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Category: China

  • America’s National Humiliation by Eurasia: Uncle Sam is ‘Sick Man’ of the West

    As American economic power continues to decline, a division has emerged within the U.S. political establishment as to which of its designated adversaries is to blame for the country’s woes — Russia, or China. The dispute came to a head during each of the last two presidential elections, with the Democratic Party first blaming Moscow for Hillary Clinton’s shocking defeat in 2016 over unproven “election meddling” by the Kremlin. After Joe Biden’s equally controversial victory over Donald Trump this past November, the GOP has retaliated by portraying the 46th president as “soft on China” just as their counterparts drew critical attention to Trump’s alleged ties to Russia — even though both men have taken tough stances toward each respective country. As a result of this neo-McCarthyist political atmosphere, détente has been criminalized. In order to understand what is driving this interwar between factions of the Anglo-American elite amid the rise of China and Russia on the world stage, a revisiting of the history of relations between the three nations is necessary.

    From the first millennia until the 19th century, China was one of the world’s foremost economic powers. Today, the People’s Republic has largely recaptured that position and by the end of the decade is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, a gain that may be expedited by the post-pandemic U.S. recession compared with China’s rapid recovery. Unfortunately, the Western attitude toward China remains stuck in the ‘century of humiliation’ where from the mid-19th century until the Chinese Revolution in 1949, it was successively raped and plundered by the Western, Japanese, and Russian imperial powers. The reason the English-speaking world clings to this backwards view is because apart from that centennial period, the West has always been second place to China as the world’s most distinguished country providing the global standard in infrastructure, technology, governance, agriculture, and economic development. Even at the peak of the Roman Empire, the Han dynasty where the ancient Silk Road began was vastly larger in territory and population.

    For two consecutive years in the early 1930s, the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. was Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth which depicted the extreme poverty and famine of rural peasant life in pre-revolutionary China. In many respects, the picture of China in the Western mind remains a composite impression from Buck’s Nobel Prize-winning novel. The former Chinese Empire underwent its ‘hundred years of humiliation’ after suffering a series of military defeats in the Opium Wars which funded Western industrialization, where the ceding of territories and war reparations in unequal treaties left China subjugated as the “sick man of Asia.” Like Russia which lagged behind Europe after the Industrial Revolution until the Soviet centralized plans of the 1930s, China was able to transform its primarily agricultural economy into an industrial giant after its communist revolution in 1949. However, it was only a short time until the Sino-Soviet split in 1961 when China began to forge its own path in one of the most widely misunderstood geopolitical developments of the Cold War.

    In 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave what is commonly known as his “Secret Speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a report entitled “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”, where the Ukrainian-born politician denounced the excesses of his deceased predecessor, Joseph Stalin. The news of the shocking address to the Politburo did not just further polarize an international communist movement already divided between Trotskyists and the Comintern but had geopolitical consequences beyond its intended purpose of accommodating Washington to deescalate the arms race. At first, China took a relatively neutral stance toward the Soviet reforms during its Hundred Flowers Campaign, even as Mao encouraged the USSR to put down the 1956 counter-revolution in Hungary.

    The real turning point in Sino-Soviet relations came when the bureaucratic placation of the Khrushchev Thaw began to discourage movements in the developing world living under Western-backed dictatorships from taking up arms in revolutionary struggle. With the support of Enver Hoxha and Albania, China began to fiercely criticize de-Stalinization and accused the Soviet Union of “revisionism” for prioritizing world peace and preventing a nuclear war over support for national liberation movements, becoming the de facto leader of ‘Third Worldism’ against Western imperialism. Moscow reciprocated by freezing aid to China which greatly damaged its economy and relations soured between the world’s two biggest socialist countries, transforming the the Cold War into a tri-polar conflict already multifaceted with the Non-Aligned Movement led by Yugoslavia after Josep Broz Tito’s falling out with Stalin.

    As the PRC continued to break from what Mao viewed as the USSR’s deviation from Marxism-Leninism, China went down the primrose path of the Cultural Revolution during the 1960s amid the rise of the Gang of Four faction who took the anti-Soviet policies a step further by condemning the USSR as “social imperialist” and an even greater threat than the West. This led to several huge missteps in foreign policy and a complete betrayal of internationalism, as China aligned with the U.S. in support of UNITA against the MPLA in the Angolan civil war, the CIA-backed Khmer Rouge genocidaires in Cambodia against Vietnam, and the fascist Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile. After years of international isolation, U.S. President Richard Nixon and his war criminal Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were received as guests in 1972. Despite the initial reasons for the Sino-Soviet split, it was ironically the Soviet Union which ended up carrying the mantle of national liberation as the USSR backed numerous socialist revolutions in the global south while China sided with imperialism.

    In hindsight, the Cold War’s conclusion with the demise of the USSR was arguably an inevitable result of the Sino-Soviet split. Ultimately, mistakes were made by both sides that are recognized by the two countries today, as can be seen in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation’s negative historical view of Khrushchev and the denunciation of the Cultural Revolution and Gang of Four by the CPC (not “CCP”). In fact, China has since even apologized to Angola for its support of Jonas Savimbi. Nevertheless, the break in political relations with Moscow also set the process in motion for China to develop its own interpretation of Marxism-Leninism that diverged from the Soviet model and eventually allowed a level of private enterprise which never occurred under the USSR, including during the short-lived New Economic Policy of the 1920s. If truth be told, this may have been the very thing which prevented China from meeting the same fate.

    Starting in 1978, China began opening its economy to domestic private enterprise and even foreign capital, but with the ruling party and government retaining final authority over both the private and public sectors. The result of implementing market-oriented reforms while maintaining mostly state ownership of industry was the economic marvel we see today, where China has since become the ‘world’s factory’ and global manufacturing powerhouse. For four decades, China’s real gross domestic product growth has averaged nearly ten percent every year and almost a billion people have been lifted out of poverty, but with capital never rising above the political authority of the CPC. Unfortunately, the success of Deng Xiaoping’s reform of the Chinese socialist system was not replicated by perestroika (“restructuring”) in the USSR under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev who completely failed to revive the Soviet economy and eventually oversaw its dissolution in 1991.

    During the 1990s, Russia underwent total collapse as its formerly planned enterprises were dismantled by the same neoliberal policies to which Margaret Thatcher once phrased “there is no alternative” (TINA). The restoration of capitalism sharply increased poverty and unemployment while mortality fell by an entire decade under IMF-imposed ‘shock therapy’ which created an obscenely wealthy new class of Russian “oligarchs” overnight. So much so, the fortunes of the Semibankarschina (“seven bankers”) were compared to the boyars of tsarist nobility in previous centuries. This comprador elite also controlled most of the country’s media while funding the election campaigns of pro-Western President Boris Yeltsin who transformed the previously centralized economy into a free market system. That was until his notorious successor assumed power and brought the energy sector back under control of the Russian state which restored wages, reduced poverty, and expelled corrupt foreign investors like Bill Browder. Needless to say, the U.S. was not pleased by Vladimir Putin’s successful revival of the Russian economy because the U.S. already faced a geopolitical contender in China.

    As China has been the world’s ascending economic superpower through its unique mixture of private and state-owned enterprises, the U.S. economy has shrunk as trade liberalization and globalization de-industrialized the Rust Belt. Simultaneously, the expense of the military budget has grown so gargantuan that it can’t be audited while rash imperialist wars in the Middle East following 9/11 marked the beginning of the end for American hegemony. In 2016, Donald Trump rose to power railing against the political establishment over its “endless wars” and anti-worker free trade deals, abandoning the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on his first day in office and imposing protectionist tariffs which kickstarted a U.S.-China trade war. Unfortunately, any efforts to return U.S. productive power outsourced to China by multinationals and scale back American empire-building were destined to fail.

    Trump was also politically persecuted by the Democrats and the intelligence community for daring to embrace détente with Moscow as a candidate and spent his entire administration trying to appease the deep state in Washington with little result. Oddly enough, it was reportedly none other than Henry Kissinger who encouraged Trump to ease the strained relations with Russia as a strategy to contain China, the traditional enemy he once convinced Richard Nixon to make steps toward peace with. The GOP, representing the interests of the military-industrial complex, has reciprocated the anti-Russia hysteria by accusing incumbent Joe Biden of being weak on China, even though the previous Obama-Biden administration presided over an unprecedented military buildup in the Pacific as part of the U.S. “pivot to Asia.” The views of constituents from both parties also seem to fall on partisan lines, as indicated in a recent Gallup poll where only 16% of Democrats held a positive view of Russia and a mere 10% of Republicans regard China favorably.

    The rise of Russia and China on the global stage presents such a threat to Washington’s full spectrum dominance that the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, recently warned of the very real possibility of a nuclear war in the future with both countries. Under the administration of Xi Jinping, China has reshaped the geopolitical order with its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure project, also known as the New Silk Road. At the same time, Russia has reintegrated several of the former Soviet republics with the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Conceivably, the return of Russia to world politics has the potential to transform the sphere of competition between the U.S. and China into a multipolar plane where the balance of power can shift toward a more stable geopolitical landscape in the long run. Nevertheless, the challenge made by the Xi-Putin partnership to the dominion of Western capital is the basis for the bellicosity toward Eurasia by the U.S., as is their joining forces to repair the Sino-Russian political relations broken decades ago.

    When the Soviet Union dissolved, the tentative US–China alliance effectively ended and Sino-Russian rapprochement began. But what prevented the PRC from going the same route as the Eastern Bloc? Why did Deng succeed and Gorbachev fail? After all, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were concurrent with the numerous ‘Color Revolutions’ behind the Iron Curtain, even though the Western narrative about the June Fourth Incident omits that among the “pro-democracy” demonstrators were many Maoists who considered Deng’s market reforms a betrayal of Chinese socialism. As it happens, Xi Jinping himself correctly identified one of the main reasons why the USSR dissolved in a 2013 speech:

    Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party fall from power? An important reason was that the struggle in the field of ideology was extremely intense, completely negating the history of the Soviet Union, negating the history of the Soviet Communist Party, negating Lenin, negating Stalin, creating historical nihilism and confused thinking. Party organs at all levels had lost their functions, the military was no longer under Party leadership. In the end, the Soviet Communist Party, a great party, was scattered, the Soviet Union, a great socialist country, disintegrated. This is a cautionary tale!

    Xi is correct in that China, unlike the Soviet Union, never made the crucial error of playing into the hands of the West through the condemnation of its own history as Khrushchev did in his “Secret Speech.” Despite the fact that the report by the Soviet leader contained demonstrable falsehoods such as the absurd claim that Stalin, one of Russia’s most formidable bank robbers as a revolutionary, was a coward deathly afraid of the Nazi invasion as it neared Moscow during WWII, the self-serving speech split the international communist movement and laid the internal groundwork for the USSR’s eventual downfall. As for the economic reasons for the different outcomes, the late Marxist historian Domenico Losurdo explained:

    If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see three social experiments. The first experiment, based on the equal distribution of poverty, suggests the “universal asceticism” and “rough egalitarianism” criticised by the Communist Manifesto. We can now understand the decision to move to Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which was often interpreted as a return to capitalism. The increasing threat of war pushed Stalin into sweeping economic collectivisation. The third experiment produced a very advanced welfare state but ended in failure: in the last years of the Soviet Union, it was characterised by mass absenteeism and disengagement in the workplace; this stalled productivity, and it became hard to find any application of the principle that Marx said should preside over socialism — remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered. The history of China is different: Mao believed that, unlike “political capital,” the economic capital of the bourgeoisie should not be subject to total expropriation, at least until it can serve the development of the national economy. After the tragedy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it took Deng Xiaoping to emphasise that socialism implies the development of the productive forces. Chinese market socialism has achieved extraordinary success.

    Since China’s economic upswing has been simultaneous with the downturn of American capitalism, it has left the U.S. with only one option but to equate the PRC with its own crumbling system. Sadly, in most instances it is the Eurocentric pseudo-left which has parroted the propaganda of Western think tanks that China is “state capitalist” and even “imperialist.” This also means that its unparalleled economic gains must therefore be a result of capitalism, not state planning, which is another fabrication. Has there ever been a clearer case of neocolonial projection than the baseless accusation of “dept-trap diplomacy” hurled at China’s BRI by the West? It is true that China seeks to profit in the global south, but based on terms of mutual benefit for developing nations previously plundered by Western financial institutions which actually impose debt slavery on low income countries. In reality, Beijing is only guilty of offering a preferable win-win alternative to states exploited under the yoke of imperialism. Once upon a time, the U.S. itself envisioned a peaceful world of mutual cooperation and trade under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, a forgotten legacy that Xi’s BRI is fulfilling.

    None of this is to say China is undeserving of any criticism. To the contrary, its paradoxes are as deep as its achievements and it would be naive to think that Chinese capital, if left unchecked, doesn’t have the potential to be as predatory as the Western variety. Free enterprise is so inherently unstable that its destructive nature will be impossible to contain forever even by a party like the CPC and must be disassembled eventually. Without the retention of a large state sector maintaining vital infrastructure and public services, the market relations in China would wreak havoc as it did in post-Soviet Russia. Not to mention, the biggest progress made by the PRC was in the years prior to the pro-market reforms and ultimately served as the foundation upon which “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is able to thrive. The lesson of the fall of the USSR is that even a society capable of the most incredible human advancements is not invincible to a market environment. The Soviet Union withstood an invasion by more than a dozen Allied nations during the Russian Civil War and an onslaught by the Nazi war machine in WWII, but succumbed to perestroika. While Russia may be under the free market, both nations are a threat to Western capital because they represent a new win-win cooperative model in international relations and an end to American unipolarity.

    The post America’s National Humiliation by Eurasia: Uncle Sam is ‘Sick Man’ of the West first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • America’s National Humiliation by Eurasia: Uncle Sam is ‘Sick Man’ of the West

    As American economic power continues to decline, a division has emerged within the U.S. political establishment as to which of its designated adversaries is to blame for the country’s woes — Russia, or China. The dispute came to a head during each of the last two presidential elections, with the Democratic Party first blaming Moscow for Hillary Clinton’s shocking defeat in 2016 over unproven “election meddling” by the Kremlin. After Joe Biden’s equally controversial victory over Donald Trump this past November, the GOP has retaliated by portraying the 46th president as “soft on China” just as their counterparts drew critical attention to Trump’s alleged ties to Russia — even though both men have taken tough stances toward each respective country. As a result of this neo-McCarthyist political atmosphere, détente has been criminalized. In order to understand what is driving this interwar between factions of the Anglo-American elite amid the rise of China and Russia on the world stage, a revisiting of the history of relations between the three nations is necessary.

    From the first millennia until the 19th century, China was one of the world’s foremost economic powers. Today, the People’s Republic has largely recaptured that position and by the end of the decade is expected to overtake the U.S. as the world’s largest economy, a gain that may be expedited by the post-pandemic U.S. recession compared with China’s rapid recovery. Unfortunately, the Western attitude toward China remains stuck in the ‘century of humiliation’ where from the mid-19th century until the Chinese Revolution in 1949, it was successively raped and plundered by the Western, Japanese, and Russian imperial powers. The reason the English-speaking world clings to this backwards view is because apart from that centennial period, the West has always been second place to China as the world’s most distinguished country providing the global standard in infrastructure, technology, governance, agriculture, and economic development. Even at the peak of the Roman Empire, the Han dynasty where the ancient Silk Road began was vastly larger in territory and population.

    For two consecutive years in the early 1930s, the best-selling fiction book in the U.S. was Pearl S. Buck’s The Good Earth which depicted the extreme poverty and famine of rural peasant life in pre-revolutionary China. In many respects, the picture of China in the Western mind remains a composite impression from Buck’s Nobel Prize-winning novel. The former Chinese Empire underwent its ‘hundred years of humiliation’ after suffering a series of military defeats in the Opium Wars which funded Western industrialization, where the ceding of territories and war reparations in unequal treaties left China subjugated as the “sick man of Asia.” Like Russia which lagged behind Europe after the Industrial Revolution until the Soviet centralized plans of the 1930s, China was able to transform its primarily agricultural economy into an industrial giant after its communist revolution in 1949. However, it was only a short time until the Sino-Soviet split in 1961 when China began to forge its own path in one of the most widely misunderstood geopolitical developments of the Cold War.

    In 1956, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev gave what is commonly known as his “Secret Speech” to the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, a report entitled “On the Cult of Personality and Its Consequences”, where the Ukrainian-born politician denounced the excesses of his deceased predecessor, Joseph Stalin. The news of the shocking address to the Politburo did not just further polarize an international communist movement already divided between Trotskyists and the Comintern but had geopolitical consequences beyond its intended purpose of accommodating Washington to deescalate the arms race. At first, China took a relatively neutral stance toward the Soviet reforms during its Hundred Flowers Campaign, even as Mao encouraged the USSR to put down the 1956 counter-revolution in Hungary.

    The real turning point in Sino-Soviet relations came when the bureaucratic placation of the Khrushchev Thaw began to discourage movements in the developing world living under Western-backed dictatorships from taking up arms in revolutionary struggle. With the support of Enver Hoxha and Albania, China began to fiercely criticize de-Stalinization and accused the Soviet Union of “revisionism” for prioritizing world peace and preventing a nuclear war over support for national liberation movements, becoming the de facto leader of ‘Third Worldism’ against Western imperialism. Moscow reciprocated by freezing aid to China which greatly damaged its economy and relations soured between the world’s two biggest socialist countries, transforming the the Cold War into a tri-polar conflict already multifaceted with the Non-Aligned Movement led by Yugoslavia after Josep Broz Tito’s falling out with Stalin.

    As the PRC continued to break from what Mao viewed as the USSR’s deviation from Marxism-Leninism, China went down the primrose path of the Cultural Revolution during the 1960s amid the rise of the Gang of Four faction who took the anti-Soviet policies a step further by condemning the USSR as “social imperialist” and an even greater threat than the West. This led to several huge missteps in foreign policy and a complete betrayal of internationalism, as China aligned with the U.S. in support of UNITA against the MPLA in the Angolan civil war, the CIA-backed Khmer Rouge genocidaires in Cambodia against Vietnam, and the fascist Augusto Pinochet regime in Chile. After years of international isolation, U.S. President Richard Nixon and his war criminal Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were received as guests in 1972. Despite the initial reasons for the Sino-Soviet split, it was ironically the Soviet Union which ended up carrying the mantle of national liberation as the USSR backed numerous socialist revolutions in the global south while China sided with imperialism.

    In hindsight, the Cold War’s conclusion with the demise of the USSR was arguably an inevitable result of the Sino-Soviet split. Ultimately, mistakes were made by both sides that are recognized by the two countries today, as can be seen in the Communist Party of the Russian Federation’s negative historical view of Khrushchev and the denunciation of the Cultural Revolution and Gang of Four by the CPC (not “CCP”). In fact, China has since even apologized to Angola for its support of Jonas Savimbi. Nevertheless, the break in political relations with Moscow also set the process in motion for China to develop its own interpretation of Marxism-Leninism that diverged from the Soviet model and eventually allowed a level of private enterprise which never occurred under the USSR, including during the short-lived New Economic Policy of the 1920s. If truth be told, this may have been the very thing which prevented China from meeting the same fate.

    Starting in 1978, China began opening its economy to domestic private enterprise and even foreign capital, but with the ruling party and government retaining final authority over both the private and public sectors. The result of implementing market-oriented reforms while maintaining mostly state ownership of industry was the economic marvel we see today, where China has since become the ‘world’s factory’ and global manufacturing powerhouse. For four decades, China’s real gross domestic product growth has averaged nearly ten percent every year and almost a billion people have been lifted out of poverty, but with capital never rising above the political authority of the CPC. Unfortunately, the success of Deng Xiaoping’s reform of the Chinese socialist system was not replicated by perestroika (“restructuring”) in the USSR under the leadership of Mikhail Gorbachev who completely failed to revive the Soviet economy and eventually oversaw its dissolution in 1991.

    During the 1990s, Russia underwent total collapse as its formerly planned enterprises were dismantled by the same neoliberal policies to which Margaret Thatcher once phrased “there is no alternative” (TINA). The restoration of capitalism sharply increased poverty and unemployment while mortality fell by an entire decade under IMF-imposed ‘shock therapy’ which created an obscenely wealthy new class of Russian “oligarchs” overnight. So much so, the fortunes of the Semibankarschina (“seven bankers”) were compared to the boyars of tsarist nobility in previous centuries. This comprador elite also controlled most of the country’s media while funding the election campaigns of pro-Western President Boris Yeltsin who transformed the previously centralized economy into a free market system. That was until his notorious successor assumed power and brought the energy sector back under control of the Russian state which restored wages, reduced poverty, and expelled corrupt foreign investors like Bill Browder. Needless to say, the U.S. was not pleased by Vladimir Putin’s successful revival of the Russian economy because the U.S. already faced a geopolitical contender in China.

    As China has been the world’s ascending economic superpower through its unique mixture of private and state-owned enterprises, the U.S. economy has shrunk as trade liberalization and globalization de-industrialized the Rust Belt. Simultaneously, the expense of the military budget has grown so gargantuan that it can’t be audited while rash imperialist wars in the Middle East following 9/11 marked the beginning of the end for American hegemony. In 2016, Donald Trump rose to power railing against the political establishment over its “endless wars” and anti-worker free trade deals, abandoning the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) on his first day in office and imposing protectionist tariffs which kickstarted a U.S.-China trade war. Unfortunately, any efforts to return U.S. productive power outsourced to China by multinationals and scale back American empire-building were destined to fail.

    Trump was also politically persecuted by the Democrats and the intelligence community for daring to embrace détente with Moscow as a candidate and spent his entire administration trying to appease the deep state in Washington with little result. Oddly enough, it was reportedly none other than Henry Kissinger who encouraged Trump to ease the strained relations with Russia as a strategy to contain China, the traditional enemy he once convinced Richard Nixon to make steps toward peace with. The GOP, representing the interests of the military-industrial complex, has reciprocated the anti-Russia hysteria by accusing incumbent Joe Biden of being weak on China, even though the previous Obama-Biden administration presided over an unprecedented military buildup in the Pacific as part of the U.S. “pivot to Asia.” The views of constituents from both parties also seem to fall on partisan lines, as indicated in a recent Gallup poll where only 16% of Democrats held a positive view of Russia and a mere 10% of Republicans regard China favorably.

    The rise of Russia and China on the global stage presents such a threat to Washington’s full spectrum dominance that the head of U.S. Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, recently warned of the very real possibility of a nuclear war in the future with both countries. Under the administration of Xi Jinping, China has reshaped the geopolitical order with its ambitious Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) infrastructure project, also known as the New Silk Road. At the same time, Russia has reintegrated several of the former Soviet republics with the formation of the Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). Conceivably, the return of Russia to world politics has the potential to transform the sphere of competition between the U.S. and China into a multipolar plane where the balance of power can shift toward a more stable geopolitical landscape in the long run. Nevertheless, the challenge made by the Xi-Putin partnership to the dominion of Western capital is the basis for the bellicosity toward Eurasia by the U.S., as is their joining forces to repair the Sino-Russian political relations broken decades ago.

    When the Soviet Union dissolved, the tentative US–China alliance effectively ended and Sino-Russian rapprochement began. But what prevented the PRC from going the same route as the Eastern Bloc? Why did Deng succeed and Gorbachev fail? After all, the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests were concurrent with the numerous ‘Color Revolutions’ behind the Iron Curtain, even though the Western narrative about the June Fourth Incident omits that among the “pro-democracy” demonstrators were many Maoists who considered Deng’s market reforms a betrayal of Chinese socialism. As it happens, Xi Jinping himself correctly identified one of the main reasons why the USSR dissolved in a 2013 speech:

    Why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Soviet Communist Party fall from power? An important reason was that the struggle in the field of ideology was extremely intense, completely negating the history of the Soviet Union, negating the history of the Soviet Communist Party, negating Lenin, negating Stalin, creating historical nihilism and confused thinking. Party organs at all levels had lost their functions, the military was no longer under Party leadership. In the end, the Soviet Communist Party, a great party, was scattered, the Soviet Union, a great socialist country, disintegrated. This is a cautionary tale!

    Xi is correct in that China, unlike the Soviet Union, never made the crucial error of playing into the hands of the West through the condemnation of its own history as Khrushchev did in his “Secret Speech.” Despite the fact that the report by the Soviet leader contained demonstrable falsehoods such as the absurd claim that Stalin, one of Russia’s most formidable bank robbers as a revolutionary, was a coward deathly afraid of the Nazi invasion as it neared Moscow during WWII, the self-serving speech split the international communist movement and laid the internal groundwork for the USSR’s eventual downfall. As for the economic reasons for the different outcomes, the late Marxist historian Domenico Losurdo explained:

    If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see three social experiments. The first experiment, based on the equal distribution of poverty, suggests the “universal asceticism” and “rough egalitarianism” criticised by the Communist Manifesto. We can now understand the decision to move to Lenin’s New Economic Policy, which was often interpreted as a return to capitalism. The increasing threat of war pushed Stalin into sweeping economic collectivisation. The third experiment produced a very advanced welfare state but ended in failure: in the last years of the Soviet Union, it was characterised by mass absenteeism and disengagement in the workplace; this stalled productivity, and it became hard to find any application of the principle that Marx said should preside over socialism — remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered. The history of China is different: Mao believed that, unlike “political capital,” the economic capital of the bourgeoisie should not be subject to total expropriation, at least until it can serve the development of the national economy. After the tragedy of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution, it took Deng Xiaoping to emphasise that socialism implies the development of the productive forces. Chinese market socialism has achieved extraordinary success.

    Since China’s economic upswing has been simultaneous with the downturn of American capitalism, it has left the U.S. with only one option but to equate the PRC with its own crumbling system. Sadly, in most instances it is the Eurocentric pseudo-left which has parroted the propaganda of Western think tanks that China is “state capitalist” and even “imperialist.” This also means that its unparalleled economic gains must therefore be a result of capitalism, not state planning, which is another fabrication. Has there ever been a clearer case of neocolonial projection than the baseless accusation of “dept-trap diplomacy” hurled at China’s BRI by the West? It is true that China seeks to profit in the global south, but based on terms of mutual benefit for developing nations previously plundered by Western financial institutions which actually impose debt slavery on low income countries. In reality, Beijing is only guilty of offering a preferable win-win alternative to states exploited under the yoke of imperialism. Once upon a time, the U.S. itself envisioned a peaceful world of mutual cooperation and trade under Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s Good Neighbor Policy, a forgotten legacy that Xi’s BRI is fulfilling.

    None of this is to say China is undeserving of any criticism. To the contrary, its paradoxes are as deep as its achievements and it would be naive to think that Chinese capital, if left unchecked, doesn’t have the potential to be as predatory as the Western variety. Free enterprise is so inherently unstable that its destructive nature will be impossible to contain forever even by a party like the CPC and must be disassembled eventually. Without the retention of a large state sector maintaining vital infrastructure and public services, the market relations in China would wreak havoc as it did in post-Soviet Russia. Not to mention, the biggest progress made by the PRC was in the years prior to the pro-market reforms and ultimately served as the foundation upon which “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is able to thrive. The lesson of the fall of the USSR is that even a society capable of the most incredible human advancements is not invincible to a market environment. The Soviet Union withstood an invasion by more than a dozen Allied nations during the Russian Civil War and an onslaught by the Nazi war machine in WWII, but succumbed to perestroika. While Russia may be under the free market, both nations are a threat to Western capital because they represent a new win-win cooperative model in international relations and an end to American unipolarity.

    This article was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2021 at 7:17pm and is filed under China, History, Russia.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China:  Leading to World Recovery and Beyond

    China’s currently ongoing (4-11 March 2021) annual parliamentary meeting, known as the “Two Sessions”, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC), may be the most important of such meetings in recent years. The event is also celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

    The conference will define China’s internal and external development strategies, as well as her future role on the world stage. China is the only major economy that has mastered the covid-induced economic crisis, ending 2020 with a 2.3% growth. Compare this with economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively.

    These figures may only be indicative. The bulk of the economic fallout from western governments’ mishandling of the covid crisis; i.e., bankruptcies, trade disruption, unemployment and housing foreclosures – a massive slide into poverty – may only be registered in 2021 and beyond.

    The greed-driven capitalist system has already plunged tens of millions of westerners and perhaps hundreds of millions in the Global South into destitution.

    What China decides at the “Two Sessions” Conference will undoubtedly have an impact on the entire world in the medium-term (2025) as well as long-term (2035) and beyond. China’s socialism “with Chinese characteristics” will be an influence for peace, justice and equality, as well as for a multi-polar world.

    China’s thousands of years of cultural history and the ensuing Tao-philosophy of non-aggression and conflict avoidance, of a societal spirit of endless creation, as well as long-term thinking, contrasts radically with western conflict and instant-profit seeking.

    The summit is addressing ambitious but attainable 2035 targets, including a 6%-plus growth in the foreseeable future; reduction of unemployment with urban focus; continued food self-sufficiency and environmental improvement targets, a gigantic 18% CO2 reduction, largely through a significant drop in energy consumption (13.5%) per unit of GDP — and this with a projected higher than 6% annual economic output. Environmental improvement and protection targets are way above any environmental objectives of western countries.

    The conference may also define China’s guiding role in a worldwide recovery from a covid-related devastated economy. China’s economy has suffered, mainly during the first half of 2020, but her decisive actions have successfully overcome the pandemic’s path of destruction. By the end of 2020, China’s production and services were back to 100%. Thanks to this stellar efficiency, the west and Global South may continue relying on China’s supply of such vital goods as medical equipment, medicines, electronics and more.

    What China’s 2025 Plan and 2035/2050 visions may include is a strong emphasis on economic autonomy and defense.

    Economy:  Western China bashing with related sanctions, trade and currency wars, may continue also under the Biden Administration because US/European policies on dealing with China – and Russia for that matter – are made well above the White House and Brussels.

    Rapid dedollarization may be an effective way to stem against the western “sanctions culture”. China may soon roll out her new digital Renminbi (RMB) or yuan, internationally, as legal tender for inter-country payments and transfers, and as an international reserve currency.

    Reduce demand for US-dollars may incite worldwide investments in the new digital RMB.

    Detaching from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation on her ASEAN partners. In November 2020 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 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding some 30% of the world’s GDP. This agreement is a first in size, value and tenor worldwide.

    China, Russia, as well as the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.

    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.

    Defense:  China provides the west’s main supply chain, from medical goods to electronic equipment to almost every sector important to humanity. Yet, western political interference in China’s internal affairs, like in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet, are endless. Overcoming these aggressions and threats of armed conflicts is part of China’s forward-looking plan and defense strategy.

    Mr. Wang Yi, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently warned the White House to stop meddling in China’s internal affairs; that reunification with Taiwan is a historic tendency and was the collective wish of the Chinese people. He added, this trend cannot be reversed.

    As a forerunner to China’s CPPCC Summit, in his address to the virtual World Economic Forum (WEF) on 25 January 2021, President Xi Jinping stated that China’s agenda was to move forward in the World of Great Change, with her renewed policy of multilateralism, aiming for a multi-polar world, where nations would be treated as equals.

    China will continue to vouch for strong macroeconomic growth with focus on internal development which, in turn, will stimulate and contribute to international trade and investments. China pledges assistance for those that are suffering the most during this pandemic-induced crisis.

    President Xi emphasized there was no place in this world for large countries dominating smaller ones, or for economic threats and sanctions, nor for economic isolation. China is pursuing a global free trade economy. BUT – and this is important – when talking of “globalism” respect for political and fiscal sovereignty of nations is a MUST.

    On a global scale, President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. BRI offers the world participation, no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind BRI, is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. BRI may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid-devastation and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.

    China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, becoming food, health and education self-sufficient, but to become the world’s second largest economy today; or, if measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), since 2017 the world’s largest econmy. China is poised to surpass the US by 2025 in absolute terms.

    On 4 March, 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Children’s Health Defense), 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 5 and 15 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.
    .

    First published by the New Eastern Outlook (NEO)

    Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. Read other articles by Peter.

    This article was posted on Thursday, March 18th, 2021 at 12:05am and is filed under ASEAN, Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China, Disinformation, Economy/Economics, Hong Kong, Peace, President Xi Jinping, Propaganda, Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), Taiwan, Tibet.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • China:  Leading to World Recovery and Beyond

    China’s currently ongoing (4-11 March 2021) annual parliamentary meeting, known as the “Two Sessions”, the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) and the National People’s Congress (NPC), may be the most important of such meetings in recent years. The event is also celebrating the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Party of China (CPC).

    The conference will define China’s internal and external development strategies, as well as her future role on the world stage. China is the only major economy that has mastered the covid-induced economic crisis, ending 2020 with a 2.3% growth. Compare this with economic declines way into the red for the US and Europe, of 25% to 35%, and 10% to 15%, respectively.

    These figures may only be indicative. The bulk of the economic fallout from western governments’ mishandling of the covid crisis; i.e., bankruptcies, trade disruption, unemployment and housing foreclosures – a massive slide into poverty – may only be registered in 2021 and beyond.

    The greed-driven capitalist system has already plunged tens of millions of westerners and perhaps hundreds of millions in the Global South into destitution.

    What China decides at the “Two Sessions” Conference will undoubtedly have an impact on the entire world in the medium-term (2025) as well as long-term (2035) and beyond. China’s socialism “with Chinese characteristics” will be an influence for peace, justice and equality, as well as for a multi-polar world.

    China’s thousands of years of cultural history and the ensuing Tao-philosophy of non-aggression and conflict avoidance, of a societal spirit of endless creation, as well as long-term thinking, contrasts radically with western conflict and instant-profit seeking.

    The summit is addressing ambitious but attainable 2035 targets, including a 6%-plus growth in the foreseeable future; reduction of unemployment with urban focus; continued food self-sufficiency and environmental improvement targets, a gigantic 18% CO2 reduction, largely through a significant drop in energy consumption (13.5%) per unit of GDP — and this with a projected higher than 6% annual economic output. Environmental improvement and protection targets are way above any environmental objectives of western countries.

    The conference may also define China’s guiding role in a worldwide recovery from a covid-related devastated economy. China’s economy has suffered, mainly during the first half of 2020, but her decisive actions have successfully overcome the pandemic’s path of destruction. By the end of 2020, China’s production and services were back to 100%. Thanks to this stellar efficiency, the west and Global South may continue relying on China’s supply of such vital goods as medical equipment, medicines, electronics and more.

    What China’s 2025 Plan and 2035/2050 visions may include is a strong emphasis on economic autonomy and defense.

    Economy:  Western China bashing with related sanctions, trade and currency wars, may continue also under the Biden Administration because US/European policies on dealing with China – and Russia for that matter – are made well above the White House and Brussels.

    Rapid dedollarization may be an effective way to stem against the western “sanctions culture”. China may soon roll out her new digital Renminbi (RMB) or yuan, internationally, as legal tender for inter-country payments and transfers, and as an international reserve currency.

    Reduce demand for US-dollars may incite worldwide investments in the new digital RMB.

    Detaching from western dependence, China is focusing trade development and cooperation on her ASEAN partners. In November 2020 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 Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership, or RCEP, covers some 2.2 billion people, commanding some 30% of the world’s GDP. This agreement is a first in size, value and tenor worldwide.

    China, Russia, as well as the Central Asia Economic Union (CAEU) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), are likewise integrated into the eastern trade block.

    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.

    Defense:  China provides the west’s main supply chain, from medical goods to electronic equipment to almost every sector important to humanity. Yet, western political interference in China’s internal affairs, like in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and Tibet, are endless. Overcoming these aggressions and threats of armed conflicts is part of China’s forward-looking plan and defense strategy.

    Mr. Wang Yi, China’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, recently warned the White House to stop meddling in China’s internal affairs; that reunification with Taiwan is a historic tendency and was the collective wish of the Chinese people. He added, this trend cannot be reversed.

    As a forerunner to China’s CPPCC Summit, in his address to the virtual World Economic Forum (WEF) on 25 January 2021, President Xi Jinping stated that China’s agenda was to move forward in the World of Great Change, with her renewed policy of multilateralism, aiming for a multi-polar world, where nations would be treated as equals.

    China will continue to vouch for strong macroeconomic growth with focus on internal development which, in turn, will stimulate and contribute to international trade and investments. China pledges assistance for those that are suffering the most during this pandemic-induced crisis.

    President Xi emphasized there was no place in this world for large countries dominating smaller ones, or for economic threats and sanctions, nor for economic isolation. China is pursuing a global free trade economy. BUT – and this is important – when talking of “globalism” respect for political and fiscal sovereignty of nations is a MUST.

    On a global scale, President Xi’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) embraces currently more than 130 countries and over 30 international organizations, including 18 countries of the European Union. BRI offers the world participation, no coercion. The attraction and philosophy behind BRI, is shared benefits – the concept of win-win. BRI may be the road to socioeconomic recovery from covid-devastation and cross-border cooperation for participating countries.

    China’s achievements in her 71 years of revolution are unmatched by any nation in recent history. From a country largely ruined by western colonization and conflicts, China rose from the ashes, by not only lifting 800 million people out of poverty, becoming food, health and education self-sufficient, but to become the world’s second largest economy today; or, if measured by purchasing power parity (PPP), since 2017 the world’s largest econmy. China is poised to surpass the US by 2025 in absolute terms.

    On 4 March, 2021, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. (Children’s Health Defense), 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 5 and 15 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.
    .

    First published by the New Eastern Outlook (NEO)

    The post China:  Leading to World Recovery and Beyond first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • A Nation That’s Always At War Has No Moral Authority: Notes From The Edge Of The Narrative Matrix

    A nation that has constantly been at war throughout its entire history has no moral authority to tell other nations how to be. This should be extremely obvious to literally everyone.

    ❖

    Liberals are much, much more comfortable thinking about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes as a rise in white supremacism caused by Donald Trump than as the inevitable consequence of an aggressive imperialist propaganda campaign against China.

    Talking about the spike in anti-Asian hate crimes as just the result of white supremacism and not imperialist propaganda against China facilitated by white supremacism is a service to white supremacism. It’s like pretending the spike in hate crimes against Muslim Americans as the propaganda engines for Bush’s wars were fanning the flames of Islamophobia was just the result of a random spontaneous increase in white supremacism. It’s irresponsible, and it serves white supremacism.

    ❖

    Tucker Carlson is to China as Rachel Maddow is to Russia. He has some good guests and is occasionally correct on foreign policy, but watching him regularly will make you stupid.

    ❖

    It’s absolutely stunning how many people think “But China is really bad tho” is an awesome and insightful comment to post on the internet.

    ❖

    The US-centralized power alliance is the most powerful institution in the world. Helping it advance its narratives on the world stage (like smearing targeted governments) is as servile and power-worshipping as prostrating yourself before Joe Biden and calling him “Your Highness”.

    ❖

    It’s not that class is the only important issue and that race is unimportant. It’s that the imperial narrative managers consistently force the conversation into being about race instead of class because the race conversation can happen without costing the ruling class anything.

    ❖

    ❖

    The strategy of incrementalism (pursuing change in small, gradual increments over time) absolutely is effective. The problem is that when plutocrats control the government and media, the only incremental changes which actually occur are those which benefit the plutocracy. As long as the plutocratic class controls the political/media class, incremental change will only ever go one way. Politicians advocating incremental change for the benefit of the working class are actually advocating no change whatsoever, because that’s what they’ll deliver.

    Incrementalism is all you’re ever seeing when, for example, the minimum wage doesn’t keep up with inflation. Or when public programs are slowly privatized. Or when more and more money is allowed to influence politics. Or when industries become more and more deregulated. Things are fucked right now exactly because the ruling class has been using the strategy of incrementalism to slowly chip away at the working class for its own benefit. Incrementalism works. It just only ever goes one way, and always will until there is revolutionary change.

    Don’t say incrementalism doesn’t work. It does work. It works all the time. It just never works for you.

    ❖

    I don’t know who needs to hear this, but you will never, ever, ever succeed in converting me to capitalism or right-wing ideology. Trying to do this will only lead to frustration. You are free to frustrate yourself in this way as much as you like, it just looks uncomfortable.

    ❖

    If humanity miraculously survives the existential hurdles it has placed before itself as a species, future generations will scarce believe we used to actively stockpile armageddon weapons on purpose.

    ❖

    You can tell how sincere someone’s politics are based on how much time they spend up-punching versus how much time they spend down-punching or left-punching. If they’re in it for healthy reasons they’ll focus on the former. If they’re in it for ego and/or profit their emphasis will be on the latter.

    ❖

    Every insane thing humans have done has been the result of some dumb narrative that they believed in their minds. Some recognize this and help free humanity from its enslavement to mental narrative. Others recognize this and use this weakness to enslave humans to themselves.

    ❖

    You are pure beauty
    swimming in a yawning abyss
    of pure beauty.

    Only the mind obscures this.

    It is not hidden.

    It is not hidden.

    I love you.

    __________________________

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for at  or on Substack, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is , so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on , following my antics on , or throwing some money into my tip jar on Ko-fi,  or . If you want to read more you can buy my new book Poems For Rebels (you can also download a PDF for five bucks) or my old book . For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, . Everyone, racist platforms excluded,  to republish, use or translate any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2

    This post was originally published on Caitlin Johnstone.

  • Bizarre RT Framing

    … you have to include the important information first.

    — News Writing for Television and Radio, University of Florida

    RT America begins a newscast with anchor Rick Sanchez standing by a map of Iraq, informing viewers: “Seven rockets hit a US military base just north of Baghdad. It houses US troops.”1

    Sanchez continues, “But here is what I want you to understand about this story. This is not just a story about Iraq and the United States. This is a story about Iraq and Iran and the United States and China.”

    Sanchez says we should ask: why China? Sanchez answers, “Because this week we learned that China has increased its purchases of Iranian oil by 129%!”

    “Now does this mean that China is partnering with Iran?” Sanchez answers his own question: “Yes, and no.”

    When the buyer has the chance to snap up a regularly purchased commodity at a discount price, usually the buyer will make a large purchase. That is a normal behavior in business transactions. Sanchez recognizes that China may just be agreeing to a good deal.

    But, says Sanchez, “China is ignoring US sanctions, getting tons of oil at a discount and supplying Iran with a much needed revenue source which Iran is in turn using against US troops.”

    Here, his tenuous logic that China is indirectly, and presumably knowingly, funding attacks against the US is so off-putting. And why should China which also finds itself under US sanctions (including new sanctions over alleging Chinese “interfering in Hong Kong’s freedoms.”2 ) want to abide by US sanctions?

    To state the connections proffered is bizarre is putting it mildly. “Question more,” RT advises. Is Sanchez suggesting that when one country conducts trade with another country — for instance, an exchange of cash for goods — that the buyer is responsible for what the buyer does with the cash it receives? Is an employer responsible should an employee use his pay check to drink himself silly and go home and abuse his family? Such is the logical connection that Sanchez proposes.

    Sanchez continues, “So Iran, fueled by its oil revenues, is trying to force the US out of Iraq. And you know what?” Sanchez leans forward and hold his arm out, as if pointing to the viewer: “Seems to be working.”

    Why would Iran want the US — which declared Iran to be part of an “axis of evil” along with Iraq (then under the rule of Saddam Hussein) — next door in Iraq? Who would want a neighbor like that?

    Sanchez got the year wrong,3 in subsequently stating that the Iraqi parliament is “essentially asking the United States troops to leave, to get out of their country.” [emphasis added]

    Most news organizations referred to Iraq expelling US troops; for example, the first page of an internet search on the terms “iraq parliament us troops 2020” listed NPR, Al Jazeera, France24, DW, Rand, Boston Herald, and VOX using some form of the word expel.

    To be fair, the parliament’s resolution did not target only the US: “The Iraqi government must work to end the presence of any foreign troops on Iraqi soil and prohibit them from using its land, airspace or water for any reason.” [emphasis added]

    Sanchez carries on:

    … we have China, Iran, two of the countries most targeted by the United Sates when it comes to sanctions and trade wars in recent years, right?, partnering in a deal that is ostensibly funding attacks against the United States, so what does the United States do at this point? Does it leave Iraq once and for all? Or does it attack China with more sanctions?

    Sanchez is proposing the questions. “Question more” is the RT slogan — a slogan that RT selectively adheres to. There are several more questions that should spring to mind: What are sanctions; i.e, what purpose do they serve? Are sanctions legal? Why is the US military still in Iraq and how did it get to be stationed there in the first place? Why are the purportedly “Iran-backed” militias attacking US bases in Iraq?

    Economic sanctions outside the parameters of a United Nations Security Council resolution or national self-defense are held to constitute an illicit intervention into the sovereign affairs of other nations. More egregiously, sanctions are widely regarded as a declaration of war. And why not? Sanctions kill! Professors John Mueller and Karl Mueller in their article, “Sanctions of Mass Destruction,” made clear the devastating lethality of sanctions:

    economic sanctions … may have contributed to more deaths during the post-Cold War era than all weapons of mass destruction throughout history.

    Speaking of killing, Sanchez does not mention the extremely pertinent assassination of Iranian major general Qasem Soleimani by a US drone strike on 3 January 2020 at Baghdad International Airport. Five Iraqi nationals and four other Iranian nationals were killed alongside Soleimani, including the deputy chairman of Iraq’s Popular Mobilization Forces. This led to the Iraqi resolution to remove foreign troops for its territory.

    When someone commits an unprovoked attack against you, you have a choice to respond or not. What message is sent to the aggressor when you do not respond? Might not the aggressor think she can now attack freely knowing that retaliation is unlikely? For instance, consider how the lack of response to Israeli bombing in Syria has resulted in repeated bombing by Israel of targets in Syria and compare it to Israel’s reluctance to bomb the Hizbollah resistance knowing that there will likely be retaliation.

    There is much dark history regarding the US vis-à-vis Iraq (that includes the western backers of the US, such as the UK, Australia, Canada, etc). There are the deaths of half-a-million children resulting from US-backed UN sanctions on Iraq — a price worth the US sanctions policy, according to Madeleine Albright, then US secretary-of-state. The devastation of a war launched by US president George Bush and UK prime minister Tony Blair in which “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy” of removing Iraq’s president Saddam Hussein. Abdul Haq al-Ani and Tarik al-Ani noted the UN complicity, and wrote a book titled Genocide in Iraq: The Case against the UN Security Council and Member States (Clarity Press)4 .

    Sanchez asks if China even cares about sanctions. “These are serious questions that too few of us are even asking in the media these days.”

    Question more Mr Sanchez: The US is sanctioning Iran. Why? Even though Iran was abiding by the terms of the JCPOA (the Iran nuclear deal), president Donald Trump (most certainly at the behest of Israel) wanted further capitulations by Iran, all this while the US was not in compliance with the deal. Then the US withdrew (so much for fidelity to a signed agreement by the US, but there are scads of such examples), and kept insisting that Iran comply, all while the Europeans partners were also in non-compliance.

    Sanchez presents as the top news question of the day: “Is there an alliance building between China [and Iran] and how will it affect the US?”

    Does Sanchez imply that trade between two countries constitutes “an alliance”? Sanchez’s intonation makes it seem as if the word alliance has some sinister connotations. The US trades with China, so do they have an alliance? Do two countries trading with each other constitute a provocative act against a third country? What does Sanchez wish to denote positing that “an alliance” between China and Iran? Wouldn’t it be nice it all countries were in alliance with each other — like a meaningful United Nations where each member country steadfastly abides by the UN Charter?

    Why not question US alliances, such as with Israel? Israel is a country in violation of dozens of UN resolutions, in violation of several Geneva Conventions, and is engaged in a slow-motion genocide against Palestinians. Indeed, Israeli media pointed out yesterday (16 March) that “Israel’s Theft Business Against the Palestinians Is as Thriving as Ever.”

    How does the US even get portrayed as the aggrieved party in this news reportage? It was the US which did not abide by the JCPOA. It is the US sanctioning Iran, inflicting damage to its economy, and killing Iranian people. It is the US which assassinated a high-ranking Iranian general. It is the US (plus Israel) behind the sabotage caused by the Stuxnet virus and the assassinations of Iranian scientists.

    All Rick Sanchez needs do, to get a good overview of the geo-strategic situation, is eyeball a map bigger than the one he used on air. Then question more: Are Iranian military situated near American shores? Are Iranians in the Florida Strait? Yet, US US warships commonly ply the waters of the Persian Gulf. Should US warships be sailing near Iranian shores? Moreover, when the US sanctions another country, assassinates that country’s citizens, and surrounds it with military hardware, then who is the threat? Also noteworthy is that US warships provocatively sail in the South China Sea, allegedly protecting freedom of navigation there, although never has the US provided any evidence that freedom of navigation has been blocked or threatened by China.

    So why then frame the opening segment by casting aspersions against Iran and China?

    The RT segment improved drastically when Sanchez interviewed former British MP George Galloway, but sadly, the opening segment set a terrible tone. That tone needs to be questioned more because RT is so much better than western mass media, and it needs to keep to that standard.

    1. The opening segment report ends at 16:47.
    2. Imagine if China were to sanction the US for interfering in BLM protestors’ or Capitol Hill protestors’ freedoms?
    3. He stated “Earlier this year,” but it was early 2020 — in January.
    4. Review.
    The post Bizarre RT Framing first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • WSJ Rage at ‘Woke’ China Foreshadows New Redbaiting of Social Justice Activists

     

    WSJ: The Woke Chinese Communist Party

    The Wall Street Journal (3/7/21) accused Chinese media of “invoking the woke themes of American progressives as a propaganda weapon against the US.”

    The Wall Street Journal editorial board (3/7/21) has accused a major Chinese newspaper, and by extension the People’s Republic of China, of exploiting progressive rhetoric around racial justice to create division in the United States.

    The Journal‘s target was an editorial in the Communist Party–owned newspaper Global Times (2/23/21), which complained that the US, Britain and Canada were pressuring China on human rights. The Journal editorial board accused the party paper of using “woke” language:

    Note the use of “white supremacy” and “diversity” and “civilization superiority,” which come straight from the progressive critique of America as a country that is “systemically” racist and oppressive. The Global Times editors may be crude, but they’ve obviously been reading the New York Times. Their dismissal of [Sen. Tom] Cotton as racist is what you see on progressive Twitter.

    The Journal suggested that the Chinese government was following the playbook of the Soviet Union, which reminded the world of the “social and antiwar turmoil of the 1960s” to turn world opinion against Washington. While implying that concerns of US racial injustice are overstated, the Murdoch-owned broadsheet said the Global Times’ “invocation of woke ideology shows they realize its threat to American confidence and purposes.”

    Not only did the Wall Street Journal argue that Chinese “wokeness”—a dismissive term used to deride campaigns against racism, sexism, homophobia and xenophobia—is a danger to conservatism, it depicts it as an existential threat to the survival of the US republic—whether employed by Communists abroad or social justice activists at home. If a Chinese newspaper can support the claims made by Black Lives Matter, then somehow Black Lives Matter must be a foreign agent of a rival power, the suggestion goes.

    The Journal distinguished today’s progressives from the noble civil rights activists of the early 1960s, because the latter wanted to “match American practice with its founding principles,” thus indirectly acknowledging an essential US goodness, while the former are “woke activists” who “find America fundamentally flawed,” an entitled professional elite who worry more about the “Pentagon than they do Chinese censorship.”

    The latter point by the Journal is an old deflection, but it has an obvious counter-argument: A US citizen has more responsibility for and agency to change conditions at home than in a foreign power like China. And while the Journal cites repression of Tibetans and Uighur Muslims, these are hardly overlooked issues in the United States. The Free Tibet movement has long had support among celebrities (Hindustan Times, 3/21/08); concerts for Tibet were all the rage in the 1990s (Rolling Stone, 8/8/96), as it was a major cause promoted by the Beastie Boys, and the concerts featured left-wing bands like Rage Against the Machine. Ill-treatment of Tibetans has been covered in the left-wing press (The Nation, 2/26/09; Jacobin, 2/21/17; In These Times, 4/7/05). And US human rights organizations have kept a close eye on the Uigher issue. It’s not like these concerns are unheard of in the United States across the political spectrum.

    But acknowledging left critics of China would undermine the Journal‘s guilt by association: If Chinese editorialists think tapping into American wokeness is a way to divide and conquer the US empire, then any American with an LGBT flag or Black Lives Matter flag is either knowingly or unknowingly doing Beijing’s bidding.

    Global Times: Five Eyes today’s axis of white supremacy

    The Global Times editorial (2/23/21) attributed white supremacy to the “Five Eyes”—the English-speaking intelligence alliance of the United States, Britain, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

    The Global Times editorial cited the rise of neo-Nazi rhetoric and organizing around the world, particularly its growth in the Trump wing of conservatism. “Hostility towards immigrant groups and non-Western countries became the realistic carrier of this white supremacy,” it said, pointing to Sen. Tom Cotton of Arkansas’s call “for 90 million Chinese Communists to be consigned ‘to the ash heap of history.’”

    As FAIR.org (2/16/21) has noted, the Journal and its siblings in the Murdoch empire see the threat of wokeness coming not just from left-wing activist groups, but from the for-profit corporations that right-wing media are more accustomed to lauding. That the vanguard newspaper of the investment class sees social justice as so dangerous that it has felt the need to attack major American companies for their pro-tolerance public relations campaigns and to shine light on a Chinese newspaper with much less American readership is telling.

    Certainly, one can accuse the Global Times of cheap whataboutism—the attempt to dismiss concerns about one’s own country’s human rights by citing human rights problems in other countries. But whatever one thinks about the limits to their editorial independence, Chinese media have a journalistic obligation to report on racial injustice in the United States. US hate crimes are increasing (BBC, 11/17/20), with a documented increase in anti-Asian violence (NBC, 2/12/21; Human Rights Watch, 2/12/21). The riot on Capitol Hill aimed at annulling the 2020 presidential election exposed the violent potential of far-right militia groups and conspiracy theorists.

    And the Global Times is right to target Cotton. He has defended slavery (BBC, 7/27/20) and denied the existence of systemic racism (Newsweek, 2/26/21). The Arkansas ACLU office called his anti-protest bill racist. His infamous New York Times piece (6/3/20) calling for military suppression of Black Lives Matter protesters was considered so outrageous that it forced the resignation of the paper’s top opinion editor (Politico, 6/7/20).

    The Wall Street Journal‘s linkage of a foreign foe to the paper’s domestic enemies is a dangerous set up—an omen that the paper will not only push for an aggressive cold war against China, but will bring that cold war home, vilifying racial and social justice activists as traitors and enemies of the state.

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Vaccine Diplomacy Is Paying Off For China

    Vaccines have had a place in diplomacy since the Cold War era. The country that can manufacture and distribute lifesaving injections to others less fortunate sees a return on its investment in the form of soft power: prestige, goodwill, perhaps a degree of indebtedness, even awe. Today the country moving fastest toward consolidating these gains may be China, under President Xi Jinping, who proclaimed last May that Chinese-made vaccines against COVID-19 would become a “global public good.” Since that time, top officials have promised many developing countries priority access to Chinese vaccines, and the Chinese Foreign Ministry has announced that the country is providing free vaccines to 69 countries and commercially exporting them to 28 more.

    The post Vaccine Diplomacy Is Paying Off For China appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Vijay Prashad Warns Biden Is “Doubling Down” on Trump’s Anti-China Cold War

    Beijing has accused the U.S. of perpetuating a Cold War mentality as President Joe Biden and senior administration officials shore up alliances in the Pacific region to counter China’s growing influence and increasingly describe the country as a geopolitical threat. Vijay Prashad, director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, says the “bellicose” tone out of Washington is not because the U.S. sees China as a military threat, but because China threatens U.S. dominance in the scientific, technological and diplomatic spheres. “It’s very chilling what the U.S. government is doing in ramping up this cold war,” says Prashad.

    The post Vijay Prashad Warns Biden Is “Doubling Down” on Trump’s Anti-China Cold War first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Public opinion and civil society: shaping Indonesia’s South China Sea Policy?

    In early 2020 last year, dozens of people, mostly from fisher’s associations, gathered in front of the Chinese Embassy in Jakarta. With a huge white loud-speaker truck, they screamed and protested China’s moves in the North Natuna Sea. They demanded China back off the Indonesian exclusive economic zone, stop breaching Indonesia’s sovereign rights, and stop threatening Indonesia’s fishermen.

    Aside from protestors in front of the Chinese Embassy, columns in Indonesia’s major newspapers written by Indonesian scholars and analysts, as well as seminars and focus group discussions organised by universities and think tanks, have also voiced their concerns on China’s move in the South China Sea. They demand a strong response from the Jakarta government. Posts to social media and group messaging platforms have echoed the same concern.

    These kinds of protests are not the first and surely will not be the last in which masses of protestors and Indonesian intellectuals express concern about China’s increasing threats in the region. The North Natuna Sea is just one among many issues to gain attention, including repression of Chinese Uyghur populations and the migration of Chinese workers to Indonesia.

    Indeed, in 2020 the Lingkaran Survey Indonesia showed that 34 percent of Indonesians hold negative perceptions of China. This is a quite significant increase from the 2016 survey, in which the level of negative attitudes toward China was only 19 percent.

    In light of this, the Indonesian government has to consider and adjust its policies and responses to any escalation with China in the South China Sea.

    Despite protests demanding Indonesia take a strong stance against China’s incursions in the South China Sea, Jakarta seems to have a positive relationship with Beijing. With an influx of infrastructure projects and money from Beijing, surely the government does not want provocative and unproductive protests to obstruct China’s investment?

    After the January 2020 incident, when China’s coast guard entered Indonesia’s exclusive economic zone in the North Natuna Sea, Luhut Binsar Pandjaitan, Coordinating Minister for Marine Affairs and Fisheries, urged the public not to exaggerate the incident. Presumably he didn’t want that the incident to be a barrier to China’s investment.

    Related

    How China’s foreign policy shapes prejudice against Chinese Indonesians

    China’s domestic and foreign policy actions indirectly affect prejudice against Chinese Indonesians

    Nathanael Gratias Sumaktoyo and Burhanuddin Muhtadi 05 October, 2020

    Despite Luhut’s warning, the public is still demanding a strong response from Jakarta. Indeed as a new democracy, the Indonesian public tends to openly express what it thinks on any issue, including foreign policy.

    Although Jakarta wants to have good economic cooperation with Beijing, President Joko Widodo has responded to public demand with several symbolic and rhetorical acts, to show that his administration is actually taking sovereign rights violations in the North Natuna Sea seriously. That included conducting a limited cabinet ministerial meeting on a warship in Natuna in 2016 and visiting Natuna Sea himself after the 2020 incident.

    This rhetoric is necessary to show that even though Jakarta desires strong economic cooperation and investment from Beijing, it takes any maritime violations seriously.

    Indonesia’s position on the South China Sea dispute has already clarified that we are not a claimant to any features in the disputed area. However, the overlap with the Chinese Nine-dash line was ruled illegal by a 2016 tribunal.

    For the past several years there have been some second-track diplomatic efforts from scholars and analysts in Southeast Asian countries, such as Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, to consider how civil society and researchers can help to navigate and find a common interests in the dispute. It is often easier for a non-government institutions to find common understandings and common interests, which may enable them to advise their respective governments’ on the next move, including in the current ongoing negotiation of the Code of Conduct.

    That being said, Indonesia’s South China Sea policy, and government responses to any violations in the South China Sea, are also driven by public concern and demand, considering the strategic role of civil society, public intellectuals, and NGOs. It is important to make sure they retain their role in advocating Indonesia’s national interest in the dispute.

    The post Public opinion and civil society: shaping Indonesia’s South China Sea Policy? appeared first on New Mandala.

    This post was originally published on New Mandala.

  • The Watchdogs of Imperialism and the Uyghur Genocide Slander

    On February 26 the Canadian Parliament passed a motion, by a vote of 226 to 0, expressing the opinion that “the People’s Republic of China has” implemented “measures intended to prevent” Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim births and that these measures are “consistent with” the United Nations Genocide Convention.

    The reality is that Beijing is not preventing Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim births, and a report by a German anthropologist widely cited as evidence that it is, contradicts this claim. That report, by Adrian Zenz, a fellow at a US government-created foundation whose mission is to bring about the end of communism and the Chinese Communist Party,  reveals that while Chinese family planning policy restricts the number of children Chinese couples are allowed to have, it does not prevent couples in any group, including Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, from bearing children. Moreover, limits on family size are the same between the Han Chinese ethnic majority and religious minorities. There is, therefore, no discrimination in Chinese family planning policy on the basis of national, religious, or ethnic affiliation.

    Perhaps aware their position was untenable, the parliamentarians sought to buttress their motion by citing political opinion in the United States, where “it has been the position of two consecutive administrations that Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims are being subjected to a genocide by the Government of the People’s Republic of China,” the motion observed. In an act of unseemly subservience to imperial power, Canada’s parliament constructed a motion, based on no evidence, to echo a point of view articulated in Washington, also based on no evidence.

    Significantly, the last two consecutive administrations have designated China a rival, and therefore have politically-motivated reasons for slandering their challenger. Moreover, apart from using the hyper-aggressive US military to extort economic and strategic concessions from other countries, US administrations have a long record of fabrication to justify their aggressive actions. That “two consecutive administrations” have held that the Chinese are carrying out a genocide is evidence of nothing more than Washington continuing to operate in its accustomed fashion of churning out lies about states that refuse to be integrated into the US economic, military and political orbit. A Serb-orchestrated genocide against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo; hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; moderate rebels in Syria: these are only the tip of the iceberg of US lies and calumnies offered as pretexts for imperial aggression. Genocide in Xinjiang is but the latest.

    Below, I look at the genocide slander from four perspectives:

    1. The geostrategic context.
    2. Who is behind the accusations?
    3. How do the accusers define genocide?
    4. What is the evidence?

    The geostrategic context

    In 2003, Graham E. Fuller, a former vice-chair of the US National Intelligence Estimate and one-time CIA station chief in Kabul, wrote a book for the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Study at the Johns Hopkins University, titled The Xinjiang Problem. His co-author was the academic S. Frederick Starr.

    Fuller and Starr wrote that:

    the historical record suggests that the decision of countries and even of international organizations to raise specific human rights issues is often politicized and highly selective. Many countries will devote attention to human rights issues in China in inverse proportion to the quality of their overall bilateral relationship.

    It need not be said that today, 18 years later, the quality of overall bilateral relations between the United States and China has deteriorated sharply. China has emerged as a formidable competitor to US economic and technological supremacy, and US policy has shifted, beginning with the Obama administration, toward an explicit program of eclipsing China’s rise.

    In recent days, US president Joe Biden has said, “American leadership must meet … the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States.” The Wall Street Journal reports that Biden’s “goal is to stay ahead of China in semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other advances that are expected to define the economy and military of the future.” However, the US president, according to the newspaper, intends to portray the conflict as one based on “a clash of values: democracy vs. autocracy,” rather than a clash of economic interests.

    At the base of a deteriorating Sino-US relationship, then, lies a commercial rivalry, on top of which Washington has layered a narrative about a clash of values. In a Foreign Affairs article written before he became president, Biden outlined a strategy of confronting China over the economic challenges it poses to US businesses, US domination of the industries of tomorrow, and US technological (and concomitant military) supremacy. Biden said he would use a human rights narrative to rally support for a US-led campaign against China.

    Fuller and Starr continued: “It would be unrealistic,” they wrote, “to rule out categorically American willingness to play the ‘Uyghur card’ as a means of exerting pressure on China in the event of some future crisis or confrontation.” Many “of China’s rivals have in the past pursued active policies in Xinjiang and exploited the Uyghur issue for their benefit.” Almost two decades later, with US hostility rising as Washington’s claim to primacy on the world stage is under challenge, the United States has decided to play the Uyghur card.

    Who is behind the accusations?

    A network of groups and individuals, animated by an antagonism to the Chinese Communist Party, and supportive of continued US global supremacy, are involved in originating the slanders against Beijing. At the center is the German anthropologist, Adrian Zenz.

    Zenz’s opposition to Beijing lies in his religious beliefs. A fundamentalist Christian, he views communism, feminism and homosexuality, as abominations against God. Zenz also believes that he is on a divinely-inspired mission to bring about the demise of communist rule in China.

    Zenz is a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The foundation, created by the US government to discredit an ideology which competes against the United States’ first favorite religion, US state-capitalism (Christianity being the second) seeks to free the world “from the false hope of Marxism” and save it from “the tyranny of communism” (the leitmotif of Hitler’s political career.) This it strives to do by educating future generations that “Marxist socialism is the deadliest ideology in history,” (one that, by this view, is fully capable of carrying out a genocide), a task the foundation sees as especially pressing today, when “Positive attitudes toward communism and socialism are at an all-time high in the United States.”

    Zenz has also written anti-Beijing reports for the Jamestown Foundation,  an anti-Communist outfit supported by corporations, foundations, and wealthy individuals, whose mission is to shape public opinion against China and North Korea.

    The slanderers also include a number of Uyghur exile groups, including the World Uyghur Congress, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED is a US government-bankrolled organization whose first president conceded that it does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, namely destabilize foreign governments by strengthening fifth columns. The NED does so under the cover of promoting democracy and human rights.  The organization has boasted on Twitter that it has been funding fifth columnists in Xinjiang since 2004.

    Another propagator of anti-Beijing slanders is the Epoch Times, the newspaper of the Falun Gong. Like Zenz, the roots of Falun Gong’s anti-Beijing animus lie in reactionary religious convictions. The cult deplores gender equality, homosexuality, and communism as affronts against God.

    How do the accusers define genocide?

    Those who accuse Beijing of carrying out a genocide employ a ruse regularly used in the corporate world to dupe consumers and employees. The subterfuge is to redefine a word to mean something other than what the word would be reasonably interpreted to mean.

    Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo used this ruse. He accused Beijing of trying to integrate Xinjiang and its Turkic people into the larger Chinese society. While this did not meet the definition of genocide, Pompeo labelled Beijing’s actions as genocide all the same.  According to the magazine Foreign Policy, State Department lawyers told Pompeo that Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang did not satisfy the UN convention’s definition of genocide. Pompeo, who has no respect for the truth, much less the contrary opinions of government lawyers, was undeterred.

    The current US secretary of state Anthony Blinken also accused Beijing of genocide. Using the same ruse, Blinken pointed to non-genocidal actions, namely one million Uyghurs in ‘concentration camps’, to make the claim that Beijing was trying to destroy a Muslim minority.  The claim was a double deception. First, there are no Uyghur concentration camps in Xinjiang, and second, even if there were, concentration camps do not equal genocide. Blinken was likely trying to exploit the association of the Holocaust with German death camps to insinuate that concentration camps and genocide go together, like the artic and snow, and that the Chinese government, and its Communist Party, are contemporary expressions of Nazi horror.

    The source of the concentration camp allegation is yet another of Beijing’s political foes, an Islamist media outlet run by Uyghur separatists in Turkey, which serves as a platform for the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, an al-Qaeda affiliated jihadist outfit which seeks to transform Xinjiang into an Islamic State. ETIM is considered a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States—or was considered a terrorist organization by the United States until Pompeo removed the group from the US terrorism list in October, thereby eliminating an impediment that had limited the contribution the jihadists could make to the US project of destabilizing Xinjiang, propagating calumnies about the Chinese government, and ultimately undermining China’s ability to compete with US businesses on the world stage.

    In July of last year, Zenz wrote a paper for the Jamestown Foundation on Uyghur birthrates, which appears to be the basis for the claim cited by Canadian parliamentarians that China is carrying out a genocide in Xinjiang. Zenz’s report raised the question of genocide only in its final sentence, and then only tentatively. It was, instead, the Jamestown Foundation editor, John Dotson, a former US naval officer and US Congressional staff researcher, who concluded in an introductory note that “Zenz presents a compelling case that the CCP party-state apparatus in Xinjiang is engaged in severe human rights violations that meet the criteria for genocide as defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” Zenz, however, concluded only that Chinese policies “might be characterized” as constituting “a demographic campaign of genocide per” the UN convention. To be sure, any policy might be characterized in any particular way one wants, but the ad rem question isn’t, can policy x be characterized as y, but is it y? Zenz, unlike Dotson, was not prepared to say that Chinese birth control policy constitutes genocide. And there’s a good reason for this; it clearly doesn’t.

    Zenz’s paper was a political tract erected on the foundations of a report on Beijing’s family planning policies and their effects on Uyghur and Han birthrates in Xinjiang. What the report showed, notwithstanding Dotson’s politically-motivated misinterpretation, was that:

    • Previously, Han Chinese couples were limited to one child, while Uyghur couples were allowed two in urban areas, and three in rural areas. Family planning restrictions were not rigidly enforced on Uyghur couples.
    • Today, Han Chinese couples are permitted to have as many children as Uyghur couples are permitted (two children in urban areas, and three in rural areas.)
    • Family planning restrictions are now rigidly enforced.
    • The change from lax to rigid enforcement has been accompanied by a decrease in the Uyghur birth rate.

    Zenz’s report showed that the Uyghur population continued to grow, despite enforcement of family planning policies; Uyghur couples are not prevented from having children, (they’re only limited in the number of children they can have); and family planning rules apply equally to Han Chinese.

    Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, reads as follows:

    In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    (a) Killing members of the group;

    (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

    (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

    (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

    (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

    The relevant consideration is the fourth item, namely, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. Chinese family planning policy does not prevent births within the Uyghur population; it only restricts them, and the restriction is non-discriminatory; it applies equally to all groups.

    What is the evidence?

    US State Department lawyers told Pompeo there is no evidence of genocide in Xinjiang. As we have seen, that didn’t stop Pompeo–who once boasted that as CIA director “we lied, cheated, and stole”– from making the accusation. He simply changed the definition of genocide, carrying on the US state tradition of fabricating lies to advance its interests.

    Bob Rae, Canada’s representative to the UN, accused China of committing genocide, and then said efforts should be made to gather evidence to demonstrate this to be true.

    John Ibbitson, a columnist with Canada’s Globe and Mail, conceded that Chinese government actions in Xinjiang do not meet the UN definition of genocide, but that Beijing is carrying out a genocide all the same.

    The watchdogs of imperialism

    The United States is waging an economic and information war on China, to preserve its economic,  military, and technological supremacy. Washington is recruiting its citizens, its allies and their citizens, and the progressive community, into a campaign to protect the international dictatorship of the United States from the challenge posed by the peaceful rise of China. Every manner of slander has been hurled at China to galvanize popular opposition to Beijing and mobilize popular support for economic aggression and growing military intimidation against the People’s Republic, from accusations that Chinese officials concealed the spread of the coronavirus; to calumnies about Muslims being immured in concentration camps, subjected to forced labor, and targeted for genocide; that Beijing is violating the one state-two systems agreement in Hong Kong (when in fact it’s only implementing a security law to undergird the one state part of the accord) and that Beijing’s efforts to reunify the country by re-integrating a territory the US Seventh Fleet prevented it from reintegrating in 1950, are really acts of aggression against an independent country named Taiwan.

    Progressive forces, from Democracy Now!, which has provided Adrian Zenz a platform to traduce Beijing, to the New Democratic and Green parties in Canada, which voted for the motion declaring a genocide is in progress in Xinjiang, collude in the campaign to protect and promote the profits of Western shareholders, investors, and bankers from the challenges posed by China’s rise. Lenin, who knew a thing or two about communism, international rivalries, and the perfidy of progressives, described the predecessors of today’s Democracy Nows, Greens, and New Democrats as the watchdogs of imperialism. His words echo through the corridors of time.

  • Originally published at Gowan’s blog.
    • The post The Watchdogs of Imperialism and the Uyghur Genocide Slander first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • The Watchdogs of Imperialism and the Uyghur Genocide Slander

    On February 26 the Canadian Parliament passed a motion, by a vote of 226 to 0, expressing the opinion that “the People’s Republic of China has” implemented “measures intended to prevent” Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim births and that these measures are “consistent with” the United Nations Genocide Convention.

    The reality is that Beijing is not preventing Uyghur and other Turkic Muslim births, and a report by a German anthropologist widely cited as evidence that it is, contradicts this claim. That report, by Adrian Zenz, a fellow at a US government-created foundation whose mission is to bring about the end of communism and the Chinese Communist Party,  reveals that while Chinese family planning policy restricts the number of children Chinese couples are allowed to have, it does not prevent couples in any group, including Uyghurs and other Turkic Muslims, from bearing children. Moreover, limits on family size are the same between the Han Chinese ethnic majority and religious minorities. There is, therefore, no discrimination in Chinese family planning policy on the basis of national, religious, or ethnic affiliation.

    Perhaps aware their position was untenable, the parliamentarians sought to buttress their motion by citing political opinion in the United States, where “it has been the position of two consecutive administrations that Uyghur and other Turkic Muslims are being subjected to a genocide by the Government of the People’s Republic of China,” the motion observed. In an act of unseemly subservience to imperial power, Canada’s parliament constructed a motion, based on no evidence, to echo a point of view articulated in Washington, also based on no evidence.

    Significantly, the last two consecutive administrations have designated China a rival, and therefore have politically-motivated reasons for slandering their challenger. Moreover, apart from using the hyper-aggressive US military to extort economic and strategic concessions from other countries, US administrations have a long record of fabrication to justify their aggressive actions. That “two consecutive administrations” have held that the Chinese are carrying out a genocide is evidence of nothing more than Washington continuing to operate in its accustomed fashion of churning out lies about states that refuse to be integrated into the US economic, military and political orbit. A Serb-orchestrated genocide against ethnic Albanians in Kosovo; hidden weapons of mass destruction in Iraq; moderate rebels in Syria: these are only the tip of the iceberg of US lies and calumnies offered as pretexts for imperial aggression. Genocide in Xinjiang is but the latest.

    Below, I look at the genocide slander from four perspectives:

    1. The geostrategic context.
    2. Who is behind the accusations?
    3. How do the accusers define genocide?
    4. What is the evidence?

    The geostrategic context

    In 2003, Graham E. Fuller, a former vice-chair of the US National Intelligence Estimate and one-time CIA station chief in Kabul, wrote a book for the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Study at the Johns Hopkins University, titled The Xinjiang Problem. His co-author was the academic S. Frederick Starr.

    Fuller and Starr wrote that:

    the historical record suggests that the decision of countries and even of international organizations to raise specific human rights issues is often politicized and highly selective. Many countries will devote attention to human rights issues in China in inverse proportion to the quality of their overall bilateral relationship.

    It need not be said that today, 18 years later, the quality of overall bilateral relations between the United States and China has deteriorated sharply. China has emerged as a formidable competitor to US economic and technological supremacy, and US policy has shifted, beginning with the Obama administration, toward an explicit program of eclipsing China’s rise.

    In recent days, US president Joe Biden has said, “American leadership must meet … the growing ambitions of China to rival the United States.” The Wall Street Journal reports that Biden’s “goal is to stay ahead of China in semiconductors, artificial intelligence and other advances that are expected to define the economy and military of the future.” However, the US president, according to the newspaper, intends to portray the conflict as one based on “a clash of values: democracy vs. autocracy,” rather than a clash of economic interests.

    At the base of a deteriorating Sino-US relationship, then, lies a commercial rivalry, on top of which Washington has layered a narrative about a clash of values. In a Foreign Affairs article written before he became president, Biden outlined a strategy of confronting China over the economic challenges it poses to US businesses, US domination of the industries of tomorrow, and US technological (and concomitant military) supremacy. Biden said he would use a human rights narrative to rally support for a US-led campaign against China.

    Fuller and Starr continued: “It would be unrealistic,” they wrote, “to rule out categorically American willingness to play the ‘Uyghur card’ as a means of exerting pressure on China in the event of some future crisis or confrontation.” Many “of China’s rivals have in the past pursued active policies in Xinjiang and exploited the Uyghur issue for their benefit.” Almost two decades later, with US hostility rising as Washington’s claim to primacy on the world stage is under challenge, the United States has decided to play the Uyghur card.

    Who is behind the accusations?

    A network of groups and individuals, animated by an antagonism to the Chinese Communist Party, and supportive of continued US global supremacy, are involved in originating the slanders against Beijing. At the center is the German anthropologist, Adrian Zenz.

    Zenz’s opposition to Beijing lies in his religious beliefs. A fundamentalist Christian, he views communism, feminism and homosexuality, as abominations against God. Zenz also believes that he is on a divinely-inspired mission to bring about the demise of communist rule in China.

    Zenz is a senior fellow at the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation. The foundation, created by the US government to discredit an ideology which competes against the United States’ first favorite religion, US state-capitalism (Christianity being the second) seeks to free the world “from the false hope of Marxism” and save it from “the tyranny of communism” (the leitmotif of Hitler’s political career.) This it strives to do by educating future generations that “Marxist socialism is the deadliest ideology in history,” (one that, by this view, is fully capable of carrying out a genocide), a task the foundation sees as especially pressing today, when “Positive attitudes toward communism and socialism are at an all-time high in the United States.”

    Zenz has also written anti-Beijing reports for the Jamestown Foundation,  an anti-Communist outfit supported by corporations, foundations, and wealthy individuals, whose mission is to shape public opinion against China and North Korea.

    The slanderers also include a number of Uyghur exile groups, including the World Uyghur Congress, funded by the National Endowment for Democracy. The NED is a US government-bankrolled organization whose first president conceded that it does overtly what the CIA used to do covertly, namely destabilize foreign governments by strengthening fifth columns. The NED does so under the cover of promoting democracy and human rights.  The organization has boasted on Twitter that it has been funding fifth columnists in Xinjiang since 2004.

    Another propagator of anti-Beijing slanders is the Epoch Times, the newspaper of the Falun Gong. Like Zenz, the roots of Falun Gong’s anti-Beijing animus lie in reactionary religious convictions. The cult deplores gender equality, homosexuality, and communism as affronts against God.

    How do the accusers define genocide?

    Those who accuse Beijing of carrying out a genocide employ a ruse regularly used in the corporate world to dupe consumers and employees. The subterfuge is to redefine a word to mean something other than what the word would be reasonably interpreted to mean.

    Former US secretary of state Mike Pompeo used this ruse. He accused Beijing of trying to integrate Xinjiang and its Turkic people into the larger Chinese society. While this did not meet the definition of genocide, Pompeo labelled Beijing’s actions as genocide all the same.  According to the magazine Foreign Policy, State Department lawyers told Pompeo that Beijing’s actions in Xinjiang did not satisfy the UN convention’s definition of genocide. Pompeo, who has no respect for the truth, much less the contrary opinions of government lawyers, was undeterred.

    The current US secretary of state Anthony Blinken also accused Beijing of genocide. Using the same ruse, Blinken pointed to non-genocidal actions, namely one million Uyghurs in ‘concentration camps’, to make the claim that Beijing was trying to destroy a Muslim minority.  The claim was a double deception. First, there are no Uyghur concentration camps in Xinjiang, and second, even if there were, concentration camps do not equal genocide. Blinken was likely trying to exploit the association of the Holocaust with German death camps to insinuate that concentration camps and genocide go together, like the artic and snow, and that the Chinese government, and its Communist Party, are contemporary expressions of Nazi horror.

    The source of the concentration camp allegation is yet another of Beijing’s political foes, an Islamist media outlet run by Uyghur separatists in Turkey, which serves as a platform for the East Turkistan Islamic Movement, an al-Qaeda affiliated jihadist outfit which seeks to transform Xinjiang into an Islamic State. ETIM is considered a terrorist organization by the United Nations, the European Union, and the United States—or was considered a terrorist organization by the United States until Pompeo removed the group from the US terrorism list in October, thereby eliminating an impediment that had limited the contribution the jihadists could make to the US project of destabilizing Xinjiang, propagating calumnies about the Chinese government, and ultimately undermining China’s ability to compete with US businesses on the world stage.

    In July of last year, Zenz wrote a paper for the Jamestown Foundation on Uyghur birthrates, which appears to be the basis for the claim cited by Canadian parliamentarians that China is carrying out a genocide in Xinjiang. Zenz’s report raised the question of genocide only in its final sentence, and then only tentatively. It was, instead, the Jamestown Foundation editor, John Dotson, a former US naval officer and US Congressional staff researcher, who concluded in an introductory note that “Zenz presents a compelling case that the CCP party-state apparatus in Xinjiang is engaged in severe human rights violations that meet the criteria for genocide as defined by the UN Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide.” Zenz, however, concluded only that Chinese policies “might be characterized” as constituting “a demographic campaign of genocide per” the UN convention. To be sure, any policy might be characterized in any particular way one wants, but the ad rem question isn’t, can policy x be characterized as y, but is it y? Zenz, unlike Dotson, was not prepared to say that Chinese birth control policy constitutes genocide. And there’s a good reason for this; it clearly doesn’t.

    Zenz’s paper was a political tract erected on the foundations of a report on Beijing’s family planning policies and their effects on Uyghur and Han birthrates in Xinjiang. What the report showed, notwithstanding Dotson’s politically-motivated misinterpretation, was that:

    • Previously, Han Chinese couples were limited to one child, while Uyghur couples were allowed two in urban areas, and three in rural areas. Family planning restrictions were not rigidly enforced on Uyghur couples.
    • Today, Han Chinese couples are permitted to have as many children as Uyghur couples are permitted (two children in urban areas, and three in rural areas.)
    • Family planning restrictions are now rigidly enforced.
    • The change from lax to rigid enforcement has been accompanied by a decrease in the Uyghur birth rate.

    Zenz’s report showed that the Uyghur population continued to grow, despite enforcement of family planning policies; Uyghur couples are not prevented from having children, (they’re only limited in the number of children they can have); and family planning rules apply equally to Han Chinese.

    Article II of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, reads as follows:

    In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

    (a) Killing members of the group;

    (b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

    (c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;

    (d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

    (e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.

    The relevant consideration is the fourth item, namely, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group. Chinese family planning policy does not prevent births within the Uyghur population; it only restricts them, and the restriction is non-discriminatory; it applies equally to all groups.

    What is the evidence?

    US State Department lawyers told Pompeo there is no evidence of genocide in Xinjiang. As we have seen, that didn’t stop Pompeo–who once boasted that as CIA director “we lied, cheated, and stole”– from making the accusation. He simply changed the definition of genocide, carrying on the US state tradition of fabricating lies to advance its interests.

    Bob Rae, Canada’s representative to the UN, accused China of committing genocide, and then said efforts should be made to gather evidence to demonstrate this to be true.

    John Ibbitson, a columnist with Canada’s Globe and Mail, conceded that Chinese government actions in Xinjiang do not meet the UN definition of genocide, but that Beijing is carrying out a genocide all the same.

    The watchdogs of imperialism

    The United States is waging an economic and information war on China, to preserve its economic,  military, and technological supremacy. Washington is recruiting its citizens, its allies and their citizens, and the progressive community, into a campaign to protect the international dictatorship of the United States from the challenge posed by the peaceful rise of China. Every manner of slander has been hurled at China to galvanize popular opposition to Beijing and mobilize popular support for economic aggression and growing military intimidation against the People’s Republic, from accusations that Chinese officials concealed the spread of the coronavirus; to calumnies about Muslims being immured in concentration camps, subjected to forced labor, and targeted for genocide; that Beijing is violating the one state-two systems agreement in Hong Kong (when in fact it’s only implementing a security law to undergird the one state part of the accord) and that Beijing’s efforts to reunify the country by re-integrating a territory the US Seventh Fleet prevented it from reintegrating in 1950, are really acts of aggression against an independent country named Taiwan.

    Progressive forces, from Democracy Now!, which has provided Adrian Zenz a platform to traduce Beijing, to the New Democratic and Green parties in Canada, which voted for the motion declaring a genocide is in progress in Xinjiang, collude in the campaign to protect and promote the profits of Western shareholders, investors, and bankers from the challenges posed by China’s rise. Lenin, who knew a thing or two about communism, international rivalries, and the perfidy of progressives, described the predecessors of today’s Democracy Nows, Greens, and New Democrats as the watchdogs of imperialism. His words echo through the corridors of time.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Is China Committing Genocide?

    Xinjiang Province, China – Up is down. War is peace. And the U.S., Canada and the Netherlands have accused China of genocide.

    “This is forced labor, this is forced sterilization, this is forced abortions, …the kind of thing we haven’t seen in an awfully long time in this world,” declared then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.

    To be fair, the accusers are experts in genocide: the U.S. and its junior imperial partner, Canada, wiped out their indigenous populations. Today the U.S. is responsible for the three biggest human rights catastrophes in the world in Afghanistan, Syria and Yemen. And the Netherlands is just coming to terms with its massacres in Indonesia.

    Mike Pompeo’s successor at the State Department, Antony Blinken, is sticking with the genocide claim.

    The post Is China Committing Genocide? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Beijing’s Decades-Long Policies In Xinjiang

    Central to China’s rise as a global power are the attempts to increase its influence over Xinjiang, the country’s biggest and most mineral rich region. Xinjiang has been part of Chinese territory since the mid-18th century, longer than the existence of the United States, and this province at just over 640,000 square miles, is equal to two-thirds the size of continental Europe. Unlike Europe, however, Xinjiang is sparsely populated with just over 20 million people while it contains rare and iconic species like snow leopards, bears and wolves.

    In 2019 Beijing oversaw the production of five million tons of cotton in Xinjiang, 85% of the national total for the year. Cotton is considered one of the most important cash crops in China.

    The post Beijing’s Decades-Long Policies In Xinjiang appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Iconic Sauce Brand Lee Kum Kee Leads Fermented Food Industry With LEED Platinum Certification

    Lee Kum Kee Koji Making Plant

    4 Mins Read Hong Kong-headquartered food corporation Lee Kum Kee has announced that its Guangdong-based production site has received the LEED Platinum certification, making it the first in the global fermented food industry to have earned the achievement. Equipped with a solar photovoltaic power generation system, geothermal heat pumps, a wetland park and wastewater treatment facilities, the manufacturing […]

    The post Iconic Sauce Brand Lee Kum Kee Leads Fermented Food Industry With LEED Platinum Certification appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • China unveils homegrown HQ-17AE short range air defence system

    State-owned defence prime China Aerospace Science and Industry Corporation (CASIC) has unveiled a new variant of the in-service Hong Qi-17A (HQ-17A) self-propelled short-range air-defence (SHORAD) system known as the HQ-17AE, state broadcaster CCTV revealed on 7 March. The HQ-17AE is the latest variant within the “Flying Mongoose” family of SHORAD vehicles developed by CASIC’s Second […]

    The post China unveils homegrown HQ-17AE short range air defence system appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Unilever X Alibaba: Duo Debuts Closed Loop Recycling System In China To Tackle Plastic Waste

    4 Mins Read Unilever has joined forces with Alibaba Group to develop an AI-powered recycling system that will identify and sort plastic packaging in an effort to make China a waste-free country. British-Dutch multinational consumer goods giant Unilever partnered with Chinese multinational tech company Alibaba Group to launch the ‘Waste Free World’ Initiative, a first of its kind technology-driven […]

    The post Unilever X Alibaba: Duo Debuts Closed Loop Recycling System In China To Tackle Plastic Waste appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Food Safety & Nutrition Top Motivators For Chinese Consumers To Adopt Cell-Based Meat, Study Finds

    3 Mins Read Food safety concerns and nutrition will be the key drivers Chinese consumers to adopt cell-based products, a new consumer attitudes survey finds. Ethical and environmental advantages of cultured meats, on the other hand, fare lower on the list of priorities. The research sheds light on the potential marketing strategies that would be effective for alternative […]

    The post Food Safety & Nutrition Top Motivators For Chinese Consumers To Adopt Cell-Based Meat, Study Finds appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • UK Protecting Its Citizens With China’s Forced-Labor PPE

    UK Protecting Its Citizens With China's Forced-Labor PPE

    Image: original Scot-NHS/re-egineered by @tibettruth

    The world’s insatiable appetite for PPE as a stated precaution against infection from viruses has lead to a number of issues, not least the environmental impact of untold numbers of discarded masks. The panic (or calculation) of governments to shroud their health-workers and general citizenry in masks, gowns and gloves has also made a number business very very rich. Including some based in China (where as the world knows very well, employment and human rights are non-existent).

    UK Protecting Its Citizens With China's Forced-Labor PPE

    Image: original cloudfront.net/augmented by @tibettruth

    But those realities have not prevented countries such as the United Kingdom from engaging in a number of shadowy deals to procure such equipment, that often times has proved to be dangerously ineffective and required withdrawal, so much for cautious management of public expenditure! We see a report today from, ‘The New European’ (an English online journal) that the British have paid the equivalent of $125 million to a Chinese corporation that uses a hotel room in downtown Beijing as its offices!

    The Beijing Union Glory Investment Company, like many such corporations operates closely with, and no doubt invested by the Chinese regime. An authority that inflicts genocidal policies against the Tibetan and Uyghur peoples. Such however is the crazed momentum for PPE the British Department for Health (with the knowledge and support of England’s version of the State Department) ignored entirely the harrowing misery suffered across Tibet and East Turkistan. Yet in only January this year the British Secretary for Foreign Affairs, Dominic Raab announced in Parliament that UK companies would face fines if they could not show that their products or supply chains were free from any association with forced labor in so-called Xinjiang.

    UK Protecting Its Citizens With China's Forced-Labor PPE

    Image: original courthousenews/augmented by @tibettruth

    It is, of course, a matter of fact that the region is a huge producer of cotton and it has become increasingly apparent and well documented that slave-labor is used in that production.Which returns us to the subject of medical protective clothing and equipment. Did the British not realize that a major component used in the manufacturing of such products is cotton? Surely either Matt Hancock or Dominic Raab stop to consider where the source of a government backed Chinese company would source their materials from when producing PPE items? Maybe they asked the Chinese where the cotton used in such items was from? If so they would take credulity to a whole new level if believing any refutation that the cotton content was not from the very region cited by the UK authorities for housing forced-labor camps!

    UK Protecting Its Citizens With China's Forced-Labor PPE

    Image: original ce.cn/augmented by @tibettruth

    We hope any of our UK friends and readers will seek a freedom-of-information disclose from the British ministries of health and foreign affairs on this issue. As it stands the government in Britain looks to be in violation of its own foreign and trading policies with respect to the importation of goods linked to forced labor. Is this how the British seek to tackle human rights abuses in so-called Xinjiang?

    Of course in truth it doesn’t give a damn about the condition of Uyghurs enslaved and exploited to produce and process cotton, most likely a core component of the PPE bought by the UK government. Nor is it troubled that its people will be wearing equipment made in the traumatizing misery of China’s concentration camps.

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

  • Has NYT Heard of China’s or Russia’s Covid Vaccines?

     

    I guess it is hard to get news at the world’s leading newspapers, but this lengthy New York Times podcast (The Daily, 3/3/21) on Bill Gates and his efforts to make vaccines available to the developing world never once mentioned the vaccines developed by China or Russia. This is more than a bit incredible, because at this point, far more of the Russian and Chinese vaccines are going to developing countries than the vaccines supplied by Western countries through COVAX, the international consortium set up the World Health Organization and supported by the Gates Foundation.

    Are New York Times reporters prohibited from talking about the Chinese and Russian vaccines?

    This piece is also incredible in that it explicitly says that because Gates doesn’t want the government-granted patent monopoly system of financing from being challenged, there is no alternative. That could well be true, but it speaks to the incredible corruption of our politics and our economy that because one incredibly rich person is opposed to having a corrupt, inefficient and antiquated system reformed, it will not be reformed.

    A version of this post originally appeared on CEPR’s blog Beat the Press (3/4/21).

    This post was originally published on FAIR.

  • Defend and Deter

    The air defence threat-and-response equation exists increasingly in integrated layers. Armada looks at two examples of how Western navies use missiles to defend against and deter the integrated air threat. The expanding levels of naval missile capabilities deployed in the maritime operating environment are both cause and effect of the increasing levels of naval operational […]

    The post Defend and Deter appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Women’s Leadership In The Global Recovery From The COVID-19 Pandemic

    Beijing – Today is International Women’s Day (IWD), and the theme for this year’s celebration is “Women in leadership: Achieving an equal future in a COVID-19 world.” We recognize the tremendous contribution and leadership demonstrated by women and girls around the world in shaping our recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and a more sustainable future.

    A global review of the progress achieved towards commitments made at the Fourth World Conference on Women 25 years ago in Beijing, conducted by UN Women in 2020, reveals that no country has fully delivered on the Beijing Platform for Action, nor is close to it. Globally, women currently hold just one-quarter of the seats at the tables of power across the board and are absent from some key decision-making spaces, including in peace and climate negotiations.

    This reality is despite the advances that we can see globally: there are now more girls in school than ever before, fewer women are dying in childbirth, and over the past decade, 131 countries have passed laws to support women’s equality.

    The post Women’s Leadership In The Global Recovery From The COVID-19 Pandemic appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Digital Colonialism: The Evolution Of American Empire

    In 2020, billionaires made out like bandits. Jeff Bezos’s personal holdings surged from $113 to $184 billion. Elon Musk briefly eclipsed Bezos, with a net worth rise from $27 billion to over $185 billion.

    For the bourgeoisie presiding over “Big Tech” corporations, life is grand.

    Yet, while the expanded dominance of these corporations in their domestic markets is the subject of numerous critical analyses, their global reach is a fact seldom discussed, especially by dominant intellectuals in the American empire.

    In fact, once we investigate the mechanics and numbers, it becomes apparent that Big Tech is not only global in scope, it is fundamentally colonial in character and dominated by the United States. This phenomenon is called “digital colonialism.”

    We live in a world where digital colonialism now risks becoming as significant and far-reaching a threat to the Global South as classic colonialism was in previous centuries.

    The post Digital Colonialism: The Evolution Of American Empire appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • ‘Beijing Spring’ The Story of Chi Xiaoning and His Smuggled Camera

    Revealed for the first time: Reminiscent of what is happening in Hong Kong today, this is a story about underground film-making, radical art, and censorship. In 1979, Chi Xiaoning created his “Film of Star Group Activities of 1979.” It is the only known video documenting the radical activities of the Stars Group, avant-garde artists from China who championed individuality and freedom of expression. The only copy of the footage is in the M+ Collections in Hong Kong. American film-maker Andy Cohen, a regular Global Insights Magazine contributor, portrays this story in his 2020 film ‘Beijing Spring’, which is being premiered internationally at the Geneva Human Rights Film Festival (FIFDH) in March, 2021. [see https://fifdh.org/en/2021/film/120-beijing-spring]

    In Global Geneva of 11 February 2021 Andy Cohen writes about the challenges behind Chi Xiaoning’s daring film-making during a period that was subject to severe censorship in favour of official propaganda art.

    Stars Protest March Demanding Artistic Freedom— Beijing, National Day (1979) (Photo: ©Wang Rui)

    Before the 1980s, documentary films in China were mostly propaganda made to serve the ideological purposes of the Communist Party. Views critical of the party were prohibited. Only one official voice could be heard: that of the government. Film-makers obeyed Mao Zedong’s dictum that artists’ works should reflect the lives of the masses — the workers, peasants, and soldiers—for whom they were made. These films, scripted and staged using ‘model people’ instead of ordinary subjects, were crafted in a dogmatic, formulaic style that put a positive spin on government policies.

    By 1979, however, the political tide in the People’s Republic had turned and the scent of reform began to fill the air, heralding what would become known as the Beijing Spring. Mao Zedong had died a few years earlier, and the nation had begun to reawaken after thirty years of oppression that had claimed more than fifty million lives. Deng Xiaoping, the new ‘paramount leader’, experimented with not only economic reforms but also loosening restrictions on freedom of speech. He even tolerated the open postings of government criticisms in one easily monitored locale in central Beijing — a long brick wall running along Xidan Street just west of Tiananmen Square that came to be known as Democracy Wall.

    Originally intended for workers and peasants to post the grievances they’d suffered during the Cultural Revolution, the wall was quickly overtaken by artists and activists, who seized the opportunity to post their radical works in such a prominent place. These artworks and writings not only exposed the suffering the country had been through but also focused on the present plights of ordinary people, emphasising that every individual is unique, equal, and imbued with the right to openly express thoughts and emotions without being crushed or silenced.

    A young Beijing film-maker named Chi Xiaoning used this moment to shoot an unofficial documentary about the Democracy Wall movement in a style different from its predecessors. Chi chose to focus his film on the daring activities of one specific group that had arisen from the underground magazine Today: a band of artists who called themselves the Stars Group (Xingxing). Explaining the imagery behind the choice of the name, the group’s co-founder Ma Desheng said: ‘When I was growing up there was only one star in the sky: the red sun, Mao Zedong. Many stars mean many people. Every individual is a star.’

    In order to realise his vision, Chi needed to overcome one major obstacle: finding a camera and film stock, both of which were unavailable to the average person. Luckily for Chi, his faithful friend Ren Shulin was among the precious few who not only knew how to operate a camera but actually had access to one.

    In May 1979, Ren was assigned to work at the Institute of Coal and Carbon Science. His job was to film official documentaries about safety in coal mines. ‘To smuggle one or two boxes of film out of my service was easy. To get more? That took some time. And to get the movie camera out — that racked my brains,” Ren later stated. In the end, Ren succeeded and the two began filming on 27 September, 1979, the first day that the Stars Group hung an unofficial exhibition on the perimeter fence outside of Beijing’s China Art Gallery (now known as the National Art Museum of China). Simultaneously, an official propaganda art show was being held inside the space.

    Adding to this paradox was the name of the film Ren had smuggled out: Every Generation Is Red (Dai Dai Hong). Ren’s knowledge and courage enabled him to play the crucial role of camera assistant, steadily unloading and reloading the reels under the cover of trees at the eastern wall of the gallery. By keeping the film stock safe from the crowds, avoiding the scrutiny of undercover police, and feeding him reels, Ren enabled Chi to continuously film the Stars exhibition on the fence.

    The camera Ren smuggled out was a hand-wound Gansu’s Light model (Gan Guang). This made Chi’s already difficult task all the more so, as he aimed to capture real events unfolding in real time. A fully wound camera could shoot for only thirty seconds, and an entire box of film produced only three minutes of footage. This time constraint, coupled with having to avoid the police, tested Chi’s improvisational style.

    Filmmaker Chi Xiaoning on Top of Democracy Wall (1979)  (Photo: ©Wang Rui) 

    Chi climbed the back of the fence to capture the impressions of onlookers as they stared at the artworks with shock and awe. Chi’s method, like the Stars artists’, focused on ordinary people such as factory workers, teachers with students, and the elderly. He recorded their genuine emotions and free expressions typically hidden beneath the outer masks that had become the default after years of toeing the party line.

    The fact the Stars artists also employed original, modernist styles and content, utilising free forms and abstraction, added a meta-artistic layer to the undertaking. Chi shot an avant-garde film about avant-garde artists during a time when the act of filming was also considered an act of protest. This was art for art’s sake, produced about and with the aim of freedom of expression. Chi’s lens revealed faces viewing never-before-seen artworks that challenged the aesthetic conventions of the party, and that depicted the naked female body in twisted modern forms. The first day was a success for both the Stars artists and the greater artistic principle.

    Early the next morning, Chi and Ren were back at the fence, locked, loaded, and ready to film, when the police suddenly arrived to take down the Stars Group exhibit. As the police closed in, Chi wound his way through the crowds, in and out of the chaos ‘like a wartime journalist in a battlefield’, as Ren later described it. After tearing the art off the fence, the police surrounded Chi and Ren. They had no chance to escape. The police confiscated the camera from Chi. From Ren, they took the camera bag containing the used and unused film stock.

    “I was very nervous,” Ren recounted. “If the camera was confiscated, I’d be fired from my job at the institute. But Xiaoning was calm, arguing with the other side.” After being kept in a windowless room inside the museum for hours, the film and the camera were abruptly and inexplicably returned to Chi and Ren. For some reason, the authorities’ mood was sympathetic to the artists that day.

    Stars Artists Group Portrait (1980)  (Photo: ©Helmut Opletal)

    The Stars Group artists, on the other hand, were angry that their show had been terminated and their artworks confiscated. Together with other political activists, they planned a protest rally and march. Everyone knew this could mean jail time for the ringleaders.

    The Stars rally was an enormous provocation to the Communist leaders — it was reported on and documented by foreign media at the time — and it was planned for 1 October: National Day and the thirtieth anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic. The big parade had been cancelled in light of Mao’s death in 1976; now, in its stead, the Stars and their supporters took it upon themselves to march from Democracy Wall to the Municipal Building. Chi planned to film it but told Ren not to assist him. If caught, there was no sense in both of them going to jail, as he would need Ren to develop the reels and edit the film.

    Chi stood atop Democracy Wall, filming as the rally began. When the group headed for the Municipal Building, Chi and his camera weaved in and out. He went inside factories and shot from windows to capture workers’ perspectives; he zoomed in on passengers’ reactions as they peered from the windows of passing buses; he filmed the crowds of protestors marching along rainy streets, zooming in on their puddle-pounding feet.

    While the crowds marched on, Ren waited anxiously all day for news of his friend. This was an era before cell phones and pagers. It was inevitable that, with a 16mm camera in hand, filming in highly visible locations, Chi once again attracted the omnipresent authorities’ attention. When asked how Chi had saved his film, Stars Group artist and friend Wang Keping recounted that Chi had told him he’d exposed the part that had not yet been filmed, tricking the police into thinking it was useless. Beyond showcasing his enormous talent, what makes Chi’s footage even more spectacular and immediate is the constant risk of arrest he faced while filming.

    In stark contrast to his main action footage of the protest march, Chi also shot B-roll focusing on scenes by the lake in the park of the Old Summer Palace. In its deceptively quiet manner, however, the B-roll is just as avant-garde. From the weather conditions it is evident that he filmed on two different occasions. On the first day, the water was calm, as were the demeanours of the subjects—rowing on the lake, playing guitars or mah-jong, strolling along tree-lined trails, and picnicking. This idleness was diametrically opposed to the ‘heroic’ actions of the ‘model people’ in official documentaries. The calmness of the lake mirrors the first quiet day of the exhibit.

    Artist Ma Desheng Speech at Democracy Wall (1979) (Photo: ©Wang Rui)

    On the second day of B-roll, the wind was flapping the red flags on the bridge and bending the branches of trees, reflecting the chaos of the protest march. Chi’s use of contrasting weather filmed at the park echoes the inner emotions of his subjects as well as the political events surrounding them. The B-roll shows close-ups of everyday objects with an anthropomorphic introspection: the empty rowboats lined up like cadres, crates of empty soda bottles (Coca-Cola had just entered China in December 1978), goldfish swimming in a vendor’s water-filled plastic bag—all shots considered unsuitable for documentaries at the time.

    When asked why the style of this footage can now be considered groundbreaking, Ren replied, “Documentary films in China were almost all propaganda, not the expression of the author himself. We were conscious of this, so our film, from idea to structure to visual language, was different from documentaries of that time.”

    Despite its significance, almost no one knew about this unfinished film until recently. In total, it comprises forty-seven minutes of raw footage, out of sequence, that was hidden from the authorities for the past thirty-five years. Fearing for the safety of his friends and his family, Chi hid the salvaged footage in a confidant’s home, swearing him to secrecy.

    After Chi’s untimely death in 2007, no one knew the whereabouts of the footage, not even Ren, as it had been kept underground, passed from friend to friend. The footage was eventually recovered and the only copy now resides in the M+ Collections.

    Film of Star Group Activities of 1979 by Chi Xiaoning and Ren Shulin reflects on and documents the social, cultural, and political changes that took place during the Beijing Spring. This treasure trove will be mined for years to come by film-makers, historians, and art historians alike. This pivotal moment in China’s history, which gave birth to its democracy movement, could not have been possible without the powerful combination of art and activism that coalesced at Democracy Wall. And because of the courageous feats of one documentarian and his assistant cameraman, history will forever have the visual accounts of those exciting times.

    Andy Cohen is an American documentary film-maker, journalist and author based in Geneva. Much of his work is investigative and human rights-based. Cohen’s films have been shown at the FIFDH Geneva, Venice Film Festival, Telluride, Tribeca, Traverse City, Toronto International Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, and the Sundance Film Festival, among others, and broadcast on PBS, BBC, UK Ch4, ARTE, Netflix, and Amazon.For more information about AC Films, please go to his website.

    A version of this article was first published by M+ HK.

    Andy Cohen

    ‘Beijing Spring’ is scheduled for its International Premier at the Human Rights Film Festival in Geneva (FIFDH), which takes placed 5-14 March, 2021. See: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2021/03/06/2021-edition-of-geneva-film-festival-kicks-off-in-virtual-format/

    The Geneva Film Festival & Censored Chinese History: The Story of Chi Xiaoning and His Smuggled Camera 池小寧和他偷運得來的攝影機

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

  • Hong Kong activists and plight of the Uighurs: human rights this week in photos

    A roundup of the coverage on struggles for human rights and freedoms, from Colombia to the Sahara

    Continue reading…

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

  • SBS suspends broadcasts from Chinese state-run channels over ‘forced confessions’

    Human rights organisation says CGTN and CCTV channels regularly featured footage of prisoners making confessions under duress

    Australian public broadcaster SBS has suspended broadcasts from Chinese state media channels CGTN and CCTV, pending a review into human rights complaints.

    SBS told the Guardian it was reviewing a complaint sent by human rights organisation Safeguard Defenders, which claimed CGTN and CCTV programs regularly shown on the multicultural broadcaster had in the past included dozens of forced confessions both domestically and internationally, in breach of the SBS code of conduct. It did not claim that SBS had aired any of the confessions.

    Related: Death threats, distrust and racism: how anti-Chinese sentiment in Australia ‘seeped into the mainstream’

    Continue reading…

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

  • The Biden Administration Proving to Be More of the Same Old Discredited Policies as its Predecessor

    There were a number of political commentators who urged us to give newly elected United States president Joe Biden a chance to show that he would offer a new approach to the multiple problems facing the United States alliance. Well, he had an opportunity to do so. But the speech that Biden gave on 19th of February of this year that “an attack on one is an attack on all” tells a different story. This “attack” was going to be made by either Russia or China, whom he declared to be the greatest enemy of both the United States and Europe.

    What Biden hoped to achieve, beyond gratifying the exorbitant United States military budget, in attacking Russia and China as the United States’ main threats is unclear. Certainly, any kind of military attack on those two nations, or either of them, is a fantasy invoked by more than a few of the United States strategic planners. This fantasy has not stopped the United States from using its military to continue to threaten both Russia and China.

    Three days after his speech, the United States deployed four B1 heavy bombers to Norway. According to the CNN commentary on the move, the objective of this particular exercise was to send “a clear message” to Russia that the United States intended to operate in the strategically important Arctic region. The move was also apparently to send a message that the United States will defend allies in the Arctic area against “any Russian aggression.”

    That the United States is unable to point to a single instance of this alleged “Russian aggression” is apparently immaterial. That the placing of United States military assets within reach of Russia’s borders could reasonably be perceived as an American threat to Russia is a concept that appears beyond American minds to grasp.

    That the United States military deployment to threaten Russia and China is contrary to international law is apparently an idea that fails to trouble United States planners. Their double standard in this regard was exemplified in the United States’ response to a speech by China’s foreign minister Wang on 22nd of February indicating a continued Chinese willingness to communicate on problems that may exist.

    The conciliatory approach by the Chinese was rudely rebuffed by United States State Department spokesman Ned Price, who instead of welcoming the offer of constructive dialogue preferred to characterise it as reflecting the alleged continuing pattern of China’s tendency to “avert blame for its predatory economic practices, it’s lack of transparency, its failure to honour international agreements, and its repression of universal human rights.” This is a classic example of the pot calling the kettle black, because each and every one of Mr Price’s allegations could be applied to United States behaviour over the past 70+ years.

    Further convincing evidence that NATO (and Biden) are still singing from a long-discredited song sheet is found in the recently published document NATO 2030, prepared by a group of so-called “wise persons.” It contains 138 specific proposals that does nothing to modify French president Macron’s description of NATO as “brain dead.”

    In comments made just prior to the documents publication, NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg declared that “China posed important challenges to our security.” At a press conference given to broadcast his views, Stoltenberg claimed that China did not share “our values” and tries to “intimidate other countries.”

    Unfortunately, Stoltenberg is locked in the same outdated time frame as Biden. China is now the largest trading partner for the European Union, replacing the United States in that role last year. A total of 18 of the European Union nations have now signed a Memorandum of Understanding regarding China’s Belt and Road Initiative. According to independent economic data the European Union member States that have signed up to the BRI are now experiencing faster economic growth rates than those who have not signed on.

    This development is a classic illustration of what Chinese president Xi refers to as a “win win situation”. Critics of the Chinese moves have claimed that it is all part of some undefined “Chinese plot” to take over the economies of Western Europe. The economic logic behind such a claim is manifestly lacking.

    NATO and the Biden administration are happy to promote this anti-China rhetoric, regardless of its detachment from reality, but also manifestly at odds with the experience of countries that have embraced the Chinese initiative.

    Similarly, on 20th February Biden repeated tired US claims that Russia had violated international law with its purported annexation of Crimea. This is a claim endlessly repeated in the western media. Such claims show a casual disregard for Crimea’s history. Alarmed at the manifestly illegal coup that replaced the legitimate Ukrainian government in early 2014, the Crimean parliament voted to re-join the Russian Federation.  I say “re-join” because Crimea had been part of Russia for centuries before being gifted to Ukraine in 1953 by then Russian President Khrushchev.

    The issue was then put to a referendum on whether or not the people wanted to re-join Russia. It is the “re-join” component that is notably lacking from western commentary. The people of Crimea voted overwhelmingly (>90%) in favour of reunification and the Russian parliament in turn voted to allow them to re-join. All of this relevant history is missing from western discussion of what happened. Instead, there is a constant misrepresentation of events that also ignores the right, guaranteed by the United Nations Charter, for such self-determination votes to occur.

    That Kosovo was similarly separated from Serbia in 2008 is a fact that the critics of Crimean separation from Ukraine carefully avoid, not least because the Kosovo government has become a major United States asset with an enormous military presence.  It also serves as a major conduit to Europe of heroin from Afghanistan. That the United States had similar visions for its navy in Crimea, replacing the Russians, is another part of the equation carefully avoided in western analysis.

    For the United States, what happened in Crimea is yet another stick with which to beat the Russians. That Biden, who had his own particular role in the Ukrainian revolution, is unlikely to have a change of heart on this topic is yet further proof that there will be no substantive changes in United States foreign policy under the new administration.

    Fortunately, the world has changed since he last held power. The sooner the United States recognises that fact and adjusts its foreign policy accordingly, the safer we are all likely to be.

    The post The Biden Administration Proving to Be More of the Same Old Discredited Policies as its Predecessor first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • No House Meeting Today — Potential for Riots

    Stories continue to break about the previous administration. Continue reading

    The post No House Meeting Today — Potential for Riots appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Frank Senge Kolma: Somare could lose his temper – trust me, I know

    TRIBUTE: By Frank Senge Kolma in Port Moresby

    Many will now try to recollect some experience, some exchange or brush with the Grand Chief Sir Michael Thomas Somare who fell to pancreatic cancer on February 26 after a long checkered career in politics as our founding Prime Minister.

    That he was an engaging conservationist is true. He was captivating, sincere and focused.

    His humour was infectious and he used it often. He was kind and fair. He could be firm and tough when the situation demanded it.

    And he could lose his temper. Trust me, I know.

    I felt his temper flare once in March 1987 and although I maintain my innocence in that little exchange, the memory is now something I shall hold special as the great man, whom I too call Papa, lies in State.

    He had returned from Taiwan via Singapore to Port Moresby and had called a media conference upon landing. He had read a story on the plane flying in that ran in the Post-Courier under my byline.

    It said a building was going to be built in Waigani and that it was going to be called the Somare Foundation House. Funding was to come from Taiwan which was what the Grand Chief had secured on his most recent trip abroad.

    No particular investigation
    I did no particular investigation for this piece. Somebody sent me a page of a newspaper cutting that had a picture of the Grand Chief shaking hands with an important personality in Taiwan. Nothing else was discernable to me as the newspaper was written in Chinese characterS.

    I had it translated by the Singapore consul and the Chinese Embassy separately and the translated story matched.

    The Chief was incensed which surprised me at the press conference in Parliament because I thought he would announce further details of the deal. Instead, he was guarded and angry.

    Frank Senge Kolma with Somare
    Frank Senge Kolma interviewing Sir Michael Somare. Image: PNG Post-Courier

    I worked out later that the publication would place our country at odds with the Chinese Embassy which had always maintained a One China policy since it first recognised PNG’s Independence and entered into bilateral relations with the new nation in 1976.

    Papua New Guinea respected that stance and had always maintained a Taiwanese Trade Mission but never elevated that to any higher recognition.

    To have our own Grand Chief now appear to have received some assistance to build a building named after himself would create all manner of diplomatic tensions. And so the Chief lost it and my cheek, on the day, was in the way of a swinging open slap. It stung.

    I remember saying: “Why are you attacking me? I did nothing wrong,” but he did not hear me in the commotion as other journalists scurried out of the way fearing they too might receive similar treatment.

    First direct contact
    “And there it was, my first direct contact with the hand that had signed so many things into existence, including my country’s nationhood.

    A week later, in Parliament and witnessed by Ted Diro, Lady Veronica Somare and a few others we made our peace in Parliament.

    He was good like that: a sudden storm and immediate calm weather. I look back now and consider that encounter a rare sort and I cherish the memory.

    Frank Senge Kolma is one of Papua New Guinea’s leading journalists, commentators and newspaper editors. This commentary was first published in the PNG Post-Courier.

    This post was originally published on Asia Pacific Report.

  • “Engaging the World”: The “Fascinating Story” of Hamas’s Political Evolution

    On February 4, representatives from the Palestinian Movement, Hamas, visited Moscow to inform the Russian government of the latest development on the unity talks between the Islamic Movement and its Palestinian counterparts, especially Fatah.

    This was not the first time that Hamas’s officials traveled to Moscow on similar missions. In fact, Moscow continues to represent an important political breathing space for Hamas, which has been isolated by Israel’s Western benefactors. Involved in this isolation are also several Arab governments which, undoubtedly, have done very little to break the Israeli siege on Gaza.

    The Russia-Hamas closeness is already paying dividends. On February 17, shipments of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine, Sputnik V, have made it to Gaza via Israel, a testament to that growing rapport.

    While Russia alone cannot affect a complete paradigm shift in the case of Palestine, Hamas feels that a Russian alternative to the blind and conditional American support for Israel is possible, if not urgent.

    Recently, we interviewed Dr. Daud Abdullah, the author of ‘Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas’s Foreign Policy’, and Mr. Na’eem Jeenah, Director of the Afro-Middle East Center in Johannesburg, which published Dr. Abdullah’s book.

    Abdullah’s volume on Hamas is a must-read, as it offers a unique take on Hamas, liberating the discussion on the Movement from the confines of the reductionist Western media’s perception of Hamas as terrorist – and of the counterclaims, as well. In this book, Hamas is viewed as a political actor, whose armed resistance is only a component in a complex and far-reaching strategy.

    Why Russia? 

    As Moscow continues to cement its presence in the region by offering itself as a political partner and, compared with the US, a more balanced mediator between Israel and the Palestinians, Hamas sees the developing Russian role as a rare opportunity to break away from the US-Israel imposed isolation.

    “Russia was a member of the Quartet that was set up in 2003 but, of course, as a member of the (United Nations) Security Council, it has always had an ability to inform the discourse on Palestine,” Abdullah said, adding that in light of “the gradual demise of American influence, Russia realized that there was an emerging vacuum in the region, particularly after the (Arab) uprisings.”

    “With regard to Hamas and Russia the relationship took off after the (Palestinian) elections in 2006 but it was not Hamas’s initiative, it was (Russian President Vladimir) Putin who, in a press conference in Madrid after the election, said that he would be willing to host Hamas’s leadership in Moscow. Because Russia is looking for a place in the region.”

    Hamas’s willingness to engage with the Russians has more than one reason, chief among them is the fact that Moscow, unlike the US, refused to abide by Israel’s portrayal of the Movement. “The fundamental difference between Russia and America and China … is that the Russians and the Chinese do not recognize Hamas as a ‘terrorist organization’; they have never done so, unlike the Americans, and so it made it easy for them to engage openly with Hamas,” Abdullah said.

    On Hamas’s ‘Strategic Balance’

    In his book, Abdullah writes about the 1993 Oslo Accords, which represented a watershed moment, not only for Hamas but also for the entire Palestinian liberation struggle. The shift towards a US-led ‘peace process’ compelled Hamas to maintain a delicate balance “between strategic objectives and tactical flexibility.”

    Abdullah wrote:

    Hamas sees foreign relations as an integral and important part of its political ideology and liberation strategy. Soon after the Movement emerged, foreign policies were developed to help its leaders and members navigate this tension between idealism and realism. This pragmatism is evident in the fact that Hamas was able to establish relations with the regimes of Muammar Gaddhafi in Libya and Bashar al-Assad in Syria, both of whom were fiercely opposed to the Muslim Brotherhood.

    In our interview, Abdullah elaborated:

    From the very beginning, Hamas adopted certain principles in respect to its international relations and, later on, in the formation of a foreign policy. Among these, there is a question of maintaining its independence of decision-making; non-alignment in conflicting blocks, avoidance of interference in the affairs of other states.

    Mr. Jeenah, an accomplished writer himself, also spoke of the “delicate balance.”

    “It is a delicate balance, and a difficult one to maintain because, at this stage, when movements are regarded and regard themselves as liberation movements, they need to have higher moral and ethical standards than, for example, governments,” Jeenah said.  “For some reason, we expect that governments have to make difficult choices but, with liberation movements, we don’t, because they are all about idealism and creating an ideal society, etc.”

    Jeenah uses the South Africa anti-apartheid struggle which, in many ways, is comparable to the Palestinian quest for freedom, to illustrate his point:

    When the liberation movement in South Africa was exiled, they took a similar kind of position. While some of them might have had a particular allegiance to the Soviet Union or to China, some of them also had strong operations in European countries, which they regarded as part of the bigger empire. Nevertheless, they had the freedom to operate there. Some of them operated in other African countries where there were dictatorships and they got protection from those states.

    Hamas and the Question of National Unity

    In his book, which promises to be an essential read on the subject, Abdullah lists six principles that guide Hamas’s political agenda. One of these guiding principles is the “search for common ground.”

    In addressing the question of Palestinian factionalism, we contended that, while Fatah has failed at creating a common, nominally democratic platform for Palestinians to interact politically, Hamas cannot be entirely blameless. If that is, indeed, the case, can one then make the assertion that Hamas has succeeded in its search for the elusive common ground?

    Abdullah answers:

    Let me begin with what happened after the elections in 2006. Although Hamas won convincingly and they could have formed a government, they decided to opt for a government of national unity. They offered to (Palestinian Authority President) Mahmoud Abbas and to (his party) Fatah to come into a government of national unity. They didn’t want to govern by themselves. And that, to me, is emblematic of their vision, their commitment to national unity.

    But the question of national unity, however coveted and urgently required, is not just controlled by Palestinians.

    The PLO is the one that signed the Oslo Accords,” Abdullah said, “and I think this is one of Hamas’s weaknesses: as much as it wants national unity and a reform of the PLO, the fact of the matter is Israel and the West will not allow Hamas to enter into the PLO easily, because this would be the end of Oslo.

    On Elections under Military Occupation

    On January 15, Abbas announced an official decree to hold Palestinian elections, first presidential, then legislative, then elections within the PLO’s Palestine National Council (PNC), which has historically served as a Palestinian parliament in exile. The first phase of these elections is scheduled for May 22.

    But will this solve the endemic problem of Palestinian political representation? Moreover, is this the proper historical evolution of national liberation movements – democracy under military occupation, followed by liberation, instead of the other way around?

    Jeenah spoke of this dichotomy:

    On the one hand, elections are an opportunity for Palestinians to express their choices. On the other hand, what is the election really? We are not talking about a democratic election for the State, but for a Bantustan authority, at greater restraints than the South African authority.

    Moreover, the Israeli “occupying power will not make the mistake it did the last time. It will not allow such freedom (because of which) Hamas (had) won the elections. I don’t think Israel is going to allow it now.”

    Yet there is a silver lining in this unpromising scenario. According to Jeenah, “I think the only difference this election could make is allowing some kind of reconciliation between Gaza and the West Bank.”

    Hamas, the ICC and War Crimes 

    Then, there is the urgent question of the anticipated war crime investigation by the International Criminal Court (ICC). Yet, when the ICC agreed to consider allegations of war crimes in Palestine, chances are not only alleged Israeli war criminals are expected to be investigated, but the probe could potentially consider the questioning of Palestinians, as well. Should not this concern Hamas in the least?

    In the Israeli wars on Gaza in 2008, 2012 and 2014, Hamas, along with other armed groups had no other option but to “defend the civilian population,” Abdullah said, pointing out that the “overriding concept” is that the Movement “believes in the principle of international law.”

    If Hamas “can restore the rights of the Palestinian people through legal channels, then it will be much easier for the Movement, rather than having to opt for the armed struggle,” Abdullah asserted.

    Understanding Hamas

    Undoubtedly, it is crucial to understand Hamas, not only as part of the Palestine-related academic discourse, but in the everyday political discourse concerning Palestine; in fact, the entire region. Abdullah’s book is itself critical to this understanding.

    Jeenah argued that Abdullah’s book is not necessarily an “introductory text to the Hamas Movement. It has a particular focus, which is the development of Hamas’s foreign policy. The importance of that, in general, is firstly that there isn’t a text that deals specifically with Hamas’s foreign policy. What this book does is present Hamas as a real political actor.”

    The evolution of Hamas’s political discourse and behavior since its inception, according to Jeenah, is a “fascinating” one.

    Many agree. Commenting on the book, leading Israeli historian, Professor Ilan Pappé, wrote,

    This book challenges successfully the common misrepresentation of Hamas in the West. It is a must-read for anyone engaged with the Palestine issue and interested in an honest introduction to this important Palestinian Movement.

    • (Dr. Daud Abdullah’s book, Engaging the World: The Making of Hamas’s Foreign Policy, is available here.)

    The post “Engaging the World”: The “Fascinating Story” of Hamas’s Political Evolution first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.