FORDISM IS GLOBALIZATION
Vietnam carmaker VinFast will start selling two EV models in the US next year as it challenges Tesla on its home turf

Huileng Tan
Thu, November 18, 2021

VinFast Global CEO Michael Lohscheller unveils an electric vehicle the Los Angeles Auto Show .Patrick Fallon/AFP

Vietnamese automaker VinFast is setting up US HQ in LA and is also shopping for a factory site.

VinFast is the auto manufacturing subsidiary of Vingroup, the largest conglomerate in Vietnam.

VinFast has not disclosed prices in the US, but it's selling a smaller EV in Vietnam for $30,500.

Vietnam carmaker VinFast has entered the US with its answer to Tesla, unveiling two full battery-electric SUV models at the Los Angeles Auto Show.

VinFast is the car subsidiary of VinGroup, the largest conglomerate in Vietnam helmed by the country's richest man, Pham Nhat Vuong.

It's introducing the VF e35 midsize and VF e36 large electric SUVs to the US, where it plans to start taking orders in the first half of next year and start delivery in the fourth quarter, VinFast said in a press release.

The VF e35 will have a maximum range of 310 miles per charge, and the e36 will be able to travel up to 422 miles per charge, VinFast global CEO Michael Lohscheller told the Associated Press. Teslas get between 262 and 405 miles per charge, depending on the model, according to SolarReviews.com.

VinFast has not revealed prices for the e35 and e36 vehicles, with Lohscheller told CNN it's "a little too early to talk about" the pricing for the US market, but it wants to offer "world-class product quality, reasonable prices, and then really good service."

In Vietnam, the VF e34 SUV — a smaller model — is listed on VinFast's website for 690 million dong ($30,500.) Teslas start at around $47,000 and top out at around $250,000 (for its yet-to-be-released Roadster), according to Motor Trends.

The SUVs will initially be built at a factory in Vietnam, but the carmaker is planning US production in the second half of 2014, AP reported. The company is now shopping for a site.

The carmaker is also setting up US headquarters in Los Angeles, it said in another press release. There are plans to list on the US stock market in the next few years, Lohscheller told Reuters.

The VinFast VF e35 SUV.VinFast

VinFast will sell only EVs in the US where it faces stiff competition not just from market leader Tesla, but also start-ups like Rivian and Lucid — although these new names making it into the mainstream could also help VinFast, Stephanie Brinley, IHS Markit auto industry analyst, told CNN.

"Our branding position here in the US is inclusive," said Nguyen Van Anh, CEO of VinFast US, per CNN. "We want to provide a premium product at a reasonable price."

Ford and Rivian’s Breakup: Sour Grapes, Growing Confidence or Something Else?

November 20, 2021

Rivien spokespersons confirmed on Friday.

This is actually not a big surprise.

Nonetheless, the move may leave investors wondering why joint development is not a good idea and what the split means for the actions of the two automakers.
First of all, a little background. Even before the split, Ford (ticker: F) canceled a program in 2020 that would have seen one of its vehicles built on a Rivian chassis (RIVN). And last spring, Ford relinquished its seat on Rivian’s board of directors in the run-up to Rivian’s IPO, even though it might have made sense for competitive reasons.

“As Ford scaled its own electric vehicle strategy and demand for Rivian vehicles increased, we mutually decided to focus on our own projects and deliveries,” Rivian said in a statement. “Our relationship with Ford is an important part of our journey, and Ford remains an investor and ally on our shared journey towards an electrified future. “

For Ford, the breakup comes with an irony: The company helped Rivian take off by investing in the electric vehicle startup in 2019. Rivian’s market cap, however, has since exploded to around $ 125 billion. , based on its full number of diluted shares. That eclipses Ford’s, which is around $ 77 billion.

But sour grapes on stock prices rarely result in business disruptions. And Ford still owns around 100 million shares of Rivian, which are worth around $ 13 billion.

There are two other dynamics that better explain why automakers have gone their separate ways. The first is that Ford is doing better in the EV game now than when he originally staked Rivian. Ford, which has sold around 22,000 Mustang Mach Es so far this year, plans to sell 600,000 electric vehicles a year by 2023. Ford executives also announced an $ 11.4 billion investment plan. dollars, which will give the company the assembly and battery capacity to manufacture about 1 million additional electric vehicles each year.

Ford has also had some success with its electric vehicles: its Mustang Mach E was named car and electric vehicle of the year in July. The company also plans to start selling its all-electric F-150 pickup in 2022, competing with the Rivian R1T pickup.

The other dynamic: Partnerships between automakers may not make as much sense in a battery-powered world as it does in a gasoline-powered world.

Consider the fact that partnerships between automakers for traditional automobiles were all about scale. The companies would jointly develop a platform for a vehicle, so that they could spread the development dollars over the sales of two companies.

Scale still matters in an EV world, but not in the same way.

Here’s why: Engines, transmissions, and a gas tank provide power to traditional automobiles, with engine displacement varying depending on vehicle size. But with electric vehicles, batteries and electric motors provide the power. Larger EVs typically get more batteries and another electric motor, usually mounted on an axle, than smaller EVs.

The EV platforms come with their own built-in scale, which can be operated on many types of vehicles that the automaker already sells.

Scale still matters and two companies can always jointly develop an EV platform. In fact, Ford and

Volkswagen
(VOW3. Germany) share some of the EV technology with each other. There is just less urgency in forming the kind of partnerships that were profitable in the past.

When it comes to stocks, Friday’s news doesn’t mean much to Ford or Rivian. Ford stock, which closed 0.9% lower in the regular session, slipped about 0.3% in after-hours trading on Friday. Rivian stock, meanwhile, ended up 4.2% as post-IPO volatility continued, before falling around 1.2% after-market.

Investors have yet to pick the winners and losers in the growing electric vehicle industry, but they currently appear to be giving startups the edge. However, they shouldn’t count Ford or other traditional automakers. Based on the level of spending and new products from traditional players, it seems that they are not going quietly overnight.

GM flags concern over renewable energy in Mexico, sees investment risk


FILE PHOTO: General Motors plant is seen in Silao, Mexico


Fri, November 19, 2021
By Sharay Angulo

MEXICO CITY (Reuters) - A senior executive of carmaker General Motors (GM) raised concern about the future of renewable energy usage in Mexico, saying that without a solid legal basis for it, automotive investment in Latin America's no. 2 economy would suffer.

Francisco Garza, chief executive of GM Mexico, spoke as debate rages over a Mexican government proposal to give priority to the state-run power utility in the electricity market at the expense of private investors, particularly in renewable energy.

Participating in a panel in Mexico City, Garza said it was important for Mexico to forge conditions enabling investment in renewables, to which the company was itself committed.

"Unfortunately, if the conditions aren't there, Mexico won't be a destination for investment, because the conditions won't be given that permit us to meet our objective of having zero emissions in the long term," Garza said.

"We're evaluating that if there aren't the conditions, that dollar that was going to be invested in Mexico will go to the United States, Brazil, China or Europe, and Mexico will no longer be a key destination," he added.

Garza did not make explicit reference to the government's electricity initiative, although others on the panel did.

GM, which has been one of the top investors in Mexico since the start of the North American Free Trade Agreement in 1994, earlier this year said it planned to invest $1 billion https://www.reuters.com/business/autos-transportation/general-motors-make-1-bln-electric-auto-investment-mexico-2021-04-29 to build electric vehicles in the northern state of Coahuila.

After Garza spoke, GM Mexico spokesperson Teresa Cid told Reuters that GM was "at no time threatening" not to make the investments it had pledged for Mexico.

"GM must meet its (zero emissions) vision and we must follow that path," she said. "So that's where the risk would be."

(Reporting by Sharay Angulo; Editing by Sandra Maler)

Hungary opposition leader vows to restore western alliances




Hungary Opposition LeaderPeter Marki-Zay, the joint opposition candidate who will challenge Hungarian prime minister Viktor Orban in next spring's elections, speaks during an interview with the Associated Press in Hodmezovasarhely, Hungary, Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021. An independent conservative candidate for prime minister in Hungary is vowing to restore western alliances he says have frayed under the leadership of right-wing leader Viktor Orban. In an interview with the Associated Press, Marki-Zay said he will reverse the closening ties Orban has pursued with autocracies in Russia and China, and mend conflicts between Hungary and the European Union. 

(AP Photo/Laszlo Balogh)More


JUSTIN SPIKE
Fri, November 19, 2021

HODMEZOVASARHELY, Hungary (AP) — Hungary's opposition leader wants to restore his country's frayed ties with the West — and also has a message for American fans of right-wing Prime Minister Viktor Orban.

"Let me state very strongly for all Americans that to be a part of Putin’s fan club doesn’t make you a conservative,” said Peter Marki-Zay, a self-described conservative Christian running against Orban in next year's elections, in an interview with The Associated Press.

"Orban is betraying Europe, Orban is betraying NATO, Orban is betraying the United States,” he said.

Marki-Zay, the 49-year-old mayor of the small city of Hodmezovasarhely, is leading a diverse coalition of six opposition parties aiming to defeat Hungary's hard-line leader and his ruling Fidesz party in parliamentary elections scheduled for April.

If elected, Marki-Zay says, he will reverse the closer ties Orban has pursued with autocracies in Russia and China, and improve his country's relations with the European Union and other Western allies.

“I still stand for Western values, and we cannot accept a corrupt thug ... who betrays Western values and who is now a servant of Communist China and Russia,” he said.

Governing Hungary with a two-thirds majority in parliament since 2010, the right-wing populist Orban and his anti-immigration party have dominated the fractured opposition in all subsequent elections, and cemented their power through changes to election laws, stacking institutions with loyalists and dominating large portions of Hungary's media.

While Orban's critics in Europe have warned of an alarming erosion of democracy in Hungary as its relations with EU have frayed, some of his policies — like his staunch rejection of refugees and generous financial support to families with children — have attracted glowing praise from right-wing American commentators.

Fox News host Tucker Carlson broadcast from Budapest for a week this summer, and praised Orban's migration policy and rejection of the EU's liberal mainstream. Rod Dreher, senior editor of U.S. publication The American Conservative, spent several months in Budapest this year on a fellowship financed by a right-wing think tank close to Orban's government.

But Marki-Zay, a devout Catholic with seven children and a former Fidesz voter himself, says that despite Orban's proclamations of building an illiberal “Christian democracy” in the Central European country, he considers the leader neither a Christian, nor a conservative, nor even a democrat.

“Real conservatives consider Christianity to be something very much (the) opposite” of Orban's policies, he said.

Orban's party has accused Marki-Zay of being a left-wing candidate posing as a conservative, a charge stemming from his cooperation with several left-of-center parties in the opposition coalition.

Last week, Marki-Zay travelled to Brussels where he met with some key EU figures — spurring further accusations that he aims to undermine Hungary's sovereignty in favor of adhering to EU dictates.

A fierce critic of the 27-member bloc, which Hungary joined in 2004, Orban has compared EU membership to the Soviet domination Hungary endured for 40 years, and has pursued close diplomatic and economic ties with China and Russia.

But agreements with those countries on major investment projects have both weakened Hungary's geopolitical position and come at the expense of Hungarian taxpayers, Marki-Zay says.

He cites as an example a roughly $2.3 billion Chinese-led project to modernize the railway between the capital cities of Hungary and Serbia, part of China's Belt and Road global trade initiative that is financed by the Hungarian state primarily from a loan from a Chinese state bank.

Another project — a no-bid contract awarded to Russia's state nuclear energy corporation Rosatom to expand a Hungarian nuclear power plant at an estimated cost of over $11 billion — is “against the national interests of Hungary,” he said.

Sitting in his office in Hodmezovasarhely's city hall, the candidate wears a blue ribbon on the lapel of his jacket, something he said represents an “anti-corruption fight" against the kind of governance that has plagued Hungary since its democratic transition from Communism in 1990.

Hungary has become a “country with no consequences,” he said, where corruption "has been totally centralized and it’s absolutely a part of the system. It is now organized by the government itself.”

If elected, Marki-Zay says he will immediately join the European Public Prosecutors Office, an independent EU anti-fraud and corruption body, and set up a domestic anti-corruption office in Hungary.

“Most people in Hungary recognize that there is a corruption problem," he said. "I really hope that in the last four years I have already proven here in Hodmezovasarhely that not all politicians are corrupt.”

Running as an independent outsider with no past ties to Hungary's liberal opposition parties, Marki-Zay has vowed to tackle corruption even-handedly, whether it was committed by those currently in government or by the earlier Socialist-led governments that are now in opposition. Two of the parties in his own coalition have been associated with past corruption cases.

Recent polling shows the six-party coalition in a tight race with Orban and his party, suggesting the race will be the closest since Fidesz took power 11 years ago.

Still, Marki-Zay says a media environment which favors the ruling party and an imbalance in financial resources will mean elections next year will not be free and fair.

In an effort to safeguard next year's ballot, the opposition coalition has launched a campaign to recruit 20,000 civilian vote counters to be present at every polling station in the country.

While Marki-Zay expects a highly competitive campaign, he believes that his conservative bona fides and political outsider status can mobilize both disaffected Fidesz supporters and undecided voters who are turned off by corruption.

“We have to get the truth to even the last house in the last village,” he said. “We have to give them true and credible information that they were robbed.”

Report: China is now the world's richest country



Carl Samson
Fri, November 19, 2021,

China has beat the U.S. to become the world’s richest nation, according to a new report.

Key findings: Global net worth soared from $156 million in 2000 to $514 trillion in 2020, making the world wealthier than it was at any point in history. China accounted for nearly a third of the increase, the report from management consultancy firm McKinsey & Company stated.

McKinsey analyzed the national balance sheets of 10 countries that represented 60% of the world’s income. Of these nations, China accounted for 50% of the growth in net worth, followed by the U.S. (22%) and Japan (11%).

The report found that China’s wealth rose from $7 trillion in 2000 to $120 trillion in 2020. The U.S., on the other hand, saw its wealth more than double to $90 trillion in the same period.

The big picture: While the world is wealthier today, inequality still persists. In both China and the U.S. alone, more than 67% of wealth is controlled by the richest 10% of households ― and they continue to make more.

The report found that 68% of the world’s net worth lies in real estate. The remainder can be found in infrastructure, inventories, machinery and equipment and “intangibles” such as intellectual property and patents, according to Bloomberg.

With rising costs in real estate, China could suffer a financial crisis similar to the 2008 housing bubble burst in the U.S. Shenzhen-based property developer Evergrande, for instance, is already in hot water over debts totaling $300 billion, which reportedly forced its chairman to sell his personal assets, according to CNN.

A collapse of global asset prices could wipe out as much as 33% of the world’s wealth, McKinsey noted. To avoid such a scenario, the report encouraged productive and sustainable investments that contribute to the global gross domestic product (GDP).

IMPERIALISM IS STATE CAPITALISM
Report shows China's growing clout at World Bank, global institutions


FILE PHOTO: The Chinese national flag is seen in Beijing, China

Andrea Shalal
Thu, November 18, 2021

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - With over $66 billion in total capital, China has passed Japan to become the second largest contributor to the system of development banks that provide some $200 billion in subsidized loans to poor countries each year, a new report said Thursday.

While China still receives loans and other aid from multilateral institutions like the World Bank and U.N. agencies, it has also emerged as one of the most powerful donors, according to the Center for Global Development.

It said that China, the world's second largest economy after the United States, is the fifth largest overall donor across the range of United Nations agencies focused on development, including the U.N. Development Program, World Food Program, and World Health Organization.

Beijing's role as a major donor, shareholder, aid recipient, and commercial partner of international institutions gives it "uniquely influential position," the think tank said, citing a detailed look at China's role at 76 global institutions.

"There’s been a lot of attention to China’s Belt and Road lending to developing countries, but a lot less on its growing footprint at global institutions like the World Bank," said Scott Morris, a senior fellow at the center.

China's expanding role at these institutions - and its role as the world's largest creditor - has raised concerns in the United States and elsewhere in recent years, but Morris cautioned against viewing its role at the banks as a threat.

"This isn't necessarily a cause for alarm," Morris said. "It’s better for everyone to have China working inside the system instead of outside of it."

Some of the increase has been driven by automatic contributions based on the size of China's growing economy. But Beijing has also scaled up its voluntary donations, including at the World Bank’s low-income lending arm, the International Development Association, where it is now the 6th largest donor.

(Reporting by Andrea Shalal; Editing by Mark Heinrich)

Bukharin on State Capitalism and Imperialism | Leftcom

China’s State Capitalist Imperialism

By

Per-Åke Westerlund

 -

May 9, 2021

In the first of a two-part article Per-Åke Westerlund looks at the rise of Chinese imperialism and what it means for building international workers’ solidarity against international capitalism.

Per-Åke Westerlund, ISA International Executive

China becoming the workshop of the world was the main driver of capitalist globalisation of the last decades. Multinational companies, particularly from the US, earned super profits and couldn’t care less about the dictatorship and conditions for workers in China. This was a win-win process for the ruling classes in both states — economic growth and low inflation assisted in hiding and softening the building up of contradictions.

This process could not go on forever and started to reverse. With similarities to German imperialism versus the British Empire up to WW1, US imperialism today is challenged by Beijing across all fields — economy, technology, finance, military and international relations. Imperialism “give[s] rise to a number of very acute, intense antagonisms, frictions and conflicts”, Lenin explained, and in his time this eventually led to war. Today, we have a Cold War.

Long-term imperialist confrontation

The record of US imperialism is crystal clear. Washington has never hesitated to use war and force to sustain its power. It is the mightiest military power the world has ever seen. The challenger, Chinese imperialism, is a brutal dictatorship against working people and any opposition. These two forces are now positioned for a long-term global imperialist confrontation. The Cold War will vary in intensity, contain new twists and alliances, but will not go away. This happens parallel with an escalating armaments race, record increases in military expenditure and arms exports.

Socialists and the working class must have an independent, revolutionary socialist position and organize struggle against all imperialist forces. No imperialist power, let alone military forces, will ever “liberate” the oppressed. US capitalist politicians that now suddenly condemn the dictatorship in China have turned a blind eye to it for decades — and still do the same to dictatorial regimes such as in Saudi Arabia. Neither can the fight against US imperialism in any way justify support for the regime in Beijing. However, there are certain “left” groups that supported US bombings in Libya in 2011 and others that label criticism of the Chinese dictatorship as supporting US imperialism.

There is no doubt who benefits from the regime in China today. It is an extremely unequal society with 878 dollar billionaires, an increase of 257 in 2020 and far more than the 649 billionaires in the US. In the same process, education, healthcare and housing are largely privatized and workers have no rights in the workplaces. Land grabbing by the authorities and environmental scandals and problems are frequent.

Real socialists are defined by supporting workers’ struggles everywhere. Workers in China fighting for their rights meet severe repression from the regime, including abductions, torture and prison. The state machine of oppression is enormous — millions are employed in the police, military, intelligence agencies and the enormous surveillance apparatus. This system works in cooperation with private and state Chinese companies — but also US and Western companies in the country. Capitalists and governments internationally fear revolutionary movements in whatever country — they sometimes hypocritically give support in order to derail these struggles and hug them to death.

International Socialist Alternative stands for solidarity and support to workers’ struggle in China, Hong Kong and internationally. Any struggle on working conditions, jobs, wages, the environment, education and other important fields immediately becomes a struggle against the CCP (Chinese Communist Party) dictatorship in Beijing. Eventually brutal state repression will be used also against local grievances or protests. Therefore, democratic demands — the right to protest, to organize trade unions, freedom of the internet and media — are central in any struggle in China and Hong Kong, and intimately linked to the fight for improved living conditions and environment. Democratic demands become revolutionary since they are a threat to the regime and can only be achieved by revolutionary mass struggle of the working class.

Socialists must be prepared for the confrontation between US imperialism and Chinese imperialism. Real working class internationalism means solidarity and struggle against the global capitalist and imperialist system, for workers and the oppressed to take power.

What is imperialism?

The classic Marxist analysis is Lenin’s Imperialism, the Highest stage of Capitalism, written in 1916. In order to understand and explain the new phase, he analyses global capitalism, not only one or two countries, and the processes over a longer period. This is what Marxists today call perspectives. Imperialism develops with concentration of capital. Growing giant companies become monopolies, “a general and fundamental law of the present stage of development of capitalism”. Linking up with and controlled by banks, this means finance capital comes to power. It is capitalism in decay and parasitic: “the bulk of the profits go to the ‘geniuses’ of financial manipulation”. There is no longer any “border” between speculative and productive capital.

All the features of imperialism described by Lenin have existed for decades in China. The economy is producing for a mass market, in China and globally, but appropriation of profits is private, to both foreign and Chinese capitalists. A few monopolies dominate in all spheres of the economy — finance, energy, internet etc., and in China with state-capitalist characteristics. Lenin in Imperialism stressed how the major companies in Germany and elsewhere had a “personal link-up” to banks and to the government. This was also the case with confiscation and speculation in land, an issue that has led to many protests in China.

Private companies and powerful capitalists in China are working hand-in-hand with the CCP state dictatorship. Top billionaires are members of the CCP and government ministers, generals and party leaders are richer than any other governments globally. Lenin’s concept of “Plutocracy and Bureaucracy” — the super-rich and the state — has reached perfection in China in the shape of state capitalism. However, as in all capitalist societies, this in no way creates stability, but piles up contradictions and prepares new crises.

No super-imperialism

Lenin argued strongly against the theory of Karl Kautsky, that imperialism would merge into one union, ”ultra-imperialism”. That theory implied that wars and conflicts would cease, while financial exploitation would continue. This was an argument contrary to Marxism, which defines the bourgeoisie as national capitalist classes, unable to overcome their national interests. Further, the theory of super-imperialism fostered illusions in a peaceful development of imperialism. It was Lassalle’s theory of the bourgeoisie as “one gray mass”, instead of understanding its inner conflicts and splits, set on a global stage.

Lenin argued “an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony”. Modern imperialism meant “the competition between several imperialisms”. US imperialism was the leader of the capitalist bloc following WW2, in a Cold War against primarily the Soviet Union, but also China. The latter two were non-capitalist bureaucratically planned economies ruled dictatorially by “communist” parties that were not actual parties, but the state apparatus. When Stalinism collapsed in the Soviet Union and capitalism was re-established in China, US imperialism seemed to remain as the only superpower.

However, the relationship of forces between the powers will change over time, mainly based on economic strength. The growth of China’s economy relative to the US, and the development of Asia as the main arena for economic growth, meant a gradual shift and challenge. In a sense, it became like the challenge from German capitalism against the British from the 1870s onwards. In key production fields such as steel, Germany went from half the British production level to produce twice as much. Based on the experience of WW1, Lenin asked, “what other solution of the contradictions can be found under capitalism than that of force?” Today, despite both the US and China being capitalist, there is a Cold War. What is holding back a hot war is the existence of nuclear weapons that could destroy the entire globe. As important is the opposition to war from a big majority of the population.

Military incidents and proxy wars such as in Syria are possible, but a full-scale war between the US and China is not on the table for now. The Cold War will continue, and contrary to many predictions, the ruling classes on both sides are likely to lose ground as a result. Initial support for nationalism will be countered by the cost of the conflict and grave internal political, economic, environmental and social crises in both countries and blocs.

Divide the world

In Lenin’s definition of imperialism the development of monopolies and the role of finance capital is linked to globalization: export of capital, the development of multinational and transnational companies and “the territorial division of the whole world among the biggest capitalist powers”. In a few decades in the end of the 1800s, the main imperialist powers divided the world between them. Lenin describes “two or three powerful world plunderers armed to the teeth”. This was a result of an “enormous ‘surplus of capital’… in the advanced countries”. It was forced upon the capitalists as a result of concentration of capital and monopoly. This led to a scramble for resources and markets, for profits and power, in less developed countries where ”the price of land is relatively low, wages are low, raw materials are cheap”. It was also a “struggle for spheres of influence”.

In the 1800s, the British Empire was the top producer for the global market. Its technological superiority in producing textiles, machinery, etc., meant ruin for local small-scale production in other countries, for example in Latin America. Although Lenin described the process as a final partitioning of the globe, he also stressed “repartitions are possible and inevitable”. This of course has been proved again and again since then, not least in the two imperialist world wars. The 1900s also saw US imperialism becoming the dominant imperialist power, pushing other imperialist powers into the back seat.

For a relatively long period, US imperialism accepted China’s economic growth, as Beijing seemed prepared to continue as a kind of subcontractor. However, since Xi Jinping came to power, with the Chinese economy on course to become the biggest in the world, several processes have altered the balance between the two powers. The Chinese state capitalist model looked to be less damaged by the global crisis of 2008–09 and the regime took some bold steps. “Made in China 2025”, released in 2015, targeted Chinese leadership in fields of technology and to become less dependent on the West and the US.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is a giant network of agreements between China and governments in more than 100 countries on every continent. Its launch signified that China was following the general law of capital outgrowing national boundaries. BRI’s roads, railways, harbors, airports, pipelines etc will connect the participating states to the Chinese economy via trade, loans and debts. BRI gives China access to infrastructure, energy sources and land. BRI will increase the use of Chinese technology in participating countries. China’s annual foreign direct investment quadrupled from 2009 to 2016, reaching close to 200 billion dollars. In total, FDI outflow from China 2005–2020 was almost 2.1 trillion dollars. A third of this was investments in energy resources.
Railways

In Imperialism, Lenin wrote:

“The building of railways seems to be a simple, natural, democratic, cultural and civilizing enterprise; that is what it is in the opinion of the bourgeois professors who are paid to depict capitalist slavery in bright colors, and in the opinion of petty-bourgeois philistines. But as a matter of fact the capitalist threads, which in thousands of different intercrossings bind these enterprises with private property in the means of production in general, have converted this railway construction into an instrument for oppressing a thousand million people (in the colonies and semi colonies), that is, more than half the population of the globe that inhabits the dependent countries, as well as the wage-slaves of capital in the ‘civilized’ countries.

“Two hundred thousand kilometers of new railways in the colonies and in the other countries of Asia and America represent a capital of more than 40,000 million marks newly invested on particularly advantageous terms, with special guarantees of a good return and with profitable orders for steel works, etc., etc.”

34 countries have signed contracts with Chinese companies for construction of new railways in the last ten years. They include China-Laos, Addis Ababa-Djibouti, Mombasa-Nairobi, Lagos-Ibadan, and many other spectacular railways. They are built by the main Chinese railway construction companies, financed by loans from China and also using a high number of Chinese workers and technicians. In total, railway projects worth 61.6 billion dollars were signed between governments and Chinese companies in 2013–2019. Infrastructure projects are not charities, but built to more efficiently transport both imports and exports, giving access to oil, mineral and other natural resources, and building a political link between the CCP regime in China and governments around the world.

Debts

Already in 1916, Lenin also pointed out that finance capital took a strong grip on countries in need. “Numerous foreign countries, from Spain to the Balkan states, from Russia to Argentina, Brazil and China, are openly or secretly coming into the big money market with demands, sometimes very persistent, for loans.” In addition, he showed how loans were linked to export demands: “The most usual thing is to stipulate that part of the loan granted shall be spent on purchases in the creditor country, particularly on orders for war materials, or for ships, etc.”

In the 2000’s, China became the main creditor and exporter of capital. A study by the economists Sebastian Horn, Carmen M. Reinhart, and Christoph Trebesch (Harvard Business Review, February 2020) found that “the Chinese state and its subsidiaries have lent about $1.5 trillion in direct loans and trade credits to more than 150 countries around the globe. This has turned China into the world’s largest official creditor — surpassing traditional, official lenders such as the World Bank, the IMF, or all OECD creditor governments combined.”

Most of the loans are connected to infrastructure and natural resources investments by the Chinese state and Chinese companies. The result is extreme dependence on China by the debtor countries. Most of the loans are based on commercial conditions; only less than five percent are interest free.

“For the 50 main developing country recipients, we estimate that the average stock of debt owed to China has increased from less than 1% of debtor country GDP in 2005 to more than 15% in 2017. A dozen of these countries owe debt of at least 20% of their nominal GDP to China (Djibouti, Tonga, Maldives, the Republic of the Congo, Kyrgyzstan, Cambodia, Niger, Laos, Zambia, Samoa, Vanuatu, and Mongolia).” (Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch).

The investigation of lending by China, up to 2017, underlines its major role in global finance capital. ”When adding portfolio debts (including the $1 trillion of U.S. Treasury debt purchased by China’s central bank) and trade credits (to buy goods and services), the Chinese government’s aggregate claims to the rest of the world exceed $5 trillion in total. In other words, countries worldwide owed more than 6% of world GDP in debt to China as of 2017.” (Horn, Reinhart and Trebesch).

In November 2020, Zambia became the first country during the pandemic to default on its debt payments. Of its 11.2 billion dollar debt, 3 billion is to China, but in reality what is owed to China is much more. The Chinese regime has been particularly interested in the country that is Africa’s second largest copper producer. During the pandemic, Beijing has also promised loans to cover purchase of Chinese vaccines, for example 500 million dollars to Sri Lanka.

The purpose of Chinese loans and connections to governments and presidents is not to improve the lives of the poor masses in these countries. On the contrary, payments on debts take an increasing share of public expenditure, working conditions worsen with increased exploitation and poverty increases as it does now in Zambia. Many regimes in the Belt and Road Initiative are authoritarian, constantly attacking democratic rights. The Chinese regime and system is an integral part of the global capitalist system.

U.S. regulator to raise oversight at Georgia Vogtle nuclear power reactor

Thu, November 18, 2021

Nov 18 (Reuters) - The U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) on Thursday said it will increase oversight at one of the Southern Co operated Vogtle nuclear power plants under construction in Waynesboro, Georgia.

The decision to increase oversight comes after finalizing two inspection findings involving the safety-related electrical raceway system at Unit 3, the NRC said.

The NRC said it had launched a special inspection in June 2021 and found two violations of federal regulations at the site.


"NRC inspectors found that Southern Nuclear did not properly implement its corrective action program, resulting in construction quality issues, extensive rework, and a report to the NRC for a significant quality assurance breakdown."

"They also found that the company did not follow design specifications while installing safety-related cables for reactor coolant pumps and equipment designed to shut down the reactor safely."

The NRC said these findings fall under a low-to-moderate safety significance and will schedule a supplemental inspection to verify Southern Nuclear understands the root cause and has taken appropriate corrective actions.

(Reporting by Brijesh Patel in Bengaluru Editing by Marguerita Choy)

Moderna offers NIH co-ownership of COVID vaccine patent



Alexander Tin
Mon, November 15, 2021

The National Institutes of Health said Monday it has engaged Moderna in "good faith discussions" to resolve a monthslong dispute over the company's patent application that advocates say could impact global production of the shots.

Moderna is offering to share ownership of its COVID-19 vaccine patent with the U.S. government to resolve the dispute, the vaccine maker said, and would allow the Biden administration to "license the patents as they see fit."

An NIH spokesperson declined Monday to comment directly on Moderna's offer, citing "ongoing discussions."

The company claims it had no choice under the "strict rules" of American patent law to list only its own scientists "as the inventors on these claims."

But the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases disagrees.

A spokesperson for the government research arm - housed within the NIH - said that "its own thorough review" had determined that scientists Kizzmekia Corbett, Barney Graham, and John Mascola also deserved to be named as inventors.

"Moderna has made a serious mistake here in not providing the kind of co-inventorship credit to people who played a major role in the development of the vaccine that they are now making a fair amount of money off of," NIH Director Dr. Francis Collins told Reuters last week.

"Omitting NIH inventors from the principal patent application deprives NIH of a co-ownership interest in that application and the patent that will eventually issue from it," said an NIAID spokesperson.

Public Citizen, a government watchdog group, penned a letter this month to the NIH urging the agency "to publicly reclaim the foundational role" it played in developing the shots, criticizing a July patent filing by Moderna claiming it had "reached the good-faith determination" that the NIH's scientists "did not co-invent the mRNAs" in their application.

The New York Times first reported on Public Citizen's discovery.

"The U.S. government has done so much for Moderna and yet asked for so little in return, consistently. There is an urgent need for the U.S. government to reassert more control over how this vaccine is priced and produced," said Zain Rizvi, Public Citizen's research director.

The Government Accountability Office recently estimated that the NIH has earned $2 billion in royalties since 1991 over licensing patents for FDA-approved drugs.

Moderna announced this month it had earned $10.7 billion from COVID-19 vaccine sales in 2021 through September. Under the Trump administration early in the pandemic, Operation Warp Speed, the accelerated government effort to develop a COVID-19 vaccine, pledged to cover up to $483 million of costs to accelerate development and manufacturing of the vaccine.

Beyond the money the federal government could earn from the patent, Rizvi said the Biden administration could leverage a license with co-inventorship to allow developing countries to ramp up production of the shots and prepare for future pandemics without strings attached.

"Moderna says it offered to allow that NIH to be a co-owner on some of the patent applications. But it did not say what it demanded from the NIH, if anything, in return. Was this a unilateral offer?" said Rizvi.

Who invented Moderna's vaccine?

Early in 2020, the NIAID's Vaccine Research Center helmed by Graham was already working on vaccines for other diseases with Moderna when the agency says its scientists pivoted to ramping up research into a new virus that had been raising alarm overseas.

Having long worked with scientists in a lab led by Jason McLellan at the University of Texas at Austin on research into similar kinds of viruses, the university says the NIH's scientists were able to accelerate their development of genetic sequences that could be delivered in mRNA vaccines, which train the body to spot and fend off a signature spike protein on SARS-CoV-2.

"The work of Dr. Barney Graham and Kizzmekia Corbett and others stabilized the pre-fusion spike protein which is used in virtually all, with few exceptions, of the vaccines that are now successful," NIAID Director Dr. Anthony Fauci told a House of Representatives hearing in April.

Corbett, Graham, and McLellan are among the scientists listed on a patent first filed on February 11, 2020 for a COVID-19 vaccine stemming from that work. An NIAID spokesperson said Moderna uses its "stabilized spike protein technology in its vaccine."

Both Moderna and NIH scientists are also listed together on another patent filing from May of 2020, regarding "methods of use" for mRNA vaccines to address COVID. The NIAID spokesperson described it as a "minor patent application."

"Virtually everything that comes out of the government's research labs is a non-exclusive licensing agreement, so that it doesn't get blocked by any particular company," Graham told The Financial Times in April, saying the government could "use the leverage of the public funding to solve public health issues."

Early press releases by Moderna acknowledged the work with Graham's team, describing their mRNA-1273 vaccine as using a spike protein "designed by Moderna in collaboration with NIAID."

But Moderna has also sought to separate the development of its vaccine from the NIH's research, saying that the mRNA sequence in the company's vaccine "was selected exclusively by Moderna scientists using Moderna's technology, and without input of NIAID scientists."

The company says the NIH's scientists were "not even aware of the mRNA sequence" used in its vaccines until after Moderna had filed its patent request, which dates to as early as late January.

The February filing by the NIH's scientists was further evidence that "the same thing cannot be claimed to be invented twice by the same people working with two different collaborators," Moderna said.

"The Moderna team worked in Boston while the NIH team worked outside of D.C. and we then compared notes," Moderna's CEO Stéphane Bancel told the "I Am Bio" podcast last year, saying it was "encouraging" that the two groups of scientists "independently came to exactly the same antigen" for the vaccine.

Graham and McLellan both declined to comment for this article.

In an interview published Wednesday by The Grio, Corbett said she had "decided that it is not my place to really say anything."

"Patent disputes and all of those things, I like to say, I leave it to the institutions and the attorneys to really figure that out. I sleep at night knowing that lives have been saved and knowing that the science that I put blood, sweat, and tons of tears into is saving those lives," added Corbett.

Orbite’s plans for space training complex get a boost from famed French designer Philippe Starck

Alan Boyle
Wed, November 17, 2021

Orbite customers and instructors take a zero-G airplane flight during spaceflight training. (Orbite Photo)

The French designer who created the look for Virgin Galactic, Spaceport America and Axiom Space’s orbital habitat has taken on yet another space-centric project: the space training complex planned by a Seattle-based venture called Orbite.

Orbite says Philippe Starck will design its Astronaut Training and Spaceflight Gateway Complex, which is expected to consist of multiple buildings and go into operation at a U.S. location in late 2023 or 2024.

For now, that’s about all that can be said about the project. Further details, including the site selected for the complex and the specifics of Starck’s vision for the facility, will be announced in the months ahead.

“We will have to wait a little more during the winter,” Orbite co-founder Nicolas Gaume told GeekWire. “We thought it was great to announce that such an amazing designer, who shares so much of our vision for astronaut orientation, preparation and training, could be disclosed.”

The 72-year-old Starck has designed projects ranging from hotels and yachts (including a yacht for the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs) to bathroom accessories. But he’s best-known for his space-related projects, including the Virgin Galactic logo that incorporates a close-up of billionaire founder Richard Branson’s iris.

Embed from Getty Images

“Space is the future,” Starck said today in a news release. “With the Astronaut Training and Spaceflight Gateway Complex, I am honored to be able to give individuals rare educational opportunities to step into astronauts’ shoes and prepare for thrilling orbits in space.”

Starck said the Orbite project is “inspiring and groundbreaking.”

“I am delighted to be collaborating with Orbite on this one-of-a-kind project that is advancing the opportunities for civilization to encounter the wonders of space and celebrate the uniqueness of Earth,” he said.

Gaume and the privately funded venture’s other co-founder, veteran space entrepreneur Jason Andrews, aren’t merely waiting for Starck to come up with a set of drawings. Orbite (pronounced “Or-beet,” French-style) already conducted an initial “space camp for grownups” in France in August, and the next training session is due to take place in Florida early next month.

The sessions are more expensive than your typical teenage space camp: August’s five-day, four-night program carried a price tag of $29,500, and the prices for December’s three-day, two-night session start at $15,000.

But Gaume, whose family runs a boutique hotel in France that was renovated under Starck’s guidance, knows how to blend luxury and space experiences to create value for an upscale clientele. August’s program, for example, featured a space-food tasting session as well as zero-G and high-G airplane flights.

Trainees also donned virtual-reality headsets to get a feel for four kinds of space tourism experiences, including the suborbital flights offered by Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic, an orbital trip on a SpaceX Crew Dragon, and a round-the-moon excursion on SpaceX’s yet-to-be-built Starship.

Andrews, who presided over Seattle-based Spaceflight Industries before joining up with Gaume, says Orbite is carving out a special niche in the nascent market for spaceflight training.

“We’ve positioned ourselves as this neutral third party,” he said. “We have this ‘try before you buy’ opportunity, to say, ‘You’re about to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars, if not tens of millions of dollars. Maybe you should understand what you’re getting yourself into and what type of adventure you want.'”

Eight customers took part in August’s inaugural training program, and Gaume guessed that about a third of them will be taking an honest-to-goodness spaceflight in the years to come.

Andrews said the August session was something of an experiment.

“We designed our entire facility around class sizes of 10, so it was an opportunity to test that hypothesis,” he said. “Is that the right size? Is it too big? Is it too small? The way we thing about that is, most of these people, if they go [on a spaceflight], it’s only going to be four participants at a time, or five or six. So you take two capsules’ worth of five people and put them together.”

The experience “really validated the class size, and what we want to do going forward,” Andrews said.

2021 is the year when space tourism finally took off, largely due to Branson’s Virgin Galactic voyage; the Blue Origin trips taken by Jeff Bezos and William Shatner, and Inspiration4’s orbital mission in a SpaceX Crew Dragon. Andrews hopes all those flights — plus Axiom Space’s first mission to the International Space Station, which is set for early next year — will get more people thinking about training with Orbite.

“You saw William Shatner when he got off the Blue Origin flight — he was just overcome by the grandness of it,” Andrews said. “And that’s really what Orbite does. It prepares people for those opportunities.”

More from GeekWire:

Former Spaceflight CEO and French entrepreneur join forces to launch astronaut training startup


Try before you fly: Orbite sets schedule for luxurious astronaut orientation sessions


Japanese firms finish acquisition of Spaceflight, with BlackSky satellite venture going its own way


Astronauts arrive in Florida to set new NASA traditions for crewed spaceflight

Scientists mystified, wary, as Africa avoids COVID disaster

People are seen at a busy market in a poor township on the outskirts of the capital Harare, Monday, Nov, 15, 2021. When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions and destroying the continent’s fragile health systems. Although it’s still unclear what COVID-19’s ultimate toll will be, that catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize in Zimbabwe or much of Africa. (AP Photo/Tsvangirayi Mukwazhi)More

MARIA CHENG and FARAI MUTSAKA
Fri, November 19, 2021

HARARE, Zimbabwe (AP) — At a busy market in a poor township outside Harare this week, Nyasha Ndou kept his mask in his pocket, as hundreds of other people, mostly unmasked, jostled to buy and sell fruit and vegetables displayed on wooden tables and plastic sheets. As in much of Zimbabwe, here the coronavirus is quickly being relegated to the past, as political rallies, concerts and home gatherings have returned.

“COVID-19 is gone, when did you last hear of anyone who has died of COVID-19?” Ndou said. “The mask is to protect my pocket,” he said. “The police demand bribes so I lose money if I don’t move around with a mask.” Earlier this week, Zimbabwe recorded just 33 new COVID-19 cases and zero deaths, in line with a recent fall in the disease across the continent, where World Health Organization data show that infections have been dropping since July.

When the coronavirus first emerged last year, health officials feared the pandemic would sweep across Africa, killing millions. Although it’s still unclear what COVID-19’s ultimate toll will be, that catastrophic scenario has yet to materialize in Zimbabwe or much of the continent.

Scientists emphasize that obtaining accurate COVID-19 data, particularly in African countries with patchy surveillance, is extremely difficult, and warn that declining coronavirus trends could easily be reversed.

But there is something “mysterious” going on in Africa that is puzzling scientists, said Wafaa El-Sadr, chair of global health at Columbia University. “Africa doesn’t have the vaccines and the resources to fight COVID-19 that they have in Europe and the U.S., but somehow they seem to be doing better,” she said.

Fewer than 6% of people in Africa are vaccinated. For months, the WHO has described Africa as “one of the least affected regions in the world” in its weekly pandemic reports.

Some researchers say the continent’s younger population -- the average age is 20 versus about 43 in Western Europe — in addition to their lower rates of urbanization and tendency to spend time outdoors, may have spared it the more lethal effects of the virus so far. Several studies are probing whether there might be other explanations, including genetic reasons or past infection with parasitic diseases.

On Friday, researchers working in Uganda said they found COVID-19 patients with high rates of exposure to malaria were less likely to suffer severe disease or death than people with little history of the disease.

“We went into this project thinking we would see a higher rate of negative outcomes in people with a history of malaria infections because that’s what was seen in patients co-infected with malaria and Ebola,” said Jane Achan, a senior research advisor at the Malaria Consortium and a co-author of the study. “We were actually quite surprised to see the opposite — that malaria may have a protective effect.”

Achan said this may suggest that past infection with malaria could “blunt” the tendency of people’s immune systems to go into overdrive when they are infected with COVID-19. The research was presented Friday at a meeting of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene.

Christian Happi, director of the African Center of Excellence for Genomics of Infectious Diseases at Redeemer’s University in Nigeria, said authorities are used to curbing outbreaks even without vaccines and credited the extensive networks of community health workers.

“It’s not always about how much money you have or how sophisticated your hospitals are,” he said.

Devi Sridhar, chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh, said African leaders haven’t gotten the credit they deserve for acting quickly, citing Mali’s decision to close its borders before COVID-19 even arrived.

“I think there’s a different cultural approach in Africa, where these countries have approached COVID with a sense of humility because they’ve experienced things like Ebola, polio and malaria,” Sridhar said.

In past months, the coronavirus has pummeled South Africa and is estimated to have killed more than 89,000 people there, by far the most deaths on the continent. But for now, African authorities, while acknowledging that there could be gaps, are not reporting huge numbers of unexpected fatalities that might be COVID-related. WHO data show that deaths in Africa make up just 3% of the global total. In comparison, deaths in the Americas and Europe account for 46% and 29%.

In Nigeria, Africa’s most populous country, the government has recorded nearly 3,000 deaths so far among its 200 million population. The U.S. records that many deaths every two or three days.

The low numbers have Nigerians like Opemipo Are, a 23-year-old in Abuja, feeling relieved. “They said there will be dead bodies on the streets and all that, but nothing like that happened,” she said.

On Friday, Nigerian authorities began a campaign to significantly expand the West African nation’s coronavirus immunization. Officials are aiming to inoculate half the population before February, a target they think will help them achieve herd immunity.

Oyewale Tomori, a Nigerian virologist who sits on several WHO advisory groups, suggested Africa might not even need as many vaccines as the West. It’s an idea that, while controversial, he says is being seriously discussed among African scientists — and is reminiscent of the proposal British officials made last March to let COVID-19 freely infect the population to build up immunity.

That doesn’t mean, however, that vaccines aren’t needed in Africa.

“We need to be vaccinating all out to prepare for the next wave,” said Salim Abdool Karim, an epidemiologist at South Africa’s University of KwaZulu-Natal, who previously advised the South African government on COVID-19. “Looking at what’s happening in Europe, the likelihood of more cases spilling over here is very high.”

The impact of the coronavirus has also been relatively muted beyond Africa in poor countries like Afghanistan, where experts predicted outbreaks amid ongoing conflict would prove disastrous.

Hashmat Arifi, a 23-year-old student in Kabul, said he hadn’t seen anyone wearing a mask in months, including at a recent wedding he attended alongside hundreds of guests. In his university classes, more than 20 students routinely sit unmasked in close quarters.

“I haven’t seen any cases of corona lately,” Arifi said. So far, Afghanistan has recorded about 7,200 deaths among its 39 million people, although little testing was done amid the conflict and the actual numbers of cases and deaths are unknown.

Back in Zimbabwe, doctors were grateful for the respite from COVID-19 — but feared it was only temporary.

“People should remain very vigilant,” warned Dr. Johannes Marisa, president of the Medical and Dental Private Practitioners of Zimbabwe Association. He fears that another coronavirus wave would hit Zimbabwe next month. “Complacency is what is going to destroy us because we may be caught unaware.”

___

Cheng reported from London. Rahim Faiez in Islamabad, Pakistan, and Chinedu Asadu in Lagos contributed to this report.

Aside from vaccination, mask-wearing seems the most effective tool for combating COVID-19, a major study suggests


Dr. Catherine Schuster-Bruce
Fri, November 19, 2021

Mask-wearing reduced COVID-19 incidence by 53%, a large study found.

CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP via Getty Images

Mask-wearing seems the best public health measure for fighting COVID-19, according to a large analysis.


Hand-washing and social distancing could also reduce the number of new COVID-19 cases, the study authors said.


The researchers bemoaned a lack of quality data on quarantine, lockdowns, and school closures.

Mask-wearing seems to be the most effective public health measure for combating the coronavirus, according to a large global analysis that found it reduced COVID-19 incidence by 53%.

Hand-washing and physical distancingcould also reduce the number of new COVID-19 cases, according to the analysis published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) Thursday.

The scientists, from the UK, Australia, and China, analyzed more than 70 published studies from across the world that examined non-pharmaceutical public health interventions. Vaccines are proven to be highly effective at stopping people catching COVID-19 but the effects of other public health measures is less clear.

The scientists said they were unable to draw firm conclusions about the effectiveness of quarantine and isolation, universal lockdowns, and closures of borders, schools, and workplaces, because the studies were so diverse.

Paul Glasziou, director of the Institute for Evidence-Based Healthcare at Australia's Bond University, said in a BMJ editorial that "uncertainties and controversies" around the effects of public health measures and "lack of investment" — at just 4% of global COVID-19 research funding — was "puzzling" given their "central importance" in controlling the pandemic.

Glasziou said the "most striking" finding was that the study authors identified only one randomized controlled trial for mask-wearing — the type of trial considered to provide the best evidence. Meanwhile, hundreds of trials have been completed for COVID-19 drug treatments, he said.

Dr. Baptiste Leurent, assistant professor in medical statistics at London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, said in a statement to the Science Media Centre that the researched published Thursday was probably the best available regarding the effects of public health measures on COVID-19 transmission.

However, the accuracy of the findings from this type of research relies on the quality of studies it analyzes.

Laurent cautioned that "nearly all" the evidence in the review was based on a type of study that shows a link between an intervention and outcome, without necessarily proving causation. "Caution is needed when trying to put a single number to their effectiveness," he said.

The authors of the study said that controlling COVID-19 "depends not only on high vaccination coverage and its effectiveness but also on ongoing adherence to effective and sustainable public health measures."

Once enough people are vaccinated, new research will be needed to discover how well public health measures work, they said.

New research offers glimpse into early human development


Research released Wednesday, Nov. 17, 2021 in the journal Nature provides a rare glimpse of an early stage of human development. This image from Oxford University shows a human embryo 16-19 days after fertilization. The embryo is undergoing a process called gastrulation, when different cell types are generated and distributed to specific places in the embryo. (University of Oxford via AP)

LAURA UNGAR
Wed, November 17, 2021

Scientists have been able to get a rare glimpse into a crucial, early stage of human development by analyzing an embryo in its third week after fertilization — a moment in time that has been difficult to study because of both practical and ethical considerations.

European researchers looked at a single embryo that was 16 to 19 days old, donated by a woman who ended her pregnancy. Until now, experts said, researchers have lacked a full understanding of this stage of development because human embryos at this stage are difficult to obtain. Most women don’t yet know they’re pregnant by this point and decades-old global guidelines have until recently prohibited growing human embryos in a lab beyond 14 days.

The study, published online Wednesday in the journal Nature, looked at “gastrulation,” which begins about 14 days after fertilization, when the embryo is still about the size of a poppy seed, and lasts a little more than a week.

It’s “a process by which you have this kind of explosion of cell diversity,” said lead investigator Shankar Srinivas, an expert in developmental biology at the University of Oxford, who worked with colleagues in the United Kingdom and Germany on the research. “It’s during gastrulation that the different cells emerge, but they also start to be positioned in different places in forming the body so that they can carry out their functions and form the correct organs.”

For decades, the so-called “14-day rule" on growing embryos in the lab has guided researchers, with some places, including the United Kingdom, writing it into law. Others, including the United States, have accepted it as a standard guiding scientists and regulators.

Earlier this year, the International Society for Stem Cell Research recommended relaxing the rule and allowing researchers to grow embryos past two weeks under limited circumstances and after a tough review process. But the rule remains law in the UK.

This research was not subject to the law because the embryo wasn't grown in a lab. But it is an example of the types of things scientists expect to learn more about if rules are relaxed. Researchers found various types of cells, including red blood cells and “primordial germ cells” that give rise to egg or sperm cells. But they didn’t see neurons, Srinivas said, meaning embryos aren’t equipped at this stage to sense their environment.

Oxford University officials said this stage of development has never been fully mapped out in humans before.

The authors said they hope their work not only sheds light on this stage of development but also helps scientists learn from nature about how to make stem cells into particular types of cells that can be used to help heal damage or disease.

Robin Lovell-Badge, a stem cell expert at London’s Francis Crick Institute who chaired the group behind the guidelines, said being able to culture human embryos beyond 14 days “would be incredibly important to understand not just how we develop normally but how things go wrong.”

It’s very common for embryos to fail during gastrulation or shortly afterwards, he said. “If things go even slightly wrong, you end up with congenital abnormalities, or the embryo miscarries.”

Dr. Daniel Sulmasy, director of the Kennedy Institute of Ethics at Georgetown University, said “those of us who are morally conservative” always thought the 14-day rule was somewhat arbitrary, “but at least it was some recognition of the humanness of the embryo.”

With the new recommendation, there will be more research on older embryos, he said. “Part of what science does is to always try to go forward and learn things that are new. And that continues to be a pressure. But the mere fact that we can do something is not sufficient to say that we ought to do it.”

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The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.