Auckland woman says she was banned from popular Chinese-language media forum SkyKiwi for posting political content
A woman is taking New Zealand’s biggest Chinese-language media site to a human rights review tribunal after she claims she was banned from its online message board for posting political content.
May Moncur migrated from China 20 years ago and is a permanent resident of New Zealand. The Auckland employment advocate has used the New Zealand-based media company SkyKiwi for more than 15 years, regularly posting links about migrant exploitation or offering employment advice on its most popular message board, “FML”.
The UK and Italy are closing in on a jet fighter deal with Japan. Reuters reported on 2 December that the deal could be done by the following week. The contracts would see the UK’s Tempest project merged with Japan’s F-X project.
Efforts by the ruling Japanese political party are underway to develop a new, more aggressive foreign policy:
The announcement will come before Japan releases a new national security strategy and military procurement plan around mid December, the sources said.
There have also been moves in Japan to secure an increased long-range missile capacity. Rivalry with China is seen as the major justification:
That arms build up, which could double the country’s defence budget to around 5% of gross domestic product (GDP) over the next five years, will pay for new weapons including long-range missiles designed to deter China from resorting to military action in and around the East China Sea.
Japan’s post-war constitution still bans particular kinds of militarist behaviour, including the possession or development of nuclear weapons. However, in recent years defence reforms have still gone ahead under different governments. Article 9 of the constitution was created to prevent Japan becoming a military power again.
But some in Japan want to change this. As Japanese politics expert Ra Mason has explained, the increasing militarism:
raises concerns of entrapment into American proxy wars and increasing economic involvement in the US “military-industrial complex”, the system by which the defence sector encourages arms spending and war.
Militarism on the move
Japan’s return to a war footing under US influence should concern us all. Chinese military buildup was touted as a threat by NATO and the US. With Europe already at risk of expanded war due to Ukraine, every effort must be made to resist the march to conflict in Asia.
In response to Jeff J. Brown’s article “The Myth of Chinese Capitalism,” Ron Leighton wrote an article published at Dissident Voice, Counterpunch, and elsewhere. Dr. T. P. Wilkinson has interviewed Jeff J. Brown about his article and much more.
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The debate about what system actually governs the People’s Republic of China has continued since the death of Mao Zedong in 1976. The significance of this controversy increased after 1989 when the Soviet Union was destroyed along with the governments that had prevailed in the Comecon1 region.
After the NATO-led demolition of Yugoslavia, the prevailing opinion in the West was that communism or even socialism had failed. This left the Republic of Cuba, the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea and the People’s Republic of China as the only states ruled by and through communist parties. The claim that China—at least since Deng—is capitalist and not communist or socialist is not so much an issue in China as one for those adamant on proving that the system attributed to the US or the “West”, generally called “capitalism” is not merely the superior system but the only system on the planet no matter who governs.
This interview is not only a response to an article by Ron Leighton criticizing Jeff J Brown. It is the first in a series of articles on the Transformation of Political Language. Since 1989 there has been an obvious crisis in popular-based politics following the global purging of radical popular movements from the 1950 to the 1980. While the thirty years following the end of World War II were dominated by violent counter-insurgency and assassinations, the period following the end of the Soviet Union has been an era where the very language of popular political action has collapsed. This series aims to explain this and perhaps point toward possibilities for a reconstituted political speech capable of collating the subjective and objective conditions of political struggle.
T.P. Wilkinson: As someone whose life in China went through different phases, in fact, changed through personal experience, it might be useful to start by describing when and how you came to China and briefly describe those transformations.
Jeff J. Brown: I really need to go back in time to fully answer your question. My travel lust began over a decade before starting my career in China, 1990-1997. With my agricultural upbringing, in 1978, I learned fluent Portuguese at graduate school, with the express goal of going to Brazil to become a corn and soybean baron. Luckily, I could not get the financing. Otherwise, I would have probably become a greedy landowner, shooting at locals and Natives, to protect my property.
Instead, I joined the Peace Corps, 1980-1982 in Tunisia, learning Arabic fluently, to help local farmers with their imported Holstein dairy cows. This launched me into eight more years across Africa and the Middle East, first in marketing frozen bull semen for artificial insemination and then in grain trade, also learning French fluently.
Having gotten married in 1988 and becoming a naturalized French citizen, I was ready for a change of culture. We got transferred to China in 1990, with four more years in grain trade and then for three years, overseeing the installation and management of McDonald’s first bun bakery on the Mainland.
I mention all this, because I am ashamed of my attitude and behavior during my first seven years in China. In spite of all my previous cosmopolitan, globetrotting, linguistic experiences in tens of countries on four continents, I was thoroughly brainwashed with the hubris and cultural superiority of all things USA. Yes, I learned to read, write and speak Mandarin fluently, soaked up the culture, traveling all over China and in the region, yet sadly, I swaggered around like the proverbial ugly American.2
Looking back, I cringe at myself.
It wasn’t until we returned 2010-2019, that my arc of awareness became meaningful and personally transformative. First was the metamorphosis of the country, after only 13 years. I was stunned by the breathtaking development and improvement in quality-of-life factors. Even more importantly was the amazing, positive revolution in the people, their attitudes, behavior and lifestyles. I was truly impressed with everything I saw. However, we were in Beijing and at first, we only did limited travel in the area. I had to prove to myself that what I was seeing was the real deal in other parts of the country. I thus spent 44 days traveling by foot, local trains and buses, in six of the poorest provinces/regions of the country, including the Tibetan Plateau.
What started out as a simple blog developed into my first book, 44 Days Backpacking in China. Nonetheless, having finished it, I knew something was very wrong about my lingering Western superiority attitude, which I fully shed in writing my second book, China Rising. I then really rounded out the Chinese people’s incredible story of their 5,000-year civilization in writing BIG Red Book on China. Through it all, I learned to talk and write about the Chinese people from their point of view, in their voice.
As a result of my long journey to truth and understanding, I am very patient with Westerners, who are just like I was in the 1990s. I can fully empathize.
TPW: Lots of slogans are used in the mass media to describe people and the governments they lead, as well as those countries. We hear a lot about democracies, dictatorships, oligarchies, etc. However, we rarely hear anyone using those terms give an intelligible definition or explain why the same terms are so inconsistently used. Could you explain based on your own experience in China what democracy means in China, and how that definition might be applied elsewhere to judge if a place or system is democratic?
JJB: It took me writing China Rising to fully purge my system of a lifetime of “The West is the Best” brainwashing. I was having tremendous cognitive dissonance after experiencing 44 Days, and suspected that some of the comments I wrote about the Mao Era and China’s governance were wrong. I intuitively understood that to extend my arc of awareness into a more accurate understanding, I had to learn the truth about the West. As it turns out, it was not a pretty picture, and still isn’t. Nonetheless, it gave me the path I needed to really analyze the Chinese people in their voice, not from Uncle Sam’s condescending, from-above perspective.
This allowed me to realize that “Western liberal democracy” has always been a propagandized myth, going back to Ancient Greece and Rome, 3,000 years ago. Both prospered on what I call the Six E’s of Western Racism, Expansionism, Expropriation, Extraction, Extermination, Enslavement, Evangelism (since New World colonialism, we can add a seventh, epidemics).
With few, isolated exceptions (Louis IX, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Charles De Gaulle, John F. Kennedy), Western leaders and governments have always been autocratic, elitist, aristocratic, dictatorial, totalitarian, as well as corrupt, criminal and cruel.
After the fall of Rome, we suffered a thousand years of the tyrannical Catholic Church, then for the last 500, tyrannical monarchy’s imperialism and colonialism. Through it all, humanity has suffered the extermination of many billions of innocent souls, with the rape and plundering of the survivors’ human and natural resources. For a brief time under Napoleon Bonaparte’s leadership, 1799-1815 (he was a democratic socialist), the French and much of the rest of the European 99% on the continent being served before the aristocratic, monarchial 1%. After he was deposed, putting lipstick on what devolved into “Western Liberal Democracy” and its god-awful imperialist-capitalist pig, no longer works for me. (See Ramin Mazaheri discusses Part 1 of his fabulous book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values).
Instead in China, I know that for thousands of years, even during its limited, elite-class use of slavery (as opposed to Greece/Rome’s economies only able to function with massive, continual importations of slaves) and its longer period of feudalism, citizens were free to seek redress with local authorities if they felt there was an injustice. If that decision was unacceptable to the complainant, they could take it up to the provincial level and even to the emperor. It is still used today, called Letters and Complaints (信访) or Higher Appeal (上访). I’ve personally seen Chinese delivering letters to the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, where the National People’s Congress convenes. We have seen increasingly that when Westerners do that they are likely to be punished, permanently injured, imprisoned or killed. Black lists, assassinations, and wrongful imprisonment have been common in the US at least since the infamous Palmer Raids. Just ask protesters being run over, mace-sprayed, beaten and shot in the West, especially in the USA and France. (See Ramin Mazaheri discusses Part 2 of his fabulous book, France’s Yellow Vests: Western Repression of the West’s Best Values).
At the same time, emperors and governors routinely sent out high level confidants incognito all over the country, disguised as traveling salesmen or tinkers, to chat up the locals, to understand their zeitgeist at the common level. What’s working? What are the people’s problems? What are their hopes and dreams?
This bottom-up style democracy continues today, with Mao Zedong’s mass line, which is simply massive polling and surveys of what the 99% want and need: to take the line of the masses. To this day, Baba Beijing3 is the world’s most active pollster and surveyor of public opinion. Living in Beijing and Shenzhen, there were notices every week on our apartment buildings’ main doors, asking people to come to the local government office to tell them about everything, from the availability of pap smears and breast exams, to garbage collection, possible sources of pollution, corruption, recycling, bus and metro services, public safety, the speed of the internet, and on and on.
Nowadays, citizens can do the same thing online, and do so vociferously. Artificial Intelligence and Big Data give Baba Beijing the power to zero in on potential problems and find fast solutions. Portals are available to confidentially report corruption, malfeasance, criminal business practices and other irregularities, which feeds into the Social Credit System (SCS-see below). I personally used it to report a couple of problems in my neighborhood and within a couple of three weeks, they were resolved.
Every three years, elections in 900,000 localities take place to vote for their village/neighborhood committees. More than half of those elected are not members of the CPC, just caring and concerned citizens. From there, these local reps vote for the bigger city government, and these in turn vote for provincial level leaders, and these latter vote for China’s 2,500-member National People’s Congress (NPC), which includes eight opposing political parties other than the CPC, something very few Western countries can claim. This body votes for the 300-member Central Committee (like a state council), which in turn elects the 25-member Standing Committee and top-level seven-member Politburo Standing Committee. All these representatives are highly experienced and well-educated. No movie actors and sports stars allowed (Democracy).
These foundations were laid millennia ago and since communist-socialist liberation in 1949, China has the world’s most consultative, consensual, bottom-up people’s democracy on Earth. Mao called it the mass line, President Xi Jinping calls it whole-process democracy. They both mean one thing: SERVE THE PEOPLE! (the 99%). Post-Napoleonic Western liberal democracy is a three-ring, barking dog circus performance to make the 1% super wealthy, keep them in power, while keeping the 99% down, poorer and in their lowly place.
There is simply no comparison.
TPW: Economist Michael Hudson, whose book Superimperialism was written for people in the US government to explain how the “dollar empire” works, has lectured a lot in China. Although he does not know the language, there is no one who can doubt his credentials as a serious political-economist. He also says that China is a socialist country from an economic point of view. He bases that observation on Chinese economic policy and his perception of who makes it. Since you do understand the language and have lived and worked in China many years, could you describe how Chinese talk about their system on a day-to-day basis?
JJB: It was Deng Xiaoping who came up with the moniker Socialism with Chinese Characteristics and it has stuck in the minds of the Chinese people, which they and the media use. Among those adhering to Mao Thought, (of which there are many magnitudes more than Western pundits want to admit) there is much criticism of Deng’s economic liberalization and opening up to the outside world, meaning global capitalism.4 This, while the same-said global capitalists loved what they perceived as a laissez-faire free-for-all, viz, a chance to plunder China’s resources.
What cannot be questioned is Deng’s belief that post-liberated China never had the chance to go through bourgeois capitalist industrialization, and according to Marxism, this is a prerequisite for transition to communism thereafter. Thus, this is what I lived through 1990-1997: Fast-Freddy, make-a-quick-buck, street level, jungle capitalism. The economy was mostly liberalized for high volume, low margin consumer/manufactured goods and retail services, such as restaurants, tourism, hotels, shopping malls, etc. Much less noticed by foreigners was that Baba Beijing kept, and is still keeping to this day, firm control of what they call the 100 Great Industries; i.e., directing and planning the country’s critical means of production.
Global capitalists only saw the prior and wore blinders for the latter, by hypnotizing themselves with their “Dengist” palliative, which avoided the don’t-go-there communism boogeyman. For the West’s mainstream media, this gave China a self-congratulating “capitalist road” sheen of inevitability. The Big Lie Propaganda Machine (BLPM)5 was gloating that China was rapidly joining the global capitalism’s “rules-based order”, meaning becoming a supine vassal, to be raped and plundered by the West trillionaire dictators. Self-conceited Western capitalists saw all that 1980s-1990s retail chaos as a sure sign they would soon be buying up banks, factories and public infrastructure for pennies on the dollar/euro, as they had across the postwar developing world. As it stands, Deng, who was a committed communist to his last dying breath (just read his works) and the Chinese people are having the last laugh to continual development and ever-increasing 99%-prosperity.
Fast forward to 2013. Xi Jinping added Chinese Dream to Deng’s hashtag, which is now used interchangeably by the people and in the media.
The Chinese people’s meteoric rise since 1949 is proof that they know what they are talking about: nonstop and broad-based economic opportunity, growing prosperity, sociopolitical harmony, public safety, and bottom-up, consensual people’s democracy. When the Chinese government announced it has raised some 300 million people out of absolute poverty, one needs to get a sense of proportion. The US population in 2022 is about 333 million. How many Americans are living in absolute poverty in what is supposedly the richest country in the world? Of course, Western anti-communists and Sinophobes refuse to see why, in top international polls, year after year (Gallup, Pew, etc.), the Chinese report great satisfaction with their government, media and the direction in which the country is heading, usually the world’s top-ranked country in each category.
At the same time, most Chinese are mortified by the West’s cruelty and criminality, both at home and abroad. Your average waitress or taxi driver knows much more about Eurangloland’s reality than vice-versa.
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Walter Lipmann’s China Lobby could not bring themselves to admit it, using the euphemism “So-Called Communist China”, fully expecting one day for the country to be covered with big white churches, full of little yellow, Americanized Christians. Today, global capitalists continue to deny that China is communist, in spite of the fact that,
The means of production in the 100 great industries are still controlled by Baba Beijing.
Infrastructure, public transportation, telecommunications and the internet are people-owned.
The financial sector is people-owned, with the world’s four biggest banks being wholly controlled by the State.
The People’s Bank of China (central bank) issues the country’s currency, not like privately owned, Western central banks, which make trillions off performing the same function.
The insurance sector is people-owned.
The aforementioned is all owned and managed by very successful and profitable state-owned enterprises (SOEs).
No dirt/green land can be bought in China. All land can only be leased for up to 70 years, this applies to locals and foreigners.
China has a vanguard political party, the CPC, which oversees the military.
The media is mostly government-owned and tightly state-managed, with an official censor explaining to the people why certain information is withheld (official censors in China have existed for thousands of years).
Marxism-Leninism is official social, political and economic policy, employed at all levels of governance and business.
Stalinist state planning is the order of the day, with benchmarked national five-year rolling plans laying out social, economic and political goals across the country. The private sector is expected to join forces with the state in achieving these targets.
The above official policymaking is reinforced by Mao Thought and Xi Thought, and it all anchors both China’s national and CPC constitutions.
The CPC, PLA and the Chinese people are considered to be one unifying, cohesive force for the betterment of all, to serve the people.
Heavy redistribution of wealth from the top to the bottom, with progressive taxation to make sure it happens.
Heavy legislation, regulations and judicial oversight to keep China’s private sector technology, fintech, social media, education, medicine and other potential “usurpers” on a tight leash. No Chinese Mark Zuckerberg’s, Elon Musk’s, Jeff Bezos’s and Big Pharma allowed.
Broad-based social services, such as generous maternity/nursing leave, universal health care, retirement income, old age homes and freebies for the elderly. Not to mention there are massive programs to eliminate rural poverty, ongoing.
Bottom-up, consensual, consultative people’s democracy, with Mao’s mass line, never-ending polls and surveys among the people, which are essentially eternal public referenda, via direct voting.
These are not just policies on paper, but the big picture that drives daily practice. Yet – and yet – neoliberal, neocon and libertarian pundits still call it “So-Called Communist China”! There are only two other countries that can tick off most to all of these boxes: DPRK/North Korea and Cuba. So, for all these reality deniers, are these countries not communist either?
Ron Leighton, who wrote that dreadfully-argued article, “The Religiosity of ‘The Myth of Chinese Capitalism” appears6, like so many others, to be brainwashed. One might even doubt the article’s actual authorship since Mr Leighton’s website identifies him as a fiction writer, specializing in fantasy, but provides no biographical or other information to show his qualifications for writing about China. Philip Agee7 and more recently Udo Ulfkotte have explained how stories are planted using writers and journalists willing to publish CIA articles as their own. His article and the website he cites heavily take glib, elitist, tones even using Trotskyite “permanent revolution” jargon. Moreover that website provides no clear indication of who actually maintains or funds it.
TPW: It is no secret that while Western governments formally recognise national sovereignty, the corporations that own those governments have always seen national sovereignty as an obstacle to business — an obstacle to be overcome by whatever means necessary. Chinese people can be found almost anywhere in the world, but not the Chinese government. In fact, much of the overseas Chinese population is really the legacy of Western forced labour. Yet there is no doubt about strong historical and contemporary contact between overseas Chinese and New China (not just Taiwan). I imagine you have known people in China who are linked to this diaspora. How would you characterise the relationship between Chinese in China and those Chinese living outside China, whether or not they are Chinese citizens?
I ask this question for two reasons. One is the awareness that Chinese all around the world have been subjected to racialist policies in the countries they inhabit. The other is the question raised, in fact, by Putin, with respect to the Russian diaspora created by the dissolution of the Soviet Union. New countries like the US or, in fact, most of the Western peninsula can only claim a nationality since the 1789 Revolution in France — before that there were monarchies, but no Westphalian nations. China in contrast has had a national identity for thousands years. Somehow, it seems to me that this ancient national identity must have special relevance for the Chinese view of their economic and political system.
JJB: Good question. In fact, we have to go back, way back. The Chinese people cum civilization have had a national identity going back 7,700 years. How? That is when the first remnants of the written language were preserved (on bone, tortoise shell and stone) and incredibly, its grammatical structure has changed very little since then. While today called Mandarin, for thousands of years and between thousands of spoken dialects, the lingua franca has always been the written language.
Even to this day, I have seen older Chinese, who only speak their local dialect, communicate using written messages, when meeting another person from elsewhere, in the same oral situation. They have been using the same characters for millennia, but pronounce them differently. The classic examples are Cantonese and Hakka, which have six tones and Mandarin, which has four (five, including the “non-tone”). We experienced this through all our travels across China. Even exploring small villages just outside Beijing, ground zero for all things Mandarin, we often had to use Chinese maps and writing with the villagers to find our way around, because for us, they were speaking dialectical gibberish; this long before GPS and mobile phones.
I bring this up to point out that postwar Mandarin has become political. The Mainland uses Mao-Era simplified characters, as does Singapore. However, it is associated with communism, Taiwan and most Western Chinese enclaves insist on using the traditional form. Nevertheless, Taiwanese and Singaporeans speak Mainland Mandarin. Thus, this national/linguistic identity applies to the 50 million Chinese living outside the Mainland and Taiwan. San Francisco, Hakka-dominated Penang Island and Paris’ 13th Arrondissement all consider themselves Chinese, many of them feeling this first and foremost, then they see themselves as American, Malaysian and French, respectfully.
To keep the civilizational umbilical cord connected, overseas Chinese are called Huaqiao (华侨), meaning Chinese Bridge. When they come back to the motherland, like after studying and working overseas, they are called Sea-Returnees (海归). The second character (gui = return) has the same pronunciation and tone for turtle. Thus, they are also called Sea Turtles (海龟), which always find their way home!
In sum, politics aside, for the diaspora and Mainlanders, there is only one Chinese Nation/Civilization on Planet Earth.
TPW: We hear and read that China — especially since 2020 — is the evil social system of the future for the rest of the world. I find it hard to believe that Chinese can either want or are able to impose their own social order on the rest of the planet. Americans talk and act as if everyone in the earth wanted nothing better than to become an American. Do Chinese think of the world becoming Chinese?
JJB: Absolutely not. Unlike 3,000 years of Western cultural, spiritual and economic evangelism, Mainland Chinese don’t have a proselytizing bone in their bodies. With the introduction of Buddhism in the first century AD, their spiritual palette has melded into a cosmic Confucism-Daoism-Buddhism (the prior two from sixth century BC), yet have no interest in “selling” it to others. Nonetheless, because of the ancient Asian notion of saving and losing face, they do care what others think about them and are sensitive to outside criticism.
Yes, they are rightfully proud of humanity’s longest enduring civilization and love it when they see foreigners learn Mandarin, enjoy the culture and can express empathy with their communist-socialist way of life. Be that as it may, if an outsider criticizes their sociopolitical system, they are just as likely to ignore them and say sotto voce, tamade (他妈的), which means fuck off!
As far as Baba Beijing’s paternalistic, authoritarian governance is concerned, this is pure Confucism, which Mao Thought seamlessly integrated into his Serve the People, bottom-up, consultative mass line and consensual people’s democracy. What adherents of Western liberal democracy refuse to accept is that the Chinese people demanded that their Social Credit System be created. Why? Because like me, they were sick and tired of the Fast-Freddy, Rip-Off-Eddy mentality and rampant corruption, from all that street-level, jungle capitalism. I have personally experienced and written much about the SCS and would encourage anyone who wants to understand it from the perspective of Chinese citizens, to read this very informative article.
Western libertarians are quick to point to the World Economic Forum’s (WEF) global Covid Plandemic + Agenda 2030 as a Chinese conspiracy. One actually can hear and read people calling COVID-19 or SARS-CoV-2 the Chinese virus. In this scenario the CCP, like a hissing serpent, spitting and biting, seeks to diabolically impose its SCS and Zero-Covid policy on an unwitting planet. Again, this is laughable, since China has never tried to export its Confucism-Daoism-Buddhism-Communism-Socialism anywhere. It is the West’s trillionaire dictators, going back to their 19th century obsessions with eugenics, totalitarian control of all humanity and their natural and human resources, that is at the heart and soul of the WEF’s techno-fascist totalitarianism. Blaming the CCP for the Covid Plandemic + Agenda 2030 is simply the worst psychological deflection and exonerates the real psychopaths, who own and operate Western global capitalism. It is also deeply rooted in Sinophobia, going back centuries.
Concerning China being a big funder of the World Health Organization (WHO), they have the same idiom as many other cultures, Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer (让你的朋友亲密，让你的敌人更亲密). This is also true for China’s participation in October 2019’s WEF/Gates+Rockefeller+Fauci/Western Big Pharma/Military Event 201 (read “Increasing oppression of the Covid-Great Reset Plandemic proves it is forever and ever in the West“). We can add the Wuhan Institute of Virology accepting payments (also through EcoHealth Alliance) from Anthony Fauci in 2015, to be taught by Ralph Baric at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill how to weaponize SARS-COV-2 (read “We made SARS. And we patented it on 19/4/2002, before there was any alleged outbreak in Asia”: David E. Martin testifies at the German Corona Inquiry Committee July 9th, 2021“). If you know that you are going to be attacked using biological agents, it just might make sense to learn all about the weapon that is being planned to destroy you? Just assume that this was, in fact, “defensive” weapons research. There is a long history of countries not (currently) at war participating officially as observers of each other’s military exercises.
Furthermore, until its collapse, no country can stand up to the West’s global, steamrolling BLPM. Case in point: a good friend of mine worked at the World Bank in New York, which is very near the WHO’s offices. He had a number of friends there and both sides socialized on the weekends. He said it was an open secret that Fauci’s HIV/AIDS was a complete hoax, to suck over two trillion dollars with-a-T into Big Pharma’s medical industrial coffers. Be that as it may, anyone who tried to speak out was assassinated, blackmailed, bribed or extorted into silence.
Want proof? Dr. Luc Montagnier discovered HIV and was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for his work. Seeing how it was being exploited by Fauci & Co., he correctly publicly stated that HIV was no more dangerous than seasonal flu. What happened? He and his reputation were utterly destroyed by the corporate-state propaganda machine. One of the greatest microbiologists in history, a true national hero, yet his death this year in France was censored and ignored.
Chinese evangelism? Looking back across the millennia, the simple truth is that China’s Silk Roads reached Ancient Greece/Rome and Medieval/Renaissance Europe. Yet, it was Alexander the Great who was marching towards China, when he died in Afghanistan in 323 BC. It was Europe that globalized its imperial-colonial Six E’s of Racism, including its rape and plunder of Sinoland, 1839-1949. Chinese Admiral Zheng He sailed all over the Indian Ocean basin, two generations before pirate Columbus launched Europe’s New World genocide in 1492. Zheng’s massive flotillas, thousands of times bigger than the Santa Maria, Niña and Pinta conquered no lands, colonized no people. China was centuries ahead of Europe in navigational, military and productive, agricultural/manufacturing technology.9
If the Chinese had the same Six E’s of Racism DNA as the West, we would all be speaking Mandarin and singing songs of praise for Zhonguo (中国), the Middle Kingdom, while likely living much less bellicose and more prosperous and democratic lives.
Imagine that!
Comecon, the Council for Mutual Economic Assistance, was formed in 1949 to coordinate the trade relationships among those countries that had been “acceded“ to the Soviet sphere as a result of the Yalta agreements (1945) and in response to the US-led economic isolation of the region. At Yalta, the US had persuaded the Soviet Union that in lieu of reparations it would be permitted exclusive economic control over the territory it had occupied defeating Nazi Germany. US President Harry Truman repudiated these agreements at the Potsdam Conference.
This expression was popularised by the eponymous 1958 political novel by Eugene Burdick and William Lederer. It was adapted for the screen in 1963, with Marlon Brando.
Baba Beijing, literally “father Beijing” is Jeff Brown’s sobriquet for the central government of the People’s Republic of China. This can be contrasted with the historical expression used prior to the overthrow of the Qing dynasty, when the emperor was called the “Son of Heaven”.
For example, William H. Hinton wrote The Great Reversal: The Privatization of China, 1978-1989 in which he accused Deng of abandoning Mao’s communist programme for China. Hinton also saw the Tiananmen Square event as a protest against Deng’s policies. Hinton published his first book lauding Mao’s land reform, Fanshen, in 1966. He was also a supporter of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, which was widely repudiated after Mao’s death. After Edgar Snow, Hinton is probably the American most well known for his sympathetic reporting of China’s communist revolution.
BLPM, “Big lie propaganda machine“ is a term Jeff Brown uses in most of his weblog posts and his books. The term refers to the notion that “big lies“ are very effective in shaping consciousness. The concentration of Western mass media in some five or six corporations domiciled in the Western hemisphere gives these media their machine quality.
Kim Petersen also responded to Mr Leighton’s article in DV: “China is Not Capitalist and it is Not Yet Communist” (3 October 2022). Here the author of the original piece responds to Mr Leighton and to other questions concerning contemporary China.
Philip Agee explained this in his book Inside the Company:CIA Diary (1975) and in the Allan Francovich film On Company Business (1980).
See inter alia the Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of the Facts Concerning Bacterial Warfare in Korea and China (1952) also called the “Needham Report” after Dr Joseph Needham who presided over the commission’s work.
See Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China (1954-2008) 27 vols.; also The Shorter Science and Civilisation: an abridgement of Joseph Needham’s original text, (1980-1995) by Colin Ronan, Cambridge University Press.
Demonstrations in China sparked by tough anti-coronavirus (Covid-19) policies explode the ‘myth’ of a ‘harmonious society’ and reveal deep discontent with Beijing’s rulers, a leader of the Tiananmen Square protests said on Thursday. Wang Dan, who was jailed and then exiled after the 1989 Tiananmen pro-democracy movement was crushed, told reporters in Japan that the string of protests also proved that younger Chinese people are not politically apathetic.
Speaking in Tokyo, he told Agence France-Presse (AFP):
In the past 30 years there’s a myth that the younger generation or middle class were really satisfied about the government, but these protests show us the truth.
So this is a big significance of this movement, it reveals the truth. The truth is that it’s not a harmonious society… there’s already a lot of conflict between society and the government.
‘Protest era’
Wang said he believed the unrest would continue, and could signal a new “protest era”.
Anger over China’s zero-Covid policy – which involves mass lockdowns, constant testing, and quarantines even for people who are not infected – has sparked protests in major cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. However, demonstrators have also demanded wider political reforms, with some even calling for President Xi Jinping to stand down.
Wang continued:
The first feeling that came to my mind when I witnessed the incredible protests across China was the spirit of 1989 has come again, after 33 years.
Watching videos of Chinese university students chanting ‘give me liberty or give me death’ has brought me tears and hopes.
Wang was a 20-year-old student during the Tiananmen movement, which ended with the government setting tanks and troops on peaceful protesters. He was placed on the government’s most-wanted list, and was imprisoned before going into exile in the United States. But he described those protesting today as “more brave” than his generation because in the late 1980s the political climate was less severe. “This time it’s quite different. The environment is very bad,” he said, calling the protests a “heavy blow” to Xi’s reputation, weeks into his historic third term.
He concluded:
That’s why I think maybe, maybe eventually he will decide to crack down because he cannot afford to lose face.
While small-scale protests over specific government abuses happen occasionally in China, it is extremely rare for people to publicly call for President Xi Jinping to step down or for the end of Communist Party rule. The authorities punish any perceived challenge to the Party’s hold on power with long prison sentences under highly abusive conditions.
HRW’s senior China researcher Yaqiu Wang said:
People across China are taking extraordinary risks to demand their human rights. The Chinese authorities should not suppress the protests but instead allow everyone to peacefully express their views.
Hong Kong’s immigration department withheld Timothy Owen KC’s application for an extension of his work visa on Thursday
Hong Kong has temporarily blocked a top British human rights lawyer from representing jailed pro-democracy activist JimmyLai, in a trial stymied by delays and calls for an intervention from Beijing.
NATO has doubled down on its determination to eventually add Ukraine to its membership, renewing its 2008 commitment to that goal in a meeting between the foreign ministers of the alliance in Bucharest, Romania this past Tuesday.
The Romanian city was where NATO initially made the promise to Ukraine back in 2008, and at the time, US officials acknowledged that attempting to bring the country into the alliance could spark a war in the region.
“We made the decision in Bucharest in 2008 at the summit,” NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg said on Tuesday. “I was there … representing Norway as Prime Minister. I remember very well the decisions. We stand by those decisions. NATO’s door is open.”
In a joint statement, the NATO foreign ministers, including Secretary of State Antony Blinken, said that they “reaffirm” the decisions that were made at the 2008 Bucharest summit.
It has become fashionable among the mainstream western commentariat to claim that Russia’s invasion of Ukraine had nothing to do with NATO expansion, but as recently explained by Philippe Lemoine for the Center for the Study of Partisanship and Ideology, that’s a completely false narrative that requires snipping past comments made by Putin out of the context in which they were made. Many western experts warned for years in advance that NATO expansion would lead to a conflict like the one we’re seeing today, and they were of course correct.
The recent push to expand NATO in Ukraine along with nations like Finland and Sweden as justified by “Russian aggression” is a good example of what professor Richard Sakwa has called the “fateful geographical paradox: that NATO exists to manage the risks created by its existence.” As the late scholar on US-Russia relations Stephen Cohen explained years before the Ukraine crisis erupted in 2014, Moscow sees NATO as an “American sphere of influence,” and the expansion of NATO and NATO influence as expansion of that sphere. It reacts to this with hostility just as the US would react to China or Russia building up aggressive military alliances on its borders, and arguably with vastly more restraint than the US would.
Other future examples of Sakwa’s fateful geographical paradox are likely to include the push to reconfigure NATO into an alliance dedicated to “restraining” China, which of course means halting China’s rise on the world stage and working to constrict, balkanize and usurp it. A recent Financial Times article titled “Washington steps up pressure on European allies to harden China stance” gives new detail to this agenda:
The US is pushing European allies to take a harder stance towards Beijing as it tries to leverage its leadership on Ukraine to gain more support from Nato countries for its efforts to counter China in the Indo-Pacific.
According to people briefed on conversations between the US and its Nato allies, Washington has in recent weeks lobbied members of the transatlantic alliance to toughen up their language on China and to start working on concrete action to restrain Beijing.
US president Joe Biden identified countering China as his main foreign policy goal at the start of his administration, but his efforts have been complicated by the focus on Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February.
But with Russian president Vladimir Putin’s invasion in its 10th month, Washington was making a concerted effort to push China back up Nato’s agenda, the people said.
A defensive alliance doesn't look to pick fights with a country on a different continent. This is some classic mission creep from NATO – or, more accurately, Washington.https://t.co/UWNsPuSXlD
The “North Atlantic” Treaty Organization added China to its security concerns for the very first time this past June, and ever since it’s seen a mad push from Washington to ramp up aggressions against Beijing. Another Financial Times article titled “Nato holds first dedicated talks on China threat to Taiwan” details a meeting between alliance members this past September:
They also discussed how Nato should make Beijing aware of the potential ramifications of any military action — a debate that has gained significance following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine amid questions about whether the west was tough enough in its warnings to Moscow.
The US has been urging allies, particularly in Europe, to focus more on the threat to Taiwan, as concerns mount that Chinese president Xi Jinping may order the use of force against the island.
Senior US military officers and officials have floated several possible timelines for military action, with some eager to increase the sense of urgency to ensure Washington and its allies are prepared.
Some are noticing that Washington’s eagerness to “increase the sense of urgency” on this front can easily wind up having a provocative effect which serves as a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Bonnie Glaser, director of the Asia program at the German Marshall Fund of the United States, told Bloomberg a month ago that Washington’s haste to prepare everyone for another major conflict could “end up provoking the war that we seek to deter.”
“NATO should be renamed ASFP: the Alliance for Self Fulfilling Prophecies,” tweeted commentator Arnaud Bertrand of the alliance’s discussions about Taiwan.
“A defensive alliance doesn’t look to pick fights with a country on a different continent,” tweeted Jacobin’s Branko Marcetic. “This is some classic mission creep from NATO – or, more accurately, Washington.”
"Nato holds first dedicated talks on China threat to Taiwan"
NATO should be renamed ASFP: the Alliance for Self Fulfilling Prophecies…https://t.co/yU6OSiRhuu
When you ignore all the empty narrative fluff and really boil it down to the raw language of actual behavior, NATO’s existence really does seem to be premised on the circular reasoning that without NATO there’d be nobody to protect the world from the consequences of NATO’s actions. It goes out of its way to threaten powerful nations and then justifies its existence by their responses to those threats. It’s a self-licking ice cream cone, or, if you prefer, a self-licking boot.
And this is all happening as news comes out that European nations are beginning to notice they’re bearing a lot more of the cost of Washington’s proxy warfare in Ukraine than the US is, while the US reaps all the profits. In an article titled “Europe accuses US of profiting from war,” Politico reports:
Top European officials are furious with Joe Biden’s administration and now accuse the Americans of making a fortune from the war, while EU countries suffer.
“The fact is, if you look at it soberly, the country that is most profiting from this war is the U.S. because they are selling more gas and at higher prices, and because they are selling more weapons,” one senior official told POLITICO.
The explosive comments — backed in public and private by officials, diplomats and ministers elsewhere — follow mounting anger in Europe over American subsidies that threaten to wreck European industry.
"Is Washington still our ally or not?”
The "geopolitical Commission" and official Brussels as a whole is apparently only learning now what critics have been saying since the beginning: America has no permanent friends or enemies, only interests.https://t.co/WFEBTdq9r2
Washington is taking extreme risks and angering allies at this time because it’s getting to do-or-die time as far as preserving US unipolar hegemony is concerned. As Antiwar’s Ted Snider explains in a recent article, the US proxy war in Ukraine has never really been about Ukraine, and hasn’t even ultimately been about Russia. In the long run this standoff has always been about China, and about the desperate campaign of the US empire to preserve its unrivaled domination of this planet.
“The war in Ukraine has always been about larger US goals,” writes Snider. “It has always been about the American ambition to maintain a unipolar world in which they were the sole polar power at the center and top of the world.”
“Events in Ukraine in 2014 marked the end of the unipolar world of American hegemony,” Snider says. “Russia drew the line and asserted itself as a new pole in a multipolar world order. That is why the war is ‘bigger than Ukraine,’ in the words of the State Department. It is bigger than Ukraine because, in the eyes of Washington, it is the battle for US hegemony.”
“If Ukraine is about Russia, Russia is about China,” Snider writes. “The ‘Russia Problem’ has always been that it is impossible to confront China if China has Russia: it is not desirable to fight both superpowers at once. So, if the long-term goal is to prevent a challenge to the US led unipolar world from China, Russia first needs to be weakened.”
Snider quotes Lyle Goldstein, a visiting professor at Brown University, who says that “In order to maintain its hegemonic position, the US supports Ukraine to wage hybrid warfare against Russia…The purpose is to hit Russia, contain Europe, kidnap ‘allies,’ and threaten China.”
As the world becomes more multipolar and securing total control looks less and less likely, the empire is fighting more and more like a boxer in the later rounds who’s been down on the scorecards the entire fight: taking more risks, throwing wild haymakers, preferring the possibility of a knockout loss over the certainty of losing a decision.
We’re at the most dangerous point in humanity’s abusive relationship with US unipolar domination, for the same reason the most dangerous point in a battered wife’s life is right when she’s trying to escape. The empire is willing to do terrible and risky things to retain control. “If I can’t have you no one can” is a line that can be said to a wife, or to the world.
The importance of opposing these megalomaniacs, and their games of nuclear chicken, has never been higher.
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.
Peter Boyle spoke about the new wave of protests sparked by harsh anti-COVID-19 restrictions with Choo Chon Kai, who is working with the movement for democracy in China.
There are Chinese people with real grievances against their government.
The US empire’s propaganda machine will spin current protests in China to advance imperial agendas.
Western intelligence agencies will become more and more involved in these protests the longer they go on.
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It still amazes me how many people who fancy themselves anti-establishment critical thinkers will spend all day mindlessly regurgitating mainstream media lines about China.
I cannot emphasize enough how little respect I have for anyone who parrots US empire narratives about China and how completely dismissive I am of all their attempts to explain to me that it’s actually right and good to do this. Literally all of our major problems are because of the people who rule over us; if you’re buying into the narrative that who we should really be mad at right now is a government on the other side of the planet with no power over us, you’re a fucking loser. You’re a bootlicking empire simp. You’re worthless, bleating human livestock.
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Why does China keep aggressively surrounding itself with US military bases?
Everyone knows the US has invaded countries completely unprovoked very recently and will definitely do so again, but we still have to pretend that Putin is the worst thing since Hitler.
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It’s disturbing how many people I encounter who claim Russia’s invasion of Ukraine is worse than America’s invasion of Iraq because Ukraine is a “democracy”. How fucked up do you have to be inside to believe human lives are worth less because of their nation’s political system?
Leaving aside the fact that a nation which bans political parties, shuts down opposition media, imprisons opposition leaders, and is vastly more accountable to Washington than to its own people is in no way a “democracy”, that’s just a profoundly disturbed way of looking at life. A mother holding the remains of a child whose body has been ripped apart by military explosives does not care whether her country is considered a “democracy” by the western governments who are invested in that country’s military outcomes.
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Rightists correctly believe that liberals subscribe to an artificially constructed worldview designed by the powerful in the service of the powerful, but incorrectly believe that they themselves do not.
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Common debates:
Which status quo party is best
Which side of the culture war is correct
How the western empire should act
What capitalism should look like
Uncommon debates:
Should status quo politics exist
Should the western empire exist
Should capitalism exist
Should class war replace culture war
And it is of course entirely by design that the former are common and the latter are uncommon. Keeping everyone debating how establishment power structures should exist, rather than if they should, ensures the survival of those power structures.
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It’s actually a really big problem that the most visible “left” in the US is completely worthless on war and militarism. When Americans who are critical of those things look right and see people like Rand Paul and Tucker Carlson doing something then look left and see AOC and Bernie doing nothing, which side do you think they’ll choose?
And of course this is because the so-called progressive Democrats are not “left” in any meaningful way, but your average mainstream American doesn’t know that, and perception is reality. The US is the nation where antiwar sentiment is most important and the most urgently needed, and it’s been buried on the left. Americans are trained that Clintonites are “center-left” and AOC/Bernie are “far left”, and anyone further to the left than them on foreign policy is demonized by these progressives as a Russian agent. This creates the very understandable impression that the entire left is pro-war.
When you’ve got Ilhan Omar and AOC calling people who protest US proxy warfare at their rallies Russian operatives and antiwar leftists like Jill Stein branded as Kremlin agents, the message mainstream Americans come away with is that antiwar sentiment is only welcome on the right.
Again, I get this isn’t true and there’s lots of antiwar sentiment on the true left in the US, but nobody sees that left. It’s denied any media presence or political validity; mainstream Americans don’t know the difference between an anti-imperialist socialist and a Berner. This causes antiwar Americans to drift to the right; I’ve watched it happen in real time with some of my US followers. I do my best to make the case for the left, but I’m just one voice amid a surging deluge of messaging they’re getting that the real opposition is on the right.
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Naming your war machinery after the Indigenous tribes your government genocided is the modern-day equivalent of wearing the skulls of your enemies on your war horse.
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A lot of acceptance of the status quo worldview boils down to a failure of imagination. People literally can’t imagine the possibility that reality is as different as it is from what they’ve been told by their teachers, parents, pundits and politicians. It’s actually unfathomable to them, and that is because it’s so different. The world we’re trained to see by establishment perception managers is as different from the real world as any fictional world is.
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The incremental normalization of police murderbots is probably nothing to worry about. https://t.co/N97S6Rm0tk
The claim that capitalism is the best system for generating profits is basically correct; it’s hard to beat greed and starvation as a carrot and stick to get the gears of industry whirring. The issue here is that merely generating profits won’t solve most of the world’s problems, and in fact many of our problems come from the fact that capitalism is too effective at turning the gears of industry. Our biosphere is dying largely because capitalism values making lots of things but not un-making things; we’re choking our ecosystem to death because it’s profitable.
Capitalism has no real answers for problems like ecocide, inequality, exploitation and caring for the needful. Yes “let the markets decide” will generate lots of profits for those set up to harvest them, but profit-seeking cannot address those very serious problems. The “invisible hand of the market” gets treated as an actual deity that actually exists, with all the wisdom necessary to solve the world’s problems, but in reality the pursuit of money lacks any wisdom. It can’t solve our major problems, it can only make more stuff and generate more profit.
Find me a capitalist business plan for leaving a forest untouched. Find me a capitalist business plan for keeping someone free of illness, for ensuring that someone with nothing gets what they need, for giving resources to a struggling parent. You can’t. Capitalism can’t do this. These are the most important things in the world, and no possible iteration of capitalism has any solutions for any of them whatsoever, apart from “Well hopefully rich people will feel very charitable and fix those problems.” And how is that solution working out? It’s a joke.
The “Maybe the very rich will feel charitable and fix our problems for us” solution assumes that the very same people who are wired to do whatever it takes to claw their way to the top of the ladder will suddenly start caring deeply about everyone they stepped on to get there. Capitalism elevates sociopaths, because profit-seeking competition-based systems reward those who are willing to do whatever it takes to get ahead. That’s why we are ruled by sociopaths, and it’s why looking to “philanthropy” as a solution to our problems is a ridiculous joke.
When capitalism proponents tell socialists and communists “You don’t understand economics,” what they really mean is “You don’t understand that capitalism is the best system for generating profits.” But socialists and communists do understand this; it’s just that generating profits, in and of itself, is not sufficient.
If lack of wealth is your major problem, then capitalism can be a tool to address it; that’s what China is temporarily doing to keep up economically with the western forces who wish to enslave it. But such measures won’t solve ecocide, inequality, exploitation, and caring for the needful. For that other measures are needed.
If you want to make more of something (money, material goods), then capitalism can be a good way to do that. But if you need to make less of something (pollution, inequality, exploitation, sickness, homelessness, etc) it’s worthless, and other systems must be looked to.
You can say “But communist regimes are authoritarian blah blah” all you want, but that doesn’t change the fact that capitalism has zero answers for the most important problems facing our species. This still needs to be addressed, and moaning about Mao and Stalin isn’t an answer. Don’t like the iterations of socialism we’ve seen so far? Okay. Then find another answer, and remember we’ve already established that capitalism is not an answer; it cannot address the problems we’ve discussed here. So we need to find an actual answer that does actually work.
Dismantling capitalism, if we ever achieve it, will be the most difficult thing that humanity has ever accomplished. As hard as everyone becoming a buddha, and essentially not much different. But that doesn’t change the fact that it is existentially necessary for us to do so.
We’ll either move from competition-based systems to collaboration-based ones, eliminating all the obstacles necessary for us to do so, or we will go extinct. We are at our adapt-or-die juncture as a species.
My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, following me on Facebook, Twitter, Soundcloud or YouTube, buying an issue of my monthly zine, or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi, Patreon or Paypal. If you want to read more you can buy my books. The best way to make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at my website or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. All works co-authored with my American husband Tim Foley.
As President Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping arrived on the resort island of Bali, Indonesia, for their November 14th “summit,” relations between their two countries were on a hair-raising downward spiral, with tensions over Taiwan nearing the boiling point. Diplomats hoped, at best, for a modest reduction in tensions, which, to the relief of many, did occur. No policy breakthroughs were expected, however, and none were achieved. In one vital area, though, there was at least a glimmer of hope: the planet’s two largest greenhouse-gas emitters agreed to resume their languishing negotiations on joint efforts to overcome the climate crisis.
These talks have been an on-again, off-again proposition since President Barack Obama initiated them before the Paris climate summit of December 2015, at which delegates were to vote on a landmark measure to prevent global temperatures from rising more than 1.5 degrees Celsius (the maximum amount scientists believe this planet can absorb without catastrophic consequences). The U.S.-Chinese consultations continued after the adoption of the Paris climate accord, but were suspended in 2017 by that climate-change-denying president Donald Trump. They were relaunched by President Biden in 2021, only to besuspended againby an angry Chinese leadership in retaliation for House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s August 2 visit to Taiwan, viewed in Beijing as a show of support for pro-independence forces on that island. But thanks to Biden’s intense lobbying in Bali, President Xi agreed to turn the interactive switchback on.
Behind that modest gesture there lies a far more momentous question: What if the two countries moved beyond simply talking and started working together to champion the radical lowering of global carbon emissions? What miracles might then be envisioned? To help find answers to that momentous question means revisiting the recent history of the U.S.-Chinese climate collaboration.
The Promise of Collaboration
In November 2014, based on extensive diplomatic groundwork, Presidents Obama and Xi met in Beijing and signed a statement pledging joint action to ensure the success of the forthcoming Paris summit. “The United States of America and the People’s Republic of China have a critical role to play in combating global climate change,” theyaffirmed. “The seriousness of the challenge calls upon the two sides to work constructively together for the common good.”
Obama then ordered Secretary of State John Kerry to collaborate with Chinese officials in persuading other attendees at that summit — officially, the 21st Conference of the Parties of the U.N. Framework Convention on Climate Change, or COP21 — to agree on a firm commitment to honor the 1.5-degree limit. That joint effort, many observers believe, was instrumental in persuading reluctant participants like India and Russia to sign the Paris climate agreement.
“With our historic joint announcement with China last year,” Obamadeclaredat that summit’s concluding session, “we showed it was possible to bridge the old divides… that had stymied global progress for so long. That accomplishment encouraged dozens and dozens of other nations to set their own ambitious climate targets.”
Obama also pointed out that any significant global progress along that path was dependent on continued cooperation between the two countries. “No nation, not even one as powerful as ours, can solve this challenge alone.”
Trump and the Perils of Non-Cooperation
That era of cooperation didn’t last long. Donald Trump, an ardent fan of fossil fuels, made no secret of his aversion to the Paris climate accord. He signaled his intent to exit from the agreement soon after taking office. “It is time to put Youngstown, Ohio; Detroit, Michigan; and Pittsburgh, PA, along with many, many other locations within our great country, before Paris, France,” hesaidominously in 2017 when announcing his decision.
With the U.S. absent from the scene, progress in implementing the Paris Agreement slowed to a crawl. Many countries that had been pressed by the U.S. and China to agree to ambitious emissions-reduction schedules began to opt out of those commitments in sync with Trump’s America. China, too, the greatest greenhouse gas emitter of this moment and the leading user of that dirtiest of fossil fuels, coal,felt far less pressureto honor its commitment, even on a rapidly heating planet.
No one knows what would have happened had Trump not been elected and those U.S.-China talks not been suspended, but in the absence of such collaboration, there was a steady rise in carbon emissions and temperatures across the planet. According to CO.2.Earth, emissionsgrewfrom 35.5 billion metric tons in 2016 to 36.4 billion tons in 2021, a 2.5% increase. Since such emissions are the leading contributor to the greenhouse-gas effect responsible for global warming, it should be no surprise that the past seven years have also proventhe hotteston record, with much of the world experiencing record-breaking heatwaves, forest fires, droughts, and crop failures. We can be fairly certain, moreover, that in the absence of renewed U.S.-China climate cooperation, such disasters will become ever more frequent and severe.
On Again, Off Again
Overcoming this fearsome trend was one of Joe Biden’s principal campaign promises and, against strong Republican opposition, he has indeed endeavored to undo at least some of the damage wrought by Trump. It was symbolic indeed that herejoinedthe Paris climate accord on his first day in office and ordered his cabinet to accelerate the government’s transition to clean energy. In August, he achieved a significant breakthrough when Congress approved the Inflation Reduction Act of 2022, whichprovides$369 billion in loans, grants, and tax credits for green-energy initiatives.
Biden also sought to reinvigorate Washington’s global-warming diplomacy and the stalled talks with China,namingJohn Kerry as his special envoy for climate action. Kerry, in turn, reestablished ties with his Chinese colleagues from his time as secretary of state. At last year’s COP26 gathering in Glasgow, Scotland, he persuaded them to join the U.S. in approving the “Glasgow Declaration,” a commitment to step up efforts to mitigate climate change.
However, in so many ways, Joe Biden and his foreign policy team are still caught up in the Cold War era and his administration has generally taken a far more antagonistic approach to China than Obama. Not surprisingly, then, the progress Kerry achieved with his Chinese counterparts at Glasgow largely evaporated as tensions over Taiwan only grew more heated. Biden was, for instance, the first president in memory to claim —four times— that U.S. military forces would defend that island in a crisis, were it to be attacked by China, essentially tossing aside Washington’s longstanding position of “strategic ambiguity” on the Taiwan question. In response, China’s leaders became ever more strident in claiming that the island belonged to them.
When Nancy Pelosi made that Taiwan visit in early August, the Chinese responded byfiringballistic missiles into the waters around the island and, in a fit of anger,terminatedthose bilateral climate-change talks. Now, thanks to Biden’s entreaties in Bali, the door seems again open for the two countries to collaborate on limiting global greenhouse gas emissions. At a moment of ever more devastating evidence of planetary heating, from amegadroughtin the U.S. to “extreme heat” in China, the question is: What might any meaningful new collaborative effort involve?
Reasserting the Climate’s Centrality
In 2015, few of those in power doubted the overarching threat posed by climate change or the need to bring international diplomacy to bear to help overcome it. In Paris, Obamadeclaredthat “the growing threat of climate change could define the contours of this century more dramatically than any other.” What should give us hope, he continued, “is the fact that our nations share a sense of urgency about this challenge and a growing realization that it is within our power to do something about it.”
Since then, all too sadly, other challenges, including the growth of Cold War-style tensions with China, the Covid-19 pandemic, and Russia’s brutal invasion of Ukraine, have come to “define the contours” of this century. In 2022, even as the results of the overheating of the planet become ever more obvious, few world leaders would contend that “it is within our power” to overcome the climate peril. So, the first (and perhaps most valuable) outcome of any renewed U.S.-China climate cooperation might simply be to place climate change at the top of the world’s agenda again and provide evidence that the major powers, working together, can successfully tackle the issue.
Such an effort might, for instance, start with a Washington-Beijing “climate summit,” presided over by presidents Biden and Xi and attended by high-level delegations from around the world. American and Chinese scientists could offer the latest bad news on the likely future trajectory of global warming, while identifying real-world goals to significantly reduce fossil-fuel use. This might, in turn, lead to the formation of multilateral working groups, hosted by U.S. and Chinese agencies and institutions, to meet regularly and implement the most promising strategies for halting the onrushing disaster.
Following the example set by Obama and Xi at COP21 in Paris, Biden and Xi would agree to play a pivotal role in the next Conference of the Parties, COP28, scheduled for December 2023 in the United Arab Emirates. Following the inconclusive outcome of COP27, recently convened at Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, strong leadership will be required to ensure something significantly better at COP28. Among the goals those two leaders would need to pursue, the top priority should be the full implementation of the 2015 Paris accord with its commitment to a 1.5-degree maximum temperature increase, followed by a far greater effort by the wealthy nations to assist developing countries suffering from its effects.
There’s no way, however, that China and the U.S. will be able to exert a significant international influence on climate efforts ifboth countries— the former the leading emitter of greenhouse gasses at this moment and the latter the historic leader — don’t take far greater initiatives to lower their carbon emissions and shift to renewable sources of energy. The Inflation Reduction Act will indeed allow the White House to advance many new initiatives in this direction, while China ismoving more swiftlythan any other country to install added supplies of wind and solar energy. Nevertheless, both countries continue to rely on fossil fuels for a substantial share of their energy — China, for instance, remains the greatest user of coal,burning more of itthan the rest of the world combined — and so both will need to agree on even more aggressive moves to reduce their carbon emissions if they hope to persuade other nations to do the same.
The Sino-American Fund for Clean Energy Transitions
In a better world, next on my list of possible outcomes from a reinvigorated U.S.-Chinese relationship would be joint efforts to help finance the global transition from fossil fuels to renewable energy. Although the cost of deploying renewables, especially wind and solar energy, has fallen dramatically in recent years, it remains substantial even for wealthy countries. For many developing nations, it remains an unaffordable option. This emerged as a major issue at COP27 in Egypt, where representatives from the Global Southcomplainedthat the wealthy countries largely responsible for the overheating of the planet weren’t doing faintly enough (or, in many cases, anything), despite prior promises, to help them shoulder the costs of the increasingly devastating effects of climate change and the future greening of their countries.
Many of these complaints revolved around the Green Climate Fund, established at COP16 in Cancún. The developed countries agreed to provide $100 billion annually to that fund by 2020 to help developing nations bear the costs of transitioning to renewable energy. Although that amount is now widely viewed as wildly insufficient for such a transition — “all of the evidence suggests that we need trillions, not billions,”observedBaysa Naran, a manager at the research center Climate Policy Initiative — the Fund hasnever even come closeto hitting that $100 billion target, leaving many in the Global South bitter as, withunprecedented floodingandstaggering heat waves, climate change strikes home ever more horrifically there.
When the U.S. and China were working on the climate together at COP26 in Glasgow, filling the Green Climate Fund appeared genuinely imaginable. In their Glasgow Declaration of November 2021, John Kerry and his Chinese counterpart, Xie Zhenhua,affirmedthat “both countries recognize the importance of the commitment made by developed countries to the goal of mobilizing jointly $100b per year by 2020 and annually through 2025 to address the needs of developing countries [and] stress the importance of meeting that goal as soon as possible.”
Sadly enough, all too little came of that affirmation in the months that followed, as U.S.-China relations turned ever more antagonistic. Now, in the wake of Biden’s meeting with Xi and the resumption of their talks on climate change, it’s at least possible to imagine intensified bilateral efforts to advance that $100 billion objective — and even go far beyond it (though we can expectfierce resistancefrom the new Republican majority in the House of Representatives).
As my contribution to such thinking, let me suggest the formation of a Sino-American Fund for Green Energy Transitions — a grant- and loan-making institution jointly underwritten by the two countries with the primary purpose of financing renewable energy projects in the developing world. Decisions on such funding would be made by a board of directors, half from each country, with staff work performed by professionals drawn from around the world. The aim: to supplement the Green Climate Fund with additional hundreds of billions of dollars annually and so speed the global energy transition.
The Pathway to Peace and Survival
The leaders of the U.S. and China both recognize that global warming poses an extraordinary threat to the survival of their nations and that colossal efforts will be needed in the coming years to minimize the climate peril, while preparing for its most severe effects. “The climate crisis is the existential challenge of our time,” the Biden administration’s October 2022 National Security Strategy (NSS)states. “Without immediate global action to reduce emissions, scientists tell us we will soon exceed 1.5 degrees of warming, locking in further extreme heat and weather, rising sea levels, and catastrophic biodiversity loss.”
Despite that all-too-on-target assessment, the NSS portrays competition from China as an even greater threat to U.S. security — without citing any of the same sort of perilous outcomes — and proposes a massive mobilization of the nation’s economic, technological, and military resources to ensure American dominance of the Asia-Pacific region for decades to come. That strategy will, of course, require trillions of dollars in military expenditures, ensuring insufficient funding to tackle the climate crisis and exposing this country to an ever-increasing risk of war — possibly even a nuclear one — with China.
Given such dangers, perhaps the best outcome of renewed U.S.-China climate cooperation, or green diplomacy, might be increasing trust between the leaders of those two countries, allowing for a reduction in tensions and military expenditures. Indeed, such an approach constitutes the only practical strategy for saving us from the catastrophic consequences ofbotha U.S.-China conflict and unconstrained climate change.
At the beginning of November, when Israel and the United States held elections within days of each other, it seemed clear that the pull in opposite directions embodied in the disappointing showing for the American far-right and the strong showing for their Israeli counterparts portended tension in the “unshakeable” alliance between the two countries. Benjamin Netanyahu hasn’t even formed his government yet, but already we are beginning to see how that new government will make things difficult for the White House.
And the early indications from Joe Biden’s administration indicate a continuation of the weak responses that have characterized his policy toward Israel for decades.
Thehand-wringing was franticas the vote count in Israel was finalized and it became clear that, while Netanyahu’s Likud was once again going to be the largest party in the Knesset — as it had been in the previous six elections — the Religious Zionism bloc would be the second biggest in the incoming governing coalition. The two main parties in that coalition were led by Bezalel Smotrich, whose blatantly racist policies are reminiscent of the late radical Meir Kahane, a man so honestly racist he was banned from the Knesset; and Itamar Ben-Gvir, who openly espouses his admiration for and adherence to Kahane’s ideology.
The first concern Washington had wasSmotrich’s ambitionto be the Minister of Defense. Biden administration officialsimmediately told Netanyahuthat this wasn’t going to work for them, and Netanyahu made it clear that hewouldn’t give Smotrichthat post, prompting some faux outrage from the head of Religious Zionism. But Smotrich never really had a chance at the Defense portfolio. He hasmuch less military experiencethan most Israelis, which made him a highly dubious choice even for his fellow right-wingers. And Netanyahu wanted to keep Defense for Likud anyway.
But it was a welcome opportunity to craft a performance for Washington, suggesting that Netanyahu would “listen to reason.” With that illusion cast, the provocative steps began to coalesce. Ben-Gvir got the Public Security ministry he wanted. That puts him in control of Israel’s police and border patrol, two entities that interact a great deal with Palestinians in 1948 Israel, Jerusalem, and the West Bank. It also controls firearms licenses, and Israel’s International Homeland Security Forum, meaning Ben-Gvir will have an enormous influence all over the world on such matters as cybersecurity and so-called “counter-terrorism” procedures.
Another prominent feature that has emerged from the coalition talks is that Netanyahu hasapparently concededto Smotrich’s demand that he be given control of the so-called “Civil Administration,” which isthe military regime that administersboth the Palestinian areas (except for those meager powers doled out to the Palestinian Authority in the Oslo-designated Areas A and B) and Jewish settlements in the West Bank. The Religious Zionist platform calls for dismantling this administration and reverting authority to the relevant Israeli ministries and authorities, no different than in 1948 Israel.
AsShaqued Morag of Peace Now put it, “Smotrich sees Area C as Israeli territory and he is going to implement his vision of Jewish supremacy there, meaning he will allow settlements to take Palestinian land and do everything in his power to suppress the minority of Palestinians living in Area C, meaning thede factoannexation of the territory.”
Yet thus far, there has been little buzz from the Biden administration over this possibility, a starkcontrastwiththe uproarover the question of Israeli annexation of West Bank that we witnessed just a few years ago. While Israel would not make a formal declaration of annexation if Smotrich has his way — at least, not immediately — de factoannexation would be the result.
The potential fault lines between even the meek Biden administration and Israel don’t stop with Smotrich and Ben-Gvir. Netanyahu remains under indictment, and there’s a good chance that ifhis trial is ever completed, he will face severe penalties, including prison time. Fortunately for him, much of Israel’s right wing, including some in the opposition,support a lawthat would severely curb the power of Israel’s judiciary, by allowing the government to bypass the court with a vote.
Netanyahu has a clear personal interest in such a law, but the ramifications would be far wider. The High Court of Justice is a tool of the Israeli apartheid regime, but part of the role it plays is to offer a small modicum of democracy and the rule of law to the state. It usually sides with the Israeli military when Palestinians bring cases before it (which is very difficult for Palestinians to do, as the first judicial line for them are military courts), but sometimes they do not, creating a veneer of fairness and angering the Israeli right. If the court becomes subordinate to the government, that veneer will disappear and will weaken even further the frequent arguments in support of Israel of its being the “only democracy in the Middle East” and its having such symmetry and “shared values” with the United States.
While these moves remain speculative — the government hasn’t been formed yet, and the potential backlash from Europe,the United Arab Emirates, and even the U.S. has yet to be measured with any certainty — there can be little doubt that they will serve to further damage the perception of Israel among liberal Americans, American Jews, and Democrats. But what will matter most will be the response of the Biden administration, particularly the reactions of Secretary of State Antony Blinken and President Biden himself.
Their track record, of course, suggests they will bend over backwards, even beyond the breaking point, to try to maintain business as usual with Israel. Recent events give us some clues about where Biden might want to go in facing Israeli actions that are obviously contrary to the wishes of the Democrats, and those clues don’t paint a promising picture.
The most high-profile event was the Justice Department deciding to open an investigation into the death of Shireen Abu Akleh. Both the White House and State Departmentwere very quickto declare that the decision to have the FBI open this investigation had nothing to do with them, and that they were unaware of it. This last isalmost certainly untrue. DoJ had decided several days before the announcement was made to launch this investigation. It beggars belief that they made such a potentially explosive decision and sat on it for days without telling the White House or State Department. Still, the fact that Biden and Blinken probably knew about the decision but apparently did nothing to change it, despite their obvious discomfort with it, reflects the considerable political downturn Israel’s image has taken within the Democratic party.
They clearly did not want to be seen as interceding with DoJ on Israel’s behalf in this matter. In part, that has to do with Biden’s need for DoJ to be seen as politically independent as it pursues investigations around the corruption of his predecessor. But it also reflects the pressure that was brought by the Abu Akleh family, their supporters and advocates, and the response to that from leading Democrats in Congress, such as Senator Chris Van Hollen. Biden would have a hard time defending an intercession with DoJ to members of Congress regarding an investigation into the killing of an American citizen.
The investigation into Shireen’s death is not likely to go anywhere asIsrael refuses to cooperateand Biden and Blinken have made it clear that they are not going to press Israel on this matter. On the contrary, they are trying to figure out how to work with this far-right Israeli coalition. They have alreadydropped a strong hint to Netanyahuabout one familiar face they’d like to see come back, and it’s none other than former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer.
That would be the same Ron Dermer who snuck past the White House of Barack Obama andengineered the infamous 2015 address by Netanyahuto a joint session of Congress that attempted to undermine Obama’s signature foreign policy achievement, the Iran nuclear deal. It’s the same Dermer who called that his “proudest moment.” It’s the same Dermer who defiantlyaccepted an awardfrom the Center for Security Policy, an Islamophobic hate group and, in his defiance alsostood up for extremistanti-Muslim figures including Frank Gaffney, Daniel Pipes, Maajid Nawaz, and Ayaan Hirsi Ali.
Yet a Biden administration officialtoldAxios, “We had our differences with Dermer, but we would be happy to work with him in the next government.”
In other areas, the U.S. isputting genuine pressureon Israel. Bowing to pressure from Washington, the outgoing Israeli government decided to tighten government oversight of their investments. It’s a move the Biden administration has been demanding for some time, as a response to increasing Israeli cooperation with China. Israel had been reluctant to give in to this demand as it sees China as a great source of potential investment in the coming years, but finally relented under pressure from the United States.
The decision shows that the United States is capable of moving Israel when it wants to. It simply doesn’t care enough about Palestinian rights to push Israel in that regard. Of course, the politics are very different. China is seen very negatively in the United States, and pro-Israel forces here are not eager to defend growing Israeli-Chinese cooperation anymore than they want to try to defend Israel’s relativelack of support for Ukraine. Still, if the Biden administration wanted to make an argument against Israel’s increasing legal discrimination against Palestinians or potentially annexing West Bank settlements, they could certainly do so within the bounds of political viability.
But the dedicated Zionists Biden and Blinken seem to have no intention of doing that. Instead, they will try to buy Palestinian acquiescence bypromoting their Palestinian interlocutor for all occasions, Assistant Secretary of State Hady Amr, to the post of special representative for Palestinian affairs. It’s not an ambassador-level position, but Biden and Blinken hope that this will somehow soften the blow of their unwillingness or inability to deliver on their promises to the Palestinians of reopening the PLO office in Washington and the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem.
It won’t soften the blow. And as Israel takes bolder steps to consolidate its possession of West Bank land and dispossession of Palestinians, Palestinian anger and frustration will continue to grow, alongside increasing Israeli fascism. It’s an explosive combination into which Biden and Blinken are pouring gasoline. The coming explosion, which is entirely avoidable with the simple application of a modicum of justice, will be as tragic as it will be bloody.
• New international mediation center in Hong Kong
• Growth of state-owned enterprise assets
• Scientists clone mutant gene of a corn variety
• Qatar World Cup and panda diplomacy
The Biden administration’s efforts to support renewables through the landmark Inflation Reduction Act presents a significant critical minerals processing and export opportunity for Australia, according to Arthur Sinodinos, Australia’s Ambassador to the United States. Legislated in August, the Inflation Reduction Act (IRA) introduced and expanded several tax credits to accelerate the transition to clean energy…
State-owned and private companies have once again taken the opportunity at the Airshow China 2022 exhibition in Zhuhai, which concluded on 13 November, to showcase the latest developments of its robust military and commercial unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) industry. The Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) unveiled its new MALE-class Wing Loong-3 (WL-3) armed reconnaissance […]
Report finds stock indexes provided by MSCI include companies using forced labour or constructing surveillance state in Xinjiang
Many of the world’s largest asset managers and state pension funds are passively investing in companies that have allegedly engaged in the repression of Uyghur Muslims in China, according to a new report.
The report, by UK-based group Hong Kong Watch and the Helena Kennedy Centre for International Justice at Sheffield Hallam University, found that three major stock indexes provided by MSCI include at least 13 companies that have allegedly used forced labour or been involved in the construction of the surveillance state in China’s Xinjiang region.
14 NGOs that closely follow and engage with the Third Committee have joined together to publish a joint statement on outcomes of this 77th session. The undersigned civil society organisations mark the conclusion of the UN General Assembly’s (GA) 77th Third Committee session with the following observations on some thematic and country-specific resolutions considered at this session. We urge all States to implement the commitments they have made in the resolutions discussed below to their full extent.
Joint statements
We welcome the joint statement on the human rights situation in Xinjiang, China delivered by Canada on behalf of a cross-regional group of 50 countries. This statement echoes the UN Human Rights Office’s independent, objective analysis and its findings which the UN’s human rights office determined may amount to crimes against humanity, and urges China to implement that report’s recommendations, in particular on enforced disappearance. There was an increase in State support compared to last year, signalling hope for future initiatives to debate the situation and support victims to secure accountability. Nonetheless, there is more work to ensure support from member states, in the EU and globally, as well as from Muslim-majority countries.
We welcome a resolution on the right to privacy in the digital age. The resolution integrates much of the progressive language seen in the most recent Human Rights Council version of the resolution, contending with new and persisting challenges for the right to privacy worldwide, with a particular focus on the impact on human rights defenders and journalists. However, the resolution missed an opportunity to make strong recommendations on the proliferation of private surveillance technologies, including spyware, which global experts are calling to ban or suspend through a moratorium. We call on future resolutions to contain stronger language on biometric technologies, particularly recognising that these technologies should never be used for mass surveillance of public spaces.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on Extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions by a vote which aims to uphold the right to life, liberty and security and acknowledges that impunity is a major contributor to executions. We welcome the new references to freedom of religion or belief, new technologies, institutions as places of custody, as well as strengthened language on the role of civil society and human rights defenders in the protection against arbitrary deprivation of life. We also welcome that the resolution once again highlighted the targeting (including killing) of specific groups of persons belonging to national or ethnic, religious and linguistic minorities, indigenous communities, human rights defenders, lawyers, journalists or demonstrators, or because of their sexual orientation or gender identity. Critically, we welcome the rejection by a vote of an oral amendment attempting to remove the reference to ‘sexual orientation and gender identity’ in that listing.
We welcome support by an overwhelming majority of States for the resolution on a moratorium on the use of the death penalty proposed by Australia and Costa Rica (on behalf of an Inter-Regional Task Force of States). A record number of 126 States voted in favour of the text (including Ghana, Liberia and Myanmar, after abstaining in the GA plenary in 2020), while 37 voted against and 24 abstained. The text reiterates calls made in previous resolutions, including to halt executions with the view to abolishing the death penalty. It also includes additions on the importance of transparency and access to information regarding the use of the death penalty and criminal prosecutions to identify discriminatory practices, the negative impact on the rights of children and youth whose parental caregivers face the death penalty, the need to ensure that trial leading to imposition of the death penalty complies with fair trial and non-discrimination guarantees, ensuring the death penalty is not applied on the basis of laws targeting individuals for exercising their human rights, the need to improve conditions in detention for those on trial for capital crimes or on death row, ensuring respect for their inherent dignity, and complying with international standards, in evaluating, promoting, protecting and improving their physical and mental health.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on Inclusive development for and with persons with disabilities, that newly calls for leadership and participation of persons with disabilities in disaster risk reduction, climate change adaptation and mitigation, and other climate change policies and programmes, as well as affordable and accessible internet, and continues to emphasize non-discrimination, accessibility and inclusion in the implementation of the 2030 Agenda, including for women and girls with disabilities. In particular, we welcome the request for the Secretary-General to report on participation of persons with disabilities in COVID-19 response and recovery, and on the implementation of the UN Disability Inclusion Strategy. We regret that despite wide support, language supporting the right to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of sexual and reproductive health of persons with disabilities, on an equal basis with others, was not included in the final resolution.
We welcome the adoption by consensus of the resolution on the Human rights treaty body system. We regret that States were not able to ‘welcome’, but merely ‘take note’ of the biennial report by the UN Secretary-General on the state of the treaty body system and the report of the most recent meeting of treaty body chairpersons. We urge all States to follow through with their reaffirmation in the resolution of the formula contained in General Assembly resolution 68/268, and allocate corresponding financial and human resources in the Fifth Committee that the treaty bodies require to function effectively.
Gender Issues
We welcome the adoption by consensus of the resolution on Child, Early and Forced Marriage (CEFM) presented by Canada and Zambia, and for the first time co-sponsored by 125 States, including several countries with high CEFM prevalence. We welcome new references to multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination, including in the context of climate change, conflict and poverty. We particularly welcome the call to Member States to address the root causes of gender inequality, gender stereotypes and negative social norms that underlie CEFM and for participatory and adequately funded measures to address the ongoing impacts of COVID-19 including school closures; the digital divide; uninterrupted access and funding for sexual and reproductive health-care services; adolescent-centered services; and redistribution of unpaid care and domestic work. We regret that despite significant support, references to comprehensive sexuality education and intimate partner violence were omitted.
The resolution on Intensification of efforts to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls, presented by Netherlands and France, was adopted by a vote for the second time. We welcome the text, focused this year on eliminating gender stereotypes and negative social norms. It included commitments to prevent and eliminate violence against all women, including intimate partner violence, femicide, commitments to protect, respect and fulfill all human rights, including sexual reproductive health and reproductive rights; recognize challenges and obstacles to eliminating discriminatory attitudes perpetuating multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination against women and girls; text on migrant and indigenous women and girls, racism, xenophobia, women human rights defenders, promoting young women and adolescents’ participation and leadership in decision making positions as well as full, effective, equal and meaningful participation of all women in all their diversity. Although we are encouraged by the rejection of 9 amendments presented by Guatemala, Egypt, Iraq, Libya, Nigeria, Russia, Saudi Arabia and Yemen, we regret that consensus was not achieved on a number of important commitments, that have been previously agreed, aiming to prevent and eliminate gender stereotypes and negative social norms and take multisectoral, effective and gender-responsive measures to prevent and eliminate all forms of violence. We are also dismayed that a vote was called on the reference to the Generation Equality Forum, an initiative with wide support from diverse stakeholders globally.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on Intensifying global efforts for the elimination of female genital mutilation (FGM) presented by Burkina Faso (on behalf of African Group) which has not been fully opened up since 2018. The resolution failed to strengthen the most pertinent and pressing areas for preventing and eliminating FGM, especially in relation to health outcomes for girls, adolescents and women including the lack of inclusion on sexual and reproductive health, comprehensive sexuality education and multiple and intersecting forms of discrimination. Despite this, we welcome language on the cross-border and transnational practice of FGM, an important component of FGM prevention and elimination.
The resolution on Intensifying efforts to end obstetric fistula presented by Senegal (on behalf of African Group) was a technical rollover (with no substantive changes to the respective 2018 and 2020 texts) and adopted by consensus. Given the devastating impact of Obstetric fistula on women and girls, and the exacerbation of root causes due to climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, we are disappointed about the missed opportunity to outline global, regional and national level efforts to end this tragedy by 2030, an integral component of achieving the Sustainable Development Goals.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on Trafficking in women and girls presented by the Philippines, which includes references to access to justice for victims, government commitments to eliminate, prevent and respond to all forms of violence against women and girls including trafficking, and the linkage between climate change and trafficking. While encouraged that the text maintained critical elements from previous years, we regret that it did not include: progressive references to gender transformative, survivor, victim-centred and trauma-informed approaches to anti-trafficking efforts; references to women and girls in all their diversity; comprehensive sexuality education; and recognition of the importance of full, equal and meaningful participation of women and girls in addressing trafficking.
Country Situations
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on the human rights situation in the Islamic Republic of Iran, with 50 cosponsors by a vote of 79 (80) votes in favour (Panama voted after votes were locked), 28 against and 68 abstentions. We welcome new references expressing concern on the violent enforcement of the hijab and chastity law by the Iranian morality police, ‘widespread use of force against non-violent protestors’, the proposed bill on the use of firearms during protests, and calls to release persons participating in peaceful protests, to address poor conditions of prisons, and to implement the amendment to the Nationality Law, which gives Iranian women married to foreign nationals the right to request Iranian citizenship for their children under 18. We also welcome calls to end violations of the rights to freedom of expression and opinion including internet disruption practices, and the right to freedom of thought, conscience, religion or belief against recognized and unrecognised religious minorities, particularly Baha’is being subject to increased persecution, arrest, destruction and confiscation of property. See more: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2022/11/23/un-human-rights-council-holds-special-session-on-iran-on-24-november/
We welcome the resolution on the situation of human rights in the Syrian Arab Republic, cosponsored by 32 Member States. The resolution references the wide range of human rights violations and abuses perpetrated in Syria, many of which may amount to war crimes and crimes against humanity. We particularly welcome the decision to take further actions on the issue of missing people in Syria, based on the SG’s recommendation in his report on the matter, and to include survivors and their families throughout the process. We call upon the Member States to implement the SG’s recommendation by establishing an International Mechanism to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the missing persons in Syria without further delay.
We regret that the resolution on the situation of human rights of Rohingya Muslims and other minorities in Myanmar, which was adopted by consensus, does not reiterate key elements of the 2021 UNGA resolution which followed the military coup in February 2021. We regret that it fails to comprehensively address, condemn, and call for an end to ongoing and escalating human rights violations by the military, as described in detail by the Special Rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar. However, we acknowledge that language regarding the ongoing commission of rights violations against and protection needs of the Rohingya has been retained, and the expression of solidarity with the Rohingya made by Myanmar’s Permanent Representative.
We welcome the consensus adoption of the resolution on the human rights situation in theDemocratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK). We welcome in particular the retention of a call for the UN Security Council to resume discussions on the human rights situation in the DPRK, supplemented with a call for the OHCHR to brief it. The Security Council held formal meetings annually on the human rights situation in the country in December from 2014-2017, however in December 2020 and 2021, the subject was discussed in closed consultations under ‘Any other Business’.
We welcome the adoption of the resolution on Human rights in the temporarily occupied Autonomous Republic of Crimea and the city of Sevastopol, Ukraine. We welcome in particular the resolution’s condemnation of the ‘unprecedented wave’ of violations that Russian forces have committed in Crimea following the February 2022 invasion of Ukraine, including arbitrary detention, forcible transfers and enforced disappearances. We also welcome the call on Russia to cease violations and abuses including those within the framework of so-called filtration procedures and forcible transfers or deportation of Ukrainian children to Russia, and to lift discriminatory regulatory barriers prohibiting or limiting the activities of religious groups.
Civil society access
While we welcome the action by some States to welcome civil society organisations to join informals as observers this session, it was deeply disappointing that only a few States extended this invitation. This year, civil society again faced additional challenges in even keeping abreast of information regarding informal negotiations as information on informals taking place was once again not shared in the UN journal as it previously was. This year this information was only published on the e-deleGATE platform to which civil society has no access. These critical barriers to civil society access to Third Committee negotiations, deprive the Committee of civil society’s technical expertise and mean that its outcomes fail to leverage the contributions of a crucial stakeholder in promoting the implementation of human rights.
Access Now
Amnesty International
Association for Progressive Communications
Center for Reproductive Rights
Fòs Feminista, International Alliance for Sexual and Reproductive Health, Rights and Justice
Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect
Global Justice Centre
Human Rights in China
Human Rights Watch
International Disability Alliance
International Service for Human Rights
Jacob Blaustein Institute for the Advancement of Human Rights
Outright Action International
Syrian Center for Media and Freedom of Expression (SCM)
Disappeared Chinese human rights defender must be allowed to reunite with his family in Canada
After 31 months in hiding in Vietnam, on August 24, 2022 Chinese human rights defender Dong Guangping was arrested by Vietnamese police. There has been no news of his fate since then. His wife and daughter, who live in Toronto, are fearful that he has been handed over to Chinese authorities. In China he would face a grave risk of once again being jailed for his human rights activism. He has previously served three prison terms there, simply because he believes in human rights and refuses to remain silent in the face of grave violations in the country.
He was sentenced to 3 ½ years in prison in China. After he was released in 2019, Dong Guangping wanted to reunite with his wife and daughter in Canada. However, as China refused to issue him a passport, he was not allowed to leave the country through official channels. He first tried unsuccessfully to reach safety by swimming to a nearby Taiwanese island. In January 2020, he clandestinely crossed the border into Vietnam.
With backing from the Canadian government, Dong Guangping and his family had been hopeful that he would soon be allowed by Vietnamese officials to leave the country and travel to Canada. His arrest was unexpected and his subsequent disappearance has come as a crushing blow.
You can express Your Concern to the Embassies Please write, phone or send an email to Vietnam’s and China’s Ambassadors to Canada:
expressing your concern about Dong Guangping’s arrest in Vietnam on August 24, 2022 and the fact that there has been no news of his whereabouts or wellbeing since then;
asking them to immediately disclose where Dong Guangping is at this time and that Canadian officials be granted access to him; and
requesting that Dong Guangping be allowed to travel to Canada without any further delay, to join his wife and daughter.
His Excellency Cong Peiwu Ambassador of the People’s Republic of China in Canada
A new survey finds nearly 40 percent of Chinese consumers are reducing their meat consumption—a move driven by health benefits, taste, ethics, and a ‘cool factor.’
The new research, led by Good Growth, finds that more than half (60 percent) of a sample of more than 1,200 Chinese consumers have tried plant-based meat, with more than half of those identifying as omnivores.
Meat alternatives in China
Meat alternatives aren’t new in China—tofu and other plant-based meats go back centuries or longer. Those meat replacements are still staples in rural communities but urban, middle-income consumers are now leading the shift toward modern plant-based meats with companies including OmniFoods and Beyond Meat widely available.
While vegetarianism and veganism remain low—under three percent for both demographics combined—the researchers say the number of consumers working to reduce meat consumption mirrors demographics in Europe with more than 38 percent saying they’re actively reducing meat,
Source: Good Growth Co
Despite the interest in reducing meat, fewer than six percent of Chinese consumers say they’re regularly eating plant-based meat.
“Although plant-based meat was generally seen positively, most respondents gave fairly neutral responses,” the researchers noted. “We found that Chinese consumers generally see plant-based meat as animal-friendly and good for the environment. To a slightly lesser extent, they also see it as convenient, healthy, safe, and trendy. On the other hand, they don’t have strong perceptions of plant-based meats as being real, natural or affordable.”
Chinese consumers increasingly interested in plant-based meat
Overall, the trend shows increasing interest in trying plant-based meat with 42 percent who haven’t tried it saying they would, and 48 percent of those who had tried it said they would again.
Source: Good Growth Co
With China leading the global climate crisis, Good Growth says there are ways to increase the consumption of more climate-friendly plant-based foods.
Chiefly, the group recommends increasing opportunities to try plant-based meat. It also suggests appealing more to early adopters such as younger parents and married couples in Tier 1 cities with more resources to try. It’s also encouraging marketing and product design to stay relevant and on-trend to appeal to consumers seeking out novel products. Likewise, it recommends using messaging to craft ‘new perceptions’ about plant-based meat and its benefits.
“Chinese consumers do not currently have strong views towards plant-based meat. Thus, this may be a timely opportunity to proactively shape yet undeveloped consumer perceptions through media and marketing,” the group says.
The fate of Myanmar has major implications for a free and open Indo-Pacific.
An undemocratic Myanmar serves no one’s interests except China, which is consolidating its economic and strategic influence in its smaller neighbour in pursuit of its two-ocean strategy.
Since the coup China has been — by far — the main source of foreign investment in Myanmar.
This includes US$2.5 billion in a gas-fired power plant to be built west of Myanmar’s capital, Yangon, that will be 81 percent owned and operated by Chinese companies.
Among the dozens of infrastructure projects China is funding are high-speed rail links and dams. But its most strategically important investment is the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor, encompassing oil and gas pipelines, roads and rail links costing many tens of billions of dollars.
The corridor’s “jewel in the crown” is a deep-sea port to be built at Kyaukphyu, on Myanmar’s west coast, at an estimated cost of US$7 billion.
This will finally give China its long-desired “back door” to the Indian Ocean.
A map of China’s planned ‘back door’ to the Indian Ocean. Source: Vivekananda International Foundation
Natural gas from Myanmar can help China reduce its dependence on imports from suppliers such as Australia. Access to the Indian Ocean will enable China to import gas and oil from the Middle East, Africa and Venezuela without ships having to pass through the contested waters of the South China Sea to Chinese ports.
About 80 percent of China’s oil imports now move through the South China Sea via the Malacca Strait, which is just 65 kilometres wide at its narrowest point between the Malay Peninsula and Indonesia’s Sumatra.
Overcoming this strategic vulnerability arguably makes the Kyaukphyu port and pipelines the most important element of China’s Belt and Road initiative to reshape global trade routes and assert its influence over other nations.
Deepening relationship Most of China’s infrastructure investment was planned before Myanmar’s coup. But whereas other governments and foreign investors have sought to distance themselves from the junta since it overthrew Myanmar’s elected government in February 2021, China has deepened its relationship.
China is the Myanmar regime’s most important international supporter. In April Foreign Minister Wang Yi said China would support Myanmar “no matter how the situation changes”. In May it used its veto power on the United Nations Security Council to thwart a statement expressing concern about violence and the growing humanitarian crisis in Myanmar.
Work continues on projects associated with the China-Myanmar Economic Corridor. New ventures (such as the aforementioned power station) have been approved.
More projects are on the cards. In June, for example, China’s embassy in Myanmar announced the completion of a feasibility study to upgrade the Wan Pong port on the Lancang-Mekong River in Myanmar’s east.
Debt trap warnings In 2020, before the coup, Myanmar’s auditor general Maw Than warned of growing indebtedness to China, with Chinese lenders charging higher interest payments than those from the International Monetary Fund or World Bank.
At that time about 40 percent of Myanmar’s foreign debt of US$10 billion was owed to China. It is likely to be greater now. It will only increase the longer a military dictatorship, with few other supporters or sources of foreign money, remains in power, dragging down Myanmar’s economy.
Efforts to restore democracy in Myanmar should therefore be seen as crucial to the long-term strategic interests of the region’s democracies, and to global peace and prosperity, given the increasing belligerence of China under Xi Jinping.
Xi, now president for life, this month told the People’s Liberation Army to prepare for war. A compliant and indebted Myanmar with a deep-sea port controlled by Chinese interests tips the scales towards that happening.
A democratic and independent Myanmar is a counter-strategy to this potential.
Calls for sanctions Myanmar’s democracy movement wants the international community to impose tough sanctions on the junta. But few have responded.
The United States and United Kingdom have gone furthest, banning business dealings with Myanmar military officials and state-owned or private companies controlled by the military.
The European Union and Canada have imposed sanctions against a more limited range of individuals and economic entities.
South Korea has suspended financing new infrastructure projects. Japan has suspended aid and postponed the launch of Myanmar’s first satellite. New Zealand has suspended political and military contact.
Australia has suspended military cooperation (with some pre-existing restrictions on dealing with military leaders imposed following the human rights atrocities committed against the Rohingya in 2017.
But that’s about it.
Myanmar’s closest neighbours in the ten-member Association of South-East Asian Nations are still committed to a policy of dialogue and “non-interference” – though Malaysia and Indonesia are increasingly arguing for a tougher approach as the atrocities mount.
U.S. President Joe Biden apparently sought to lower tensions with China this week when he promised Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping that Washington was “not seeking a new Cold War” with Beijing.
The two leaders met on the sidelines of the G20 summit in Indonesia. It was their first face-to-face meeting since Biden took office in January 2021. While Biden was all smiles for a handshake photo-op, Xi looked noticeably reserved, like a guy who was bracing himself as one about to hear loads of bullshit.
After more than three hours of private discussions, the Americans and Western media subsequently tried to spin that both sides had agreed on condemning Russia’s alleged threat to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. This was the Americans taking license. Xi did not specify Russia, according to the White House readout of the meeting. Both leaders condemned nuclear war and said it should never be fought, a rebuke which applies as much to the United States as anyone else. The Western media, however, tried to spin it as joint condemnation of Russia.
The Chinese side had quite a different take on what was conveyed in the meeting. No wonder that Xi had looked reserved when he greeted Biden earlier.
President Xi was quoted as telling Biden: “A statesman should think about and know where to lead his country. He should also think about and know how to get along with other countries and the wider world… Instead of talking in one way and acting in another, the United States needs to honor its commitments with concrete action.”
This was pretty close to the Chinese president calling out his American counterpart as a bare-faced liar who can’t be trusted in what he says.
After all, Biden has continued the policy of massively arming China’s island province of Taiwan. That is a direct assault on Beijing’s sovereignty and China’s territorial integrity as well as posing a threat to its national security across the 150-km Taiwan Strait.
This American president has said publicly on four occasions that the U.S. would defend Taiwan militarily if the Chinese mainland were to exercise its legal right to use force for bringing the island under full administrative control from Beijing. Those declarations by Biden violate the legally binding One China principle recognized by international law as well as under domestic U.S. laws. At the G20 summit this week, Biden said there was no change in American policy on Taiwan, despite his previous flagrant statements to the contrary.
The Biden administration is planning to station nuclear-capable B-52 bombers in Australia aimed at provoking China as well as supplying Canberra with nuclear submarines as part of a new military coalition in the Asia-Pacific involving the United Kingdom, known as AUKUS.
Washington has also stepped up economic warfare against China with bans on the export of hi-tech semiconductors vital for Chinese industry.
The resumption of U.S. war drills off the Korean Peninsula in recent weeks after a three-year hiatus has sharply escalated tensions with between North and South Korea which poses a destabilizing national security risk for neighboring China.
So, Biden’s talk of “not seeking a new Cold War” with China is contemptible in the face of empirical events and U.S. conduct.
Which brings us to the question: what was Biden trying to achieve in soft-talking to Xi?
It seems the U.S. president was really seeking to split China from Russia.
Biden talked about no Cold War with China. But what about Russia? Seems the United States is full-on about aggravating Moscow. Can a presumed superpower be credibly in a Cold War with one adversary but not with another? That dichotomy doesn’t sound believable. So, what’s going on?
It is significant that Putin did not attend the G20 summit this week. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov was deputized to act as Russia’s dignitary for the event. Why Putin did not go to the summit was not clear.
Also significant was a top-level meeting held in Turkey at the same time between the U.S. and Russia’s spy chiefs.
William Burns, the CIA director, met with the head of Russia’s foreign intelligence Sergei Naryshkin in Ankara. The meeting was widely reported in the Western media which is unusual for such back-channel encounters. The impression is that the Biden administration wanted this meeting to be widely reported for the optics and headlines. Western headlines dutifully reported that Burns purportedly “warned Russia against using nuclear weapons in Ukraine”.
The White House’s national security council emphasized that Burns was not engaged in talks to end the conflict in Ukraine.
The heavily reported narrative of “warning Russia against nukes” reinforces the contrived notion that Russia is a pariah state that is threatening to use nuclear weapons, whereas it is Moscow that has repeatedly warned that the war being fueled in Ukraine by the United States and its NATO partners could spiral uncontrollably into a catastrophic confrontation.
Russia has not threatened to use nuclear weapons, has not even mentioned the word, and it has warned of the reckless dangers that the U.S. and NATO are stoking. If anything, it is the United States and its partners who are implicitly threatening the risk of nuclear war. President Vladimir Putin’s warned in September that if Russia’s existential security is threatened by NATO then Moscow reserves “the right to use all means of defense”. That reasonable warning has been cynically distorted to appear like a menacing threat to use nukes by Russia.
It seems that the Burns trip was aimed at further demonizing Russia as a nuclear threat to world security. Meanwhile, Biden was trying to ingratiate himself with Xi as a way to undermine the strong friendship that has developed between Beijing and Moscow, especially under Xi and Putin’s leadership.
Biden’s bid to appease Xi by saying that there is no Cold War intended is a blatant lie that China no doubt can see through as plain as a glass of urine. Biden and Burns’ clunky double act is likely to not impress anyone in Beijing and Moscow.
Presidents Joe Biden and Xi Jinping shook hands in front of the two nations’ flags before starting a long-awaited sit down on the Indonesian resort of Bali ahead of a Group of 20 summit, following months of tension over Taiwan and other issues.
Biden said that Beijing and Washington “share responsibility” to show the world that they can “manage our differences, prevent competition from becoming conflict.”
Xi told Biden that the world has “come to a crossroads,” and added:
The world expects that China and the United States will properly handle the relationship.
Despite the upbeat public statements, both nations are increasingly suspicious of each other, with the United States fearing that China has stepped up a timeline for seizing Taiwan.
Taiwan and more
US officials said ahead of the meeting that Biden hoped to set up “guardrails” in the relationship with China and to assess how to avoid “red lines” that could push the world’s two largest economies into conflict.
The most sensitive issue is Taiwan, the self-governing democracy claimed by China.
The United States has been stepping up support for Taiwan, while China has ramped up its threats to seize control of the island. After House Speaker Nancy Pelosi visited Taipei in August, China reacted by staging unprecedented military drills.
On the eve of his talks with Xi, Biden met with Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol on the sidelines of a Southeast Asian summit in Cambodia, with the three leaders jointly calling for “peace and stability” on the Taiwan Strait.
Biden is also expected to push China to rein in its ally North Korea after a record-breaking spate of missile tests has raised fears that Pyongyang will soon carry out its seventh nuclear test.
Cold calculations
US officials and experts have come to believe that Xi has no desire for moderation, with the new Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party stacked with hardliners and lacking any obvious heir apparent.
Yun Sun, a senior fellow at the Stimson Centre in Washington, said:
We all knew that Xi Jinping was going to prevail. But I think people are still surprised that Xi Jinping could not even find the grace to save some accommodation for his political opponents.
With the Party Congress over, Xi now has greater space and flexibility to focus on his international push for a stronger China, she said. Sun concluded:
We are not looking at a Xi Jinping who is going to be less emboldened
Both Biden and Trump identified China as the preeminent global competitor to the United States. But while Trump by late in his term was railing against China on everything from trade to Covid-19, Biden has supported talks on narrow areas of cooperation. Biden told reporters Wednesday he would speak to Xi about each country’s “red lines” in the hopes of avoiding conflict.
Biden has said three times that the United States would defend Taiwan militarily if China attacks, although the White House has walked back the apparent shift from longstanding US ambiguity.
Inching away
Biden’s meeting with Xi is notable as a departure from US-China relations under Trump. As the Canary’s John McEvoy reported:
the US has adopted an increasingly confrontational stance towards China. In January 2018, Trump launched a trade war with China. In 2019, it imposed a ban on Chinese telecommunications firm Huawei. And following the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic, Trump has consistently attempted to distract from his administration’s failures to contain the virus with anti-Chinese racism.
Another element that casts doubts on this seemingly happy proceeding is the alliance of Australia, the UK, and the US. As the Canary’s Joe Glenton explained:
Australia, the UK, and the US have signed a new military pact they say will protect their countries. The allies claim an AUKUS (pronounced ‘awk-us’) alliance will support a “peaceful and rules-based international order”. But critics have called the move a new Cold War against China. And some question the Western countries’ decision so soon after defeat and withdrawal from Afghanistan. It seems to ignore key lessons: that US power is in decline and that expeditionary warfare is a recipe for disaster.
Indeed, Yun doubted China would be as obliging as they may appear, saying that Xi views co-operation as transactional:
With competition the main theme of the US’s China policy, why would China cooperate?
Their calculation is that they are not going to do anything from the goodness of their hearts. They want to see the US give something.
Featured image via screenshot – YouTube/BBC NewsAdditional reporting by Agence France-Presse
Chinese overseas labor activists and allies have launched a campaign demanding accountability from Apple and Foxconn for their gross mistreatment of workers at a Chinese factory where half the world’s iPhones are made. They rallied in front of the Apple store on Fifth Avenue in New York City on November 6, handing out flyers inviting passersby tosign a petitionwith the support of labor and community organizations across the world.
Since late October, footage depicting brutal treatment at one of Foxconn’s largest factories has surfaced online and even been picked up by official media outlets in China. Online videos have shown workers — eager to escape the virus, hunger, and difficult working conditions in the locked-down factory complex — leaping over fences and running away despite facing severe weather conditions and long journeys back to their hometowns and villages.
The factory, located in the city of Zhengzhou in the province of Henan, is Apple’s largest production site in China. More than 200,000 workers are employed there. Foxconn is Apple’s top global supplier, and has drawn attention for its poor working conditions, most notoriously during a rash of suicides at its Shenzhen plant in 2010.
Trapped at Work
Foxconn workers are in the midst of peak season for production of the new iPhone 14, with management eager to fulfill its promises of on-time delivery to Apple.
Since October, the Zhengzhou factory complex has been pushing an inhumane closed-loop management regime, forbidding workers from leaving the area. Closed-loop systems require workers to live on-site in the factory complex for a certain period of time, so that the company can maintain production even during China’s regional Covid lockdowns, as well as preventing the likelihood of virus outbreaks among the workforce.
Despite this approach, new Covid outbreaks still emerged at the complex. But in order to continue production, Foxconn kept its gates shut, preventing workers from leaving while failing to maintain adequate conditions inside.
There were reports that infected workers had been forced to isolate in nearby unfinished dormitory buildings, without access to medical services and supplies. Some workers slept in the workplace to avoid infected workers living in the same dorms who were not isolated.
For those not infected, if they did not go to work, then they could not receive meal boxes which are only distributed after work — leaving them without food, since the restaurants inside the complex have all shut down. Workers complained they also lacked adequate protective gear.
Workers who tried to leave the factory complex were impeded, sometimes by force.
It’s Apple’s Responsibility
This is far from the first time that Foxconn’s labor practices have drawn scrutiny. News reports in 2019 and 2020 revealed thatthe company employs substantially more dispatch workers than is allowed under Chinese law. Dispatch workers, hired through private employment agencies, are common in China and enjoy even less job security than other kinds of temporary workers. Foxconn did not provide dispatch workers with the proper labor contracts and social benefits guaranteed by Chinese labor law — also a common practice among factories in China.
After the videos of workers fleeing surfaced, Foxconn’s mother company Hon Hai released astatementon October 30 saying that it will make improvements, guaranteeing more basic necessities for workers (providing three free meals a day and a workers’ care hotline), offering transportation to those who want to leave, and committing to reopening some restaurants in the complex.It also announced it was quadrupling bonuses for workers who stayed. But it continued to affirm closed-loop management practices — a kind of forced labor.
The government’s insistence on strict Covid lockdowns should not give companies an excuse to enact forced labor. Foxconn is still choosing to prioritize profit over workers’ health and human rights.
Apple’s statement last Sunday, released on the day of the New York action, was even more nefarious. The company stated that it would slow down production capacity in Zhengzhou to “prioritiz[e] the health and safety of the workers in our supply chain […] as we have done throughout the COVID-19 pandemic.”
Yet Apple refuses to acknowledge the harms committed against workers under its watch, and does not mention that it has called for increased production in another Foxconn factory in Shenzhen.
Chinese state media has still not adequately reported on the workers’ conditions. With information tightly controlled by the ruling Communist Party, we need an independent third party to investigate to uncover the truth.
As Foxconn’s top source of orders, with products purchased by consumers across the world, Apple has the responsibility to arrange for such an investigation under the supervision of international trade unions, including U.S. unions and the International Trade Union Confederation.
Lone-Wolf Protest
Chinese overseas activists’ response to the egregious conditions in Zhengzhou follows a global decentralized movement echoing a rare lone-wolf protest against the Chinese regime in Beijing last month, just days before the ruling party’s National Congress.
The protestor, Peng Lifa, unveiled banners on the capital city’s Sitong Bridge, calling for all levels of Chinese civil society to strike and for people to take the streets in dissent against President Xi Jinping and the party’s autocratic rule.
This triggered a wave of demonstrations around the world by many overseas Chinese, includinginternational students and other youthwho reproduced Peng’s demands in posters plastered across college campuses and cities.
While Peng’s demands did not clearly tackle the capitalist nature of the Chinese state and economy, in his onlinemanifestohe touched on the plight of migrant and other precarious workers, whose exploitation hasintensifiedduring the pandemic.
The revelations of the conditions in Zhengzhou’s Foxconn factory further testify to the fact that China’s authoritarian governance cannot be divorced from its hyper-exploitation of labor for the global commodity economy.
Overseas Solidarity Is Crucial
The repressive political conditions in China prevent any coordinated and independent mass protests beyond wildcat and brief lone-wolf actions. Given that, overseas Chinese can play an outsized role in building an effective dissident movement.
This solidarity movement with Foxconn workers by Chinese overseas activists themselves is an important follow-up to the Sitong Bridge demonstrations because it touches on how the Chinese regime’s political power is derived from its dependence on its capitalist sector.
A genuine struggle for democracy in China involves building a mass movement not only against authoritarianism, but also against authoritarian capital. This requires a critical attitude toward the regimes in both the U.S. and China, which promote the power of multinational corporations to prioritize profits and growth over workers’ lives.
To do this, we must continue to strengthen links between unions and other labor organizations across the world and this new generation of Chinese overseas activists.
#SupportFoxconnWorkers by signing and sharing the petitionhere.
Liu Xiang and Ruo Yan are pseudonyms of overseas Chinese labor activists. Pseudonyms were used to protect activists and their families from retaliation by the Chinese government.
• German Chancellor Olaf Scholz visits China
• Renowned biologist’s returns to launch medical research institution
• Reemergence of rural cooperatives
• New plan for integrated communities
For the Western press, the 20th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party offered a number of signals which—if read in good faith—could have been perceived as reassuring.
Instead, establishment outlets reverted to familiar narratives regarding China’s Covid mitigation strategy and tied these into renewed predictions of a long-prophesied economic disaster—one that would inevitably befall China as a result of its government’s decision to forsake the orthodoxy of open markets.
More than anything else, corporate media fixated on Hu Jintao’s departure from the congress hall, engaging in tabloid-variety speculation around the fate of CCP General Secretary Xi Jinping’s 79-year-old predecessor.
Invoking the specter of a purge, outlets like the New York Times and CNN pushed the narrative that Xi manipulated events to consolidate his power. However, the “evidence” used by corporate media to suggest that Xi orchestrated Hu’s exit as part of a power grab was far from convincing.
Substantive developments
If establishment outlets covering the congress were on the lookout for substantive developments—rather than additional fodder to comport with their prefabricated narratives—they could have found them.
Despite the Biden administration’s belligerent posture vis-à-vis Taiwan, demonstrated by escalations like Nancy Pelosi’s visit to the island and Biden’s own promise to deploy US forces in the event of a forced reunification, Xi indicated that China would continue to approach cross-strait relations with restraint.
SCMP (10/16/22): “Analysts said Xi’s remarks suggested that Beijing was exercising restraint on Taiwan, despite the soaring tensions.”
Of Xi’s relatively measured statements on reunification, Sung Wen-ti, a political scientist at the Australian National University (Guardian, 10/16/22), said, “The lack of ‘hows’ is a sign he wants to preserve policy flexibility and doesn’t want to irreversibly commit to a particularly adversarial path.” Lim John Chuan-tiong, a former researcher at Taiwan’s Academia Sinica (SCMP, 10/16/22), deemed Xi’s message to the Taiwanese people “balanced and not combative.” This sounds like good news for everyone who wants to avoid a potential nuclear war.
In addition, Xi’s opening report to the congress placed particular emphasis on the task of combating climate change. The section titled “Pursuing Green Development and Promoting Harmony between Humanity and Nature” presented a four-part framework to guide China’s policy efforts in this area. Even the avidly pro-Western Atlantic Council had to admit that “China is showing its leadership in green development in a number of ways.”
Since China is home to one-fifth of the global population, and is currently the most prolific CO2-emitting country on Earth, its government’s decision to prioritize a comprehensive response to the climate crisis seems like an unambiguously positive development.
The congress even provided some encouraging news for those who claim to care about human rights. In a surprise move, Chen Quanguo, who was hit with US sanctions for his hardline approach as party secretary in both Tibet and Xinjiang, was ousted from the central committee.
But US corporate media generally failed to highlight these developments as positive news. In fact, with the exception of some coverage of Xi’s statements on Taiwan—which largely misrepresented China’s posture as more threatening than a good-faith reading would indicate—US news outlets had remarkably little to say about the substance of any news coming out of the congress.
Recycled narratives
As FAIR (3/24/20, 1/29/21, 9/9/22) has pointed out at various points in the pandemic, corporate media—seemingly disturbed by China’s unwillingness to sacrifice millions of lives at the altar of economic growth—have been almost uniformly critical of the Chinese government’s Covid mitigation strategy.
The New York Times (10/16/22) refers to the “idea” that China’s zero Covid policies “have saved lives”—as though it’s possible that China could have allowed the coronavirus to spread throughout its population without killing anyone.
Indeed, establishment outlets have persistently demonized the “zero-Covid” policy despite its successes—in terms of both lives saved and economic development. After Xi indicated to the congress that China would continue along this path, corporate media were predictably dismayed.
Returning to its familiar line that, contrary to evidence, China’s decision to prioritize public health would ravage its economy, the New York Times (10/16/22) reported:
Mr. Xi argued that the Communist Party had waged an “all out people’s war to stop the spread of the virus.” China’s leadership has done everything it can to protect people’s health, he said, putting “the people and their lives above all else.” He made no mention of how the stringent measures were holding back economic growth and frustrating residents.
The article went on to quote Jude Blanchette, a “China expert” at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), who declared, “There is nothing positive or aspirational about zero Covid.” That CSIS would disseminate such a narrative—with the assistance of the reliably hawkish Times—is unsurprising, since the think tank’s chief patrons share a common interest in vilifying China.
CSIS’s roster of major donors includes military contractors Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Boeing, as well as a litany of oil and gas companies—all of whom derive financial benefit from America’s military build-up in the Pacific.
CSIS has also received millions of dollars from the governments of Taiwan, Japan and South Korea. Sitting on its board of trustees are Phebe Novakovic, chair and CEO of General Dynamics, and Leon Panetta who—as Defense secretary in the Obama administration—helped craft the DOD’s “pivot to Asia.”
‘No to market reforms’
CNN (10/17/22) reported that “experts are concerned that Xi offered no signs of moving away from the country’s rigid zero-Covid policy or its tight regulatory stance on various businesses, both of which have hampered growth in the world’s second-largest economy.” CNN‘s experts don’t point out that China’s economy has grown 9% since 2019, when Covid struck, vs. 2% for the US.
In “Xi Jinping’s Speech: Yes to Zero Covid, No to Market Reforms?” CNN (10/17/22) framed Xi’s statement that China would not allow the deadly coronavirus to spread freely across its population as part of a broader rejection of liberalized markets by the CCP.
Aside from the obvious shortcomings of a framework that evaluates public health policy on the basis of its relationship to economic growth, CNN presented the opening of Chinese markets to foreign capital as an objective good—the forsaking of which would bode poorly for China’s economic prospects.
While China’s “reform and opening-up” has been immensely profitable for corporations—as evidenced in media coverage (Forbes, 10/24/22; NYT, 11/7/22) of global markets’ uneasiness over Xi’s alleged “return to Marxism”—its impact on Chinese workers has been uneven, to say the least. Living standards have improved generally, but labor conditions remain poor and inequality is growing.
Like the Times, CNN went the think tank route to support its thesis, quoting Craig Singleton—senior China fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD):
Yesterday’s speech confirms what many China watchers have long suspected—Xi has no intention of embracing market liberalization or relaxing China’s zero-Covid policies, at least not anytime soon…. Instead, he intends to double down on policies geared towards security and self-reliance at the expense of China’s long-term economic growth.
Despite the fact that China watchers have, for as long as one can remember, predicted a collapse of China’s economy that has yet to materialize, corporate media keep on returning to that same old well.
For its part, FDD—to which CNN attached the inconspicuous label of “DC-based think tank”—is a neoconservative advocacy group that has an ax to grind with China. The chairman of FDD’s China Program is Matt Pottinger, former deputy national security advisor to Donald Trump.
Early on in the pandemic, a Washington Post profile (4/29/20) of Pottinger stated that he “believes Beijing’s handling of the virus has been ‘catastrophic’ and ‘the whole world is the collateral damage of China’s internal governance problems.’” The article quoted Trump’s second national security advisor, H.R. McMaster—who is also currently employed as a “China expert” at FDD—as calling Pottinger “central to the biggest shift in US foreign policy since the Cold War, which is the competitive approach to China.”
Desperate search for a purge
If consumers of corporate media only encountered one story about the congress, it probably had something to do with this seemingly innocuous development: During the congress’s closing session, aides escorted Hu Jintao—Xi’s predecessor as China’s paramount leader—out of the Great Hall of the People.
Later that day, Xinhua, China’s state news agency, said that Hu’s departure was health related. This explanation isn’t exactly far-fetched, since the 79-year-old Hu has long been said to be suffering from an illness—as early as 2012, some observers posited that the then-outgoing leader had Parkinson’s disease.
Since the whole episode was caught on camera, however, corporate media were not satisfied with China’s mundane account of events. Instead, establishment outlets seized the moment and transformed Hu’s departure into a dramatic spectacle, laden with sinister connotations. The speculation that followed was almost obsessive in nature.
The New York Times (10/27/22) invited readers to scrutinize video of a 79-year-old retiree being escorted from a meeting for signs that he was “purged”—a conjecture that the Times otherwise provides no evidence for.
In a piece titled “What Happened to Hu Jintao,” the New York Times (10/27/22) resorted to a form of video and image analysis one would typically expect from the most committed conspiracy theorist. Despite conceding that “it’s far from evident that Mr. Hu’s exit was planned, and many analysts have warned against drawing assumptions,” the Times went on to do just that.
The article centered on nine video clips and three stills, providing a moment-by-moment breakdown of Hu’s exit from various angles and zoom levels. Some images even included Monday Night Football–style telestrator circles, which surrounded the heads of certain CCP cadres like halos in a Renaissance painting.
In reference to the haloed party figures whose “expressions did not change” as Hu was escorted away, the Times quoted Wu Guoguang, a professor at Canada’s University of Victoria:
Here was Hu Jintao, the former highest leader of your party and a man who had given so many of you political opportunities. And how do you treat him now?… This incident demonstrated the tragic reality of Chinese politics and the fundamental lack of human decency in the Communist Party.
While noting that Wu “said he did not want to speculate about what had unfolded,” the Times evidently did not consider this statement of caution as being at odds with his subsequent use of Hu’s departure to condemn the CCP in the broadest possible terms.
Indeed, the paper of record saw no problem with attributing the failure of Hu’s colleagues to react in a more appropriate manner—whatever that may have been—to “the tragic reality of Chinese politics” and a “fundamental lack of human decency” on the part of the CCP.
Here was a microcosm of corporate media’s contradictory approach to the episode: a professed reluctance to engage in conjecture, persistently negated by an overwhelming eagerness to cast aspersions. In line with this tack, the Times resorted to innuendo by posing a hypothetical question:
Was Mr. Hu, 79, suffering from poor health, as Chinese state media would later report? Or was he being purged in a dramatic show by China’s current leader, Xi Jinping, for the world to see?
Rather than asserting outright that Hu was the victim of a purge, the Times advanced this familiar red-scare narrative by including two photographs from the Cultural Revolution—one of which depicts Xi’s father being subjected to humiliation during a struggle session. With these images, the Times coaxed readers into making a spurious connection between Hu’s exit and the political repressions of yesteryear.
Unfazed by lack of evidence
The Wall Street Journal (10/27/22) subjected Hu’s exit to the kind of analysis usually done in movies with photos linked by string on a basement wall.
The same day as the Times released its “analysis,” the Wall Street Journal (10/27/22) published a similar piece under the headline “Hu Jintao’s Removal From China’s Party Congress, a Frame-by-Frame Breakdown.”
Short on substance, since there was no actual evidence to suggest that the 79-year-old—who hasn’t held power for a decade and has never even been rumored to oppose Xi—was being purged or publicly humiliated, the Journal chose to hyperfixate on every aspect of the footage.
Predictably, cable news networks and China watchers also took part in the orgy of speculation. On CNN’s Erin Burnett Out Front (10/25/22), international correspondent Selina Wang said this:
Now, I have spoken to experts who think there is more to this than that pure health explanation, including Steve Tsang of [the] SOAS China Institute. He told me that this is humiliation of Hu Jintao. It is a clear message that there is only one leader who matters in China right now and that is Xi Jinping.
She did not mention the fact that Tsang is a fellow at Chatham House, a think tank that derives a substantial proportion of its funding from the US State Department and the governments of Britain and Japan.
The day before, on CNNNewsroom (10/24/22), Wang stated, “Hu Jintao. . . was publicly humiliated at the closing ceremony of the Party Congress.” The only support she offered for this assertion came from Victor Shih, another China watcher from the aforementioned CSIS, who conjectured:
I am not a believer of the pure health explanation. And it seemed like [Hu] sat down in a pretty stable manner. And then suddenly, he was asked to leave. I’m not sure if he whispered something, said something to Xi Jinping.
Half-acknowledging that Shih’s description of events actually said nothing at all, Wang concluded: “Regardless, it was a symbolic moment. Out with Hu and the collective leadership of his era.” For Wang and for corporate media’s treatment of the episode writ large, “regardless” was the operative word—regardless of the fact that they were merely engaged in baseless speculation, they would still inevitably arrive at the most sinister conclusion.
President Xi Jinping made history by opening the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), when he announced the beginning of a New Era of socio-political development with focus on the Global South.
The initiative embarks on a path of peaceful modernization and moderate prosperity, bringing more equilibrium to a world often beset by conflicts.
He made history again by having been confirmed for his 3rd Five-Year term as China’s leader. This is good for continuity of a successful policy of growth and for the transformation of China as a moderately prosperous society – a socialism with Chinese characteristics.
The next five years will focus on expanding the policy of growth and transformation with more emphasis on peacefully integrating the Global South.
President Xi pointed out there would be no change in strategy vis-à-vis Taiwan, Hong Kong and China’s zero-covid policy. Regarding Taiwan, China is aiming at a nonviolent unification. This is entirely an internal matter. China would not tolerate any foreign intervention.
The new 7 member Standing Committee are poised to make a strong team to tackle the many challenges China will face during the next 5 years, envisaging an even longer horizon, until 2049, the Centenario of Modern China.
China has a stellar record of success stories during her 70-plus years of peaceful existence as a modern socialist country. Unfortunately, they are mostly ignored by western politicians and journalists.
Just to mention a few of the many achievements during President Xi’s twenty-year tenure.
Poverty reduction – lifting 800 million people out of poverty (equivalent to ten times the population of Germany);
Health – impressive improvement in China’s health system; increasing China’s average life expectancy from about 71 years in 2000 to close to 79 years in 2021. This exceeds many so-called developed countries (compare this to the US – 76 years life expectancy in 2021). Most Chinese have access to FREE health care – which is rare in the west.
Dedollarization is achieved through the gradual debunking of the sanction-prone US-dollar, by concentrating on developing internal and Asian regional markets and through a massive de-dollarization program which includes:
Development of a Chinese digital central bank yuan, for use in international transactions;
China and ever more Asian and western countries are trading in Yuan and local currencies;
China’s economy and that of other Asian countries will be backed by their actual economic outputs – and most-likely by a basket of commonly used commodities;
Attracting many (former) “western orbit countries” into Asian regional organizations, such as (a) the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); (b) the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement (RCEP) of ASEAN+5 countries (15 altogether) – which is the worldwide largest free trade agreement; and (c) the BRICS-plus, …. to mention just a few. These countries will trade in other currencies than the US-dollar.
The Belt and Road Initiative – BRI – may be the Crown Jewel of China’s achievements during the past two decades. It is a direct Initiative of President Xi’s, launched in 2013. It will celebrate next year its tenth Anniversary.
BRI has created already at least six land and maritime “roads” that are gradually spanning the globe to connect people of different cultures with infrastructure, with projects for joint research, learning, as well as the development of alternative sources of energies, and much more.
At present more than 150 countries and international organizations are connected to the Belt and Road.
The most recent addition of a BRI connection may be the Port of Hamburg, a Chinese participation, for which the German Government has just given its Green Light.
Key Elements of China’s projected and visionary New Era include
Continuation and enhancement of the new autonomous monetary system – detached from the fiat “dollar-world”. The new system could become a trailblazer for other countries. It might become the gateway for a sanction-free world economy.
Embracing the Global South – proposing peaceful development and detachment from the fangs of western exploitation, while offering partner countries of the Global South technical assistance and development projects addressing their socioeconomic priorities.
The Belt and Road, beyond its worldwide expansion, may become a first-class instrument to implement a program of peaceful modernization of the Global South, preparing joint ventures and connections between countries and regions, including for trade, as well as research into alternative energy resources.
China’s Governancemiracle is the result of a long-term strategic vision. Her peaceful and effective governance has successfully dealt with crises and problems. The path of the past will lead to successful governance into the future.
KeyGovernance Challenges ahead may include
Peaceful integration of Taiwan into mainland China;
Maintaining Hong Kong’s internal peace, protecting HK from foreign interference;
Becoming rapidly self-sufficient in the semi-conductor production, for which the Biden Administration is attempting barring China from access to the needed technology.
This new US sanctions scheme seems to be an unrealistic endeavor. China is already master of these technologies. Besides, China disposes of the necessary raw materials, rare earths, for which the West depends largely on China’s exports.
In conclusion
China has been successful in her 70-plus years existence because of her peaceful approach to development and to selective growth. China is pursuing a multipolar world, rather than hegemonic power.
China uses her peaceful governance to address injustices and irrationalities in the current international order, including conflicts with the US and its western allies.
Peaceful global governance initiatives include the BRI; Global Development Initiative; Global Security Initiative; BRICS+ Mechanism; Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB); Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO); the world’s largest ever Free Trade Agreement; the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RECP); and more.
Enhancing Global Governance initiatives is China’s long-term vision, an important feature of what distinguishes the East from the West.
The 20th CPC Congress outlines an outlook to 2035 – with a horizon 2049 – pointing to the 100th Anniversary of the “New Communist China” – that successfully evolved to a socialism with Chinese characteristics.
As a momentum for closing, please allow me to present a brief 3-minute video:
“Who Am I?” Chinese Path to the Success of the CPC
A groundbreaking partnership between Chinese real estate leader Hang Lung Properties and French luxury giant LVMH Group is forging new ground when it comes to sustainable building.
Hang Lung and LVMH have officially partnered on a three-year innovative collaboration on climate and sustainability action across their respective real estate and retail businesses that will see the two Groups work together with a clear focus on five key areas, and will engage their respective employees and suppliers to co-create solutions to the ESG issues they face. The partnership is expected to inspire many more landlords and tenants to work creatively for the greater good.
The joint partnership, the first of its kind globally, spans Hang Lung’s properties across seven mainland Chinese cities, covers 26 LVMH brands in more than 90 retail spaces, and hopes to redefine the relationship between property owners and leading retail brands when it comes to sustainability. Focus areas include Climate Resilience, Resource Management, Wellbeing, Sustainable Transactions, and Sustainability Communication, events and Progress Reviews. The partnership will run until the end of 2025, and is expected to be renewed thereafter.
This unique and innovative partnership, which sets an example for both the real estate and retail industry globally, is rooted in the premise that a more systemic approach is required to better meet the needs of the current climate crisis. Both Hang Lung and LVMH are committed to a deeply collaborative approach with regular progress monitoring and open sharing, and thoughtful engagement amongst key stakeholders such as employees and suppliers. And at the upcoming Real Estate & Climate Forum, co-organized by the two Groups, a digital platform enabling a tailor-made experience for every user that will allow for curated ideation and consensus-based decision-making.
Adriel Chan, Vice Chair & Chair of Sustainability Steering Committee, Hang Lung Properties and Antoine Arnault, Image and Environment, LVMH;Credit: Marie Rouge.
“A positive sum game in a zero sum world”
At the launch ceremony held in Paris and broadcast across various cities including Hong Kong and Shanghai, Adriel Chan, Hang Lung Properties’ Vice Chair and Chair of Sustainability Steering Committee, told the audience that “sustainability is a positive sum game in what often feels like a zero sum world.”
Chan underlined the importance of collaboration when it comes to reaching ambitious goals around sustainability. Of Hang Lung and LVMH’s new plans, he said the two giants are “excited to launch this groundbreaking partnership, leveraging our strategic relationship to help ensure a sustainable future for the world while providing unique experiences to our customers. Although Hang Lung already has ambitious ESG goals and targets, the partnership with LVMH takes our sustainability agenda to the next level, demonstrating how landlords and tenants can work creatively together for the greater good.”
Antoine Arnault, LVMH Image and Environment, spoke of how their customers were increasingly looking for sustainable shopping spaces. “The design of our stores, like that of our products, is inspired by LVMH’s core values of creativity, innovation and excellence. And this of course means guaranteeing the environmental performance of our over 5,550 stores around the world.”
Chan also anchored the commitment made to China’s overall carbon targets, adding: “We are confident that the partnership will make a positive impact in support of China’s goals to peak its carbon emissions by 2030 and to reach carbon neutrality by 2060.”
Hang Lung Properties – Plaza 66, Shanghai
A passion and dedication to sustainability across all lines of business
Chan is Vice Chair of Hang Lung Properties, the real estate giant that manages over 58 million sq. ft. gross floor area in China with flagship properties in nine cities including Shanghai, Shenyang, Jinan, Wuxi, Tianjin, Dalian, Kunming, Wuhan and Hangzhou.
After joining Hang Lung back in 2010, Chan has worked his way up from leasing and finance to today holding the responsibility for the Company’s strategic direction. His great passion, however, is the environment. In fact, Chan manages the Company’s Sustainability Steering Committee and works closely with General Manager – Sustainability, John Haffner, who joined Hang Lung in 2019 and is responsible for formulating the group-wide sustainability strategy and driving its execution.
Chan has spoken publicly at length about the Company’s commitment to tackling climate change, stating that Hang Lung is among the first real estate companies in Asia to have committed to setting both near- and long-term targets to reach net-zero value chain greenhouse gas emissions by no later than 2050 in alignment with Science Based Targets initiative’s (“SBTi”) Net-Zero Standard, the world’s first framework for corporate net-zero target setting in line with climate science.
He has also shared the challenges of engaging employees on sustainability and some key learnings from his journey including the importance of making the corporate sustainability aspiration digestible and relatable to his employees with top-level commitment to an actionable sustainability framework to engaging and providing them with a clear agenda for the short-, near- and long-term, along with continuous internal education and events and crucially, buy-in at all levels of the organization, highlighting that in the Asian context, top-level commitment is key.
Hang Lung boasts a range of company-wide sustainability achievements, from an AA rating by the Hang Seng Corporate Sustainability Index Series, to a “A” MSCI ESG rating, to maintaining a 4-star GRESB performance rating. The Company has also been listed as an Index Component of the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices in the Asia Pacific Index since 2017. In addition, over 77% of its overall construction floor area is certified with green buildings, including 32 Leadership in Energy and Environment Design (LEED) gold or above certifications or pre-certifications. The company has been repeatedly awarded for its sustainability reporting efforts too, including winning the Grand Award in Best ESG Report at 2022’s Hong Kong ESG Reporting Awards (HERA) and the Excellence Award in the Environmental, Social, and Governance Reporting at the 2022 Hong Kong Management Association (HKMA)’s Best Annual Reports Awards.
Spring City 66, Kunming
Furthermore, Hang Lung’s Spring City 66 in Kunming also marks the Company’s first development and China’s Yunnan Province’s first commercial complex, featuring a world-class shopping mall, Grade A office space and a hotel and residential tower that is powered by 100% renewable energy, which achieve net zero carbon emissions for both landlord and tenant annual electricity consumption.
To build on the success of the Company’s sustainability progress, Chan further stated at the launch ceremony in Paris “Hang Lung and LVMH have made explicit in our agreement that we encourage one another to work with other tenants and other landlords to further the sustainability agenda, and so we welcome the proliferation of these types of agreements going forward.”
Plans for dedicated events are in the works including the first Real Estate & Climate Forum, which will take place on November 24 and 25, 2022, and unite changemakers across both industries to help formulate solution-based plans around twelve areas from energy efficiency and circularity to social impact.
All images courtesy of Hang Lung Properties. Lead image: Hang Lung Properties’ Heartland 66, Wuhan was awarded the two Gold certificates under Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) for Core and Shell Development – Gold Level by the U.S. Green Building Council in 2021.
Soon, the US government may be making waves regarding another extradition request for a figure connected with that oft exaggerated notion of national security. While the high profile and insidious effort to extradite Julian Assange from the United Kingdom continues, the case of former US pilot, Marine Corps major and flight instructor Daniel Edmund Duggan has crossed the radar of reporters and international lawyers.
On October 21, Duggan was arrested by Australian authorities in the New South Wales town of Orange at the request of Washington. He appeared in Orange Local Court and was refused bail.
After his formal tenure as a military pilot, Duggan moved into the field of aviation consultancy, running AVIBIZ Limited, “a comprehensive consultancy company with a focus on the fast growing and dynamic Chinese Aviation Industry.” He moved to Australia in 2005, where he founded Top Gun Tasmania, providing customers flights in the British military jet trainer, the BAC Jet Provost, and the CJ-6A Nanchang, a Chinese propeller-driven trainer. His staff consisted of former US and UK military pilots.
From Australia, he moved to Beijing in 2014 after selling Top Gun Tasmania, working with a Chinese businessman, Stephen Su, also known as Su Bin. Su had been convicted for hacking charges in the US, having been arrested in Canada in July 2014 regarding the theft of US military aircraft designs. Duggan’s residential address from December 2013, an apartment in Beijing’s Chaoyang district, was also of interest given that it appears on the US Entity List in August 2014 as belonging to Su and his technology company, Nuodian Technology.
Duggan’s own expertise is being babbled about in some circles: as a former Harrier pilot, his expertise in vertical take-off and landing (VTOL) fighters such as the F-35B and AV-8B is considered of interest to some powers.
That same week, a stir had been made of Chinese mischief regarding certain pilots keen to make some post-retirement cash. British intelligence had flagged the issue of 30 ex-RAF pilots working with the PRC military, though a South African flying school damped matters in claiming that no classified information had passed hands.
According to a statement from the Test Flying Academy of South Africa (TFASA), “none of its trainers are in possession of legally or operationally sensitive information relating to the national security interest of any country, whether those from where its employees are drawn or in which it provides training”. Since 2013, “British tutors have been in direct contact on an individual basis with the UK MoD and other UK government agencies prior” regarding training duties, including Chinese clients. No objection had been raised.
The whirligig of time is, however, a strange thing. UK Armed Forces Minister James Heappey thought that enough smoke had risen to warrant a comment on loyalties. “It certainly doesn’t match my understanding of service of our nation – even in retirement – to then go and work with a foreign power, especially one that challenges the UK interest so keenly.”
Much of this is stringent codswallop, given the vast array of consultancies and training connected to old military hands and a multitude of foreign powers. Such old dogs rarely go quietly in retirement, and are, at the best of times, happy to offer their services at a consultative level. That surprise should even register at this point suggests that something more is afoot.
Without a wisp of evidence and basis, Duggan, a former US marine and naturalised Australian citizen, is already being treated as a target for extradition. He has been advised that he will be moved to Goulburn Supermax, described by his lawyer Dennis Miralis as “dramatic and aggressive” and “without any proper foundation”. “There is no factual material that has been provided supporting the way he was indicted secretly in the US.”
The authorities have been disturbingly reticent. “As the matter is before the courts, it would not be appropriate to comment further,” claim the Australian Attorney-General’s department and police authorities. Beijing has also decided to shed little light on the matter. “I’m not aware of the situation you mentioned,” came the response of Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson Wang Wenbin to a query on the issue.
The US Navy has also stated that it was “not aware” of the pending arrest of Duggan, while the US Marine Corps would only confirm Duggan’s service record. In a response to Forbes, the US Air Force noted that, “At this time, we aren’t aware of any ex-Air Force pilots working with the Chinese.”
Former USN captain Bill Hamlet was more forthcoming, noting that the issue of having former US military pilots working with Chinese authorities had never made an appearance between the sacrosanct covers of the Naval Institute’s journal Proceedings. “There’s growing concern that this is a problem and people are wondering to what extent. How many NATO pilots have been helping the Chinese improve the proficiency of their airforce?”
Miralis has made it clear that a complaint will be filed with the Australian Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security, which should leave little room for optimism. Duggan had returned from China “a few weeks prior to his arrest and in the intervening period a number of interactions occurred with those agencies that the inspector-general of intelligence has the capacity to investigate.”
The will is there, but the flesh is weak; the IGIS, as with many other oversight bodies in the Australian bureaucratic canon, is scandalously understaffed. The 2020-21 annual report is unreserved about the nature of the staffing problems, unable to achieve “well-developed and effective complaint and PID [Public Interest Disclosure] management processes”. As of June 30, the office has 33 working individuals, which is 22 short of what is recommended.
The US Justice Department, for its part, has 60 days from the date of Duggan’s arrest to request extradition. Miralis is cognisant about what this case entails. Throw out the legal protocols and the jurisprudence: brute power is at stake. “This has nothing to do with law, this has everything to do with international politics and international relations.”
You can magnify a single bacteria a thousand times but it will not tell you that your entire herd is missing or that everything is dying on the farm.
The point is that when we’re too focused on the so-called details, we often miss what’s truly important to understand what’s going on.
This is an old story, chicanery that has been used without pause from the onset of human communication. The misapplication of “focus” is used by tricksters, hucksters, hustlers, politicians, and other consummate liars, on a regular basis to keep us from stepping back and getting a full appreciation of a situation — the big picture, a fuller more truthful and useful understanding. It’s used by racists to generate hatred. By citing a few bad apples they convince us the whole orchard is rotten. It’s used by salesmen to direct our attention to some apparent necessity, often illusory, in order to pry open our wallets for the purchase of some superfluous, overvalued item. It’s used by propagandists and their allies in the media to misinform and twist our view of ourselves and the world we live in. Via calculated cherry-picking the truth, lying by omission, even making up “facts”, we are enlisted for an agenda which, if fully understood, we would never support, would probably oppose. As a subset of that, it’s used by warmongers to convince us of the nobility, justice, essential goodness of all sorts of horrors they inflict on the world. We save the lives of three school children in a remote village, failing to mention we killed 100,000 innocent civilians to get there.
If we take a long step back and look at how our country got to be so rich, so powerful, so respected and feared, if we are honest with ourselves, completely objective, attentive and balanced, there is only one possible conclusion we can draw . . .
The overall trajectory of U.S. foreign policy is that of a predator, a conqueror, a colonial oppressor.
There is nothing in the historical record of the last 100 years which contradicts this.
There is no example of voluntary retreat. There has never been an apology for the death and destruction wantonly inflicted on other countries. Except for a steady stream of self-flattering virtue signaling about justice and human rights, we’ve never made up for the grotesque theft of the labor and entire lives stolen from the millions of people we’ve enslaved over the entire course of our existence. This now includes the use of prison labor in our bloated system of corporate incarceration. There have been no reparations for the wars the U.S. has prosecuted, for the enormous social, economic, and political damage resulting from both military and non-military aggression by the U.S. against other nations. The U.S. has countless times covertly and overtly violated international law, broken treaties and its trusted word. It has turned truth on its head to justify its aggression and sometimes outright theft of money and resources, 1) falsely claiming its “national security” is under threat; 2) falsely portraying its military campaigns and economic terrorism as mitigation for human rights abuses, e.g. the public relations charade mockingly called Responsibility to Protect (R2P); 3) falsely accusing other countries of treaty violations to justify its own treaty violations; 4) hypocritically utilizing terrorist groups it claims to condemn for proxy wars against its perceived enemies; 5) bullying, instituting sanctions, blockades and embargoes, starving whole populations of essential food and medicines, self-righteously declaring itself judge and jury in determining how other sovereign nations and their people must act or be condemned and isolated for violating some model of proper behavior — a rules-based order — which the U.S., itself, ignores when inconvenient or unprofitable for the corporate interests the government loyally represents and serves.
The War on Terror, among the most egregious frauds perpetrated under the banner of Pax Americana, has been a War of Terror by the #1 terrorist country in the world — the U.S. itself. The unnecessary and illegal wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Yemen, now Ukraine, to name the most prominent ones, have caused the greatest refugee crises in history. Taiwan is next on the assembly line of horrors generated by our belligerence, arrogance, and recklessness.
What do we take from this? What’s the lesson?
The message is clear: Any attempt at repairing U.S. foreign policy requires a complete reversal of priorities which are currently baked into our economy, politics, social and political system.
And such a reversal of priorities must necessarily require eliminating from positions of power any and all proponents of global hegemony, world conquest, indispensability, “American exceptionalism”, total spectrum dominion. Our current geopolitical agenda only produces one trajectory: imperial conquest. This trajectory only embraces one mechanism: War in all of its contemporary manifestations: war on other countries, war on economies, war on social structures, war on people (including its own), war on families, war on human rights, war on the environment, war on the truth.
Returning to our discussion of the “details”, meaning the focus on single, easily spun and manipulated events and public posturing. Questioning and challenging what the U.S. does in its relationship with the rest of the world by only targeting individual incidents, single moments in time, each supposedly a unique crisis — as it mysteriously just pops up out of nowhere and spoils our good time like some party crasher — is a pointless and futile task, a fool’s errand . . . A HUGE WASTE OF ENERGY AND TIME.
How many times do we need to be reminded of this? We question the wisdom and necessity of invading the tiny island nation of Grenada, we get Panama and the first Iraq war, then Kosovo. We object to the war on Afghanistan, we get a war both on Afghanistan and Iraq. We condemn the Iraq War and we get Libya and Syria and Sudan and Yemen. How many times do we need to be reminded that any calls for basic civility, diplomacy, restraint, peace, are scoffed at — if even noticed — are mocked and dismissed as childish fantasy and unhinged idealism, the stuff of hippies and dreamers? How often does the current power elite have to make it clear that for them confrontation, aggression, and war are the answers to every question?
The latest crisis to monopolize our attention — and admittedly it’s a whopper! — being used to obfuscate America’s real and ultimately self-destructive agenda, is the Ukraine war. Starting this war has been in the works for decades.* Further proof of the West’s real intent — a major drawn-out conflict which will weaken and ultimately destroy Russia — is the refusal by US and its NATO lapdogs to negotiate, have any conversation with Russia. Boris Johnson — a pathetic servile sheepdog if there ever was one — flew to Kiev and told Zelensky to pull out of peace talks and refuse any further discussion with Russia to resolve the situation. Zelensky is being generously rewarded by Washington DC to follow orders, toe the line, and sacrifice unnecessarily tens of thousands of Ukrainian lives in support of US/NATO thuggery. He’s got millions in the bank now, luxury homes far from the conflict zone, and presumably access to the best comedy writers in America, should he decide to return to his real calling, that of a buffoon TV comic.
Any cursory review of the actual events which made this mess inevitable leads to an indisputable conclusion: The “special operation”, as Russia calls it, is not naked Russian aggression, or as the media reminds us every ten seconds, an “unprovoked” attack. It is a reaction by Russia to calculated provocations, intimidations, a program engineered over at least a half a century — though hatred of Russia by the West goes back much further — ultimately intended to destroy Russia as a nation, then plunder it. It is the direct result of a highly-sophisticated, multi-layered strategy for imperial conquest, sometimes subtle and always covert, by the US and its puppet institution NATO . . . destroy, conquer, subjugate, pillage. It’s not Russia that’s circled the continental U.S. with military bases. It’s the U.S. and its puppet allies that have tried to construct a noose around Russia. The US by its own admission put $5 billion into creating turmoil and installing a US/NATO-friendly puppet regime in Kiev. The Ukraine coup of 2014 was nothing more than a tightening of the military noose around Russia and a ham-fisted attempt at stealing Russia’s major naval base in Sevastopol. That plot, of course, was foiled when Crimea decided by referendum to again become part of Russia.
Next in line — as if destroying and conquering Russia is just a day’s work — is China. This likewise is nothing new. The subjugation of China has been a work in progress for two centuries. The effort by the West+1 (the +1 being Japan) from 1839 to 1949 is referred to by the Chinese as the Century of Humiliation. China has never forgotten or forgiven. Why should it? Why shouldn’t it protect itself from future humiliation and plunder? The long history of racist, imperial aggression by the Western-led colonialists is what drives China’s distrust of the U.S. and its current partners in crime (Australia, Japan, Canada, the NATO lapdogs). As with Russia, China is not rattling its sabers across the planet. Understandably it is attempting to construct an impregnable defense framework against more anticipated Western colonial incursions. It’s not China performing FONOPS (Freedom of Navigation Operations) in the Mediterranean, the Caribbean, off the coast of California and Virginia, not even around Hawaii and Alaska. It’s not China that has surrounded the U.S., Australia, the U.K. and other NATO countries with military bases. It is the U.S. in concert with its obsequious puppets that have encircled China with a huge array of forward-positioned bases, staffed and armed to the teeth with offensive weaponry. Japan alone has 56 U.S. bases. There are close to 30,000 active duty military persons in Okinawa alone.
It is imperative that the citizens of the U.S. who are still sane and capable of making their own rational judgments, understand that the obvious, truly frightening, unavoidable, but completely unnecessary result of our present course with Russia and China is WAR, WAR, AND MORE WAR — potentially nuclear war and the end of human life on this planet!
And putting aside death and destruction, as if tens of millions of deaths and ruined lives is just collateral inconvenience, for us now and future generations right here at home, our current trajectory guarantees more waste, an evisceration of our individual and national potential, a squandering of our vast human, national and economic resources, all in pursuit of the unattainable, undesirable, pathological insane goal of world domination!
During discussion of the most recent budget cycle, we might have detected the usual barely audible pleas for restraint and rationality, from the small chorus of voices attempting to alert the public exactly how skewed our funding priorities are. These are the same appeals we’ve been hearing year-after-year: Reduce the DOD budget, then repair the infrastructure, fix health care, take care of the planet, put the people back in the equation. The result of the “negotiations”? The defense budget increased to an all-time high, with Republicans and Democrats adding billions more than the White House requested, the grandstanding gas bags from both major parties competing for bragging rights over who is most responsible for this unconscionable bloat.
Did we vote for this? Do we really need more weapons of war, more military bases, more ships and submarines, more bombers and fighter jets, more missiles and nuclear bombs?
Or put another way . . .
Does the sturdy, proud individualism we claim defines us as a people have to equate to mass murder and destruction across the globe? World War III? Nuclear annihilation?
Is this what we as Americans stand for?
I think not.
This regime of perpetual war and global domination is the work of madmen, power-drunk sociopaths who’ve grabbed and now maintain absolute control of our foreign policy. They are empire-obsessed megalomaniacs who’ve seized the initiative and are the architects of the Great Imperial Project — the U.S. as absolute imperial master of the Earth. They have, without any consent by an informed citizenry, established the disastrous direction of the country, and are now taking us to a final denouement, an epic clash with two other major nuclear powers. To say ‘this will not end well’ ranks as the greatest understatement in history.
I repeat: There is nothing in the historical record of the last 100 years — some historians go back to the very early days of our republic — which offers any hope that our constant beating of the war drums will magically stop. That the trajectory of imperial conquest, and all the misadventures and war crimes which follow from that, will spontaneously reverse. Whether it’s the Monroe Doctrine or manifest destiny or the Wolfowitz Doctrine or R2P or Brzezinski’s Grand Chessboard or charter for the Project for the New American Century, whatever form the justification and rationalizations take, the direction is clear and ghastly: The promise of aggression, chaos, and carnage, distinguishes itself as the only promise the U.S. will keep.
I’m baffled why anti-war activists can’t see this. Right now the U.S. is a beast. The nature of the beast is war. The beast is merciless, relentless, unforgiving, amoral, sociopathic, homicidal. If we don’t slay the beast, the beast will continue to do just what such a creature does. Negotiating with the beast is impossible. Taming the beast is impossible. Even slowing down the beast will only insignificantly temper the pace of its ravaging ways.
Many well-intentioned individuals over decades have been appealing to the better nature and better instincts of U.S. leadership. The reality is, it has neither. Nor does it show signs of common decency or common sense.
There is only one option: Removing from power those who now embrace threats, intimidation, confrontation, violence, and ultimately military conflict as the only mechanisms for dealing with the rest of the world.
Removing ALL OF THOSE now in power! They are all culpable. They are all complicit.
Yes, the world is a dangerous place. But those now in control of our governing institutions systematically and systemically make it a more dangerous place. They are not protecting us. They are not even protecting our nation. They are dooming America to a horrifying and catastrophic fate. Either they go away or the U.S. itself will go away. It won’t be a pretty sight. Manifest destiny will be manifest implosion and collapse. Or total annihilation in the war to end all wars, which will fulfill that hope by ending everything.
* You might consider looking at my The Peace Dividend book, written six years ago, which exposes the unhinged geopolitical agenda which made this conflict inevitable.
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