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Category: China

  • In the Middle of a Pandemic, We Shouldn’t Be Funding a New Cold War With China

    President Joe Biden, center, accompanied by Vice President Kamala Harris, right center, Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin, left, and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Mark Milley, right, tours the Pentagon on February 10, 2021, in Washington, D.C.

    This country is in a crisis of the first order. More than half a million of us have died thanks to Covid-19. Food insecurity is on the rise, with nearly 24 million Americans going hungry, including 12 million children. Unemployment claims filed since the pandemic began have now reached 93 million. Given the level of damage to the less wealthy parts of this society, it’s little wonder that most Americans chose pandemic recovery (including the quick distribution of vaccines) as their top priority issue.

    Keep in mind that our democracy is suffering as well. After all, former president Donald Trump incited an insurrection when he wasn’t able to win at the polls, an assault on the Capitol in which military veterans were overrepresented among those committed to reversing the election results (and endangering legislators as well). If you want a mood-of-the-moment fact, consider this: even after Joe Biden’s election, QAnon followers continued to insist that Trump could still be inaugurated to his second term in office. Addressing economic and political instability at home will take significant resources and focus, including calling to account those who so grossly mishandled the country’s pandemic response and stoked the big lie of questioning the legitimacy of Biden’s election victory.

    If, however, you weren’t out here in the real world, but in there where the national security elite exists, you’d find that the chatter would involve few of the problems just mentioned. And only in our world would such a stance seem remarkably disconnected from reality. In their world, the “crisis” part of the present financial crisis is a fear, based on widespread rumors and reports about the Biden budget to come, that the Pentagon’s funding might actually get, if not a genuine haircut, then at least a trim — something largely unheard of in the twenty-first century.

    The Pentagon’s boosters and their allies in the defense industry respond to such fears by insisting that no such trim could possibly be in order, that competition with China must be the prime focus of this moment and of the budget to come. Assuming that China’s rise is, in fact, a genuine problem, it’s not one that’s likely to be solved either in the near future or in a military fashion (not, at least, without disaster for the world), and it’s certainly not one that should be prioritized during a catastrophic pandemic.

    While there are genuine concerns about what China’s rise might mean for the United States, it’s important to recognize just how much harm those trying to distract us from the very real problems at hand are likely to inflict on our health and actual security. Since the beginning of the pandemic, in fact, those unwilling to accept our failures or respond adequately to the disease at hand have blamed outside forces, most notably China, for otherwise preventable havoc to American lives and the economy.

    Trump and his allies tried to shirk accountability for their failure to respond to the pandemic by pushing xenophobic and false characterizations of Covid-19 as the “China virus” or the “kung flu.” In a similar fashion, the national security elites hope that focusing on building up our military and building new nuclear weapons with China in mind will distract time and energy from making needed changes at home. But those urging us to increase Pentagon spending to compete with China in the middle of a pandemic are, in reality, only compounding the damage to our country’s recovery.

    Militarizing the Future

    Given the last two decades, you won’t be surprised to know that this misplaced assessment of the real threat to the public has a firm grip on Washington right now. As my colleague Dan Grazier at the Project On Government Oversight pointed out recently, confirmation hearings for Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin III and Deputy Secretary Kathleen Hicks included more than 70 (sometimes ominous) mentions of China.

    So again, no surprise that only a few weeks after those hearings, Biden announced the creation of a new China task force at the Pentagon. As the press announcement made clear, that group is going to be a dream for the military-industrial complex since it will, above all, focus on developing advanced “defense” technologies to stare down the China “threat” and so further militarize the future. In other words, the Pentagon’s projected threat assessments and their wonder-weapon solutions will be at the forefront of Washington thinking — and, therefore, funding, even during this pandemic.

    That’s why it’s easy enough to predict where such a task force will lead. A similar panel in 2018, including lobbyists, board members, and contractors from the arms industry, warned that competition with China would require a long-term increase in funding for the Pentagon of 3% to 5%. That could mean an almost unimaginable future Department of Defense budget of $971.9 billion in fiscal year 2024. To pay for it, they suggested, Congress should consider cutting social security and other kinds of safety-net spending.

    Even before Covid-19 hit, the economic fragility of so many Americans should have made that kind of recommendation irresponsible. In the midst of a pandemic, it’s beyond dangerous. Still, it betrays a crucial truth about the military-industrial complex: its key figures see the U.S. economy as something that should serve their needs, not the other way around.

    Of course, the giants of the weapons industry have long had a direct seat at the table in Washington. Despite being the first Black secretary of defense, for instance, Lloyd Austin III remains typical of the Pentagon establishment in the sense that he comes to the job directly from a seat on the board of directors of weapons giant Raytheon. And he’s in good company. After all, many of the administration’s recent appointees are drawn from key Washington think tanks supported by the weapons industry.

    For instance, more than a dozen former staffers from, or people affiliated with, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS) have joined the Biden administration. A recent report by the Revolving Door Project found that CNAS had repeatedly accepted the sort of funding that went comfortably with recommendations it was making that “would directly benefit some of the think tank’s donors, including military contractors and foreign governments.” When it came to confronting China, for instance, CNAS figures urged the Department of Defense to “sustain and enhance” defense contractors so that they would become ever more “robust, flexible, and resilient” in a faceoff with that country.

    Sadly, even as the Pentagon’s budget remains largely unchallenged, there’s been a sudden reawakening — especially in Republican ranks — to the version of fiscal conservatism that looks askance at providing relief to communities and businesses suffering around the country. Recent debates in Washington about the latest pandemic relief bill suggest once again that the much-ballyhooed principles of “responsibility” and “fiscal conservatism” apply to everyone — except, of course, the Pentagon.

    Putting Covid-19 Relief Spending in Perspective

    The price tag for the relief bill presently being debated in Congress, $1.9 trillion, is certainly significant, but it’s not far from the kind of taxpayer support national security agencies normally receive every year. In 2020, for instance, the real national security budget request surpassed $1.2 trillion. That request included not only the Pentagon, but other costs of war, including care for veterans and military retirement benefits.

    Over the years, such costs have proven monumental. The Department of Defense alone, for example, has received more than $10.6 trillion over the past 20 years. That included $2 trillion for its overseas contingency operations account, a war-fighting fund used by both the Pentagon and lawmakers to circumvent congressionally imposed spending caps. Reliance on that account, the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office assured Congress, only made it likelier that taxpayers would fund more expensive and less optimal solutions to America’s forever wars.

    In the past, the justification for such excessive national-security spending rested on the idea that the Defense Department was the key to keeping Americans safe. As a result, the Pentagon’s ever-escalating requests for money were approved by Congress year after year without real opposition. Disproportionate funding for that institution has, however, come at a significant cost.

    Caps on non-defense spending under the Budget Control Act of 2011 meant that civilian agencies were already underfunded when the pandemic hit. As the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities pointed out, “Overall funding for programs outside veterans’ medical care remains below its level a decade ago.” The consequences of that underspending can also be seen in our crumbling roads and infrastructure, to which, in its last report in 2017, the American Society of Civil Engineers gave a D+ — and the situation has only grown worse since then.

    Job protection is the other common refrain for those defending high funding levels for the Pentagon and, during a pandemic with such devastating employment consequences, such a concern can hardly be dismissed. But studies have consistently shown that military spending is a remarkably poor job creator compared to almost any other kind of spending. Some of us may still remember World War II’s Rosie the Riveter and mid-twentieth-century union support for defense budgets as engines for job creation. Those assumptions are, however, sorely out of date. Investing in healthcare, combating climate change, or rebuilding infrastructure are all significantly more effective job creators than yet more military spending.

    Of course, non-military stimulus spending has been far from perfect. Even measuring the effects of the first relief package passed by Congress has proven difficult, especially since the Trump administration ignored the law when it came to reporting on just how many jobs that spending either preserved or created. Still, there’s no question that non-military stimulus efforts are more effective, by orders of magnitude, than defense spending when it comes to job creation.

    Needed: A New Funding Strategy to Weather Future Storms

    The uncomfortable truth (even for those who would like to see a trillion dollars in annual Pentagon spending) is that such funding won’t make us safer, possibly far less so. Recent studies of preventable military aviation crashes indicate that, disturbingly enough, given the way the Pentagon spends taxpayer funds, more money can actually make us less safe.

    Somewhere along the line in this pandemic moment, Washington needs to redefine the meaning of both “national security” and “national interest.” In a world in which California burns and Texas freezes, in which more than half-a-million Americans have already been felled by Covid-19, it’s time to recognize how damaging the over-funding of the Pentagon and a myopic focus on an ever more militarized cold war with China are likely to be to this country. As the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft’s Stephen Wertheim has argued, it’s increasingly clear that an American strategy focused on chasing global military supremacy into the distant future no longer serves any real definition of national interest.

    Vanderbilt law professor Ganesh Sitaraman recently pointed out at Foreign Affairs that “the coming era will be one of health crises, climate shocks, cyberattacks, and geoeconomic competition among great powers. What unites those seemingly disparate threats is that each is not so much a battle to be won as a challenge to be weathered.” While traditional defense threats still loom large in what passes for national debate in Washington, the most likely (and potentially most devastating) threats to public health and safety aren’t actually in the Pentagon’s wheelhouse.

    Weathering those future crises will continue to require innovation and creativity, which means ensuring that we are investing adequately not in the hypersonic weaponry of some future imagined war but in education and public health now. Particularly in the near term, as we try to rebuild jobs and businesses lost to this pandemic, even the Pentagon must be forced to make better use of the staggering resources it already receives from increasingly embattled American taxpayers. Rushing to produce yet more useless (and sometimes poorly produced) weapons systems and technology will only increase the fragility of both the military and the civilian society it’s supposed to protect.

    Make no mistake: the addiction to Pentagon spending is a bipartisan problem in Washington. Still, change is in order. The problems we face at home are too overwhelming to be ignored. We can’t continue to let the appetites of the military-industrial complex crowd out the needs of the rest of us.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • The Pentagon, First, Last, and Always

    Focusing on the wrong threats, including a new Cold War with China, is the last thing we can afford now. Continue reading

    The post The Pentagon, First, Last, and Always appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Australian senator calls to recognise China’s treatment of Uighurs as genocide

    Independent Rex Patrick moves after similar parliamentary motions passed in Canada and the Netherlands

    An Australian senator will seek support from fellow upper house members to recognise China’s treatment of the Uighur Muslim minority as genocide, after similar parliamentary motions passed in Canada and the Netherlands.

    The proposed motion – placed on the Senate’s notice paper for 15 March – looms as a test for the major parties at a time when Australia should join the international community in taking a stand, according to the South Australian independent senator Rex Patrick.

    Related: ‘Being young’ leads to detention in China’s Xinjiang region

    Related: ‘Our souls are dead’: how I survived a Chinese ‘re-education’ camp for Uighurs – podcast

    Continue reading…

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

  • After Years Of Propaganda, American Views Of Russia and China Hit Historic Lows

    A new Gallup poll finds that U.S. public opinion on China and Russia has crashed to all time lows. Only 20% of Americans hold favorable views towards China. This is a remarkable decline, considering that only three years ago, the majority of the country saw the Asian giant in a positive light. The public image of Russia is barely any better, with just 22% of the country viewing the world’s largest nation in favorable terms and 77% holding unfavorable views towards the country.

    Negative sentiment towards Beijing has risen across the board, but Republicans are most likely to hold it in low regard, with only 10% of GOP voters seeing China positively. Among Democrats, only 27% continue to hold a very or mostly favorable opinion of the country.

    The post After Years Of Propaganda, American Views Of Russia and China Hit Historic Lows appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Legacies of Cold War Liberalism

    To promote democratic and egalitarian ideals today, we need to break with the anxieties that drove U.S. politics during the Cold War.

    This post was originally published on Dissent MagazineDissent Magazine.

  • Biden’s CIA Nominee Identifies China As Top ‘Adversary’

    William Burns, Biden’s pick for CIA chief, had tough words for China during his Senate confirmation hearing and identified countering Beijing as a top priority.

    “Adversarial, predatory Chinese leadership poses our biggest geopolitical test,” Burns told the Senate Intelligence Committee on Wednesday. He described China as “a formidable, authoritarian adversary.”

    “Out-competing China will be key to our national security in the days ahead,” Burns said. For the CIA, he said this means “intensified focus and urgency, continually strengthening its already impressive cadre of China specialists, expanding its language skills, aligning personnel and resource allocation for the long haul and employing a whole of agency approach.”

    The post Biden’s CIA Nominee Identifies China As Top ‘Adversary’ appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Instead of Fueling Cold War With China, Biden Should Collaborate on Climate

    A man is seen watching the news report of the inauguration of U.S. President Joe Biden on a large screen in Hong Kong, China. on January 21, 2021.

    Slowing the pace of climate change and getting “tough” on China, especially over its human-rights abuses and unfair trade practices, are among the top priorities President Biden has announced for his new administration. Evidently, he believes that he can tame a rising China with harsh pressure tactics, while still gaining its cooperation in areas of concern to Washington. As he wrote in Foreign Affairs during the presidential election campaign, “The most effective way to meet that challenge is to build a united front of U.S. allies and partners to confront China’s abusive behaviors and human rights violations, even as we seek to cooperate with Beijing on issues where our interests converge, such as climate change.” If, however, our new president truly believes that he can build an international coalition to gang up on China and secure Beijing’s cooperation on climate change, he’s seriously deluded. Indeed, though he could succeed in provoking a new cold war, he won’t prevent the planet from heating up unbearably in the process.

    Biden is certainly aware of the dangers of global warming. In that same Foreign Affairs article, he labeled it nothing short of an “existential threat,” one that imperils the survival of human civilization. Acknowledging the importance of relying on scientific expertise (unlike our previous president who repeatedly invented his own version of scientific reality), Biden affirmed the conclusion of the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) that warming must be limited to 1.5 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial levels or there will be hell to pay. He then pledged to “rejoin the Paris climate agreement on day one of a Biden administration,” which he indeed did, and to “make massive, urgent investments at home that put the United States on track to have a clean energy economy with net-zero [greenhouse gas] emissions by 2050” — the target set by the IPCC.

    Even such dramatic actions, he indicated, will not be sufficient. Other countries will have to join America in moving toward a global “net-zero” state in which any carbon emissions would be compensated for by equivalent carbon removals. “Because the United States creates only 15 percent of global emissions,” he wrote, “I will leverage our economic and moral authority to push the world to determined action, rallying nations to raise their ambitions and push progress further and faster.”

    China, the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases right now (although the U.S. remains number one historically), would obviously be Washington’s natural partner in this effort. Here, though, Biden’s antagonistic stance toward that country is likely to prove a significant impediment. Rather than prioritize collaboration with China on climate action, he chose to castigate Beijing for its continued reliance on coal. The Biden climate plan, he wrote in Foreign Affairs, “includes insisting that China… stop subsidizing coal exports and outsourcing pollution to other countries by financing billions of dollars’ worth of dirty fossil-fuel energy projects through its Belt and Road Initiative.” Then he went further by portraying the future effort to achieve a green economy as a potentially competitive, not collaborative, struggle with China, saying,

    “I will make investment in research and development a cornerstone of my presidency, so that the United States is leading the charge in innovation. There is no reason we should be falling behind China or anyone else when it comes to clean energy.”

    Unfortunately, though he’s not wrong on China’s climate change challenges (similar, in many respects, to our own country’s), you can’t have it both ways. If climate change is an existential threat and international collaboration between the worst greenhouse gas emitters key to overcoming that peril, picking fights with China over its energy behavior is a self-defeating way to start. Whatever obstacles China does pose, its cooperation in achieving that 1.5-degree limit is critical. “If we don’t get this right, nothing else will matter,” Biden said of global efforts to deal with climate change. Sadly, his insistence on pummeling China on so many fronts (and appointing China hawks to his foreign policy team to do so) will ensure that he gets it wrong. The only way to avert catastrophic climate change is for the United States to avoid a new cold war with China by devising a cooperative set of plans with Beijing to speed the global transition to a green economy.

    Why Cooperation Is Essential

    With such cooperation in mind, let’s review the basics on how those two countries affect world energy consumption and global carbon emissions: the United States and China are the world’s two leading consumers of energy and its two main emitters of carbon dioxide, or CO2, the leading greenhouse gas. As a result, they exert an outsized influence on the global climate equation. According to the International Energy Agency (IEA), China accounted for approximately 22% of world energy consumption in 2018; the U.S., 16%. And because both countries rely so heavily on fossil fuels for energy generation — China largely on coal, the U.S. more on oil and natural gas — their carbon-dioxide emissions account for an even larger share of the global total: China alone, nearly 29% in 2018; the U.S., 18%; and combined, an astonishing 46%.

    It’s what will happen in the future, though, that really matters. If the world is to keep global temperatures from rising above that 1.5 degrees Celsius threshold, every major economy should soon be on a downward-trending trajectory in terms of both fossil-fuel consumption and CO2 emissions (along with a compensating increase in renewable energy output). Horrifyingly enough, however, on their current trajectories, over the next two decades the combined fossil-fuel consumption and carbon emissions of China and the United States are still expected to rise, not fall, before stabilizing in the 2040s at a level far above net zero. According to the IEA, if the two countries stick to anything like their current courses, their combined fossil-fuel consumption would be approximately 17% higher in 2040 than in 2018, even if their CO2 emissions would rise by “only” 3%. Any increase of that kind over the next two decades would spell one simple word for humanity: D-O-O-M.

    True, both countries are expected to substantially increase their investment in renewable energy during the next 20 years, even as places like India are expected to account for an ever-increasing share of global energy use and CO2 emissions. Still, as long as Beijing and Washington continue to lead the world in both categories, any effort to achieve net-zero and avert an almost unimaginable climate cataclysm will have to fall largely on their shoulders. This would, however, require a colossal reduction in fossil-fuel consumption and the ramping up of renewables on a scale unlike any engineering project this planet has ever seen.

    The Institute of Climate Change and Sustainable Development at Tsinghua University, an influential Chinese think tank, has calculated what might be involved in reshaping China’s coal-dependent electrical power system to reach the goal of a 1.5-degree limit on global warming. Its researchers believe that, over the next three decades, this would require adding the equivalent of three times current global wind power capacity and four times that of solar power at the cost of approximately $20 trillion.

    A similar transformation will be required in the United States, although with some differences: while this country relies far less on coal than China to generate electricity, it relies more on natural gas (a less potent emitter of CO2, but a fossil fuel nonetheless) and its electrical grid — as recent events in Texas have demonstrated — is woefully unprepared for climate change and will have to be substantially rebuilt at enormous cost.

    And that represents only part of what needs to be done to avert planetary catastrophe. To eliminate carbon emissions from oil-powered vehicles, both countries will have to replace their entire fleets of cars, vans, trucks, and buses with electric-powered ones and develop alternative fuels for their trains, planes, and ships — an undertaking of equal magnitude and expense.

    There are two ways all of this can be done: separately or together. Each country could devise its own blueprint for such a transition, developing its own green technologies and seeking financing wherever it could be found. As in the fight over fifth generation (5G) telecommunications, each could deny scientific knowledge and technical know-how to its rival and insist that allies buy only its equipment, whether or not it best suits their purposes — a stance taken by the Trump administration with respect to the Chinese company Huawei’s 5G wireless technology. Alternatively, the U.S. and China could cooperate in developing green technologies, share information and know-how, and work together in disseminating them around the world.

    On the question of which approach is more likely to achieve success, the answer is too obvious to belabor. Only those prepared to risk civilization’s survival would choose the former — and yet that’s the choice that both sides may indeed make.

    Why a New Cold War Precludes Climate Salvation

    Those in Washington who favor a tougher approach toward China and the bolstering of U.S. military forces in the Pacific claim that, under President Xi Jinping, the Chinese Communist regime has become more authoritarian at home and more aggressive abroad, endangering key U.S. allies in the Pacific and threatening our vital interests. Certainly, when it comes to the increasing repression of Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang Province or pro-democracy activists in Hong Kong, there can be little doubt of Beijing’s perfidy, though on other issues, there’s room for debate. On another subject, though, there really should be no room for debate at all: the impact of a new cold war between the planet’s two great powers on the chances for a successful global response to a rapidly warming planet.

    There are several obvious reasons for this. First, increased hostility will ensure a competitive rather than collaborative search for vital solutions, resulting in wasted resources, inadequate financing, duplicative research, and the stalled international dissemination of advanced green technologies. A hint of such a future lies in the competitive rather than collaborative development of vaccines for Covid-19 and their distressingly chaotic distribution to Africa and the rest of the developing world, ensuring that the pandemic will have a life into 2022 or 2023 with an ever-rising death toll.

    Second, a new cold war will make international diplomacy more difficult when it comes to ensuring worldwide compliance with the Paris climate agreement. Consider it a key lesson for the future that cooperation between President Barack Obama and Xi Jinping made the agreement possible in the first place, creating pressure on reluctant but vital powers like India and Russia to join as well. Once President Trump pulled the U.S. out of the agreement, that space evaporated and global adherence withered. Only by recreating such a U.S.-China climate alliance will it be possible to corral other key players into full compliance. As suggested recently by Todd Stern, the lead American negotiator at the 2015 Paris climate summit, “There is simply no way to contain climate change worldwide without full-throttle engagement by both countries.”

    A cold war environment would make such cooperation a fantasy.

    Third, such an atmosphere would ensure a massive increase in military expenditures on both sides, sopping up funds needed for the transition to a green-energy economy. In addition, as the pace of militarization accelerated, fossil-fuel use would undoubtedly increase, as the governments of both countries favored the mass production of gas-guzzling tanks, bombers, and warships.

    Finally, there is no reason to assume a cold war will always remain cold. The current standoff between the U.S. and China in the Pacific is different from the one that existed between the U.S. and the Soviet Union in Europe during the historic Cold War. There is no longer anything like an “Iron Curtain” to define the boundaries between the two sides or keep their military forces from colliding with each another. While the risk of war in Europe was ever-present back then, each side knew that such a boundary-crossing assault might trigger a nuclear exchange and so prove suicidal. Today, however, the air and naval forces of China and the U.S. are constantly intermingling in the East and South China Seas, making a clash or collision possible at any time. So far, cooler heads have prevailed, preventing such encounters from sparking armed violence, but as tensions mount, a hot war between the U.S. and China cannot be ruled out.

    Because American forces are poised to strike at vital targets on the Chinese mainland, it’s impossible to preclude China’s use of nuclear weapons or, if preparations for such use are detected, a preemptive U.S. nuclear strike. Any full-scale thermonuclear conflagration resulting from that would probably cause a nuclear winter and the death of billions of people, making the climate-change peril moot. But even if nuclear weapons are not employed, a war between the two powers could result in immense destruction in China’s industrial heartland and to such key U.S. allies as Japan and South Korea. Fires ignited in the course of battle would, of course, add additional carbon to the atmosphere, while the subsequent breakdown in global economic activity would postpone by years any transition to a green economy.

    An Alliance for Global Survival

    If Joe Biden genuinely believes that climate change is an “existential threat” and that the United States “must lead the world,” it’s crucial that he stop the slide toward a new cold war with China and start working with Beijing to speed the transition to a green-energy economy focused on ensuring global compliance with the Paris climate agreement. This would not necessarily mean abandoning all efforts to pressure China on human rights and other contentious issues. It’s possible to pursue human rights, trade equity, and planetary survival at the same time. Indeed, as both countries come to share the urgency of addressing the climate crisis, progress on other issues could become easier.

    Assuming Biden truly means what he says about overcoming the climate threat and “getting it right,” here are some of the steps he could take to achieve meaningful progress:

    * Schedule a “climate summit” with Xi Jinping as soon as possible to discuss joint efforts to overcome global warming, including the initiation of bilateral programs to speed advances in areas like the spread of electric vehicles, the improvement of battery-storage capabilities, the creation of enhanced methods of carbon sequestration, and the development of alternative aviation fuels.

    * At the conclusion of the summit, joint working groups on these and other matters should be established, made up of senior figures from both sides. Research centers and universities in each country should be designated as lead actors in key areas, with arrangements made for cooperative partnerships and the sharing of climate-related technical data.

    * At the same time, presidents Biden and Xi should announce the establishment of an “Alliance for Global Survival,” intended to mobilize international support for the Paris climate agreement and strict adherence to its tenets. As part of this effort, the two leaders should plan joint meetings with other world leaders to persuade them to replicate the measures that Biden and Xi have agreed to work on cooperatively. As needed, they could offer to provide financial aid and technical assistance to poorer states to launch the necessary energy transition.

    * Presidents Biden and Xi should agree to reconvene annually to review progress in all these areas and designate surrogates to meet on a more regular basis. Both countries should publish an online “dashboard” exhibiting progress in every key area of climate mitigation.

    So, Joe, if you really meant what you said about overcoming climate change, these are some of the things you should focus on to get it right. Choose this path and guarantee us all a fighting chance to avert civilizational collapse. Opt for the path of confrontation instead — the one your administration already appears headed down — and that hope is likely to disappear into an unbearable world of burning, flooding, famine, and extreme storms until the end of time. After all, without remarkable effort, a simple formula will rule all our lives: a new cold war = a scalding planet.

    This post was originally published on Latest – Truthout.

  • No Human Rights In Texas

    Texas, the Lone Star state, was once a part of Mexico but broke away after that nation outlawed slavery. Such reactionary beginnings have carried over into its governance in the 21st century and millions of people now pay a high price as a result.

    That state’s government perpetuates its history by committing itself to being regulated as little as possible. Texas is disconnected from the two electric grids which provide power to the rest of the country. Its system failed under the strain of a freak snowstorm and people went without power and heat and even without water. Consumers pay unregulated utilities who are allowed to charge a fluctuating wholesale price which soars when demand is high. Those lucky few whose power stayed on now have bills in the thousands of dollars .

    The post No Human Rights In Texas appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Genocide Denier Johnson Insists Business As Usual With China

    Genocide Denier Johnson Insists Business As Usual With China

    Original Image: expressandstar/augmented for accuracy and education by @tibettruth

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

  • Vaccine Imperialism: China vs. The Western World

    China and Russia are among the first countries in the world to vaccinate people, according to the website Our World in Data. By December 15, 2020, at least 1.5 million Chinese had taken a jab, compared to the U.S. and U.K. who also began their vaccination campaigns in early December and by December 15 had vaccinated around half a million people.

    So far China is leading the world in number of people who are fully vaccinated or have at least received the first jab. According to the Chinese media, as of January 23, 2021, nearly 16 million had taken a jab, closely followed by the number of people vaccinated in the U.S; as of February 9, China had administered 40.52 million doses and the U.S. had given 43.2 million.

    The post Vaccine Imperialism: China vs. The Western World appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • What Planet Is NATO Living On?

    The February meeting of NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization) Defense Ministers, the first since President Biden took power, revealed an antiquated, 75-year-old alliance that, despite its military failures in Afghanistan and Libya, is now turning its military madness toward two more formidable, nuclear-armed enemies: Russia and China.

    This theme was emphasized by U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin in a Washington Post op-ed in advance of the NATO meeting, insisting that “aggressive and coercive behaviors from emboldened strategic competitors such as China and Russia reinforce our belief in collective security.”

    Using Russia and China to justify more Western military build-up is a key element in the alliance’s new “Strategic Concept,” called NATO 2030: United For a New Era, which is intended to define its role in the world for the next ten years.

    The post What Planet Is NATO Living On? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Heather Cox Richardson: A Bat-Fax Kind of Day

    Senators Ted Cruz and Josh Hawley, who encouraged the rioters by their willingness to challenge the counting of the certified ballots, are now questioninglaw enforcement officials about their actions during the insurrection. Continue reading

    The post Heather Cox Richardson: A Bat-Fax Kind of Day appeared first on BillMoyers.com.

    This post was originally published on BillMoyers.com.

  • Report: Chinese Alternative Protein Market Poised For Growth As Flexitarianism Rises & Big Food Dives In

    4 Mins Read The alternative protein market in China is positioned to continue its rapid growth in the coming years, driven by the rise of flexitarianism in the country. In response to mass demand, big food players are now tapping the huge business opportunity, a move that will make the burgeoning market increasingly competitive, say the analysts.  China’s […]

    The post Report: Chinese Alternative Protein Market Poised For Growth As Flexitarianism Rises & Big Food Dives In appeared first on Green Queen.

    This post was originally published on Green Queen.

  • Neither Washington Nor Beijing?

    A newcomer to politics would likely assume that members of the global left support the People’s Republic of China. It is after all led by a communist party, with Marxism as its guiding ideology. During the period since the Communist Party of China (CPC) came to power in 1949, the Chinese people have experienced an unprecedented improvement in their living standards and human development. Life expectancy has increased from 361 to 772 years. Literacy has increased from an estimated 20 percent3 to 97 percent.4 The social and economic position of women has improved beyond recognition (one example being that, before the revolution, the vast majority of women received no formal education whatsoever, whereas now a majority of students in higher education institutions are female).

    The post Neither Washington Nor Beijing? appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.

  • Peers vote for ‘judicial committee’ to assess genocide claims

    Proposal is attempt to find compromise on issue after two rejections in Commons

    The government’s marathon resistance to giving the UK judiciary any role in determining if a country is committing genocide has suffered a fresh blow after peers voted to set up an ad hoc five-strong parliamentary judicial committee to assess evidence of genocide crimes. The peers voted in favour by a majority of 367 to 214, a majority of 153.

    It is the third time peers have voted for the measure in various forms and Tory whips will have to face down a third rebellion on the issue when the trade bill returns to the Commons. The judicial but parliamentary genocide assessment would be made if the government was planning to sign a new trade or economic agreement and would be most relevant to claims that China is committing genocide against the Uighur Muslims in Xinjiang province.

    Related: UK ministers accused of cynically blocking clear vote on genocide

    Continue reading…

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

  • PLA Mass Drone Launcher

    The Peoples Liberation Army is actively exploring the application of mass drone deployment in future ground combat. State owned, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), had in 2018 demonstrated an earlier eight-tube launcher using its CH-901 loitering drone. The more recent system shows a box configured launching system integrated onto the rear of a Dongfeng […]

    The post PLA Mass Drone Launcher appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • PLA Mass Drone Launcher

    The Peoples Liberation Army is actively exploring the application of mass drone deployment in future ground combat. State owned, China Electronics Technology Group Corporation (CETC), had in 2018 demonstrated an earlier eight-tube launcher using its CH-901 loitering drone. The more recent system shows a box configured launching system integrated onto the rear of a Dongfeng […]

    The post PLA Mass Drone Launcher appeared first on Asian Military Review.

    This post was originally published on Asian Military Review.

  • Does the West Repeating Claims of China Committing Genocide in Xinjiang Reify It?

    The Jewish Virtual Library quotes Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels as having said: “If you tell a lie big enough and keep repeating it, people will eventually come to believe it.”

    Yet that could be called a lie, or more kindly put, a misattribution. Wikiquotes provides the accurate quotation, albeit not as a Nazi stratagem: “The English follow the principle that when one lies, it should be a big lie, and one should stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” It is sourced as: “Aus Churchills Lügenfabrik” (“Churchill’s Lie Factory”), 12 January 1941, Die Zeit ohne Beispiel (Munich: Zentralverlag der NSDAP, 1941), p. 364-369.

    There is an allegation that is being repeated ad nauseam about internment camps for Muslims in Xinjiang, China or even worse that a genocide is being perpetrated by Han Chinese against Uyghurs. The allegation has been denied and refuted over and over, the sources of the allegation have been discredited, but the allegation still has legs.

    Canadian Members of Parliament are preparing to vote on today Monday, 22 February, on a motion to declare China to be committing a genocide that was brought forward by far-right Conservative Party leader Erin O’Toole. Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has said the matter requires more study. Others are less clear about the need for study.

    In an interview with CBC, Bob Rae, Canada’s ambassador to the United Nations, stated: “There is no question that there is aspects of what the Chinese are doing that fits into the definition of a genocide in the Genocide Convention.” Rae immediately followed by saying, “But that requires you to go through the process of gathering information and of making sure that we got the evidence that would support that kind of an allegation.

    This is confused and contorted speak. Rae began by stating that unquestionably a genocide is occurring in Xinjiang. Then the diplomat admitted information hasn’t been gathered yet to provide evidence of “that kind of allegation.” An allegation refers to a claim typically without proof. If there were proof, then it would be a fact. Yet, the Canadian diplomat stated, “There is no question… of a genocide.” Ergo, he claims to be stating a certainty — a seeming certainty since Rae acknowledges a requirement for evidence, which Rae says is in the process of being gathered.

    Chinese foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian hit back hard; he called Rae’s comments “ridiculous,” adding that Canada itself better fits the description of having perpetrated a genocide.

    CTV wrote, “Zhao on Monday used a number of select statistics that suggest China’s Uighur population is growing at a faster rate than Canada’s population to mock Rae’s suggestions that the Uighurs are being persecuted.”

    That the CTV reporting is disingenuous is obvious from the moving of the goalposts with the substitution of “persecution” for “genocide.” Clearly persecuting someone, however unpleasant, is absolutely and qualitatively different from killing someone. And since genocide refers to the destruction of a population, a rapidly growing population would seem to belie claims of one side committing a genocide. Moreover, what statistic is better to “select” to refute assertions of a genocide being perpetrated?

    Still, to claim one group is being persecuted requires evidence.

    A more pressing priority for the politicians throwing rocks from the Canadian greenhouse ought to be awareness of how rife Canada is with racism. One report reveals systemic anti-Black racism in Canada. In 2006, Canada apologized for the racist imposition of a Chinese Head Tax, but the COVID-19 pandemic hysteria has exposed lingering racism toward ethnic Chinese people. In Un-Canadian: Islamophobia in the True North, author Graeme Truelove details the discrimination and the racist attitudes held against Muslims by the federal government and Canadian monopoly media. Canada is also a partner in the US-Imposed Post-9/11 Muslim Holocaust & Muslim Genocide, as substantiated by Gideon Polya. First Nations fare no better in Canada, as adumbrated in a report issued by the United Nations on severe discrimination against Indigenous peoples.

    Despite this festering racism within Canada, foreign affairs minister Francois-Philippe Champagne saw fit for Canada to join 38 other countries in calling for the admission of experts to Xinjiang “to assess the situation and to report back.” As a rule, basic decency would require that one clean up one’s own yard (except in Canada’s case, the yard was stolen from its Indigenous peoples) before criticizing someone else’s yard.

    Nonetheless, the world must not be silent in the face of crimes against humanity, especially genocide. And China welcomes outside observers to Xinjiang. China has invited the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights to Xinjiang as well as representatives of the EU.

    Chinese media, Global Times, writes,

    China welcomes foreigners to visit Northwest China’s Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region and learn about the real Xinjiang, given that some anti-China politicians in the West are spreading lies about Xinjiang.

    So much for a cover-up.

    What is the real situation in Xinjiang? I will refer again to the extensive must-read report compiled by the Qiao Collective, an all-volunteer group comprised of ethnic Chinese people living abroad, on Xinjiang that warned of “politically motivated” western disinformation:

    The effectiveness of Western propaganda lies in its ability to render unthinkable any critique or alternative—to monopolize the production of knowledge and truth itself. In this context, it is important to note that the U.S. and its allies are in the minority when it comes to its critiques of Chinese policy in Xinjiang. At two separate convenings of the UN Human Rights Council in 2019 and 2020, letters condemning Chinese conduct in Xinjiang were outvoted, 22-50 and 27-46. Many of those standing in support of Chinese policy in Xinjiang are Muslim-majority nations and/or nations that have waged campaigns against extremism on their own soil, including Iraq, Palestine, Pakistan, and Nigeria. On the issue of Xinjiang, the clear break in consensus between the Global South and the U.S. bloc suggests that Western critiques of Xinjiang are primarily politically motivated.

    Are the ramblings of the self-confessed liar Mike Pompeo to be taken seriously about a Chinese-perpetrated genocide in Xinjiang (which has also been accepted by the Biden administration)? Are American administration words to be believed without severe scrutiny considering the myriad lies; for example, about phantom torpedo attack in the Gulf of Tonkin, Viet Nam; about yellow cake and WMD in Iraq; about soldiers being supplied with Viagra in Libya to facilitate mass rapes; about Syrian chemical weapon attacks, etc, etc.

    In all my years in China, I never once encountered any expression of Islamophobia. The following video by an ex pat living in China expresses a similar sentiment. Consider when hearing stories from sources living outside China, especially those with a penchant for twisting the truth, what such a source has to gain from repeating allegations without ironclad proof.

    This article was posted on Monday, February 22nd, 2021 at 1:00pm and is filed under Canada, China, Disinformation, Imperialism, Media, Racism.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • HRD issues on agenda of 46th Session of the council

    Although I have decided to focus this blog mostly on human rights defenders and their awards, I will make an exception for the regular sessions of the UN Human Rights Council of which the 46th session has started on 22 February and which will last until to 23 March 2021. This post is based on the as always excellent general overview published by the International Service for Human rights: “HRC46 | Key issues on agenda of March 2021 session”. Here’s an overview of some of the key issues on the agenda which affect HRDs directly:

    Modalities for NGOs this year: According to the Bureau minutes of 4 February 2021: “Concerning the participation of NGOs in the 46th session, the President clarified that under the proposed extraordinary modalities, NGOs in consultative status with the ECOSOC would be invited to submit pre-recorded video statements for a maximum of three general debates in addition to the interactive dialogues, panel discussions and UPR adoptions as they had been able to do during the 45th session. In addition, “the Bureau agreed that events organised virtually by NGOs in consultative status with the ECOSOC could be listed on the HRC Extranet for information purposes.”

    Human Rights implications of COVID-19

    The pandemic – and States’ response to it – has presented various new challenges and threats for those defending human rights. The pandemic has exposed and deepened existing discrimination, violence and other violations. Governments have used COVID as a pretext for further restricting fundamental rights, including through the enactment of legislation, and specific groups of defenders – including WHRDs and LGBTI rights defenders – have lost their livelihoods, access to health services have reduced and they have been excluded from participating in pandemic responses. Action to address the pandemic must be comprehensive and systemic, it must apply a feminist, human rights-based, and intersectional lens, centred on non-discrimination, participation and empowerment of vulnerable communities. Last March ISHR joined a coalition of 187 organisations to draw the Council’s attention to the situation of LGBTI persons and defenders in the context of the pandemic.

    #HRC46| Thematic areas of interest

    Protection of human rights defenders

    On March 3rd and 4th, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on human rights defenders on her annual report “Final warning: death threats and killings of human rights defenders”, and the country visit report of her predecessor to Peru.

    Reprisals

    Reports of cases of intimidation and reprisals against those cooperating or seeking to cooperate with the UN not only continue, but grow. Intimidation and reprisals violate the rights of the individuals concerned, they constitute violations of international human rights law and undermine the UN human rights system. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/reprisals/

    The UN has taken action towards addressing this critical issue including:

    • Establishing a dedicated dialogue under item 5 to take place every September;
    • Affirmation by the Council of the particular responsibilities of its Members, President and Vice-Presidents to investigate and promote accountability for reprisals and intimidation; and
    • Appointment of the UN Assistant Secretary General on Human Rights as the Senior Official on addressing reprisals.

    ISHR remains deeply concerned about reprisals against civil society actors who try to engage with UN mechanisms, and consistent in its calls for all States and the Council to do more to address the situation.

    During its 42nd session, the Council adopted a resolution which listed key trends such as the patterns of reprisals, increasing self-censorship, the use of national security arguments and counter-terrorism strategies by States as justification for blocking access to the UN. The resolution also acknowledged the specific risks to individuals in vulnerable situations or belonging to marginalised groups, and called on the UN to implement gender-responsive policies to end reprisals. The Council called on States to combat impunity and to report back to it on how they are preventing reprisals, both online and offline.

    Item 5 of the Human Rights Council’s agenda provides a key opportunity for States to raise concerns about reprisals, and for governments involved in existing cases to provide an update to the Council on any investigation or action taken toward accountability to be carried out.

    During the organisational meeting held on 8 February, the President of the Council stressed the importance of ensuring the safety of those participating in the Council’s work, and the obligation of States to prevent intimidation or reprisals.

    In line with previous calls, ISHR expects the President of the Human Rights Council to publicly identify and denounce specific instances of reprisals by issuing formal statements, conducting press-briefings, corresponding directly with the State concerned, publicly releasing such correspondence with States involved, and insist on undertakings from the State concerned to investigate, hold the perpetrators accountable and report back to the Council on action taken.

    Other thematic reports

    At this 46th session, the Council will discuss a range of economic, social and cultural rights in depth through dedicated debates with mandate holders, and consider the annual report of the Secretary-General on the question of the realization in all countries of economic, social and cultural rights. The debates with mandate holders include:

    • The Special Rapporteur in the field of cultural rights, annual report on COVID-19, culture and culture rights and country visit to Tuvalu 
    • The Special Rapporteur on the right to adequate housing, annual report on twenty years on the right to adequate housing: taking stock – moving ahead and country visit to New Zealand 

    The Council will discuss a range of civil and political rights through dedicated debates with the mandate holders, including:

    • The Special Rapporteur on torture, annual report and country visit to Maldives
    • The Special Rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, annual report on combating anti-Muslim hatred
    • The Special Rapporteur on the right to privacy, annual report on artificial intelligence and privacy, and children’s privacy, and country visit reports to the United Kingdom, France, Germany, United States of America, Argentina, and Republic of Korea.  

    In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on the rights of specific groups including:

    In addition, the Council will hold dedicated debates on interrelation of human rights and human rights thematic issues including:

    • The Special Rapporteur on human rights and the environment, annual report on human rights and the global water crisis: water pollution, water scarcity and water-related disasters 
    • The Special Rapporteur on the promotion and protection of human rights while countering terrorism, annual report on human rights impact of counter-terrorism and countering (violent) extremism policies and practices on the rights of women, girls and the family

    Country-specific developments

    China 

    A pile of evidence continues to mount, including the assessment from the UN Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination, about policies of the Chinese government targeting ethnic and religious minorities, including Uyghurs, Tibetans and Mongolians. The rule of law is being further eroded in Hong Kong, as deeply-respected principles of due process and pluralistic democracy are disappearing at an alarming rate.  Human rights defenders and ordinary citizens confront ongoing crackdowns on civic freedoms, pervasive censorship and lightning-fast recourse to administrative sanction, enforced disappearance and trumped-up national security charges to silence critics.  – In the face of this, inaction has become indefensible.

    The UN Special Procedures issued a sweeping statement in June 2020, calling for the international community to take ‘decisive action’ on the human rights situation in the country. At the March session, ISHR urges States to convey at the highest level the incompatibility of China’s actions domestically with its obligations as a new Council member, and to continue to press for transparency, actionable reporting and monitoring of the situation. Statements throughout the Council are key moments to show solidarity with individual defenders – by name – , their families, and communities struggling to survive. And finally, States should take every opportunity to support efforts by China that meaningfully seek to advance human rights – while resolutely refuting, at all stages of the process, initiatives that seek to distort principles of human rights and universality; upend the Council’s impressive work to hold States up to scrutiny; and weaken the effectiveness and impact of the Council for victims of violations and human rights defenders. Furthermore, other Council members should step up their commitments to the body’s mandate and purpose, and reject efforts by China and its partners and proxies. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/china/

    Egypt

    The Egyptian authorities continue to systematically carry out patterns of reprisals against human rights defenders for their legitimate work, including for engagement with UN Special Procedures. These have included arbitrary arrests and detention, enforced disappearance, torture, unlawful surveillance, threats and summons for questioning by security agencies. The government’s refusal to address key concerns raised by States in its response to the UPR in March 2020 demonstrated its lack of political will to address its deep challenges and to engage constructively with the Council. ISHR reiterates its call on the Council to establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the human rights situation in Egypt. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/tag/egypt/

    Saudi Arabia

    In 2020, the Council continued its scrutiny over the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia. Yet, the Saudi government has failed the litmus test to immediately and unconditionally release the women’s rights activists and human rights defenders, instead they continued to prosecute and harshly sentence them for their peaceful activism. On 10 February 2021, it was reported that WHRDs Loujain Al-Hathloul, and Nouf Abdulaziz have been released conditionally from prison after spending over two and a half years in detention solely for advocating for women’s rights, including the right to drive and the dismantling of the male guardianship system. ALQST reported that WHRDs Nassima al-Sadah and Samar Badawi remain in detention and that “in a worrying development, the Public Prosecution has appealed the initial sentence issued on 25 November 2020 by the Criminal Court against al-Sadah of five years and eight months in prison, half of it suspended, seemingly with the aim of securing an even harsher sentence”. See: https://www.trueheroesfilms.org/thedigest/laureates/1a6d84c0-b494-11ea-b00d-9db077762c6c

    The government’s refusal to address this key concern raised in the three joint statements demonstrates its lack of political will to genuinely improve the human rights situation and to engage constructively with the Council.  ISHR reiterates its call on the Council to establish a monitoring and reporting mechanism on the human rights situation in Saudi Arabia.

    Nicaragua 

    On 24 February, the Council will hold an interactive dialogue on the High Commissioner’s report on Nicaragua. Despite the renewal of Resolution 43/2, the human rights situation in Nicaragua has steadily deteriorated over the last months. Civil society space has sharply shrank, due to new restrictive laws on foreign agents and counter-terrorism, while attacks against journalists and human rights defenders -the last remaining independent human rights observers – continue. The lack of an independent judiciary or NHRI further deprives victims of the possibility to seek justice and redress. Whilst the repression deepens, State inaction in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and the passage of hurricanes have also exacerbated the ongoing humanitarian crisis and the deprivation of economic, social, and cultural rights. In light of upcoming elections in Nicaragua, ISHR urges the Council to renew and strengthen its resolution on the human rights situation in Nicaragua, laying down a clear benchmark of key steps the State should take to demonstrate its willingness to cooperate in good faith, while clearly signaling the intention to move towards international investigation and accountability should such cooperation steps not be met within the year. States should also increase support to targeted defenders and CSOs by raising in their statements the cases of student Kevin Solís, Aníbal Toruño and Radio Darío journalists, trans activist Celia Cruz, as well as the CENIDH and seven other CSOs subject to cancellation of their legal status.

    Venezuela

    Venezuela will come under the spotlight several times with oral updates from OHCHR on the situation of human rights in the country (25 February, 11 March) and an update from the international fact-finding mission on Venezuela (10 March). OHCHR is mandated to report on the implementation of the recommendations made to Venezuela, including in reports (here and here) presented last June.  The fact-finding mission has started work on its renewed and strengthened 2-year mandate, despite delays in the disbursement of funds and is due to outline its plans to the Council. Intensifying threats and attacks on civil society in Venezuela since November 2020, provide a bleak context to these discussions. States should engage actively in dialogue on Venezuela, urging that recommendations be implemented – including facilitating visits from Special Rapporteurs; that the fact-finding mission be granted access to the country and that civil society be promoted and safeguarded in its essential work.

    Burundi

    On 2 February 2021, the Supreme Court of Burundi announced its decision allegedly adopted on 23 June 2020 to sentence 12 defenders to life in prison. The date of the adoption of this decision was announced after the Court decided to defer it further to 30 June 2020 and again after that. The Court never assigned or informed the 12 concerned of the proceedings. This case was investigated and judged in the absence of all those concerned and the sentence only made public seven months after the alleged proceedings took place. Among the victims of this arbitrary procedure are renown lawyers such as Me Armel Niyongere, Vital Nshimirimana and Dieudonné Bashirahishize, who are being targeted for their engagement in the defense of victims of the 2015 repression in Burundi and for filing complaints for victims to the International Criminal Court (ICC) in The Hague.  A group of civil society organisations denounced the dysfunctioning and lack of independence of judicial proceedings in the country. After confirming the 32 years sentence of defender Germain Rukuki, Burundi continues its crackdown against civil society. In addition to ensuring the continued work of the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi, members of the Council need to call on Burundi to uphold its international obligations and stop reprisals against defenders for engaging with any international mechanisms. See also: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2019/03/29/ngo-statement-condemns-new-irregularities-in-the-case-of-germain-rukuki-burundi/ The Council will hold an interactive dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on Burundi on 10 March.

    The High Commissioner will provide an oral update to the Council on 25 February. The Council will consider updates, reports on and is expected to consider resolutions addressing a range of country situations, in some instances involving the renewal of the relevant expert mandates. These include:

    • Oral update and interactive dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on Eritrea
    • Interactive Dialogue on the High Commissioner’s report on Sri Lanka
    • Enhanced Interactive Dialogue on the High Commissioner’s report on Belarus
    • Oral update and interactive dialogue with the Group of Eminent International and Regional Experts on Yemen
    • Interactive Dialogue on the High Commissioner’s report on ensuring accountability and justice in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Islamic Republic of Iran
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Commission on Human Rights in South Sudan
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Commission of Inquiry on the Syrian Arab Republic
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Myanmar
    • Interactive Dialogue with the High Commissioner on the situation of human rights in Ukraine
    • Oral updates and enhanced interactive dialogue with the High Commissioner on the situation of human rights in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and the team of international experts on the situation in Kasai
    • High-level Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in the Central African Republic
    • Interactive Dialogue with the Independent Expert on the situation of human rights in Mali 

    Council programme, appointments and resolutions

    During the organisational meeting for the 46th session held on 8 February, the President of the Human Rights Council presented the programme of work. It includes seven panel discussions. States also announced at least 28 proposed resolutions. Read here the reports presented this session. 

    Appointment of mandate holders

    The President of the Human Rights Council proposed candidates for the following mandates: 

    1. Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (member from Africa) 
    2. Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (member from North America)
    3. Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions 
    4. Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Cambodia
    5. Working Group of Experts on People of African Descent (member from African States)
    6. Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (member from Asia-Pacific States).

    Resolutions to be presented to the Council’s 46th session

    At the organisational meeting on 8 February the following resolutions were announced (States leading the resolution in brackets):

    • Promotion of the enjoyment of the cultural rights of everyone and respect for cultural diversity (Cuba)
    • Human rights and the environment, mandate renewal  (Costa Rica, Maldives, Morocco, Slovenia, Switzerland)
    • Prevention of torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment (Denmark)
    • Question of the realization in all countries of economic, social and cultural rights (Portugal)
    • Guarantee of the right to the health through equitable and universal access to vaccines in response to pandemics and other health emergencies (Ecuador)
    • Negative impacts of unilateral coercive measures (Azerbaijan on behalf of the Non-Aligned Movement-NAM)
    • Human rights, democracy and the rule of law (Morocco, Norway, Peru, Romania, Republic of Korea, Tunisia)
    • Freedom of religion or belief (EU)
    • Situation of human rights in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, mandate renewal (EU)
    • Situation of human rights in Myanmar, mandate renewal (EU)
    • Combating intolerance based on religion or belief (OIC)
    • Ensuring accountability and justice for all violations of international law in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem (OIC)
    • Right of the Palestinian people to self-determination (OIC)
    • Human rights situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem (OIC)
    • Israeli settlements in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem, and in the occupied Syrian Golan (OIC)
    • Technical assistance and capacity-building for Mali in the field of human rights (African Group)
    • Persons with albinism (African Group)
    • Impact of non-repatriation of funds of illicit origin to countries of origin (African Group)
    •  The situation of human rights in Iran, mandate renewal (Moldova, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, Iceland)
    • The right to privacy in the digital age, mandate renewal (Austria, Brazil, Germany, Liechtenstein, Mexico)
    • The human rights situation in the Syrian Arab Republic, mandate renewal (France, Germany, Italy, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, Netherlands, Qatar, Turkey, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland)
    • Promoting reconciliation, accountability and human rights in Sri Lanka (Canada, Germany, Montenegro, North Macedonia, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland) 
    • Situation of human rights in South Sudan, mandate renewal (Albania, Norway, UK) 
    • Read the calendar here.

    Adoption of Universal Periodic Review (UPR) reports

    During this session, the Council will adopt the UPR working group reports on Belarus, Liberia, Malawi, Panama, Mongolia, Maldives, Andorra, Honduras, Bulgaria, the Marshall Islands, the United States of America, Croatia, Libya and Jamaica. ISHR supports human rights defenders in their interaction with the UPR. It publishes and submits briefing papers regarding the situation facing human rights defenders in some States under review and advocate for the UPR to be used as a mechanism to support and protect human rights defenders on the ground. 

    Panel discussions

    During each Council session, panel discussions are held to provide member States and NGOs with opportunities to hear from subject-matter experts and raise questions. Panel discussions scheduled for this upcoming session:

    1. Annual high-level panel discussion on human rights mainstreaming. Theme: The state of play in the fight against racism and discrimination 20 years after the adoption of the Durban Declaration and Plan of Action and the exacerbating effects the COVID-19 pandemic has had on these efforts
    2. Biennial high-level panel discussion on the question of the death penalty. Theme: Human rights violations related to the use of the death penalty, in particular with respect to whether the use of the death penalty has a deterrent effect on crime rate
    3. Meeting on the role of poverty alleviation in promoting and protecting human rights
    4. Annual full-day meeting on the rights of the child [two accessible panels]. Theme: Rights of the child and the Sustainable Development Goals
    5. Annual interactive debate on the rights of persons with disabilities [accessible panel]. Theme: Participation in sport under article 30 of the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities
    6. Debate on the midterm review of the International Decade for People of African Descent. (Commemoration of the International Day for the Elimination of Racial Discrimination)

    Read here ISHR’s recommendations on the the key issues that are or should be on the agenda of the UN Human Rights Council in 2021.

    To stay up-to-date: Follow @ISHRglobal and #HRC46 on Twitter, and look out for the Human Rights Council Monitor. During the session, follow the live-updated programme of work on Sched. 

    To compare: https://humanrightsdefenders.blog/2020/09/06/hrc45-key-issues-for-human-rights-defenders/

    https://www.ishr.ch/news/hrc46-key-issues-agenda-march-2021-session

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

  • Boris Johnson declares he is ‘fervently Sinophile’ as UK woos China

    PM seeks to strengthen UK trade ties with Beijing at No 10 roundtable despite Uighur abuses

    The UK is seeking to strengthen its economic and trade links with China after Boris Johnson stated he was “fervently Sinophile” and determined to improve ties “whatever the occasional political difficulties”.

    The prime minister’s remarks at a Downing Street roundtable with Chinese businesses are likely to infuriate backbenchers in his Conservative party who want the government to take a tougher approach to Beijing’s human rights abuses.

    Continue reading…

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

  • How Democratic is China?

    Like America, China is a republic and, like America, says it is democratic, but how democratic is China? A glance at history is always a good starting point

    The People are supreme, the state is secondary and the Ruler is the least important: only those who please the people can rule. Mencius

    In Roman politics, citizens lost control of politicians after they elected them. It’s one of the system’s greatest weaknesses and it is no wonder that, like our Roman forebears, we regard government as our biggest problem: we cannot compel them to keep their promises.

    Imagine that, instead of hiring eloquent amateurs, we hired professionals–sociologists, statisticians, political scientists, economists–and told them to create solutions to our problems identified by publicly conducted surveys. Then they should support state and local governments to implement policy solutions, track public satisfaction with them for a few years and discard failed policies. California would probably try Canadian medicare and if their medical bills fell fifty percent and Californians showed a three year gain in healthy life expectancy, we’d elect a thousand volunteers and send them–all expenses paid–to Washington so they could audit the results and pass legislation.

    That’s what China does and it’s why their democracy resembles Proctor & Gamble more than Pericles of Athens.

    How Democratic is China–Really?

    Large-scale national surveys, the Chinese Labor Dynamics Survey (Sun Yat-Sen University), the Chinese Family Panel Survey (Peking U), the Chinese General Social Survey (Renmin U), the Chinese Income Inequality Surveys (Beijing Normal U) and hundreds of polls by overseas scholars and institutions like Harvard University, Gallup, Edelman, World Values and Asian Barometer, rival the world’s best in sampling techniques, questionnaire design and quality control.

    The results, all available online, are a treasure trove of democratic data that Mao created by wresting policy control from scholars and commissioning extensive surveys saying, “Public opinion must guide our actions.” Today, says author Jeff J. Brown, “My Beijing neighborhood committee and town hall are constantly putting up announcements, inviting groups of people–renters, homeowners, over seventies, women under forty, those with or without medical insurance, retirees–to answer surveys. The CPC is the world’s biggest pollster for a reason: China’s democratic ‘dictatorship of the people’ is highly engaged at the day-to-day, citizen-on-the-street level. I know, because I live in a middle class Chinese community and I question them all the time. I find their government much more responsive and democratic than the dog-and-pony shows back home, and I mean that seriously.”

    Mao introduced universal suffrage in 1951 (ten years before America ) on the basis of one person, one vote. Everyone voted to elect a legislature that would control of all legislation and approve all senior appointments. He even extended democracy to non-citizens, as Quaker William Sewell , a professor at Jen Dah Christian University in Szechuan recalls,

    As a labor union member, I was entitled to vote. The election of a government in China is indirect. We at Jen Dah were to vote for our local People’s Congress. Then the Local Congresses would, from among their own members, elect the Duliang Congress. From these members and from the congresses of the great cities and many counties would be elected the Szechwan People’s Provincial Congress. Finally emerged the National People’s Congress, every member of which had in the first place been elected to a local body. The National Congress made the laws, elected the Chairman, and appointed the Premier and members of the State Council. In our chemistry group we discussed the sort of men and women who might best represent us; then we put forward half a dozen names.

    Each group in our Jen Dah section did the same. All the names were then written on a board so that everyone might see who had been suggested. The names which several groups had listed in common were put on a short list. They amounted to over a dozen, any groups being still at liberty to put forward again any name which they considered should not have been omitted. Those whose names were on the short list had then to be persuaded to allow their names to remain. This took some time as a genuine sense of inability to cope made many of them reluctant to undertake such responsible work. Each person was discussed at length by the group. Those who were unknown were invited to visit the various groups so that they might be questioned. At length a still shorter list of candidates was obtained, which was cut down eventually, after further discussion, to the number desired.

    When the day of the election came, the flags were flying and the bands with their cymbals and drums with their constant rhythm made it all pleasantly noisy. Voting slips were handed out at one end of the booth and students, all sworn to secrecy, were available to help if you couldn’t read. Then alone, or accompanied by your helper, you sat at the table and cast your votes. The list contained names which had by now become very familiar but there was a space at the bottom for additional names to be added should you so desire. A ring was to be put around those whom you wished to be elected and the paper dropped into the box. In England I had voted for a man I didn’t know, with whom I had never spoken and who asked for my vote by a circular letter and who had lost to his rival by over 14,000 votes. I had felt that my vote was entirely worthless. In China, at this one election, I had at least had the happy illusion that my vote was of real significance.

    By the 1980s the electoral process had deteriorated, powerful family clans dominated local elections and villagers regularly petitioned Beijing to send ‘a capable Party Secretary to straighten things out’. So the government invited The Carter Center to supervise the process and, by 2010, voter turnout had outstripped America’s and the Prime Minister encouraged more experiments, “The experience of many villages has proven that farmers can successfully elect village committees. If people can manage a village well, they can manage a township and a county. We must encourage people to experiment boldly and test democracy in practice.” Five years later President Xi asked the Carter Center to reevaluate the fairness of election laws and to educate candidates in ethical campaigning, “Democracy is not only defined by people’s right to vote in elections but also their right to participate in political affairs on a daily basis. Democracy is not decoration, it’s for solving people’s problems.” Like Capitalism, Democracy is a tool in China, not a religion.

    There are six hundred thousand villages and successful candidates, who need not be Party members, begin their five-year terms with a trial year at the end of which, if they fail to achieve their promised goals, they’re dismissed. Otherwise they spend their second year reviewing and adjusting their objectives, knowing that their successes could be propagated nationwide.

    Village representatives choose peers to represent them at district level where further voting elects county representatives until, eventually, three thousand provincial congresspeople, all volunteers, convene in Beijing and strive for consensus as earnestly as they do in their villages. Congresspeople are volunteers, ordinary citizens whose progress to the national level requires prudence and common sense. Tiered voting makes it difficult to join a higher level assembly without the support from politicians below and impossible for the Party to completely control the process. As a result, one-third of National People’s Congresspeople are not Communist Party members, nor are other parties merely decorative. Parties like the China Democratic League, the Kuomintang and the Jiusan Society (whose all-PhD members campaign for climate initiatives, increased R&D budgets and data-driven health policies) regularly produce outstanding Ministers.

    Is China’s Constitution Democratic?

    The Constitution is clear: “The National People’s Congress and the local people’s congresses at various levels are constituted through democratic elections. They are responsible to the people and subject to their supervision. All administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs of the State are created by the People’s Congresses to which they are responsible and by which they are supervised.” Most legislation receives ninety-percent support in Congress but does this make the NPCC a mere ‘rubber stamp’ as critics claim?

    The ‘rubber stamp’ misunderstanding arises because policy development is managed like double-blind, randomized clinical trials, called Trial Spots, and Congress is primarily responsible for publicly evaluating data gathered on them. Europe has started universal income trial spots but China has been doing them for thirty years and has a mature system to support it and manage it.

    It’s not hard to must ninety-percent support if the data is sound. Policy proposals are first tried in villages, towns or cities and the vast majority die during this phase for the same reasons that most scientific experiments fail. The process has created the most trusted government on earth but Congress is no pushover. Congresspeople visit, inspect and audit Trial Spot cashflows, calculate affordability and debate scalability and national impact.

    When, after thirty years of engineering studies, the government presented its proposal to fund the Three Gorges Dam, Congress demurred. The project’s cost and scale were beyond most members’ imagination, retired engineers and foreign experts damned it and a million people who would be displaced criticized the project so vehemently that legislators demanded a similar dam be built nearby to demonstrate geological stability. The government duly built the Gezhouba Dam downstream yet, when they re-presented the funding request, just sixty-four percent of delegates supported it and, when the government decided to proceed, people loudly accused it of ‘ramming the bill through.’

    Though China’s process is neither fully scientific nor totally democratic, labeling it ‘authoritarian’–a Western concept–also misses the point. China’s reliance on data for course corrections is its greatest strength, though even solid data does not guarantee smooth sailing. Fifty percent of legislation is not passed within the planned period and ten percent takes more than a decade, thanks to the Peoples Consultive Congress, a gigantic lobby of special interest groups–including peasants, indigenes, professors, fishermen, manufacturers and Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party–who ensure that pending legislation does not damage their interests. Legislators must use both trial data and political tradeoffs to craft the laws which, by the time they emerge, have almost unanimous support. Even then, legislation is issued ‘subject to revision’ because data collection continues after implementation, too.

    Congress commissioned the Guangzhou-Shenzhen high speed rail Trial Spot in 1998 before voting to fund today’s massive HSR network. In 2016 the administration advanced legislation permitting genetically modified food crops because they had promised that GM maize and soybeans would be in commercial use by 2020. Two years later–after an intense public education campaign–a survey found half the country still opposed to GM, ten percent were supportive and eleven percent considered GM ‘a bioterrorism weapon aimed at China’. Legislation was shelved. Venture capitalist Robin Daverman describes the process at the national level:

    China is a giant trial portfolio with millions of trials going on everywhere. Today, innovations in everything from healthcare to poverty reduction, education, energy, trade and transportation are being trialled in different communities. Every one of China’s 662 cities is experimenting: Shanghai with free trade zones, Guizhou with poverty reduction, twenty-three cities with education reforms, Northeastern provinces with SOE reform: pilot schools, pilot cities, pilot hospitals, pilot markets, pilot everything. Mayors and governors, the Primary Investigators, share their ‘lab results’ at the Central Party School and publish them in their ‘scientific journals,’ the State-owned newspapers.

    Beginning in small towns, major policies undergo ‘clinical trials’ that generate and analyze test data. If the stats look good, they’ll add test sites and do long-term follow-ups. They test and tweak for 10-30 years then ask the 3,000-member People’s Congress to review the data and authorize national trials in three major provinces. If a national trial is successful the State Council [the Brains Trust] polishes the plan and takes it back to Congress for a final vote. It’s very transparent and, if your data is better than mine, your bill gets passed and mine doesn’t. Congress’ votes are nearly unanimous because the legislation is backed by reams of data. This allows China to accomplish a great deal in a short time, because your winning solution will be quickly propagated throughout the country, you’ll be a front page hero, invited to high-level meetings in Beijing and promoted. As you can imagine, the competition to solve problems is intense. Local government has a great deal of freedom to try their own things as long as they have the support of the local people. Everything from bare-knuckled liberalism to straight communism has been tried by various villages and small towns.

    Yiwu, a sleepy town in the middle of Zhejiang province, started an international trade Trial Spot in the 1980s and became the world’s center for small commodities like stuffed animals (and the subject of endless books and articles). Today, townships are running Trial Spots on smart towns, schools ran Trial Spots on academic quality, labor unions ran labor rights Trial Spots, state-owned enterprises trialed mixed compensation (cash and stock) and maverick officials tried ideas knowing that any damage would be contained and successes quickly replicated. Even the conservative Chinese Customs had ‘trade facilitation Trial Spots’ at border crossings.

    The Health Ministry asked thirty-three Provincial Health Ministers–PhDs and MDs–to bring childhood obesity under control by 2030. The ministers involved a thousand County Health Directors and today hundreds of Childhood Obesity Awareness Trial Spots are running in cities and townships across the country. One billboard warns, rather dubiously, that obesity reduces children’s intelligence but wheat and chaff will be separated by 2030 and overweight children will become as rare as they were when we were young. Overall, the process keeps the government in sync with people’s wishes better than any on earth:

    Every five years since 1950, planners have readjusted the nation’s course towards the country’s ultimate goal of dàtóng, issued progress reports and gathered feedback. Results encouraged them to allow entrepreneurs to compete in non-essential industries like automobile manufacturing but showed that profits on essential services were as burdensome as taxes. Profiting from healthcare, they found, taxed every business needing healthy workers, and profits from education taxed every businesses that needs literate workers. The government now provides them at cost and even supports loss-making corporations (‘zombies’ to neoliberals) that serve a social purpose.

    Are China’s Five Year Plans Democratic?

    Researchers begin Five Year Plans with questionnaires and grassroots forums and, after mid-term assessments, Congress commissions scholars to evaluate and economists to budget for their recommendations. Teams then tour the country, appear on local TV, listen to local opinions and formulate proposals. One planner explained, “Computers have made huge improvements in collecting and analyzing the information but still, thousands of statisticians, actuaries, database experts and technicians with degrees in urban, rural, agricultural, environmental and economic planning invest thousands of hours interpreting and analyzing this vast trove of data, statistics and information. Needless to say, for a continent-sized country with over a billion citizens, it takes hundreds of thousands of people to develop each Five-Year Plan.”

    Next, the State Council publishes a draft Plan and solicits input from employees, farmers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, officials and specialists and feasibility reports from all twenty-seven levels of the bureaucracy responsible for implementing it. The Finance and Economics Committee analyzes the Plan’s budget and, after the State Council and Politburo sign off, Congress votes. Then discussion is suspended and implementation proceeds unimpeded. Here’s the cover sheet for the 12th Plan:

    Over the five years, economic growth averaged 7.8%, services became the largest sector and consumption became the major growth driver, energy intensity fell eighteen percent and emissions dropped twelve percent, the urban-rural income gap narrowed, rudimentary health insurance became universal, three hundred million folk gained access to safe drinking water and one hundred million were lifted from poverty. Harvard’s Tony Saich, who conducts his own surveys, concludes that ninety per cent of people are satisfied with the government and surveys found that eighty-three percent think it runs the country for everyone’s benefit rather than for special groups. More remarkably, it’s run parsimoniously:

    The current administration has promised to further extend democratic rule of law as education levels rise but there has been another, less formal democracy at work for three thousand years. Any citizen can petition the government with a demand or complaint. Historically at any time but especially now, when Congress is meeting with the Peoples Consultative Congress, thousands of insistent constituents appear on their doorsteps with written petitions. Protocol requires them to start at the neighborhood level then, if they are still dissatisfied, go to the next level, all the way to the NPC if needed. In fact, there is a special office, the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, where everyone, even resident non-citizens, can lodge petitions.

    Legislation, once published in newspapers and posted on neighborhood bulletin boards, now blossoms online. Every draft is posted for citizens, non-citizens, national and international businesses alike to comment and critique–and they do. If there is strong pushback or resistance to proposed laws they’re sent back for amendment. And if that is too cumbersome there is the constitutional right to demonstrate publicly.

    Today, smartphones, social media and streaming video to multiply the effects of public demonstrations (as 150,000 ‘mass incidents’ in 2018 testify). Rowdy protests–usually triggered by local officials’ unfairness, dishonesty or incompetence–are cheap, exciting and safe since police are unarmed. Indignant citizens paint signs, alert NGOs and the media, recruit neighbors, bang drums, shout slogans and livestream their parade. Responses which once took months now take hours. Targeted officials–usually after a phone call from an angry superior–speed to the scene, bow deeply, apologize profusely, kiss babies, explain that they had no idea that such things were going on and promise brighter tomorrows. Since cell phones became ubiquitous local officials’ approval has risen from forty-five to fifty-five percent and, by 2025, should rival Americans’ seventy percent.

    From land redistribution in the 1950s to communes in the 60s to the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Reform and Opening and anti-corruption, Chinese politics are almost unrecognizable from one decade to the next yet policy support rivals Switzerland’s. Tsinghua Professor Daniel Bell credits democracy at the bottom, experiments in the middle and meritocracy at the top for a string of policy successes. And the New York Times’ Tom Friedman says wistfully, “If we could just be China for one day we could actually authorize the right decisions.”

    Former President Hu Jintao, who formalized Trial Spots, wisely observed that there’s more to China’s democratic process than meets the eye, “Taking from each according his ability and giving to each according to his need requires democratic rule of law, fairness and justice, honesty and fraternity, abundant energy, stability, orderliness, harmony between people and the environment and sustainable development.”

    Words to ponder.

    Godfree Roberts, Ed.D. Education & Geopolitics, University of Massachusetts, Amherst (1973), currently residing in Chiang Mai, Thailand is the author of Why China Leads the World: Talent at the Top, Data in the Middle, Democracy at the Bottom (2021). His expertise covers many areas, from history, politics and economics of Asian countries, chiefly China, to questions relating to technology and even retirement in Thailand, a topic of special interests for many would-be Western expats interested in relocating to places where a modest income can still assure a decent standard of living and medical care. Read other articles by Godfree.

    This article was posted on Saturday, February 20th, 2021 at 10:35am and is filed under China, Democracy, Legal/Constitutional.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • How Democratic is China?

    Like America, China is a republic and, like America, says it is democratic, but how democratic is China? A glance at history is always a good starting point

    The People are supreme, the state is secondary and the Ruler is the least important: only those who please the people can rule. Mencius1

    In Roman politics, citizens lost control of politicians after they elected them. It’s one of the system’s greatest weaknesses and it is no wonder that, like our Roman forebears, we regard government as our biggest problem2: we cannot compel them to keep their promises.

    Imagine that, instead of hiring eloquent amateurs, we hired professionals–sociologists, statisticians, political scientists, economists–and told them to create solutions to our problems identified by publicly conducted surveys. Then they should support state and local governments to implement policy solutions, track public satisfaction with them for a few years and discard failed policies. California would probably try Canadian medicare and if their medical bills fell fifty percent and Californians showed a three year gain in healthy life expectancy, we’d elect a thousand volunteers and send them–all expenses paid–to Washington so they could audit the results and pass legislation.

    That’s what China does and it’s why their democracy resembles Proctor & Gamble more than Pericles of Athens.

    How Democratic is China–Really?

    Large-scale national surveys, the Chinese Labor Dynamics Survey (Sun Yat-Sen University), the Chinese Family Panel Survey (Peking U), the Chinese General Social Survey (Renmin U), the Chinese Income Inequality Surveys (Beijing Normal U) and hundreds of polls by overseas scholars and institutions like Harvard University, Gallup, Edelman, World Values and Asian Barometer, rival the world’s best in sampling techniques, questionnaire design and quality control.

    The results, all available online, are a treasure trove of democratic data that Mao created by wresting policy control from scholars and commissioning extensive surveys3 saying, “Public opinion must guide our actions.” Today, says author Jeff J. Brown, “My Beijing neighborhood committee and town hall are constantly putting up announcements, inviting groups of people–renters, homeowners, over seventies, women under forty, those with or without medical insurance, retirees–to answer surveys. The CPC is the world’s biggest pollster for a reason: China’s democratic ‘dictatorship of the people’ is highly engaged at the day-to-day, citizen-on-the-street level. I know, because I live in a middle class Chinese community and I question them all the time. I find their government much more responsive and democratic than the dog-and-pony shows back home, and I mean that seriously.”

    Mao introduced universal suffrage in 1951 (ten years before America4 ) on the basis of one person, one vote. Everyone voted to elect a legislature that would control of all legislation and approve all senior appointments. He even extended democracy to non-citizens, as Quaker William Sewell5 , a professor at Jen Dah Christian University in Szechuan recalls,

    As a labor union member, I was entitled to vote. The election of a government in China is indirect. We at Jen Dah were to vote for our local People’s Congress. Then the Local Congresses would, from among their own members, elect the Duliang Congress. From these members and from the congresses of the great cities and many counties would be elected the Szechwan People’s Provincial Congress. Finally emerged the National People’s Congress, every member of which had in the first place been elected to a local body. The National Congress made the laws, elected the Chairman, and appointed the Premier and members of the State Council. In our chemistry group we discussed the sort of men and women who might best represent us; then we put forward half a dozen names.

    Each group in our Jen Dah section did the same. All the names were then written on a board so that everyone might see who had been suggested. The names which several groups had listed in common were put on a short list. They amounted to over a dozen, any groups being still at liberty to put forward again any name which they considered should not have been omitted. Those whose names were on the short list had then to be persuaded to allow their names to remain. This took some time as a genuine sense of inability to cope made many of them reluctant to undertake such responsible work. Each person was discussed at length by the group. Those who were unknown were invited to visit the various groups so that they might be questioned. At length a still shorter list of candidates was obtained, which was cut down eventually, after further discussion, to the number desired.

    When the day of the election came, the flags were flying and the bands with their cymbals and drums with their constant rhythm made it all pleasantly noisy. Voting slips were handed out at one end of the booth and students, all sworn to secrecy, were available to help if you couldn’t read. Then alone, or accompanied by your helper, you sat at the table and cast your votes. The list contained names which had by now become very familiar but there was a space at the bottom for additional names to be added should you so desire. A ring was to be put around those whom you wished to be elected and the paper dropped into the box. In England I had voted for a man I didn’t know, with whom I had never spoken and who asked for my vote by a circular letter and who had lost to his rival by over 14,000 votes. I had felt that my vote was entirely worthless. In China, at this one election, I had at least had the happy illusion that my vote was of real significance.

    By the 1980s the electoral process had deteriorated, powerful family clans dominated local elections and villagers regularly petitioned Beijing to send ‘a capable Party Secretary to straighten things out’. So the government invited The Carter Center to supervise the process and, by 2010, voter turnout had outstripped America’s and the Prime Minister encouraged more experiments, “The experience of many villages has proven that farmers can successfully elect village committees. If people can manage a village well, they can manage a township and a county. We must encourage people to experiment boldly and test democracy in practice.” Five years later President Xi asked the Carter Center to reevaluate the fairness of election laws and to educate candidates in ethical campaigning, “Democracy is not only defined by people’s right to vote in elections but also their right to participate in political affairs on a daily basis. Democracy is not decoration, it’s for solving people’s problems.” Like Capitalism, Democracy is a tool in China, not a religion.

    There are six hundred thousand villages and successful candidates, who need not be Party members, begin their five-year terms with a trial year at the end of which, if they fail to achieve their promised goals, they’re dismissed. Otherwise they spend their second year reviewing and adjusting their objectives, knowing that their successes could be propagated nationwide.

    Village representatives choose peers to represent them at district level where further voting elects county representatives until, eventually, three thousand provincial congresspeople, all volunteers, convene in Beijing and strive for consensus as earnestly as they do in their villages. Congresspeople are volunteers, ordinary citizens whose progress to the national level requires prudence and common sense. Tiered voting makes it difficult to join a higher level assembly without the support from politicians below and impossible for the Party to completely control the process. As a result, one-third of National People’s Congresspeople are not Communist Party members, nor are other parties merely decorative. Parties like the China Democratic League,6 the Kuomintang7 and the Jiusan Society8 (whose all-PhD members campaign for climate initiatives, increased R&D budgets and data-driven health policies) regularly produce outstanding Ministers.

    Is China’s Constitution Democratic?

    The Constitution is clear: “The National People’s Congress and the local people’s congresses at various levels are constituted through democratic elections. They are responsible to the people and subject to their supervision. All administrative, judicial and procuratorial organs of the State are created by the People’s Congresses to which they are responsible and by which they are supervised.” Most legislation receives ninety-percent support in Congress but does this make the NPCC a mere ‘rubber stamp’ as critics claim?9

    The ‘rubber stamp’ misunderstanding arises because policy development is managed like double-blind, randomized clinical trials, called Trial Spots, and Congress is primarily responsible for publicly evaluating data gathered on them. Europe has started universal income trial spots but China has been doing them for thirty years and has a mature system to support it and manage it.

    It’s not hard to must ninety-percent support if the data is sound. Policy proposals are first tried in villages, towns or cities and the vast majority die during this phase for the same reasons that most scientific experiments fail. The process has created the most trusted government on earth but Congress is no pushover. Congresspeople visit, inspect and audit Trial Spot cashflows, calculate affordability and debate scalability and national impact.

    When, after thirty years of engineering studies, the government presented its proposal to fund the Three Gorges Dam, Congress demurred. The project’s cost and scale were beyond most members’ imagination, retired engineers and foreign experts damned it and a million people who would be displaced criticized the project so vehemently that legislators demanded a similar dam be built nearby to demonstrate geological stability. The government duly built the Gezhouba Dam downstream yet, when they re-presented the funding request, just sixty-four percent of delegates supported it and, when the government decided to proceed, people loudly accused it of ‘ramming the bill through.’

    Though China’s process is neither fully scientific nor totally democratic, labeling it ‘authoritarian’–a Western concept–also misses the point. China’s reliance on data for course corrections is its greatest strength, though even solid data does not guarantee smooth sailing. Fifty percent of legislation10 is not passed within the planned period and ten percent takes more than a decade, thanks to the Peoples Consultive Congress, a gigantic lobby of special interest groups–including peasants, indigenes, professors, fishermen, manufacturers and Taiwan’s Kuomintang Party–who ensure that pending legislation does not damage their interests. Legislators must use both trial data and political tradeoffs to craft the laws which, by the time they emerge, have almost unanimous support.11 Even then, legislation is issued ‘subject to revision’ because data collection continues after implementation, too.

    Congress commissioned the Guangzhou-Shenzhen high speed rail Trial Spot in 1998 before voting to fund today’s massive HSR network. In 2016 the administration advanced legislation permitting genetically modified food crops because they had promised that GM maize and soybeans would be in commercial use by 2020. Two years later–after an intense public education campaign–a survey12 found half the country still opposed to GM, ten percent were supportive and eleven percent considered GM ‘a bioterrorism weapon aimed at China’. Legislation was shelved. Venture capitalist Robin Daverman describes the process at the national level:

    China is a giant trial portfolio with millions of trials going on everywhere. Today, innovations in everything from healthcare to poverty reduction, education, energy, trade and transportation are being trialled in different communities. Every one of China’s 662 cities is experimenting: Shanghai with free trade zones, Guizhou with poverty reduction, twenty-three cities with education reforms, Northeastern provinces with SOE reform: pilot schools, pilot cities, pilot hospitals, pilot markets, pilot everything. Mayors and governors, the Primary Investigators, share their ‘lab results’ at the Central Party School and publish them in their ‘scientific journals,’ the State-owned newspapers.

    Beginning in small towns, major policies undergo ‘clinical trials’ that generate and analyze test data. If the stats look good, they’ll add test sites and do long-term follow-ups. They test and tweak for 10-30 years then ask the 3,000-member People’s Congress to review the data and authorize national trials in three major provinces. If a national trial is successful the State Council [the Brains Trust] polishes the plan and takes it back to Congress for a final vote. It’s very transparent and, if your data is better than mine, your bill gets passed and mine doesn’t. Congress’ votes are nearly unanimous because the legislation is backed by reams of data. This allows China to accomplish a great deal in a short time, because your winning solution will be quickly propagated throughout the country, you’ll be a front page hero, invited to high-level meetings in Beijing and promoted. As you can imagine, the competition to solve problems is intense. Local government has a great deal of freedom to try their own things as long as they have the support of the local people. Everything from bare-knuckled liberalism to straight communism has been tried by various villages and small towns.

    Yiwu, a sleepy town in the middle of Zhejiang province, started an international trade Trial Spot in the 1980s and became the world’s center for small commodities like stuffed animals (and the subject of endless books and articles). Today, townships are running Trial Spots on smart towns, schools ran Trial Spots on academic quality, labor unions ran labor rights Trial Spots, state-owned enterprises trialed mixed compensation (cash and stock) and maverick officials tried ideas knowing that any damage would be contained and successes quickly replicated. Even the conservative Chinese Customs had ‘trade facilitation Trial Spots’ at border crossings.

    The Health Ministry asked thirty-three Provincial Health Ministers–PhDs and MDs–to bring childhood obesity under control by 2030. The ministers involved a thousand County Health Directors and today hundreds of Childhood Obesity Awareness Trial Spots are running in cities and townships across the country. One billboard warns, rather dubiously, that obesity reduces children’s intelligence but wheat and chaff will be separated by 2030 and overweight children will become as rare as they were when we were young. Overall, the process keeps the government in sync with people’s wishes better than any on earth:

    Every five years since 1950, planners have readjusted the nation’s course towards the country’s ultimate goal of dàtóng, issued progress reports and gathered feedback. Results encouraged them to allow entrepreneurs to compete in non-essential industries like automobile manufacturing but showed that profits on essential services were as burdensome as taxes. Profiting from healthcare, they found, taxed every business needing healthy workers, and profits from education taxed every businesses that needs literate workers. The government now provides them at cost and even supports loss-making corporations (‘zombies’ to neoliberals) that serve a social purpose.

    Are China’s Five Year Plans Democratic?

    Researchers begin Five Year Plans with questionnaires and grassroots forums and, after mid-term assessments, Congress commissions scholars to evaluate and economists to budget for their recommendations. Teams then tour the country, appear on local TV, listen to local opinions and formulate proposals. One planner explained, “Computers have made huge improvements in collecting and analyzing the information but still, thousands of statisticians, actuaries, database experts and technicians with degrees in urban, rural, agricultural, environmental and economic planning invest thousands of hours interpreting and analyzing this vast trove of data, statistics and information. Needless to say, for a continent-sized country with over a billion citizens, it takes hundreds of thousands of people to develop each Five-Year Plan.”13

    Next, the State Council publishes a draft Plan and solicits input from employees, farmers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, officials and specialists and feasibility reports from all twenty-seven levels of the bureaucracy responsible for implementing it. The Finance and Economics Committee analyzes the Plan’s budget and, after the State Council and Politburo sign off, Congress votes. Then discussion is suspended and implementation proceeds unimpeded. Here’s the cover sheet for the 12th Plan:

    Over the five years, economic growth averaged 7.8%, services became the largest sector and consumption became the major growth driver, energy intensity fell eighteen percent and emissions dropped twelve percent, the urban-rural income gap narrowed, rudimentary health insurance became universal, three hundred million folk gained access to safe drinking water and one hundred million were lifted from poverty. Harvard’s Tony Saich, who conducts his own surveys, concludes that ninety per cent of people are satisfied with the government and surveys found that eighty-three percent think it runs the country for everyone’s benefit rather than for special groups. More remarkably, it’s run parsimoniously:

    The current administration has promised to further extend democratic rule of law as education levels rise but there has been another, less formal democracy at work for three thousand years. Any citizen can petition the government with a demand or complaint. Historically at any time but especially now, when Congress is meeting with the Peoples Consultative Congress, thousands of insistent constituents appear on their doorsteps with written petitions. Protocol requires them to start at the neighborhood level then, if they are still dissatisfied, go to the next level, all the way to the NPC if needed. In fact, there is a special office, the State Bureau for Letters and Calls, where everyone, even resident non-citizens, can lodge petitions.

    Legislation, once published in newspapers and posted on neighborhood bulletin boards, now blossoms online. Every draft is posted for citizens, non-citizens, national and international businesses alike to comment and critique–and they do. If there is strong pushback or resistance to proposed laws they’re sent back for amendment. And if that is too cumbersome there is the constitutional right to demonstrate publicly.

    Today, smartphones, social media and streaming video to multiply the effects of public demonstrations (as 150,000 ‘mass incidents’ in 2018 testify). Rowdy protests–usually triggered by local officials’ unfairness, dishonesty or incompetence–are cheap, exciting and safe since police are unarmed. Indignant14 citizens paint signs, alert NGOs and the media, recruit neighbors, bang drums, shout slogans and livestream their parade. Responses which once took months now take hours. Targeted officials–usually after a phone call from an angry superior–speed to the scene, bow deeply, apologize profusely, kiss babies, explain that they had no idea that such things were going on and promise brighter tomorrows. Since cell phones became ubiquitous local officials’ approval has risen from forty-five to fifty-five percent and, by 2025, should rival Americans’ seventy percent.

    From land redistribution in the 1950s to communes in the 60s to the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, Reform and Opening and anti-corruption, Chinese politics are almost unrecognizable from one decade to the next yet policy support rivals Switzerland’s. Tsinghua Professor Daniel Bell credits democracy at the bottom, experiments in the middle and meritocracy at the top for a string of policy successes.15 And the New York Times’ Tom Friedman says wistfully, “If we could just be China for one day we could actually authorize the right decisions.”

    Former President Hu Jintao, who formalized Trial Spots, wisely observed that there’s more to China’s democratic process than meets the eye, “Taking from each according his ability and giving to each according to his need requires democratic rule of law, fairness and justice, honesty and fraternity, abundant energy, stability, orderliness, harmony between people and the environment and sustainable development.”

    Words to ponder.

  • First published at Here Comes China.
    1. Confucius’ most famous disciple, Mencius, lived 372 BC – 289 BC.
    2. Record High Name Government as Most Important Problem. Gallup. February 18, 2019.
    3. Wenfang Tang, “The ‘Surprise’ of Authoritarian Resilience in China.”
    4. The Voting Rights Act of 1965.
    5. William Sewell, I Stayed in China.
    6. The China Democratic League is for teachers from elementary school to universities. Since Confucius is China’s archetypal teacher and teachers are held at an high regards by the society as a whole, this is a highly influential party.
    7. The Kuomintang of China, KMT; (sometimes Guomindang) often translated as the Nationalist Party of China) is a major political party in the Republic of China on Taiwan, based in Taipei and is currently the opposition political party in Taiwan’s Legislative Yuan.
    8. The Jiusan Society is for PhD scientists, mostly physicists and engineers, whose position is ‘everything should be run by science’. Very big on pushing for climate initiatives, environmental protection, more R&D budget, better health policies, etc.
    9. Wikipedia.
    10. Rory Truex, “Authoritarian Gridlock? Understanding Delay in the Chinese Legislative System,” Journal of Comparative Political Studies, April 2018.
    11. The lowest recorded legislative support is sixty-four percent for the Three Gorges Dam project, which now repays its original investment every two years. It was the biggest, most expensive single-site project in history whose lake has changed the earth’s rotation, so legislators’ caution in their generation is understandable.
    12. Kai Cui & Sharon P. Shoemaker, “Public perception of genetically-modified (GM) food: A Nationwide Chinese Consumer Study,” Science of Food Volume 2, Article number: 10 (2018).
    13. Jeff J. Brown, China Rising.
    14. Tang, Populist Authoritarianism.
    15. Daniel Bell, The China Model: Political Meritocracy and the Limits of Democracy: p. 9.
    The post How Democratic is China? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Partners: China and Cuba

    Miguel Díaz-Canel and Xi Jinping

    In the 1960s, the main forms of the Chinese assistance offered to Cuba were preferential trade and interest-free loans. From 1961 to 1965, China gave Cuba an interest-free loan of 60 million U.S. dollars. The two sides signed the China-Cuba Economic Cooperation Agreement, Trade and Payment Agreement, and Technology Cooperation Protocol. According to the agreement, the interest-free loan provided by China was used for Cuba to purchase complete sets of Chinese technical equipment. China purchased 1 million tons of raw sugar from Cuba and trained 200 Cuban technicians in China.

    In order to support Cuba’s self-reliance, China actively recommended and dispatched agricultural experts and rice planting experts to Cuba to guide Cuban farmers in planting rice, and achieved good results. In order to break the radio blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba, the Chinese government promptly sent experts to escort and install high-power transmitters, transmission stations and power generation equipment donated to Cuba, so that Cuba’s Latin American News Agency can continue to maintain communication with the outside world.

    In February, 1963, the Chinese government decided to use China’s trade surplus in 1962 and 1963 as a long-term interest-free loan to Cuba. In December 1964, the governments of China and Cuba signed the second trade and payment agreement (1965-1970) and the 1965 trade agreement. According to the agreement, China will provide Cuba with rice, soybeans, fat, canned meat, chemical products, machinery and equipment and other commodities for a long time, while Cuba will export raw sugar, nickel ore, copper ore, etc. to China. In bilateral trade, the Chinese government had taken care of Cuba in terms of food prices and trade balances with obvious aid nature.

    Under the principles of equality and mutual benefit, emphasis on practical results, diversified forms, and common development, China had actively carried out economic and technological cooperation involving agriculture, energy, transportation, education and many other fields. In terms of specific forms of assistance, small-scale technical cooperation projects are the mainstay, with China providing demonstration equipment and sending experts to the recipient country to teach technology. At the same time, it also invited personnel from the recipient country to study and conduct technical training in China. In terms of financial assistance, in addition to providing interest-free loans, a new form of assistance emerged in the late 1990s.

    At the end of 1987, the Cuban Communist Party took the initiative to meet with relevant persons of the Chinese Communist Party and proposed to restore relations between the two parties. The two parties subsequently agreed to exchange delegations between the two parties’ foreign institutions to take the first step in restoring Sino-Cuban relations.

    China has invested heavily in Cuba to improve Cuba’s basic transportation facilities and power supply. As of 2004, China had agreed to invest US$500 million in Cuba’s industrial facilities; in this project, Cuban producers hold 51% of the shares, and the Chinese government’s Minmetals Corporation holds 49%. The project is covered by China Export Credit Insurance. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation signed an agreement with Cuban state-owned oil company to cooperate in the development of petroleum resources. In early 2006, Cuba signed a contract with China to purchase 1,000 buses to improve transportation within the city and across provinces and cities. The Cuban government purchased 30,000 refrigerators from China to replace the old models. In mid 2006, Cuba purchased 100 railway locomotives from China for 130 million US dollars. China and Cuba signed an agreement at the end of 2005 to cooperate in the development of biotechnology in three to five years. As of 2007, the two countries had a total of about 200 scientific and technological cooperation projects.

    In summary, Cuba has sought aid from China for years. Cuba and China increased collaboration in telecommunications of Computerization and Cybersecurity after signing a memorandum of understanding in July, 2014. As a result, Cuban human resources in this field have received training in China, and cooperation between Chinese tech companies and their Cuban counterparts has increased over the past few years. In December 2019, the two countries held the first China-Cuba Internet Forum in Havana, hosted by the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Cuban Ministry of Communications, to share experiences in internet governance, network management, among other topics. Cuba is expected to continue strengthening participation in the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative because of the importance of China’s Digital Silk Road as a multilateral platform for promoting the economic and technological development of the participating countries.

    China has participated with infrastructure and technical assistance in the process of computerization of the Cuban society.

    In summary, it all depends on how much the Cuban government would like to reform and open up Cuban market economy. China is ready to help.

    China’s role has been in providing capital and technology as China often is willing to take risks despite economic uncertainty created by the ongoing U.S. economic embargo.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Partners: China and Cuba

    Miguel Díaz-Canel and Xi Jinping

    In the 1960s, the main forms of the Chinese assistance offered to Cuba were preferential trade and interest-free loans. From 1961 to 1965, China gave Cuba an interest-free loan of 60 million U.S. dollars. The two sides signed the China-Cuba Economic Cooperation Agreement, Trade and Payment Agreement, and Technology Cooperation Protocol. According to the agreement, the interest-free loan provided by China was used for Cuba to purchase complete sets of Chinese technical equipment. China purchased 1 million tons of raw sugar from Cuba and trained 200 Cuban technicians in China.

    In order to support Cuba’s self-reliance, China actively recommended and dispatched agricultural experts and rice planting experts to Cuba to guide Cuban farmers in planting rice, and achieved good results. In order to break the radio blockade imposed by the United States against Cuba, the Chinese government promptly sent experts to escort and install high-power transmitters, transmission stations and power generation equipment donated to Cuba, so that Cuba’s Latin American News Agency can continue to maintain communication with the outside world.

    In February, 1963, the Chinese government decided to use China’s trade surplus in 1962 and 1963 as a long-term interest-free loan to Cuba. In December 1964, the governments of China and Cuba signed the second trade and payment agreement (1965-1970) and the 1965 trade agreement. According to the agreement, China will provide Cuba with rice, soybeans, fat, canned meat, chemical products, machinery and equipment and other commodities for a long time, while Cuba will export raw sugar, nickel ore, copper ore, etc. to China. In bilateral trade, the Chinese government had taken care of Cuba in terms of food prices and trade balances with obvious aid nature.

    Under the principles of equality and mutual benefit, emphasis on practical results, diversified forms, and common development, China had actively carried out economic and technological cooperation involving agriculture, energy, transportation, education and many other fields. In terms of specific forms of assistance, small-scale technical cooperation projects are the mainstay, with China providing demonstration equipment and sending experts to the recipient country to teach technology. At the same time, it also invited personnel from the recipient country to study and conduct technical training in China. In terms of financial assistance, in addition to providing interest-free loans, a new form of assistance emerged in the late 1990s.

    At the end of 1987, the Cuban Communist Party took the initiative to meet with relevant persons of the Chinese Communist Party and proposed to restore relations between the two parties. The two parties subsequently agreed to exchange delegations between the two parties’ foreign institutions to take the first step in restoring Sino-Cuban relations.

    China has invested heavily in Cuba to improve Cuba’s basic transportation facilities and power supply. As of 2004, China had agreed to invest US$500 million in Cuba’s industrial facilities; in this project, Cuban producers hold 51% of the shares, and the Chinese government’s Minmetals Corporation holds 49%. The project is covered by China Export Credit Insurance. China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation signed an agreement with Cuban state-owned oil company to cooperate in the development of petroleum resources. In early 2006, Cuba signed a contract with China to purchase 1,000 buses to improve transportation within the city and across provinces and cities. The Cuban government purchased 30,000 refrigerators from China to replace the old models. In mid 2006, Cuba purchased 100 railway locomotives from China for 130 million US dollars. China and Cuba signed an agreement at the end of 2005 to cooperate in the development of biotechnology in three to five years. As of 2007, the two countries had a total of about 200 scientific and technological cooperation projects.

    In summary, Cuba has sought aid from China for years. Cuba and China increased collaboration in telecommunications of Computerization and Cybersecurity after signing a memorandum of understanding in July, 2014. As a result, Cuban human resources in this field have received training in China, and cooperation between Chinese tech companies and their Cuban counterparts has increased over the past few years. In December 2019, the two countries held the first China-Cuba Internet Forum in Havana, hosted by the Cyberspace Administration of China and the Cuban Ministry of Communications, to share experiences in internet governance, network management, among other topics. Cuba is expected to continue strengthening participation in the Chinese Belt & Road Initiative because of the importance of China’s Digital Silk Road as a multilateral platform for promoting the economic and technological development of the participating countries.

    China has participated with infrastructure and technical assistance in the process of computerization of the Cuban society.

    In summary, it all depends on how much the Cuban government would like to reform and open up Cuban market economy. China is ready to help.1

    China’s role has been in providing capital and technology as China often is willing to take risks despite economic uncertainty created by the ongoing U.S. economic embargo.2

  • Source: Quora
  • Image credit: Emerging Power
    1. “Collaboration with China important to Cuba,” Belt and Road News, 30 October 2020.
    2. “China’s BRI in Latin America: Case Study — Sustrainable Energy in Cuba,” tearline.mil, 14 August 2020.
    The post Partners: China and Cuba first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Two legal challenges expose grave flaws at the heart of global wildlife trading system

    The Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES) is one of the most important international bodies in the world right now. Its actions and choices have immense bearing on what the future holds. CITES determines what trade in at-risk wildlife species is permissible or not. As such, whether the world properly tackles the biodiversity crisis, aka the disappearance of essential diverse life on earth, and limits the risk of future zoonotic pandemics, like coronavirus (Covid-19), partly lies in its hands.

    Currently, CITES is subject to two legal challenges. They both relate to China and its trading in Asian elephants and chimpanzees with Laos and South Africa respectively. The challenges are complex and allege numerous violations of CITES wildlife trading rules. They paint a picture of a highly profitable and thriving market in some of the world’s most endangered species, where corruption, rule-bending and fraud is rife. In essence, the legal complaints expose the CITES system as one where the rules are used to accommodate the trade, rather than the other way around.

    With CITES’ increasing importance in our wildlife-depleted and pandemic-riddled world, these legal challenges offer an insight into how the UN body currently functions. Unfortunately, they starkly highlight how unfit CITES is for the existential problems we face.

    The Convention

    As The Canary has previously reported, CITES is a global agreement between most states – known as parties – on international wildlife trading. Its primary purpose is meant to be ensuring that trade doesn’t drive species to extinction. It currently regulates the trade in around 38,700 species that it’s designated as in need of protection – approximately 32,800 species of plants and 5,950 species of non-human animals.

    It lists these species in three appendices, essentially depending on how much at risk of extinction they are. It then sets out rules for trade of species in those different appendices. This rules-based trade is authorised through a permitting system. Permits are issued by national CITES management authorities in member countries “upon advice” from their national CITES scientific authorities. A central CITES authority, called the CITES Secretariat, oversees the working of the Convention, assisted by a number of committees.

    In theory, the system is simple enough. For international trade in CITES-listed species to occur, the national CITES authorities in the involved countries have to issue import and export permits, which are in line with the applicable rules for that species, to confirm the trade is permissible.

    The legal complaints show, however, that in practice, the system is anything but simple or, indeed, functional.

    Responsibility for source codes

    CITES has created source codes for species subject to trade. As the name implies, these codes indicate where the trader sourced the individuals in question from. The legal complaint about Asian elephant trades between Laos and China, which UK law firm Advocates for Animals has raised with CITES on behalf of filmmaker and author Karl Ammann, has issues relating to source codes at its core.

    CITES lists Asian elephants in Appendix I, reserved for species that are “the most endangered”. However, one of the special provisions for trade that CITES has is that if individuals from an Appendix I species are bred in captivity for commercial purposes, they are downgraded to Appendix II. There are more restrictions on trade for Appendix I species than Appendix II.

    In the CITES list of Asian elephant trades from Laos to China since 2014, all of them are listed as captive-bred, or source code C. The legal complaint disputes this, arguing that the source code has been ‘misused’. It claims that Laos “does not have any CITES registered commercial breeding facilities”. It also highlights a study that states “80% of calves born in captivity in Laos during the past decade are from wild genitors [fathers] from the Nam Pouy Protected Area”. Ammann says his sources have confirmed this.

    Whether the source code has been misused here is a case that Laos has to answer. But a further burning question is, why didn’t China question Laos’s repeated use of source code C, if it’s a country that has no CITES registered breeding facilities? Indeed, in its guidance on the application of source codes, CITES says that:

    If no licensed operation for the species exists, the legality of the export should be questioned.

    Internal inconsistencies

    The complaint also points out that CITES’ data says that Laos has exported 87 elephants to China since 2014. But a media report from Laos claimed that the country has exported 142 Asian elephants to China through one port – Mohan Port – since 2015. A further report by the Rescue Animals Project, which is quoted in the complaint, says that in 2014 there were 195 Asian elephants in 57 venues in China. The report said the number had increased by 140 to 335 Asian elephants, in 67 venues, by 2020.

    Clearly, the numbers don’t stack up. The Advocates for Animals complaint alleges that elephants are regularly smuggled, via a “hidden forest trail”, across the Laos/China border. This could account for the discrepancy. A failure by involved countries to fully record their permit documentation in the CITES database could cause such disparities too. Nonetheless, the fact that the discrepancy has only come to the fore because of the legal challenge begs another question: where are the checks and balances in CITES whereby the declared trades are checked against actual trades and what’s happening on the ground?

    Definition issues

    The second legal complaint, which Advocates for Animals has also raised on behalf of Ammann, focuses on the sale of 18 chimpanzees from South Africa to a Chinese zoo. As is the case for the Asian elephant complaint, it claims that the trade potentially violated numerous CITES rules. One of the violations the complaint alleges is that the traded chimpanzees will be “used for primarily commercial purposes”. As an Appendix I species, people cannot trade chimpanzees for primarily commercial purposes.

    CITES has a definition of what ‘commercial purposes’ means. It states that:

    An activity can generally be described as ‘commercial’ if its purpose is to obtain economic benefit (whether in cash or otherwise), and is directed toward resale, exchange, provision of a service or any other form of economic use or benefit.

    It also says that the term should be defined “as broadly as possible so that any transaction which is not wholly ‘non-commercial’ will be regarded as ‘commercial’”.

    The legal complaint partly asserts [pdf p6] that the trade was ‘primarily commercial’ because the zoo – Beijing Wild Animal Park – is a “profit based facility”, with a net profit of around $7m in 2017. As various tourism websites have boasted, the park also puts on ‘animal shows’, meaning the venue forces certain species to perform for the paying spectators.

    China issued a government directive in 2011 banning such performances. It reiterated the ban in further guidance in 2013. Nonetheless, the performances continue in many venues, with some notable exceptions.

    Lack of clarity

    CITES has responded to the chimpanzee complaint. Based on its response, Advocates for Animals understands that CITES is satisfied the trade in chimpanzees was for zoo purposes due to China claiming that the park’s focus is on science, education and research, among other related things. However, it appears all parties have acknowledged the venue isn’t registered as a scientific, educational or research institution.

    Essentially, CITES concluded that the purpose of the chimpanzee sale was for ‘zoo’ purposes not for ‘commercial purposes’ because that’s what China claims. It did concede that more clarification is needed for purpose code Z, i.e., zoos, and pledged to take action accordingly. But the fact CITES doesn’t appear to already have a clear definition of what constitutes a zoo and under what circumstances it considers a zoo to be a commercial entity – in light of its own definition of ‘commercial purposes’ – is deeply troubling.

    As Advocates for Animals’ Alice Collinson commented:

    It is vital that CITES put measures in place to prevent protected animals from being traded to zoos for primarily commercial purposes, which is happening increasingly according to Karl Ammann’s growing evidence base, particularly with China, and could undermine the purpose of a regime aimed at protecting the most vulnerable species. CITES has not ruled out that zoos can fall into the category of primary commercial, but have failed to clarify when that could occur.

    A system ripe for corruption

    The Asian elephant complaint also raises concerns over corruption being an issue in the current CITES system. Ammann has been investigating the wildlife trade, including the trade in elephants, for years. The complaint asserts that his investigations have shown that trafficking of elephants between Laos and China, in some cases, “involved bribes with officials”. The complaint alleges that bribes, which were not exclusive to one or other side of the border, were sometimes connected with preparing the ‘paperwork’ for CITES permits.

    Adding to concerns over corruption, Ammann’s investigations show that although Chinese dealers may purchase a Laotian elephant for around $25,000, the price Chinese zoos pay for them can be up to $500,000. This raises further issues with the ‘non-commercial’ classification of such trading. It also begs the question of where these vast sums of money are going.

    Ammann previously co-authored a 2013 report on illegal sales of chimpanzees from Guinea, mainly to China. Guinea issued numerous fraudulent permits for the chimpanzees between 2009 and 2011. In their investigation, the 2013 report’s authors said animal dealers told them that getting the fraudulent permits was “just a question of the relevant financial initiative (bribe)”.

    In short, allegations of corruption are neither new nor uncommon in CITES. One of the reasons why that’s the case is because CITES still relies on an archaic paper permitting system. As The Canary previously reported, an e-permit system does exist, called eCITES. But it appears to be barely functional, partly because of a lack of funding. It’s also not compulsory.

    The Canary contacted China’s CITES authorities for comment on the Asian elephant complaint. They did not respond to the request.

    Iceberg ahead

    Like the Laotian elephants, the issue with the Guinea-China chimpanzee trades centred on the classification of the great apes as ‘captive-bred’, despite Guinea having no breeding centres for them. Meanwhile, as with the South African chimpanzees, these apes were destined for Chinese zoos that the 2013 report’s authors argued were for ‘primarily commercial purposes’. One of the grounds for the Asian elephant complaint is also that they are used for ‘primarily commercial purposes’.

    Considered together, these three situations highlight recurring issues with the CITES system. Clearly, the body needs to address the inconsistencies around its ‘captive-bred’ source code. Arguably, given this source code appears ripe for abuse, the body needs to consider affording all individuals of a species the same stronger trade restrictions, regardless of their ‘source’ being the wild or captivity. CITES also needs to firm up who bears responsibility for ensuring source codes are adhered to. Notably, in the Guinea-China chimpanzee controversy, China faced no repercussions for its role in the years-long fraudulent use of the code. Moreover, CITES didn’t enforce a crucial obligation the involved parties had in the situation. Namely, under the Convention, parties are “obliged… to provide for the confiscation or return to the State of export” of any individuals who are “traded in violation of the Convention”.

    The apparent lack of checks and balances regarding declared trades and the reality on the ground also needs to be addressed. Systematic checks of submitted CITES paperwork, and wholesale adoption of a transparent, electronic permitting system, should happen too. Furthermore, the body must provide clarity on the critical purpose codes it has created and address the inconsistencies in its guidance and definitions. In particular, it needs to urgently resolve the ambiguity over when zoos should be viewed as commercial enterprises, so that the Z purpose code matches up with its definition of ‘primarily commercial purposes’.

    Like all international bodies, CITES is a behemoth. Coordination of the global wildlife trade involving most of the world’s governments is understandably no easy task. But for the sake of everyone in the living world – human and non-human – it is an essential one, with its importance only growing amid the biodiversity crisis and the threat of zoonotic diseases.

    Given its critical role, CITES needs to operate like a tight ship. But right now, it more resembles the Titanic. If it doesn’t buck up and get its act together, there’s nothing but icebergs ahead.

    Featured image via Wikimedia and Karl Ammann

    By Tracy Keeling

    This post was originally published on The Canary.

  • Key pro-democracy figures go on trial over Hong Kong protests

    Veteran activist Lee Cheuk-yan accuses police and government of depriving Hongkongers of constitutional rights

    A veteran champion of democracy in Hong Kong has described its legal system as an instrument of political suppression, after he and eight other high-profile figures went on trial in one of the biggest court cases linked to the protest movement that paralysed the city for more than a year.

    “It’s the department of justice, the police department and the Hong Kong government who should be on trial because they have deprived us of our constitutional rights,” said Lee Cheuk-yan after the day’s proceedings. “This year is the year of the ox so we should be stubborn as an ox.”

    Related: Hong Kong: 1.7m people defy police to march in pouring rain

    Continue reading…

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

  • Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West?

    In 2016, I attended an information session about First Nations in Lax Kxeen (colonial designation Prince Rupert),1 “BC.” During a break, I conversed with some fellow attendees. They expressed skepticism to colonial provincial authorities being behind the intentional spreading of smallpox among First Nations people2 and that a vaccine was withheld from infected Indigenous individuals. The attendees insisted that there was no vaccine at that time for smallpox.

    Yet, the English doctor Edward Jenner is celebrated for having discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796. This is the predominant western account on the origin of the smallpox vaccination.

    It is also recorded that inoculation against smallpox was already being practiced in Sichuan province by Taoist alchemists in the 10th century CE.3 The Chinese inoculators administered dead or attenuated smallpox collected from less virulent scabs, which were inserted into the nose on a plug of cotton. Inoculation may also have been practiced much earlier by the Chinese — some sources cite dates as early as 200 BCE.

    China obviously has a historical background in strengthening the immune response of people. Yet, in the western media, one seldom reads or hears about the Chinese COVID-19 vaccines. Neither were we well informed about the effectiveness of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine — that was until recently, when some western nations have been coming up short on vaccine supplies. The Canadian government has been scrambling to meet the demand for vaccines since Pfizer shipments were held up. The focus of western state and corporate media seemed clearly on procuring supplies of the Pfizer (US), Moderna (US), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden) vaccines. This is despite effective, but less heralded, Russian and Chinese vaccines being available and at a more affordable price. South Korea’s Arirang News reported Russian test results that “its second COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective.” CBC.ca found this success problematic; it depicted a political quandary in considering a Russian vaccine: “At first dismissed and ridiculed by Western countries, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has not only been rehabilitated; it’s emerging as a powerful tool of influence abroad for President Vladimir Putin.” France 24 concurred, hailing it as “a scientific and political victory for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

    Would Canada refuse to consider securing vaccines from Russia to safeguard the health of Canadians to avoid granting Putin, derided by Canadian magazine Macleans as a “new Stalin,” a political victory? Why shouldn’t Russia be lauded for coming up first with a working and effective vaccine? What does it matter if the leader of that country receives recognition? Shouldn’t the national priority be obtaining the best vaccine to protect the health of citizens?

    Medical data aside, western mass media has, apparently, been effective in stirring up a distrust of COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia in comparison to western vaccines, as revealed in a YouGov poll of almost 19,000 people worldwide.

    Hungary has been mildly criticized for going its own way in ordering the Russian vaccine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had no qualms and defended Budapest’s decision to buy two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

    The Czech Republic is also considering following Hungary in using Russian and Chinese vaccines that are still pending approval by the European Union.

    Huge Potential Profits in Vaccines

    Investigative journalist Matt Tabibi pointed out,

    What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., … the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly criticized big pharma for profiteering and vaccine inequalities. Adhanom charged that younger, healthier adults in wealthy countries were being prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19 before older people or health care workers in poorer countries and that markets were sought to maximize profitability.

    In chapter VII of the e-book The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” (December 2020, revised January 2021), professor Michel Chossudovsky writes:

    The plan to develop the Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven.

    The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.

    The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2….

    The Covid vaccine is a multibillion dollar Big Pharma operation which will contribute to increasing the public debt of more than 150 national governments.

    Imagine, if those thousands of people stay home, reduce contact with others, they may have survived the pandemic.4

    Chossudovsky also questions the safety of the rushed testing and the need for a vaccine given that the WHO and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both confirmed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza.”5

    Some Safety Concerns about Vaccines

    A report raised alarm about at least 36 people who developed a rare, lethal blood disorder, called thrombocytopenia, after receiving either of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A Miami obstetrician, Gregory Michael, just 56, died of a brain hemorrhage just 16 days after receiving a Pfizer vaccination. His thrombocytopenia had caused his platelets to drop to virtually zero.

    A Johns Hopkins University expert on blood disorders, Jerry L. Spivak, who was uninvolved in Michael’s care, said that based on Michael’s wife’s description: “I think it is a medical certainty that the vaccine was related [to Michael’s death].”

    In Israel, at least three people suffered Bell’s palsy, facial paralysis, after receiving the vaccine. Data from Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials revealed seven COVID-19 participants had experienced Bell’s palsy in the weeks following vaccination.

    In Norway, at least 23 people who received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine died. According to authorities, thirteen of the fatalities were associated to the vaccine’s side effects. In addition, 10 deaths shortly following vaccination were being probed in Germany.

    Pfizer and Moderna use a novel vaccine based on mRNA. Following the deaths in Norway, Chinese health experts called for caution and the suspension of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, especially for elderly people.

    Regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC reported the administration of over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US from 14 December 2020 through 7 February 2021. During this time, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System received 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people vaccinated for COVID-19. Based on the extremely low figure, the CDC advised people that “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective” and “to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as you are eligible.”

    Yet, it seems some Europeans distrust their own government-approved Covid-19 vaccines. A black market has arisen; two doses of unapproved Chinese vaccines have reportedly sold for as high as 7,000 yuan (£800) — almost 20 times the reported usual price.

    Vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac, cautioned the public not to buy the vaccines online.

    Chinese Vaccines and Profit-seeking

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been magnanimous with what could be an extremely profitable property. Said Xi, “China is willing to strengthen cooperation with other countries in the research and development, production, and distribution of vaccines,”

    “We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford.”

    Imagine that: making an in-demand product available as a “pubic good” instead of taking advantage of a seemingly dire situation to rake in huge profits. Africa, for one, is benefiting.

    Back in October 2020, Fortune.com proclaimed in its headline: “World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese COVID candidate ‘the safest, most promising.’” The tests conducted in Brazil were large, human trials of the COVID-19 vaccines that included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm.

    São Paulo Governor João Doria said,

    The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac from Chinese developer Sinovacis the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates.

    On 3 February 2021, the peer-review medical journal, The Lancet, published a study by Wu et al. who spoke to the urgent need for a vaccine against COVID-19 for the elderly. Their study found that the Chinese CoronaVac, containing inactivated SARS-CoV-2, is safe and well tolerated by the elderly.

    Journalist Wei Ling Chua, who follows closely how events involving China are portrayed and perceived elsewhere, asked in an email on 12 February 2021:

    1) till this date, there is no report of a single death or hospitalisation after taking China vaccine

    2) unlike the capitalist west, China vaccine companies did not require nations to excuse them from legal liability from side effects.

    Despite, western nations acknowledging many having died soon after taking the vaccine, they all claim that after investigation the cause of death not related to vaccine. But, why does death happen so soon after taking the vaccine?

    Why following administration of a Chinese vaccine are there no reports of people dying soon afterwards?

    Closing Comments

    This essay does not explore the necessity for vaccination against COVID-19. Indeed, there are grounds to be skeptical of the necessity for all people to be vaccinated. However, if COVID-19 is genuinely an urgent health issue,6 then why would governments play politics with the health of their populace?

    1. The city’s name is an eponym for Prince Rupert of the Rhine, a European elitist who never set foot on the Pacific coast. For the Ts’msyen: “Place names are usually rooted in the natural world and the land they refer to.” See Kenneth Campbell, Persistence and Change: A History of the Ts’msyen Nation (Prince Rupert, [sic] BC: First Nation Educational Council, 2005): 10. Author Kenneth Campbell commented, “By writing and saying the name name in [Sm’algyax, the Ts’msyen language], both the language and the people are honored.” (p. 10)
    2. Tom Swanky, The Great Darkening: The True Story of Canada’s “War” of Extermination on the Pacific plus The Tsilhqot’in and other First Nations Resistance (Burnaby, BC: Dragon Heart Enterprises, 2012). See also an interview with Tom Swanky.
    3. Robert Temple, The Genius of China: 3,000 Years of Science, Discovery and Invention (London: Prion Books, 2002): 135-137.
    4. Click on the following link to access the complete E-book consisting of a Preface, Highlights and Nine Chapters.
    5. For more on “the absolute and relative ‘flu-like’ risk of death from a SARS-CoV-2 infection” see “Review of calculated SARS-CoV-2 infection fatality rates: Good CDC science versus dubious CDC science, the actual risk that does not justify the ‘cure’ – By Prof Joseph Audie,” ResearchGate.
    6. Even about this be skeptical; research and inform yourself; and draw your own conclusions.
    The post Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West? first appeared on Dissident Voice.

    This post was originally published on Dissident Voice.

  • Why are Effective and Inexpensive Chinese and Russian Vaccines Unavailable in Much of the West?

    In 2016, I attended an information session about First Nations in Lax Kxeen (colonial designation Prince Rupert), “BC.” During a break, I conversed with some fellow attendees. They expressed skepticism to colonial provincial authorities being behind the intentional spreading of smallpox among First Nations people and that a vaccine was withheld from infected Indigenous individuals. The attendees insisted that there was no vaccine at that time for smallpox.

    Yet, the English doctor Edward Jenner is celebrated for having discovered the smallpox vaccine in 1796. This is the predominant western account on the origin of the smallpox vaccination.

    It is also recorded that inoculation against smallpox was already being practiced in Sichuan province by Taoist alchemists in the 10th century CE. The Chinese inoculators administered dead or attenuated smallpox collected from less virulent scabs, which were inserted into the nose on a plug of cotton. Inoculation may also have been practiced much earlier by the Chinese — some sources cite dates as early as 200 BCE.

    China obviously has a historical background in strengthening the immune response of people. Yet, in the western media, one seldom reads or hears about the Chinese COVID-19 vaccines. Neither were we well informed about the effectiveness of the Russian COVID-19 vaccine — that was until recently, when some western nations have been coming up short on vaccine supplies. The Canadian government has been scrambling to meet the demand for vaccines since Pfizer shipments were held up. The focus of western state and corporate media seemed clearly on procuring supplies of the Pfizer (US), Moderna (US), and AstraZeneca (UK-Sweden) vaccines. This is despite effective, but less heralded, Russian and Chinese vaccines being available and at a more affordable price. South Korea’s Arirang News reported Russian test results that “its second COVID-19 vaccine is 100% effective.” CBC.ca found this success problematic; it depicted a political quandary in considering a Russian vaccine: “At first dismissed and ridiculed by Western countries, Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine has not only been rehabilitated; it’s emerging as a powerful tool of influence abroad for President Vladimir Putin.” France 24 concurred, hailing it as “a scientific and political victory for Vladimir Putin’s Russia.”

    Would Canada refuse to consider securing vaccines from Russia to safeguard the health of Canadians to avoid granting Putin, derided by Canadian magazine Macleans as a “new Stalin,” a political victory? Why shouldn’t Russia be lauded for coming up first with a working and effective vaccine? What does it matter if the leader of that country receives recognition? Shouldn’t the national priority be obtaining the best vaccine to protect the health of citizens?

    Medical data aside, western mass media has, apparently, been effective in stirring up a distrust of COVID-19 vaccines from China and Russia in comparison to western vaccines, as revealed in a YouGov poll of almost 19,000 people worldwide.

    Hungary has been mildly criticized for going its own way in ordering the Russian vaccine. Hungary’s foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, had no qualms and defended Budapest’s decision to buy two million doses of Russia’s Sputnik V vaccine.

    The Czech Republic is also considering following Hungary in using Russian and Chinese vaccines that are still pending approval by the European Union.

    Huge Potential Profits in Vaccines

    Investigative journalist Matt Tabibi pointed out,

    What Americans need to understand about the race to find vaccines and treatments for Covid-19 is that in the U.S., … the production of pharmaceutical drugs is still a nearly riskless, subsidy-laden scam.

    The World Health Organization (WHO) director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus strongly criticized big pharma for profiteering and vaccine inequalities. Adhanom charged that younger, healthier adults in wealthy countries were being prioritized for vaccination against COVID-19 before older people or health care workers in poorer countries and that markets were sought to maximize profitability.

    In chapter VII of the e-book The 2020 Worldwide Corona Crisis: Destroying Civil Society, Engineered Economic Depression, Global Coup d’État and the “Great Reset” (December 2020, revised January 2021), professor Michel Chossudovsky writes:

    The plan to develop the Covid-19 vaccine is profit driven.

    The US government had already ordered 100 million doses back in July 2020 and the EU is to purchase 300 million doses. It’s Big Money for Big Pharma, generous payoffs to corrupt politicians, at the expense of tax payers.

    The objective is ultimately to make money, by vaccinating the entire planet of 7.8 billion people for SARS-CoV-2….

    The Covid vaccine is a multibillion dollar Big Pharma operation which will contribute to increasing the public debt of more than 150 national governments.

    Imagine, if those thousands of people stay home, reduce contact with others, they may have survived the pandemic.

    Chossudovsky also questions the safety of the rushed testing and the need for a vaccine given that the WHO and the US Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) both confirmed that Covid-19 is “similar to seasonal influenza.”

    Some Safety Concerns about Vaccines

    A report raised alarm about at least 36 people who developed a rare, lethal blood disorder, called thrombocytopenia, after receiving either of the two approved COVID-19 vaccines in the US. A Miami obstetrician, Gregory Michael, just 56, died of a brain hemorrhage just 16 days after receiving a Pfizer vaccination. His thrombocytopenia had caused his platelets to drop to virtually zero.

    A Johns Hopkins University expert on blood disorders, Jerry L. Spivak, who was uninvolved in Michael’s care, said that based on Michael’s wife’s description: “I think it is a medical certainty that the vaccine was related [to Michael’s death].”

    In Israel, at least three people suffered Bell’s palsy, facial paralysis, after receiving the vaccine. Data from Pfizer and Moderna vaccine trials revealed seven COVID-19 participants had experienced Bell’s palsy in the weeks following vaccination.

    In Norway, at least 23 people who received the Pfizer COVID-19 vaccine died. According to authorities, thirteen of the fatalities were associated to the vaccine’s side effects. In addition, 10 deaths shortly following vaccination were being probed in Germany.

    Pfizer and Moderna use a novel vaccine based on mRNA. Following the deaths in Norway, Chinese health experts called for caution and the suspension of mRNA-based COVID-19 vaccines, especially for elderly people.

    Regarding the safety of COVID-19 vaccines, the CDC reported the administration of over 41 million doses of COVID-19 vaccines in the US from 14 December 2020 through 7 February 2021. During this time, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System received 1,170 reports of death (0.003%) among people vaccinated for COVID-19. Based on the extremely low figure, the CDC advised people that “COVID-19 vaccines are safe and effective” and “to get a COVID-19 vaccine as soon as you are eligible.”

    Yet, it seems some Europeans distrust their own government-approved Covid-19 vaccines. A black market has arisen; two doses of unapproved Chinese vaccines have reportedly sold for as high as 7,000 yuan (£800) — almost 20 times the reported usual price.

    Vaccine makers, Sinopharm and Sinovac, cautioned the public not to buy the vaccines online.

    Chinese Vaccines and Profit-seeking

    Chinese leader Xi Jinping has been magnanimous with what could be an extremely profitable property. Said Xi, “China is willing to strengthen cooperation with other countries in the research and development, production, and distribution of vaccines,”

    “We will fulfill our commitments, offer help and support to other developing countries, and work hard to make vaccines a public good that citizens of all countries can use and can afford.”

    Imagine that: making an in-demand product available as a “pubic good” instead of taking advantage of a seemingly dire situation to rake in huge profits. Africa, for one, is benefiting.

    Back in October 2020, Fortune.com proclaimed in its headline: “World’s vaccine testing ground deems Chinese COVID candidate ‘the safest, most promising.’” The tests conducted in Brazil were large, human trials of the COVID-19 vaccines that included Johnson & Johnson, Pfizer, AstraZeneca, and China’s Sinovac and Sinopharm.

    São Paulo Governor João Doria said,

    The first results of the clinical study conducted in Brazil prove that among all the vaccines tested in the country, CoronaVac from Chinese developer Sinovacis the safest, the one with the best and most promising rates.

    On 3 February 2021, the peer-review medical journal, The Lancet, published a study by Wu et al. who spoke to the urgent need for a vaccine against COVID-19 for the elderly. Their study found that the Chinese CoronaVac, containing inactivated SARS-CoV-2, is safe and well tolerated by the elderly.

    Journalist Wei Ling Chua, who follows closely how events involving China are portrayed and perceived elsewhere, asked in an email on 12 February 2021:

    1) till this date, there is no report of a single death or hospitalisation after taking China vaccine

    2) unlike the capitalist west, China vaccine companies did not require nations to excuse them from legal liability from side effects.

    Despite, western nations acknowledging many having died soon after taking the vaccine, they all claim that after investigation the cause of death not related to vaccine. But, why does death happen so soon after taking the vaccine?

    Why following administration of a Chinese vaccine are there no reports of people dying soon afterwards?

    Closing Comments

    This essay does not explore the necessity for vaccination against COVID-19. Indeed, there are grounds to be skeptical of the necessity for all people to be vaccinated. However, if COVID-19 is genuinely an urgent health issue, then why would governments play politics with the health of their populace?

    This article was posted on Monday, February 15th, 2021 at 4:30pm and is filed under Africa, China, Corporate Globalization, COVID-19, Health/Medical, Russia, Vaccines.

    This post was originally published on Radio Free.

  • Warm Words From The State Department Do Not Conceal US Betrayal Of Tibet

    Image: original photo State Department, amended for accuracy by @tibettruth

    Of course Secretary Blinken did not appear Feb 12 with the Tibetan national flag, either behind him or upon his lapel. He followed a long line of Secretary’s of State by avoiding any reference to the notion of Tibet as a nation, either through displaying emblems or via his carefully scripted New Year greeting. While many Tibetans are encouraged that he offered up solidarity on Tibetan culture, language and religion, it should never be forgotten that since Nixon reached an accord with Mao Tse Tung in 1972 successive administrations, be they Republican or Democrat, have recognized the bogus claim, and affirmed, that Tibet is part of China. This been the central policy of the State Department for decades, encouraged and shaped by a powerful coalition of corporate interests, whose prime goal is maintaining and expanding financial ties with China.

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

  • Forced Labor In The United States

    By any measure, the United States has the worst human rights record among the nations called democratic or developed or advanced or “free world” or any of the other labels that rich capitalist countries use to describe themselves. The U.S. has the worst health care system in that group, the worst benefits for workers, and the worst income inequality. It also has the dubious distinction of being the world’s biggest jailer, with some 2.3 million people behind bars. This country which treats its people so terribly is also the one most likely to project its evil doing on to others.

    There is a method to the madness.

    The post Forced Labor In The United States appeared first on PopularResistance.Org.

    This post was originally published on PopularResistance.Org.