Re: China
Posted: Sat Apr 30, 2022 2:08 pm
Why doesn’t more of the Western left support the People’s Republic of China?
The focus of my presentation is: why doesn’t more of the Western left support the People’s Republic of China? Why doesn’t more of the Western left engage in a serious way with Chinese socialism?
There are lots of things about modern China that seem worthy of support, from a socialist point of view.
Poverty alleviation. Reducing poverty is a decidedly leftist objective. If there was no poverty under capitalism – if there were no homeless, no people without sufficient food to eat, without access to education and healthcare, without work or the possibility of earning an income – most people on the left would probably find something better to do with their time than struggling for a new society.
So the fact that China has achieved so much in the realm of poverty alleviation should obviously be something that we study and celebrate.
Not everyone trusts the Chinese government’s statistics, not everyone is convinced by the claim that China in 2020 eliminated extreme poverty. Fine. But it is absolutely beyond question that, in the period from 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed, the Chinese people have experienced an unprecedented and extraordinary improvement in their living standards and their level of human development.
China was one of the poorest countries in the world. Millions would die every year due to malnutrition, even in non-famine years. The vast majority of the population had no access to education and healthcare.
Life expectancy has more than doubled since 1949. China has achieved universal literacy. Everybody has access to education and healthcare. The social and economic position of women has improved beyond recognition.
Yes, life expectancy and literacy have improved in much of the world. But in China’s case, it has gone from a long way below the global average to a long way above the global average. The UN Development Programme describes China as having achieved “the most rapid decline in absolute poverty ever witnessed”.
There is tremendous inequality in China, and yes there are billionaires, but actually the economic baseline – the quality of life for the poor – is much higher than in other countries of the developing world.
The rural poor in China may not have a great deal of disposable income, but they have access to land, they have secure housing, they’re not drowning in debt to feudal landlords, their children get educated, they can see a doctor if they need to, they’re entitled to a pension, they have water piped into their homes, and so on. They might be considered as poor, but it’s a very different category of poverty to that which can be seen elsewhere in Asia.
And there are a number of other areas in which China is making amazing progress.
On climate change and biodiversity, China has emerged as a global leader.
On the Covid-19 pandemic, China has established the gold standard in terms of going all out to protect human life.
The fact that China is able to focus to such a degree on poverty alleviation, on renewable energy, on education, on suppressing the pandemic, on cracking down on corruption, and so on, doesn’t reflect some mystical, etherial quality of Chinese culture. It reflects the fact that the Chinese state prioritises the needs of ordinary people.
And that in itself reflects the fact that the CPC came to power via a revolution that was led by, supported by and sustained by the working class and peasantry. It was a revolution that created a workers’ state – moreover, a state led by a communist party with Marxism as its guiding ideology.
And yet, support for Chinese socialism is a niche position on the Western left.
Socialist China?
To start with, an awful lot of people think that China is a capitalist country, or even an imperialist country.
China has nearly 700 billionaires. A lot is made of China’s billionaires. Of course, China’s a huge country. Proportionally speaking, measured in terms of billionaires per million population, China stands at 0.27, which is actually below the global average of 0.35.
Monaco, by the way, is the world leader, with 79 billionaires per million population! The US is well above the global average with just under 2 per million. So China can hardly be said to be the home of billionaires.
But anyway. You can find McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks in Chinese cities. There’s private capital, there are big businesses and wealthy individuals and significant inequality. There are rich people and poor people; there is exploitation of labour; and there is integration into global value chains operated by huge multinationals.
A lot of people on the Western left look at this situation and say, well, this can’t be socialism.
And yet such people face an ideological trap that’s very difficult to break out of.
The standard of living in China has increased dramatically and continuously since 1949, certainly including in the period from 1978 when China is supposed to have “gone capitalist”. No capitalist country has achieved what China’s achieved in terms of improving the lives of ordinary people – certainly not on anything like the scale, or for such a sustained period of time.
Under capitalism, wealth always has a counterpart in poverty. The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, but tens of millions of people lack access to healthcare. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. And that’s before we even think about the extent to which US wealth relies on poverty, war and destruction elsewhere in the world – which is very much not the case for China.
If China is capitalist, and Chinese capitalism has delivered such extraordinary improvements to the lives of hundreds of millions of people, does that mean we need to think again about being anti-capitalists? That’s a serious question for anti-China leftists.
The Chinese themselves have always been very clear: they use market forces, within the overall context of a planned and state-run economy, in order to stimulate the development of the productive forces.
The Chinese state maintains tight control over the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy: heavy industry, energy, transport, communications, and foreign trade. China’s financial system is dominated by the ‘big four’ state-owned banks, which are accountable to the government rather than to private shareholders.
This level of intervention and regulation – which is the opposite of the free market fundamentalism and ‘small government’ neoliberalism that prevails in the West – means that capital isn’t in control; that the economy exists to benefit the people as a whole.
The land in China continues to be owned and managed at the village level.
So from an economic point of view, when you do a bit of investigation, China is much more socialist and much less capitalist than it might appear at a superficial level.
I often quote the Shanghai investor Eric Li, who’s interviewed on John Pilger’s film ‘The Coming War on China’. He makes an essential point about how China works:
“China is a market economy but it’s not a capitalist country. There’s no way a group of billionaires could control the politburo in the way billionaires control American policy making. Capital does not have enshrined rights in China.”
That is to say, in capitalist countries, the interests of capital come first. The capitalist class is the ruling class. In China that’s manifestly not the case.
Look at the top priorities of the Chinese government in recent years. Eradicate extreme poverty. Clamp down on corruption. Shift to renewable energy. Protect biodiversity. Protect human life in a pandemic. Improve living standards. These goals represent the will of ordinary people, not a capitalist elite.
Compare that with the major capitalist countries. Where I am in Britain, we’ve faced years of bitter austerity – life for ordinary working class people is getting worse all the time. Our death rate from Covid is almost a thousand times higher than China’s. Our progress rolling out renewable energy is painfully slow.
And the fact that China’s government represents the class interests of the masses is also reflected in the fact that it’s extraordinarily popular. Studies, including by Western academic institutions, routinely show that the CPC-led government has a 90-plus percent approval rating.
Meanwhile, the latest polling data indicates that only 20 percent of respondents feel the US Congress is doing a good job. But the US is the democracy, apparently.
The other thing to quickly mention about China and socialism is that the Chinese themselves continue to conceive of their political trajectory in terms of socialism and communism. Xi Jinping often says: “Only socialism can save China”, and “socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism and not any other kind of -ism.”
All school students learn the basic tenets of Marxism; all the major universities have Schools of Marxism. It’s pretty difficult to understand why the Chinese would go to such lengths to pretend to be socialists.
Propaganda war
Another important factor in how the Western left engages with China is the propaganda war. A lot of people who won’t even give critical support to Chinese socialism are happy to give uncritical support to anti-China propaganda put out by Western imperialists.
China’s the new colonial force in Africa.
China’s the new colonial force in Latin America and the Caribbean.
China is cornering developing countries in debt traps.
China is perpetrating a genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
China is preventing Tibetans and Inner Mongolians from speaking their languages.
China is trying to wipe out democracy in Hong Kong.
And the list goes on. Each item can be, and has been, comprehensively debunked. But why do people fall for these lies over and over again?
It should be perfectly obvious why the US and its allies would wage a propaganda war against China. China’s rise constitutes an existential threat for US hegemony. China is by most measures the largest economy in the world; it’s a leader in multiple key areas of science and technology; it takes an independent and anti-imperialist stance on the global stage and consistently supports the Global South, consistently works towards multipolarity; it’s a non-white power; it’s run by a communist party… For these reasons and more, China is the principal target in the US-led New Cold War, and the propaganda war is part of that.
But why do people fall for it? Why do people who consider themselves to be critical thinkers not think a bit more critically about the information they’re being fed about China?
There are several elements to this.
For one thing, a lot of this propaganda is quite powerful and sophisticated, and it actively connects to progressive ideas and sentiments. Particularly since the Carter administration, US politicians and media have really mastered the use of human rights as a stick to beat their enemies with. They find a problem, magnify it, exaggerate it, build a slick and all-pervasive campaign around it, and make you feel like you’re a bad person if you don’t join that campaign.
The accusation of genocide is particularly potent in these terms. By accusing China of genocide in Xinjiang, or Russia of genocide in Bucha, you create an emotional-intellectual environment where to stand with China or Russia is the equivalent of being a Holocaust denier. So you’ve massively increased the psychological cost of taking an anti-imperialist position.
The propaganda is very persuasive, very sophisticated, and we have to understand that and systematically counter it.
Then the Western left has a couple of quite deep-rooted problems that it needs to face up to.
It has a eurocentrism problem. The trajectory of Marxism over the course of the 20th century was towards the East and the South. It started as the ideology of the North American and West European industrial working class in their struggle against capital; it shifted East first to Russia, then China, Vietnam, Korea; then South to Cuba, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Nicaragua, Grenada and elsewhere.
It became the ideology of the oppressed masses worldwide against imperialism, capitalism and white supremacy. It’s very significant that the final sentence of the Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, reads: “Workers of the world, unite!” The Comintern, at its second congress in 1920, at the suggestion of a certain Vladimir Lenin, expanded this to: “Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!”
But a lot of the Western left never quite caught up with that. In their minds, workers’ struggle still mainly looks like white men, working in factories and demanding pay rises. The idea of a Chinese or Zimbabwean peasant being at the cutting edge of the global class struggle doesn’t quite resonate.
The less a movement looks and acts like the European working class of the late 19th century, the less support it gets. And if you look at the communist parties in countries like China and Korea – countries that really aren’t at all Europeanised, that don’t have their philosophical roots in Greece and Rome, and so on – they don’t fit that bill.
Connected to that, the Western left also has a dogmatism problem. Let’s just admit it. In spite of – or perhaps because of – our lack of success building a socialist project of our own, we’ve developed very fixed ideas about what socialism is. And those ideas often don’t match the messy reality of Chinese socialism, which exists in the real world, which is engaged in a long-term battle for its survival in the face of ongoing imperialist hostility and destabilisation, and which therefore has had to make compromises and to develop creative solutions to new and complex problems.
Conclusion
How do we go about addressing these issues in our movement? It’s a tough question. Through the work that various groups and individuals have been doing – including the International Manifesto Group – we’re starting to see the re-emergence and consolidation of an international anti-imperialist movement. We need to continue developing this work, building unity and deepening our understanding.
We need to be cognisant of the propaganda war, and we need to fight resolutely against it.
And of course we always need to be alert to the intellectual arrogance and the prejudices that are so easy to absorb when you exist in a culture that’s fundamentally racist and Eurocentric.
Thank you very much for listening.
https://socialistchina.org/2022/04/29/w ... -of-china/
NATO and AUKUS: the makings of an Asian NATO
But NATO members are also Pacific powers – the US, Canada, but also France and Britain, which maintain possession of a few islands and hence some considerable maritime territory.
In this Pacific presence can be seen the makings of an Asian NATO as a counter to the growing Eurasian dimension.
Whilst the world’s focus is on Russia in the Ukraine, for the US, China is the ‘pacing challenge’, and from this perspective, the Ukraine crisis can be seen as the first phase in the US’s last-ditch battle to retain its world supremacy, a battle pitting ‘democracies against autocracies’ in which NATO is to serve as the armed vanguard against the so-called Russia-China alliance.
The world before NATO was to be a new world of the UN Charter which, in the coordination of the wartime allies – the US, UK, Soviet Union and China – and in its commitment to national sovereignty, held the promise of a multipolar world.
It was this new world of the equality of nations that the US set out to smash in driving the first Cold War.
From Cold War to thaw back to Cold War in the Asia Pacific
The Cold War in the Pacific divided China and Korea and involved two hot wars – in Korea and Indochina – at the cost of countless lives and countless war crimes.
The US sought to set up an Asian NATO – however Australia lacked trust in Japan after WW2; Japan’s military was constrained under Article 9 of its constitution; and many South East Asian states, having fought to gain independence, chose non-alignment over subordination in a military alliance.
SEATO – Southeast Asia Treaty Organization – was set up in 1955 to block the ‘communist domino effect’ but it lacked unity and folded in 1977. The US instead relied on bilateral alliances and a spread of some 400 military bases to encircle China.
The Cold War never ended in the Pacific – China and Korea remain divided. Nevertheless, a degree of thaw in the 1990s allowed China to improve its relations in the region whilst ASEAN extended membership to the three communist-aligned Indochinese nations along with Myanmar. Regional economic growth entered a new phase.
But then, sending things into reverse, Obama embarked on his Asian pivot launching the freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. Following this, Trump declared China a strategic competitor, initiating the Quad to draw India into a new network with Australia, Japan and the US.
2020 saw the counter-hegemonic trend gather momentum with agreement on RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, embracing large parts of East Asia and Oceania; the EU was also about to sign a major investment deal with China – these two developments recalling the coalition of Germany all the way across to China which Brzezinski foresaw in 1997, claiming this would be hostile to the US.
The US then prepared to strike back, launching the New Cold War, followed in September 2021 by AUKUS – a mini–Asian NATO, an intervention by the outside Anglosphere which started to sow disunity within the region, undermining its resolve for Asians to deal with Asian affairs.
NATO in the Pacific
NATO itself has been expanding into Asia since 2012 with its Partnerships for Peace programme drawing in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
By 2014, an equation was already being drawn between Russia and the Ukraine and China in the South China Sea.
At the 2019 NATO summit, Pompeo raised the issue of the China threat and, in 2021, the NATO 2030 document widened its focus to include the ‘IndoPacific’, making very clear a strategy of: Russia first then China.
Biden has advanced on Trump’s anti-China approach in two key ways, elevating the Quad and bringing the Taiwan issue more into view. But the Quad lacks military muscle – hence the announcement of AUKUS.
The US and UK are to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, not only violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but also subverting the nuclear weapons free zones of South East Asia and the South Pacific – both important advances of regional independence in the 1980s. These submarines will extend Australia’s naval reach much further into the South and East China Seas.
Australia is to be transformed into a forward base for the US military, providing the core of a regional ‘hybrid warfare’ network, with looser links bringing nations into various regional networks under US direction, covering diplomacy, intelligence sharing, media narratives, supply chains and so on.
The pact also represents a new level of cooperation in military technologies – in quantum computing and digital technologies – as exemplified in the recent announcement on the development of hypersonic weaponry.
Accompanying the promotion of arms sales and the implementation of sanctions, AUKUS then is designed to secure US dominance over East Asia’s future growth in its support of US competition at the cutting edge of new technologies.
The impact of the Ukraine crisis
Amidst the Ukraine crisis, fears have been raised of a Chinese military takeover of Taiwan – in a completely false parallel between Ukraine, a sovereign state and Taiwan, recognised by the UN as a part of China.
As in Europe, militarisation in East Asia is accelerating: Japan has just increased its military budget by $50bn; Australia has estimated the cost of AUKUS at an eye-watering $250bn. With the newly elected conservative president in South Korea, a North East Asian arc with Japan and the US, comes into view, and with both Japan and South Korea strengthening military links with Australia, there are possible ties here into AUKUS in the South.
AUKUS only received a lukewarm reception amongst regional powers with Indonesia and Malaysia most openly expressing their reservations. Again, as in Europe, pressure is being brought to bear to erode the long held stabilising positions of Japan’s peace clause and ASEAN’s non-aligned inclinations, using the threat of sanctions to splinter and subordinate the organisation so as to clear the obstacles to militarisation.
Rather than Ukraine-Taiwan, Ukraine-the South China Sea may offer a better parallel: whilst Russia insists on Ukraine’s neutrality, China has been seeking the neutrality of the South China Sea in negotiations on a code of conduct which limits permission for outside powers to set up naval bases.
The marker of the Cold War battle line of ‘democracies versus autocracies’ is being drawn by the US around the so-called democratic right of nations to choose their allies. This is also the meaning behind the ‘free and open IndoPacific’ – that is freedom to join in the making of an Asian NATO.
Why is it that the US is blocking peace negotiations on Ukraine’s neutrality? Why can’t it accept the legitimacy of Russia’s security concerns? Not least, because this would set a precedent for China over Taiwan and the South China Sea. And it is China that is seen as the real, comprehensive challenger.
Amidst false allegations that China is supplying arms to Russia and propping Russia up, NATO is strengthening its links with the Pacific 4 – Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. The upcoming summit this June will set the stage for an attempt to legitimise NATO’s increasing penetration into the IndoPacific region as the necessary opposition to the so-called ‘Russia-China alliance’.
In conclusion
NATO expansion is the root cause of the war in Europe; through its links into the Asia Pacific, it is equally intent to divide and destabilise a region now forecast to overtake Europe as the centre of the world economy by 2030.
Russia first, China next, NATO is bringing on a new world order – it’s called the jungle.
If China has not criticised Russia, at least one reason is because it looks to the long term – to a new security plan not just for Europe but one which restores its Eurasian orientation, a new Eurasian Security Order
China, in taking its stand on the indivisibility of security, on security for all – not of one at the expense of another – is keeping alive the spirit of the UN Charter.
https://youtu.be/BGAocoqiOLo
https://socialistchina.org/2022/04/27/n ... sian-nato/
Qin Gang: The Ukraine crisis and its aftermath
China loves peace and opposes war. It advocates upholding international law and universally recognized norms governing international relations and respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine. China supports all efforts that can deliver a ceasefire and relieve the humanitarian crisis on the ground, and will continue to play a constructive role toward this end.
Lessons must be learned. While working to end this conflict, we must also give some serious thought to the changes brought by the crisis and the path forward in its aftermath.
The postwar international system is coming under the heaviest pressure since the Cold War. The once-in-a-century pandemic, the Ukraine crisis and the unparalleled sanctions, the spiraling inflation and a looming recession, all these have sounded the alarm for the “boiler” of the international system. It is high time for us to reduce the pressure, not the other way round, for our shared world.
Europe is the focus of all the pressure in the crisis. Its prospects of stability and prosperity were apparently damaged overnight and replaced by huge uncertainties. To reverse this situation, there must be not only an end to this war, but also a fundamental answer to lasting peace and stability in Europe, and a balanced, effective, and sustainable philosophy and architecture for its security.
The contrasting shifts over the thirty years on the two ends of the Eurasian continent should shed some light on how security can be ensured for Europe and the world. After the Cold War, when Europe chose to use NATO’s eastward expansion to preserve security, on the other side of the continent, China, Russia, and Central Asian countries initiated the Shanghai Five mechanism, in an unprecedented exploration of a new security philosophy and model. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton for the first time announced a timetable for NATO enlargement in Detroit, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan signed the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions, resolving China’s boundary issues with former Soviet Union countries once and for all and putting an end to military standoff along the China-Soviet Union border. The cornerstone of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has thus been laid, and the “Shanghai spirit,” i.e., mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity, and pursuit of common development, has been established. As such, neighborly friendship and common peace have prevailed among China, Russia, and Central Asian countries. As is shown by history, different choices lead to different outcomes.
The unfolding Ukraine crisis has also put America’s relations with both Russia and China to new tests. In 1992 when Russian President Boris Yeltsin paid his first visits to the United States and China following the Soviet disintegration, the countries agreed not to regard each other as adversaries, which basically put Russia’s bilateral relations with the United States and China on the same level. Over the past thirty years, the China-Russia relationship has made great progress, but it is still based on non-alliance, non-confrontation, and non-targeting of third countries. China has been and will remain an independent country that decides its position according to the merits of each matter, immune from external pressure or interference. The claims about China’s prior knowledge of Russia’s military action or China providing military aid to Russia are pure disinformation. Had similar conflicts happened in other places or between other countries, China’s position would be no different. At the same time, U.S.-Russia relations are sliding into a new Cold War, which is not in the interest of either China, the United States, or Russia, and is not what China wants to see. After all, a worse Russia-U.S. relationship does not mean a better China-U.S. relationship, and likewise, a worse China-Russia relationship does not mean a better U.S.-Russia relationship, either. More importantly, if the China-U.S. relationship is messed up, that does not augur well for Russia-U.S. relations or the world.
Disturbingly, as the crisis continues, some people are wielding the stick of sanctions against China to coerce the renunciation of its independent foreign policy of peace. Some are clamoring about a “Beijing-Moscow Axis” in a dangerous misinterpretation of China-Russia relations, asking China to bear responsibility for the crisis. Some are linking Taiwan to Ukraine and playing up the risks of a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Still others, for all the lessons that should be learned, are fanning up misunderstanding, confrontation, and insecurity in Asia-Pacific, without a modicum of care if this region might follow in the footsteps of Europe. These words and actions are not helpful to resolving the crisis or ensuring the stability of China-U.S. relations. Dragging everyone down does no good to our future generations.
Ukraine knows best how the postwar international system was all built. Over seventy years later today, its future is again closely linked with that of the world. Though we are not able to reach consensus, for the moment, on what kind of international system we want, last century’s “scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind,” and the following four decades of estrangement should enlighten us that we all live in a shared world with a shared future. It is out of the question for any country or country bloc to have absolute security while ignoring other countries’ security. Without respect, trust, mutual accommodation, and cooperation, the world would never be peaceful. It does not need and cannot afford another Cold War in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis.
China and the United States should not only work together to tackle the warming of the global climate, but also seek maximum common ground in addressing the cooling of the international political climate. Differences in perception of the crisis do not justify groundless accusations or pressure and should not hinder our joint efforts to end the crisis. I have been staying in close communication with American colleagues on it. At the same time, China and the United States should take a long-term view and have pragmatic and constructive dialogue, coordination, and cooperation for what comes our way outside and after the crisis. In this way, we can bring about an arrangement for lasting peace and stability in Europe acceptable to all parties; properly resolve other global hotspots; prevent and address the crisis’ impact on the global economy and trade, finance, energy, food, and industrial and supply chains; and minimize the losses for the economy and people’s livelihood. The current international system is not perfect. It needs to make progress with the times, and China is committed to supporting and contributing to this process, not undercutting or wrecking it. In the final analysis, our shared goal is lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity for the 1.8 billion Chinese and American people and the 7.8 billion world population. This is the historical responsibility for China and the United States as two major countries.
https://socialistchina.org/2022/04/23/q ... aftermath/
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China: Experts Say There Is No Chance To Ease Pandemic Control
China experts warn on not easing COVID-19 measures control. Apr. 29, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@globaltimesnews
Published 29 April 2022
As cases of infected people by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 continue to increase, Chinese experts said there is no chance to ease pandemic measures.
On Friday, the top Chinese epidemiologist Liang Wannian said that in light of outbreaks resulting from an increase of infected people by the Omicron variant, China could not afford a relaxation of the pandemic control measures.
The Expert said during a press conference that China's elderly and underage population has not yet completed its vaccination schema. Meanwhile, different parts of the country are facing discrepancies in medical resources.
"Under such circumstances, the country's medical resources will be stretched too thin should we adopt a laissez-faire epidemic containment approach," he said, adding that such a move would also affect the health of vulnerable people, which include minors and the aged people.
Referring to anti-pandemic measures conducted in Beijing and Shanghai, the top epidemiologist highlighted the need for the swift and full establishment of containment policies to effectively strike infections due to the Omicron variant and stay one step ahead of the virus.
Liang considers that intended to stop the spreading of the virus and continue protecting citizens' lives; China needs to continue standing with the principle of timely detection, quarantine, patient admission, and treatment.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0023.html
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Latest data released by National Health Commission by midnight, April 29, 2022.
- Chinese mainland reports 1,410 new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases, 47 new deaths
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 8965f.html
Chinese mainland reports 5,646 new local COVID-19 cases, 5,487 in Shanghai
Updated: 2022-04-29 10:00
BEIJING -- The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 5,646 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 5,487 were in Shanghai, according to the National Health Commission's report Friday.
The rest of the cases were reported in 17 other provincial-level regions, including Beijing, Jilin, and Zhejiang.
Of all the newly reported local confirmed cases, 5,125 were previously identified as asymptomatic infections.
Shanghai also reported 9,545 of the 9,942 local asymptomatic carriers newly identified on the mainland.
Following the recovery of 2,796 COVID-19 patients on Thursday, there were 28,317 confirmed COVID-19 cases undergoing treatment in hospitals across the country.
Shanghai on Thursday also reported 52 deaths from COVID-19, bringing the mainland's total COVID-19 deaths to 4,975.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202204/ ... 5a19a.html
At a webinar of the International Manifesto Group on the theme of Anti-imperialism and the Western Left, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez gave this talk about the Western left’s failure to meaningfully engage with Chinese socialism.
The focus of my presentation is: why doesn’t more of the Western left support the People’s Republic of China? Why doesn’t more of the Western left engage in a serious way with Chinese socialism?
There are lots of things about modern China that seem worthy of support, from a socialist point of view.
Poverty alleviation. Reducing poverty is a decidedly leftist objective. If there was no poverty under capitalism – if there were no homeless, no people without sufficient food to eat, without access to education and healthcare, without work or the possibility of earning an income – most people on the left would probably find something better to do with their time than struggling for a new society.
So the fact that China has achieved so much in the realm of poverty alleviation should obviously be something that we study and celebrate.
Not everyone trusts the Chinese government’s statistics, not everyone is convinced by the claim that China in 2020 eliminated extreme poverty. Fine. But it is absolutely beyond question that, in the period from 1949, when the People’s Republic of China was proclaimed, the Chinese people have experienced an unprecedented and extraordinary improvement in their living standards and their level of human development.
China was one of the poorest countries in the world. Millions would die every year due to malnutrition, even in non-famine years. The vast majority of the population had no access to education and healthcare.
Life expectancy has more than doubled since 1949. China has achieved universal literacy. Everybody has access to education and healthcare. The social and economic position of women has improved beyond recognition.
Yes, life expectancy and literacy have improved in much of the world. But in China’s case, it has gone from a long way below the global average to a long way above the global average. The UN Development Programme describes China as having achieved “the most rapid decline in absolute poverty ever witnessed”.
There is tremendous inequality in China, and yes there are billionaires, but actually the economic baseline – the quality of life for the poor – is much higher than in other countries of the developing world.
The rural poor in China may not have a great deal of disposable income, but they have access to land, they have secure housing, they’re not drowning in debt to feudal landlords, their children get educated, they can see a doctor if they need to, they’re entitled to a pension, they have water piped into their homes, and so on. They might be considered as poor, but it’s a very different category of poverty to that which can be seen elsewhere in Asia.
And there are a number of other areas in which China is making amazing progress.
On climate change and biodiversity, China has emerged as a global leader.
On the Covid-19 pandemic, China has established the gold standard in terms of going all out to protect human life.
The fact that China is able to focus to such a degree on poverty alleviation, on renewable energy, on education, on suppressing the pandemic, on cracking down on corruption, and so on, doesn’t reflect some mystical, etherial quality of Chinese culture. It reflects the fact that the Chinese state prioritises the needs of ordinary people.
And that in itself reflects the fact that the CPC came to power via a revolution that was led by, supported by and sustained by the working class and peasantry. It was a revolution that created a workers’ state – moreover, a state led by a communist party with Marxism as its guiding ideology.
And yet, support for Chinese socialism is a niche position on the Western left.
Socialist China?
To start with, an awful lot of people think that China is a capitalist country, or even an imperialist country.
China has nearly 700 billionaires. A lot is made of China’s billionaires. Of course, China’s a huge country. Proportionally speaking, measured in terms of billionaires per million population, China stands at 0.27, which is actually below the global average of 0.35.
Monaco, by the way, is the world leader, with 79 billionaires per million population! The US is well above the global average with just under 2 per million. So China can hardly be said to be the home of billionaires.
But anyway. You can find McDonalds, KFC and Starbucks in Chinese cities. There’s private capital, there are big businesses and wealthy individuals and significant inequality. There are rich people and poor people; there is exploitation of labour; and there is integration into global value chains operated by huge multinationals.
A lot of people on the Western left look at this situation and say, well, this can’t be socialism.
And yet such people face an ideological trap that’s very difficult to break out of.
The standard of living in China has increased dramatically and continuously since 1949, certainly including in the period from 1978 when China is supposed to have “gone capitalist”. No capitalist country has achieved what China’s achieved in terms of improving the lives of ordinary people – certainly not on anything like the scale, or for such a sustained period of time.
Under capitalism, wealth always has a counterpart in poverty. The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, but tens of millions of people lack access to healthcare. Hundreds of thousands are homeless. And that’s before we even think about the extent to which US wealth relies on poverty, war and destruction elsewhere in the world – which is very much not the case for China.
If China is capitalist, and Chinese capitalism has delivered such extraordinary improvements to the lives of hundreds of millions of people, does that mean we need to think again about being anti-capitalists? That’s a serious question for anti-China leftists.
The Chinese themselves have always been very clear: they use market forces, within the overall context of a planned and state-run economy, in order to stimulate the development of the productive forces.
The Chinese state maintains tight control over the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy: heavy industry, energy, transport, communications, and foreign trade. China’s financial system is dominated by the ‘big four’ state-owned banks, which are accountable to the government rather than to private shareholders.
This level of intervention and regulation – which is the opposite of the free market fundamentalism and ‘small government’ neoliberalism that prevails in the West – means that capital isn’t in control; that the economy exists to benefit the people as a whole.
The land in China continues to be owned and managed at the village level.
So from an economic point of view, when you do a bit of investigation, China is much more socialist and much less capitalist than it might appear at a superficial level.
I often quote the Shanghai investor Eric Li, who’s interviewed on John Pilger’s film ‘The Coming War on China’. He makes an essential point about how China works:
“China is a market economy but it’s not a capitalist country. There’s no way a group of billionaires could control the politburo in the way billionaires control American policy making. Capital does not have enshrined rights in China.”
That is to say, in capitalist countries, the interests of capital come first. The capitalist class is the ruling class. In China that’s manifestly not the case.
Look at the top priorities of the Chinese government in recent years. Eradicate extreme poverty. Clamp down on corruption. Shift to renewable energy. Protect biodiversity. Protect human life in a pandemic. Improve living standards. These goals represent the will of ordinary people, not a capitalist elite.
Compare that with the major capitalist countries. Where I am in Britain, we’ve faced years of bitter austerity – life for ordinary working class people is getting worse all the time. Our death rate from Covid is almost a thousand times higher than China’s. Our progress rolling out renewable energy is painfully slow.
And the fact that China’s government represents the class interests of the masses is also reflected in the fact that it’s extraordinarily popular. Studies, including by Western academic institutions, routinely show that the CPC-led government has a 90-plus percent approval rating.
Meanwhile, the latest polling data indicates that only 20 percent of respondents feel the US Congress is doing a good job. But the US is the democracy, apparently.
The other thing to quickly mention about China and socialism is that the Chinese themselves continue to conceive of their political trajectory in terms of socialism and communism. Xi Jinping often says: “Only socialism can save China”, and “socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism and not any other kind of -ism.”
All school students learn the basic tenets of Marxism; all the major universities have Schools of Marxism. It’s pretty difficult to understand why the Chinese would go to such lengths to pretend to be socialists.
Propaganda war
Another important factor in how the Western left engages with China is the propaganda war. A lot of people who won’t even give critical support to Chinese socialism are happy to give uncritical support to anti-China propaganda put out by Western imperialists.
China’s the new colonial force in Africa.
China’s the new colonial force in Latin America and the Caribbean.
China is cornering developing countries in debt traps.
China is perpetrating a genocide against Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang.
China is preventing Tibetans and Inner Mongolians from speaking their languages.
China is trying to wipe out democracy in Hong Kong.
And the list goes on. Each item can be, and has been, comprehensively debunked. But why do people fall for these lies over and over again?
It should be perfectly obvious why the US and its allies would wage a propaganda war against China. China’s rise constitutes an existential threat for US hegemony. China is by most measures the largest economy in the world; it’s a leader in multiple key areas of science and technology; it takes an independent and anti-imperialist stance on the global stage and consistently supports the Global South, consistently works towards multipolarity; it’s a non-white power; it’s run by a communist party… For these reasons and more, China is the principal target in the US-led New Cold War, and the propaganda war is part of that.
But why do people fall for it? Why do people who consider themselves to be critical thinkers not think a bit more critically about the information they’re being fed about China?
There are several elements to this.
For one thing, a lot of this propaganda is quite powerful and sophisticated, and it actively connects to progressive ideas and sentiments. Particularly since the Carter administration, US politicians and media have really mastered the use of human rights as a stick to beat their enemies with. They find a problem, magnify it, exaggerate it, build a slick and all-pervasive campaign around it, and make you feel like you’re a bad person if you don’t join that campaign.
The accusation of genocide is particularly potent in these terms. By accusing China of genocide in Xinjiang, or Russia of genocide in Bucha, you create an emotional-intellectual environment where to stand with China or Russia is the equivalent of being a Holocaust denier. So you’ve massively increased the psychological cost of taking an anti-imperialist position.
The propaganda is very persuasive, very sophisticated, and we have to understand that and systematically counter it.
Then the Western left has a couple of quite deep-rooted problems that it needs to face up to.
It has a eurocentrism problem. The trajectory of Marxism over the course of the 20th century was towards the East and the South. It started as the ideology of the North American and West European industrial working class in their struggle against capital; it shifted East first to Russia, then China, Vietnam, Korea; then South to Cuba, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Zimbabwe, Angola, Namibia, Nicaragua, Grenada and elsewhere.
It became the ideology of the oppressed masses worldwide against imperialism, capitalism and white supremacy. It’s very significant that the final sentence of the Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, reads: “Workers of the world, unite!” The Comintern, at its second congress in 1920, at the suggestion of a certain Vladimir Lenin, expanded this to: “Workers and oppressed peoples of the world, unite!”
But a lot of the Western left never quite caught up with that. In their minds, workers’ struggle still mainly looks like white men, working in factories and demanding pay rises. The idea of a Chinese or Zimbabwean peasant being at the cutting edge of the global class struggle doesn’t quite resonate.
The less a movement looks and acts like the European working class of the late 19th century, the less support it gets. And if you look at the communist parties in countries like China and Korea – countries that really aren’t at all Europeanised, that don’t have their philosophical roots in Greece and Rome, and so on – they don’t fit that bill.
Connected to that, the Western left also has a dogmatism problem. Let’s just admit it. In spite of – or perhaps because of – our lack of success building a socialist project of our own, we’ve developed very fixed ideas about what socialism is. And those ideas often don’t match the messy reality of Chinese socialism, which exists in the real world, which is engaged in a long-term battle for its survival in the face of ongoing imperialist hostility and destabilisation, and which therefore has had to make compromises and to develop creative solutions to new and complex problems.
Conclusion
How do we go about addressing these issues in our movement? It’s a tough question. Through the work that various groups and individuals have been doing – including the International Manifesto Group – we’re starting to see the re-emergence and consolidation of an international anti-imperialist movement. We need to continue developing this work, building unity and deepening our understanding.
We need to be cognisant of the propaganda war, and we need to fight resolutely against it.
And of course we always need to be alert to the intellectual arrogance and the prejudices that are so easy to absorb when you exist in a culture that’s fundamentally racist and Eurocentric.
Thank you very much for listening.
https://socialistchina.org/2022/04/29/w ... -of-china/
NATO and AUKUS: the makings of an Asian NATO
NATO serves as the nuclear-armed fortress that helps to elevate the West above the ‘Rest’; it anchors Europe to its western orientation, severing it from its Eurasian geography.In this recent presentation to the International Manifesto Group webinar, The Case Against NATO, Dr Jenny Clegg traces the makings of an Asian NATO via such mechanisms as AUKUS and the Quad whose fundamental purposes are to contain and confront a rising China. She further draws attention to the extension of NATO influence into the Asia Pacific through its Partnerships for Peace for example with Japan, South Korea and Australia; and also considers the impact of the Ukraine crisis in relation to these developments with the increase of tensions, divisions and militarisation in the region
But NATO members are also Pacific powers – the US, Canada, but also France and Britain, which maintain possession of a few islands and hence some considerable maritime territory.
In this Pacific presence can be seen the makings of an Asian NATO as a counter to the growing Eurasian dimension.
Whilst the world’s focus is on Russia in the Ukraine, for the US, China is the ‘pacing challenge’, and from this perspective, the Ukraine crisis can be seen as the first phase in the US’s last-ditch battle to retain its world supremacy, a battle pitting ‘democracies against autocracies’ in which NATO is to serve as the armed vanguard against the so-called Russia-China alliance.
The world before NATO was to be a new world of the UN Charter which, in the coordination of the wartime allies – the US, UK, Soviet Union and China – and in its commitment to national sovereignty, held the promise of a multipolar world.
It was this new world of the equality of nations that the US set out to smash in driving the first Cold War.
From Cold War to thaw back to Cold War in the Asia Pacific
The Cold War in the Pacific divided China and Korea and involved two hot wars – in Korea and Indochina – at the cost of countless lives and countless war crimes.
The US sought to set up an Asian NATO – however Australia lacked trust in Japan after WW2; Japan’s military was constrained under Article 9 of its constitution; and many South East Asian states, having fought to gain independence, chose non-alignment over subordination in a military alliance.
SEATO – Southeast Asia Treaty Organization – was set up in 1955 to block the ‘communist domino effect’ but it lacked unity and folded in 1977. The US instead relied on bilateral alliances and a spread of some 400 military bases to encircle China.
The Cold War never ended in the Pacific – China and Korea remain divided. Nevertheless, a degree of thaw in the 1990s allowed China to improve its relations in the region whilst ASEAN extended membership to the three communist-aligned Indochinese nations along with Myanmar. Regional economic growth entered a new phase.
But then, sending things into reverse, Obama embarked on his Asian pivot launching the freedom of navigation operations in the South China Sea. Following this, Trump declared China a strategic competitor, initiating the Quad to draw India into a new network with Australia, Japan and the US.
2020 saw the counter-hegemonic trend gather momentum with agreement on RCEP – the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, embracing large parts of East Asia and Oceania; the EU was also about to sign a major investment deal with China – these two developments recalling the coalition of Germany all the way across to China which Brzezinski foresaw in 1997, claiming this would be hostile to the US.
The US then prepared to strike back, launching the New Cold War, followed in September 2021 by AUKUS – a mini–Asian NATO, an intervention by the outside Anglosphere which started to sow disunity within the region, undermining its resolve for Asians to deal with Asian affairs.
NATO in the Pacific
NATO itself has been expanding into Asia since 2012 with its Partnerships for Peace programme drawing in Australia, Japan, New Zealand, Pakistan, and the Philippines.
By 2014, an equation was already being drawn between Russia and the Ukraine and China in the South China Sea.
At the 2019 NATO summit, Pompeo raised the issue of the China threat and, in 2021, the NATO 2030 document widened its focus to include the ‘IndoPacific’, making very clear a strategy of: Russia first then China.
Biden has advanced on Trump’s anti-China approach in two key ways, elevating the Quad and bringing the Taiwan issue more into view. But the Quad lacks military muscle – hence the announcement of AUKUS.
The US and UK are to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines, not only violating the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty but also subverting the nuclear weapons free zones of South East Asia and the South Pacific – both important advances of regional independence in the 1980s. These submarines will extend Australia’s naval reach much further into the South and East China Seas.
Australia is to be transformed into a forward base for the US military, providing the core of a regional ‘hybrid warfare’ network, with looser links bringing nations into various regional networks under US direction, covering diplomacy, intelligence sharing, media narratives, supply chains and so on.
The pact also represents a new level of cooperation in military technologies – in quantum computing and digital technologies – as exemplified in the recent announcement on the development of hypersonic weaponry.
Accompanying the promotion of arms sales and the implementation of sanctions, AUKUS then is designed to secure US dominance over East Asia’s future growth in its support of US competition at the cutting edge of new technologies.
The impact of the Ukraine crisis
Amidst the Ukraine crisis, fears have been raised of a Chinese military takeover of Taiwan – in a completely false parallel between Ukraine, a sovereign state and Taiwan, recognised by the UN as a part of China.
As in Europe, militarisation in East Asia is accelerating: Japan has just increased its military budget by $50bn; Australia has estimated the cost of AUKUS at an eye-watering $250bn. With the newly elected conservative president in South Korea, a North East Asian arc with Japan and the US, comes into view, and with both Japan and South Korea strengthening military links with Australia, there are possible ties here into AUKUS in the South.
AUKUS only received a lukewarm reception amongst regional powers with Indonesia and Malaysia most openly expressing their reservations. Again, as in Europe, pressure is being brought to bear to erode the long held stabilising positions of Japan’s peace clause and ASEAN’s non-aligned inclinations, using the threat of sanctions to splinter and subordinate the organisation so as to clear the obstacles to militarisation.
Rather than Ukraine-Taiwan, Ukraine-the South China Sea may offer a better parallel: whilst Russia insists on Ukraine’s neutrality, China has been seeking the neutrality of the South China Sea in negotiations on a code of conduct which limits permission for outside powers to set up naval bases.
The marker of the Cold War battle line of ‘democracies versus autocracies’ is being drawn by the US around the so-called democratic right of nations to choose their allies. This is also the meaning behind the ‘free and open IndoPacific’ – that is freedom to join in the making of an Asian NATO.
Why is it that the US is blocking peace negotiations on Ukraine’s neutrality? Why can’t it accept the legitimacy of Russia’s security concerns? Not least, because this would set a precedent for China over Taiwan and the South China Sea. And it is China that is seen as the real, comprehensive challenger.
Amidst false allegations that China is supplying arms to Russia and propping Russia up, NATO is strengthening its links with the Pacific 4 – Australia, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand. The upcoming summit this June will set the stage for an attempt to legitimise NATO’s increasing penetration into the IndoPacific region as the necessary opposition to the so-called ‘Russia-China alliance’.
In conclusion
NATO expansion is the root cause of the war in Europe; through its links into the Asia Pacific, it is equally intent to divide and destabilise a region now forecast to overtake Europe as the centre of the world economy by 2030.
Russia first, China next, NATO is bringing on a new world order – it’s called the jungle.
If China has not criticised Russia, at least one reason is because it looks to the long term – to a new security plan not just for Europe but one which restores its Eurasian orientation, a new Eurasian Security Order
China, in taking its stand on the indivisibility of security, on security for all – not of one at the expense of another – is keeping alive the spirit of the UN Charter.
https://youtu.be/BGAocoqiOLo
https://socialistchina.org/2022/04/27/n ... sian-nato/
Qin Gang: The Ukraine crisis and its aftermath
The Ukraine crisis is agonizing. One more minute the conflict lasts means one more hardship for the 43 million Ukrainian people. To end this unwanted conflict as soon as possible is more important than everything else.China’s Ambassador to the US, Qin Gang, is making persistent efforts to explain to the American public his country’s real position regarding the conflict in Ukraine and to counter disinformation. Below is his article, published on April 18 by The National Interest, a leading US conservative bimonthly International Relations magazine, founded in 1985.
Ambassador Qin notes that: “To end this unwanted conflict as soon as possible is more important than anything else.” He notes that Europe is the focus of the current crisis and the continent needs not only an end to the fighting but also a fundamental answer to the question of securing lasting peace and stability and a balanced and effective security architecture.
Qin Gang contrasts the eastward expansion of NATO, which contributed in no small measure to today’s tragic situation, with the development of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, in which framework China has amicably settled all its historic border disputes with Russia and the countries of Central Asia, both of which may be traced to 1996, and notes: “Different choices lead to different outcomes.”
China loves peace and opposes war. It advocates upholding international law and universally recognized norms governing international relations and respecting the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, including Ukraine. China supports all efforts that can deliver a ceasefire and relieve the humanitarian crisis on the ground, and will continue to play a constructive role toward this end.
Lessons must be learned. While working to end this conflict, we must also give some serious thought to the changes brought by the crisis and the path forward in its aftermath.
The postwar international system is coming under the heaviest pressure since the Cold War. The once-in-a-century pandemic, the Ukraine crisis and the unparalleled sanctions, the spiraling inflation and a looming recession, all these have sounded the alarm for the “boiler” of the international system. It is high time for us to reduce the pressure, not the other way round, for our shared world.
Europe is the focus of all the pressure in the crisis. Its prospects of stability and prosperity were apparently damaged overnight and replaced by huge uncertainties. To reverse this situation, there must be not only an end to this war, but also a fundamental answer to lasting peace and stability in Europe, and a balanced, effective, and sustainable philosophy and architecture for its security.
The contrasting shifts over the thirty years on the two ends of the Eurasian continent should shed some light on how security can be ensured for Europe and the world. After the Cold War, when Europe chose to use NATO’s eastward expansion to preserve security, on the other side of the continent, China, Russia, and Central Asian countries initiated the Shanghai Five mechanism, in an unprecedented exploration of a new security philosophy and model. In 1996, when President Bill Clinton for the first time announced a timetable for NATO enlargement in Detroit, China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan signed the Treaty on Deepening Military Trust in Border Regions, resolving China’s boundary issues with former Soviet Union countries once and for all and putting an end to military standoff along the China-Soviet Union border. The cornerstone of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization has thus been laid, and the “Shanghai spirit,” i.e., mutual trust, mutual benefit, equality, consultation, respect for cultural diversity, and pursuit of common development, has been established. As such, neighborly friendship and common peace have prevailed among China, Russia, and Central Asian countries. As is shown by history, different choices lead to different outcomes.
The unfolding Ukraine crisis has also put America’s relations with both Russia and China to new tests. In 1992 when Russian President Boris Yeltsin paid his first visits to the United States and China following the Soviet disintegration, the countries agreed not to regard each other as adversaries, which basically put Russia’s bilateral relations with the United States and China on the same level. Over the past thirty years, the China-Russia relationship has made great progress, but it is still based on non-alliance, non-confrontation, and non-targeting of third countries. China has been and will remain an independent country that decides its position according to the merits of each matter, immune from external pressure or interference. The claims about China’s prior knowledge of Russia’s military action or China providing military aid to Russia are pure disinformation. Had similar conflicts happened in other places or between other countries, China’s position would be no different. At the same time, U.S.-Russia relations are sliding into a new Cold War, which is not in the interest of either China, the United States, or Russia, and is not what China wants to see. After all, a worse Russia-U.S. relationship does not mean a better China-U.S. relationship, and likewise, a worse China-Russia relationship does not mean a better U.S.-Russia relationship, either. More importantly, if the China-U.S. relationship is messed up, that does not augur well for Russia-U.S. relations or the world.
Disturbingly, as the crisis continues, some people are wielding the stick of sanctions against China to coerce the renunciation of its independent foreign policy of peace. Some are clamoring about a “Beijing-Moscow Axis” in a dangerous misinterpretation of China-Russia relations, asking China to bear responsibility for the crisis. Some are linking Taiwan to Ukraine and playing up the risks of a conflict across the Taiwan Strait. Still others, for all the lessons that should be learned, are fanning up misunderstanding, confrontation, and insecurity in Asia-Pacific, without a modicum of care if this region might follow in the footsteps of Europe. These words and actions are not helpful to resolving the crisis or ensuring the stability of China-U.S. relations. Dragging everyone down does no good to our future generations.
Ukraine knows best how the postwar international system was all built. Over seventy years later today, its future is again closely linked with that of the world. Though we are not able to reach consensus, for the moment, on what kind of international system we want, last century’s “scourge of war, which twice in our lifetime has brought untold sorrow to mankind,” and the following four decades of estrangement should enlighten us that we all live in a shared world with a shared future. It is out of the question for any country or country bloc to have absolute security while ignoring other countries’ security. Without respect, trust, mutual accommodation, and cooperation, the world would never be peaceful. It does not need and cannot afford another Cold War in the aftermath of the Ukraine crisis.
China and the United States should not only work together to tackle the warming of the global climate, but also seek maximum common ground in addressing the cooling of the international political climate. Differences in perception of the crisis do not justify groundless accusations or pressure and should not hinder our joint efforts to end the crisis. I have been staying in close communication with American colleagues on it. At the same time, China and the United States should take a long-term view and have pragmatic and constructive dialogue, coordination, and cooperation for what comes our way outside and after the crisis. In this way, we can bring about an arrangement for lasting peace and stability in Europe acceptable to all parties; properly resolve other global hotspots; prevent and address the crisis’ impact on the global economy and trade, finance, energy, food, and industrial and supply chains; and minimize the losses for the economy and people’s livelihood. The current international system is not perfect. It needs to make progress with the times, and China is committed to supporting and contributing to this process, not undercutting or wrecking it. In the final analysis, our shared goal is lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity for the 1.8 billion Chinese and American people and the 7.8 billion world population. This is the historical responsibility for China and the United States as two major countries.
https://socialistchina.org/2022/04/23/q ... aftermath/
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China: Experts Say There Is No Chance To Ease Pandemic Control
China experts warn on not easing COVID-19 measures control. Apr. 29, 2022. | Photo: Twitter/@globaltimesnews
Published 29 April 2022
As cases of infected people by the Omicron variant of COVID-19 continue to increase, Chinese experts said there is no chance to ease pandemic measures.
On Friday, the top Chinese epidemiologist Liang Wannian said that in light of outbreaks resulting from an increase of infected people by the Omicron variant, China could not afford a relaxation of the pandemic control measures.
The Expert said during a press conference that China's elderly and underage population has not yet completed its vaccination schema. Meanwhile, different parts of the country are facing discrepancies in medical resources.
"Under such circumstances, the country's medical resources will be stretched too thin should we adopt a laissez-faire epidemic containment approach," he said, adding that such a move would also affect the health of vulnerable people, which include minors and the aged people.
Referring to anti-pandemic measures conducted in Beijing and Shanghai, the top epidemiologist highlighted the need for the swift and full establishment of containment policies to effectively strike infections due to the Omicron variant and stay one step ahead of the virus.
Liang considers that intended to stop the spreading of the virus and continue protecting citizens' lives; China needs to continue standing with the principle of timely detection, quarantine, patient admission, and treatment.
https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Chi ... -0023.html
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Latest data released by National Health Commission by midnight, April 29, 2022.
- Chinese mainland reports 1,410 new locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases, 47 new deaths
http://global.chinadaily.com.cn/a/20220 ... 8965f.html
Chinese mainland reports 5,646 new local COVID-19 cases, 5,487 in Shanghai
Updated: 2022-04-29 10:00
BEIJING -- The Chinese mainland on Thursday reported 5,646 locally transmitted confirmed COVID-19 cases, of which 5,487 were in Shanghai, according to the National Health Commission's report Friday.
The rest of the cases were reported in 17 other provincial-level regions, including Beijing, Jilin, and Zhejiang.
Of all the newly reported local confirmed cases, 5,125 were previously identified as asymptomatic infections.
Shanghai also reported 9,545 of the 9,942 local asymptomatic carriers newly identified on the mainland.
Following the recovery of 2,796 COVID-19 patients on Thursday, there were 28,317 confirmed COVID-19 cases undergoing treatment in hospitals across the country.
Shanghai on Thursday also reported 52 deaths from COVID-19, bringing the mainland's total COVID-19 deaths to 4,975.
https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202204/ ... 5a19a.html