Category: China

  • Lawyers say delay in case against three defendants including a Briton is to avoid embarrassing China

    The trial in Greece of activists who protested against Beijing holding the Winter Olympics has been postponed amid accusations that proceedings were delayed to avoid embarrassing China on the eve of the Games.

    The highly anticipated hearing had been due to take place on Thursday in the town of Pyrgos, with human rights lawyers travelling from the UK and Athens to attend. The activists, who included a Briton, an American and a Tibetan-Canadian, were arrested when they briefly disrupted the Olympic flame lighting ceremony in October.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The United States led the way in announcing a “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Olympics on December 6, 2021, citing allegations of “genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses.” It was followed by Britain, Canada, and Australia (i.e., all but one of its “Five Eyes” allies), as well as Japan and a smattering of small north European countries. The Five Eyes, which constitute a majority of “boycott” hangers-on, are united not just by the English language but by a common history of settler colonialism, Indigenous genocide, and violently enforced regional and global hegemony.

    The post The Hypocrisy Of The ‘Diplomatic Boycott’ Of The 2022 Beijing Olympics appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Using a sports boycott to make a point that Washington still has plenty of options has actually resulted in the opposite. Only three other countries have agreed to join the American diplomatic boycott, a negligible number if compared to the 20 African countries that refrained from participating in the 1976 Montreal Summer Games in protest of New Zealand’s participation. The latter was criticized for validating the South African apartheid regime when their rugby team had toured South Africa in that same year.

    The post US Olympic Boycott Not About Uyghurs appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Beijing,

    The Beijing Winter Olympics began while opening ceremony kicks off under pandemic restrictions. China is also under high diplomatic boycott and questions over Uighurs.

    The “Bird’s Nest” shaped stadium took attention, just alike the past 2008 Games. Beijing becomes the first city to host both a Summer and Winter Olympics.The opening ceremony was attended by President Xi Jinping and will declare the Games officially open. The ceremony will also be joined by more than 20 world leaders including Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin. Earlier the day, two presidents met.Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan also presented in the opening ceremony, Federal Minister of Information Fawad Chaudhry was accompanied P.M. while observing the beauty of the Beijing Stadium, P.M. Imran declared the magnificence of it an ‘Another Level’.The United States, Britain, Canada and Australia are among countries imposing a diplomatic boycott of the Games over China’s, Uyghur, Muslim minority of Xinjiang. Moreover, their athletes will still compete at the Games.

    Winter Olympics will run until February 20 and are taking place inside a vast “closed loop” designed to prevent the virus. Tickets were not sold to the general public because of the pandemic.

    Limited spectators will be present at the opening ceremony at the 90,000-capacity “Bird’s Nest” but it is unclear how many spectators present in the events at the Games.

    The mastermind of the inauguration ceremony is renowned Chinese film director Zhang Yimou, who was also behind the 2008 extravaganza. Zhang has promised a “totally innovative” ceremony but conceded that the pandemic and freezing weather will limit its scale compared to the Summer Games. Some 15,000 performers took part in a lavish gala featuring opera singers, acrobats and drummers but this time about 3,000 performers will take part and themes will include “environmental protection and low carbon emission”.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • The executive branch of the Taiwanese government, the Executive Yuan, has revealed in a policy report released late January that the integration of pressure hull sections for the prototype Indigenous Defense Submarine (IDS) is expected to be completed by the end of June 2022. The report also officially confirmed that the keel of the submarine […]

    The post Taiwan reports progress on indigenous submarine construction appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Amid a worsening stand-off between East and West, Russia and China are increasingly contemplating using their own currencies in mutual settlements and finding ways to work together to counter sanctions, Moscow’s envoy in Beijing has disclosed.

    Speaking as part of an appearance on YouTube channel Soloviev Live on Wednesday, Andrey Denisov weighed in on the impact of embargoes imposed by Western nations on ties between the two nations.

    The post Russia & China Hatch Sanctions Busting Plan To Limit Use Of Dollar appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • It should matter little to the Chinese that American diplomats and a handful of their western allies will not be attending the Beijing Winter Olympics in February. What truly matters is that the Russians are coming.

    The above is not an arbitrary statement. It is supported with facts. According to a survey conducted by China’s Global Times newspaper, the majority of the Chinese people value their country’s relations with Russia more than that of the EU and certainly more than that of the United States. The newspaper reported that such a finding makes it “the first time in 15 years that China-US ties did not top the list of the important bilateral relations in the Global Times annual survey.”

    In fact, some kind of an alliance is already forming between China and Russia. The fact that the Chinese people are taking note of this and are supporting their government’s drive towards greater integration – political, economic and geostrategic – between Beijing and Moscow, indicates that the informal and potentially formal alliance is a long-term strategy for both nations.

    American hostilities towards China, as seen by the Chinese, have become unbearable, and the Chinese people and government seem to have lost, not only any trust, however modest, of Washington, but of its own political system as well. 66 percent of all Chinese either disapproved of the US democratic system – or whatever remains of it – or believe that US democracy has sharply declined. Ironically, the vast majority of Americans share such a bleak view of their own country, according to a survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in 2019 and again by the Michigan Public Policy Survey in 2021.

    This leads us to two possible conclusions: First, the Chinese people will not be pushing for an American-style democracy any time soon and, second, the Chinese trust in the US does not hinge on what political party controls the White House or Congress.

    While the Chinese negative view of the US is unmistakably clear, Beijing remains hopeful that existing divisions with the European Union would allow it to expand economically in a region that is rife with financial and political opportunities, thus strategic growth. This fact offers China and Russia yet another area of potential cooperation, as Russia is also keen to expand into the European markets using its recently completed Nord Stream 2 gas project. Though Europe is already struggling with gas shortages, Europeans are divided on whether Russia should be allowed to claim a massive geostrategic influence by having such sway over the EU energy needs.

    Germany, which already receives nearly a third of its gas supplies from Russia – through Nord Stream 1 – is worried that allowing Nord Stream 2 to operate would make it too dependent on Russian gas supplies. Under intense pressure from Washington, Germany is caught between a rock and a hard place:  it needs Russian gas to keep its economy afloat, but is worried about American retaliation. To appease Washington, the German government threatened, on December 16, to block the new pipeline if Russia invades Ukraine. But is Germany in a position that allows it to make such demands?

    Meanwhile, Washington is keeping a close watch on Russia’s and China’s strategic expansion westward, and it views the ‘threat’ posed by both countries with great alarm. In his recent visit to Scotland to take part in the COP26, US President Joe Biden accused China and Russia of “walking away” on “a gigantic issue”, referring to climate change. China has “lost the ability to influence people around the world and here in COP. The same way I would argue with Russia,” Biden said on November 3.

    But will such rhetoric make any difference, or sway traditional US allies to boycott the lucrative deals and massive economic opportunities presented by the two emerging Asian giants?

    According to Eurostat, in 2020, China overtook the US as Europe’s largest import and third-largest export partner. Moreover, according to Nature magazine, most European countries largely depend on Russian energy sources, with the European Union estimated to import nearly 40 percent of its natural gas from Russia.

    In the face of these vastly changing realities, the US seems to be running out of options. The Summit for Democracy, orchestrated by Washington last December, seemed like a desperate cry for attention as opposed to celebrating the supposed democratic countries. 111 countries participated in the conference. The participants were handpicked by Washington and included such countries as Israel, Albania and Ukraine. China and Russia were, of course, excluded, not because of their lack of democratic credentials – such notions are often of no relevance to the politicized US definition of ‘democracy’ – but because they, along with others, were meant to be left isolated in the latest US hegemonic move.

    The conference, expectedly, turned out to be an exercise in futility. Needless to say, the US is in no position to give democracy lessons to anyone. The attempted coup in Washington by tens of thousands of angry US militants on January 6, 2021 – coupled with various opinion polls attesting to Americans’ lack of faith in their elected institutions – places the US democracy brand at an all-time low.

    As the US grows desperate in its tactics – aside from increasingly ineffectual sanctions, aggressive language and the relentless waving of the democracy card – China and Russia continue to draw closer to one another, on all fronts. In an essay entitled ‘Respecting People’s Democratic Rights’, written jointly by the ambassadors of Beijing and Moscow in Washington, Qin Gang and Anatoly Antonov wrote in the National Interest magazine that the democracy summit was “an evident product of (US’s) Cold-War mentality,” which “will stoke up ideological confrontation and a rift in the world, creating new ‘dividing lines’.”

    But there is more than their mutual rejection of American hostilities that is bringing China and Russia closer. The two countries are not motivated by their fear of the American military or some NATO invasion. Russia’s and China’s militaries are moving from strength to strength and neither country is experiencing the anxiety often felt by smaller, weaker and relatively isolated countries that have faced direct or indirect US military threats.

    To push back against possible NATO expansion, the Russian military is actively mobilizing in various regions at its western borders. For its part, the Chinese military has made it clear that any US-led attempt aimed at altering the balance of power in the Taiwan Strait would provoke an immediate military retaliation. In a virtual meeting with the US President, Chinese President Xi Jinping warned Biden on November 16 that the US was “playing with fire”. “Whoever plays with fire will get burnt,” he threatened.

    The Chinese-Russian alliance aims largely at defending the two countries’ regional and international interests, which are in constant expansion. In the case of China, the country is now a member of what is considered the world’s largest economic pact. The Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), which was officiated on January 1, covers a global market that caters to around 30 percent of the world’s population.

    Russia, too, operates based on multiple regional and international alliances. One of these military alliances is the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO), which is currently involved in ‘peacekeeping’ operations in Kazakhstan. From Syria in the Middle East, to Venezuela in South America to Mali in West Africa and beyond, Russia’s military influence has increased to the extent that, in September 2021, Moscow signed military cooperation agreements with Africa’s two most populous nations, Nigeria and Ethiopia, challenging the traditional dominance of the US and France on the African continent.

    Informally, China and Russia are already operating according to a regional and global model that can be compared to that of the now-defunct Warsaw Treaty Organization (1955-91), a political and military alliance between the Soviet Union and several Eastern European countries that aimed at counter-balancing the US-led NATO alliance. The Warsaw Pact pushed back against US-led western hegemony and labored to protect the interests of the pact’s members throughout the world. History seems to be repeating itself, though under different designations.

    Historically, the two countries have had a difficult and, at times, antagonistic relationship, dating back to the 19th century. During the Nikita Khrushchev era, Beijing and Moscow even broke their ties altogether. The Sino-Soviet split of 1960 was earth-shattering to the extent that it transformed the bipolarity of the Cold War, where China operated as an entirely independent party.

    Though diplomatic relations between Beijing and Moscow were restored in 1989, it was not until the collapse of the Soviet Union that cooperation between both nations intensified. For example, the decision, in 1997, to coordinate their diplomatic positions in the United Nations gave birth to the Joint Declaration on a Multipolar World and the Establishment of a New International Order. That agreement between Russia and China laid the foundations for the actively evolving multi-polar world that is currently transpiring before our eyes.

    Present reality – namely US, NATO, EU pressures – has compelled Russia and China to slowly, but surely, cement their relationship, especially on the economic, diplomatic and military fronts. Writing in Carnegie Moscow Center, Alexander Gabuev explained that, according to data provided by the Russian Federal Customs Service, “China’s share in Russian foreign trade grew from 10.5 percent in 2013 (before the Ukraine crisis and sanctions) to 16.7 percent in 2019 and 18.3 percent in the pandemic-struck 2020.”

    Moreover, the two countries are holding regular large-scale joint military exercises, aimed at strengthening their growing security and military cooperation.

    This already close relation is likely to develop even further in the near future, especially as China finds itself compelled to diversify its energy sources. This became a pressing need following recent tensions between Australia, a NATO member, and China. Currently, Australia is the main natural gas supplier to Beijing.

    On its own, Russia cannot conclusively defeat Western designs. China, too, despite its massive economic power, cannot play a geopolitical game of this caliber without solid alliances. Both countries greatly benefit from building an alternative to US-led political, economic and military alliances, starting with NATO. The need for a Russian-Chinese alliance becomes even more beneficial when seen through the various opportunities presenting themselves: growing weakness in the US’s own political system, cracks within US-EU relations and the faltering power of NATO itself. Turkey, for example, though a NATO member, has for years been exploring its own geopolitical alliances outside the NATO paradigm. Turkey is already cementing its ties with both Russia and China, and on various fronts. Other countries, for example, Iran and various South American countries, that have been targeted by the US for refusing to toe Washington’s political line, are desperately seeking non-western alliances to protect their interests, their sovereignty and their heavily sanctioned economies.

    While it is still too early to claim that China and Russia are anywhere near a full-blown alliance of the Warsaw nature, there is no reason to believe that the cooperation between both countries will be halted, or even slow down anytime soon. The question is how far are Beijing and Moscow willing to go to protect their interests.

    The post The Russians Are Coming: Are Beijing and Moscow at the Cusp of a Formal Alliance? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • China has on 31 January dispatched two naval vessels to the disaster-hit Tonga as it expands its humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) efforts to the South Pacific country, following a massive eruption of an underwater volcano that caused a tsunami which devastated its smaller outer islands and cut commercial air transport links. The two-ship […]

    The post China dispatches naval vessels on Tonga relief mission, while Australian LHD flounders appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • The anti-China panic sweeping Canadian politics has descended from tragedy into farce.

    A month ago I mocked Globe and Mail Report on Business columnist Eric Reguly for complaining about China-based Zijin Mining purchasing Neo Lithium. The nominally Canadian firm extracts lithium in Argentina.

    Reguly succeeded in stirring a national security scare about minerals extracted 10,000 kilometres from Canada. Since he published “The West is asleep while China hoards key minerals” on December 18 the opposition parties have repeatedly criticized the Liberals for failing to conduct a “national security review” of the Neo Lithium sale. Conservative leader Erin O’Toole called it “critical” to review the purchase of Argentinian resources by a Chinese firm while NDP MP Charlie Angus tweeted, “How is it possible that Ottawa gave the thumbs up to a Chinese takeover of Neo Lithium? This is a critical metal for the renewable economy. There is a major geopolitical fight for control of these minerals and Canada is being left on the sidelines.”

    Opposition MPs forced Innovation, Science and Industry minister François-Philippe Champagne to explain the lack of review before a federal committee. At the industry and technology committee meeting a senior fellow with the Macdonald-Laurier Institute demanded a review of the sale. In all seriousness Jeff Kucharski claimed, “our national security interests don’t end at our borders. The mere fact that the lithium mine is in Argentina, and not in Canada is really irrelevant.” But Kucharski is calling for a Canadian, not Argentinian, government national security review.

    In an article on Neo Lithium Kucharski wrote, “Resource firms should be considered as contributors to advancing Canada’s national security interests, irrespective of where their activities and assets are located.” With Canadian-based or listed mining firms operating thousands of international projects, Kucharski’s logic would grant Ottawa remarkable leverage over the global mineral supply and (probably) threaten Canadian companies’ vast profits. Right-wing, pro-corporate, voices don’t generally argue for measures that undermine Canadian mining firms (Why would a government allow a Canadian company into their country if it meant foreign sovereignty over their resources?). But, the ‘threat’ of China’s rise elicits all manner of double standards and absurdities.

    Another China double standard is the discussion of Canada creating a foreign agents’ registry. Last week the Globe and Mail quoted a spokesperson for Canadian Friends of Hong Kong saying that “Canada needs a foreign agents registration act like those in Australia or the United States, as well as a centralized reporting centre for victims of intimidation by the Chinese government.” In the following sentence of the article Ian Bailey and Steven Chase quote “Mehmet Tohti, executive director of the Uyghur Rights Advocacy Project” (URAP). But URAP ought to be listed on any foreign agent registry worth its salt. URAP’s website says it “is funded by the Washington-based National Endowment Fund for Democracy for its Advocacy work in Canada.” The NED was established in 1983 to work alongside the CIA. In 1991 Allen Weinstein, a founding member and president, told the Washington Post, “a lot of what we [NED] do today was done covertly 25 years ago by the CIA.”

    In a recent expose The Canada Files noted that Tohti has “far deeper connections to the NED than those stemming only from URAP. In 2004, Tohti was a co-founder of the NED-funded World Uyghur Congress. He was a ‘Special Representative’ of the WUC to the European Parliament between 2010 to 2012, and even served as Vice-President of the World Uyghur Congress for two separate terms.”

    Tohti and URAP played an important role in pushing Parliament’s subcommittee on human rights to adopt a resolution calling China’s treatment of Uighurs a genocide. The House of Commons subsequently followed suit, which has pushed the Trudeau government towards more conflictual relations with Beijing.

    The Globe and Mail’s senior parliamentary reporter, Steven Chase, has quoted Tohti in a half dozen articles over the past two years. Chase has also written numerous articles about the need for a foreign agents’ registry. I did not find any article in which he mentions that Tohti’s group is funded by a CIA cut-out organization.

    An important force pushing for a foreign agent registry is Kucharski’s MacDonald Laurier Institute. Its fellows have published recent op-eds titled “Canada needs a foreign agent registry to help it tackle China’s influence” and “The persistent threat of foreign interference in Canada’s democracy”. As part of their supposed concern with foreign governments interfering in Canadian politics, the MacDonald Laurier Institute established DisinfoWatch.org. In December it published “Influence Operation Targeting Canadian 2021 Federal Election”. The report noted, “The Chinese government has repeatedly demonstrated its readiness to advance its interest in Canada by directly manipulating Canadian political debate and policy through the use of disinformation, threats, intimidation, and influence operations directed at Canadian diaspora groups.”

    Well, surprise, surprise, DisinfoWatch is also funded by the US government. The bottom of its initiating statement notes that “Development of the DisinfoWatch platform is funded by the United States Department of State’s Global Engagement Center and the US Embassy in Ottawa with support from Journalists for Human Rights.” And to move from hypocrisy into the realm of farce, the MacDonald Laurier Institute has received significant sums from the governments of Taiwan and Latvia.

    Those calling for a foreign agents’ registry are not principally concerned with foreign influence in Canadian politics. They are obsessed with stopping the world’s most populous country from someday transplanting the US to become its most powerful.

    • On February 4 China Canada Focus will be hosting a free webinar with Noam Chomsky on Canada’s growing conflict with China.

    The post Anti-China Canadian MPs claim Sovereignty over Argentine Mine first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • By telling her story, tennis champion Peng Shuai has revealed how a violent power structure hides its violence, and the perverse way in which it drags in its victims.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Web desk,

    Chinese Lunar New Year celebrations 2022 and Spring Festival begins with colors and this year symbolized with Tiger. The Chinese New Year festival period lasts for 16 days, starting from Chinese New Year’s Eve to the Lantern Festival. In 2022, the Chinese New Year festival will begin on February 1st and go on till February 16th. People clean their houses; decorate their doors using red posters with poetic verses, red lanterns, etc. to welcome the Spring Festival. People get together with their families at this time of the year to celebrate the festival. Chinese New Year was renamed the Spring Festival after China adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1911.

    The Spring Festival is a national holiday in China. During the period from Spring Festival Eve to the seventh day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar, government offices, schools, universities, and many companies stay closed.

    However, some important institutions like banks stay open with employees working on shifts. There are fireworks and firecrackers in order to bring good luck. Many people wear new clothes and share Chinese New Year greetings with their loved ones.

    While, Lunar celebrations also drew attention of the peoples on the world’s tallest building the Burj Khalifa in Dubai. Burj Khalifa will also light up to celebrate the Chinese New Year from February 1 to 4. Burj Khalifa’s Twitter handle welcomed the Chinese New Year and mentioned that it will light up twice during these four days – at 7:45 pm and 9:45 pm local time. Peoples in Dubai can witness the beautiful display of lights.

    In Chinese culture, the tiger symbolizes bravery, vigor and strength that can lift people from adversity and usher in final auspiciousness and peace. The tiger is the third of the 12 Chinese Zodiac animals, which also include rat, ox, rabbit, dragon, snake, horse, goat, monkey, rooster, dog, and pig.

    President Xi said in his Spring Festival message which stressed the importance of unity of the country in forging ahead towards national rejuvenation saying that as long as 1.4 billion Chinese people work together for a shared future, China will continue to work miracles on its journey forward.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  •  

    Daily Show: China Is Colonizing Africa

    Trevor Noah (Daily Show, 12/16/21)

    “Why China Is in Africa” (12/16/21) is a question Trevor Noah took up last month for Comedy Central‘s Daily Show. As with many of the topics taken up by the Daily Show, the issue is no joke: China has a large and growing economic presence in many African countries. The China/Africa deals cry out for analysis: Are they different from the deals on offer from Western countries like the US, Britain or France?

    Post-independence Africa’s economic relationship with the West has been mediated through the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Funding for projects comes with a range of conditionalities; when Western loans come due, the IMF demands painful cuts to health and education programs as the price of refinancing. In the past, the IMF has taken outright control of African governments. At other times, the US has sponsored coups, assassinated leaders and fomented civil wars on the continent.

    China, meanwhile, does not attach political strings to its loans. China is known as a “patient” investor, making deals that take decades to pay off. When the Chinese loans come due, China reschedules or restructures debt payments. Ex-Minister for Public Works for Liberia, Gyude Moore, cited 87 cases of restructuring or rescheduling of such loans between 2000–19.

    Which of these two approaches sounds like neocolonialism, and which like economic development?

    China offers Africa terms that the West isn’t interested in matching. Instead of improving its own offers, the West presents scary tales to try to infantilize Africans and frighten them away from doing business with China. Examples of these scare stories abound, from Mike Pence (USA Today, 11/17/18) and John Bolton (Guardian, 12/13/18) to Foreign Policy (4/25/19) and Al Jazeera (5/17/17).

    But even in the Wall Street Journal (5/2/19), readers can learn that “the real political purpose” of China’s deals “isn’t a debt trap but building goodwill and high-level relationships.”  The New York Times (4/26/19) published an opinion in 2019 that “the idea that the Chinese government is doling out debt strategically, for its benefit, isn’t supported by the facts.”

    The format of the Daily Show and comparable shows (e.g., Last Week Tonight With John Oliver) makes it possible to deliver political commentary and news with plausible deniability about political viewpoints (“it’s only comedy”). Noah, a New York-based comedian who grew up in South Africa, did his best to spin Chinese investment in Africa into neo-colonialism—regardless of the underlying reality.

    ‘With the stroke of a pen’

    Trevor Noah: 'To take over another country with the stroke of a pen'“Back in the day,” Noah begins,

    when one country wanted to take over another country, they had to beat them in a war…. But now it looks like a country might have found a way to take over another country with the stroke of a pen.

    Noah presents a clip from BBC World News (11/30/21), in turn quoting the London Times (11/30/21): “China has recently been accused of trying to take over Uganda’s sole international airport if the East African country fails to pay a $200 million loan for the expansion of the site.”

    Debunked in Asia Times (12/8/21), the “Uganda airport takeover” story was based on a tendentious reading of a 2015 loan agreement between the government of Uganda and the Exim Bank of China. The grace period for the loan ends in December 2022, at the end of which, if 87 previous examples over the past 20 years are indicative, China and Uganda will presumably renegotiate the terms.

    Noah quotes the Chinese embassy’s statement: “Not a single project in Africa has ever been ‘confiscated’ by China because of failing to pay Chinese loans.” But Noah does not find this reassuring, saying: “‘We have never confiscated an airport’ is very different from ‘we are never going to confiscate an airport.’”

    In fact, past behavior is a pretty good indicator of future behavior. The Western record in Africa—an indicator of future behavior there—is appalling.

    The simplest Western strategy of all is to withhold investment until African countries are ready to accept terrible conditions—including demands to privatize national industries that amount to across-the-board confiscation by Western corporations. The strategy has worked in the past because, as Noah says, Africa needs financing:

    Ever since the age of colonialism ended, Africa has been working hard to modernize its economies and catch up with the rest of the world. But to do that it needs lots of new infrastructure: roads, railways, ports, dams…. You name it, Africa needs to build it. The problem is, that stuff all costs money. Money that most African countries don’t have. But in recent years, many African countries have found themselves a new sugar daddy: China.

    How China/Africa deals work

    How China Is Reshaping the Global Economy, by Rhys Jenkins

    Oxford, 2018

    But what went wrong with Africa’s old “sugar daddy”? How did China end up financing projects in Africa, once a Western monopoly? In Rhys Owen Jenkins’ 2018 book, How China Is Reshaping the Global Economy: Development Impacts in Africa and Latin America, the author tells an illustrative story. Oil-rich Angola, whose infrastructure was devastated after surviving a (US-sponsored) civil war, approached the IMF in 2001. But the IMF demanded cuts to public spending as a condition of giving Angola any money—and a shaky regime coming fresh off of a brutal civil war can ill-afford to alienate the people with an austerity program.

    So Angola approached China in 2002, and the relationship has expanded since. Angola and China trade directly in oil. While most oil deals in the global economy are transacted in US dollars, China often makes “infrastructure for resources” deals, circumventing the US dollar altogether.

    Fantu Cheru and Cyril Obi present other examples in their 2010 book The Rise of China and India in Africa. In the DR Congo, Zhongxing Telecommunication Equipment Corporation (ZTE) built a mobile phone network and sold phones in hopes of “capturing a market niche primarily focused on the millions of African poor who now constitute the largest potential consumers.” In Kenya, Tianpu Xianxing partnered with Electrogen Technologies to establish a solar panel factory, seeing an opportunity in Kenya’s policy of using solar power to extend electrification.

    But it isn’t all happy win/win deals. Elsewhere in the book, the authors present Zambia as a case where Chinese investors entered an economy already devastated by IMF-imposed structural adjustment, such that workers in all sectors—including those with heavy Chinese investment—are indeed exploited. China didn’t create those conditions, but nonetheless benefits from exploitation. How should that be addressed? A complex analysis is called for, comprehending the overall impact of Chinese and Western investment and the competition between them, the pre-investment condition of a given African economy and its bargaining power. But summarizing it all as a form of Chinese colonialism is misleading.

    China as ‘cool mom’

    Trevor Noah: China is the 'Cool Mom' of International FinanceChina’s approach of offering financing without political strings makes it the “cool mom of international finance,” Noah says, adding a joke in which (as usual) Africans are the children and others are the grownups. “Oh, you and your friends want to come party…. Come do it in our basement with your child soldiers, we won’t hear a thing!” (The implication is that the US is a “strict mom” that forbids its partners from making use of child soldiers. In fact, after the US State Department in 2020 identified 14 countries as being responsible for recruiting or using child soldiers, President Joe Biden signed a waiver allowing the US to continue providing security aid to eight of those countries, five of which are in Africa.)

    Despite China’s assertion that there are no strings, Noah suggests that China’s deals do indeed have a political agenda: Countries that do more business with China also tend to vote with China about Taiwan at the United Nations. This observation may have the causality backwards, however: Countries that vote with China are voting against the US—something that a country can only do if it is in a position to protect itself from US economic retaliation.

    Yemen had no such protection in 1990 when it voted against the US invasion of Iraq. US diplomats told their Yemeni counterparts, “That was the most expensive vote you ever cast,” and the US withdrew $70 million in  foreign aid to the country. Today, African countries have a second option.

    Daily Show: EswatiniNoah then points to Eswatini as the only African country that does recognize Taiwan, and follows this up with the most demeaning insult in the entire piece—predictably, perhaps, towards Africans. Noah says:

    That’s the power of money right there. Enough of it can make you switch allegiances, change your principles, do anything. For enough money, you could get Africans to start saying that Africa is just one country.

    He then asks for money in an “African” accent, joking that Eswatini will change its tune upon realizing that China is “giving out money.”

    Eswatini, called Swaziland until 2018, was picked up in 1906 by the British as a protectorate after the Boer War. Britain’s South Africa colonies had planned to make Swaziland part of the Union of South Africa, but plans changed; the country gained independence only in 1968. Eswatini, with a population of about a million, is currently ruled as an absolute monarchy. Its huge neighbor, Noah’s native South Africa, exerts immense political influence. At the moment, the monarchy is being challenged by a pro-democracy movement. It is dubious to hold up the decision of Eswatini’s monarchy as an example of an African state freely choosing principle over money.

    ‘Jobs are going to China’

    Noah’s next point is about employment: “You might say subordinating your foreign policy to another country is worth it if it means getting all this investment… and it is true, these projects do create jobs. It’s just that many of those jobs are going to China!”

    A news clip continues the argument: “The country’s been accused of unfair labor practices in Africa including bringing its own workers instead of hiring locally.” Noah presents no hard data on this point.

    But there are studies on China/Africa workforce development; a 2018 paper presented a number of interesting figures about the topic. There were 10,000 Chinese-funded companies, 90% of which were private companies. Surveys cited in the paper showed that local workers hired by Chinese firms were around 78% of the workforce overall, 85% in Nigeria, 90% in Kenya. Another survey cited in the paper pointed to an issue with the quality of those jobs: Only 44% of managerial positions were held by Africans. But a study in Ethiopia found 75% of Chinese firms invested in worker training, compared to 27% of Ethiopian firms. The study reported:

    In firms engaged in construction and manufacturing, where skilled labor is a necessity, half provide apprenticeship training, while experienced Chinese workers teach new African hires to begin work through hands-on teaching and gradually improve the new workers’ skills through daily operation.

    Angola, Egypt, South Africa and other countries oblige Chinese companies to hire locals (as they should). This makes sense for other reasons: Chinese workers don’t want to leave their families to work far from home. As a consequence, while Chinese workers are often hired to start up projects, jobs and responsibility are gradually transferred to local talent (again, as they should be).

    ‘At least they were upfront’

    Daily Show runs Voice of America clip

    The Daily Show cites the official US propaganda outlet Voice of America (1/15/19) on China’s “debt-trap diplomacy.”

    Noah summarizes what he has presented about the non-conditional loans, African countries voting with China on Taiwan, and Chinese workers taking up jobs in China-Africa projects: “When you start to examine this relationship as a whole,” he says, “it actually starts to look a lot less like a loan, and a lot more like a new kind of colonialism.”

    A few quick clips follow on this “new colonialism.” One from Al Jazeera calls it “debt colonialism.” The Voice of America (1/15/19) calls it “debt-trap diplomacy.” A PBS clip (9/27/19) says that Kenya “agreed to apply Chinese law inside Kenya” (presumably labor laws), and was in a position to get the port if Kenya couldn’t repay the loan (a repeat of the Uganda airport story). Noah’s segment descends from here into pure tasteless comedy, including Noah doing a Chinese accent.

    “Say what you will about European colonizers,” Noah concludes, “but at least they were upfront about it.” Actually, they weren’t “upfront about it” at all. The history of European colonization is replete with covert operations and assassinations, mistranslated treaty clauses, broken promises and outright lies.

    Western colonizers enslaved and killed millions of Africans over centuries (Williams, Capitalism and Slavery; Davidson, The African Slave Trade). They colonized the entire continent (Rodney, How Europe Underdeveloped Africa). They invented apartheid and imposed it on Africans (Magubane, The Making of a Racist State). They corralled Africans into death traps to be machine-gunned in one-sided battles, from Ulundi in 1879 to Omdurman in 1898 (Pakenham, The Scramble for Africa), and posed proudly for photographs with the corpses. They ran counterinsurgencies against independence movements in the 1950s that included torture, mass hanging and concentration camps (Elkins, Imperial Reckoning).

    In the Democratic Republic of Congo alone, they killed 10 million people between 1885-1906, cutting off people’s hands to coerce their families to work (Hochschild, King Leopold’s Ghost). They assassinated the most promising post-Independence leaders (notably Patrice Lumumba). They engineered the secession of Katanga, the wealthiest province of the country. They backed first a dictatorship (Mobutu) then an invasion and occupation (by Rwanda and Uganda). Millions of people died in post-independence wars sponsored by the US. (See Podur, America’s Wars on Democracy in Rwanda and the DR Congo; Epstein, Another Fine Mess; or Curtis, Unpeople, for details.)

    Drawing a comparison between the horrors visited by Western countries on Africa and China’s infrastructure deals there can only serve to advance ignorance and racism.

    The threat of a second offer

    Zimbabwe Herald: US Plan to Discredit Chinese Investments Unmasked

    Zimbabwe Herald (9/21/21)

    The Zimbabwe Herald (9/21/21) published an article, “US Plan to Discredit Chinese Investments Unmasked.” The article described a program, sponsored ultimately by the US embassy, “to fight the influence and growth of China in Zimbabwe through weaponizing anti-Chinese sentiments.” It stated that the US was offering $1,000 per pitch for media stories that fit the bill.

    The money could be coming from special funds from the May 2021 Strategic Competition Act, which included $300 million per year for 2022 through 2026 “to counter the malign influence of the Chinese Communist Party globally.” One funded activity is to “support civil society and independent media to raise awareness of and increase transparency regarding the negative impact of activities related to the Belt and Road Initiative.”  Expect much more of this type of news item and derivative comedy.

    Why is so much venom directed at a series of infrastructure deals between other countries?

    Every negotiator knows the dramatic effect of a second offer on a negotiation. If you have one, it’s no longer a monopoly situation. The second offer becomes the floor for a deal, and it becomes impossible to impose terms on you. Europe colonized the entire continent, and for decades after independence, Western countries have imposed the most humiliating terms on the African continent. Noah’s piece, despite its comedic form, is a vehicle for the rage of the imperialist West—a former monopolist who now has a competitor.

    Let them fume. Africa was not colonized in the first place by clever propaganda, nor by last-minute clauses inserted into trade deals, but by brutal violence. Africa resisted and won its independence. Africa will never be colonized by China—but nor will it be recolonized by the West. This is the real source of the rage against China seething behind the Daily Show’s bit of comedy news.

    The post Why Comparing Chinese Africa Investment to Western Colonialism Is No Joke appeared first on FAIR.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Operation Tibet Issues Notice To Winter Olympics Targets
    Image courtesy of @AnonymousTibet

    Anonymous activists, ‘Operation Tibet’ have released online a media statement on their impending action supporting Tibet, due to target Chinese regime, corporation servers and companies associated with the Winter Olympics, launching in Beijing on February 4.

    The statement is available here: https://www.docdroid.net/70Kap2d/mediareleasetwo-pdf

    This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.

  • Web Desk:

    Hypersonic is a term that usually associated with military-related projects, but commercial aviation is also trying to revive the concept of ultra-fast flight.

    A Beijing-based company “Space Transportation” plans on winged rocket that can soar from Beijing to New York in just one hour.

    Chinese aerospace firm is developing a “rocket with wings” designed for space tourism as well as point to point travel.

     “We are developing a winged rocket for high-speed, point-to-point transportation, which is lower in cost than rockets that carry satellites and faster than traditional aircraft,” the company said in a recent interview with Yicheng Times.

    According to a report from Space.com, the space plane would aim to provide rapid transport between two locations on Earth through suborbital travel and be fully reusable.

    The company revealed that ground tests are planned by 2023 with a first flight in 2024 and a crewed flight in 2025. Even more ambitiously, a test flight of a global, or orbital, crewed space vehicle is planned by 2030, the company says.

    Photo Courtesy: Space Transportation

    According to the company’s website, space plane will travel at speed of approximately 2,600 mph (4,184 km/h), meaning that it could fly from New York to London in about an hour.

    Photo Courtesy: Space Transportation

    The company’s website release a video that shows passengers board a plane attached to a large triangular paragliders-like wing featuring two large rocket boosters. After takeoff, the plane detaches from the wing and flies through suborbital space. The wing lands back safely on Earth while the space plane carried on to its destination.

    This post was originally published on VOSA.

  • The diplomatic boycott of the Beijing Winter Olympic and Paralympic Games may go down in history as the official start of the cold war between the US, a handful of its allies and China. The American strategy, however, of using boycotts to pressure Beijing in the name of ‘human rights’, may prove costly in the future.

    On December 6, Washington declared that it would not send any diplomatic representation to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games in Beijing. In subsequent days, the UK, Canada and Australia followed suit.

    The official American line claims that US diplomats will not participate in the event in protest of the “human rights abuses … in Xinjiang”. That claim can easily be refuted by simply recalling that the US has taken part in the Beijing 2008 Summer Olympics.

    Then, claims of human rights violations in China were hardly a priority for the Americans, for one single reason: the thriving Chinese economy was the last line of defense that saved the global economy from total collapse, itself a result of the gross mismanagement of the US economy and malpractices of America’s largest banking institutions.

    “Since the onset of the global financial crisis in 2008, one country more than any other has provided the ‘heavy lifting’ to support global economic growth,” Stephen King wrote in the Financial Times in August 2015.

    Things have changed significantly since then. China emerged as a global economic power, which is increasingly replacing the US and its allies on the world’s stage. Desperate to recover from their economic woes – worsened by unhindered military spending on seemingly endless wars – the US has been waging a different kind of war against China. This economic war, which began under Barack Obama’s administration in 2012, and accelerated under Donald Trump’s administration, continues under the administration of Joe Biden.

    However, forcing a country the size of China to compromise on its economic growth merely to allow Washington to sustain its global dominance is easier said than done. Additionally, it is utterly unfair.

    Using a sports boycott to make a point that Washington still has plenty of options has actually resulted in the opposite. Only three other countries have agreed to join the American diplomatic boycott, a negligible number if compared to the twenty African countries that refrained from participating in the 1976 Montreal Summer Games in protest of the New Zealander participation. The latter was criticized for validating the South African apartheid regime when their rugby team had toured South Africa in that same year.

    Earlier, in the Mexico City Olympics of 1968, 38 countries had refused to participate in protest of the admission of South Africa into the Olympics. Despite the initial decision by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to allow South African participation, international pressure led by African nations succeeded in the expulsion of the apartheid country – which was excluded from the international event until its re-admission in 1992.

    The US and three of its allies want us to believe that their diplomatic boycott is motivated by principles, namely, though not exclusively, in defense of China’s Uyghur Muslims. If that was the case, what is one to make of the US-led wars on Muslim countries over the last two decades? What kind of human rights standards did Washington apply when it waged war on Afghanistan in 2001 and invaded Iraq in 2003? Tellingly, and ironically, the same three countries – the UK, Canada and Australia – actively participated in America’s military misadventures that have claimed countless Muslim lives and destroyed entire countries.

    The fact that only three other countries have adhered to the American call for a diplomatic boycott also illustrates the weakening grip of Washington over international affairs. It is worth mentioning that the European Union has refused to join the US in its latest foreign policy intrigue.

    For its part, China criticized Washington’s position, rightly stating, in the words of its Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Zhao Lijian, that the boycott is motivated by “ideological prejudice and based on lies and rumors.”

    Historically, international sports events have been politicized in two different ways: First, morally-driven boycotts based on an ethical agenda, like the boycott of South African apartheid and so on; and second, purely political boycotts that are instituted to serve a political agenda or to isolate host countries as a form of economic pressure. An example of the latter was the US-led boycott of the Moscow Summer Olympics of 1980, for which the Soviet Union and their allies retaliated by boycotting the Los Angeles Summer Olympics of 1984.

    The American diplomatic boycott of the upcoming Chinese Olympics is an example of a politically-motivated boycott. The fact that it is a diplomatic boycott only, as opposed to a full boycott, is most likely compelled by Washington’s fears that a full-fledged boycott would only serve to illustrate its own isolation in the international arena.

    Keeping in mind existing global divisions and the need for international unity to confront collective crises – such as that of the environment, deadly pandemics, among others – delving back into yet a new cold war will serve no purpose, aside from harming millions of people around the world for no fault of their own. What is required is dialogue, one that aims at providing equitable opportunities for all nations to grow and prosper.

    That said, the age of global hegemony is coming to an end and no amount of self-serving boycotts or trade wars will alter this unavoidable fact.

    The post US Doesn’t Care for China’s Muslims: Boycotting the Olympics is about Global Competition first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Tang Mingfang is willing to risk reprisals to clear his name over Foxconn revelations – and to get backing from Jeff Bezos

    A whistleblower who exposed illegal working conditions in a factory making Amazon’s Alexa devices says he was tortured before being jailed by Chinese authorities.

    Tang Mingfang, 43, was jailed after he revealed how the Foxconn factory in the southern Chinese city of Hengyang used schoolchildren working illegally long hours to manufacture Amazon’s popular Echo, Echo Dot and Kindle devices.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • This moment of history will be remembered for the massive shift in global relations currently underway. On one side stands the forces of peace and multipolarity led by China, Russia, and their allies in the Global South. On the other is the forces of empire and conquest spearheaded by the U.S. and its allies. The conflict between these two “camps” is about much more than competing visions for planetary development. World politics have transitioned from a war between socialism and capitalism to a protracted struggle for the survival of humanity itself.

    The post Endless War is the Empire’s Last Dance appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • The Scholars at Risk Media Review of January 2022, carries an in-depth article about a university funding row which has raised fears of Chinese influence, written by Yojana Sharma on 26 January 2022:

    The Free University of Amsterdam (Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam or VU Amsterdam) in the Netherlands has said it will return Chinese funding for its Cross Cultural Human Rights Centre (CCHRC) after an embarrassing row over Chinese influence on academia when it emerged that several of the centre’s academics publicly denied China oppresses Uyghur peoples. See also: https://chinachange.org/2020/04/30/one-chinese-gongos-war-against-global-human-rights/

    But the row in the Netherlands amid other recent controversies over Chinese funding of university centres and Confucius Institutes in Germany and the United Kingdom has also made university disclosure of foreign funding more urgent, academics said. In 2018, 2019 and 2020, the CCHRC at VU Amsterdam received a subsidy of between €250,000 (US$282,000) and €300,000 (US$339,000) from the Southwest University of Political Science and Law in Chongqing, China.

    According to documents obtained by Dutch broadcaster NOS, the Chinese university was the sole financial contributor to the CCHRC during those years, which has raised eyebrows.

    VU Amsterdam has said it would return the money it had already received from China for this year, NOS revealed last week. But the university only backed down after the damaging revelations prompted a public outcry and strong statements by the Dutch education minister and others condemning the activities of the centre.

    On Wednesday NOS said the activities of the Centre were being suspended, with all its lectures for students cancelled, ascribing the decision to the executive board and deans of the university. The Centre’s activities were already in doubt after the return of funds, making it dependent on the university or other donors for its continued survival.

    The row blew up just as the Dutch education ministry is due to present its National Guidelines on Knowledge Security on 31 January and to announce its ‘Government-wide knowledge security front-office’, which is expected to have an advisory role and support universities in identifying risks.

    It also followed the publication last week of the European Commission ‘toolkit’ for universities on how to deal with foreign interference.

    Dutch Education Minister Robbert Dijkgraaf responded swiftly and unequivocally to the report, saying he was “very shocked” that the funding arrangement signalled possible academic dependence.

    “It is urgent and sensible that the Free University now takes action quickly. Scientific core values such as academic freedom, integrity and independence must always be guaranteed,” he said in a statement.

    The minister added: “It is important that Dutch knowledge institutions are and remain alert to possible risks of undesired influence by other countries and that they take adequate measures to safeguard academic core values, especially when it comes to universal values like human rights.”

    The centre runs an academic journal and organises conferences. Its mission, laid down in the financing agreement with the Chinese university, is to draw attention to a “global view of human rights”, and specifically to the way in which non-Western countries such as China view human rights.

    University’s lukewarm initial response

    After a lukewarm initial response when the university merely underlined that “as befits the Free University, the research of the CCHRC is independent, interdisciplinary, dialogical and socially relevant”, it added to its statement just hours later, saying “even the appearance of dependence is unacceptable” and announced that it was “taking appropriate measures”, including halting the funding from China.

    The university said it has not yet decided whether it will also refund subsidies from previous years, but it said it would first conduct an investigation to determine “whether the independence of the institute’s research has been safeguarded on all fronts”.

    The CCHRC website noted in October 2020 that a delegation of people affiliated to the centre ‘recently’ visited the western Chinese region of Xinjiang… the CCHRC website noted: “The situation we encountered in the four cities in this trip did not reflect the grim situation as depicted in the Western reports. There is definitely no discrimination of Uyghurs or other minorities in the region.”

    CCHRC Director Tom Zwart, professor at Utrecht University, who is also a frequent guest at Chinese state events and on Chinese state television, told NOS any similarities between the centre’s positions online and those of the Communist Party were “coincidental” and were not steered by any direct influence. Zwart described the CCHRC website as a place for “uncensored free thought”, ascribing the comments on its webpages to individuals “who do not represent the organisation as a whole”.

    On 26 January CCHRC released a new statement on its website saying the website would be “temporarily taken offline” in order “to check whether a sufficiently clear distinction is made between statements made on behalf of the Centre and opinions and observations made in a personal capacity.”

    It added: “[The] Centre explicitly endorses the conclusions of the United Nations regarding the systematic violation of the Uyghur human rights. In this vein, the Centre’s director, in the presence of members of the Chinese State Council and the Politburo, called on 8 April 2021 to respect and protect the rights of Uyghurs and stop repressive anti-terrorism policies.”

    Ingrid d’Hooghe, an expert on China-Europe relations and senior research fellow at the Leiden Asia Centre, Leiden University in the Netherlands, said: “The director of the Centre said in an interview which was also on TV that they were fully independent, there was nothing that made them say what they were saying. But apparently it did not cross their mind that even if they are independent, it doesn’t look like it.

    Dutch academic Lokman Tsui, a researcher on digital freedoms and a former assistant professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, said via Twitter: “Important to note: until this year, they [the university in Chongqing] were the only funder. Problematic, because it’s hard to be independent if your research centre relies on one single funder. Problematic also, because public universities in China are closely affiliated with the Chinese Communist Party.”

    Tsui added: “But whether the research centre is independent or not is also beside the question. The more important question is: Why is the university allowing its integrity and its reputation to be compromised by accepting money meant to validate China’s atrocious human rights record?”

    Need for disclosure legislation

    “We need legislation that universities have to make funding public,” Fulda said, pointing to Section 117 of the United States Higher Education Act which requires universities that receive foreign gifts of US$250,000 or more within a calendar year to file a disclosure report to the government.

    Other draft foreign influence bills, including the Senate Bill S.1169 in the US, are currently attempting to tighten those rules, including reducing the amount that has to be declared by institutions and individuals if the funding comes from certain countries such as China, after a number of universities failed to report substantial foreign gifts under Section 117.

    An amendment to the UK Higher Education Bill tabled on 12 January in the House of Commons would require disclosures of foreign funds of £50,000 (US$68,000) going back 10 years.

    “The question is, if the Dutch government or other governments in Europe issued new regulations where universities were forced to make these contracts public, whether it would change things, and I think it would,” said Fulda.

    Leiden Asia Centre’s d’Hooghe said: “There is no regulation that forces people to register somewhere what kind of collaboration they have. With new regulations in Australia and, to a certain extent, in the US and Canada, you have to become public with that kind of information. Not so in the Netherlands.”

    “It’s not necessarily that people want to keep it a secret, it’s just not something that is done routinely. So at top levels in the university, but often even at the faculty level, the departments don’t have a good overview of exactly what kind of research is being done with whom, and how this is financed,” she said

    The Association of Universities in the Netherlands (VSNU) published a “Framework for Knowledge Security” in July 2021 that outlined risks and the need for monitoring research collaboration, as well as recommending that universities set up their own internal ‘knowledge security advisory team’ to include experts such as cybersecurity specialists.

    The focus is on building risk awareness but does not go as far as requiring disclosure of foreign funding. Some universities have pointed out that they cannot ‘police’ research or researchers on behalf of the government.

    Who will investigate?

    The Netherlands Inspectorate of Education has not indicated that it will carry out a broader investigation into China influence at universities in the country, saying in a statement following the VU Amsterdam row: “No other signals about Chinese influence are known to the inspectorate.”

    Sophie Richardson, China director at Human Rights Watch, said in a statement that the Inspectorate of Education “would be wise to do more homework in this area”.

    “In a decade of documenting Chinese government threats to academic freedom around the world, Human Rights Watch has found threats at universities from Australia to the United States, and proposed a code of conduct to help mitigate these risks.

    “One key step: universities should publicly disclose all direct and indirect Chinese government funding and a list of projects and exchanges with Chinese government counterparts on an annual basis,” she said.

    “In showing its permeability to Chinese government influence, the Free University shouldn’t limit its response simply to returning the funding. It should urgently assess whether students and scholars of and from China on its campus are subjected to harassment or surveillance,” which she noted had been well documented elsewhere, notably in Australia, Canada, the UK and the US.

    “University leadership and scholars should assess whether censorship and self-censorship have eroded the curriculum or classroom debate,” Richardson added.

    “The Free University should also join forces with counterparts across Europe – from Berlin to Cambridge to Budapest – who have faced similar problems, and agree to share information and adopt common standards with the goal of collectively resisting Beijing’s efforts to curtail academic freedom. The list of potential participants – supposedly ‘free’ universities – is disturbingly long.”

    EU toolkit for universities: will it make a difference?

    The EU issued a toolkit for universities on 18 January. Although it is comprehensive, d’Hooghe noted that “these rules are not binding because the EU has no competence in the area of education”. Universities are outside Brussels’ remit.

    She saw it more as a “service to EU member states who still don’t have national rules, who find it very difficult to develop them or don’t have the capacity to develop them”.

    While many ongoing collaboration projects with Chinese universities continue, despite academics and researchers being unable to travel due to pandemic restrictions, d’Hooghe said she knew of many who “are staying away” from starting new projects with China, in part due to risks, including reputational risks.

    But she noted that legislation on a national level regarding foreign influence could be tricky. “University autonomy is regarded as an important value and very important for science to advance, so universities are very reluctant to be limited by binding regulations.”

    https://www.hrw.org/news/2022/01/20/dutch-university-hit-chinese-government-funding-scandal

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • The infrastructure bill is a good start, but the U.S. must go much further in “domestic renewal” to truly compete with China.

    By: Scott Singer and Ben Silvian

    Original post here: https://thediplomat.com/2021/11/how-universal-basic-income-can-advance-the-united-states-china-strategy/

    Earlier this summer, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken outlined his foreign policy strategy of “domestic renewal,” aimed directly at arming the United States to compete with China. The strategy, articulated in an August 9 speech at the University of Maryland, focused predominantly on increasing infrastructure investment at home, reflecting the potential foreign policy benefits of the bipartisan infrastructure bill Congress passed last week.

    In the weeks following the “domestic renewal” speech, we patiently awaited further elaboration of Blinken and President Joe Biden’s domestic policy-oriented China policy, some next steps to integrate the oft-segregated domestic and foreign policy worlds.

    But no further elaboration came.

    Perhaps the principle of domestic renewal served little more than a rhetorical function for the Democratic party leadership in the State Department, designed to push the infrastructure bill through Congress. But make no mistake: For the United States to compete with China – and address domestic concerns like economic inequality – it must embrace a broader policy that explores the synergies between local, domestic, and international policy. That means taking domestic renewal seriously, and expanding it beyond the realm of physical capital and into the realm of human capital.

    Democratic constraint, the idea that countries have a limited policy arsenal due to pressure from public opinion and other electoral constraints, has profoundly influenced American foreign policy for decades, such as during the end of the wars in Vietnam and Iraq. Experimental evidence conducted on Israeli parliamentarians showed they were more willing to use force when public opinion concurred. The key takeaway of this research is that in order to optimize its foreign policy, the U.S. must align its domestic policy so that its citizens – and voters – support “strategically optimal” foreign policy objectives.

    Consider the area of artificial intelligence (AI), a crucial point of contestation between the United States in China. 

    As Graham Allison and Eric Schmidt at the Belfer Center have argued, the AI arms race is much more competitive than most Americans realize.

    Despite the importance of encouraging AI development, most Americans are techno-pessimists. Much of this apprehension toward technology stems from concerns that automation will fuel job loss, with a 2017 Pew Research Center study showing 72 percent of Americans are concerned about a future where computers can do many human jobs. The United States’ ability to develop a foreign policy to compete with China in AI is thus directly hindered by domestic policy constraints: The American public is afraid of the economic consequences of automation.

    How can the United States overcome the democratic constraint problem that is inhibiting progress in developing an optimal foreign policy response toward China? The answer lies partly in modifying domestic incentives such that the American public supports strategically optimal foreign policies. If U.S. domestic policy can harness technological advancement to improve the lives of average Americans, it can unlock advantageous foreign policy approaches from their domestic constraints. The only way to turn Luddites into technophiles is to recalibrate the system so that the economic gains of advanced technology start flowing to them. Relevant human infrastructure investment could manifest in a range of forms, but here we consider one of the most prominent ideas from the 2020 U.S. presidential elections: Universal Basic Income (UBI).

    At its core, UBI is a direct investment in American human capital, distributing the immense economic gains of technology advancements throughout the populace.

    The policy, popularized by Andrew Yang as a “Freedom Dividend,” would guarantee direct cash payments every month. Cash is highly flexible and fungible, meaning it can be used to overcome the recipient’s most pressing financial pain points.ADVERTISEMENT

    The domestic benefits of UBI are well-documented. Although UBI wouldn’t bring the mining and manufacturing jobs back, experts estimate it would lead to 13-percent GDP growth and help revive pandemic-ravaged industries like retail and hospitality, providing them the funds to pay employees reasonable wages. Simultaneously, it would offer workers bargaining power and psychological security. While gross cost calculations for the program run into the trillions, the net cost, or “real cost” is calculated to be just a sixth of the oft-mentioned price tag, landing at about $540 billion. With the potential to eradicate absolute poverty, it is a compelling investment at a lower net price than the defense budget.

    However, UBI would operate as more than an inward-facing policy. Rather, it would strengthen American competitiveness on the world stage by unlocking support for technological progress and AI development. As such, it would help the United States maintain its hegemonic advantage over China. UBI reframes the story of automation. Instead of replacing us, robots would now be working for us, and their progress would deliver us financial freedom. As their productivity grows in the coming decades, so could monthly checks – aka the dividends we are paid for being stakeholders in the United States. In this context, rapid technological progress that allows America to stay nationally competitive is not only digestible, but beneficial.

    Fortunately, the implementation of Universal Basic Income would improve foreign policy outcomes in other ways as well.

    For one, UBI can inspire Americans to work in the national interest, as it shows citizens that their leaders believe in their abilities and that their nation is willing to fight for them. There is strong empirical evidence that direct cash payments from the government increase social trust in both lawmakers and peers. When Finland conducted its landmark basic income experiment, providing direct cash transfers to 2,000 of its citizens, trust in legislators and fellow citizens both markedly improved.

    Robert Cialdini’s psychological research surrounding reciprocity is highly relevant here: People feel naturally obliged to return favors done for them. This new wave of UBI-inspired patriotism would be instrumental in helping the United States accomplish its foreign policy objectives.

    Additionally, UBI provides Americans the material resources to innovate by uplifting them financially. It offers citizens the seed funding they need to innovate without the risk of financial ruin, helping them turn their product ideas into realities. It provides the financial resources to take a chance.

    All three of these outcomes – acceptance of technological progress, patriotic fervor, and rising innovation and entrepreneurship – would go a long way in improving our national competitiveness. They would serve as a strong foundation for America’s post-pandemic domestic renewal.

    The post Opinion: How Universal Basic Income Can Help the United States Out-Compete China in AI appeared first on Basic Income Today.

    This post was originally published on Basic Income Today.

  • The NSW government has appointed new secretaries for Treasury and the newly formed Department of Enterprise Investment and Trade secretary, while a new Chinese ambassador seeks to mend fences. Senior bureaucrat Paul Grimes will become secretary of the NSW Treasury on Saturday. He replaces Michael Pratt who is returning to the private sector after nearly…

    The post Gig Guide: Service NSW architect departs, new China Ambasador appeared first on InnovationAus.

    This post was originally published on InnovationAus.

  • The state-owned aerospace and defence company Aviation Industry Corporation of China (AVIC) has announced the maiden flight of its latest medium altitude long endurance unmanned aerial vehicle (MALE UAV) called the Wing Loong-1E. The prototype Wing Loong-1E – which the company claims to be fully constructed from lightweight composite materials – took off from an […]

    The post AVIC reveals “all composite” Wing Loong-1E UAV appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Family in Bismarck Martinez Housing neighborhood watch the inauguration and swear to fight with all their strength to eliminate hunger, poverty and backwardness. [Photo by Jairo Cajina]

    On January 10, Daniel Ortega was inaugurated President and Rosario Murillo was inaugurated as Vice President. The central event in the Plaza of the Revolution was accompanied by Sandinistas celebrating in almost every town with big-screen displays of the inauguration.

    Once he had been sworn in, with the presidential sash across his chest, Daniel repeated his action from 2007, 2012 and 2017: He took off his sash and then symbolically handed it to the people: El Pueblo Presidente—the People are President. The crowd broke out in wild cheers. He asked tens of thousands of Sandinistas gathered in the 153 municipalities of the country to swear to fight with all their strength to eliminate hunger, poverty, and backwardness.

    Moment when President Ortega offers his sash to the People. [Photo by Jairo Cajina].

    “Let’s go forward…building peace to fight poverty, building peace so that there can be roads and highways. building peace so that families can feel secure; their children can feel secure in their work; they can feel secure in having a dignified life. That is our commitment, dear Nicaraguan brothers and sisters, we are all in this and that is why we say the people are president,” he exclaimed emotionally.

    Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and Cuban President Miguel Díaz-Canel attended the inauguration to the obvious delight of the crowd, who cheered ecstatically when each arrived. President Ortega actually left the area and went out to greet them.

    President Ortega goes out to greet President Maduro. [Photo by Cesar Perez]

    Along with official representatives of dozens of countries, including Honduras, Mexico, China, India and Iran—countries that represent 2.5 billion people, there were also more than 300 journalists and solidarity activists from 21 nations accompanying the inauguration.

    “Here are delegates from many governments that have been mentioned, peoples, brothers, friendly peoples and where the European governments or the Yankee government do not send delegates… what greater pride than to have here as representatives of the North American people, of the European peoples, citizens, dignified men and women who fight in their homelands for true dignity, for the true independence of their own countries and for a true democracy to be installed in their own countries,” said Ortega.

    North Americans hold press conference about Nicaragua after the inauguration. [Photo by Jairo Cajina]

    “What better and more worthy representative can the American people have than Brian Willson. They [the U.S.] threw the military train at him and it was filmed, and they destroyed his legs and where were the human rights [organizations]… and who condemned that crime… if it is the same Yankee government that promoted those crimes,” he emphasized. Willson wrote: “President Ortega spoke for more than an hour about the new silk road agreements with China, the continued history of U.S. imperialism, and the continued advances of the Sandinista Nicaragua revolution. He needed no notes, no teleprompters—such a contrast with U.S. presidents. He spoke straight from his heart and experiences without any pauses.”

    S. Brian Willson and his partner Ulda Garcia with President Ortega. [Photo by Jairo Cajina].

    President Ortega indicated that Nicaragua and the People’s Republic of China had a historic meeting where they signed four cooperation treaties, highlighting the Memorandum of Understanding on cooperation in the framework of the Silk Road Economic Belt. “The Chinese Revolution and the Sandinista Revolution have the same path, the same destiny, which is to end poverty,” Ortega stressed.

    President Ortega and Vice President Murillo at the signing of agreements for cooperation with China. [Photo by Jairo Cajina]

    On January 12 China’s Foreign Ministry spokesperson, Wang Wenbin, said, “China firmly supports the government and people of Nicaragua in choosing independently a development path that suits their national realities. We urge the U.S. side to face squarely its own ‘democratic deficit,’ renounce the misguided old practice of arbitrary sanctions and pressure, stop engaging in hegemonic and bullying acts, adhere to the purposes and principles of the UN Charter, lift unilateral sanctions on Nicaragua and stop interfering in Nicaragua’s domestic affairs.”

    This was in response to a question about more U.S. sanctions on six Nicaraguan officials including the Defense Minister as well as visa restrictions on 116 individuals on inauguration day.

    These sanctions were on top of the internationally illegal U.S. unilateral coercive actions including the 2018 NICA Act, and the RENACER Act passed by Congress just a week before Nicaragua’s November 7 elections.

    Black Agenda Report Executive Editor Margaret Kimberley says that RENACER is a classic example of hybrid warfare as it calls for “supporting independent news media and freedom of information.” Such language is a declaration of interference in the rights of a sovereign nation, in short, a blueprint for war propaganda and regime change.

    President Ortega also demanded an end to the U.S. blockade and sanctions on Cuba and Venezuela: “And if there is any respect for democracy when the immense majority of the peoples of the world are saying that the blockade should cease, then the Yankee government should comply if it has a shred of respect for international law and cease the blockade against Cuba, and cease the blockade against the sister Republic of Venezuela. A criminal blockade where they persecute them, prosecute them, invent crimes against them, simply because they seek to guarantee food for Venezuelan families.”

    Earning the highest percentage of confidence from the population on November 7 of any elected president in the Americas in recent times, the Sandinista government was endorsed to continue carving out new paths to reduce poverty and continue extraordinary advances, like 90% food sovereignty, 99% electricity coverage with 75% green energy, and one of the top positions in social infrastructure in the Americas; and that they will do this specifically because they are no longer willing to be a colony of the United States.

    “We will continue to fight with dignity, always defending the homeland, always defending sovereignty,” said Ortega, “because only with sovereignty, with dignity, with conscience, is it possible to achieve the great victories.”

    • First published in CovertAction Magazine

    The post Nicaragua Once Again Inaugurates the “People as President” first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • 4 Mins Read China’s Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs has published its eagerly awaited national plan. Acting as a blueprint for future developments, innovations and national economic strength, the plan has specifically included cultivated meat and ‘future foods’ as sectors to actively participate in.  Long-term goals as directed by China’s political leaders, are supported by the agricultural […]

    The post China’s 5-Year Agricultural Plan To Include Cultivated Meat and ‘Future Foods’ For The First Time appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • British judges are lending credibility to an increasingly anti-democratic justice system in Hong Kong, argues Siobhain McDonagh

    The Orwellian reports coming from Hong Kong will come as no surprise to those of us who have been watching its legal system deteriorate (New Hong Kong barristers’ chief warns profession to stay out of politics, 21 January). Since the draconian national security law was imposed in 2020, Beijing’s interference in Hong Kong has been increasingly flagrant. As shocking as the attack on the rule of law in Hong Kong is, we should also be asking why British judges are still propping up a broken system.

    British judges have sat in Hong Kong’s court of final appeal since the territory was returned in 1997. But the deterioration of the city’s legal system means they are now lending a false veneer of respectability to Beijing’s campaign against human rights and political freedom.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • The People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has been persistent in its incursions into Taiwan’s air defence identification zone (ADIZ). Over the past two years, the People’s Liberation Army Air Force (PLAAF) has increased its air activity with near-daily sorties into the Republic of China’s (Taiwan’s) air defence identification zone (ADIZ), which is airspace over […]

    The post China Continuous Testing of Taiwan’s Air Defence appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • So before Covid, a local school where one of my kids used to attend, had prominent race issues. Namely, teachers were being accused of being blind to obvious racist incidences against black students. The normalized notion of racism was so rampant that the school was forced to embrace some sort of deprogramming sessions by a parent-led committee on the issue.  However, this committee itself was ultimately deemed rather racist in its own way by the school’s black alumni group. To me, at the end, it became rather obvious that the whole momentum was part of a corporate political campaign for the Democratic Party establishment.  The same people who raised their fists and said “Black Lives Matter” turned out to be the supporters of Joe Biden who has bragged that he was the architect of crime bills and The Patriot Act—the very root of the school to prison pipeline, the racist, colonial “war on terror,” the prison industrial complex and so on.  Is irony completely dead as “reality” continues to be stretched to fit the ruling class interests? In the end, I felt so dirty and violated to be a part of that committee’s activities.

    Fast forward to the Black-Lives-Matter-only-if-you-are-vaccinated era, and this school is voluntarily implementing a strict mandatory vaccine policy with few exemptions.  My son doesn’t like to gossip and he never really talks behind anyone’s back. But the other day, he said that the whole school is basically bullying the few kids that have not received the experimental injections.  He was particularly upset about his Black friend being given a hard time, after being subjected to the blatant racism previously.

    There are some harsh numbers regarding race-related matters and the Covid “vaccines”.  In NYC, where Covid “vaccine” mandates are effectively shutting people out from indoor activities, roughly half the Black people have chosen not to receive the experimental injections. How can anyone justify segregating half the Black people from indoor activities? What is that?  And what is wrong with businesses that, without a mandate, voluntarily exclude unvaccinated people from entering their premises when statistical risk factors for getting the illness in question range from obesity to old age to having chronic conditions.  To be clear, the efficacy of the Covid injections are being debated by scientists and doctors vigorously, along with their safety issues. Yet, there are business owners who are calling themselves “community leaders” for being medical cheerleaders for big pharma, proud of being brown-nosed social climbers at the expense of those who make their own medical choices.  And if we take the whole US,  40% of small Black-owned businesses have been wiped out.  This whole virus event is a giant urban renewal push disguised as war on virus—don’t they realize what people have gone through with war on crime, war on drugs and so on?

    The cozy Covid life for privileged, resourced people who can work from home or afford not to work is propped up in many ways at the expense of many who are suffering under the economic restructuring process for the oligarchy.  An unprecedented wealth transfer from the already exploited population to extremely rich and powerful people has been ongoing for the past two years, while the kind of neoliberal restructuring they’ve been dreaming about has been implemented in the name of saving lives.

    It’s really demoralizing to really understand that the mechanism of exploitation and subjugation is rather simple.  The power of the wealthy oligarchs is so huge that they own everything.  They own the media.  They own the politics.  They own the governments. They own the scientists. They own the military.

    And the same people who own everything tell us that we have to respect the separation of powers, we have to rely on “representative democracy,” and we have to obey the legal system which is ultimately ruled by Supreme Court judges who are appointed by, well, the same people who own everything. Needless to say, the whole thing is made to divide us and consecrate the rich and powerful as priests of capitalism, because they own everything and all powers are designed to concentrate in their hands, while  the people are effectively deprived of all power.

    In the US, the power of the people is represented by two corrupt corporate political parties.  I mean, they don’t really represent people, but they pretend that they do.  The situation is so obvious and blatant that it is tedious to even mention, but the reality is that this mechanism of two corporate entities engaging in ritualistic battles within a strictly curated capitalist framework has been so effective in staging the appearance of “democracy” that it is hard to discuss the social dynamics in the US without it.  No matter what ideological leaning one has as an American, the larger than life theater of historical myths, dramas, glories of wars, nationalistic emotions and the reverence of the American flag are likely to be a part of the internalized authority which builds its footings in the minds and the bodies of those who are born on this land.

    Today, many of the rich and powerful are associated with the Democratic Party—for example, Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, George Soros, Bill Gates, and so on. This is strange because it is the Republican Party that is supposed to represent business interests. Recent numbers also indicate the trend:  “Some recent US figures on the distribution of income by party: 65 percent of taxpayer households that earn more than $500,000 per year are now in Democratic districts; 74 percent of the households in Republican districts earn less than $100,000 per year. Add to this what we knew already, namely that the 10 richest congressional districts in the country all have Democratic representatives in Congress“.

    Anyway, it really doesn’t matter because when people play politics—meaning you cheer for one of the corrupt political parties—you are not supposed to talk about how money controls social institutions and how our values, beliefs and norms are determined by the interests of the ruling class, and how the economic caste order effectively enforces capitalist imperatives to perpetuate the reign of money and violence.

    Believe it or not, today, this sort of understanding is labeled as “conspiracy.”  Right, you are a tinfoil hat wearing conspiracy nut case if you happen to call out corporate crimes, their criminal conspiracies and so on and so forth.   How obvious can it get? Rich people dominate corporate politics with the good old righteousness of exceptionalism, and a colonial attitude with the kinder, gentler face of liberal politics, and it is perfectly OK to call a simple Marxist analysis of exploitation a “conspiracy.”

    The tendency to obscure the mechanism of capitalism is mirrored exactly among many of those who oppose the overwhelming push for Covid lockdowns, Covid “vaccine” mandates and so on. For many of those who stand on the other side of the virus event, the entire mobilization is described as a “communist takeover.” That’s right.  All those diehard capitalists who have been conspiring to perpetuate their interests through World Economic Forum, IMF, World Bank and so on are communists now. How convenient?  You can’t have capitalism without opportunism.

    But the whole thing makes perfect sense. Both ends of the capitalist spectrum, fascists and social democrats, have always struggled to perpetuate capitalist hegemony together. At the end of the day, their ultimate goal is to perpetuate the capitalist caste hierarchy and their righteous positions within it.  One step with the left leg goes forward as the right leg moves forward to balance the momentum of the imperial hegemony — just as the hopelessly corrupt Hilary Clinton gives birth to a Donald Trump Presidency, which, in turn, gives the Democratic Party a reason to exist.  Left, right, left, right, the empire moves forward as it gently shifts its weight left to right.  As they march the imperial-scape together, they sing derogatory smears against any revolutionary momentum.  Both sides are free to argue and fight as long as they adhere to the imperial imperatives of capitalism.  The corporate media ensure that the narratives are told to fit this dynamic.  Those who do not belong to the dynamics are portrayed as “others”–fringe extremists to be demonized from multiple angles.

    How does the empire gain its mythical aura of authority?  Easy. They play a good old protection racket scheme against unsuspecting “good people.”  For example, they tell people that terrorists are coming, while “secretly” funding the killers in ways which are not so secret to the people. People get the idea: “Oh I see. we have to pay the protection fee. Otherwise, we get fucked up.” Or, for example, they tell people that plague is coming, and force people to get injected with special medicines.  If the people refuse, their jobs are taken away, their families are split apart, you can’t eat at a restaurant and so on. They can effectively turn everyone into a dangerous element with an infection until proven “healthy” by the designated means of the authority.  There goes the presumption of innocence along with informed consent out of the door.

    This is a big deal. There is a huge reason why an authority must prove someone guilty without a reasonable doubt.  Otherwise, people can be arbitrarily accused of committing any crime and then punished for it.  And without informed consent, people can be forced to drink Cool Aid just because they are told to do so. Moreover, as soon as the feudal overloads deal with the life and death of the people, they effectively consecrate themself as gods.  A politician would claim that Covid “vaccines” are sent by God.  Cultural figures would start accusing those who refuse the medication of “defying the law of nature,” defying “science” and so on, effectively turning Bill Gates and the rest of the snake oil salesmen into gods of our times.

    So now it seems that even this pretend “democracy” is being taken away by the acceptance of decrees under an “emergency” just like any other fascist take-over.

    Colonizing humanity and nature

    How is it even possible, though?  The capitalist assaults come in stages. First, it attacks to destabilize, infiltrate and tear communities apart.  It destroys the fabric of communities and turns vital institutions useless.  It cultivates the ground on which the invaders can turn themselves into the new providers of artificial social relations, resources and facts. Then the colonizers embark on domesticating people with their own beliefs, norms and values to exploit them and subjugate them.

    Social institutions are taken over by capital. As they lose their functions for the people, they are further bought and sold by the oligarchs to transform themselves into machines for the ruling class interests. In every step of the process, people are mobilized to destroy and reassemble their own institutions only to be domesticated by the resulting fake institution for the ruling class. Corporate NGOs, corporate think tanks, paid academics, paid scientists, corporate politicians are always ready to help in this regard.  This is how education has been taken away from the people.  This is how healthcare has been taken away.  This is how politics has been taken away.

    The people’s institutions are intentionally deprived of resources so that they must rely on the rich and powerful to function.  Then, privatizing and corporatizing transform the institutions into entities for profit, indoctrination and domestication. The more you struggle financially, the more you are likely to be trapped in a cycle of exploitation—an ironic reality imposed by the capitalist hierarchy in which those who could gain the most by overthrowing the establishment are pressured the most to obey the capitalist imperatives. Meanwhile those with privileged positions are conditioned to protect the status quo. Hierarchies of ideas, ideologies, religions, and people are formed.  The caste system built by all elements permeates the empire—what’s good for the empire naturally floats as the opposing elements sink systemically and structurally. People are forced to compete in serving the interests of the oligarchs regardless of the ultimate consequences to them.

    This is how people are indoctrinated to hate the system that gives power to the people—socialism, and are forced to crave the system that strangles them—capitalism.  Here is a brief summary of how socialism is actively demonized in our society:

    1. Point out results of imperial assaults against socialist countries and claim socialism doesn’t work.

    Examples:

    • Give them economic sanctions, then call the countries “economic disasters”.
    • Send death squads to destabilize their countries, then call the enemies of the western hegemony “strong man,” “dictator,” “butcher” and so on.
    • Attempt to overthrow the government by massive propaganda campaigns, then call them oppressive.

    2. Claim that no ideology, country or government is perfect, in order to ignore the injustice and inhumanity systematically and structurally imposed on the entire capitalist hegemony and beyond by the western ruling class.

    Examples:

    • Claim that socialism and capitalism are the same when they are not historically and in practice.  Capitalism is a system guided by forces of accumulated wealth and power. It manifests as imperialism at the global scale. Historically, socialism has emerged to counter imperial exploitation and subjugation. Socialist countries have been vehemently assaulted by organized forces of imperialism.  The equation totally dismisses these obvious historical dynamics, while also obscuring the very nature and mechanism of capitalism, itself.  This position is often expressed with the use of the word totalitarianism.  Although the term has been largely normalized in the western cultural sphere, historically, this term has been used by reactionary forces to equate fascism (which operates within the framework of capitalism) and socialist countries with the intention of demonizing socialist countries.
    • Claim that all violence must stop as the capitalist hegemony targets a socialist country, knowing that the imperial hegemony can topple the socialist country by many means if the country stops engaging in self-defense.
    • Demonize political leaders who defy the western hegemony saying that although the West is atrocious the dictators aren’t worth saving anyway.

    3. Utilize an emotional personal anecdote in demonizing “socialism” in its entirety, totally ignoring its inner workings to forward the interests of the people, imperial dynamics and so on.  Reactionary voices of those who betray their countries of origin in seeking to secure positions within the empire are often promoted by the capitalist media.

    Examples:

    • “My grand dad was killed by communists.”
    • “My family members were imprisoned by a socialist regime.”
    • “So and so is killing its own people.  I know because I’m from there and you are not.”

    4. Simply rely on propaganda lies concocted by capitalist social institutions.

    Examples:

    • Just mock, ridicule and demonize socialists.  The notion is fully normalized so there is no need to explain. The burden of proof is on those who defy the notion.
    • Engage in 1, 2 and 3 using the propaganda lies.

    Where is this giant monster swinging right to left, guided by the selfish motives of the ruling class, going?  Is it going to put us all in a digital prison as it continues to digitalize, financialize, and transhumanize, colonizing humanity and nature?  Is it going to declare a war against China?  These are very significant concerns, but it is unlikely that they will be on the table for all of us to examine anytime soon.  Our thoughts and ideas are constantly, systemically and structurally beaten into shapes by layers of capitalist institutions over and over so that they fit into the capitalist framework. Then the momentums of pros and cons are safely exchanged within the imperial framework at the expense of the people who struggle to secure their livelihood within it.

    When we are beaten by the capitalists, we are put against each other.  As we fight back, we are forced to attack our fellow community members as our institutions are further colonized as I described above. In the corporate political theater billions of dollars are spent in picking between hardened corporatist Joe Biden, and “reality TV show star” Donald Trump, but we cannot embrace the political institution which can truly function as our own—such a drastic shift is firmly demonized, again, as “socialism,” “communism,” Marxism and so on.

    Look at how doctors and nurses are forced to be complicit in the ongoing virus event. They are forced to limit treatment options.  Effective early treatments such as Ivermectin or HCQ, which have saved countless lives in other countries, are being ridiculed as snake oil, because as long as there are effective treatments for the virus, the experimental gene therapy drugs can’t have emergency use status.  All this goes on as Covid “vaccine” deaths are blatantly covered up in the US and in other Western countries. The health professionals are forced to put people on deadly ventilators, deadly remdisivir, and deadly sedatives—the real reason why there are so many deaths in the US, along with the fact that obesity is a hidden killer in patients with seasonal respiratory illness.  The more they try to protect their positions within the institution, the more they compromise the whole institution. Doctors, scientists and the rest of the healthcare professionals who wish to protect the institution by speaking the truth about the virus and experimental injections are censored, harassed and fired for doing so, while those who obey are forced to be complicit in failing their patients with profit-oriented protocols.

    This is what the system does when it’s driven by, and for, the oligarchs.

    Their exploitive schemes create crises on many fronts—environmental crisis, health crisis, housing crisis, economic crisis, psychiatric crisis, you name it. The ruling class officially designates a chosen crisis to impose prepackaged corporate “solutions” for more profits, more power grab and readjustment of the capitalist trajectory.  In the process, they destroy vital social institutions and reassemble them for domestication.  Nothing else matters other than the chosen crisis and the associated corporate schemes. Other crises deepen as the capitalist trajectory is recalibrated and the capitalist hierarchy is readjusted. They will not run out of crises as long as they exploit and subjugate.  Crises are not predicaments for those who can buy their way out of anything, they are opportunities for them.  And they have nothing to lose in the process.  We are forced to do their work of destroying our own institutions.  We are forced to do their work of turning them into our cages.  They can buy most of anything, and if they can’t, they destroy it, then they can simply buy and sell any remaining elements, repackage them as something else and sell them back to the people.

    See how it works?

    As we further lose our connections to ourselves, to each other, to our community and nature, we are freely subjected to propaganda and indoctrination through ruling class sanctioned entities. Psychology has been applied to adjust individuals to the hardships of capitalist behavioral conditioning. Sociology has been applied to shape collective behaviors within the capitalist framework. Economics has been applied to justify the capitalist domination. Politics has been applied to ritualize the normalization of the feudal hierarchy. Now, we see science being applied to shift the trajectory of exploitation and subjugation.

    Our behaviors are largely based on establishment-supplied social relations, facts, culture, and so on.  We don’t generally act because we perceive actual events in our lives.  Most of us go through our lives on auto-pilot mode within the structurally sanctioned capitalist framework.  The Covid event clearly shows this aspect of our lives.  People wear masks, social distance and follow lockdown measures when clearly stipulated; however, at the personal level, most of us do not act like there is a deadly plague out there.  The masks, very possibly contaminated with the “deadly virus” are thrown away everywhere without being treated as biohazard materials.  People wear masks only to enter a restaurant, then take them off to eat with strangers stuck in an enclosed space. As soon as we are born into our society, we learn to perceive the capitalist framework as our guiding principle over our actual perceptions.  This makes us extremely vulnerable to top-down mobilization, as we see with the virus event.  As soon as we are systemically and structurally forced into following instructions, then facts, our perceptions, and experts’ opinions become totally irrelevant before the decrees coming out of the establishment. The process of colonization of humanity and nature has been ongoing for generations, deeply affecting how we are, and it is accelerating.

    Being deprived of our actual perceptions based on material reality, and the subsequent manufacturing of our perceptions based on the imperatives of the ruling class interests contributes to acute divisions among dissidents as well.  The urgency of capitalist oppressions together with marginalization of ideological positions has often cornered those who voice their concerns into prescribing “solutions” based on their own condition, regardless of the consequences to others.  This often happens over class lines, or against those who are victims of imperial violence.  The classic example was seen during the imperial war against Syria.  Many anti-war dissidents had taken a position in support of the US military intervention of Syria to varying degrees due to the western demonization of the Syrian government, western propaganda that glorified the US backed terrorists as victims of Syrian violence and etc.  (Those who stand with enemies of the empire are strongly urged to amend their anti-imperial positions. This urging comes from across the spectrum; for instance, Noam Chomsky, Chris Hedges and others who are considered “dissidents” adamantly demonized leaders of targeted countries and repeated official propaganda narratives justifying the toleration of violence against those countries–By the way, both Chomsky and Hedges also hold starkly discriminatory opinions against unvaccinated people, echoing their strong condemnations of the middle eastern leaders.)

    This has resulted in acceptance of the US military attacks and the US support for violent opposition groups inside Syria. Those American people who insisted on saving the children of Syria by bombing Syria and by supporting brutal terrorists, who would behead children, failed to see the great sacrifice paid by the majority of Syrian people, who were in support of their government and their military.  Activist communities were split into pieces, while the momentum greatly exacerbated the US led war against the Syrian government.   The situation began to turn as independent journalists—Vanessa Beeley, Eva Bartlett and others—started to report from Syria on the actual situation—in which the majority of the Syrian people have approved the determined government policy against the west backed terrorists and the US colonial policies which had strangled Syrian people on many grounds.

    The war on virus, which has directly targeted our entire society, as well as the global dynamics, has presented itself as a great divider among us.  Our alienated perceptions have effectively prevented our ability to understand the course of action taken by others.  The excruciating hardship of those who wear masks 8 hours a day, 5 days a week, or more, to keep their jobs, or the anger and bitterness of those who were forced to be vaccinated against their will to remain employed,  or the predicaments faced by those who chose to be fired for their medical choice, are not shared by those who do not share the circumstances and perspectives.  The virus event kept people away from each other, prevented freedom of speech, and prevented freedom of assembly while deeply dividing people on many grounds.  It is appalling that US media outlets actually told their audience to cut their ties to friends and family members who are not vaccinated.  Anger, frustration, fear and hatred have been boiling in our communities.

    Sadly, the situation is not any better among those who oppose the draconian virus measures. For example, some people see anyone who complies with a government mandate as an enemy, even if non compliance would have meant a total loss of livelihood.  I’ve seen a sad instance in which a bar owner, who courageously spoke against the government “vaccine” mandate for his customers, was mocked and ridiculed for complying with the strict mandate, though not doing so could have resulted in loss of his business.  This sort of atmosphere effectively prevents constructive community actions.  It prevents natural growth of genuine social relations among the people based on creativity and practical means.  The real struggle involves real observations of facts and spontaneous reactions to associated events. Ultimately, it cannot be prescribed by those who stand outside of the particular circumstance.  Without the existence of a genuine institution for the people to coordinate overall strategies and educate people about the mechanism of exploitation, this sort of arbitrary behavior of purging would emerge only to exacerbate alienation and division among those who should be united to counter the ruling class assaults. What Lenin said in last century still stands on this regard. It also cultivates a defeatist attitude to embrace martyrdom as the only plausible goal of resistance.

    The establishment understands this mechanism very well.  That is why organized efforts of socialists, communists, and Marxists have been vehemently attacked by the US empire.  As long as we stand with the establishment in demonizing any potential to build revolutionary momentum, we are bound to stay within the framework of the exploitation. Our goal is to change the exploitive system to the one that benefits our mutual well-beings.  We are not the enemies of each other.  On this point, we have a lot to learn from the Syrian government, which has been allowing reconciliation between those who took weapons against the people and those who lost their family members by the violence.

    Anti-Chinese sentiment

    I have already written briefly about China and the virus event here, and here.  This topic continues to be crucial because China continues to present itself as the biggest obstacle to the western capitalist hegemony.  Although China is fully integrated in the global market economy, it continues to resist western domination of its social fabric through western neoliberalization and financialization.  This makes total sense if we understand the very reason why China opened itself to the market economy—it has done so to put its economic activities under the guidance of the Communist Party of China.  It allows China to grow economically in providing for its people while preventing western propaganda infiltration, development of western guided black market, and western capitalist restructuring of Chinese social structure.

    That is why we are flooded with anti-Chinese rhetoric today.

    All western wars are ultimately imperial in nature.  War on virus is not an exception. Those who operate within the capitalist framework— including those who claim to resist the lockdowns and the experimental Covid injections—express their disdain toward the imperial enemy as a gesture to express their allegiance to the empire even when they must oppose their feudal overlords.

    Historically, the western capitalist mobilizations—war on poverty, war on drugs, war on terror and so on—that reshape and perpetuate its structural integrity occur in tandem with imperial dynamics. The slogans and talking points have always included anti-communist/anti-socialist elements.

    The war on drugs was about destruction of minority communities as much as about destruction of Latin American movements to defy the US hegemony. The war on terror ended up destroying the middle eastern countries which have cooperated with the US hegemony to varying degrees.  The US simply does not tolerate an alternative system that demonstrates the viability of social relations outside of the imperial framework. Millions have perished.  One out of hundred people became refugees. Countries were destroyed. The momentum of war on terror exacerbated institutionalized racism and structural violence within the US as well, ultimately depriving people of legal rights through the National Defense Authorization Act, the Patriot Act, installation of the surveillance state, militarization of police and etc.

    China has experienced capitalist onslaughts of colonialism, colonial wars, chemical/biological attacks, proxy wars, propaganda campaigns, regime change operations, trade embargoes, trade sanctions, economic war and more even before it embarked on the path of socialism with its revolution.

    China has seen it all.

    There is a reason why we keep hearing “China is complicit,” “the Chinese system is coming,” and “China is violating human rights” over and over. Because the war on virus follows the same rule.  It restructures our society to perpetuate the oligarchy, and the momentum of exploitation and subjugation parallels the imperial violence against targeted countries.  This is why hundreds of military bases are surrounding China, while multiple propaganda projects are being carried out—Hong KongTibetUyghur, continued lies about Tiananmen Squareoutright deceptions stating China has killed millions of its own people.

    As long as the movement of resistance being built in the west stays within the framework of imperial exploitation and subjugation, ultimately, it will serve the empire very effectively.  The oscillation between fascism and social democracy applies within imperial dynamics as well.  For example, within the imperial framework, Nazi Germany was cultivated by the US industries to assault USSR, its failure to do so then became a justification for the US to construct its imperial hegemony.  Famously, Nazi scientists and even some political figures were absorbed into the US empire (see Operation Paper Clip).  The current atmosphere emerging is not new or any more deadly than the imperial essence, itself.  This dynamic is crucial to understand.  Failure to do so would allow another oscillation within the empire which could perpetuate the empire.  On the surface, China seems to be a part of the momentum generally referred to as the “Great Reset.”  However, meanwhile, the western allies in the pacific are also arming themself to encircle China militarily.  China is under tremendous pressure to accept western led financialization and neoliberalization of their social structure.  The situation greatly echoes how USSR and its allies were subjected to containment and encirclement.  China seems to recognize the dynamics very well as I explain shortly.

    Or, down the road, the fascist “Great Reset” might grow into a modern day economic Nazi to give a legitimacy to its counterpart within the western hegemony just like how the US achieved its imperial status after the WW2.  The history could certainly rhyme.  Such a possibility can’t be ruled out, but who wants to become another Nazi to be destroyed by the empire?  All players understand these dynamics.  The US won’t allow its own allies to threaten its own interests, while some allies are very eager to please the empire by playing their role in enforcing imperial imperatives—see how draconian measures in pushing big pharma vaccines, along with digitalization, financialization and the rest of the 4th Industrial Revolution, are forcefully forwarded in Australia, Canada and so on.

    Perhaps the role of Israel in the imperial dynamics should be pointed out here to illustrate the dynamics.  The violence which has been inflicted by the Israeli regime against neighboring countries and beyond serves the war-based US economy while punishing those who defy the imperial hegemony. Israel plays a violent guard dog for the empire under US protection, takes on the blame for it and sustains itself in this imperial relationship. Israel has been faithfully playing its role in the war on virus by relentlessly vaccinating its people while introducing various associated measures as well.  Again, understanding the war on virus requires understanding imperial dynamics.

    Meanwhile, China clearly understands its position within the imperial dynamics.  China is not about to impose on itself a deadly neoliberal restructuring such as the USSR suffered as it was being demolished. China is not about to accept colonial war on its soil in any form including biological attacks, proxy war or economic war.  If China sees its economic sphere as a part of its socialism with Chinese characteristics, it stands to reason that China would have to confront the waves of the western socio-political-economic restructuring associated with the virus event appropriately.

    It’s none of western business if China decides to prepare itself for potential western biological attacks with any measures it deems necessary considering that the US owns the biggest pile of WMDs along with hundreds of bio weapon facilities across the globe, along with the history of actually using such weapons during the Korean War and on other occasions.

    It’s none of western business if China develops its own Covid vaccines and virus measures in order to protect its financial sovereignty against western waves of Covid-related neoliberal restructuring and financialization.

    It’s none of western business if China ends up succeeding in all of the above and turning the occasion into an opportunity to strengthen its economic viability, scientific progress and international presence with the overwhelming approval of its people.

    Parasites devouring paralyzed hosts

    Twisting around fear and putting people against each other in consecrating the unconditional authority of corporate entities over families torn apart, communities destroyed, and individuals rendered hopeless and hateful is not anything nature meant for us humans.

    We are looking at parasites devouring paralyzed hosts.  This is the very essence of an inhumane social formation called capitalism described precisely by Karl Marx. It is revealing that the formation is called “communism” even by those who claim to “resist”.

    Again, the colonized institutions ultimately act as cages for capitalism. They work together to recalibrate the caste system.

    Over and over we’ve been deceived.  We are mobilized to play ritual battles on political theaters. We are mobilized to play “activism” on social theaters. We are mobilized to play good citizens on cultural theaters. We are mobilized to fight “others” on colonial theaters of war.  As long as we run around within the framework of the oligarchs, we just shift the blame among ourselves and we keep fine tuning the very feudal hierarchy that traps us as expendable beings.

    The wealth and power hoarded by the parasitic minority never belong to them. They are blessings of nature and humanity belonging to the harmony among us. Those oligarchs have only one thing—they are astronomically richer than the rest. They monopolize what belongs to us all in order to domesticate humanity and nature. But life can’t be contained by their primitive cage.  So they have been modifying life to fit within the narrowly defined framework of their own kingdom. We became dumber, we are less brave, we are more cynical and hypocritical.  None of it is acceptable from any angle from which we look at it. The current social formation is extremely destructive to our species. If we fail to grasp the situation, gene therapy drugs, psychotropic drugs, behavioral conditioning and so on will be fully used to exacerbate the situation, commodifying our minds and bodies as our lives are more and more digitized and financialized.  If we become the products to be consumed, we are subjected to planned obsolescence, reduced quality, reduced diversity and so on just like any other items around us.  They spread their tentacles in taking over social institutions.  They freely attenuate and amplify the roles of institutions in orchestrating the material reality to suit their interests.  Again, they paralyze people with illusions, lies, deceptions, drugs, carrot and stick and eat us alive.  We do not deserve this parasitic social formation.

    We need a system which firmly ensures that the material reality reflects a harmony of man and nature.  For one thing, the ridiculous rituals of corporate politics, corporate slogans for health, and so on have no place in getting us out of this feudalism of money and violence.  How can we all step back a little and take a look at what is really going on, calling out the parasites for what they are?  How can we recognize that the same colonizers who destroyed countries across the globe have embarked on psychological asymmetrical urban warfare against us? We are told that we are all in this together only to find ourselves shooting each other. We are told to flatten the curve only to see our communities flattened to be swallowed by corporate entities. How can we build our communities with social relations based on our needs?  How can we build social institutions which can help us build a social formation that serves us all?

    The parasites devour the hosts because they do not have the ability to engage in the creative process of life. They must lie and deceive to imprison the subject population so that the captive beings are forced to construct the kingdom for the parasites. Parasites are not the all-seeing gods which they present themselves to be.  In order to survive and embrace the blessings of the universe as one of the species on our planet, we must recognize this destructive state of being and somehow move beyond it.

    We are hardly the only ones screaming.  We are a fraction of a huge momentum of humanity continuing to make a point about our species’ obvious predicaments. The following words came from George L. Jackson shortly before he was murdered in California’s San Quentin Prison (I thank John Steppling for mentioning the quote recently):

    Settle your quarrels, come together, understand the reality of our situation, understand that fascism is already here, that people are already dying who could be saved, that generations more will live poor butchered half-lives if you fail to act. Do what must be done, discover your humanity and your love in revolution.

    — George L. Jackson, Blood in my Eye, January 1, 1972

    Like Fred Hampton said:

    … you can jail a revolutionary, but you can’t jail the revolution. You can run a freedom fighter around the country but you can’t run freedom fighting around the country. You can murder a liberator, but you can’t murder liberation.

    — Fred Hampton,  Speech delivered on April 27, 1969 (Movement Vol. 5. No. 12, The Movement Press, January, 1970)

    The post Parasite Empire Unravelled first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • It remains unclear who at TA decides what is political, offensive or disruptive. Inconsistency of decision making and not knowing is the problem

    I just returned to Sydney after two incredible days at the Australian Open. Dylan Alcott brought me to tears and the legends’ doubles had me laughing. As I dashed from court to court catching as many aces and rallies as I could pack in in 48 hours, the hot sun of Melbourne seemed far away from human rights concerns in Tibet, Hong Kong and Xinjiang.

    But curtailments to the fundamental human right to freedom of expression, both in Australia and China, were also playing out at the AO when two spectators held a banner and wore T-shirts that said “Where is Peng Shuai?” Their banner was confiscated, and they were asked to remove the offending shirts.

    Continue reading…

    This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.

  • ANALYSIS: By Michael Field in Auckland

    Within a day of the massive volcanic eruption that rocked Tonga and severed the archipelago’s communications with the rest of the world, a handful of countries vying for influence in the region pledged financial aid.

    Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai, 60 km north of the capital Nuku’alofa, blew up on January 15, sending tsunami waves across the Pacific and shock waves around the world.

    The eruption cut the tiny kingdom’s only fibre-optic cable, to Fiji, 800 km to the west, leaving its 110,000 residents without internet or voice connections to the world.

    A Royal New Zealand Air Force surveillance flight showed that several small islands suffered catastrophic damage, and it has become clear there is extensive damage in Nuku’alofa.

    New Zealand has sent two naval ships equipped with desalination equipment and aid materials to Tonga, which is covid-free and has effectively closed its borders. Only fully vaccinated personnel are allowed to enter the country.

    Within hours of the eruption, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern announced an immediate grant of NZ$100,000 (US$68,000) and mobilised naval and air forces to rush help to Tonga.

    Australia followed, and a day later China pledged $100,000. The US followed shortly thereafter, with all donors making it clear it was the first round of aid.

    Heavy debt to Beijing
    Siaosi Sovaleni, Tonga’s newly elected prime minister, knows his islands have little money and a heavy debt to Beijing. After political riots in 2006 that resulted in the destruction of Nuku’alofa’s central business districts, China was the only country willing to help rebuild, but only through a loan, not aid.

    Tonga still owes $108 million to the Export-Import Bank of China, equivalent to about 25 percent of its gross domestic product and about $1000 per Tongan.

    The debt at times has threatened to bankrupt Tonga, one of the Pacific’s poorest countries, but China repeatedly declines to write it off.

    Suspicion around Beijing’s agenda has grown with the construction of a lavish and large embassy in Nuku’alofa. Surveillance pictures suggest it was undamaged by the tsunami.

    The Chinese Embassy in Tonga
    The Chinese Embassy in Tonga … photographed before the volcano eruption and tsunami. Image: Wikimedia/GNU Free Documentation Licence

    Former Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tweeted that Australia must be first to give Tonga assistance.

    “Failing that,” he said, “China will be there in spades.” He added that large Australian warships should be sent immediately: “It’s why we built them.”

    China’s Global Times, the English language mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party, published an editorial saying, “Tonga is in need of emergency aid, and China said it is willing to help.”

    Huawei interests in Pacific
    It noted that the volcano had taken out Tonga’s submarine cable and refers to attempts by Huawei to operate in the South Pacific.

    “It is important to note that in addition to providing necessary supplies, China is capable of helping Pacific island nations with their reconstruction work,” the Global Times said.

    “In fact, in recent years, Chinese companies such as technology giant Huawei have been actively pursuing infrastructure projects in Pacific island nations, of which the construction of submarine fibre optic cables is an important part.”

    Huawei had attempted to be involved in cables in Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, but Australia succeeded in blocking the bids.

    The Global Times said some Western countries, led by the US, are trying to block such cooperation as they see Pacific island nations “as a place for competing for geopolitical influence and publicly claim to counter China’s growing influence in the Pacific”.

    The tabloid added Pacific island nations did not want to be forced to pick sides between China and the US.

    The Nuku’alofa riot occurred on 16 November 2006 when the country was under a royal and noble-dominated regime that essentially ruled out democracy. Following the ascension to the throne of the late King Tupou V, pro-democracy and criminal groups set fire to the capital.

    A P-3K2 Orion surveillance aircraft flies over Nomuka island in the Ha’apai group of the kingdom of Tonga, showing extensive ash damage from the Hunga Tonga-Hunga Ha’apai volcano. Image: NZ Defence Force

    Consequences of ‘soft loan’
    Then Prime Minister Fred Sevele asked China for $100 million in aid but instead received a soft loan of $112 million to fund the rebuilding of Nuku’alofa, repayable over 20 years.

    The consequences of the loan were profound for Tonga, and a subsequent prime minister, the late ‘Akilisi Pohiva, used the matter to win elections.

    In 2013 Pohiva said the kingdom had debts it could never repay: “Our hands and feet have already been tied,” he said.

    “We need a government by the people that can work this out with the Chinese government in a way Tongans now and in the future will not suffer catastrophic consequences.”

    He said he feared the Chinese would take over the running of Tonga.

    “If we fail to meet the requirements and conditions set out in the agreement,” he said, “we have to pay the cost for our failure to meet the conditions.”

    Help less flat-footed
    Jonathan Pryke, director of the Pacific Islands Programme at Australia’s Lowy Institute, said help to Tonga from Australia and New Zealand had been less flat-footed than it was during the recent anti-China riots in the Solomon Islands. Pryke wondered if Tonga was different because of the nature of the crisis.

    “While valuable in its own right, the support Australia and New Zealand provide is not entirely altruistic,” Pryke said. “This support generates a lot of goodwill and ‘soft power’ in the region, and gives Australian and New Zealand defence assets the chance to ‘get into the field.’”

    Pryke said Australia and New Zealand were both eager, now more than ever, in light of the geostrategic competition with China, to show the region that they were its best and most reliable foreign partners.

    “With that said, Tongan officials are much wiser now in what support they will accept from China than in 2006, as repayments on that debt continue to be pushed off but will be monumentally costly for the government when they finally do come due.”

    New Zealand-based security consultant Dr Paul Buchanan of 36th-Parallel.com said he wondered why China was being slow in its reaction. It previously sent a navy hospital ship to Tonga, but not this time.

    He noted the cable had only recently gone into Tonga and that two years ago it was damaged by a ship’s anchor. While coincidental, the latest severing offers an opportunity for China.

    Opportunity for China’s signals fleet
    “Getting involved in the process of repair/replacement of the branch cables linking Suva to Nuku’alofa… allows [China’s] signals fleet to get involved in a way that it has not been able to do before,” Dr Buchanan said.

    Noting Beijing’s unexpectedly large embassy in Tonga, Dr Buchanan said China might act in its own self-interest rather than out of a sense of humanitarianism.

    “Perhaps the kingdom knows this and will try to leverage the PRC’s slow response in favour of more favorable reconstruction terms,” Dr Buchanan said. “But I am not sure that the king and his court play that way.

    “New Zealand and Australia seem to have responded as could be expected, but if my read is correct, [China] seems willing to cede [the] diplomatic initiative to the ‘traditional’ patrons on the issue of immediate humanitarian relief.”

    Michael Field is an independent New Zealand journalist and co-editor of The Pacific Newsroom. This article was first published by Nikkei Asia and is republished with permission.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • Tara Everton and Jenny Wang posted in the human Rights Foundation a diatribe “Ignorance and Reluctance of the Rich and the Famous” which is well worth reading in full:

    In a recent episode of the podcast “All-In,” Chamath Palihapitiya, billionaire venture capitalist, stakeholder of the Golden State Warriors, and Chairman of Virgin Galactic, commented that “nobody cares about what’s happening to the Uyghurs… Of all the things that I care about, it is below my line.” 

    Palihapitiya has joined the growing list of wealthy Western elites, including Elon Musk, Ray Dalio, Craig Smith, and more, who have openly turned a blind eye to the suffering of millions of people living under the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)’s repression. 

    The reason for doing so is simple: to remain in the good graces of the CCP to line their own pockets.

    The world is witnessing the Chinese government’s belligerence and disregard for human dignity. In the past several decades, China’s authoritarian regime has tightened its grip on power by conducting mass crackdowns on Chinese human rights defenders, spearheading an unprecedented 21st century genocide against the Uyghur Muslims in Xinjiang, and implementing incessant policing in Tibet and Hong Kong. Despite the regime’s ongoing abysmal human rights record, highly influential entrepreneurs, business tycoons, and elites have all too willingly stayed silent.

    Greed and lust for access to the Chinese market have made profit-driven elites eager to acquiesce to the CCP’s authoritarian ideals. When these figures harbor these types of views – and express them so casually on prominent platforms – human rights are in grave danger. 

    The blatant ignorance of Western elites and billionaires is stunning. For example, founder of Tesla, Elon Musk, brazenly disregarded the testimonies and evidence coming out of Xinjiang about the genocide, and recently opened a Tesla showroom in the region. Similarly, Ray Dalio, founder of Bridgewater Associates, has shamelessly fawned over the Chinese government’s mass crackdowns toward achieving “common prosperity,” and even claimed that the United States should follow suit — a stance that has garnered him praise from Chinese state media. Most recently, Craig Smith, CEO of Burton Snowboards’ China subsidiary, showed concerning indifference to the Uyghur genocide by stating that he has no problem doing business in Xinjiang  — even after sharing that he is well-aware of the reports about genocide.

    Palihapitiya’s recent brazen remarks are just one example out of far too many. 

    Palihapitiya and his fellow tycoons are trained in social combat. Palihapitiya, in response to the resulting backlash, “recognized” he came across “lacking empathy,” citing his personal experience as a refugee and concern for all human rights. The Golden State Warriors subsequently tried to publicly distance themselves from Palihapitiya – while still dancing around using direct verbiage about China and the Uyghur genocide. All too similarly, Dalio took to social media soon after his fumble to admit he “answered sloppily” to questions about China. Elites are quick to undergo damage control – yet the real damage has already been done.

    With the power of celebrity and money comes responsibility. Businessmen and elites could undoubtedly make a dent in the CCP’s growing control just as corporate divestment campaigns did to help bring an end to apartheid in South Africa. These individuals can speak up, but egregiously, they are reluctant and choose not to. Driven instead by financial gain, they uncritically whitewash the Chinese regime’s abuses and in turn, act as agents of influence for Xi Jinping. 

    They choose money over morals. However, you do not have to – and you should not. Connect with your government officials. Policymakers and legislators need to engage with civil society groups and independent experts to ensure their foreign policies and economic negotiations are not complicit to the Chinese government’s crimes. Call your elected officials to stress their moral and legal obligation to respect, protect, and fulfil fundamental human rights. Shop responsibly. There’s a 1 in 5 chance that your clothes are linked to Uyghur forced labor. Consider supporting brands that have publicly committed to ending such forced labor, and urge your favorite brands to disclose not only how products are made but also who makes them. Support activists. The CCP actively intimidates and pressures brave individuals outside of China who stand up for human rights. Follow them on social media, donate to their campaigns, and support organizations that provide platforms for their activism. 
    Human rights are not a “luxury belief,” and complicity is not “below [your] line.” As a concerned global citizen, do what you can to stand up to the Chinese regime. We can do better than the billionaires. Full stop.

    That it can be done differently is shown inter alia by: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/02/08/celebrities-who-risked-their-careers-for-human-rights-you-always-have-a-choice/

    https://mailchi.mp/hrf.org/the-ignorance-and-reluctance-of-the-rich-and-the-famous?e=f80cec329e

    This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.

  • Being A Tibetan Panda Is No Game

    This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.