In episode 64: The United States disengages from Afghanistan, its image in tatters. China, on the other hand, stays engaged. The disinformation campaign in Xinjiang has negatively impacted western corporations who played along with the disinformation. Chinese technology continues to advance in AI. Chinese show a high regard for their cultural heritage.
The post News on China | No. 64 first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Beijing and Tehran are rushing to ensure stability in Central Asia after the Afghan capital of Kabul suddenly surrendered to the Taliban without a fight on Sunday, something American and Afghan officials had publicly stated they believed wouldn’t happen for at least a month.
The post Iran, China To Cooperate On Regional Stabilization appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
“Surely, President Biden, you must be joking”!
On May 26, these words should have poured forth from the White House Press Corps and the mainstream Commentariat when Joe Biden declared that he was placing the question of Covid-19’s origins securely in the hands of the “National Intel Agencies.” They were to report back in 90 days.
Have not the Intel Agencies been up to their eyeballs in deception about the “Global War on Terror” for the past 20 plus years? Must we really remind the press and commentariat of the scandal of the Weapons of Mass Destruction hyped by the Intel Agencies to bamboozle a highly skeptical public into the War on Iraq?
Do we need to recall the embarrassing spectacle of the hapless Colin Powell solemnly presenting the WMD fraud to the UN, with CIA Director Tenet sitting nervously behind him? Surely for those who lived through the time, those images are seared into our psyches.
Need we remind ourselves yet again that we were lied into the War on Vietnam “with a complete fabrication disseminated by the intelligence community and endorsed by corporate media outlets: that the North Vietnamese had launched an unprovoked attack on U.S. ships in the Gulf of Tonkin.” This fraud resulted in the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution that landed us in the Vietnam War.
On August 24 or thereabouts, the disgraced Intel agencies are to deliver their verdict on the origins of the Covid-19 pandemic. This is an event of enormous consequence since blaming the pandemic on China moves us one step closer to all out conflict. (It also is a distraction from the miserable performance of the U.S. with its over 600,000 deaths in contrast with China’s fewer than 5,000 deaths – over 100 times less in a country with a population four times as large.)
The vehicle to assign blame to China is the claim that Covid-19 was due either to a genetically engineered virus or to a “leak” from the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Since the alleged evidence for an engineered virus has collapsed in the face of molecular biological studies, the lab leak idea remains the sole hope for the China hawks. There is absolutely no evidence for this idea either, leaving the door wide open for the conspiracy theorists and, yes, the “Intel Agencies.”
The Biden administration has preened itself on “standing with science” in the face of the pandemic. But surely the question of the origins of Covid-19 is a scientific one. The Intel Agencies are hardly the ones to decide a question of science – or to provide the truth in any realm.
The W.H.O. has labelled the lab leak hypothesis the least likely of the four hypotheses put forward for the origin of Covid-19. The original W.H.O. study called this hypothesis “extremely unlikely,” although under pressure from the US, some have entered into vigorous discussion over whether to call it “extremely unlikely,” “very unlikely,” “unlikely” or some similar variation. Whatever the label one wants to put on it, it is unfounded conjecture in search of so much as a jot or tittle of evidence. It is based on a connect-the-dots sort of circumstantial reasoning except that there is no evidence for even the dots. As such it richly deserves the label of “Conspiracy Theory.”
The 90-day deadline is another absurdity. Finding the origins of pandemics has taken many years or decades, and sometimes the problem has remained unsolved. Science does not proceed according to a schedule. With all his power, President Biden cannot order up a bit of science at a time of his choosing any more than King Canute could reverse the tides.
Let us hope that President Biden will show the same recognition of reality that he has just exhibited in terminating the war in Afghanistan. Let’s hope he finds the Lab Leak Conspiracy Theory too untenable and just plain too embarrassing to go to the poisoned well of the Intel Agencies for a “determination” just one week after the Afghan debacle.
The first signs are not hopeful. Biden noted that his withdrawal from Afghanistan was motivated in part by his desire to devote more resources to “competition with Russia and China.” Not to peaceful coexistence nor to a win-win global order but to a competition with an enormous military component. Perhaps the Intel Agencies, whose image is already tarnished to the point of corrosion, will not want their remaining credibility to be sacrificed in developing yet another casus belli. But if past is our guide, this does not look hopeful either.
Let us not repeat the many errors of the past by trusting the Covid-19 question to the discredited and disgraced Intel Agencies.
Too much is at stake.
Let the scientists do their work.
The post “Surely, President Biden, you must be joking” first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Beijing flexes its muscles in the wake of America’s humiliating exit from Afghanistan, with a hard-hitting Global Times editorial warning Taipei that, when it comes to the crunch, it will also be abandoned by Washington.
With Washington in a state of panic and disarray following the outcome in Afghanistan, China has moved fast to exploit what it perceives as America’s humiliation in order to reassert its position on Taiwan.
On Monday night, the Global Times unleashed a scathing editorial, taunting Taipei that it would collapse swiftly, just like the Kabul regime, in the wake of an invasion by Chinese forces, and questioning Washington’s resolve to save it in such a scenario. The next day, Beijing followed up with a massive air force and navy exercise off the island.
The post China Warns Taiwan; If The Island Collapses, The United States Won’t Help appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
For neither man nor angel can discern hypocrisy, the only evil that walks invisible, except to God alone.
— John Milton, Paradise Lost, Book III
Simply put, hypocrisy is when words and actions don’t agree. It is revealing when one applies this straightforward definition to the cases involving two Canadian detainees in China, business consultant Michael Spavor and former diplomat Michael Kovrig, and the Chinese detainee in Canada, Huawei Technologies executive Meng Wanzhou.
The United States is seeking the extradition of Meng for fraud-related charges. The two Michaels were apprehended soon after in China and charged with spying on national secrets and providing state secrets to foreign entities.
On Wednesday 11 August, Spavor was sentenced by a Chinese court to 11 years in prison.
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau was dismissive of the verdict. “Today’s verdict for Mr. Spavor comes after more than two and a half years of arbitrary detention, a lack of transparency in the legal process, and a trial that did not satisfy even the minimum standards required by international law.”
There are many parts of this statement by Trudeau that require deeper consideration.
First, Trudeau notes the duration of the detention, more than two and a half years. It is commonly held that justice delayed is justice denied. When the wheels of justice grind too slowly, there is a danger of a gross injustice being committed. When detainees are found to be not guilty, a nonrecoverable portion of their lives has been squandered. If Michael Spavor and Michael Kovrig are innocent, then a gross injustice has occurred. However, this applies equally in the case of Meng Wanzhou who has been under house arrest for over two and a half years.
Does Trudeau’s concern for long-term detention only apply to Canadians? Has Trudeau ever uttered one word regarding the over a decade-long detention and torture of Julian Assange for revealing US war crimes, a detention for which Canada may well be complicit?
Second, Trudeau claims the detentions are arbitrary. However, if the verdict reached was just, then the fact that Spavor was found guilty would indicate that his detention was not arbitrary.
The Global Times argued:
The Dandong Intermediate People’s Court handled the case of Spavor in strict accordance with the law, fully protected Spavor’s litigation rights, respected and honored the Canadian side’s consular rights such as visiting and receiving notification, and arranged for the Canadian side to attend the trial. However, Canada, disregarding the political nature of the Meng Wanzhou incident and acting as an accomplice of the US, has detained Meng, an innocent Chinese citizen who didn’t violate any Canadian law, for nearly 1,000 days. This is arbitrary detention in every sense of the term, the embassy in Canada said.
The Chinese Embassy in the US also said Meng has never violated any Canadian law but has been detained by Canada until today. Canada chooses to be an accomplice to the US and this is a textbook example of arbitrary detention by “exercising leverage over a foreign government.”
And as the film The Secret Trial 5 makes clear, arbitrariness is part of Canada’s so-called justice system; people can be locked away for many years in Canada without ever being charged.
Third, Trudeau has not denied or refuted the charges against the two Michaels. His words are directed against the process.
Fourth, as for the process, rightly or wrongly, a lack of transparency is the norm when the cases involve state secrets. The same lack of transparency holds true in Canada.1 A lack of transparency is antithetical to protecting the rights of the accused and for seeking justice. Nonetheless, to cast stones at the actions of another while carrying out the self-same actions speaks to hypocrisy.
Trudeau’s statement continues: “For Mr. Spavor, as well as for Michael Kovrig who has also been arbitrarily detained, our top priority remains securing their immediate release. We will continue working around the clock to bring them home as soon as possible.” In this regard, the Canadian authorities’ sentiments and actions for the Michaels are shared by Chinese authorities for Meng.
Canadian foreign affairs minister Marc Garneau said the verdict against Kovrig is “not acceptable in terms of international rules-based law.” Such a statement falls flat in light of the recent charge that Canada is violating international law by selling arms to Saudi Arabia, arms that can be used to continue its aggression against Yemen. One needs to dig much deeper into what the rule of law means for Canada. There is no escaping the fact that the country is a colonial-settler state imposed through genocide against the Original Peoples of the landmass designated Canada by navigator Jacques Cartier. Still today, one headline makes clear that “Canada Is Waging an All-Front Legal War Against Indigenous People.” This points to the quintessence of Canada and its political class. Despite having seized political control through genocide, having committed to reconciliation, and having pledged (as Trudeau did) to a “renewed, nation-to-nation relationship with First Nations peoples … [as] a sacred obligation,” the words have exposed betrayal. Instead capitalist exploitation continues unabated while the Canadian state stonewalls reconciliation and legal redress for the Original Peoples.
Cong Peiwu, China’s ambassador to Canada, rejected accusations that Spavor’s trial was unfair and not open. “I would like to say that the minimum standard is for other countries to respect our judicial sovereignty. So here I would like to stress that actually it’s the Canadian side which did not meet the minimum standard of the international norm.”
What is the American Gambit?
Foreign affairs minister Garneau seems to have faith in American president Joe Biden being able to secure the release of the Michaels by “treating them as if they were American citizens detained by China.” This is following previous president Donald Trump politicizing Meng’s proceedings: “If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made – which is a very important thing – what’s good for national security, I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary.”
It points to a double standard for extradition as a means for achieving justice. Consider the case of Anne Sacoolas, the wife of a US diplomat who the US refuses to send to Britain to stand trial for her hit-and-run accident that killed teenager Harry Dunn in 2019. Some Americans, it seems, are beyond the reach of the law.
China is well aware of what is transpiring. China’s Huawei is the world leader in cutting-edge 5G technology. The US fears being left behind and is seeking to dissuade other states from using that technology. Thus, China’s government views Meng’s arrest as part of US efforts to hamper its technology development. Neither are the allies of the US exempt from America’s extraterritorial reach as a weapon to stymie competition. The French company Alstom experienced this as its former senior executive Frederic Pierucci was arrested and imprisoned for over 2 years in New York. Alstrom eventually had to pay a huge fine of US$772 million. Said Pierucci, “That [fine] facilitated the buyout of 70 per cent of Alstom by its main American competitor General Electric, blocking a potential merger between Alstom and Shanghai Electric Company.”
Canada is harming its relationship with the rapidly developing economic colossus of China to appease the United States. However, it ought to bear in mind how the US swooped in to replace Australian exports to China. This was after Australia aligned itself with a belligerent US policy toward China causing China to curtail imports from Australia.
A Possible Deal?
Yesterday (14 August), Canada’s National Observer published an ad hominem piece calling for an exchange of detainees. It begins, “The ugly messy truth about the two Michaels is that we must get past our indignation, however justified, over China’s gross violations of all international norms.” What is the justification? What if Chinese indignation is justified? What adduces the hyperbolic “China’s gross violations of all international norms.” All?
The National Observer grants, “Meng is charged purely for geo-political gamesmanship.” What the newsletter does not discuss is that Meng previously turned down an offer for her release in return for admitting wrongdoing.
Doubts can be gleaned from the notes of the associate chief justice Heather Holmes who is presiding over the extradition case,
Isn’t it unusual that one would see a fraud case with no actual harm, many years later, and one in which the alleged victim — a large institution — appears to have numerous people within the institution who had all the facts that are now said to have been misrepresented?
The National Observer insults China by calling its government a “regime.” The Chinese “regime” is one that lifted its entire population out of absolute poverty. Elsewhere on Canadian streets, one will see too many homeless people, people whose dignity is disparaged by having to rely on food banks, begging, or dumpster diving to quell hunger.
So which “regime” is interested in looking after the people — all its people?
Meanwhile, Kovrig, who stood trial in March, continues to await word on a verdict. And Meng awaits a decision on the extradition outcome.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
China promotes health through sports, deals with environmental threat posed by algal bloom, and trades with Africa.
The post News on China | No. 63 first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Dongsheng News.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
How the pandemic will be reshaping the world, especially in terms of economic recovery and especially the western world, remains to be seen. So far, western economic, social and health restructuring policies are chaotic, disorganized and totally uncoordinated. Western countries are skipping from lockdowns to “opening up” back to lockdown, from the first covid-wave, to the second and the third and now approaching the fourth. Looks like there is no end in sight.
One could almost think they do it on purpose, to keep people confused and easily manipulated.
What happens in China is a different story. China is the only significant world economy – the second largest for now in absolute terms, and the largest in PPP (purchasing power parity terms) – that has put her economic and financial mechanism fully back on stream. Consequently, the Chinese supply chain on which the rest of the world largely depends; i.e., on pharmaceuticals to 90%, works again in full force. It is rather western ports that are still – or again? – partially closed to receive cargo container ships, especially from China, causing dangerous supply shortages at home.
China is moving forward, always creating and leading initiatives, despite all odds, harassments, outright interferences and lie-based “sanctions” from the west. In this context and already looking into the future, into a post-covid future, China is displaying her Green Agenda towards a carbon neutral – not only China – but world.
Following the idea of President Xi Jinping of promoting a New Era of Eco-civilization, the Eco Forum Global Guiyan, for short EFG, has been held successfully for 10 sessions since its inception in 2009.
As a side line – Guiyang, according to the Nature Index, is one of the top 500 science cities in the world by scientific research outputs.
EFG is the only international high-profile forum in China themed on Eco-civilization at the state-level.
Let me venture saying, the Eco Forum Global Guiyang is, so far, the only international forum of such tenor and action that may — and hopefully will — expand into a global movement aiming at drastically reducing the world’s carbon footprint; in short, accelerating the objective of making our civilization, our life on earth, carbon neutral and, thereby, healthier.
To be clear, “Green Finance” is often confused, especially in the west. For example, investing in electric cars, when most of the electricity is made from not only unrenewable but also highly toxic CO2-producing hydrocarbon, is not a Green Investment. This is still predominantly the case in Europe and North America.
This does not even take into account the environment-unfriendly mining and often unhealthy work-conditions of exploiting and manufacturing lithium into car batteries.
The world’s chief energy source, hydrocarbons, has hardly changed in importance in the last 30 years or so. It still amounts to about 85% of all energy used in the world. This just indicates that so-called “green investments”, especially in the west, are mostly “fake” green investments, a new mode of sheer profit-driven capitalism.
These “green” investments have not even come close to a zero-carbon balance. To the contrary. The production of “green investments” used generally hydrocarbon, which lowers the energy efficiency drastically. This is clearly demonstrated in the low energy efficiency of electric cars, on average 35% to 40%, versus cars using straight petrol or gas-based energy.
This is, of course, not to advocate the continuous use of hydrocarbons. Quite the opposite. But strongly suggests investing in research to come up with real novel carbon neutral, or even carbon negative sources of renewable energy. Such investments most likely do not yield “instant profit”, as is the key incentive and neoliberal investment motive, but such research investments are directed towards long-term societal benefits for all humanity.
Real Green Investments are, for example, exploiting renewable and carbon-free sources of power, such as hydropower – wind, solar and tidal energy — with the latter taking advantage of the natural and eternal movements of the sea.
China will also continue being a world example of building “Green Cities”; investing in parks and “green housing” – housing units with plant façades – that absorb urban CO2 emissions from industry and transport.
These are Green Investments, as long as their dependence on hydrocarbon energy is way below the CO2 output of the Green Investment itself.
The traditional, huge, costly, and maintenance-heavy hydropower dams ought to make way for a new generation of hydropower production; namely, small, localized, low-maintenance and even mobile hydropower plants, the latter for use in desertic and monsoon-type flash-flood prone areas. A prime example is Yemen, one of the world’s most arid countries, where floods come when it rains, but where perennial water flows are rare.
Finally, the real challenge is investing and researching in a new generation of exploiting solar energy…. the most efficient way of using solar energy is by photo synthesis. This is what plants do to convert the energy of the sun. An estimated 95% energy efficiency might potentially be achieved, as compared to the current use of solar panels with a best-case energy efficiency of 30% or less.
Imagine the energy freedom humanity would gain by exploiting solar energy by photo-synthesis! Almost unthinkable, but not impossible by any means. When sincere minds come together, impossible dreams become reality.
In addition, the production of solar panels which have a limited life, requires enormous quantities of energy – energy which is currently mostly produced by hydrocarbons. Plus, solar panels have an average life span of 25 – 30 years, after which they need to be destroyed – or recycled, both are energy-dependent and environmentally challenging.
President Xi Jinping in his address for the 100-year Anniversary said:
We must unite and lead the Chinese people in working ceaselessly for a better life.
And, further:
We must uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics.
These words signal creating a new model for human advancement that is leading the way into a Green China – a China where socioeconomic development meets the concept of carbon neutrality. This sounds like a challenging but terrific initiative – one of many – for China leading the way into a post-covid era.
President Xi further stated:
We must ensure and enhance public wellbeing in the course of development, promote harmony between humanity and nature, and take well-coordinated steps toward making our people prosperous, our nation strong, and our country beautiful.
China may want to take this a step further. Using the Belt and Road Initiative through joint efforts, and joint ventures in Green Investments, inside, as well as outside Chinese borders, thereby providing the world with new opportunities towards improved and carbon-free standards of living, the focus always being on mutual benefits.
True to President Xi’s words:
The post Carbon Neutral Green Finance: China May Take the Lead into a Post-Pandemic World first appeared on Dissident Voice.We must continue working to promote the building of a human community with a shared future.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Peter Koenig.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
The US State Department has approved a potential Foreign Military Sale (FMS) to Taiwan of 40 155 mm M109A6 Paladin self-propelled howitzers (SPHs) and 20 M992A2 Field Artillery Ammunition Support Vehicles (FAASVs) plus associated equipment and technical support. The US Defense Security Cooperation Agency (DSCA) announced on 4 August that the US-based Taipei Economic and […]
The post US approves M109A6 Paladin SPH sale to Taiwan appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
Australia’s policy makers should make a strategic investment in leading edge science to grow future industries, according to a global trade expert, who warns it is difficult to compete with Chinese manufacturers in more established sectors.
Harvard Business School Professor Willy Shih is a renowned economist and trade expert who has spent the last 18 months mapping pandemic disruptions to supply chains and countries’ responses.
At a presentation to the Committee for Sydney urban policy thinktank, Professor Shih said Australia could build its resilience to global disruptions by developing emerging industries through more research and development, even if it took decades to pay off.
“You have to look at your capabilities and you have to invest in leading edge science and R&D. I like things that I’ve seen coming out of [Australia]… you have a lot of capabilities,” Professor Shih said.
It requires long-term planning, he said, comparing the opportunity to Taiwan’s bet on semi-conductors in the late 1980s, which ultimately paid off but took decades of work and times of uncertainty.
“It’s possible, but you need to do things that play to your strengths that maybe others aren’t as good at, or don’t have the energy to take on.”
Professor Shih said it will be nearly impossible for countries like Australia and the US to compete with manufacturing powerhouses like China in established sectors like steel and consumer electronics.
“One of the really tricky issues is: why is China so much less expensive? There’s a lot of subsidisation going on, which you have to battle.”
The subsidies from Chines municipal governments for even a single local manufacturer can be billions of dollars for large factories, according to the Harvard Business School Professor, but it keeps production onshore and the lower commodity prices attract global manufacturers from further down the value chain to China.
“It takes a very thoughtful strategy [to compete internationally]. I don’t think it’s without hope but there are some in the US who say ‘hey if China wants to subsidise it then we get to buy it at their expense. What’s wrong with that?”
“It’s a very complex issue,” Professor Shih said.
The post Trade expert backs Aust science and research appeared first on InnovationAus.
This post was originally published on InnovationAus.
Listen to a reading of this article:
❖
One of the weirdest things about the mass media propaganda which manipulates the way people think, act and vote to maintain the status quo is the fact that mainstream news outlets routinely cite the employees of think tanks that are sponsored by war profiteers and government powers as expert sources for their reports. And they just get away with it.
To pick one of nearly infinite possible examples, here in Australia the Murdoch press are currently citing a report generated through the funding of governments and weapons manufacturers to whip up public hysteria about the ridiculous fantasy that China might attack us. The most egregious of these is a write-up from Sky News whose headline reads, “Lowy Institute report: China possesses ability to ‘strike Australia’ with long-range missiles, bombers“.
On social media Sky News is sharing this story with the even more incendiary caption “China now has the military arsenal to pose the greatest threat to the Australian mainland since World War II, experts warn.”
China now has the military arsenal to pose the greatest threat to the Australian mainland since World War II, experts warn.https://t.co/FL30u21gpP
— Sky News Australia (@SkyNewsAust) August 11, 2021
The “experts” in question are the Lowy Institute, named after its billionaire founder, which is funded by multiple branches of the Australian government including ASIO and the Department of Defence, by major financial institutions, and by weapons manufacturers like Boeing. The author of the Lowy Institute report these stories are citing is Thomas Shugart, himself an employee of the notorious Center for a New American Security, a Biden administration-aligned warmongering think tank that receives funding from top war profiteers Boeing, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Raytheon, as well as the US State Department and numerous other governments.
So in summary, government agencies and war profiteers paid for a report which manufactures consent for their agendas among policymakers and the public, and mass media institutions passed this off as “news”.
And this is exactly what these think tanks exist to do: cook up narratives which benefit their immensely powerful and unfathomably psychopathic sponsors, and insert those narratives at key points of influence.
“Think tank” is a good and accurate label, not because a great deal of thought happens in them, but because they’re dedicated to controlling what people think, and because they are artificial enclosures for slimy creatures. Their job, generally speaking, is to concoct and market reasons why it would be good and smart to do something evil and stupid.
Think tank name translation guide:
Foreign = War
Policy = Crimes
Democracy = Neoliberalism
Strategic = Murderous
International = Imperialist
Relations = Domination
American = Oligarchic
Research = Indoctrination
Institution/Institute/Council/Center/Foundation = Propaganda firm— Caitlin Johnstone ⏳ (@caitoz) July 10, 2021
And it works. Because of the efforts of warmonger-funded think tanks like the Lowy Institute, Center for a New American Security, and the profoundly odious Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI), more and more Australian brains are being turned into soup by ridiculous propaganda narratives about China posing a meaningful threat to them. As The Conversation highlighted last month, a poll conducted by that same Lowy Institute claims that “only 16% of surveyed Australians [express] trust in China compared with 52% just three years ago,” that a “similar number of Australians think China will launch an armed attack on Australia (42%) as on Taiwan (49%),” and that “more Australians (13%) than Taiwanese (4%) think a Chinese invasion of Taiwan is likely sometime soon.”
You can understand why the Lowy Institute would want to show off numbers like that to potential sponsors, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they are entirely accurate; I’ve started conversations with complete strangers here in Victoria recently and seen them start babbling about how awful China is within a few minutes, completely out of the blue. It’s like watching a zombie outbreak in real time.
And this is of course entirely by design. Because of its useful geostrategic location in relation to China, Australia has been turned into a functional US military/intelligence asset so crucial that multiple coups have been instituted here to ensure we remain aligned with the Pentagon against Beijing. You can’t have the locals meddling with the gears of your war machine with pesky little nuisances like the democratic process, so you’ve got to keep them aggressively propagandized.
This is why our consciousness is continually pummelled with think tank-manufactured narratives about China. See an attention-grabbing headline about the big scary Chinese boogeyman and it will almost always be authored by a sleazy think tank denizen or be based on the work of one. A few weeks ago 60 Minutes Australia ran an unbelievably hysterical segment branding New Zealand “New Xi-Land” because its government didn’t perfectly align with Washington on one particular aspect of its cold war agenda, and it featured an interview with an Australian Strategic Policy Institute spinmeister as well as the actual ASPI office.
The Australian Strategic Policy Institute is cited by mass media outlets around the world and is funded by, you guessed it, governments and war profiteers. According to APAC News’ Marcus Reubenstein, ASPI is funded by all the usual weapons manufacturers, by the US State Department and other governments.
“ASPI has received funding from the governments of Britain, Japan and Taiwan as well as NATO,” Reubenstein writes. “Among its corporate supporters are global weapons makers Thales, BAE Systems, Raytheon, SAAB, Northrop Grumman, MDBA Missile Systems and Naval Group. Yet their contribution of over $330,000 last year is dwarfed by that of a handful of government departments and agencies.”
Media citation of warmonger-funded think tanks is common throughout the western world. Government-sponsored imperialist spin factories like Bellingcat are routinely cited by the mainstream media, and those citations are leant credibility by the fawning puff pieces which those media institutions regularly churn out about the propaganda firm.
(Thread) Bellingcat presents itself as a neutral intelligence service of and for the people.
But my new @MintPressNews investigation blows the lid off their connections to Western governments and the national security state. https://t.co/1gOrYufpbP
— Alan MacLeod (@AlanRMacLeod) April 12, 2021
I just grabbed a New York Times article at random about the events transpiring in Afghanistan and found its author citing the chief executive of the Center for a New American Security arguing against the Biden administration’s troop withdrawal, as well as a Center for American Progress employee arguing that the Taliban takeover could cause a PR nightmare. Center for American Progress is also partly funded by the war industry.
The fact that disguising statements by propagandists who are sponsored by governments and war profiteers is journalistic malpractice should be obvious to everyone in the world, and if media and education systems were doing their jobs instead of indoctrinating society into accepting the status quo, it would be. But propaganda only works if you don’t realize you’re being propagandized, and keeping people from realizing this is itself a part of the propaganda.
Make a fortune killing people and selling their bodies and you’d be remembered as the century’s worst monster. Make the same fortune selling the weapons used to kill the same number of people in wars you propagandized into existence and you’re a respected job creator.
Absolutely appalling.
___________________
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This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.
Friends rally support from Canberra to Washington to ask Chinese government to show compassion to Lei who is separated from her children
Two months before she was detained by Chinese authorities on opaque national security grounds, the Australian journalist Cheng Lei was catching up with her colleagues from the state-owned China Global Television Network (CGTN) for dinner.
Gathering at a Japanese restaurant in Beijing, the group enjoyed multiple courses and a few drinks, while sharing banter about work.
Related: Press groups raise alarm over threats to foreign media in China
Related: ‘The pressure is unbearable’: final days of Hong Kong’s Apple Daily
Continue reading…This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
The development of unmanned aerial vehicles is growing apace, especially in China. New longer range ISR platforms are also on the procurement list of several nations. Regional military forces continue to develop and field unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as part of ongoing modernisation efforts, with an eye on applications – such as border/maritime patrol and […]
The post Indo Pacific UAV Directory 2021 appeared first on Asian Military Review.
This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.
Chris Slee reviews David Brophy’s new book, which looks behind the fear campaign about China, and the issues of human rights, the US-Australia alliance and economic rivalries.
This post was originally published on Green Left.
The world is now in the throes of another wave of Covid-19, with another surge in infections, sickness and deaths, this time due to the more infectious and apparently more lethal Delta variant.
Are there lessons to be learned from the previous waves of Covid-19 that might help us now?
There are, and they were evident long ago, but in the West, they have been largely ignored. Up to now, for example, the US has suffered over 617,000 deaths; China in contrast has suffered fewer than 5,000 deaths in a population four times as large as the US. Could there not be some lessons that might serve us in the West now and in the future?
In the US and throughout the West, the response to China’s success has all too often been to ignore or deny it. As an especially egregious early example, in April 2020 Donald Trump and his assistant Dr. Deborah Birx called into question China’s mortality data with a none too clever lie of omission; they were caught in this embarrassing ploy by Asia Times. The denial of these fatality figures persists in much of the media. Certainly, there are many reports from those in China, foreigner and native alike, on the largely Covid-19 free environment there. But the many who regard China as a vast, impenetrable Potemkin Village are refractory to such accounts.
China tells the truth about Covid-19 Deaths
Is there any way in which the truth can be established about China’s death tally? One method is to examine excess deaths, that is, deaths during the pandemic compared to the same period in the previous five years, a measure used in many countries. Fortunately, a study of excess deaths in China has now been published in the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal (BMJ) by a team of scientists and physicians at Oxford in the UK and at China’s CDC.
The study was massive. EurekAlert!, a publication of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, recognizing the importance of the study, captured its magnitude as follows: “The researchers used official records from China CDC’s nationally-representative Disease Surveillance Point (DSP) system. It covered more than 300 million people from 605 urban districts and rural counties, representing more than 20% of the entire population in China.” The DSP gathers deaths that are reported by local doctors, hospitals, funeral directors, police and others. The study covered the period from January 1, 2020 to March 31, 2020, a period when most all reported deaths occurred. The lockdown in Wuhan, the most stringent, was begun on January 23 and lifted on April 8, 2020, a total of 74 days.
The two main findings of the BMJ study are simple and straightforward.
First, the number of deaths due to Covid-19 pneumonia in Wuhan was very much the same as the Chinese government reported. The BMJ study states:
In Wuhan city, the most recent official figures released on 17 April 2020 suggested that 3869 deaths were directly attributable to covid-19, including 3653 deaths from covid-19 related pneumonia and 920 excess deaths from other types of pneumonia, primarily unspecified viral pneumonia.
The tally based on the study of excess deaths that can be attributed with confidence to Covid-19 was 3653, somewhat lower than the 3869 given by the official count at the time. The demographics of the excess deaths attributable to Covid-19 matched deaths elsewhere from Covid-19 (more male than female, more old than young). And the time course of the official and excess death fatalities matched.
What about the 920 deaths from pneumonia of uncertain etiology due to absence of Covid-19 tests during the early days? If we include them in the total to get a worst-case number there is only a 20% difference in the estimates given by excess mortality and those given by the official count at the time. Later China included these unconfirmed cases in its official tally, making the two tallies almost exactly equal. No matter how one slices it, the round number of less than 5000 is correct. It turns out China’s official account is remarkably accurate.
Second, the number of excess deaths in the rest of China decreased! As a result, overall deaths in China during the pandemic compared to the previous five years actually declined. In the words of the report:
Except in Wuhan, no increase in overall mortality was found during the three months of the Covid-19 outbreak in other parts of China. The lower death rates from certain non-Covid-19 related diseases might be attributable to the associated behaviour changes during lockdown.
They suggest that the reduced number of deaths outside Wuhan was due to behavior changes like masking and social distancing which would reduce other respiratory diseases like the common flu and to less road traffic.
The Lessons From China’s Handling of the Pandemic.
The authors of the BJM study state the immediate lessons succinctly:
Furthermore, the findings highlight the need for rapid and coordinated actions during major outbreaks of infectious diseases to contain, suppress, and eradicate transmission and minimize detrimental effects on human health and societal and economic activities.
Such actions in China have included rapid and massive testing followed by tracing to find contacts of those who test positive and then quarantining when necessary, whenever even a small outbreak was detected. An example is the response in October, 2020, in Qingdao a coastal city in Shandong Province. As reported in the New England Journal of Medicine three cases of Covid-19 were detected and this triggered testing of almost 11 million people in less than a week with appropriate quarantining when necessary. Nine additional cases were quickly found and the limited lockdowns were quickly terminated. China has responded in the same way to every outbreak, in the process learning how to restrict lockdowns to subpopulations of one area, such as a single neighborhood, and for a shorter time.
When the lockdown began in Wuhan on January 23, 2020, there was only one death due to Covid-19 in the U.S. The second U.S. death occurred on February 28. By April 8 when the lockdown in all Chinese cities ended there were 19,000 deaths in the US, still a small fraction of the more than 617,000 we have today. It was apparent that China’s actions were a success by April 8, 2020, and yet the U.S. took no similar action. The U.S. had a warning from China on January 1, 2020, and on January 11 Chinese scientists published the viral genome sequence which made immediate testing possible worldwide.
At the time of this writing China is coping with the new scourge of the delta variant of SARS-Cov-2, that began in July. There are now as many as 100 cases reported in a day, still miniscule by Western standards (The U.S. reported over 100,000 new cases recently, August 8, 2021.) but a genuine surge by China’s. Today, we learn that Wuhan has completed citywide Covid-19 testing in six days and found 37 cases plus 41 asymptomatic carriers among 12 million residents. A rapid vaccination campaign had already begun months earlier, added on to the containment measures. By August 4, over 1.7 billion jabs have been administered, 127 doses per 100 population; for comparison the US has 105 per 100 population. And the total death toll for the pandemic as of August 9 remains at 4629, the same as February 1, 2021 before the recent July surge. In the event of the need for a booster, China stands ready with capacity to produce more of various sorts, including the BioNTech mRNA vaccine, which Fosun Pharma has contracted to produce in China up to 1 billion doses a year. Clearly China is willing to learn from the West. China’s measures seem to be holding the line at the moment, still a success story. What happens next is anyone’s guess, but for the first year-and-a-half of the pandemic China’s measures were exemplary.
One lesson for us here in the U.S. is to put in place public health containment measures for the next wave of Covid-19 and for the next pandemic. These are certainly necessary before a vaccine arrives and the population can be vaccinated. We might also do well to generalize this lesson. Proceeding from reason, not blindness, exceptionalism, arrogance or condescension, might serve us well in all areas of US-China relations. If not, far more than 600,000 deaths may be the price to pay.
The post Learn From the East: A Major Lesson of the Pandemic. first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Southeast Asia’s growing economic linkages with China generate political opportunities and strategic concerns in equal measure. Recent discussions have tended to focus on infrastructure projects, especially those associated with the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). However, to gauge their significance and impacts, such projects must be understood against the broader context of Chinese investments in Southeast Asia.
Our SEARBO Policy Briefing provides an overview of the findings from our larger project collating and analysing region-wide, multi-sectoral data on large Chinese investments in Southeast Asian economies from 2005 to 2019. We identify regional trends, analyse the distribution of Chinese investments across Southeast Asia, and evaluate their key political and strategic significance.
Foreign investments in Southeast Asia originating from China grew twentyfold during 2005-19. Chinese investments expanded rapidly after the global financial crisis, when temporary declines in other sources of foreign direct investment (FDI) coincided with Beijing’s “going out” strategy encouraging international investment by domestic enterprises. Between 2013 and 2017, the BRI further enabled very large (at least US$1 billion) outward investments from Chinese enterprises. Moreover, China has diversified its investments across all the key industrial sectors and all the host countries in Southeast Asia.
Even so, for Southeast Asia as a whole, China is not yet a dominant investor. Between 2005 and 2018, China featured in the top three (non-ASEAN) foreign investors list only twice (in 2012 and 2018, both times in third place). In each instance, China’s share of the region’s total annual foreign direct investment (FDI) was only half that of the second largest investor, Japan. The EU, Japan, and the United States remained the three largest sources of FDI for Southeast Asia across this period.
Using the volume-based distribution of Chinese investments, we identify three groupings of Southeast Asian economies.
Indonesia is the top Southeast Asian destination for Chinese investments, which more than quadrupled to US$8.5 billion in 2015. The infrastructure sector (including the $2.4 billion Jakarta-Bandung Highspeed Railway) attracted a fifth of total Chinese investments in Indonesia, but the energy sector accounted for the bulk (around 55%).
Malaysia ranks as the second largest recipient, but Chinese investments rested on a few very major investments, such as the 2015 US$5.96 billion acquisition of all 1Malaysia Development Berhad (1MDB) energy assets, and the 2016 US$8.6 billion investments in the East Coast Rail Link and the Melaka Gateway Port.
Singapore is the third largest recipient of Chinese investments in the region. Reflecting the city-state’s economic profile, these were marked by major Chinese acquisitions of strategic service providers in energy, e-commerce, and logistics.
Chinese investments are concentrated in the energy sector – mainly hydropower in Laos, and coal in Vietnam. Laos also received sizeable Chinese infrastructure investment in 2016-18 for the railway connecting Kunming and Vientiane. Both Vietnam and Laos saw larger than regional average proportions of very large (over US$1 billion) Chinese projects.
Laos experienced a sharp increase in Chinese investments between 2013 and 2017, coinciding in part with BRI, but Chinese investment in Vietnam has been on a declining trajectory since 2010 because of their conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea.
Cambodia and Myanmar stand out for the high significance of Chinese investment in their economies, despite the smaller amounts involved relative to the two groups above. Cambodia has largely logged China as its top non-ASEAN FDI source in 2005-18. Unlike Laos, however, Cambodia attracts a wider range of FDI and thus is less reliant on Chinese investment. Myanmar’s reliance on Chinese FDI correlated with periods of international isolation under military rule.
In contrast, the Philippines, Thailand and Brunei attract small proportions of Chinese investment for various reasons such as reliance on other sources of FDI, nationalist sentiment, and the countries’ specific economic profiles.
The largest volumes and shares of Chinese investments go to the most diversified and advanced Southeast Asian economies, but in some of the smaller developing economies, even small absolute amounts of investment can bring China top investor status. Countries that are less attractive to other major international investors are also likely to be more dependent on Chinese investment.
Concerns about over-dependence arise when one external source of investment is disproportionately important for a national economy. China has become the most important source of FDI for two Southeast Asian countries, Cambodia and Laos. Laos’ relative dependence on Chinese sources is higher, reaching a peak of 79% compared to a peak of 32% in Cambodia. China is consistently among the top three sources of FDI for only two other Southeast Asian economies: Myanmar and Singapore, but for very different reasons. Laos, Myanmar and—to a lesser extent—Cambodia are most likely to be over-exposed and potentially dependent on Chinese investments.
In general, sovereignty concerns arise over foreign ownership of critical national assets, and foreign control of service provision in critical sectors. In Southeast Asia, Chinese investments in two areas of critical national infrastructure stand out. Chinese companies are very significant in electricity generation and transmission in Singapore, the Philippines, and Laos. Chinese investment has also grown in the rapidly expanding and highly profitable telecommunications sector, including mobile and internet networks and providers in Thailand and the Philippines.
Vulnerability could also arise from very large Chinese investments in regional sectors which are strategically important for China, especially in Beijing’s quest for greater energy security. These range from Chinese acquisitions of Singapore companies for oil refining and international trading, to stakes in the refinery and petrochemical industry in oil-rich Brunei, to very large investments in Myanmar’s west coast to build oil refineries, ports to handle oil imports from the Middle East, and overland pipelines into China.
Myanmar now hosts critical Chinese infrastructure within its territory, and with its contiguous location, becomes integrated into Chinese strategic arenas and interests. China’s concrete stakes in Myanmar’s domestic politics have grown to include the management of ethnic insurgencies both on their shared border in eastern Myanmar and in Rakhine state in the west where such infrastructure is being built. Other strategically located port and transport infrastructure projects in the region have been slow to take off.
The post Chinese Investment in Southeast Asia, 2005-2019: Patterns and Significance appeared first on New Mandala.
This post was originally published on New Mandala.
I was the CIA director. We lied, we cheated, we stole.
— Mike Pompeo, former US secretary of state on how the United States conducts its business
One of the filters in the Propaganda Model propounded by professors Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky is stoking a fear of communism.1 The establishment’s anti-communism has never abated in the United States. The elitists require a populace fearful of communism to protect their own misbegotten wealth accumulation. Thus,the bugaboo of communism must be opposed wherever it arises. At its worst, the US would wage war against communist countries such as North Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, and Yugoslavia. When not militarily attacked, communist governments will be demonized by a relentless campaign of disinformation designed to bring about the fall of the government and its replacement by a government amenable to the US establishment, as happened in the Soviet Union. That is the nature of imperialism and predatory capitalism.
The establishment’s anti-communism is alive and kicking in The Diplomat, a current-affairs magazine for the Asia-Pacific region. This one can readily glean from its article titled “How China Helps the Cuban Regime Stay Afloat and Shut Down Protests.”2
The in-one’s-face bias of the article’s heading and the subheading (“Chinese companies have played a key part in building Cuba’s telecommunications infrastructure, a system the regime uses to control its people, just as the CCP does within its own borders.”) immediately gives pause to the discerning reader. First, regime is a tendentious term meant to delegitimize a government. Second, the subheading asserts Chinese governmental control. While it points at the means, it does not provide any evidence that the assertion holds true.
The leaning of the writers is apparent from their bios: Leland Lazarus is a speechwriter to US Southern Command’s admiral Craig Faller, and Dr Evan Ellis is a research professor of Latin American Studies at the US Army War College Strategic Studies Institute. They write, “July 11, thousands of people across Cuba took to the streets, fed up with the lack of food, basic products, medicine, and vaccines to combat COVID-19.”
This flash-in-the-pan, minor protest was allegedly orchestrated by the NED and US AID. Furthermore, the monopoly media narrative has been undermined by its use of fake and doctored images.3
The writers complain, “Protesters used social media to broadcast to the world what was happening, but the communist regime shut off the internet and telephone services, pulling the plug on their connection outside the island.”
A question: If your government is targeted by a barrage of disinformation from outside actors, would you allow for the disinformation to continue? Disinformation is hailed by many to be a crime against humanity and a crime against peace. And the disinformation campaigns of the US are myriad. Among them are the phantom missile attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, the non-existent WMDs in Iraq, the Viagra-fueled rapes in Libya, the Syrian government chemical-weapon attacks, and the current allegation of a genocide in Xinjiang, China. Millions of people died as a result of such disinformation.
It is clear that Lazarus and Ellis would like to knock down two communist governments that US capitalism finds antithetical, with one article. What is the crime of Cuba? The State Department Policy Planning Staff pointed to the “primary danger” the US faces, “The simple fact is that [former Cuban leader Fidel] Castro represents a successful defiance of the US…,”4 a slap in the face to the imperialist Monroe doctrine.
The writers turned to the old-school Cuba policy advocacy of US senator Marco Rubio who tweeted: “Expect the regime in #Cuba to block internet & cell phone service soon to prevent videos about what is happening to get out to the world… By the way, they use a system made, sold & installed by #China to control and block access to the internet in #Cuba.’”
Again, monopoly media undermines itself and senator Rubio: “… Fox News, however, included a small detail that went largely unnoticed. As he [Rubio] was speaking about ‘brutal oppression’ by the Cuban government and hailing the protesters, the footage shown by the cable station depicted a rally by Cuban government supporters. Fox News apparently knew exactly what it was airing, since it was careful to blur the slogans that some of the activists were carrying.”
Lazarus and Ellis see a sinister hand: “China’s role in helping the regime cut off communications during the protests has exposed one of the many ways Beijing helps keep the Cuban communist regime afloat.”
Meanwhile the capitalist5 government in the US is trying its damnedest to sink the communist government in Cuba. The US has long had an adversarial relationship with Cuba, starting with launching the Spanish-American War based on a lie concocted by US media. After the successful Cuban Revolution, the US has kept in place an economic blockade of the island. And seldom discussed is the fact that the US continues to occupy Guantánamo Bay, which Cuba has often demanded be returned to its sovereignty.
Since the article never mentions otherwise, it is assumed to be predicated upon the US and its Occidental allies not engaging in monitoring telecommunications and digital surveillance, which Edward Snowden has revealed to be patently false. This is not whataboutism because there is no evidence of a Chinese backdoor to Huawei and the company has pledged to not insert spying devices in its products; to do otherwise would be a bad business decision.
China’s Interests in Cuba
Lazarus and Ellis envision nefarious Chinese stratagems underlying their trade with Cuba:
China recognizes Cuba’s geostrategic importance. Due to its position in the Caribbean, Cuba can exert influence over the southeastern maritime approach to the United States, which contains vital sea lanes leading to ports in Miami, New Orleans, and Houston. Author George Friedman has argued that, with an increased presence in Cuba, China could potentially “block American ports without actually blocking them,” just like U.S. naval bases and installations pose a similar challenge to China around the first island chain and Straits of Malacca. Cuba’s influence in the Caribbean also makes it a useful proxy through which Beijing can pressure the four countries in the region (out of the 15 total globally) that recognize Taiwan to switch recognition.
The entire article is speculative. It is littered with words like “possible,” “can,” and “could.” The writers do not elaborate on how China might pressure the Caribbean countries. Usually countries switch allegiance to China from Taiwan based on financial inducements and not from hegemonic pressure.
Economic Support versus Economic Sanctions
The Diplomat writers argue that “China helps sustain the [Cuban] regime through economic engagement.”
What exactly do the writers intend to imply by economic engagement sustaining a regime? The logical corollary is that economic sanctions are aimed at “regime change.” Stemming from this logic, the US uses economic measures to sustain the theocratic criminality and corruption in Saudi Arabia and economic sanctions to try and change socialistic governments in, among others, Venezuela, Cuba, and China. Nonetheless, trade is what countries do to build their economies.
Regarding the US favored method of applying pressure, American academics John Mueller and Karl Mueller wrote: “economic sanctions … may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history.”
The academics further noted,
It is interesting that this loss of human life has failed to make a great impression in the United States….
Some of the inattention may derive from a lack of concern about foreign lives. Although Americans are extremely sensitive to American casualties, they – like others – often seem quite insensitive to casualties suffered by those on the opposing side, whether military or civilian.
The world views economic sanctions in a different light from the US. This was illuminated by the UN General Assembly vote demanding an end to the US economic blockade on Cuba for the 29th year in a row. Aside from two negative votes cast by the US and its Israeli ally, 184 countries voted in favor of the resolution.
Perplexingly, the writers pointed out that “China has not, however, sold Cuba any significant weapons systems, as it has done with other states in the region such as Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia.”
To the extent that selling armaments is a legitimate business, then why shouldn’t China sell armaments? Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia are not warring with other countries. Regarding the morality of selling weapons, consider that the US sells weapons to Saudi Arabia, a country committing genocide against Yemen and to Israel, a country that serially aggresses and economically strangulates Palestine. Are the writers not aware that the US pokes China in the eye by selling armaments to its renegade province, Taiwan, in contravention of the One-China policy to which the US shook hands?
“Digital Authoritarianism”
The writers complain about “China exporting ‘digital authoritarianism’ to illiberal regimes across the region. In Venezuela, Chinese telecommunication firm ZTE helped the Maduro regime establish the ‘fatherland ID card’ system, which it used to control not only voting, but the distribution of scarce food packages.”
As for the ID cards, the link provided by the writers notes that the “system could lead to abuses of privacy by Venezuela’s government.” Besides, which country does not require ID in order to cast a vote?
Why are the food packages scarce? What would one expect when the US has sanctions against Venezuela? It is quite disingenuous to criticize a government for food packages being scarce when that scarcity is caused by the writers’ own government. Moreover, the writers continue to use the word control pejoratively. Are the voting systems and economic distribution networks not a function of government implementation everywhere? If the writers want to insist that voting and the results are manipulated, then provide the evidence. Contrariwise, US observers endorsed the legitimacy of Venezuela’s May 2020 election; also, international observers were “unanimous in concluding that the elections were conducted fairly.” The link supplied by the writers is now dead, but the title reads: “For poor Venezuelans, a box of food may sway vote for Maduro.” While in Venezuela, a group of us visited the mercals — where food was being made affordable for the masses — where we were informed: “The Chavez administration does not want Venezuela’s food needs to be dependent on outside sources, so a concerted effort has been made to produce all foods locally.” Obviously that food independence is still a work in progress. Such progress is not made easier by being targeted by economic sanctions.
The writers make clear their anti-leftist and their anti-democracy views:
Leftist authoritarian regimes are consolidating control in Venezuela and Nicaragua. The populist left has returned to power in Bolivia in the form of the MAS party, in Argentina with the Peronists, and in Mexico with Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador and the Morena movement. In Peru, the recent election of Pedro Castillo, a teacher from Cajamarca with a radical left agenda, similarly raises alarm bells. Upcoming elections in the region raise the prospects for an even broader spread of the populist left, including the prospect of victory by Xiomara Castro in November 2021 elections in Honduras, a President Petro emerging from Colombia’s 2022 elections, or the return of Lula da Silva and his Workers’ Party in Brazil’s October 2022 elections.
Yikes! Democracy can be such a pain in the butt. As the anarchist professor Noam Chomsky wrote, “In the real world, elite dislike of democracy is the norm.”6 For American elitists, “the United States supports democracy if, and only if, the outcomes accord with its strategic and economic objectives.”7 That the US did and would seek “regime change” in Latin America is borne out by its Operation Condor.
Lazarus and Ellis attempt to justify the US’ machinations against Cuba and China:
China’s continued efforts to prop up the Cuban regime matters to U.S. national security. For both good and bad, Cuba is connected to the United States through geographic proximity, historical connections, and family ties. The U.S. government has long focused on violations of the freedoms and human rights of the Cuban people.
The language of Lazarus and Ellis is oleaginous. Having a focus on human rights violations is qualitatively different from opposing human rights violations and quantitatively different from supporting human rights violations, as the US did when it supported the Fulgencio Batista “regime” (to use the parlance of Lazarus and Ellis) in Cuba, which served American corporate and military interests while massacring his own people. How does the occupation of Guantánamo Bay, where prisoners of war languish in what Amnesty International called the “gulag of our time”; the Bay of Pigs fiasco; Operation Northwoods; and economic sanctions speak for American fidelity to human rights?
The writers with ties to the US military accuse China of a “malign intent against the U.S. in cyberspace.” They reason that “Cuba could also be an area from which China could gather intelligence and conduct cyberattacks against the United States.”
The writers speculate about a malign Chinese intent. Malign intent is evidenced by the Stuxnet virus that the USA and Israel inserted into the Iranian nuclear program. The authors write as if the US is not guilty of the malignity they assert that China is guilty of.
How the United States Can Respond
Lazarus and Ellis argue that the US “should concentrate on helping partners in the region to engage with China in the most healthy, productive ways. For example, an emphasis on transparency inhibits the ability to engage in corrupt backroom deals with the Chinese that benefit the elites signing the deals rather than the country as a whole.”
Helping partners and advocating for transparency is great. Is this what the US does? It would be foolish to deny that the US does not engage with corrupt rulers, rulers who siphon off the loans meant for the people of the country who are then held responsible for the odious debt to the financial lenders?8
Lazarus and Ellis write, “With respect to cybersecurity, the United States should similarly look to increase support to partners in protecting their citizens’ privacy and security from malign actors like China.”
Let’s leave aside the unsupported allegation that China might be a malign actor. Instead, let’s ask what kind of actor is the US? Is it a benevolent actor? This is the actor that just recently ended a two-decade war in impoverished Afghanistan — a country where the US engaged in a cycle of war crimes. Ask yourself: is it a benevolent actor who engages in disinformation campaigns against countries like China that have eradicated absolute poverty (while in the US a 2019 measure of poverty showed a rate of 10.5%) and accuse it of the scurrilous and easily debunked allegation of committing genocide in Xinjiang? Is it an upstanding country that pursues the locking away of Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes in Iraq and elsewhere?
The writers suggest part of the solution for escaping Chinese spying is cybersecurity training by the US.
Is that a good idea — trusting Uncle Sam? If you get trained by the US and use US technology, then you might end up being surveilled by the US. Ask German chancellor Angela Merkel and dozens of other world leaders.
Lazarus and Ellis persist:
While recent events in Cuba show China’s growing influence in the region, the CCP’s emphatic support of the Cuban regime’s repressive acts also highlights that it is on the wrong side of history. The U.S. must deepen partnerships with Latin American countries and Caribbean friends.
Was the US on the right side of history in Korea, Viet Nam, Cambodia, Laos, historical Palestine, Iraq, Iran, Haiti, Chile, Grenada, etc? How should countries like Guatemala, Honduras, Chile, Venezuela, Argentina, Bolivia and the other Latin American countries targeted by Operation Condor feel about a deepened partnership? And how would the peoples of Caribbean countries — e.g., Haiti, Grenada, Puerto Rico, etc — feel about a deepened partnership with the US?
Lazarus and Ellis proffer the haggard imperialist platitudes of partnership based on shared values, security, prosperity, and freedom. Which populations would they like to tempt with such an offer? To the people who experienced US-supported coups in Nicaragua, Honduras, Haiti, Bolivia, Brazil, or the masses in Venezuela subjected to unceasing American-government intrigues against their country? There is a reason why Latin Americans and Caribbean countries are leftists or turning leftward.
This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Once again, in confronting the greatest immediate challenge facing humanity, U.S. imperialism has played only a disruptive role. The drive to maximize profits and assert global dominance has pushed Washington to recklessly exacerbate the deadly COVID-19 health crisis. What does U.S. imperialism hope to gain by blocking the World Health Organization’s inquiry into COVID with the demand that the WHO Inquiry focus on blaming China? This intentionally blocks an international initiative which needs full cooperation.
The post The COVID Challenge − Cooperation Or Competition appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
Jonah Goldberg and Michael Ledeen have much in common. They are both writers and also cheerleaders for military interventions and, often, for frivolous wars. Writing in the conservative rag, The National Review, months before the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, Goldberg paraphrased a statement which he attributed to Ledeen with reference to the interventionist US foreign policy.
“Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business,” Goldberg wrote, quoting Ledeen.
Those like Ledeen, the neoconservative intellectual henchman type, often get away with this kind of provocative rhetoric for various reasons. American intelligentsias, especially those who are close to the center of power in Washington DC, perceive war and military intervention as the foundation and baseline of their foreign policy analysis. The utterances of such statements are usually conveyed within friendly media and intellectual platforms, where equally hawkish, belligerent audiences cheer and laugh at the war-mongering muses. In the case of Ledeen, the receptive audience was the hardline, neoconservative, pro-Israel American Enterprise Institute (AEI).
Predictably, AEI was one of the loudest voices urging for a war and invasion of Iraq prior to that calamitous decision by the George W. Bush Administration, which was enacted in March 2003.
Neoconservatism, unlike what the etymology of the name may suggest, was not necessarily confined to conservative political circles. Think tanks, newspapers and media networks that purport – or are perceived – to express liberal and even progressive thought today, like The New York Times, The Washington Post and CNN, have dedicated much time and space to promoting an American invasion of Iraq as the first step of a complete US geostrategic military hegemony in the Middle East.
Like the National Review, these media networks also provided unhindered space to so-called neoconservative intellectuals who molded American foreign policy based on some strange mix between their twisted take on ethics and morality and the need for the US to ensure its global dominance throughout the 21st century. Of course, the neocons’ love affair with Israel has served as the common denominator among all individuals affiliated with this intellectual cult.
The main – and inconsequential – difference between Ledeen, for example, and those like Thomas Friedman of The New York Times, is that the former is brazen and blunt, while the latter is delusional and manipulative. For his part, Friedman also supported the Iraq war, but only to bring ‘democracy’ to the Middle East and to fight ‘terrorism’. The pretense ‘war on terror’, though misleading if not outright fabricated, was the overriding American motto in its invasion of Iraq and, earlier, Afghanistan. This mantra was readily utilized whenever Washington needed to ‘pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall’.
Even those who genuinely supported the war based on concocted intelligence – that Iraqi President Saddam Hussein, possessed weapons of mass destruction, or the equally fallacious notion that Saddam and Al-Qaeda cooperated in any way – must, by now, realize that the entire American discourse prior to the war had no basis in reality. Unfortunately, war enthusiasts are not a rational bunch. Therefore, neither they, nor their ‘intellectuals’, should be expected to possess the moral integrity in shouldering the responsibility for the Iraq invasion and its horrific consequences.
If, indeed, the US wars in the Middle East and Afghanistan were meant to fight and uproot terror, how is it possible that, in June 2014, an erstwhile unknown group calling itself the ‘Islamic State’ (IS), managed to flourish, occupy and usurp massive swathes of Iraqi and Syrian territories and resource under the watchful eye of the US military? If the other war objective was bringing stability and democracy to the Middle East, why did many years of US ‘state-building’ efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan, for example, leave behind nothing but weak, shattered armies and festering corruption?
Two important events have summoned up these thoughts: US President Joe Biden’s ‘historic’ trip to Cornwall, UK, in June, to attend the 47th G7 summit and, two weeks later, the death of Donald Rumsfeld, who is widely depicted as “the architect of the Iraq war”. The tone struck by Biden throughout his G7 meetings is that ‘America is back’, another American coinage similar to the earlier phrase, the ‘great reset’ – meaning that Washington is ready to reclaim its global role that had been betrayed by the chaotic policies of former President Donald Trump.
The newest phrase – ‘America is back’ – appears to suggest that the decision to restore the US’ uncontested global leadership is, more or less, an exclusively American decision. Moreover, the term is not entirely new. In his first speech to a global audience at the Munich Security Conference on February 19, Biden repeated the phrase several times with obvious emphasis.
“America is back. I speak today as President of the United States, at the very start of my administration and I am sending a clear message to the world: America is back,” Biden said, adding that “the transatlantic alliance is back and we are not looking backward, we are looking forward together.”
Platitudes and wishful thinking aside, the US cannot possibly return to a previous geopolitical standing, simply because Biden has made an executive decision to ‘reset’ his country’s traditional relationships with Europe – or anywhere else, either. Biden’s actual mission is to merely whitewash and restore his country’s tarnished reputation, marred not only by Trump, but also by years of fruitless wars, a crisis of democracy at home and abroad and an impending financial crisis resulting from the US’ mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. Unfortunately for Washington, while it hopes to ‘look forward’ to the future, other countries have already staked claims to parts of the world where the US has been forced to retreat, following two decades of a rudderless strategy that is fueled by the belief that firepower alone is sufficient to keep America aloft forever.
Though Biden was received warmly by his European hosts, Europe is likely to proceed cautiously. The continent’s geostrategic interests do not fall entirely in the American camp, as was once the case. Other new factors and power players have emerged in recent years. China is now the European bloc’s largest trade partner and Biden’s scare tactics warning of Chinese global dominance have not, seemingly, impressed the Europeans as the Americans had hoped. Following Britain’s unceremonious exit from the EU bloc, the latter urgently needs to keep its share of the global economy as large as possible. The limping US economy will hardly make the substantial deficit felt in Europe. Namely, the China-EU relationship is here to stay – and grow.
There is something else that makes the Europeans wary of whatever murky political doctrine Biden is promoting: dangerous American military adventurism.
The US and Europe are the foundation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) which, since its inception in 1949, was almost exclusively used by the US to assert its global dominance, first in the Korean Peninsula in 1950, then everywhere else.
Following the September 11 attacks, Washington used its hegemony over NATO to invoke Article 5 of its Charter, that of collective defense. The consequences were dire, as NATO members, along with the US, were embroiled in their longest wars ever, military conflicts that had no consistent strategy, let alone measurable goals. Now, as the US licks its wounds as it leaves Afghanistan, NATO members, too, are leaving the devastated country without a single achievement worth celebrating. Similar scenarios are transpiring in Iraq and Syria, too.
Rumsfeld’s death on June 29, at the age of 88, should serve as a wake-up call to American allies if they truly wish to avoid the pitfalls and recklessness of the past. While much of the US corporate media commemorated the death of a brutish war criminal with amiable non-committal language, some blamed him almost entirely for the Iraq fiasco. It is as if a single man had bent the will of the West-dominated international community to invade, pillage, torture and destroy entire countries. If so, then Rumsfeld’s death should usher in an exciting new dawn of collective peace, prosperity and security. This is not the case.
Rationalizing his decision to leave Afghanistan in a speech to the nation in April 2021, Biden did not accept, on behalf of his country, responsibility over that horrific war. Instead, he spoke of the need to fight the ‘terror threat’ in ‘many places’, instead of keeping ‘thousands of troops grounded and concentrated in just one country’.
Indeed, a close reading of Biden’s decision to withdraw from Afghanistan – a process which began under Trump – suggests that the difference between US foreign policy under Biden is only tactically different from the policies of George W. Bush when he launched his ‘preemptive wars’ under the command of Rumsfeld. Namely, though the geopolitical map may have shifted, the US appetite for war remains insatiable.
Shackled with a legacy of unnecessary, fruitless and immoral wars, yet with no actual ‘forward’ strategy, the US, arguably for the first time since the inception of NATO in the aftermath of World War II, has no decipherable foreign policy doctrine. Even if such a doctrine exists, it can only be materialized through alliances whose relationships are constructed on trust and confidence. Despite the EU’s courteous reception of Biden in Cornwall, trust in Washington is at an all-time low.
Even if it is accepted, without any argument, that America is, indeed, back, considering the vastly changing geopolitical spheres in Europe, the Middle East and Asia, Biden’s assertion should, ultimately, make no difference.
The post US Foreign Policy Adrift: Why Washington is No Longer Calling the Shots first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Image: Courtesy of @AnonymousTibet
Our Twitter team received a report today from @AnonymousTibet that an English psychologist, Susan Mitchie; a key advisor to the British Government on manipulating and influencing public behavior, has jointly authored a paper (published by the University College London) which advocates children being injected, with what in truth is an unlicensed and experimental genetically modified product. The mid and long term health impacts of these drugs are unknown, while the worrying numbers of adverse health damage, and fatalities following current injections is being ignored and unexamined by governments, public health bodies and media.
None of this seems to bother Ms Mitchie, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party and admirer of the Chinese Regime.
The paper may be read here: https://www.docdroid.net/pyIMKdR/vaccines-children-18211-pdf
This post was originally published on TIBET, ACTIVISM AND INFORMATION.
Zack Beauchamp in VOX of 28 July 2021 makes a strong but perhaps controversial plea that “In the fight for democracy’s future, Indian and American politics is more important than anything China is doing“:
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One of the emerging tenets of the Biden presidency is that the United States and China are locked in ideological conflict over the fate of democracy.
In March, during his first press conference as president, he declared that “this is a battle between the utility of democracies in the 21st century and autocracies.” In April, during his first address to a joint session of Congress, he labeled this struggle “the central challenge of the age” — and that China’s Xi Jinping is “deadly earnest about becoming the most significant, consequential nation in the world.”
More recently, in last week’s CNN town hall, he warned that Xi “truly believes that the 21st century will be determined by oligarchs, [that] democracies cannot function in the 21st century. The argument is, because things are moving so rapidly, so, so rapidly that you can’t pull together a nation that is divided to get a consensus on acting quickly.”
Inasmuch as there is a Biden doctrine, the notion that the US needs to protect democracy from China’s authoritarian model is at the center of it. “Biden’s administration [is] framing the contest as a confrontation of values, with America and its democratic allies standing against the model of authoritarian repression that China seeks to impose on the rest of the world,” Yaroslav Trofimov writes in the Wall Street Journal.
Biden’s thinking captures an important insight: that the struggle over democracy’s fate will be one of the defining conflicts of the 21st century. But his analysis is crucially flawed in one respect: China is not an especially important reason why democracy is currently under threat — and centering it is not only wrong, but potentially dangerous.
In countries where democracy is at real risk of collapse or even outright defeated — places like India, Brazil, Hungary, Israel, and, yes, the United States — the real drivers of democratic collapse are domestic. Far-right parties are taking advantage of ethno-religious divides and public distrust in the political establishment to win electorally — and then twist the rules to entrench their own hold on power. Leaders of these factions, like former US President Donald Trump and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, aid and abet each other’s anti-democratic politics.
More traditional authoritarian states, even powerful ones like China or Russia, have thus far played at best marginal roles in this struggle.
“Much of the recent global democratic backsliding has little to do with China,” Thomas Carothers and Frances Brown, two leading experts on democracy, write in a recent Foreign Affairs essay. “An overriding focus on countering China and Russia risks crowding out policies to address the many other factors fueling democracy’s global decline.”
This misdiagnosis has real policy stakes. Leaning into competition with China could lead the US to excuse anti-democratic behavior by important partners, like Modi or the Philippines’ Rodrigo Duterte, in a manner reminiscent of US relations with anti-communist dictators during the Cold War. Moreover, too much emphasis on competition with China could distract from the place where Biden has the most power to affect democracy’s fate — the home front, an area in which voting rights advocates increasingly see him as indefensibly complacent.
There are real problems associated with China’s rise. Its increasing military belligerence, predatory economic practices, and horrific human rights abuses in places like Xinjiang are all very serious concerns. But the fact that China is the source of many real issues doesn’t mean it’s the source of democratic erosion worldwide — and positioning it as such will do little to advance the democratic cause.
In his public rhetoric, Biden often argues that the US needs to prove that democracy “works” — that it can “get something done,” as he said last week — in order to outcompete the Chinese model.
While he hasn’t spelled out the nature of this competition all that precisely, the concern seems to center on Chinese policy success: that its rapid economic growth and authoritarian ability to make swift policy changes will inspire political copycats unless democracies prove that they can also deliver real benefits for their citizens.
“I believe we are in the midst of an historic and fundamental debate about the future direction of our world,” the president wrote in a March letter outlining his national security strategy. “There are those who argue that, given all the challenges we face, autocracy is the best way forward. And there are those who understand that democracy is essential to meeting all the challenges of our changing world.”
But at this point, the fear of Chinese political competition is mostly hypothetical. While the Chinese government and state media frequently tout the superiority of its political model to American-style democracy, there’s little evidence that these efforts are all that influential globally — and certainly not in the countries where democracy is most at risk.
A look back at the Soviet Union, the last major challenge to the hegemony of liberal democracy, is telling. ln ideological terms, there’s no comparison: Soviet communism was a far more powerful model than Chinese authoritarian state capitalism is today.
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Marxist ideals inspired revolutionary Communist movements and governments around the globe, successfully toppling Western-backed governments in countries ranging from Cuba to Vietnam to China itself. By contrast, there are vanishingly few foreign governments or even political parties today openly vowing to emulate modern China. While the Soviets had the Iron Curtain in Europe, modern China’s most notable client state is North Korea — perhaps the most isolated and mistrusted government on the planet.
In the countries that observers worry most about — established democratic states experiencing “backsliding” toward authoritarianism — Chinese influence is minimal at best.
In backsliding democracies, authoritarian-inclined leaders win and hold power through the electoral system for domestic reasons. Corruption scandals in India and Hungary, violent crime in the Philippines, a racist backlash against America’s first Black president: These are some of the key factors in the rise of authoritarian populists, and they weren’t created or even significantly promoted by China.
Elected authoritarians still bill themselves as defenders of democracy while in power — even after they start undermining the electoral system with tactics like extreme gerrymandering and takeovers of state election agencies. Their political appeal isn’t grounded in an overt rejection of democracy in favor of a Chinese model, but rather a claim to be taking democracy back from corrupt elites in the name of the “true” people, typically defined in ethno-nationalist terms.
The ideology driving modern democratic decline is vastly different from the sort that China promotes at home and through official state media. It represents a home-grown challenge inside the democratic world, rather than an externally stoked, Cold War-style threat.
That’s not to say China does nothing to undermine democracy outside its borders. It has, for example, exported surveillance technology and provided training in “cybersecurity” for foreign officials that amount to teaching them tools for controlling public opinion — underscoring its role as a global pioneer in using technology to repress dissent.
Yet even in this area, China’s influence can easily be overstated. Backsliding countries typically do not ban websites outright or arrest online dissidents in the way China does. Instead, they rely on spreading misinformation and other more subtle uses of state power. When they do use more traditional authoritarian tools, they often don’t need China’s help in doing so — as shown by recent reporting on Israel’s NSO Group, a company with close links to the Israeli state that sold spy software to India and Hungary (whose governments allegedly used it to surveil journalists and opposition figures).
In his recent book The Rise of Digital Repression, Carnegie Endowment scholar Steven Feldstein attempts to systematically document the use of digital tools and tactics for undermining democracy around the world. He found that while such practices were indeed becoming more widespread, this is largely due to domestic factors in authoritarian and backsliding countries rather than Chinese influence.
“China really wasn’t pushing this technology any more so than other countries were pushing advanced technology or censorship technologies,” he told me in an interview earlier this year. “What I saw — when I spoke on the ground to intelligence officials, government officials, and others — was that there were many other factors at play that were much more determinative in terms of whether they would choose to purchase a surveillance system or use it than just the fact that China was trying to market it.”
Biden and his team recognize that many of the challenges to democracy have domestic roots. But in casting the rise of anti-democratic populism as part of a grander ideological struggle against an authoritarian Chinese model, they conflate two distinct phenomena — and risk making some significant policy errors.
Again, an analogy to the Cold War is helpful here. One of the most grievous errors of America’s containment policy was its repeated willingness to align itself with anti-communist dictators. The perceived need to stop the expansion of Soviet influence consistently trumped America’s commitment to democracy — with horrific consequences for the people of Iran, Argentina, Indonesia, and Bangladesh (to name just a handful of examples from a very long list).
The more China is treated like the new Soviet Union — the principal ideological threat to democracy whose influence must be curtailed — the more likely the US is to repeat that mistake.
Take India, for example. In the past six months, Biden has courted Modi’s government as a potential counterweight to China. “There are few relationships in the world that are more vital than one between the U.S. and India. We are the world’s two leading democracies,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a July 28 press conference in New Delhi.
Yet this is an Indian government that has assailed the rights of its Muslim citizens, strong-armed US social media companies into removing critical posts, and arrested a leading protest figure. Earlier this year, V-Dem — a research group behind the leading academic metric of democracy — announced that India under Modi was an “electoral autocracy,” rather than a true democracy. It’s easy to see how an emphasis on China could lead to these problems getting swept under the rug.
“There has long been a bipartisan consensus in Washington that India is a critical ally in its attempt to check Chinese influence in Asia,” the Indian intellectual Pankaj Mishra wrote in a June Bloomberg column. “In overlooking the Modi government’s excesses, Biden probably counts on support from a US foreign policy establishment invested more in realpolitik than human rights.”
If you take the notion that democracy’s crisis is emerging from within seriously, then it follows that very best thing that Biden could do for democracy’s global future has nothing to do with China or even foreign policy. It’s arresting creeping authoritarianism at home.
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Biden has acknowledged this at times, writing in his March letter that his global strategy “begins with the revitalization of our most fundamental advantage: our democracy.” And yet that urgency hasn’t translated into action — legislation necessary to safeguard American democracy from the GOP’s increasingly anti-democratic politics appears stalled out. Biden, for his part, has refused to publicly endorse more aggressive action to break the logjam — like abolishing the filibuster for voting rights bills.
The New York Times recently reported that “in private calls with voting rights groups and civil rights leaders, White House officials and close allies of the president have expressed confidence that it is possible to ‘out-organize voter suppression’” — an implausible claim that reflects an administration that, according to activists, has “largely accepted the Republican restrictions as baked in and is now dedicating more of its effort to juicing Democratic turnout.”
Shoring up American democracy after the recent attacks it has suffered should be the top priority of any US government concerned with democracy’s global fate. But for all of Biden’s lofty language about out-competing China and winning the future for democracy, there’s a striking lack of urgency when it comes to the perhaps the most important backsliding country — his own.
In this sense, China has very little influence over the future of democracy globally. The key battles are happening not in the South China Sea or the Taiwan Strait, but in the legislatures of New Delhi and Washington. If there really is to be a grand struggle for democracy’s survival in the 21st century, it needs to start there.
https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/22590777/biden-china-democracy-voting-india-doctrine
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
The ISHR and 17 other organisations (see below for their names) share reflections on the key outcomes of the 47th session of the UN Human Rights Council, as well as the missed opportunities to address key issues and situations. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/06/22/key-issues-affecting-hrds-in-47th-session-of-un-human-rights-council-june-2021/
We deplore the systemic underfunding of the UN human rights system and the drive for so-called efficiency, including the cancellation of general debates in June, which are a vital part of the agenda by which NGOs can address the Council without restrictions. We call for the reinstatement of general debates at all sessions, with the option of civil society participation through video statements. We welcome the focus of the civil society space resolution on the critical role played by civil society in the COVID-19 response, and the existential threats to civil society engendered or exacerbated by the pandemic. For the resolution to fulfil its goal, States must now take action to address these threats; while we welcome the broad support indicated by a consensus text, this cannot come at the cost of initiatives that will protect and support civil society.
We welcome a resolution on the promotion, protection and enjoyment of human rights on the Internet and its thematic focus on bridging digital divides, an issue which has become ever-important during the COVID-19 pandemic. We urge all States to implement the resolution by taking concrete measures to enhance Internet accessibility and affordability and by ceasing Internet shutdowns and other disruptions, such as website blocking and filtering and network throttling. In future iterations of the text, we encourage the core group to go further in mentioning concrete examples that could be explored by States in adopting alternative models for expanding accessibility, such as the sharing of infrastructure and community networks. We welcome the resolution on new and emerging digital technologies and human rights, which aims to promote a greater role for human rights in technical standard-setting processes for new and emerging digital technologies, and in the policies of States and businesses. While aspects of the resolution risk perpetuating “technology solutionism”, we welcome that it places a stronger focus on the human rights impacts of new and emerging digital technologies since the previous version of the resolution, such as introducing new language reiterating the importance of respecting and promoting human rights in the conception, design, use, development, further deployment and impact assessments of such technologies.
We are concerned by the increasing number of amendments and attempts to weaken the texts. We are particularly concerned by the continued resistance of many States to previously adopted texts and States’ willful misinterpretation of key concepts related in resolutions on human rights in the context of HIV and AIDS, accelerating efforts to eliminate all forms of violence against women and girls: preventing and responding to all forms of violence against women and girls with disabilities and preventable maternal mortality and morbidity and human rights on maternal morbidities. We deplore the instrumentalising of women’s rights and sexual and reproductive health and rights. We encourage States to center the rights of people most affected and adopt strong texts on these resolutions. We welcome the resolution on menstrual hygiene management, human rights and gender equality as the first step in addressing deep-rooted stigma and discrimination. We urge all States to address the root causes for the discrimination and stigma on menstruation and its impact.
The High Commissioner’s report highlighted the long-overdue need to confront legacies of slavery, the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans and colonialism and to seek reparatory justice. We welcome the historic consensus decision, led by the Africa Group, to adopt a resolution mandating an independent international expert mechanism to address systemic racism and promote racial justice and equality for Africans and people of African descent. The adoption of this resolution is testament to the resilience, bravery and commitment of victims, their families, their representatives and anti-racism defenders globally. We deplore efforts by some Western States, particularly former colonial powers, to weaken the text and urge them to now cooperate fully with the mechanism to dismantle systemic racism, ensure accountability and reparations for past and present gross human rights violations against Black people, end impunity for racialized State violence and address the root causes, especially the legacies of enslavement, colonialism, and the transatlantic trade in enslaved Africans.
Whilst we welcome the return of a resolution on human rights of migrants, we deplore the continued failure of the Council to respond meaningfully to the severity and global scale of human rights violations at international borders including connected to pushbacks. International borders are not and must not be treated as places outside of international human rights law. Migrants are not and must not be treated as people outside of international human rights law. Expressions of deep concern in interactive dialogues must be translated into action on independent monitoring and accountability.
We welcome the resolution on the impact of arms transfers on human rights and its focus on children and youth. However, we note with concern the resistance of the Council to meaningfully focus on legal arms transfers beyond those diverted, unregulated or illicitly transferred. The Council should be concerned with all negative human rights impacts of arms transfers, without focusing only on those stemming from diversion and unregulated or illicit trade.
We are disappointed that the resolution on human rights and climate change fails to establish a new Special Rapporteur. However, we welcome the increasing cross regional support for a new mandate. It is a matter of urgent priority for the Council to establish it this year.
While special procedures, the OHCHR and multiple States have recognized the intensifying Algerian authorities’ crackdown on freedom of association and expression, the Council failed to act to protect Algerians striving to advance human rights and democracy.
We welcome the renewal of the mandate of the UN Special Rapporteur on Belarus. Given the ongoing human rights crisis in Belarus, the mandate complements the OHCHR Examination in ensuring continuous monitoring of the situation, and the mandate remains an accessible and safe channel for Belarusian civil society to deliver diverse and up-to-date information from within the country.
The Council has once again failed to respond meaningfully to grave human rights violations committed by Chinese authorities. We reiterate our call on the High Commissioner and member States to take decisive action toward accountability.
We are disappointed that few States made mention of the use of excessive force against protestors in a context of serious human rights violations, including systemic racism, and urge greater resolve in support of the right to freedom of peaceful assembly in the country and globally
The resolution on Ethiopia’s Tigray region, albeit modest in its scope and language, ensures much-needed international scrutiny and public discussions on one of Africa’s worst human rights crises. We urge the Ethiopian government to engage ahead of HRC48.
We welcome the extension of the mandate of the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea, as scrutiny for violations committed at home and in Tigray is vital.
We warmly welcome the joint statement delivered by Canada on behalf of 59 States, on harassment and detention of journalists, human rights defenders, and presidential pre-candidates, urging Nicaragua to engage with the international community and take meaningful steps for free and fair elections. States should closely monitor the implementation of resolution 46/2, and send a strong collective message to Nicaragua at the 48th session of the Council, as the Council should ‘urgently consider all measures within its power’ to strengthen human rights protection in the country.
We welcome the Special Rapporteur’s report that “Israeli settlements are the engine of this forever occupation, and amount to a war crime,” emphasizing that settler colonialism infringes on “the right of the indigenous population […] to be free from racial and ethnic discrimination and apartheid.” We also reiterate his recommendation to the High Commissioner “to regularly update the database of businesses involved in settlements, in accordance with Human Rights Council resolution 31/36.”
While acknowledging the signing of the Joint Human Rights Programme with the UN OHCHR, the Government of the Philippines fails to address the long-standing issues on law enforcement and accountability institutions, including in the context of war on drugs. We continue to urge the Council to launch the long-overdue independent and transparent investigation on the on-going human rights violations.
We welcome mounting recognition for the need to establish a mechanism to reveal the fate and whereabouts of the missing in Syria, including by UN member states during the interactive dialogue on Syria, and the adoption of the resolution on Syria addressing the issue of the missing and emphasizing the centrality of victim participation, building on the momentum created by the Syrian Charter for Truth and Justice.
In the context of the recent arbitrary detention of 3 defenders from NGO Fundaredes, we welcome the denunciation by several States of persistent restrictions on civil society and again for visits of Special Rapporteurs to be accepted and accelerated.
*American Civil Liberties Union, Association for Progressive Communications, Cairo Institute for Human Rights Studies, Centro de Estudios Legales y Sociales (CELS), Center for Reproductive Rights, Child Rights Connect, CIVICUS: World Alliance for Citizen Participation, Commonwealth Human Rights Initiative, Conectas Direitos Humanos, Egyptian Initiative for Personal Rights, FIDH, Franciscans International, Human Rights House Foundation, International Bar Association’s Human Rights Institute, International Commission of Jurists, International Lesbian and Gay Association, International Service for Human Rights, US Human Rights Network
https://ishr.ch/latest-updates/hrc47-civil-society-presents-key-takeaways-from-human-rights-council/
This post was originally published on Hans Thoolen on Human Rights Defenders and their awards.
During this bleak period, in late February 2021, China’s president Xi Jinping announced that – counter to this general global downturn – China had eradicated extreme poverty. What does this announcement mean? As our team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research reported last month, it means that 850 million people had climbed out of absolute poverty , that their per capita income had increased to US$10,000, and that life expectancy had increased to 77.3 years on average. Having met the poverty reduction SDGs ten years in advance, China contributed to more than 70% of the world’s total poverty reduction. In March 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres celebrated this achievement as a ‘reason for hope and inspiration to the entire community of nations’.
The post China Eradicates Absolute Poverty While Billionaires Go for a Joyride to Space appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.
This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.
China is providing the equivalent scaremongering of the Soviet “missile gap” in order to sustain America’s militarist-dependent capitalist economy.
Media reports from the U.S. this week – regurgitated by the European press – highlighted concerns that China is embarking on a massive scale-up of underground silos for launching nuclear weapons.
Hundreds of silos are alleged to be under construction in the western regions of Xinjiang and Gansu, according to U.S. media reports citing commercial satellite data. American military officials and State Department diplomats are quoted as saying they are “deeply concerned” by the purported expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal.
For its part, Beijing has not yet commented on the claims of new nuclear silos. Some Chinese media reports say that the excavation could be due to something else entirely – the construction of large-scale wind farms. A Global Times dismissed the U.S. claims as “hyped”.
Context, as ever, is crucial. For a start, the U.S. headlines are equivocal and heavily qualified, indicating that the information is far from conclusive.
The Wall Street Journal reported: “China Appears to Be Building New Silos for Nuclear Missiles, Researchers Say”.
While CNN headlined: “China appears to be expanding its nuclear capabilities, U.S. researchers say in new report”.
Despite the lack of definite information that didn’t stop Pentagon and government officials from saying they were “deeply concerned”, thus adding a veneer of factuality to reports that were speculative.
Here’s another consideration. So what if China is expanding its nuclear arsenal with new silos? The People’s Republic of China has a stockpile of warheads numbering 350. The United States has a stockpile of some 5,550 warheads, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The U.S. has a nuclear offensive power 15 times greater than China. So even if China is planning to double its arsenal of nuclear weapons, according to the Pentagon, that increase is still a fraction of American destructive capability.
Beijing maintains that the onus is on Washington to de-escalate its nuclear arsenal. The United States and Russia have resumed talks this week in Geneva on renewing arms-control efforts – efforts that have been put on hold by Washington since the Trump administration. Washington and Moscow – both possessing over 90 percent of the world’s total nuclear warheads – need to get on with their obligations for disarmament before China is reasonably brought into the discussion, along with other minor nuclear powers, such as Britain and France.
Another consideration for context is the ramping up of hostility by the United States towards China. The Biden administration is continuing the aggressive agenda of its Trump and Obama predecessors. Arming the renegade Chinese island territory of Taiwan, sailing warships into the South China Sea, media vilification of China over allegations of human rights abuses, genocide, malign conduct in trade, cyber attacks, and the Covid-19 pandemic. All of this speaks of stoking confrontation with China and inflaming U.S. public opinion to accept war with China.
Pentagon officials tell Congressional hearings that they consider war with China a distinct possibility in the near term.
Given this context, it would be reasonable to expect China to expand its nuclear defenses in order to shift the American calculation away from contemplating a war. The problem is not the alleged Chinese military buildup. It is Washington’s criminal policy of hostility towards Beijing that is fueling the risk of war.
But here is another key factor: the United States is undergoing a trillion-dollar upgrade of its nuclear arsenal. That began under Obama and was continued under Trump and now Biden. That puts alleged Chinese expansion into perspective. The United States has already nuclear power that dwarfs China’s and yet the U.S. is expanding what is a provocative threat to China.
Furthermore, Washington’s nuclear upgrade of its triad of submarines, silo-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and strategic bombers is hurtling out of control financially.
A recent report by the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office warned that the trillion-dollar nuclear upgrade was ballooning with “stupefyingly expensive” cost overruns. In just two years, the cost was over-budget by $140 billion and the upgrade program is to run for a total of three decades.
This eye-watering waste of taxpayers’ money has led some U.S. lawmakers to call for drastic cuts in nuclear arms expenditure. Senator Ed Markey and others have decried “our bloated nuclear weapons budget”. Given the crumbling state of America’s civilian infrastructure, popular opposition to exorbitant military spending is potentially a major political problem for the Pentagon and its industrial complex.
The U.S. media hype over the alleged expansion of Chinese silos begins to look like déjà vu of the alleged “missile gap” with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In the 1950s and 60s, Washington and the compliant corporate media became animated by CIA data that purported to show the Soviet Union outpacing the U.S. in the numbers of nuclear missiles. It turned out that the “missile gap” was non-existent. But the fear-mongering it engendered, in turn, created public acceptance of massive military expenditure by Washington that has become structural and chronic to this day. The warped allocation of financial resources is a parasitical drain on American society. Any rational, democratic mind would abhor the grotesque priorities.
China today is providing the equivalent scaremongering of the Soviet “missile gap” in order to sustain America’s militarist-dependent capitalist economy.
The post Security U.S. Fears of China Nuclear Expansion… Déjà Vu of Soviet Missile Gap Hype first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Proposed amendments allow government to sanction individuals for ‘gross human rights violations’ or serious corruption
Foreign government officials could face sanctions for “gross human rights violations” while corrupt business people could be banned from travelling to Australia and have their assets and bank accounts frozen.
New sanctions powers – announced by the Morrison government on Thursday and expected to be presented to parliament by the end of the year – will allow Australia to target “perpetrators of egregious acts of international concern”.
Related: ‘We will respond in kind’: China’s ambassador warns Australia not to join Xinjiang sanctions
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This post was originally published on Human rights | The Guardian.
Women who migrated to the Wangjia community participate in local activities at the community centre in Tongren City, Guizhou Province, April 2021.
Confounding news comes from the flagship World Economic Outlook report of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The report highlights many of the pressing issues facing our planet: disruptions in the global supply chain, rising shipping costs, shortages of intermediate goods, rising commodity prices, and inflationary pressures in many economies. Global growth rates are expected to touch 6% in 2021 and 4.9% in 2022, driven by higher global government debt. According to the report, this debt ‘reached an unprecedented level of close to 100% of the global GDP in 2020 and is projected to remain around that level in 2021 and 2022’. Developing countries’ external debt will remain high, with little expectation of relief.
Each year, IMF Chief Economist Gita Gopinath highlights the main themes of the report in her blog. This year, her blog has a clear headline: ‘Drawing Further Apart: Widening Gaps in the Global Recovery’. The rift runs along North-South lines, with the poorer nations unable to find an easy path out of the pandemic-induced global slowdown. A range of reasons cause this rift, such as the penalty of relying upon labour-intensive production, the overall poverty of the populations, and the long-standing problems of debt. But Gopinath focuses on one aspect: vaccine apartheid. ‘Close to 40 percent of the population in advanced economies has been fully vaccinated, compared with 11 percent in emerging market economies, and a tiny fraction in low-income developing countries’, she writes. The lack of vaccines, she argues, is the principal cause of the ‘widening gaps in the global recovery’.
Peasant workers till the land in an organic bamboo fungus company, which was established to help lift Longmenao, a village that is officially registered as poor, out of poverty in Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021.
These widening gaps have an immediate social impact. The UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation’s 2021 report, The State of Food Insecurity and Nutrition in the World, notes that ‘nearly one in three people in the world (2.37 billion) did not have access to adequate food in 2020 – an increase of almost 320 million people in just one year’. Hunger is intolerable. Food riots are now in evidence, most dramatically in South Africa. ‘They are just killing us with hunger here’, said one Durban resident who was motivated to join the unrest. These protests, as well as the new data released by the IMF and UN, have put hunger back on the global agenda.
In late July, the United Nations’ Economic and Social Council held a high-level political forum on sustainable development. The forum’s ministerial declaration recognised that ‘the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare and exacerbated our world’s vulnerabilities and inequalities within and among countries, accentuated systemic weaknesses, challenges, and risks and threatens to halt or damage progress made in realising the Sustainable Development Goals’. Seventeen Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) were adopted by the UN member states in 2015. These goals include poverty alleviation, an end to hunger, good health, and gender equality. Before the pandemic, it was already clear that the world would not meet these goals by 2030 as projected, certainly not even the most basic goal of eradicating hunger.
During this bleak period, in late February 2021, China’s president Xi Jinping announced that – counter to this general global downturn – China had eradicated extreme poverty. What does this announcement mean? As our team at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research reported last month, it means that 850 million people had climbed out of absolute poverty (the culmination of a seven-decade-long process that began with the Chinese Revolution of 1949), that their per capita income had increased to US$10,000 (a ten-fold increase in the last twenty years), and that life expectancy had increased to 77.3 years on average (compared to 35 years in 1949). Having met the poverty reduction SDGs ten years in advance, China contributed to more than 70% of the world’s total poverty reduction. In March 2021, UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres celebrated this achievement as a ‘reason for hope and inspiration to the entire community of nations’.
First Secretary Liu Yuanxue speaks with a local villager during routine home visits in the village of Danyang, Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021.
Our July study, Serve the People: The Eradication of Extreme Poverty in China, inaugurated a new series called Studies on Socialist Construction, through which we aim to study experiments in the construction of socialist practices from Cuba to Kerala, Bolivia to China. Serve the People is based on ground-level studies of poverty eradication schemes in different parts of China and on interviews with experts who participated in this long-term project. For instance, Wang Sangui, dean of the National Poverty Alleviation Research Institute of Renmin University, told us how the concept of multidimensional poverty is central to the Chinese approach. The concept became a policy through the Communist Party of China’s programme of ‘three guarantees’ (safe housing, healthcare, and education) and ‘two assurances’ (being fed and being clothed). But even here, the essence of this policy is in the details. As Wang put it in terms of drinking water:
How do you classify drinking water as safe? First, the basic requirement is that there must be no shortages in the water supply. Second, the source of water must not be too far, no more than twenty minutes round-trip for water retrieval. Last, the water quality must be safe, without any harmful substances. We require test reports that confirm the water quality is safe. Only then can we say that the standard is met.
Once a policy is crafted, the real work of implementation begins. The Communist Party (CPC) sent out 800,000 cadre to help local authorities survey households to understand the depth of poverty in the countryside. Then, the CPC delegated 3 million cadre out of the Party’s 95.1 million members to be part of 255,000 teams that spent years living in poor villages working towards the eradication of poverty and the social conditions it created. One team was assigned to a village, one cadre to each family.
The studies of poverty and the experience of the cadre resulted in five core methods for eradicating poverty: developing industry; relocating people; incentivising ecological compensation; guaranteeing free, quality, and compulsory education; and providing social assistance. The most powerful lever of these five methods was industrial development, which created capital-intensive agricultural production (including crop processing and animal breeding); restored farmlands; and grew forests as part of the ecological compensation schemes, reviving areas that had become prey to resource over-exploitation. In addition, an emphasis was placed on educating minority populations and women. As a result, by 2020, China ranked first in the world in the enrolment of women in tertiary education, according to the World Economic Forum.
Less than 10% of the people who lifted themselves out of poverty did so because of relocation, which was often the most dramatic instance of the programme. One relocated resident, Mou’se, told us about Atule’er, a village on the edge of a mountain, where he lived before relocating. ‘It took me half a day to climb down the cliff to buy a packet of salt’, he recalled. He would go down the cliff on a rattan ‘sky ladder’, which dangled perilously from the edge of the cliff. His relocation – along with the eighty-three other families who lived there – has allowed him to access better facilities and live a less precarious life.
The eradication of extreme poverty is significant, but it does not solve all problems. Social inequality in China remains a serious problem. These are not China’s problems alone but pressing problems facing humanity in our time. As we move to capital-intensive agriculture that requires fewer farmers, what kinds of habitations will we produce that are neither in rural nor urban areas? What kinds of employment can be generated for people who are no longer needed in the fields? Can we begin to think about a shorter work week, allowing more time to be civic and social?
A local food vendor and user of the Yishizhifu short video platform showcases her cooking in the village of Danyang, Wanshan District, Guizhou Province, April 2021.
Eradicating poverty is not a Chinese project. It is humanity’s goal. That is why movements and governments committed to this goal look carefully at the achievement of the Chinese people. Many of the projects in motion, however, take a dramatically different approach, seeking to address poverty by transferring income (as several South African research institutes advocate). But cash transfer schemes are not enough. Multidimensional poverty requires more than this. For example, Brazil’s Bolsa Familia programme, implemented by former President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, made an enormous dent in hunger in that country, but it was not designed to eradicate poverty.
Meanwhile, in the Indian state of Kerala, absolute poverty fell from 59.79% of the population in 1973-74 to 7.05% in 2011-2012 under the governance of the Left Democratic Front. The mechanisms that led to this dramatic decline were agrarian reform, establishing public health and education, creating a public distribution system for food, decentralising political authority to local self-governments, providing social security and welfare, and promoting public action (such as through the Kudumbashree cooperative projects). Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan said recently that his government is committed to eradicating extreme poverty in the state. The next study in our series on socialist construction will concentrate on Kerala’s cooperative movement, focusing on its role in the eradication of poverty, hunger, and patriarchy.
From the countryside to Tongren City, Guizhou Province, April 2021.
In March, the UN Environment Programme released its Food Waste Index Report, which showed that an estimated 931 million tonnes of food went into waste bins across the world. The weight of this food roughly equals that of 23 million fully loaded 40-tonne trucks. If we let these trucks stand bumper-to-bumper at the earth’s circumference, they would make a ring long enough to circle the earth seven times, or to go deep into space, where billionaires Jeff Bezos and Richard Branson decided to go. The $5.5 billion Bezos spent on a four-minute trip into space could have fed 37.5 million people or fully funded the COVAX programme that would vaccinate two billion people.
The ambitions of Bezos and Branson are not life. Life is the abolition of the harshness of necessity.
The post China Eradicates Absolute Poverty While Billionaires Go for a Joyride to Space first appeared on Dissident Voice.
This content originally appeared on Dissident Voice and was authored by Vijay Prashad.
This post was originally published on Radio Free.
Web Desk:
According to gadgets360, the meme craze has jumped out of our mobile phones into the offline world. Until now, most of us were addicted to scrolling our cell phones to check the new memes going viral on the Internet, but an art mall in Hong Kong has opened an exhibition to explore the most interesting cultural snapshots of how we communicate with each other in the 21st century. As memes have become a universal language, the exhibition is an attempt to celebrate the creativity of viral memes from around the world.
Hong Kong’s meme museum at the K11 Art Mall has created a buzz on social media and has overnight become a trending topic. The exhibition is being organized by 9GAG and K11 mall and showcases over 100 memes. The museum features the evolution of memes through 3D figures and imagery. It is indeed once in a lifetime experience.
The Meme Museum features seven zones themed around the “Troll Face,” “Doge,” “Disaster Girl”, “Drake” and more. The organizers said the other popular memes that have been included in the museum are: Wojak Feels Guy, Yao Ming, and Distracted Boyfriend.
But what has caught everyone’s attention is that the museum also features the “disappointed Pakistani fan”. Later identified as Sarim Akhtar, he had gotten upset with Pakistan’s performance against Australia during an ICC World Cup 2019 match. The sheer frustration on his face was captured by the cameras as Australia won the game by 41 runs.
According to a report by Hype beast, the museum also features the “Beyond the Meme” sensory 4-D interactive experience and the world’s first meme NFT artwork – titled In Meme We Love. The organizers have also set $100 cash prizes for those who create original memes during the exhibition that will continue till September 5.
This post was originally published on VOSA.
“Post-Pandemic” for many countries, especially western countries, is a dream. The west will have to wake up fast, if it doesn’t want to fall prey to a destructive plan of chaos, unemployment, bankruptcies, and, yes, famine – shifting of capital from the bottom and the middle to the top – and leaving misery at the bottom.
Not so for China. For China, the post-pandemic era is well under way.
When SARS-CoV-2, later renamed by WHO to Covid-19, hit Wuhan in January 2020, China was prepared. Chinese authorities proceeded with warp-speed to prevent the spread of this new corona disease, by a radical lockdown of Wuhan and extending it to Hubei Province. Later, other areas of risk were locked down, including about 80% of China’s production and manufacturing apparatus. The result was astounding. Within a few months, by about mid-2020, China was in control of Covid, and gradually started opening up crucial areas, including the production process, all the while maintaining strict protection measures.
By the end of 2020 China’s economy was practically working at full speed and achieving, according to IMF’s very conservative account, a 2.6% growth for the year. China’s own, and perhaps more realistic projections, were closer to 3.5%. IMF growth projections for China in 2021 stand at 8.4%. China’s economic expansion in 2022 is projected at 5.6%. This is way above any other country in the world.
Compare this with 2020 economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively. These are real figures. Not necessarily the published ones.
Future expansion in China takes into account that much of the projected growth over the coming years will be internal “horizontal” growth, helping China’s interior and western provinces catching up with infrastructure, research and development, as well as education facilities – increasing the overall level of well-being to reduce the gap with the highly-developed eastern areas.
China’s economic recovery and her industrial apparatus working at full speed is good for China and good for the world, because China had become in the past four decades or so the western principal supply chain, mainly the US and Europe. We are talking crucial supplies, such as medical equipment, medication and ingredients for medication. About 80% – 90% used in the west comes from China.
China’s rapid economic growth may be mostly attributed to two main factors: large-scale investments – financed by predominantly domestic savings and foreign capital and rapid productivity growth. These two features appear to have gone hand in hand.
China remains attractive for investors. In addition to medical equipment, China supplies the west and the world with electronic equipment and is meant to become one of the key developers and exporter of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to accelerate and facilitate research and manufacturing processes, while minimizing negative environmental impacts.
China’s outlook for the future is bright. However, a number of anormal factors have to be considered, for instance:
(i) The unresolved covid issues in the west, which may be reducing demand naturally or by force – possibly import restrictions for goods from China as a way of constant pressure on China;
(ii) Continuation of a direct and indirect trade and currency war on China. To the detriment of the US-dollar, China’s currency, the yuan and soon the digital yuan as international payment currency, independent from western controlled monetary transfer modes, is gaining rapidly in status as an international reserve money. According to some estimates, in five years the yuan may account for up to 30% of all world reserves. As a parenthesis, the US-dollar in the early 1990s amounted to more than 90% of worldwide reserve denominations; today that proportion has shrunk to less than 60%; and,
(iii) The west, led by Washington, is intent to harm China in whatever way they can. It will not succeed. Washington knows it. But it is a typical characteristic of a dying beast to lash around itself to destroy as much as possible in its surroundings before it collapses.
Just as an example which the world at large is probably unaware of, China is presently surrounded by about 1,400 US military bases, or bases of other countries which host US military equipment and personnel. About 60% of the US navy fleet is currently stationed in the South China Sea.
Just imagine what would happen, if China or any other super-power, would be surrounding the US with military basis and an aggressive Navy fleet!
China is constantly harassed, sanctioned and slandered with outright lies. One of the prevalent examples of defamations, is her alleged inhuman treatment of the Uyghurs in Xinjiang province. Total population of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in Northwestern China is about 26 million, of which some 12 million are Uyghurs, mostly of Muslim belief.
Uyghur Muslims are regularly recruited by US secret services from across the border with Afghanistan, sent to fight the Jihad in the Middle East, and when some of them return, China makes an effort to re-school and re-integrate them into society.
Could the real reason for this western aggression be that Xinjiang province, the largest and western-most province of China, is also a principal hub for the two or more main routes of the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – trans-Asia Routes, by rail through Pakistan to the Gwadar Port in the Persian Gulf, and possibly by road through the newly to become autonomous Afghanistan, connecting China with Iran?
China is perceived as a threat to western hegemonic thinking – to western-style globalization, which is the concept of a One World Order over a borderless western corporate and banking-controlled world – and because China is well positioned to become the world’s number one economy in absolute terms within a few years.
These are challenges to be kept in mind in planning China’s future economic development.
In fact, already today China is number one in PPP-terms (purchasing power parity), which is the only indicator that counts, namely how much of goods and services may be acquired with a unit of currency.
Taking these challenges into account, and following her non-aggressive and non-expansive moving-forward style, China may be embarking on a three-pronged development approach. Overarching this tactic may include China’s 2025 Plan and 2035/2050 vision: A strong emphasis on economic and defense autonomy.
(i) Outreach and connecting with the rest of the world through President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative, also called One Belt One Road (OBOR) which is patterned according to the ancient Silk Road more than 2,100 years ago, a peaceful trade route connecting Eastern China through Asia, Europe and the Middle East.
On a global scale, OBOR embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. OBOR offers their partners participation – no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind OBOR is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. OBOR may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid consequences and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.
OBOR is also aiming at a multi-polar world where partner countries would equally benefit through infrastructure, industrial joint ventures, cultural exchange, exploration of new renewable sources of energy, research and education projects working towards a joint future with prosperity for all.
Here is the distinction between the western and Chinese meaning of “globalization”. In the west, it means a unipolar world controlled by one hegemon, the US of A, with one army called NATO which forcibly holds the west, mainly Europe, together. NATO, with its 2.5 billion-dollars official budget – unofficially a multiple of this amount reaching into the trillions – spreads already with its tentacles into South America, Colombia.
Together the west, or Global North, is a conglomerate of NATO-vassal-countries with little autonomy as compared to Chinese globalization – meaning a multi-polar connection of countries, all the while OBOR-linked countries maintain their sovereignty. This is “globalization” with Chinese characteristics.
(ii) In a precautionary detachment from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation with her ASEAN partners. In November 2020, after 8 years of negotiations, China signed a free trade agreement with the ten ASEAN nations, plus Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand, altogether 15 countries, including China.
The so-called Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding about 30% of the world’s GDP. This is a never before reached agreement in size, value and tenor.
China and Russia have a longstanding strategic partnership, containing bilateral agreements that also enter into this new trade fold. The countries of the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU), consisting mostly of former Soviet Republics, as well as members of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.
The RCEP’s trade deals will be carried out in local currencies and in yuan – no US dollars. The RCEP is, therefore, also an instrument for dedollarizing, primarily in the Asia-Pacific Region, and gradually moving across the globe; and,
(iii) China will focus much of her future development on her internal and western regions – increase the standard of well-being of populations, infrastructure, research and development – industrial development, joint ventures, including with foreign capital. To achieve a better equilibrium between eastern and western China is crucial for socioeconomic sustainability.
This dual development approach, on the one hand, external trade with close ASEAN associates, as well as with OBOR partners; and on the other, achieving internal equilibrium and well-being, is a circular development, feeding on each other, minimizing risks and impacts of western adversary aggressions.
China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution speak for themselves. They are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western-influenced colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, but also by becoming food, health and education self-sufficient.
Coinciding with the 4 March 2021, opening of the Chinese People’s political Consultative Conference (CPPCC), Robert F. Kennedy Jr., late President John F. Kennedy’s nephew, asked the pertinent question, “Can We Forge a New Era of Humanity Before It’s Too Late?” – His answer is simple but lucid: “Unless we move from a civilization based on wealth accumulation to a life-affirming, ecological civilization, we will continue accelerating towards global catastrophe.”
This understanding is also at the forefront of China’s vision for the next 15 to 20 years – and beyond. A China-internal objective is an equitable development to well-being for all; and on a world-scale, a community with shared benefits for all.
The post China’s Post-Pandemic Growth: Reaching Out and Developing Internal Markets and Well-being first appeared on Dissident Voice.This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.
Beijing/ APP:
As part of the celebratory activities of 70 years of Pakistan-China diplomatic ties, five movies from Pakistan will be screened during a first-ever Pakistan Film Week starting here from Wednesday, Aug 04.
Pakistan Embassy, Beijing, and China-Film Administration have jointly organized the four-day film week to further enhance cultural exchanges and people to people contacts between the two countries.
The movies to be screened during the film week include Motorcycle Girl, Punjab Nahi Jaungi, Bin Roye, Ho Maan Jahan, and Blind Love. Two films will be screened on the last day of the film week. The movies will be screened with Chinese and English subtitle.
In November last year, “Parwaaz Hai Junoon” became the first Pakistan film to hit the silver screens in China first time in 40 years. The movie received a round of applause from around 400 people including officials of the Chinese government, institutions, enterprises, think tanks, and media during its premier show.
The screening of movies during film week is expected to build a new bridge for cultural exchanges between the two countries and further consolidate the Pakistan-China friendship. It is also likely to pave way for joint ventures and joint productions of Pakistani movies between Pakistan and China.
This post was originally published on VOSA.
3 Mins Read Shanghai startup Wellme is behind the new homegrown Chinese plant-based brand Berrywell and its range of chickpea-based vegan yogurt.
The post This Shanghai Startup Is Making Gut-Healthy Vegan Yogurt From Chickpeas appeared first on Green Queen.
This post was originally published on Green Queen.
