Tag: China

Nuclear powers are continuing to modernize their weapons, says Swedish think tank / by Morning Star

A U.S. nuclear weapons test in Nevada in 1953. | International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons / Creative Commons

Reposted from the Morning Star

The world’s nine nuclear-armed states continue to modernize their nuclear weapons as the countries deepened their reliance on such deterrence in 2023, a Swedish think tank said today.

Wilfred Wan, director of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s (SIPRI) weapons of mass destruction program, said: “We have not seen nuclear weapons playing such a prominent role in international relations since the Cold War.”

Earlier this month, Russia and its ally Belarus launched a second stage of drills intended to train their troops in tactical nuclear weapons, part of the Kremlin’s response to aggressive overtones from the members of the NATO military alliance.

In a separate report, the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN), which won the Nobel Peace Prize in 2017, said that the nine nuclear-armed states spent a combined total of $91.4 billion on their arsenals in 2023.

The group said that figures show a $10.7 billion increase in global spending on nuclear weapons in 2023 compared to 2022, with the United States accounting for 80 percent of that increase.

The U.S. share of total spending, $51.5 billion, is more than all the other nuclear-armed countries put together.

ICAN policy and research coordinator Alicia Sanders-Zakre said: “There has been a notable upward trend in the amount of money devoted to developing these most inhumane and destructive weapons over the past five years.”

She said: “All this money is not improving global security, in fact, it’s threatening people wherever they live.”

SIPRI estimated that some 2,100 of the deployed warheads were kept in a state of high operational alert on ballistic missiles and nearly all belong to the U.S. or Russia.

SIPRI’s director Dan Smith described the upward trend of warheads as “extremely concerning.”

The U.S. and Russia together have almost 90 percent of all nuclear weapons, SIPRI said.

In its SIPRI Yearbook 2024, the institute said that transparency regarding nuclear forces has declined in both countries in the wake of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and debates around nuclear-sharing arrangements have increased in importance.

Washington suspended its bilateral strategic stability dialogue with Russia, and last year Moscow announced that it was suspending its participation in the New Start nuclear treaty.

In Asia, India, Pakistan, and North Korea are all pursuing the capability to deploy multiple warheads on ballistic missiles, the institute said. The U.S., Russia, France, Britain, and China already have that capacity.

Morning Star

Morning Star is the socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain. Morning Star es el diario socialista publicado en Gran Bretaña.

‘Truly Shameful’: Pentagon Ran Secret Anti-Vax Campaign Against China at Height of Covid Pandemic / by Jake Johnson

A box containing the Sinovac Covid-19 vaccine is pictured on August 20, 2022 in Beijing, China | Photo: VCG via Getty Images

“I don’t think it’s defensible,” an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth said of the clandestine effort

Reposted from Common Dreams

A Reutersinvestigation published Friday revealed that the Pentagon ran a “clandestine operation” aimed at discrediting China’s coronavirus vaccines and treatments, a campaign that U.S. public health experts and others condemned as a cynical ploy that endangered lives for political purposes.

According to Reuters, the Pentagon’s secretive campaign was designed to counter what the U.S. “perceived as China’s growing influence in the Philippines,” a country that was ravaged by Covid-19. The virus, which killed millions of people globally, was first detected in Wuhan, China in late 2019.

The campaign reportedly began in the spring of 2020 and was terminated in the middle of 2021 after it had expanded beyond Southeast Asia to Central Asia and the Middle East. U.S. officials involved in the effort worked “to sow doubt about the safety and efficacy of vaccines and other lifesaving aid that was being supplied by China” using “phony internet accounts meant to impersonate Filipinos,” Reuters found.

“Social media posts decried the quality of face masks, test kits, and the first vaccine that would become available in the Philippines—China’s Sinovac inoculation,” the news agency added. “Reuters identified at least 300 accounts on X, formerly Twitter, that matched descriptions shared by former U.S. military officials familiar with the Philippines operation. Almost all were created in the summer of 2020 and centered on the slogan #Chinaangvirus—Tagalog for China is the virus.”

One tweet that Reuters described as “typical” exclaimed that “COVID came from China and the VACCINE also came from China, don’t trust China!”

Daniel Lucey, an infectious disease specialist at Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine who previously worked as a military physician, told Reuters that he was “extremely dismayed, disappointed and disillusioned to hear that the U.S. government would” conduct such an operation.

“I don’t think it’s defensible,” Lucey added.

“We were literally ready to let people die to avoid giving China a PR win.”

Others expressed outrage on social media. Justin Sandefur, a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development, called the Pentagon’s campaign “truly shameful” and lamented that “we were literally ready to let people die to avoid giving China a PR win.”

“That ‘pork in the vaccine’ nonsense you saw on Facebook was U.S. taxpayer-funded,” Sandefur wrote.

Reuters reported that a “key part” of the Pentagon’s strategy was to “amplify the disputed contention that, because vaccines sometimes contain pork gelatin, China’s shots could be considered forbidden under Islamic law.”

“Tailoring the propaganda campaign to local audiences across Central Asia and the Middle East, the Pentagon used a combination of fake social media accounts on multiple platforms to spread fear of China’s vaccines among Muslims at a time when the virus was killing tens of thousands of people each day,” the agency noted.

One senior U.S. military officer whom Reuters described as directly involved with the propaganda campaign in Southeast Asia told the outlet that “we didn’t do a good job sharing vaccines with partners,” so “what was left to us was to throw shade on China’s.” The U.S. and other rich countries repeatedly obstructed efforts to lift vaccine patents to more widely distribute coronavirus shots.

Pressed by Reuters, the Pentagon acknowledged that the U.S. military launched a propaganda effort attacking the efficacy of China’s vaccine.

World Health Organization (WHO) guidance released in June 2022 stated that China’s Sinovac vaccine is “safe and effective for all individuals aged 18 and above.”

“A large phase 3 trial in Brazil showed that two doses, administered at an interval of 14 days, had an efficacy of 51% against symptomatic SARS-CoV-2 infection, 100% against severe COVID-19, and 100% against hospitalization starting 14 days after receiving the second dose,” the WHO said.

Reuters reported that some within the U.S. State Department objected to the Pentagon’s effort to promote skepticism about China’s vaccine, arguing that a “health crisis was the wrong time to instill fear or anger through a psychological operation.”

“But in 2019, before Covid surfaced in full force, then-Secretary of Defense Mark Esper signed a secret order that later paved the way for the launch of the U.S. military propaganda campaign,” Reuters observed. “The order elevated the Pentagon’s competition with China and Russia to the priority of active combat, enabling commanders to sidestep the State Department when conducting psyops against those adversaries.”

“The Pentagon spending bill passed by Congress that year also explicitly authorized the military to conduct clandestine influence operations against other countries, even ‘outside of areas of active hostilities,'” the agency added.

Jake Johnson is a senior editor and staff writer for Common Dreams

China makes efforts to bring prosperity to the world alongside domestic growth / by Anthony Moretti

A view of Shanghai Photo: VCG

Reposted from Global Times

On October 1 this year, the People’s Republic of China (PRC) will celebrate the 75th anniversary of its founding. At the risk of engaging in hyperbole, it is doubtful the global community in 1949 would have foreseen what the nation would become over time.

I begin with the obvious: The PRC, when it was officially recognized by the United Nations (UN) in 1971, was a long way from asserting itself on the global stage. But with reform and opening-up beginning seven years later, that’s where the country has steadily earned its place. Through its growing diplomatic presence across the globe and its ever-expanding economy, China provides nations big and small with assurances that it is, and will remain, a proactive actor.

In 2018, the Brookings Institution reviewed the first four decades of reform and opening-up. It noted that China had been “profoundly transformed” with the Chinese people understanding the clear benefits of an improved standard of living. It added the following: “A clear majority of China’s people (often an overwhelming majority) express satisfaction with the regime’s policies, are optimistic about the direction of the country and indicate that they expect their children to have a better life than they do.” The country eradicated extreme poverty almost four years ago, and the World Bank estimates that China’s per capita GDP is now above $12,000. Keep in mind that it was less than $1,000 at the beginning of this century.

Chinese leader has affirmed China is now a moderately prosperous society. What’s the next goal? “We are now marching in confident strides toward the second centenary goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects,” the Chinese president said.

Alongside domestic growth, efforts have been made to bring prosperity to other nations. Perhaps the most talked about program is the China-initiated Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which started over 10 years ago. Roughly 150 nations are involved. Major infrastructure projects were one defining example of the BRI’s initial decade. According to one estimate, China invested more than $1 trillion in the projects. Meanwhile, because the geographical scope of the BRI is constantly expanding, Latin America might become a central player in subsequent years. 

Whether it will rival the success of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, which since its creation according to another estimate has created “236,000 jobs and helped Pakistan add 510 kilometers of expressways and 8,000 megawatts of power supply,” will become clearer over time.

It is disappointing to note that as the PRC soon celebrates its 75th anniversary, its relations with the US are nowhere near where they were 50 years ago. In what seemed like the blink of an eye, following president Richard Nixon’s historic visit to Beijing in 1972, the two countries established diplomatic relations, commenced high-level exchanges, signed several cooperation agreements and worked together to ensure China’s accession into the World Trade Organization. Those accomplishments are just a few examples of how positive bilateral relations between the world’s two most powerful nations can foster goodwill.

Of course, the idea of a multipolar world, where nations need not see only one locus of international power, does not sit well in the West. That reality provides a significant cause of the fracture in the relationship. Yes, there are plenty of reasons for the US most especially to tout the world order created after World War II. However, the pressure applied to many countries during that time to adopt Western values was not positively received in many foreign capitals.

China’s approach is different, and should the US and its closest allies continue to view the Global South with apprehension, if not disdain, then that part of the world will continue to be amenable to Beijing’s message: The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence, unveiled by late Chinese premier Zhou Enlai in 1953, form the core of China’s philosophy.

The global picture in 2024 remains unstable. Military conflicts in the Middle East and Eastern Europe, climate change and chronic economic inequality challenge world leaders to find the right solutions. As those efforts continue, China will be at the center of all the conversations. Its commitment to working with the UN to make the world a better place will continue. So, too, will the development of the Chinese nation.

Anthony Moretti is an associate professor at the Department of Communication and Organizational Leadership at Robert Morris University.

Malaysian Sabahan Authorities Forcefully Evict Stateless Bajau Laut ‘Sea Nomads’ / by Eric Brown

Photo: Wikimedia Commons

Reposted from Peoples World

An eviction operation conducted by authorities in the Malaysian state of Sabah from June 4th to June 6 th has left hundreds of stateless Bajau Laut people homeless. Sabah’s Tourism, Culture and Environment Minister Christian Liew has rejected that the operation violated international human rights laws, despite claims to the contrary from human rights advocacy groups and Sabahan mutual aid organization Borneo Komrad. Liew went on to claim egregiously that some Bajau Laut residents razed their own homes “for the purpose of going viral on social media and garnering sympathy and attention from netizens.”

Razed Bajau Laut home. | Credit: Borneo Komrad

Sabahan authorities cite issues of border security, along with illegal fishing and construction of permanent structures within the Tun Sakaran Marine Park off the coast of the Sabahan city of Semporna, a popular tourist destination. Forced eviction and displacement of indigenous peoples is not new in the context of historical scientific conservation.

The Bajau Laut are a semi-nomadic people of the Sama-Bajau group who have historically
lived throughout the central and eastern Malay Archipelago and Sulu Archipelago of the
modern-day Philippines. Today, although some can claim citizenship of Malaysia, the
Philippines, Brunei, or Indonesia, many Sama-Bajau are effectively stateless, living in stilted
houses and houseboats built in shallow shoreline waters at the margins of these four
countries.

The issue of statelessness in Malaysia is made more difficult by Malaysian race laws.
Ketuanan Melayu, a concept of ‘Malay Supremacy’, was cultivated as a legal framework by the British administration of Malaya which has since translated into Malay ethnic control of the federated former British colonies that now constitute Malaysia. Ketuanan Melayu at the federal level, and various interpretations of Bumiputra—a context-dependent legal concept of peoples considered indigenous to Malaysia such as Malays, the indigenous Orang Asli of peninsular Malaysia, and Dayak and other indigenous Borneans—discriminate against
Chinese, Indian, and other Malaysians who aren’t defined as Bumiputra. Affirmative action programs of peoples considered Bumiputra have historically been aimed predominantly at
ethnic Malays, and in some states such as Sarawak, children born to only one Dayak parent have only recently begun to have access to such programs.

Credit: Claudio Sieber | thediplomat.com

For those not traditionally seen to be natives to this or that Malaysian state, like foreign-born Bajau Laut, access to healthcare, schooling, and other basic social services remain out of reach. Organizations such as Iskul Sama diLaut Omadal and Borneo Komrad’s Sekolah Alternatif have become the source of some of the only social services available to the Bajau Laut, who are commonly treated as social pariahs.

Over the past few centuries, the dissolution of regional sultanates and the succession of
Anglo-European colonial administrations has placed the Bajau Laut in the path of territorial
disputes between the Philippines and Malaysia. Philippine claims on eastern parts of the Malaysian state of Sabah stem from the Sulu Sultanate’s leasing of the region to the British North Borneo Company in the 19th century. Malaysia’s formation in 1963 from the former British colonies of Malaya, Singapore, Sarawak, and North Borneo (Sabah) included this region. As the territory was never formally ceded to Malaysia, Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos claimed it still rightfully belonged to the Philippines. A failed Philippine attempt in 1967 to instigate political upheaval in Sabah, among other historical grievances, spurred insurgencies throughout the state of Mindanao. Most notable among these are the independence movements of the Moro who had resisted earlier occupation by the United
States and Spain as well as others carried out by the Communist Party of the Philippines and its offshoots in opposition to Marcos’ government.

Visual illustration of the disputed claims over Sabah [Illustration by The Economist]

In recent years, though, Sabahan territorial disputes have become the purview of emergent jihadist movements in Muslim- majority Mindanao associated with Islamic State. Abu Sayyaf has employed tactics of piracy and kidnapping throughout the Sulu Archipelago and into Sabah, including against the Bajau Laut. Caught in the crossfire, Bajau Laut have largely dispersed from the Sulu region in recent decades and relocated along the coast of Sabah, North Kalimantan, and other parts of the Philippines. As Malaysian anti-racism organization Pusat Komas said of the current predicament of stateless Bajau Laut in Sabah, “Moving people out of their homes only serves to move the problem elsewhere, rather than solving it.”

Eric Brown is a PhD student in the University of Maine’s Ecology and Environmental Sciences program studying the adaptive thermoregulatory physiology and energetics of small mammals in Sarawak, Borneo. As a UAW organizer, Eric guided a successful initiative that culminated in the creation and recognition of the UMaine Graduate Workers Union.

The United States Assembles the Squad Against China / by Vijay Prashad

Image in public domain

Originally published by Z.

In early April 2024, the navies of four countries—Australia, Japan, the Philippines, and the United States—held a maritime exercise in the South China Sea. Australia’s Warramunga, Japan’s Akebono, the Philippines’ Antonio Luna, and the United States’ Mobile worked together in these waters to strengthen their joint abilities and—as they said in a joint statement—to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight and respect for maritime rights under international law.” A few weeks later, between April 22 and May 8, ships from the Philippines and the United States operated alongside Australian and French naval troops for Exercise Balikatan 2024.

For this Balikatan (“shoulder-to-shoulder”), over 16,000 troops participated in an area of the South China Sea that is outside the territorial waters of the Philippines. Alongside the navies of these nations, the Coast Guard of the Philippines took part in Exercise Balikatan. This is significant because it is the boats of the Coast Guard that most often encounter Chinese ships in these international waters, part of which are disputed between China and the Philippines. Although the official documents of these exercises do not mention China by name, they are certainly designed as part of the increasing military activity driven by the United States along China’s maritime border.

During the Balikatan exercise, the navy vessels from the Philippines and the United States jointly attacked and sank the decommissioned Philippine Navy BRP Lake Caliraya. The ship—which was made in China—had been donated to the navy by the Philippine National Oil Company in 2014. The fact that it was the only ship in the Philippines’ navy that was made in China did not go unnoticed within China. Colonel Francel Margareth Padilla-Taborlupa, a spokesperson of the armed forces of the Philippines, said that this was “purely coincidental.”

During Balikatan, the defense ministers of the four main nations met in Honolulu, Hawaii to discuss the political implications of these military exercises off the coast of China. Australia’s Richard Marles, Japan’s Kihara Minoru, the Philippines’ Gilberto Teodoro, and the United States’ Lloyd Austin met for their second meeting to discuss their collaboration in the region that they call the Indo-Pacific. It was at the edges of this meeting that the public relations teams of these ministers began to float the term “Squad” to refer to these four countries. While they did not formally announce the creation of a new bloc in East Asia, this new nickname intends to provide a de facto announcement of its existence.

From the Quad to the Squad

In 2007, the leaders of Australia, India, Japan, and the United States met in Manila (Philippines) to establish the Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (or Quad) while their militaries conducted Exercise Malabar in the Philippines Sea. The Quad did not initially include the Philippines, whose President at the time—Gloria Arroyo—was trying to improve relations between her country and China. The Quad did not develop because Australia’s Prime Minister Kevin Rudd was unhappy with Washington’s growing belligerence towards Beijing. The Quad revived in 2017, once more in Manila, with a more forthright agenda to work against China’s Belt and Road ambitions in the region (which U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson called “predatory economics”).

Over the course of the past two years, the United States has been frustrated with India’s discomfort with the kind of pressure campaign that the U.S. has been mounting against China and Russia. India refused to stop buying discounted Russian energy, which was a pragmatic decision during an election period (although India’s purchase of Russian energy has declined over time). When asked if India will consider being a NATO+ member, India’s foreign minister S. Jaishankar said that India does not share the “NATO mentality.” India’s reluctance to join in the full-throated New Cold War against China annoyed the U.S. government, which therefore decided to set aside the Quad and assemble the Squad with the more pliant and eager government of Philippines president Bongbong Marcos. It is important to note, however, that in April India delivered a batch of supersonic BrahMos cruise missiles to the Philippines (sold for $375 million and produced by a joint venture between arms manufacturers in India and Russia). That these missiles might be part of the new pressure campaign against China is not something buried in the fine print of the deal.

Provocations

Since its “pivot to Asia,” the United States has sought to provoke China. The U.S. trade war that began in 2018 largely fizzled out due to China’s Belt and Road Initiative and its attempt to build the advanced production lines to circumvent U.S. trade restrictions (for instance, when the U.S. tried to prevent China from importing semiconductor chips, the Chinese developed their own manufacturing capacity). The U.S. attempt to make Taiwan into the frontline of its pressure campaign has not borne fruit either. The inauguration of Taiwan’s new president Lai Ching-te on May 20 brings to the helm a man who is not interested in pushing for Taiwan’s independence; only 6 percent of Taiwan’s population favors unification with China or independence, with the rest of the population satisfied with the status quo. Unable to create the necessary provocation over Taiwan, the United States has moved its gunsights to the Philippines.

While the Philippines and China dispute the status of several islands in the waters between them, these disagreements are not sufficient to drive either country to war. In April 2024, former president of the Philippines Rodrigo Duterte recalled that when he was president (2016-2022), “there was no quarrel. We can return to normalcy. I hope that we can stop the ruckus over there because the Americans are the ones pushing the Philippine government to go out there and find a quarrel and eventually maybe start a war.” In March, President Marcos said that he is “not poking the bear” and does not want to “provoke” China. However, the formation of the Squad two months later does indicate that the Philippines has now replaced Taiwan as the frontline state for U.S. provocations against China.

China’s vice chair of its Central Military Commission, Zhang Youxia, warned against “gunboat muscles.” “Reality has shown,” he said, “that those who make deliberate provocations, stoke tensions, or support one side against another for selfish gains will ultimately only hurt themselves.”

This article was produced by Globetrotter.

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

U.S. rejects China’s proposal to ban first use of nuclear weapons / by John Wojcik, Mark Gruenberg, and Ben Chacko

A U.S. nuclear weapons test in Nevada in 1953. | International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons / Creative Commons

Reposted from Peoples World

The U.S. has dismissed Chinese calls for a no-first-use treaty between nuclear weapons states, saying it has questions about China’s “sincerity.”

The outright dismissal of China’s proposal followed a major speech in which Biden announced radical tariffs of up to 100 percent, on steel imports from China. That speech follows months of U.S. military buildup in the waters off the coast of China, including the placement of additional nuclear submarines around the Korean peninsula, all in the name of “protecting” Taiwan, which is, of course, a part of China itself.

Undersecretary of State Bonnie Jenkins, the country’s top arms control official, told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last night that the U.S. worried China had increased its number of nuclear warheads to over 500, might have 1,000 by 2030, and that this was proof that the country was not “sincere” about its proposal to ban first use of the apocalypse-engendering weapons.

The Biden administration’s claim that China had increased the number of its warheads to 500 is just that – an unverified claim. In addition, the U.S. has 12 times that number with an admitted 6,000 of such warheads.

The U.S. says China refuses to engage in nuclear disarmament talks with it. China actually has engaged in talks, first by discussing with the U.S. the need for the U.S. to reduce its outrageously large number of missiles, as compared to China’s number, to show it is serious about fairness. And now it has added to those talks with its proposal to ban the first use of the weapons.

China’s position is that it has an arsenal that is tiny in comparison with that of the United States and that the size of the arsenals has to be part of serious talks. China has also gotten India to sign a no-first-use deal between those two countries. While all these initiatives by China were underway the U.S. was busy unilaterally canceling nuclear arms deals between the U.S. and Russia and continuing to push expansion of NATO not just up to the borders of Russia but into the Pacific regions near China.

China also stores its warheads and delivery systems separately, to avoid the risk of launches by accident or misunderstanding, as almost happened in 1983, when Soviet lieutenant Stanislav Petrov recognized reports of incoming U.S. missiles as a system malfunction and prevented a retaliatory strike which could have begun World War III.

The new, highest-ever U.S. tariffs on Chinese products were announced by President Biden shortly before the Chinese peace initiatives were rejected by his administration. The tariffs would apply to government-subsidized Chinese steel, aluminum, solar cells, electric vehicles—rising to 100% tariffs this year—and their batteries, semiconductors, and some raw materials.

The Biden tariffs are much higher than the Trump tariffs that Biden opposed when Trump was president.

Biden is competing for the White House against the dangerous, right-wing Republican nominee, Donald Trump. The administration hopes that one result of imposing such high tariffs is that they will take the issue of Trump’s political gains from his hatred of China away from him.

As Biden’s predecessor, Trump imposed 10% tariffs on all foreign steel and aluminum. They boomeranged and Trump had to backtrack when both the Steelworkers and Auto Workers pointed out how much of the steel and aluminum in cars, trucks, and SUVs comes from Canada.

Biden criticized China for dumping products below “cost” around the world and for Chinese government subsidies. The role of big corporations in creating the high costs, of course, is not a concern in U.S. big business circles. They oppose, of course, any low costs that might result from the efforts of a socialist government to provide subsidies to industries important to the working-class majorities in such countries. Chinese steelworkers are among the many millions of workers in that country who have been lifted out of poverty.

There are numerous administration policies, including the Inflation Reduction Act, massive infrastructure programs, and pro-environment measures that have boosted the economy and improved living standards for workers. Over the long haul, jingoistic attacks on countries like China and Russia and refusal to reduce the threat of nuclear war will work against the interests of U.S. workers and everyone else on the planet.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

John Wojcik is Editor-in-Chief of People’s World. He joined the staff as Labor Editor in May 2007 after working as a union meat cutter in northern New Jersey. There, he served as a shop steward and a member of a UFCW contract negotiating committee. In the 1970s and ’80s, he was a political action reporter for the Daily World, this newspaper’s predecessor, and was active in electoral politics in Brooklyn, New York.

Mark Gruenberg is head of the Washington, D.C., bureau of People’s World. He is also the editor of the union news service Press Associates Inc. (PAI). Known for his reporting skills, sharp wit, and voluminous knowledge of history, Mark is a compassionate interviewer but tough when going after big corporations and their billionaire owners.

Ben Chacko is Editor of Morning Star, the socialist daily newspaper published in Great Britain.

Transitioning to a new world / by David Cavendish

The Soviet pavilion at Expo ’67 in Montreal.

Reposted from Peoples World

In 1967, as a newly-minted high school graduate, my family and I drove to Montreal to visit Expo ’67. With the theme “Man and His World,” 90 countries from around the globe built pavilions and presented their culture, history, and economic achievement to the rest of humanity. It was a huge success, attracting more than 50 million visitors over six months, a record for its time.

Among the pavilions I remember best was that of Soviet Union. Marking the 50th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, the Soviets put on a dazzling display, with emphasis on its scientific (especially space) achievements), as well as cultural displays, social breakthroughs of the working people, as well as exhibits dedicated to the cause of peace and mutual understanding. The slogan of the Soviet pavilion was “In the name of man, for the good of man.”

In many ways, the Soviet presence at Expo ’67 demonstrated the Soviets’ optimism for the building of socialism and, in hindsight, represented the pinnacle of the USSR’s worldwide influence and prestige. For, as is well-known, the decades that followed increasingly became years of difficulty, especially by the late 1980s.

Not being an economist, nor able to speak or read Russian, I cannot give a detailed account of the difficulties that led in 1991 to the dissolution of the USSR. What is generally known is that the country experienced severe problems, some the result of mistakes, but also the successful machinations of Western imperialism, whose goal had always been the destruction of the Soviet Union. Its economy was largely isolated from the world mainstream, and it was saddled with exorbitant military expenditures caused by the Cold War.

The loss of the Soviet Union and its peace policy and dream of building a modern socialist society had profound effects on national liberation movements, the international Communist and workers movement, and the hopes for world peace.

But hope is not lost.

Fast forward to the present day. After 30 years, roughly 1991 to 2023 (the end of the COVID-19 pandemic), a new world is emerging that provides new opportunities for the re-shaping of the world order.

From a system largely organized by the United States after World War II, one where the imperialist powers dominated international discourse (helped by a generous helping of military power), humanity is now moving to a new arrangement where those who got the short end of the stick are rising up and saying, “No more, enough is enough.” The old order must be replaced, they say, by one built on peace, mutual respect, and equality.

Most of these demands come from what is today called the “Global South,” that is the developing countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America, and the Pacific Ocean.

To that end, they have developed numerous international organizations to give voice to their demands. These include: The Group of 77 and China, BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa, newly joined by Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates), the Gulf Cooperation Council, the African Union, and the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States, and many more.

The linchpin in many ways of this movement is China, a developing country that is building “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

China’s achievements in the last 45 years, since 1978 when it initiated an era of reform, opening-up, and modernization, are staggering. Over 800 million people have been moved out of poverty (numbers corroborated by the World Bank). China is the world’s leading trading nation, with a total of imports and exports of approximately $6 trillion, as well as the number one manufacturing country, with 28% of the world output; the United States is second at 16%. China has moved into the lead or is close in the production of such modern products as electric vehicles, solar panels, auto batteries, semiconductor chips, and artificial intelligence.

The growth of China and its new place in the modern world is built on a solid foundation of popular support and participation. By one estimate, 85% of the population supports their government’s policies.

Fundamental to this support is the fact that the Chinese people are an integral part of running the country. China’s President Xi Jinping calls this “Whole Process People’s Democracy,” a way in which there is popular input at every level of government. In the words of one commentator, “whole-process people’s democracy truly integrates law-based democratic elections, consultations, decision-making, management, and oversight through a series of laws and institutional arrangements.”

Far from being a one-party authoritarian state where all decisions are made by a few powerful men behind closed doors, there exists a vibrant thriving democratic political system based on the people.

The bottom line of all this information is that the old order is passing, that the days are long gone when the Soviet Union was unable to survive the vicissitudes of the capitalist-dominated world of the late 20th century. The cry “Communism is dead” has been relegated to the dustbin of history. Today, China is posing a challenge to the capitalist class, one that may be the most serious in history.

Andrew Murray and John Wojcik in a recent article in People’s World, summed up the situation very well when they wrote, “And now there is the economic and political rise of China, which the G7 elite really do not know what to do about at all.”

Today the world must adjust to the growing influence and economic power of the Global South and accept that socialism is very much alive and growing stronger every year.

So, who knows? Maybe when my grandson graduates from high school, he and his family will visit a future World Expo, one where he’ll be dazzled by the Chinese pavilion.

As with all op-eds and news-analytical articles published by People’s World, this article reflects the views of its author.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

David Cavendish is a retired teacher, active in the union movement, the peace movement (many years in an anti-Iraq/Afghanistan War vigil), and other progressive political activities. He is a longtime contributor to People’s World. David Cavendish es un maestro jubilado, activo en el movimiento sindical, el movimiento por la paz y otras actividades políticas progresistas. Colabora desde hace mucho tiempo en People’s World.

Youth rebellion over Gaza illuminates the wretchedness of capitalism / by Vijay Prashad

Hussein Malla / AP

Reposted from Peoples World

It was inevitable that global North governments’ full-throated support for Israel’s genocide against Palestinians would result in furious retribution from their citizenry.

That this retribution began in the U.S. is also not a surprise, given the ongoing cycle of protests that, since October 2023, have contested the U.S. government’s blank check to the Israeli government. The U.S. bankrolling of Israel’s extermination campaign against Palestinians includes over one hundred weapons shipments to Israel since Oct. 7 and billions of dollars of aid.

For a long time now, young people in the U.S.—as in other countries of the global North—have felt the demise of promise from their society. Permanent precarious work awaits them, even those with higher degrees, and a more precious hold on morality has developed within them due to their own experiments to become better humans in the world.

Cruelties of austerity and of patriarchal norms have forced them to turn against their ruling classes. They want something better than what decaying capitalism offers. The assault against Palestinians has spurred a rupture. How much further these young people will go is yet to be seen.

Across the U.S., students have built encampments on over a hundred university campuses, including the country’s most prestigious institutions, such as Columbia, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Stanford, Emory, Washington University in St. Louis, Vanderbilt, and Yale.

At these encampments, students sing and study, pray and discuss. Many of these universities have invested their vast endowments in funds that are entangled with the weapons industry and Israeli companies, with the total endowments at U.S. institutions of higher education reaching roughly $840 billion.

Seeing their ever-growing tuition payments go towards institutions that are complicit in and profiting from this genocide is far too much for these students. Hence their determination to resist with their bodies.

Democracy is corroded when basic civil actions such as this are met with the full force of the state’s repressive apparatus. College administrators and local urban authorities have sent in heavily armed police forces to use any means necessary to remove the encampments, further reinforced by placing snipers on campus rooftops at multiple universities.

Scenes of sensitive students and faculty members being ripped away from their campuses, tasered, brutalized, and arrested by police in riot gear are scattered across social media. But rather than demoralize the youth, these violent measures have simply sparked the creation of new encampments at colleges not only in the U.S., but in countries as far afield as Australia, Canada, France, Italy, and Britain.

Excuses such as the tents being a fire hazard might stiffen the resolve of the administrators, but they make no sense to the students, the faculty members who came out to defend them, or concerned people around the world.

The images of this violence are reminiscent of the photographs of the massacres against U.S. students protesting against the Vietnam War and of police dogs being unleashed on young Black children during the U.S. civil rights movement.

This is not the first time that young people, particularly college students, have tried to impose clarity upon a world encrusted by compromises. In the U.S., earlier generations fought to get their colleges to divest from apartheid South Africa and from the ugly U.S.-driven wars in Southeast Asia and Central America.

In 1968, young people from France to India, from the U.S. to Japan, erupted in anger at the imperialist wars in Algeria, Palestine, and Vietnam, their eyes firmly set on Paris, Tel Aviv, and Washington for their murderous culture.

Their attitude was captured by the Pakistani poet Habib Jalib, who sang at Lahore’s Mochi Gate, “Kyun darate ho zindan ki divar se,” (Why do you scare me with the prison’s gate?), and then, “Zulm ki baat ko jahl ki raat ko, main nahin manta main nahin jaanta,” (Oppression’s words, ignorance’s night, I refuse to acknowledge, I refuse to accept).

Since we are in May, it might be valuable to recall the brave young people of China who took to the streets on May 4, 1919 to condemn the humiliations forced upon the Chinese people during the Paris Peace Conference (which resulted in the Treaty of Versailles).

During the conference, the imperialist powers decided to give Japan a large part of Shandong province, which Germany had seized from China in 1898. In this transfer of power, Chinese youth saw the weakness of China’s republic, which had been set up in 1911. Over 4,000 students from 13 universities in Beijing took to the streets under a banner that read: “Strive for sovereignty externally, eliminate national traitors internally.”

They were angry both at the imperialist powers and their own 60-member delegation to the Paris conference, led by minister of foreign affairs Lu Zhengxiang. Liang Qichao, a member of the delegation, was so frustrated with the treaty that he sent a bulletin back to China on May 2, which was published and spurred on the Chinese students.

The student protests put pressure on the Chinese government to dismiss pro-Japanese officials such as Cao Rulin, Zhang Zongxiang, and Lu Zongyu. On June 28, the Chinese delegation in Paris refused to sign the treaty.

The actions of the Chinese students were powerful and far-reaching, with their May Fourth Movement not only protesting at the Treaty of Versailles but unfolding a broader critique of the rot in China’s elite republican culture. The students wanted more, their patriotism finding shelter in currents of left-wing thought such as anarchism but more profoundly in Marxism.

Just two years later, several of the important young male intellectuals who were shaped by this uprising, such as Li Dazhao, Chen Duxiu, and Mao Zedong, founded the Communist Party of China in 1921. Women leaders founded organizations that brought millions of women into political and intellectual life, later becoming core elements of the Communist Party.

For instance, Cheng Junying founded the Beijing Women’s Academic Federation; Xu Zonghan established the Shanghai Women’s Federation; Guo Longzhen, Liu Qingyang, Deng Yingchao, and Zhang Ruoming created the Tianjin Women’s Patriotic Comrades Association; and Ding Ling became one of the leading storytellers of China’s countryside.

Thirty years after the May Fourth Movement, many of these men and women displaced their rotten political system and established the People’s Republic of China.

Who knows where the refusals of students in the global North today will go? The students’ refusal to acknowledge the excuses of their ruling class and accept its policies are dug deeper into their soil than their tents. The police can arrest them, brutalize them, and displace their encampments, but this will only make radicalization harder to disrupt.

In the midst of the white heat of the May Fourth Movement, the poet Zhu Ziqing (1898–1948) wrote the poem “Brightness.” His words rush from 1919 to our own time, from one generation of students to another:

In the deep and stormy night,
Ahead lies a barren wilderness.
Once past the barren wilderness,
There lies the path of the people.
Ah! In the darkness, countless paths,
How should I tread correctly?
God! Quickly give me some light,
Let me run forward!
God quickly replies, Light?
I have none to find for you.
You want light?
You must create it yourself!

That is what young people are doing: They are creating this light, and, even as many of their elders try to dim it, the brightness of their souls continues to illuminate the wretchedness of our system—at its heart the ugliness of Israel’s war—and the promise of humanity.

As with all op-ed and news analytical articles published by People’s World, the views represented here are those of the author.

We hope you appreciated this article. At People’s World, we believe news and information should be free and accessible to all, but we need your help. Our journalism is free of corporate influence and paywalls because we are totally reader-supported. Only you, our readers and supporters, make this possible. If you enjoy reading People’s World and the stories we bring you, please support our work by donating or becoming a monthly sustainer today. Thank you!

Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian and journalist. He is the author of forty books, the executive director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, the chief correspondent for Globetrotter, and the chief editor of LeftWord Books (New Delhi).

Mayday! Mayday! The Ship of State Is Sinking! / by John Raby

Demonstrators calling for no funding for Israel in the conflict in Gaza are seen outside the U.S. Capitol before the House passed the foreign aid package on Saturday, April 20, 2024 | Photo: Tom Williams/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images

While the Senate and House had no trouble spitting up some $95 billion for war, they couldn’t spare $1 billion to fully fund the Women’s, Infants, and Children food program.

Reposted from Common Dreams

For its own sake, it’s good to celebrate a spring rising to its glorious peak, but the passing of wintry bleakness this year reveals our nation’s twisted priorities and deep distress. Hence the title of this piece.

In response to pleas from the Biden administration, the U.S. Senate approved a $95 billion aid package for Ukraine, Gaza, and Israel on February 13, and late this April, the House followed suit. Of that $95 billion, only $10 billion was set aside for humanitarian aid to Ukraine, Gaza, and Israel combined, at a time when at least one quarter of Gazans were starving and almost all the rest are without shelter, adequate food, clean water, medical care, or sanitation. If you’re reading this column, you are doubtless familiar with the appalling numbers of dead and wounded, especially among women and children, along with some of their personal grief, but it’s essential to add that $60 billion went for weapons to Ukraine, $8 billion for military aid to Taiwan, and another $14 billion went to more than triple the size of the standard weapons gift to Israel. As we mark this start of the growing season, we also note that Ukraine’s black earth is seeded with a half million land mines, courtesy of Russia and the U.S. You can draw your own conclusions about what that means for the eventual harvest and hunger worldwide.

In late March, while the U.S. reluctantly got out of the way of a United Nations Security Council resolution calling for a temporary cease-fire in Gaza, President Joe Biden quietly authorized another package of 2,000-pound bombs for Bibi and accelerated work on a new generation of nuclear weapons. He couldn’t even be honest enough to do it out in the open. Piling further injury upon injury, he later authorized another $18 billion in weapons to Israel, above and beyond the $14 billion he had previously approved—just as Israeli air strikes hit the Iranian embassy in Damascus, which is sovereign Iranian territory, and killed seven aid workers from World Central Kitchen who had been providing humanitarian aid in Gaza. Netanyahu claimed that the strike was unintentional, but a report from the ground by Haaretz, an Israeli newspaper, told of a deliberate, serial attack on three clearly marked World Central Kitchen cars in a convoy.

The profiteering, heedlessness, mendacity, hypocrisy, and casual cruelty involved are astonishing to behold.

Over and over again, Netanyahu has made it plain that he will do whatever he feels like about Gaza in particular and the Palestinians in general, and lash out wherever he likes, but that obvious point fails to penetrate in the White House or State Department. Instead, all we get from the Biden administration for Gaza and world peace are rationalizations and crocodile tears. Bombs away!

Do any of you donate to UNICEF, Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Doctors Without Borders, or Amnesty International? All five organizations have described the Israeli military campaign in Gaza as genocidal in nature, and in February, Amnesty reported that Israeli soldiers were killing civilians “with impunity.” Thus any U.S. weapons aid to the Netanyahu government makes the U.S. directly complicit in violations of international law and covenants to which the U.S. is a party. It also costs us here at home, both morally and materially.

This column originates in Maine, whose gift to the Senate’s $14 billion weapons package for Israel is $43,000,000. Here’s what that $43 million could have bought instead:

  • 5,104 public housing units for the homeless or insecurely housed;
  • Free or low cost healthcare for 14,941 children;
  • Enough funding to hire 467 elementary school teachers;
  • Solar electricity for 122,264 households; and
  • The cancellation of loan debt for 1,133 students.

Maine’s gift to Biden’s additional $18 billion is $55 million, which means we can now more than double the cost to Maine in unmet human needs as listed above.

In case the implications for state and local government and local small businesses aren’t plain enough, remember that war and preparation for war are the strongest engines worsening climate change. The last 10 months have seen record-breaking global temperatures, which means the prospects for the rest of this year are grim. Our state and local governments are already paying dearly for the resulting damage. Meanwhile, the majority of Maine’s delegation to Congress eagerly promotes militarism as a boost to the state’s prosperity and well-being. Respect for the environment and anything remotely resembling international law and equity—much less common sense and common decency—are barely an afterthought, except in official propaganda.

While the Senate and House had no trouble spitting up some $95 billion for war, they couldn’t spare $1 billion to fully fund the Women’s, Infants, and Children food program. That adds 2 million to the number of people in our country without enough to eat.

As if all that weren’t reckless enough, the Biden administration has proposed a $700 million boost in the appropriation for the National Nuclear Security Administration, that branch of the Energy Department which develops, modernizes, and produces nuclear weapons. The proposal assumes continued operation of the missile triad, with production facilities working until at least 2080. What lies ahead is an indefinitely continued nuclear arms race, complete with ongoing violations of our obligations under Article 6 of the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The profiteering, heedlessness, mendacity, hypocrisy, and casual cruelty involved are astonishing to behold.

By way of underscoring the point, here’s a poem from Thomas Merton which came out in 1968:

Love of the Sultan

A slave
cuts off his own head
after a long speech
declaring how much
he loves the sultan
A quaint old Asian custom
Love of the sultan!

It looks like the ship of state is sinking.

Mayday! Mayday!

John Raby is a retired history teacher and conscientious objector who is currently co-chair of Peace Action Maine. From 2014 to 2021, when he lived in New Hampshire, he was active with New Hampshire Peace Action and wrote the clean energy policy for New London, New Hampshire. He centers his activism around war and peace, environmental, and social justice issues.

Capitalism is the single greatest source of violence / by Jason Hickel

Tank between stacks of coins as a symbol of high armament expenditure | Image source: Pearls & Irritations

Reposted from MR Online

What the present moment reveals, once again, is that Western aggression during the “Cold War” was never about destroying socialism, as such. It was about destroying movements and governments in the periphery that sought economic sovereignty. Why? Because economic sovereignty in the periphery threatens capital accumulation in the core.

This remains the primary objective of Western aggression today. And it is the single greatest source of violence, war and instability in the world system.

The reason Western powers went after socialist movements across the global South during the “Cold War” (Cuba, China, the incineration of Vietnam and North Korea, etc) was because they knew socialism would enable the South to regain control over their own productive capacities—their labour and resources and factories—and organise them around local needs and national development.

When this happens—when people in the global South start producing and consuming for themselves—it means that those resources are no longer cheaply available to service consumption and accumulation in the core, thus disrupting the imperial arrangement on which Western capitalism has always relied (cheap labour, cheap resources, control over productive capacities, markets on tap). Remember, roughly 50% of all material consumption in the core is net-appropriated from the global South. This is what they are trying to defend.

But it wasn’t only socialist governments that pursued economic sovereignty. After political decolonisation, a wide range of movements and states across the South also sought economic liberation and sovereign industrial development. And Western powers attacked them with equal brutality (Indonesia, Brazil, Guatemala, the DRC…).

This is the key reason that Western powers supported the apartheid regime in South Africa, and it is why they support the Israeli regime today… as Western settler-colonial outposts that can be used to attack and destabilise regional movements seeking socialism or any form of real economic sovereignty, whether in Angola or Mozambique or Zimbabwe or any of the Arab nationalist or socialist movements in North Africa and the Middle East.

Iran has always been central to this story. Western states orchestrated a coup against the extremely popular prime minister Mohammad Mosaddegh in 1953. He was a left-leaning nationalist, not a socialist. But he wanted Iran to have control over its own resources (notably, oil), and for the U.S. and Britain this was unacceptable. Mossadegh was replaced by a brutal Western-backed dictatorship. The revolution that finally overthrew the dictatorship in 1979—and constituted the current government—wasn’t even left-leaning, much less socialist. But they want national economic self-determination and that is sin enough. They are a target for the exact same reasons that Iraq and Libya were targets.

The same goes for China. China’s path toward sovereign industrialisation—whether socialist or not—means that it is no longer an easy source of cheap labour for Western capital. And as the supply price increases so too does the sabre-rattling from Western states and media.

So this is the situation we are in. The Western ruling classes are backing obscene violence and plausible genocide in Gaza, against overwhelming international condemnation, because they must shore up their regional outpost at virtually any cost.

The vast majority of the world supports Palestinian liberation, but Palestinian liberation would constrain Israeli power and open the way to regional liberation movements, and this is strongly antithetical to the interests of Western capital. And now they are provoking war with Iran, risking regional conflagration, while at the same time encircling China with military bases, ramping up sanctions on Cuba, trying to contain progressive governments in Latin America, threatening invasion of the Sahel states…

It is intolerable and it cannot continue. The violence they perpetrate, the instability, the constant wars against a long historical procession of peoples and movements in the global South who yearn for freedom and self-determination… the whole world is dragged into this horrifying nightmare. They are willing to inflict enormous suffering and misery on hundreds of millions of people in order to preserve existing dynamics of capital accumulation.

We will not have peace until this arrangement is overcome and post-capitalist transformations are achieved.

Originally published: Pearls and Irritations

Dr. Jason Hickel is an anthropologist, author, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts. He has taught at the London School of Economics, the University of Virginia, and Goldsmiths, University of London, where he convenes the MA in Anthropology and Cultural Politics. He serves on the Labour Party task force on international development, works as Policy Director for /The Rules collective, sits on the Executive Board of Academics Stand Against Poverty (ASAP) and recently joined the International Editorial Advisory Board of Third World Quarterly.

China urges developed countries to fulfill climate finance commitments at G20 meetings / by Feng Fan

A wind power project is seen along the mountains in Ji’an, East China’s Jiangxi Province, on July 6, 2023. By the end of May, the installed capacity of wind power in China had risen 12.7 percent year-on-year to approximately 380 million kilowatts, official data showed. Photo: cnsphoto

Reposted from Global Times

China has urged developed countries to expedite the implementation of their climate finance commitments, helping developing countries in climate actions with financial and technological assistance. The stance was made during G20 meetings, held on Wednesday and Thursday, aimed at enhancing technical and capacity-building support for developing countries.

During the G20 Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors Meeting under the 2024 G20 Brazilian presidency in Washington DC, China’s Finance Minister Lan Fo’an called for all parties to adhere to the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities in climate actions, asking developed countries to implement their climate finance commitments, according to the website of China’s Ministry of Finance.

Lan emphasized China’s commitment to refining policies and standards that support green development, including fiscal, financial, investment and pricing systems. 

“These initiatives are designed to accelerate the transition toward a low-carbon economy by fostering investment in green technologies and have achieved significant progress,” said Lan.

Although developed countries have made commitments regarding green transformation and climate finance, the actual funds mobilized fall short of the needs of developing countries, slowing down global green transition efforts, Wang Peng, an associate research fellow at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences, told the Global Times on Sunday.

The UN Environment Programme’s 2023 Adaptation Gap Report, released in November 2023, revealed a significant shortfall in adaptation finance needs of developing countries, estimated at between $215 billion to $387 billion annually. In contrast, only $21 billion in public multilateral and bilateral adaptation finance flowed to developing countries in 2021, a 15 percent decrease from the previous year, resulting in a funding gap ranging from $194 billion to $366 billion.

“Developed countries often cite intellectual property protection as a reason to restrict the transfer of green technologies to developing nations. This practice not only hampers the development and application of global green technologies but also affects cooperative efforts to tackle climate change,” Wang noted.

In contrast, China actively participates in international exchanges and cooperation on green technologies, promoting the international exchanges and transfer of these technologies through initiatives, such as the China-proposed Belt and Road Initiative. 

China encourages innovation and the protection of intellectual property rights while also promoting the dissemination of technology to achieve common global green development goals, Wang stressed.

On Friday, at the 109th meeting of the World Bank’s Development Committee, Lan highlighted the need for the World Bank to implement counter-cyclical adjustment measures in expanding project investments to stimulate effective demand. He called for the promotion of trade and investment liberalization and the maintenance of open and stable global supply chains to aid the global economic recovery.

Lan noted that China is driving high-quality development, advancing the green transformation and new productive forces. The country is confident in its capability to achieve the projected GDP growth rate of 5 percent for 2024, underpinned by strong economic resilience, potential and vitality.

Furthermore, Pan Gongsheng, governor of the People’s Bank of China (PBC), the country’s central bank, stressed the benefits of a more open and inclusive multilateral trade system for stabilizing global cross-border capital flows during his address at the G20 meeting, according to the PBC’s official website. 

Pan also noted significant progress in advancing green finance, pledging continued collaboration on key initiatives.

China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology reported a robust increase in the country’s green supply capacity, with significant improvements in the provision of green equipment and products. In the first quarter of 2024, the production of new-energy vehicles (NEVs) in China reached 2.115 million units, up 28.2 percent year-on-year, with sales reaching 2.09 million units, up 31.8 percent. Sales of NEVs accounted for 31.1 percent of China’s car market.

Global Times was established in 1993, its English version was launched in 2009.

America’s latest move to block China’s economic rise / by Percy Allan

Image via Pearls and Irritations

Reposted from Pearls and Irritations

US lawmakers have introduced a bill that would bar US mutual funds from investing in indexes that track Chinese stocks (Bloomberg). According to Bloomberg “The legislation targets mutual funds that invest in indexes tracking primarily Chinese stocks, rather than those investing in indexes that only include some Chinese companies, according to Sherman’s office. However, the lawmakers left it to the Securities and Exchange Commission to write rules that’d ultimately determine which products are impacted.”

In both Emerging Market and Asian (ex-Japan) share funds (e.g. VanEck MSCI Multifactor Emerging Markets Equity ETF and Fidelity’s MSCI All Country Asia ex-Japan Fund) Chinese stocks are the biggest component (between 25% and 35%). That’s more than just “some Chinese companies”.

At present Chinese stocks are depressed so several analysts see them as good value on fundamentals such as share price to earnings and return on equity ratios. See Fig.1 below. To omit Chinese shares from a share fund portfolio would be to exclude the companies of the world’s second largest economy after the USA. It would also make global share indices more US share oriented at a time when the US share market looks extremely overvalued by historic standards. See charts below. See Fig.2 chart below.

Fig 1. China’s Stock Market Price/Earnings Ratio

Image: Supplied

Fig. 2 America’s Stock Market Price/Earnings Ratio

Image: Supplied \Source: https://worldperatio.com/area/united-states/ (Note: When a share market’s P/E ratio is high it normally suggests it is overvalued whereas when it is low it generally indicates it is undervalued)

Stopping US mutual funds from having a major exposure to Chinese stocks would have a spillover effect globally including Australia because a lot of locally registered Asian stock funds are simply offshoots of US based funds or are based on Asian asset allocation indices devised by MSCI, FTSE, S&P, Down Jones, and Morningstar. Also, global share funds allocate a portion of their assets to Chinese listed companies based on such indices.

The US has clearly declared economic war against China by wanting to bar or hinder interaction with it on trade, investment, and technology. It cites security grounds, but most Chinese companies are involved in electronics, pharmaceuticals, energy, construction, finance, consumer goods, and transportation not defence industries.

Should the US Congress approve the new bill (which seems likely since Sinophobia unites both Democrats and Republicans) it could affect both institutional and private investors such as industry and retail super funds, self-managed super funds, and private investment portfolios that use indexed funds to obtain investment exposure to large and profitable Chinese companies like Tencent, Alibaba,

PetroChina, Bank of China and China Construction Bank. Since Australia’s prosperity depends on China’s economic growth not being interrupted, America’s move to stop investors buying a stake in successful Chinese multinational companies is not in our best interests.
Except for Australian owned Beta Shares Asia Technology Tigers ETF (exchange traded fund) which seems to use its own Asian share allocation index, other Asian share funds seem to base their share investment allocations on US designed and proprietary share indices except for the FTSE indices. The FTSE Group is owned by the London Stock Exchange, but since it sells its portfolio indices to US funds managers it could buckle to pressure to stop including Chinese shares in them.

Existing Australian based global share funds (ASX listed or unlisted) that invest in Chinese shares include Schroder All China Equity Opportunities Fund, iShares China Large-Cap ETF (ASX: IZZ), Van Eck’s China A50 ETF (ASX: CETF) and Magellan High Conviction (ASX: MHHT). Global share funds also allocate a portion of their share mix to Chinese companies – for example Vanguard Global Value Equity Active ETF (Managed Fund) (ASX: VVLU), Claremont Global Fund, Forager International Shares Fund, Hyperion Global Growth Companies Fund, and Munro Global Growth Fund. Should the bill pass, and the Securities and Exchange Commission deem any share fund or index with a significant exposure to Chinese companies to be illegal then the net would be cast wider than just specific China share funds.

Percy Allan AM was Chair, Evidence Based Policy Research Project (2018-2022). He is also a Visiting Professor at the Institute for Public Policy and Governance, University of Technology Sydney. (Former Secretary, NSW Treasury and Chair, NSW T-Corp 1985-1994 and Chair, NSW Premier’s Council on the Cost & Quality of Government, 1999-2007)