Where Is China Going? A Review of Two Opposing Views


The United States is escalating its provocations against China. To understand the rivalry between the two countries, we have to understand their class nature. In the case of China, the debate over its social and economic form is far from settled. This article discusses two recent books that take quite different positions on this question.


Esteban Mercatante

December 15, 2021


On December 9 and 10, the United States organized an international “Summit for Democracy.” Excluded from this were countries, including China, that are not aligned with the United States, which remains the world’s main imperialist power. Continuing a line of provocations initiated by Donald Trump, President Joe Biden did invite Taiwan, an island nation that maintains its independence but that China considers part of its territory. In recent days, the U.S. also announced a diplomatic boycott of the 2022 Winter Olympics, to be held in Beijing, citing concerns about Chinese violations of human rights. These are the latest signs that the long-running U.S.-China dispute shows no sign of abating.

To understand this intensifying rivalry and where it might be headed requires a clear definition of what type of conflict this is, and that in turn requires that we clarify the class nature of the adversaries. In China’s case, that characterization is far from settled. There are a host of quite dissimilar positions out there, including those of two recent books, which I discuss here.

Deng Xiaoping: A Return to Marx?

Some claim that China has not departed from a socialist path, but has actually taken that path even further. This includes John Ross in his recently published China’s Great Road.1 As Ross sees it, the “reform and opening up” initiated by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, far from moving China away from socialism, would have meant a true return to Marx’s notions about the transition, first from capitalism to socialism, and then finally to communism. Deng privatized many enterprises, leaving only large firms within the state sector. This, “together with the creation of a new private sector[,] created an economic structure clearly more in line with that envisaged by Marx than the essentially 100 percent state ownership in the USSR after 1929.”

Ross argues that “reform and opening up” reflected a critique of Soviet economic policy as it had existed since the introduction of the first Five-Year Plan (1929) and, by “implication,” subsequent “Soviet economic policy [that] made the error of confusing the ‘advanced’ stage of socialism/communism, in which the regulation of the economy is ‘for need,’ with the socialist, or more precisely ‘primary’ developing stage of socialism, during which the transition from capitalism to an advanced socialist economy takes place.” In this way, the “final formulation arrived at was that China’s was a ‘socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics,” one that would be the most appropriate for the current stage at the time, and the reforms, far from a regression or the beginning of a capitalist restoration, would be the abandonment of a voluntarist and mistaken route to carry out an unfeasible rapid transition to socialism — as understood, Ross claims, by the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). “This transition,” he writes, “should be conceived as extending over a prolonged period.”

In this analysis, Ross follows Giovanni Arrighi in examining Chinese society using Adam Smith’s conceptual scheme, but he goes a step further by constructing a much more Smithian Marx than a careful reading of Capital would suggest. The author completes his rather eclectic theoretical scheme by resuscitating John Maynard Keynes’s statement, at the end of The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, that socializing investments is the only way for advanced capitalism to sustain growth. According to Ross, China is following Keynes’s prescription, which the capitalist states cannot do, and this has been the key to the success of “reform and opening up.”

This is a rather peculiar understanding and defense of a “socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics.” Ross wants to reaffirm the “return to Marx” in Deng’s policies, but he can do so only through the prism of this Smithian and Keynesian Marx, according to which the key is the division of labor, trade, and the encouragement of investment, while the generalized “expropriation of the expropriators” should not be undertaken until a very advanced stage of socialism in the distant future.

Again and again in the articles compiled in his book, Ross supports his thesis by pointing out that no capitalist country has shown a similar trajectory of sustained economic growth or has lifted millions of people out of poverty. This is proved, he writes, whether we compare what has happened in recent decades in the richest countries — which, according to the author, are situated in a “new mediocre” of weak economic growth and limited productivity growth — or whether we look at what happened in the entire history of capitalism, in which no country has generated an impact equivalent to that of China, which involved 22 percent of the world’s population in its “miracle.” Ross wants to dismantle the ideology that this performance is explained by the CCP’s decision to embrace capitalism. If the capitalist mode of production did not reduce poverty or bring development to any poor country in recent decades, how can the results achieved in China be attributed to a capitalist turn?

Obviously, for those who want to use China’s evolution to advocate for capitalism, there’s one thing for which they cannot account: no “Chinese miracle” could have taken place without the 1949 Revolution, which achieved national unity, led to a break with imperialism (until relations were restored under Mao’s initiation in the early 1970s), liquidated large land ownership, and aimed at strengthening a nationalized industry. Neither the nationalist Kuomintang nor any other sector of the bourgeoisie had been able to carry out what was achieved by the revolution.2

Ross’s approach, however, in his effort to attack the bourgeois ideology that uses China to assert that there is “no alternative” to capitalism, exposes several weaknesses.

First, as economist Michael Roberts points out, Ross goes close to echoing the views of that anti-socialist socialist, the recently deceased Hungarian economist Janos Kornai, widely acclaimed in mainstream economic circles. Kornai argued that China’s economic success was only possible because it abandoned central planning and state dominance and moved to capitalism.

Ross gives coherence to the policies implemented from Deng to Xi Jinping, under this umbrella of a socialism inspired by the return to Marx that is simply not consistent with the facts. To begin with, the “reform and opening up” was marked by many instances of trial and error, with a forceful dispute between sectors of the CCP bureaucracy, as reported by Yue Jianyong in China’s Rise in the Age of Globalization and Isabelle Weber in the recent How China Escaped Shock Therapy.3 Both books give an account of the multiple twists and turns that the leaders of the People’s Republic were forced to take with the policies of privatization and the introduction of capitalist reforms, impeded by the resistance of wage-earning sectors in the cities and the countryside and divisions within the ruling group itself (more over the pace of the reforms than their direction).

Perhaps most important is that Ross — in his effort to show the progressive path of the “great road” China has traveled, always in his view toward socialism — denies all the deeply regressive aspects of the transformations begun in 1978. He makes no mention of the massive destruction of jobs in the state-owned enterprises that were privatized — and also in those that remained in state hands and were “modernized” — or of the creation of a “second-rate” labor force that became the majority, composed of rural migrant sectors lacking hukou (residence permits) in the cities, which thus deprives them of access to many rights. The massive environmental footprint that went hand in hand with China’s transformation into the world’s factory, which keeps growing thanks to the frenetic pace of construction of infrastructure and entire cities (many of them almost empty, and with remarkably short-lived real estate developments), is also characterized by Ross as part of the baseless ideological attacks launched against China.

For Ross, China is a beacon for the rest of the world, an alternative to neoliberal capitalism. He says nothing about China’s central role in enabling the large-scale “global arbitrage of labor” that has allowed the bosses around the world to mount a massive attack on the workforce. As I wrote in “The Contours of Capitalism in China,”

This arbitrage markedly changed “how the pie was sliced” among the classes, as the country’s income was increasingly generated by private capital investment. This occurred in the imperialist countries as well as in the countries that attracted investment, while other dependent economies were left behind. China, with its current population of nearly 1.4 billion and a workforce of 940 million people, was a centerpiece of the so-called “doubling” of the world labor force available to transnational capital.

This central role played by China in the global socio-metabolism of transnationalized capitalism during the globalization of production in the last decades shows that the Chinese “miracle” Ross describes as “socialist” and the social regression imposed by capital on the rest of the planet are two sides of the same coin.

The Communist Road to Capitalism

The book The Communist Road to Capitalism by Ralf Ruckus offers a look at China’s trajectory from the revolution of 1949 to the present.4 The author maintains, and I agree, that a transition to capitalism began with Deng’s reforms, and that this transition crystallized into a new social formation, in which what one could call “capitalism with Chinese characteristics” predominated.

An interesting aspect of Ruckus’s method of analyzing China’s transformations is his emphasis on transitions. He points out that since the revolution there have been two transitions that went in opposite directions: the first, toward socialism, began in 1949; the second, from the mid-1970s onward, toward capitalism. The author also emphasizes the role of the actions of the masses throughout the history of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

His framework is correct, but I think he is wrong that the formation that would have emerged from the first transition in the late 1950s or early 1960s could be characterized as socialist. This has to do with the author’s indiscriminate criticisms of what he identifies as Marxism-Leninism (which, along with Social Democracy, he considers two “grand narratives” that the Left should break with) in favor of an autonomist strategy. Ruckus correctly characterizes several of the contradictions produced by the consolidation of the CCP: rather than putting an end to social stratification, it created new hierarchies, with the party and state bureaucracy in the privileged position; despite promises to end the oppression of women, it created new forms of oppression; and after giving land to the peasants, it relied on the appropriation of high levels of peasant surpluses to sustain industrial growth.

But as Ruckus shows, these features quickly fueled social discontent and gave rise to profound upheavals. The latter explain all the disputes and twists and turns of the CCP’s various factions, but they did not lead to socialism or anything resembling it. Instead there arose a workers’ state that was bureaucratized from its inception and that became only more so. This is the result of the social forces that acted in the revolution. As Emilio Albamonte and Matías Maiello point out.

It was not the working class with its own revolutionary party that carried out the bourgeois-democratic tasks and linked them with its own program; rather, a peasant-based communist party ended up adopting part of the proletariat’s program. … [As a consequence] there was no dynamic of permanent revolution (internationally and nationally) toward communism after the seizure of power; rather, this prospect was blocked from the beginning.5

By its social bases China was a workers’ state, with nationalized ownership of the means of production, a (bureaucratic) planned economy, and a state monopoly of foreign trade. But from the beginning the party-army imposed a bureaucratic apparatus, without any sort of soviet democracy, that took over the state. This became a barrier to any advance toward socialism.

Within the framework of these important objections, Ruckus does well in identifying some of the turning points over the course of capitalist restoration. “Mass protests marked the historical turning point once more, this time including demands for political changes and more democratic participation,” he observes6 The so-called April 5 Movement, which took place in 1976 after the death of Premier Zhou Enlai, and the Democracy Wall Movement two years later, again gave rise to a “repeated pattern of unrest followed by a varied mix of repression, concession, co-optation and eventually reform.”7 The response to April 5 was particularly brutal, but after Mao’s death in 1976, the political situation turned around.

The conservative faction in the CCP leadership staged a successful coup and disempowered the leftist rivals grouped around the so-called Gang of Four. A group around Deng Xiaoping, who had been rehabilitated, took over. It co-opted demands for democratic change and, in 1978, officially announced the Economic Reform and Opening policies.8

The beginning of the economic reforms went hand in hand with refusing to make any significant concessions in terms of democratic participation. From then on, rural land was handed over for private use (without transferring ownership), for the development of private industrial enterprises in rural areas, and to create the first Special Economic Zones (SEZ) to which multinational capital was invited — and for which rural migration provided the needed workforce. Labor contracts were introduced, and labor markets began to develop in the mid-1980s. As Ruckus writes, “The gradual transformation of the planned economy and urban industries led to economic turbulence, cadre corruption, and social unrest.”9

The 1980s saw a growing number of strikes and other forms of protest by workers and students; this culminated in the Tiananmen Square Movement in 1989, which was bloodily suppressed by the People’s Liberation Army. There then followed an upheaval, at a time when the Soviet Union and the Stalinist regimes of Eastern Europe were collapsing. This led to an impasse for a few years in the progress of restorationist measures. Deng was by then formally out of office, but he toured the entire south of the country to defend the policy of reform and opening up. Under his pressure, there was an accelerated restorationist advance beginning in 1992. “The influx of foreign investment in manufacturing increased,” Ruckus notes, “and mass migration from villages to cities and SEZs turned the PRC into the ‘factory of the world.’”10 In this framework, the CCP “accelerated the transformation of the socialist planned economy and restructured or privatized state-run enterprises, now called state-owned enterprises (SOEs) — a process that turned out to mark the final transition to capitalism.”11

Ruckus’s book ends by pointing out the signs of turmoil that threaten Xi’s ambitions to go on forever and that explain the increasingly Bonapartist features of his rule, as discussed in an earlier article.

Capitalism, Imperialism, and World Disorder

As has been shown, the dispute between the United States and China cannot only be analyzed as one between two incompatible social regimes, as was the case in the Cold War. It is just as illusory to think that because China is confronting the main imperialist power, it offers some prospect of a more benevolent, nonimperialist hegemony for the oppressed countries. On the contrary, China does not aim to challenge the imperialist system.

In the many countries of Africa where China has gained an advantage over the United States and the European powers, it has more than once exhibited behavior that is hardly different from that of traditional colonialism in terms of its rapaciousness and disregard for environmental impacts. The development of the Silk Belt and Road Initiative, with which Beijing aims to gain privileged access to natural resources all over the planet, has led to conflicts in several countries thanks to the debt burden the Asian giant imposes on its partners to carry out the ambitious infrastructure projects that comprise the initiative. And within institutions such as the International Monetary Fund, where China has gained some influence (although still much less than that of the United States), it has done nothing to reorient their direction, as evidenced by the answers China gave to Argentinean officials who had hoped for its support and financing to avoid recent IMF adjustment demands.

China aims to challenge the conditions on which the imperialist hierarchy is organized and fight for a predominant position. That is what the clash with the United States is about. This threat — seen as the main threat to continued U.S. domination as the main imperialist power — is what led Trump and now Biden to make the dispute with China today’s central policy axis.

There is nothing for the world’s oppressed people in betting on a more benevolent hegemon. Their fight must be one of concentrating forces and forging alliances to end imperialist oppression, which requires fighting to put an end to capitalism.

First published in Spanish on December 12 in Ideas de Izquierda.

Translation by Scott Cooper

An Introduction to Trotsky’s Theory of Permanent Revolution


First introduced over a hundred years ago, Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution remains a vital tool for understanding the world today. The theory shows that only the working class can lead a socialist revolution, and is an antidote to many who now claim that we can rely on bourgeois forces to take us half way there.


Kate Frey September 22, 2020


Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution is one of his most important theoretical contributions. It was introduced in Results and Prospects, which was published in 1906, and more fully developed in The Permanent Revolution, published in 1930. Trotsky’s theory drew on his observations of experiences in the Russian revolution of 1905, in which he played a leading role. He also drew on the work of other revolutionary thinkers, including Karl Marx.

Origins of Trotsky’s Theory

Marx believed that the rising Western European business class of the 17th and 18th centuries played a progressive role in sweeping away feudalism and preparing the way for capitalism and democracy. He described how the French Revolution of 1789-93 accomplished a liquidation of feudalism in France, doing away with the absolute monarchy and such norms as internal customs duties, feudal obligations on the peasantry, and an aristocratic state and military system — all of which had fettered the development of the productive forces of society. He also noted that the French Revolution established representative democracy and land reform. All this prepared the way for industrial capitalism’s later development.

By the time of the Revolutions of 1848, much of western Europe had begun to industrialize. A rising bourgeois class was gaining power and an urban working class was growing. Marx observed that in Germany, a country then economically backward, the rising liberal bourgeoisie, in its struggle against the still powerful remnants of the feudal nobility, was unable to fulfill its historic role of unifying and modernizing the country — unlike its earlier French counterpart. Feeling threatened by the growing working class, which did most of the actual fighting in the revolutionary movements, the erstwhile liberal leaders froze in fear and attempted to negotiate with the forces of reaction before their movement collapsed. Similar dynamics played out in other less-developed areas of Europe.

In more developed France, the revolution also failed when bourgeois democrats were unable to advance greater democratic social reforms. This showed that the working class, the class that performed the productive work of society but was also the most oppressed, was the only class capable of advancing society to a higher level of development — by fighting for its own demands. The working class could not depend on the treacherous and vacillating bourgeoisie.

Marx most famously used the term “permanent revolution” in a March 1850 speech; he was referring to a working-class strategy of maintaining political independence with a consistent series of militant political demands and tactics. This prefigured Trotsky’s later theory, which built on Marx’s ideas and asserted that it would be up to the working class to carry forward the struggle against the remnants of feudal despotism and open the way to social advancement in countries where capitalism had developed late, such as Russia.

Unlike Trotsky, Marx did not believe that a society could move directly from control by a semi-feudal aristocracy to the working class being in power. he envisioned a period of rule by the petit bourgeoisie — small shop owners and craftsmen — after the abolition of feudalism. The bourgeoisie, intrinsically opposed to the interests of the working class, would have an interest in preserving and developing capitalist property relations, and in such a situation power would be contested between these two classes. Continued independent working-class struggle would be necessary — a “permanent revolution” until the socialist transformation of society was achieved.

Trotsky drew on these insights to analyze the situation in early 20th-century Russia, which had only abolished serfdom in 1861. Russia was still largely under the control of feudal landlords, who together with the military and church propped up the backward czarist autocracy and impeded the country’s economic development. Russia had begun to industrialize in the late 19th century, with much of the investment for that coming from foreign financiers and the feudal nobility. Because of its history, in which trade was discouraged and during which the country developed as a militarized state on guard against foreign invaders, Russia had a weak independent bourgeois class, and the state took on industrial development This industrialization happened much later than in other Western European countries, and in a top-down fashion. For these reasons, Russia’s bourgeoisie was unable to modernize and develop the country.

In his book 1905, Trotsky explained these class dynamics against the backdrop of Russia’s overseas imperialism, which had led to disaster in the Russo-Japanese War. Trotsky described the vacillating role of the liberal bourgeoisie in the subsequent Revolution of 1905. The Russian bourgeoisie, originally opposed to czarism, quickly abandoned support for the revolution and tried to make an accommodation with the state. It was up to the working class to carry forward the fight against the czarist autocracy, often in bloody street battles. Workers councils, or “soviets,” took control of much of the capital city, Petrograd, for a time. Trotsky himself chaired the short-lived Petrograd Soviet before it was crushed. Unlike how Marx had seen the Revolutions of 1848, Trotsky felt the events of 1905 showed that in Russia, the tasks of national development and democratic reform in Russia, which in more developed countries had been carried out by the bourgeoisie, could be accomplished only by a working-class revolution that would also mobilize the poor peasantry. Trotsky drew on Marx’s insight that the working class would then need to continue its own independent struggle against the bourgeoisie’s attempts to maintain capitalist property relations. In such a situation, the working class would have to carry through to the socialist transformation of society.

Trotsky’s theory was not widely embraced within the socialist movement of his time. Marx had described that many societies progress through increasingly complex levels of organization throughout history. The French Revolution was a milestone in the transition from feudalism to capitalism. Capitalism, in turn, has its own innate contradictions that would be overcome under socialism, when production would be organized and run collectively by working people. Marx’s analysis of history was interpreted by many early 20th-century socialists in a linear and one-dimensional way, with all countries following the same path of development. According to this view — which was held by the Mensheviks, the non-Bolshevik faction in the Russian Marxist movement — Russia could not advance to socialism until capitalism had been fully developed. Since Russia was far from being a fully developed capitalist country, this view led to a political strategy of tailing liberal reformers and subordinating the needs of the working class to that of liberal “allies.” Based on the notion of revolution in “stages,” this approach would be repeated later throughout the world and lead to disastrous consequences for the working class.

Uneven and Combined Development

The theory of Permanent Revolution is closely connected with the law of uneven and combined development. This law was drawn from work by the Latvian theorist Alexander Helphand (Parvus), with whom Trotsky collaborated, as well as the Austrian Marxist Rudolf Hilferding, and was further developed by Trotsky during and after the Russian Revolution.

Trotsky described how societies overall develop at different rates and also that different parts of a society can develop differently; he also explained that by the early 20th century, capitalism had created a global economy that linked productive forces and a world division of labor. Since capitalist development, while happening at different rates in different countries, takes place in this context of a highly globalized and increasingly interdependent economy, sectors of a society can, in effect, “leapfrog” from an underdeveloped status to a highly developed one. This reality is reflected in the theory of Permanent Revolution, as it becomes up to the working class to push society forward.

What was the meaning of this in the Russian context? Russia was then still a backward country, but had nevertheless imported state-of-the-art industrial production. The small Russian working class was very new. Unlike the working class of Britain (for example), it had not gone through a century of reformism and bourgeois democracy; Russian workers were more militant, had fewer illusions about capitalism than their Western counterparts, and were politically far more advanced.

We see the dynamic of uneven and combined development in China today. China has experienced rapid development in recent decades, and a large urban working class, only a generation or so removed from rural peasant backgrounds, has emerged. Foreign and domestic firms have introduced state-of-the-art production throughout the country. Beijing and other cities have ultra-modern subway systems, often the envy of visiting Americans reminded of their own increasingly decrepit infrastructures back home.

Lenin initially believed that because of Russia’s underdevelopment and its weak bourgeois class, completing a bourgeois-democratic revolution, as in France, would be possible only through an alliance of workers and peasants. Although he felt the country would not need to go through an extended period of capitalist development, socialism would not be possible until there were successful workers’ revolutions in western Europe that could aid economically weak Russia. In effect, Russia would have a bourgeois revolution without the bourgeoisie. Lenin put forth the slogan “For a democratic dictatorship of workers and peasants.”

Trotsky disagreed with Lenin’s formulation. He felt the peasant class, which was made up of independent producers, would not be able to unify around common demands and would be politically torn in different directions. He also noted that an agrarian revolution would not be possible in the context of a purely “bourgeois-democratic” revolution. It would be possible only in the context of a transformation of society led by the working class.

The Russian Revolutions of 1917 led Lenin to agree with Trotsky. The October Revolution itself, when a revolutionary movement led by the working class took power, confirmed Trotsky’s theory. After taking power, the Bolsheviks initially did not intend to abolish capitalism altogether immediately. Largely in reaction to economic sabotage by Russian industrialists, workers themselves began seizing factories in a wave of struggle from below, pushing the new Soviet government to begin nationalizing industry much more quickly.

Legacy of the Theory of Permanent Revolution

First proposed more than a century ago, the theory of Permanent Revolution and the related law of uneven and combined development are powerful tools for understanding more recent class dynamics in underdeveloped countries of the global south. After the Chinese revolution of 1949, the Chinese Communist Party initially did not intend to nationalize private industry, and discouraged direct working-class involvement. Economic sabotage by industrialists as well as economic dislocation caused by years of war forced the state to intervene and, in effect, play the role the working class played during the Russian Revolution. More recently, the events of 2011’s Arab Spring — notably in Egypt — showed the importance of an independent working-class movement. After overthrowing Mubarak, a powerful revolutionary movement was derailed by middle-class leaders and led to a military crackdown. Similar dynamics have played out in many other countries.

The law of uneven and combined development — that under capitalism development takes place in the context of a highly globalized world,and that a militant, politically well-developed working class can exist in a society with a more backward, underdeveloped society — reinforces the power of the theory of Permanent Revolution’s argument that it is up to the working class to move society forward. The theory of Permanent Revolution, in turn, provides a powerful argument against reformist “two-stage” theories still popular in the Left and even among liberals who today still assert that the right wing must first be defeated and bourgeois democracy must be installed before an independent workers’ struggle can begin. History and theory have shown that the bourgeoisie’s interests are not those of the working class, and workers rely on the bourgeoisie at their peril.

Ultimately, the working class is the only force that can move society forward to socialism.

Humanity's Uneven CO₂ Footprint
EMISSIONS & CLIMATE CHANGE

by Florian Zandt, Dec 16, 2021

North America once again comes out on top in a global ranking, albeit on a negative note: With 20.8 tons of CO₂ emissions per capita in the year 2019, the region comprising the U.S. and Canada is the one whose inhabitants contribute the most to climate change on a personal level by a wide margin. Even with countries like India, China, Japan and Russia being responsible for a high carbon footprint on a state level, some of them don't even crack the top 3 when viewed in a regional context as evidenced by our chart.

According to data by the World Inequality Report 2022 released by the French research laboratory World Inequality Lab, the regions of Central Asia & Russia and Europe come in second and third with 9.9 tons and 9.7 tons, respectively. Europe's ranking can be explained by the dominance of wealthy states like Germany. Central Asia & Russia coming in second despite the total emission figures of China amounting to more than those of the U.S., India, Russia and Japan combined can be explained with the disparity on the wealth and technology levels in the country. So even though the People's Republic has become a hotspot for technology, manufacturing and shipping, its populace outside of centers like Beijing, Shenzhen and Shanghai contribute less to the country's and by extension the region's carbon footprint. A similar scheme can be seen in the Middle East with its 7.4 tons of carbon dioxide emissions. While countries like Kuwait and Qatar have a higher per capita emission of both North American countries combined according to research by the Global Carbon Project, places like Kuwait, Egypt and Syria hover around 2 tons of CO₂ emissions per capita.

Overall, the World Inequality Report 2022 found that the top 10 percent of carbon emitters were responsible for approximately 50 percent of global emissions in 2019, while the bottom 50 percent only contributed 12 percent of the total emissions. This inequality suggests that current, more generalized climate change policies including carbon taxes require overhauling and that country-specific measures tailored to specific emission goals might prove more fruitful in the long run.

SAFETY NOT THE CONCEN, PROFIT IS

EDF shares plunge after faults found at French nuclear power reactor

Shares in EDF plunged on Thursday after the French power giant found faults at a nuclear power station and shut down another plant using the same kind of reactors, leading it to cut its core profit goal for this year.

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Reuters | Updated: 16-12-2021 

Representative Image Image Credit: Pixabay

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Shares in EDF plunged on Thursday after the French power giant found faults at a nuclear power station and shut down another plant using the same kind of reactors, leading it to cut its core profit goal for this year. France's Nuclear Safety Authority said EDF had informed it that it had detected cracks on the pipes of a reactor at the Civaux power plant in western France due to corrosion.

It said EDF, which has extended the outage of its Civaux station as a result and also stopped the Chooz plant in eastern France that uses the same technology, was investigating the cause of the faults. The watchdog will closely monitor EDF's review, it added. Separately, the French Institute of Radiological Protection and Nuclear Safety, another public agency, said checks on other EDF reactors were likely to be necessary.

Shares in EDF were down nearly 13% at 1410 GMT. The setback comes as France plans a major nuclear power station building programme, diverging from neighbour Germany which retreated from nuclear power after Japan's Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011.

The outage of the four reactors, with a combined daily capacity of 6 Gigawatt (GW), equivalent to around 13% of current availability in France, also comes close to the peak winter season and with power prices at record highs. "The risk of a power crunch for end-December is relatively weak but our models show that in January things could become more difficult," said Emeric de Vigan, head of energy data provider COR-e.

"It's too early to say how cold it's going to be, but if we have temperatures of 2 to 4 degrees Celsius below the season's average, then we'll start seeing some tensions." European forward curve power prices surged to new contract highs on Thursday on the back of the French shutdown.

France's biggest electricity supplier said late Wednesday that some faults were detected close to the welds on the pipes of the safety injection-system circuit in the two reactors at Civaux. It said having the Civaux and Chooz reactors offline would result in a loss of about 1 Terawatt-hour by the end of 2021. As a result, it cut its core earnings (EBITDA) estimate to a range of 17.5 billion-18 billion euros from a previous target of more than 17.7 billion euros, based on current market prices.

JPMorgan Cazenove said the impact was likely to drag into next year. It said the French utility could need to spend about 2 billion-3 billion euros ($2.3 billion-$3.4 billion) in 2022 to buy back some of its power to cover outages at the nuclear reactors.

"These estimates are a worst-case scenario, yet this is very material," it said in a report. Jefferies analysts said the new core profit guidance for 2021 was 3.5% below consensus.

(Additional reporting by Dominique Vidalon; Writing by Silvia Aloisi; Editing by Mark Potter and Mark Porter)

Europe Faces Dire Winter as Nuclear Outages Deepen Energy Crunch

Rachel Morison and Jesper Starn, Bloomberg News

BC-Europe-Faces-Dire-Winter-as-Nuclear-Outages-Deepen-Energy-Crunch , Rachel Morison and Jesper Starn

(Bloomberg) -- Europe could face a grim winter as nuclear outages in France put the continent’s energy market near a breaking point, raising the risk of rolling blackouts in the coldest months of the year.

Electricite de France SA is halting reactors accounting for 10% of the nation’s nuclear capacity, worsening Europe’s energy shortages and leaving the continent at the mercy of the weather at the height of winter in January and February. Even before the outages, a shortage of natural gas had already forced Europe to rely on burning coal to keep the lights on. 

Supply concerns plaguing Europe have sent gas and electricity prices breaking fresh records several times this year, a headache for policy makers already contending with rising inflation. Geopolitical tensions between Russia and Ukraine could also further crimp supplies. Jeremy Weir, chief executive officer of commodities trader Trafigura Group, last month warned that Europe could experience rolling blackouts in case of a cold winter.

“Europe will have a lot of problems if it gets cold,” said Emeric de Vigan, CEO of energy analysis firm COR-e. “Now it would only take 2-3 degrees Celsius below the seasonal normal to get into trouble.”

The French nuclear fleet is a crucial round-the-clock source of power not just nationally but at peak times in markets such as Germany, Italy and Britain. Plant availability was already low as the pandemic delayed works on some reactors, and now EDF is halting two units and extending stoppages at two others after discovering a fault at a plant during regular maintenance.

Without these units, about a third of France’s nuclear fleet will be halted at the start of January, forcing the nation -- which typically exports electricity -- to import more supplies at peak times from neighboring markets. The crunch will mean Europe -- already faced with shortages of natural gas -- has to burn more coal, and even oil in places like Germany and Sweden, another obstacle for policy makers trying to curb carbon emissions. 

Europe’s energy crunch could still get worse. An escalation of the tensions between Kyiv and Moscow could lead to further disruptions, with the potential for Russian gas shipments to be curbed or halted altogether in the case of an invasion. Conflict could also further delay the start of the controversial Nord Stream 2 pipeline linking Russia to Germany, which has already suffered repeated delays. Tom Marzec-Manser, an analyst for European gas and LNG at ICIS, said Europe faces tough choices ahead.

The price of power for delivery in January in France soared 60% to a record 630 euros ($715) a megawatt-hour on the European Energy Exchange. In neighboring Germany, the equivalent contract surged 25% to an all-time high of 381 euros a megawatt-hour.

France may need to stop exports to Britain and Italy, according to Jean-Paul Harreman, an analyst at energy consultant Enappsys Ltd. If that happens, it will push up prices in the core markets across the continent.

The French grid operator had already said vigilance would be needed at the beginning of the year in the event of a cold snap. To cope with supply shortages, RTE increased contracts that allow it to briefly cut power of some large manufacturers. After that, it can reduce the voltage on the grid, and then utilize rotating regional power cuts of less than two hours as a last resort.

“I can see grid managers paying industrial companies to not run if it gets really cold in a short period, they have done so in the past and they can do it again,” COR-e’s de Vigan said.

Before this latest blow, markets were already under severe strain. Gas prices that are more than six times higher than usual have pushed up the cost of generating electricity, and Europe’s wide network of renewable energy sources hasn’t been able to fill the gap due to low wind speeds. High energy prices risk further industrial shutdowns, halts to cross-border power flows and even full on blackouts.

©2021 Bloomberg L.P.

Nova Scotia

Strike averted, union ratifies new contract with CBRM

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CUPE 759 represents outside workers employed by the

 municipality

CBC News · Posted: Dec 16, 2021 9:08 PM AT | Last Updated: 10 hours ago

The union is waiting for the employer, CBRM, to approve the contract. (Tom Ayers/CBC)

The union representing outside workers for the Cape Breton Regional Municipality has ratified a new contract and now the four-year collective agreement must be approved by the employer.

"We believe this is a fair deal for our members and for the public we serve," CUPE 759 president Kevin Ivey said in a news release.

CUPE 759 represents CBRM's employees in transit, public works, water and waste water management, parks and grounds maintenance, building and arena maintenance, as well as cleaning and janitorial services.

If approved, the contract would be effective retroactively from Nov. 1, 2020 to Oct. 31, 2024.

Workers have been without a contract since October 2020. The union, which represents about 300 CBRM employees, said the ratification of this contract averts a lockout and strike.

America’s “Culture of Death”: COVID-19, Gun Insanity, White Supremacy, Ecological Destruction, and Public Indifference

BY DAVID MASCIOTRAFacebook

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Photograph by Nathaniel St. Clair

The late Pope John Paul II wrote an encyclical in 1996 condemning Western societies for creating and maintaining a “culture of death.” Referring specifically to abortion and euthanasia, the Roman Pontiff wrote, “Choices once unanimously considered criminal and rejected by the common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable.”

When I was studying political science at the University of St. Francis in Joliet, Illinois, during the early 2000s, the Pope’s full-throated excoriation of the West was a routine matter of discussion in theology, philosophy, and political science courses. As a pro-choice leftist, I always took critical aim at the Catholic Church’s position against women’s medical freedom and bodily autonomy, as well as its refusal to support the terminally ill’s right to die with dignity. Despite my disagreements with its application, the simple and brutal phrase, “culture of death,” has never left my memory.

It is now as clear and ominous as a cancer diagnosis that the United States has descended into a “culture of death.” The value of human life has become fodder for partisan debate, and mass fatalities, whether the result of gunfire or widespread infection from a deadly disease, receive blasé shrugs of indifference from the general public. As the American death toll from Covid-19 climbed into the hundreds of thousands (it currently stands at over 800,000), the Republican Party obstructed minimal efforts to reduce loss of life, touting a childlike notion of “freedom” over the safety of human beings. Teachers, workers, the elderly and disabled, and even children were worthy of sacrifice, according to elected officials like Texas Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick and Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, for the health of the stock market, or the preservation of something called, “the American way of life.” 800,000 Americans cannot enjoy any way of life, nor can they applaud the profit maximization of the rich, because they are dead.

The man most responsible for their deaths – Donald Trump – is currently defeating Joe Biden in head-to-head polls for a 2024 rematch.

The National Center for Disease Preparedness at Columbia University estimated in October of 2020 that between 130,000 and 210,000 Covid-19 deaths were preventable, placing the blame squarely on the negligent and sociopathic anti-testing, anti-mask, anti-mitigation, and misinformation policies of the Trump administration. More recently, Dr. Deborah Birx, who served as the White House Coronavirus Response Coordinator under Trump, joined the Columbia team of researchers by arguing that Trump was responsible for, at least, 130,000 deaths. Citing her own experience at the highest level of the Trump administration, she told the US House select subcommittee on Covid-19 that the former president was more concerned with his reelection than public health; routinely dismissive, if not outright hostile, to the advice that she and other experts dispensed to prevent loss of life.

In a sane society, Birx’s testimony would bring the country to a grinding halt. At a minimum, the political and career prospects of Trump, and his enablers, would undergo absolute demolition. America’s leading institutions would banish Trump, his cabinet members, and adult children far into shame and exile, leaving them afraid to enter public circles. True justice would go further – bringing on legal investigations, as is possible in Brazil, where President Jair Bolsarno might face criminal charges for his Trump-like sabotage of his country’s pandemic response. Americans do not live in a sane society. We reside in a “culture of death.” Signs of it are everywhere, rendering Covid-19 itself, ironically, a symptom of a much larger disease.

Kyle Rittenhouse, vigilante Trump-worshiper, whose mother chauffeured him 20 miles from Antioch, Illinois to Kenosha, Wisconsin, to guard a used car lot with a high powered assault rifle, was acquitted for shooting three Black Lives Matter protestors, killing two of them. The defense’s entire case succeeded on if their insistence that the baby Brownshirt was “acting in self-defense.” Rarely do any commentators outside the courtroom take a moment to ask the obvious: What kind of civilization accepts as normal a teenager having access to a military-style firearm? Even though it is illegal for anyone under 18 to possess such a weapon, Rittenhouse’s lethal capacity is not shocking to anyone. His armed status is so pedestrian that the presiding judge of the case, whose phone blasts the Donald Trump campaign theme song, “God Bless the USA,” dismissed the weapons charge against him. Rittenhouse is not only a free man, while thousands of poor people of color rot in cells for minor crimes, but a right wing celebrity – making the talk show rounds with Tucker Carlson and Charlie Kirk, and scheduled to speak at the comically named, “America Fest 2021,” the annual convention for Turning Point USA, an organization committed to right wing student advocacy with a long track record of racism, extremism, and Islamophobia.

On November 30, 2021, Ethan Crumbley shot 11 of his classmates at Oxford High School in Oxford Township, Michigan, killing four of them. His parents are unlikely to fare as well as Rittenhouse. They are facing charges of involuntary manslaughter for providing Crumbley easy access to a firearm, even after receiving warnings that he was plotting a massacre. The rare turn of justice in the “culture of death” is laudable, but the public and media reaction to school shootings signifies a society with a deep disorder. When the Columbine shooting happened in 1999, the entire country stopped to have debates – some intelligent, some inane – about how such an atrocity could occur, and how to prevent similar mass casualty events from happing again. 22 years later, mass shootings often fail to even make front page news. Meanwhile, millions of Americans, including duly elected members of Congress, treat guns with sick reverence, even posing with them in family Christmas photos.

The glorification of violence is treated as a banality in exact accordance with Pope John Paul’s admonishment that “choices once rejected by common moral sense are gradually becoming socially acceptable.” 72 million Americans report owning a gun, but because it is illegal for law enforcement to keep a firearm ownership registry, the actual number is likely much higher. Although the US accounts for only 4 percent of the global population, its people own 40 percent of the world’s guns. Even Rittenhouse’s surviving victim was armed at the crime scene, testifying that grabbing his gun is like picking up his wallet and phone every morning before he leaves the house. According to the Mass Shooter Tracker Project, 470 mass shootings have occurred in 2021, leaving 482 dead, and 1, 927 injured. No matter how nightmarish a massacre, the American political system will not allow for the passage of more rigid and restrictive regulations on the purchasing and carrying of firearms. Whether it is a sniper shooting down concertgoers from his hotel window in Las Vegas, or a maniac executing schoolchildren in Newtown, Connecticut, Americans react by buying more guns, and stockpiling more ammunition. In the words of a recent Guardian headline, “US gun sales spiked during pandemic and continue to rise.” An instrument of death does not cause alarm in a culture of death

Acts of violence as mechanisms of a white supremacist and fascist ideology are hardly novel in the United States. It is possible to track the entire history of the country with statistics and stories of state sponsored, well-organized, and lone wolf acts of racial terrorism. Currently, the armed madhouse that has become the US is experiencing an explosion of hate crimes. On the rise since 2009, the Anti-Defamation League reports that hate crimes are becoming increasingly frequent and severe against Jewish, Black, Asian, Latino, gay, and trans Americans. The organization, which compiles one of the most sophisticated hate crime databases in the world, also criticizes law enforcement and political institutions for inadequate reporting, investigating, and punishment of said crimes. Using the ADL database, three academics concluded that counties hosting Trump rallies in 2016 experienced a 226 percent increase in hate crimes, most of them targeting – perhaps, by some magical coincidence – the same targets of Trump’s vicious ire: Blacks, Latinos, and trans people. Although the mainstream media regularly reports on hate crime statistics and incidents, the reaction of the electorate, and the Democratic Party that purports to represent the voters who are victims of fascist attacks, is tepid at best. Rather than treating politically targeted violence, and the Republican party that encourages it, as a national crisis, the mainline press prioritizes stories of Britney Spears’ conservatorship, Kayne West and Kim Kardashian’s divorce, and slight jumps in the prices of Christmas presents. Just as a pandemic and mass shootings fail to provoke shock and outrage in a “culture of death,” hate crimes produce a collective yawn – if not fatigue, then outright celebration. Republican Congressman Paul Gosar from Arizona tweeted a cartoon video of him murdering fellow member of Congress, progressive Latina Democrat Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, only to have almost his entire party defend him against House censure. Depicting the assassination of political opponents now has the sanction of one of America’s two major political parties.

The likelihood of political assassination and terrorism has increased with many sources confirming that school board officials and county election supervisors are under an avalanche of death threats from right wing lunatics who leave screaming voicemails with messages like, “I pray to God, your children die in your face.” Far from a few isolated misfits, leading specialist on terrorism and political violence, Robert Pape, reveals that 21 million Trump supportersclaim they are willing to participate in violence to achieve their ideological ends. As Christian Picciolini, former neo-Nazi and current anti-racist leader, has warned in reference to the legitimation of violence and the rising fascist threat against multiracial democracy, “Everything happening right now is the skinhead’s dream of the 1990s coming true.”

Meanwhile, the political system, like Satan in Dante’s Inferno, is shrouded in an icy circle of hell, unable to escape the cold capitalistic and militaristic “culture of death.” The masochistic Democrats struggle, and will likely fail, to pass the “Build Back Better” agenda of subsidized childcare, paid family leave, and universal pre-kindergarten, while slimy rats like Joe Manchin cite concerns over “inflation” and “deficit spending.” No such concerns apply to the bipartisan Pentagon budget – a $768 billion monstrosity that dwarfs Biden’s moderate social welfare plans. As historians often explain, Republican Presidents, such as Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon, signed budgets with comparatively robust infrastructural and social spending. The “culture of death” has grown so large and dominant that treasure wasted on bombs, fighter jets, and munitions doesn’t elicit a single protest, but mere discussion of allocating resources toward programs and agencies that might improve people’s lives causes panic.

Indifference to the pandemic, insane gun culture, dramatic rise in hate crimes, surge of fascism against America’s already weak democracy, and prioritization of war over everything else are all set against the largest and most significant manifestation of the “culture of death”: ecological destruction and the civilizational threat of a rapidly heating and severely polluted planet.

Proving that the “culture of death” spits its venom throughout the world, many countries have failed to react with necessary urgency and aggression to the escalating crises of climate change, species endangerment, and biodiversity destruction. The United States is the world’s foremost offender, home to many of the worst companies of the fossil fuel industry and a sprawl-automobile society, emitting greenhouse gases at murderous rates. Speaking of murder, the United States military consumes more hydrocarbons than most countries. Other rich and developed nations, such as China, Australia, and the United Kingdom, refuse to significantly alter their commercial activity, even if the entire world hangs in the balance. Humanity has eliminated 60 percent of animal populations since 1970, and Botanic Gardens Conservation International concludes that up to half of the world’s wild tree species are currently at risk of extinction. Doing their best to inculcate the values of a “culture of death,” political leaders at COP26, the United Nations Climate Change Conference, neglected to even discuss some of the world’s most environmentally devastating practices, such as the carbon footprint of the US military, or the deforestation and habitat destruction of big agriculture. The “culture of death” is nothing if not clever. Scientists at the Center for Biological Diversity, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, warn that “wildlife exploitation and habitat loss fuel pandemic risk.” The Center also explains that the US plays a “major role” in the global threat of habitat destruction.

Similar to the collapsing Roman Empire, the US has its own bread and circuses. At the Astroworld Music Festival that took place in Houston, Texas in November, ten concertgoers died due to stampede and riot-like crowd behavior that rapper, Travis Scott, encouraged while performing on stage. Scott, whose resume includes misogyny, homophobia, and celebrations of greed, is notorious for telling his audience to “rage,” “get wild,” and even assault each other. At the November Astroworld festival, even after several attendees sustained serious injuries from crowd crush, other Scott fans danced and blocked ambulances from reaching victims. Even a clever novelist would fail to find a better metaphor for what has become of the United States.

In his 1996 encyclical, Pope John Paul II wrote, “Moral uncertainty can in some way be explained by the gravity of today’s social problems, sometimes mitigating the responsibility of individuals, but it is no less true that we are confronted by a true structure of sin, which takes the form of a ‘culture of death.’ This culture denies solidarity and is fostered by currents that encourage a society that is excessively concerned with efficiency.” He went on to explain that all societies must radically restructure themselves to “promote the respect for life.”

I am not Catholic, and it has been a long time since I sat in Sunday school, but I still remember how to say, “Amen.”

David Masciotra is the author of five books, including Mellencamp: American Troubadour (University Press of Kentucky, 2015) and I Am Somebody: Why Jesse Jackson Matters (Bloomsbury, 2020).

USA
How the Largest Union Fight of 2021 Was Won

The road to recognition was arduous for student researchers at the University of California.

By Jess Banks and Ahmed Akhtar

American Federation of Teachers President Randi Weingarten, left, and California Federation of Teachers President Jeff Freitas, right, celebrate with students and lecturers gathered at UCLA Bruin Plaza to celebrate with a rally after a strike was averted. (Al Seib / Getty)

Last week, after decades of organizing, 17,000 student researchers across the University of California (UC) won recognition of our union, Student Researchers United–United Auto Workers (SRU-UAW). Spanning 10 campuses and the Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, we’re now the largest academic student employee union in US history, following one of the biggest new organizing drives in any sector in this century. But it wasn’t easy. For months after we petitioned for union recognition with supermajority support, UC administration refused to respect our democratic choice to unionize, despite overwhelming public and legislative pressure. Finally, 10,890 of our coworkers voted by 97.5 percent to strike unless UC dropped its trumped-up legal objections to our union—and we won.

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We’re not alone, either; workers everywhere are organizing. In victory, we join our UAW siblings at John Deere in showing what happens when we build and wield power on the shop floor. From the Starbucks workers who just voted for a union, to the thousands of workers on strike at employers like Kellogg’s and Columbia University, to the tens of thousands of UC postdocs, teaching assistants (TAs), and academic researchers bargaining contracts this year, this lesson is more timely than ever. We will meet UC at the bargaining table this spring in a powerful position, having learned firsthand the power of massive, coordinated action.

And massive, coordinated action is exactly what it will take to win the improvements befitting our essential role in UC’s core research mission. We conduct vital research on everything from cancer to climate change to Covid vaccines, all the while bringing in billions of dollars in annual research funding. Despite this, more than 50 percent of our low wages are routinely eaten up by rent alone. Other long-standing workplace issues, like health and safety protections in dangerous labs, were thrown into stark relief by the pandemic. After the initial shutdowns, student researchers (SRs) were among the first UC workers to return, operating critical equipment in labs pivoting to Covid research. When we started talking last year about our need for a greater say in workplace safety, we didn’t realize that we’d soon be voting whether to walk off the job for our union rights.

Academic workers at UC have been fighting for our rights for a quarter-century. In the 1980s and ’90s, when TAs and SRs at UC organized for a union together, UC argued that all of us were students first, not workers, and took this question to the courts. An unjust legal ruling recognized TAs as employees, but not SRs. It took another two decades of struggle to change state law and gain the right to a union of our own.

This year, faced with union authorization cards from a supermajority of SRs, UC resorted to the same playbook. In August, it refused to recognize and bargain with SRU-UAW, once again claiming that thousands of our coworkers funded by certain fellowships and grants are “students, not workers,” with no expectation of “service” to the university, and no right to organize. No matter that all SRs, regardless of funding source, work side by side in the same labs, under the same supervisors.

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All summer, SRs debated how to move forward: wait for the legal process to play out? Or pressure UC to drop its objections directly? We figured we could win at a Public Employment Relations Board hearing—eventually. But labor boards move slowly, and UC has unlimited resources to burn on union-busting law firms and endless appeals, making a mockery of the right to speedy negotiation of a first contract, which is enshrined in US labor law. Plus, with tens of thousands of our UC union siblings bargaining contracts over the coming year, we knew that our collective power would be greater with SRU recognized. So we took the fight to the boss, and began preparing to strike if necessary.


In September and October we held rallies on every campus, with over 1,500 SRs attending, and collected more than 5,500 SR signers on a resolution demanding recognition. In the process, hundreds of SR worker-organizers talked one-on-one with colleagues, helping them see that UC’s bad behavior might give us no choice but to strike. The boss held firm, but with each action we grew our network of workplace leaders across the state. And finally, we were ready to set aside 10 days in November for our biggest collective decision since signing cards last year: authorizing a strike to win our union.

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On every campus, November 10 through 19 was a whirlwind of daybreak strategy meetings, late-night phone banks, and thousands of conversations with our colleagues about the stakes of striking. But this frenzy of coordinated activity, and the 10,622 yes votes, flowed from months of patient, disciplined preparation.

Mass workplace action is never easy, and SRs faced some unique obstacles: We’re segmented into small, disconnected labs; our research is often on a long time scale, so a week on strike can set a project back by much longer; and we’re told over and over that our labor has value only to us, not to UC (remember, “students, not workers”). Sometimes we even hear that “STEM can’t be organized.” But it wasn’t hopeless—it was just hard work. And we did it by developing genuine shop floor leaders across every campus, department, cohort, and lab, who built deep workplace relationships and organizing skills throughout the year-long campaign. When the strike vote was called, they were ready for the tough conversations about rights, retaliation, and lost research.
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One leader’s faculty supervisor was tempestuous and vindictive, but the leader moved his lab mates through their fear of retribution by framing the supervisor’s meltdowns as the very reason they needed to organize. Another, an international researcher, asked each coworker individually to vote for the strike. Our international colleagues face unique precarity that can only be improved by a union; and when this leader asked his lab mates to stand in solidarity with him, they did.

There is nothing like a hard-won victory to show workers our power. For 10 days, we set our research aside and struggled for something simple and profound: the right to negotiate as equals with one of the largest and most powerful university systems in the country. We’re now poised to sit down at the bargaining table this spring alongside 30,000 other UC academic workers organized with the UAW. Without us, the University of California simply cannot function. And we know how to win.


Jess BanksJess Banks is a graduate student researcher in UC Berkeley’s mathematics department.

Ahmed AkhtarAhmed Akhtar studies physics at UC San Diego, where he has worked as a graduate student researcher and a teaching assistant.

One-third of Arab world food insecure in 2020, UN says

The UN says a spike in undernourishment in the Middle East and North Africa was observed across all income levels, in both conflict-ridden and stable countries.

Hungry men reach for bread behind barbed wire while waiting to enter Tunisia after fleeing Libya on February 28, 2011 in Ras Jdir, Tunisia. - Spencer Platt/Getty Images

Al-Monitor Staff
December 16, 2021

Nearly one-third of the Arab world’s population experienced food insecurity in 2020, according to a new report from the United Nations’ food agency.

Some 69 million in the region were undernourished in 2020, in what the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) said Thursday was a 91% increase in the past two decades. Roughly 32% of the region lacked regular access to sufficient and nutritious food. The UN agency said the spike in undernourishment was observed across all income levels, in both conflict-ridden and stable countries.

The onset of COVID-19 was a major driver of food insecurity, with 4.8 million more people undernourished in 2020 than the year before. Along with the economic impact of the pandemic, food insecurity in 2020 was triggered by protracted crisis, social unrest, climate change and poverty, the report said. FAO warned that recent trends suggest the Arab region is unlikely to reach the UN's goal of zero hunger by 2030.

“Conflicts continue to be one of the leading causes of hunger in the region,” FAO’s regional representative Abdulhakim Elwaer said in a statement.

"There may be no visible improvement in the situation this year since hunger's primary drivers will continue to drag the situation further down the road," Elwaer said.

Stunted growth among typically malnourished children under five years old was 20.5% in 2020, down from nearly 29% two decades ago. Despite the overall improvement in the region, stunting rates increased in Djibouti, Kuwait, Libya and Syria.

The region is also struggling with adult obesity, which has steadily increased since 2000. At 28.8% last year, the rate of adult obesity was more than double the global average and was especially on the rise in wealthy Arab countries.

War-torn Yemen, which is considered the Arab world’s poorest country, had the highest rate of anemia in 2020, affecting 61.5 percent of women of reproductive age.

Read more: https://www.al-monitor.com/originals/2021/12/one-third-arab-world-food-insecure-2020-un-says#ixzz7FKhSxfkx