Three Cautions for the Anti-Imperialism Movement

— by Bharat Dogra — 06/10/2023

The anti-imperialism movement has always been a very noble effort and at the same time it is an effort that is essential at a very basic level in present day conditions. Its nobility is linked to its capacity for advancing justice and equality, in the process saving many human lives. In addition the opposition to imperialism is also an essential part of the wider efforts to check the survival crisis created by several serious environmental problems led by climate change as well as weapons of mass destruction. Imperialism has an important role in creating and accentuating the survival crisis. Those efforts which are most likely to succeed in checking the survival crisis need to have an important component of opposing imperialism.

However while the centrality and significance of the role of opposing imperialism is well-established, in keeping with the needs and conditions of our times the movement of opposing imperialism must observe some important cautions.

Firstly, it should be made very clear all along that the movement is always directed only against the imperialist forces of any country behaving in imperialist ways, and never against the people of any country. At present the biggest center of imperialism and the most important and powerful imperialist country is the USA. However most of the people of the USA are also suffering from increasing difficulties which are caused essentially by the same imperialist forces becoming aggressive and unjust internally too. The assassinations of President John Kennedy and of President Allende, or of Martin Luther King and of Patrice Lumumba are related as essentially the same forces of aggression and injustice are responsible for all of these big tragedies, sometimes turning on their firepower outside the country and sometimes inside the country. What is more, the guns pointing outwards turn inwards when someone inside tries to check them from firing outside. As a result, the forces of injustice inside the biggest imperialist power too are strengthened. Hence while the forces of imperialism in the USA are unleashing great destruction on other countries, these are also unleashing destruction on their own people by increasing injustice, inequality, denial of basic needs, homelessness, racism, alienation, depression, self-harm, violence, arms proliferation, crime and incarceration. In this sense, a large number of people within the USA are also the victims of the forces of imperialism.

Such an understanding prepares the anti-imperialism movement for more specifically targeting the forces of imperialism and never the people of any country or nationality or color or creed. The anti-imperialism movement is essentially a movement for creating justice, equality and peace among all people of world, regardless of nationality, color or creed.

Secondly, particularly in the conditions of the present day world, the anti-imperialism movement must aim for solving all problems in peaceful ways and for peaceful solutions to emerge. The weapons of destruction available to the forces of imperialism are so dangerous that the path of peace is the best path for the anti-imperialism movement and the effort should always be to resolve issues in such a way that solutions based on durable peace can emerge.

Thirdly, while there is no doubt that the the most powerful and aggressive imperialist forces today are concentrated in the USA and its close allies, this does not exclude the possibility of very aggressive forces of imperialism at a future date being concentrated in some other countries, particularly China. One should be conscious of this all the time, so that there can be a constant strengthening of people against not just the imperialist forces in the USA and its major allies but against imperialist forces in any country from a future perspective as well.

There has been a lot of discussion of US preparations of a war against China in the near future before it becomes even stronger in economic, technological and military terms. Clearly in such a situation the anti-imperialism movement must be protective towards China and try it best to prevent US aggression. However this does not prevent the movement from ignoring the imperialist streak exhibited by China from time to time, and its strong territorial ambitions with the associated aggression.

In fact with the possibility always open that any big breakthrough in weapons of mass destruction technology can give a country a decisive edge at least for some years, the possibilities of either alternative centers of imperialism emerging or the USA further strengthening its imperialist grip cannot be ruled out and the anti-imperialism movement must be willing to target whatever is the most aggressive imperialist force on a priority basis.

Creating a strong anti-imperialism peaceful movement within the big centers of imperialism is a very important challenge ahead. This movement should be active on a continuing basis. Many more people here can come forward on a platform of peace rather than a platform of anti-imperialism. So the peace movement can be the bigger mass movement but the peace movement without a perspective of anti-imperialism cannot go very far. Hence the continuing presence of anti-imperialism movement is very important even for the peace movement to realize its proper potential.

Briefly, the anti-imperialism movement should try to create a wide space on the basis of three very obvious facts or truths. Firstly, the most important task today is to save the life-nurturing conditions of our planet which are threatened by very serious environmental problems led by climate change and by weapons of mass destruction. Secondly, this task cannot be accomplished without resisting and defeating the forces of imperialism because in their quest for dominance these forces of imperialism search relentlessly for more and more destructive weapons as well as for those ‘get-ahead-at-all-costs’ patterns of economic growth which generally involve more hazards and pollution. Thirdly, opposition to imperialism is a must for increasing justice and equality at world level which in turn is necessary for meeting the basic needs and for the dignity of all people. Based on this understanding, the anti-imperialism movement can attract more and more people and also create very creative linkages with several other social movements of high relevance.

Bharat Dogra is Honorary Convener, Campaign to Save Earth Now. His recent books include Planet in Peril, Protecting Earth for Children and A Day in 2071.

Sri Lanka 'technically bankrupt', seeks Chinese debt restructuring amid economic crisis

By KRISHAN FRANCIS 

(Associated Press) Jan 10 2022

Fertiliser at the centre of a dispute between Sri Lanka & China

A dispute between Sri Lanka and China is escalating, and it all centres around organic fertiliser.

The president of debt-ridden Sri Lanka has asked China for the restructuring of its loans and access to preferential credit for imports of essential goods, as the island nation struggles in the throes of its worst economic crisis, partly due to Beijing-financed projects that don’t generate revenue.

President Gotabaya Rajapaksa told visiting Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi that it would be "a great relief to the country if attention could be paid on restructuring the debt repayments as a solution to the economic crisis that has arisen in the face of the Covid-19 pandemic,” according to a statement from his office.

Rajapaksa asked Wang for a concessionary credit facility for imports so that industries could run without disruption, the statement said. He also requested assistance to enable Chinese tourists to travel to Sri Lanka within a secure bubble.

Wang and Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa, the president's brother, later visited Colombo’s Port City, a reclaimed island developed with Chinese investment, where they opened a promenade and inaugurated the sailing of 65 boats to commemorate the 65 years of diplomatic relations between the two countries.

In his speech at the Port City on Sunday, Wang said a persistent and unchecked pandemic had made economic recovery difficult and the two countries must use the anniversary to work closer together.

He did not elaborate nor announce any relief measures.

Wang arrived in Sri Lanka on Saturday from the Maldives on the last leg of a multinational trip that also took him to Eritrea, Kenya and the Comoros in East Africa.

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, left, poses for media before his meeting with Sri Lankan Prime Minister Mahinda Rajapaksa in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Sri Lanka faces one of its worst economic crises, with foreign reserves down to around US$1.6 billion, barely enough for a few weeks of imports. It also has foreign debt obligations exceeding US$7b in 2022, including repayment of bonds worth US$500 million in January and US$1b in July.

The declining foreign reserves are partly blamed on infrastructure projects built with Chinese loans that don’t make money. China loaned money to build a seaport and airport in the southern Hambantota district, in addition to a wide network of roads.

Central Bank figures show that current Chinese loans to Sri Lanka total around US$3.38b, not including loans to state-owned businesses, which are accounted for separately and thought to be substantial.

“Technically we can claim we are bankrupt now,” said Muttukrishna Sarvananthan, principal researcher at the Point Pedro Institute of Development.

“When you have your net external foreign assets have been in the red, that means you are technically bankrupt.”

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
Sri Lankan President Gotabaya Rajapaksa, left, and Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, center, inspect the Chinese funded sea reclamation Port City project in Colombo, Sri Lanka, Sunday, Jan. 9, 2022. 

(AP Photo/Eranga Jayawardena)

The situation has left households grappling with severe shortages. People wait in long lines to buy essential goods like milk powder, cooking gas and kerosene. Prices have increased sharply, and the Central Bank says the inflation rate rose to 12.1 per cent by the end of December from 9.9 per cent in November. Food inflation increased to over 22 per cent in the same period.

Because of a currency shortage, importers are unable to clear their cargo containing essentials and manufacturers are not able to buy raw materials from overseas.

Expatriate remittances have also fallen after the government ordered the mandatory conversion of foreign currency and exchange rate controls.

Ratings agency downgrades have resulted in Sri Lanka losing much of its borrowing power. In December, Fitch Ratings noted an increased probability of credit default.

The Central Bank has added a currency swap in Chinese currency worth US$1.5b to the reserves, but economists disagree whether it can be part of foreign reserves or not.

Wang’s visit has again highlighted the regional power struggle between China and India, Sri Lanka’s closest neighbour that considers the island part of its domain.

ERANGA JAYAWARDENA/AP
A Chinese national who lives in Sri Lanka photographs the surroundings of Chinese funded sea reclamation Port City project during a ceremony held to mark the visit of Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Colombo, Sri Lanka.

Before Wang spoke with Sri Lankan leaders, the top Indian diplomat in the country on Sunday morning inaugurated a train service from a station near Colombo to the north using compartments provided through an Indian loan facility.

An Indian embassy statement quoted Vinod Jacob recalling “the priority placed by Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi on ties with Sri Lanka in line with the ‘Neighbourhood First’ policy.”

He said that a recent statement by India's External Affairs Minister S Jaishankar that India would support Sri Lanka in difficult times was an affirmation of that policy in the current context.

“We can see Sri Lanka being saddled between India and China for a potential bailout package,” said political analyst Ranga Kalansooriya.

“India is dragging its feet for some time while China is trying to manipulate the situation to the maximum,” he added.

China considers Sri Lanka to be a critical link in its Belt and Road global infrastructure initiative. Relations were recently strained over a shipment of Chinese fertiliser that allegedly contained harmful bacteria, and business agreements that were inked with China’s rivals, the United States and India.

Kalansooriya said that China was unlikely to bail Sri Lanka out of its economic crisis. “They will look for more business opportunities, fishing in the troubled waters of economic doldrums in the country,” he said.

Bukharin on State Capitalism and Imperialism - Leftcom
https://www.leftcom.org/.../bukharin-on-state-capitalism-and-imperialism
2020-08-21 · As we have already noted, for Bukharin, imperialism and state capitalism were linked to militarism and the inevitability of more wars. As he says in the article which follows, “Imperialism, militarism, state capitalism – this holy trinity of capitalist barbarism must be blown apart by the proletariat”.
 Imperialism was written in the first half of 1916 and published in mid-1917; Imperialism and World Economy was not published until several months later, but it was …

Ossinsky on Bukharin's Imperialism and the World …
https://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2019-09-11/ossinsky-on-bukharin-s...
2019-09-11 · For Bukharin the key features of the new phase of capitalism were imperialism and state capitalism. Lenin borrowed freely from Bukharin in his own “popular outline” in Imperialism – the Highest Stage of Capitalism but did not see that state capitalism was not a stage on the way to socialism. Bukharin made it quite clear in several places that for him state capitalism …

Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism ...
https://socialistworker.org/2008/12/02/imperialism-the-highest-stage...
2008-12-02 · According to Bukharin, imperialism is the result of two conflicting tendencies in modern capitalism. Competition tends to give rise to the concentration and centralization of capital, and as this...

Nikolai Bukharin: Imperialism and World Economy
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1917/imperial/index.htm
World Economy and the "National" State. Part 3 - Imperialism as the Reproduction of Capitalist Competition on a Larger Scale. 9. Imperialism as an Historic Category 10. Reproduction of the Process of Concentration and Centralisation on a World Scale 11. Means of Competitive Struggle, and State Power. Part 4 - The Future of Imperialism and World ...

Toward a Theory of the Imperialist State - Marxists
https://www.marxists.org/archive/bukharin/works/1915/state.htm
Thus, state capitalism is the completed form of a state-capitalist

The New Imperialist

Imperialism is the highest form of capitalism. Lenin

China apparently has embraced Lenins axiom as only they could as a State Capitalist Autarky. Now sitting at the international table of imperialism; the WTO, China today is colonizing Africa as its resource base, just as the old European Imperialist Powers did in the past two centruries.

The death of the so called Super Powers conflict with the end of the Cold War has in the era of globalization led to what Kautsky called Ultra Imperialism. And China is ruthlessly applying the logic of Imperialism in Africa. Far more so than even the old Imperialists ever did.

Its rapacious need for resources,oil, gas, and ivory, which has increased the poaching of Elephants, makes Africa, poor Africa, the new colony of Imperialist China. The result is the same old same old, China's new Fordist economy relies upon underdeveloped Africa.

Africa will remain underdeveloped and a battlefield of Imperialism until some country on the contient develops its own Fordist economy.

Chinese goods flood SADC, there maybe benefits

More than 93 percent of these imports were manufactured goods. By comparison, regional exports to China, which also saw a dramatic increase from 1.3 billion US Dollars to over 8.2 billion US Dollars were dominated by raw material.

What Do the Chinese Want?

This article is about one part of the Chinese plan for economic independence, not interdependence, in a global economy in which China, itself, has become, perhaps, the driving engine of demand for commodities. A place formerly held, and for a very long time, by the United States, and still held by the United States in the minds of many investment advice-giving financial analysts. The part of the Chinese plan for economic independence I wish to discuss can be called the gathering and control of the natural resources necessary for a modern industrial economy.

The Chinese do not believe that the end result of their, strictly supervised by the government and intentionally limited, foray into a mixed planned and market driven economy should be that anyone with money can buy, and has the right to buy, anything they want. They believe that a great nation must first and foremost control sufficient natural resources and energy to be independent of the needs or desires of any other nation. They have entered into the global marketplace only to fulfill that purpose. This is the basis of what I call the ‘gold war’ that has supplanted the earlier unsuccessful cold war waged by the late Soviet Union. The Chinese have realized, as the Russians never did, that if a nation hopes to be powerful and respected it must first be economically self sufficient and bring first to its own people the superior benefits it claims for its political system as a global role model.

China’s scramble for Africa finds a welcome in Kenya

China Makes Trade Links With Africa

PanAfrica: China-Africa Trade Up 72 Percent

China’s empire-builders sweep up African riches


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US vs. China: Who Really Stands for Peace?

By Megan Russell

May 6, 2024

Source: Pressenza

Image by Derzsi Elekes Andor, Creative Commons 3.0



Thousands of innocent civilians are dying– men, women, children– being bombed to death as they sit in their homes. Thousands of Ukrainian and Russian men have been unwillingly drafted into the military, torn from their families, forced to kill each other, and forced to die. Images and videos of cold-blooded genocide plague our news in a constant loop, and our government has the audacity to sit in their comfy little chairs and not only deny what is happening, but to also order more money sent to continue these horrors.

The US has a long history of involvement in overseas conflict; this isn’t the first time we’ve had to fight back against militants in power, and it won’t be the last. Now, the US clearly has its sights set on China. Billions of dollars have already been spent militarizing the Asia-Pacific, surrounding China with military bases and conducting threatening war games– the US military’s version of peacocking.

The first step of war, as US military elites are well aware, is information warfare. Currently, the media is spouting hateful rhetoric towards China, contributing to a giant spike in Asian American hate crime. Our political leaders accuse China of everything the US is guilty of: preparing for war, spying, stifling business. The government is so paranoid they’ve even banned the Chinese social media app Tiktok– an unprecedented divergence from our first amendment rights.

We’re at a critical junction point in history. Either we let the US continue to spout narratives of fear and division and drive us towards war, or we sift through the lies, raise the truth, and fight back against the imperialist elite.

It’s time to re-navigate the situation. Let’s step back and debunk some claims.

Statement: China wants war.

Evidence:

China has, throughout its thousands of years of history, long stood for peace and harmony. Modern political ideology is interwoven with ancient Chinese philosophy and the belief that war is a failure of the state.

But let’s look at something nobody can dispute: what are US politicians saying, and how does this compare to what Chinese politicians are saying?

The Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs recently published a report detailing five objectives China had for Secretary Blinken’s visit this week, reflecting the ‘Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence’, a foundational pillar of Chinese foreign policy. One of those objectives was for “the China-US relationship should be stabilized, improved, and move forward along a path of stability, health, and sustainability.” They also advocated for mutual cooperation, strengthening dialogue, and effectively managing differences.

Meanwhile, numerous US political and military figures have said the opposite, calling for the US to raise arms and surround China with military bases, missiles, and troops. They cite a future war as almost inevitable, declaring that China will “invade” Taiwan by 2027. Just this month, Xi Jinping met with the former president of Taiwan, Ma Ying-jeou, to express their mutual consensus to stand for peace, agreeing that war “would be an unbearable burden for the Chinese nation.”

To summarize, China does not want war. Prominent political figures and spokespersons have repeatedly pronounced their adherence to peace, and have implored the US numerous times to work towards mutually beneficial cooperation rather than current antagonistic practices.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Statement: The US stands for peace.

Evidence:

You might be thinking: who has ever made that statement? Quite a few, believe it or not.

We’re going to look at the statement in the context of China, and for a moment, leave behind all the other wars the US has been involved in and actively pushed for.

The United States spends more money on defense spending than the ten following countries combined. That’s around $850 billion dollars per year– and every year, the amount goes up. In 2024, the budget request was for $911 billion dollars.

A good amount of this money has been spent building military bases in the Asia-Pacific, surrounding China with threatening long-range missiles and other defense systems. As it stands, the US has over 750 military bases around the world, with 313 bases in East Asia alone. Meanwhile, China has no military bases in the entire Western hemisphere.

US military strategy in the Asia-Pacific operates along one dominant strategy: militarize, militarize, militarize. Policy experts continue to recommend “porcupining” nearby nations, including Japan, the Philippines, and Guam. In doing so, they have repeatedly harmed the natural environment, destroying protected reefs and dumping harmful chemicals into the ocean. Many locals denounce US military presence and rising militarism, terrified they may be pulled into a conflict they want no part in.

The truth is, the US has a long history of war and imperialism. Including militaristic and covert operations, the US has invaded over 50 countries since its inception. Since WW2, the US has started wars in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq, all of which were unmitigated disasters. Adversely, China has not fought a war in 45 years.

The US pushing for a war with China is not new or surprising, but we have to do everything we can to stop the push before it escalates. Tell Biden administrations that China is Not Our Enemy and sign the petition telling Congress to vote NO on militarizing the Philippines.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Statement: The US needs to protect itself by surrounding China with weapons.

Evidence:

Policy experts and military professionals adhere to the concept of deterrence with a disconcerting level of zeal. Logically, and according to their favorite Game Theory 101 class, it makes sense. One is less likely to attack if they are aware how strong their opponent is– aware they would face severe repercussions that outweigh any potential gain.

However, the logic goes sour when you recognize a few basic facts:One, China is not an opponent and does not wish to be an opponent.
Two, hyper-militarizing the Asia-Pacific makes war more likely, not less. It’s not deterrence– it’s provocation.
Three, the US is trampling on the desires of local populations and harming the environment while at it.

China does not want war, as we’ve covered, and has expressed its concern that US militarization of the region can lead to increased risk for misunderstanding and misjudgement– which could easily escalate into conflict. The US needs to focus on prevention rather than deterrence, by strengthening dialogue, reaffirming commitments to peace, and fostering a partnership with China on other potentially catastrophic issues, such as environmental protection and nuclear disarmament.

Ultimately, there are no gains to be had by throwing billions of tax dollars into militarizing the Asia-Pacific. What the US fails to realize is that there are people living on the land they are abusing. The environment is protected– and sacred– and the military-industrial complex has no place rearing its ugly head where it does not belong.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Statement: The US needs to “beat” China to maintain power and position.

Evidence:

First, it’s important to acknowledge the origins of such a claim. Why, exactly, does the US need to maintain its hegemonic status over China, and why are our politicians and policy experts so obsessed with the idea?

There are three terrible, powerful factors at play here: colonialism, imperialism, and racism.

Colonialism: The US has a steep history of adhering to colonialist doctrines. Even its inception was a story of colonialism, running Native Americans off their indigenous lands to take over. Over the course of its comparatively short lifetime, the US has seized Puerto Rico, Guam, Samoa, the Philippines, Hawaii, and more. The US government feels it has the right to continue abusing these ties, building military bases against the desire of local indigenous populations.

Imperialism: US imperialism is essentially the belief in the expansion of American political, economic, military, and cultural influences. It ties into colonialism in many ways, reflecting the belief in racial and cultural superiority.

Racism: Racism is one of the driving factors of US imperialism and colonialism– the glamorization of “the white savior” to lead “others” out of barbarity and into salvation. Sinophobia has run rampant in the US for many years, leaking into American politics and media. Since the 2020 global pandemic, Asian American hate crimes have been on the rise.

All three tie together into a twisted undercurrent of thought running below the surface of US foreign policy. While US politicians push us towards confrontation for the sake of preserving a US hegemony, China reports that, “We firmly believe that great power competition should not be the dominant theme of this era, nor can it solve the problems faced by China, the US, and the world.”

Yikes. That’s a stiff departure from Biden’s “we want competition with China” State of the Union speech, and an even worse departure from former Deputy National Security Advisor Matt Pottinger and Congressman Mike Gallagher who say, “The United States shouldn’t manage competition with China; it should win it.” In doing so, they also claim that “the US needs to accept that achieving it will require greater friction in US-China relations.” This is nothing short of an admittance: US political leaders are so concerned with winning some power competition that they’ll risk going to war– push for it, even.

RAND policy experts punched the numbers. Even a minor conflict could lead to a 20-35% economic shrinkage of China’s economy. This would devastate the lives of millions of Chinese citizens. Recovery would take years. It’s no wonder the US imperial agenda is pushing for war.

Conclusion: FALSE!

Imagining a better world…

The US has spent billions and billions of dollars preparing for war with China. Imagine what the world would look like if those billions had been spent elsewhere– on infrastructure, poverty alleviation, cultivating a peace economy, environmental sustainability initiatives, pushing for love and mutual respect rather than division, fear, and hate…

There is a world where the US and China are capable of a respectful, cooperative relationship, where differences are set aside in accordance with a bigger picture: how can we make the world better for each and every person? How can we cultivate peace? How can we preserve the natural environment and ward off climate change?

Humans have been on this earth for a long time, and yet, we still don’t know what it would be like to live a life of peace. War infects every community, influencing the ways we live and interact with the world. It’s up to us, as citizens of the most militaristic country in the world, to put an end to our government’s rampage of imperialism and fear.

 

Is Geopolitics Deterministic?

The US, China, and Taiwan context

by Kim Petersen / January 22nd, 2024

In an online video interview, libertarian judge Andrew Napolitano asked University of Chicago political scientist and international relations professor John Mearsheimer to “translate” president Xi’s remarks in his New Year speech.

The professor answered, “There is no question that the Chinese want Taiwan back. They want to make Taiwan part of China…. There is also no question that the Taiwanese don’t want to be part of China. They want to be a sovereign state. These are two irreconcilable goals.”

First, it must be stated that much of what Mearsheimer says about geopolitical issues (particularly, with respect to the United States’ agenda in the world) comes across as arrived at by honest, factual, realistic appraisal.

It is axiomatic that the People’s Republic of China (PRC) would like the Republic of China (ROC/Taiwan) fully back in the fold. As far as the PRC is concerned, Taiwan is de jure a part of China, and the United Nations and 181 countries concur that there is only one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. This includes the United States. Mearsheimer’s words elide this reality. His words also appear in contradiction since he admits that Taiwan is not sovereign. Taiwan is not a country. Mearsheimer’s wording aligns with the oleaginous US position toward the PRC and Taiwan.

In US diplomacy, words too often do not match facts or deeds. The US signed on to the One China policy. However, because of the increasing alarm that the economic, technological, military advancement of the PRC is eclipsing the US’s arrogant claim to full spectrum dominance, the US has precipitated, what looks on its face to be, an abject desperation to maintain its place in at the top of the world order, as it defines this order.

As for Mearsheimer’s evidence-free claim of there being “no question that the Taiwanese don’t want to be part of China.” That is disputable. Legacy media will point to the recent presidential victory of the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP)’s Lai Ching-te to buttress this claim of Taiwan’s desire for sovereignty.

While Lai led with 40.05% of the vote, the opposition Guomindang (KMT) presidential candidate Hou Yu-ih received 33.49% of the votes, and the Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) candidate Ko Wen-je received 26.45%. So roughly 60% of the electorate’s votes did not go to the DPP. Earlier Ko had proposed a failed KMT-TPP alliance, which suggests something other than a sovereignist agenda for 60% of Taiwanese voters.

Looking at the voting results might, therefore, lead one to refute the “no question” Taiwan wants to be separate from the PRC claim to be itself questionable.

Mearsheimer continued, “The interesting question, at this point in time, is whether or not the Chinese are going to try to conquer Taiwan by military force.”

To most of the world Taiwan is a part of One China. It is obvious that the PRC is not bent on militarily conquering Taiwan. It need not unless Taiwan crosses its red lines. Approaching these red lines is usually done in collusion with the US. This points to a historical fact that the reason Taiwan is in a sovereignty limbo to this day is because the US used its naval might to back the KMT and Jiang Jieshi (Chiang Kai-shek) at the time of a militarily exhausted China. One ought to consider that Taiwan has been a part of China much, much longer (since 230 CE) than the geopolitical entity called the United States of America has existed based on its dispossession and genocide of the Original Peoples. Therefore, American proclamations about the PRC and Taiwan must be skeptically scrutinized since they are based in hypocrisy and desperation, with crucial facts confined to the memory hole, to anchor in place the US conception of a world order. Mearsheimer does not dwell on the relevancy of this reality when discussing the PRC and Taiwan.

Mearsheimer reveals his patriotic realism: “We [the US] are not only concerned about maintaining Taiwan as an independent state because it is a democracy and we have long had good relations with it, but we also think keeping Taiwan on our side of the ledger is very important for strategic reasons…”

Mearsheimer needs to define democracy and support his contention that the US is supportive of democracy, let alone whether the US is a legitimate democracy. Genuine democracy represents the will of the people.

Taiwan was for decades a KMT military dictatorship which resorted to mass murder to consolidate its power. Finally, in 1996, the electoral vote came to Taiwan. Yet, does a vote every few years mean a country is a democracy? Is that all it takes?

Does Mearsheimer really believe that the US supports democracy? Is supporting so-called color revolutions indicative of an adherence to democracy? Did the US backing of the Maidan coup to overthrow the elected president Viktor Yanukovych indicate a support of democracy? The examples are myriad.

Is blocking a presidential contender from receiving votes in certain states (from Ralph Nader to Donald Trump) indicative of a fidelity to democracy? Or when a government ignores the will of a majority to follow a policy rejected by the masses, such as the US government’s vindictive agenda against publisher Julian Assange? So what does Mearsheimer mean when he posits an American support for Taiwan predicated on it being a democracy?

Does the PRC not have a claim to being a democracy? Does China not pursue policies for the good of the masses of Chinese? In his compellingly argued book, Democracy: What the West Can Learn from China, Wei Ling Chua makes the case for China as a democracy based on its devotion to the well-being of all its citizens. Harvard University’s Ash Center found in its last survey in 2016 that 95.5% of those surveyed reported being either “relatively satisfied” or “highly satisfied” with the Communist Party of China government.

Even if China attempted to take Taiwan back now, Mearsheimer opined, “I think Xi Jinping has lots of domestic problems that are more important to deal with at this juncture, and furthermore, I don’t think the Taiwanese [he meant Chinese] have the military capability to take Taiwan back at the this point in time.” (Read “How Does Technology Factor in for US Militarism Toward China?”)

Mearsheimer is opining through most of the interview. This is adduced by framing many opinions with “I think.” Even non-nuclear war simulations that predict a US victory point out that it would come at a staggering price. Would the US citizenry be willing to pay the price?

Mearsheimer is convinced that regardless of the cost of a military confrontation between China and the US that “… the United States is definitely committed to containing China and keeping Taiwan out of China’s hands, then the United States would axiomatically fight war with China over Taiwan.”

He predicates this commitment on the comments of, with all due respect, a brain addled president.

Napolitano asks, “Is China a threat to the United States of America?”

Mearsheimer sidesteps the “threat” and states “the Chinese are a serious competitor.”

“Furthermore, the Chinese are interested not only in taking back Taiwan, they are interested in dominating the South China Sea and the East China Sea; and the South China Sea is of immense importance to the United States and to the world economy. And the United States does not want China to take the South China Sea back or take control of it, or take control of the East China Sea. We’re opposed to that. More generally, we do not want China to be the dominant power in Asia.”

“Taking back,” says Mearsheimer. In so stating, Mearsheimer is acknowledging Taiwan was removed from China. It was removed by Japanese imperialism. And that removal was enforced after World War II by the US against its WWII ally, China.

And what does the professor mean by “dominate”? How is China dominating these waters? Is that not what the US attempts by sending war ships into the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Persian Gulf, South China Sea, and the East China Sea? (Read “Who has Sovereignty in the South China Sea?”) Does China prevent innocent passage of shipping through these waters?
Does China prevent innocent passage of shipping through these waters? Noteworthy is a legal position that holds that military transit requires China’s approval.

Mearsheimer: “But China naturally wants to be the dominant power in Asia just like we want to be the dominant power in our backyard…”

Naturally, as if this is ineluctable. And again, this word dominate? The US dominates by having other countries adhere to its coercive demands, especially commercial demands, (read John Perkins’ Confessions of an Economic Hit Man by for elaboration), by situating its preferred people in charge in targeted countries (e.g., splitting Korea and transplanting the dictator Syngman Rhee from the US to South Korea, supporting Ngo Dinh Diem in South Vietnam before later abandoning him, and the installment of the unpopular Ayad Allawi as prime minister in Iraq).

The US is ensconced on ethnically cleansed Indigenous territory. It supported a corporate coup against the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893 and apologized for this in 1993, but still the US continues to occupy Hawai’i. There are also the cases of Puerto Rico, Guam, Saipan, Palau, the Chagos archipelago, the Marshall Islands, and others.

According to the reasoning proffered by Mearsheimer, the US was predetermined to pursue building an empire. And in his reasoning the US is unexceptional in this regard because China’s eventual imperialist path is also likewise predetermined.

Mearsheimer acknowledges that “China is ambitious for good reasons on their part, and the United States is committed to limiting China’s ambitions for good strategic reasons on its part.”

Usually to be ambitious is considered in a positive vein: learn all you can, develop, become independent, become a leader. However, in Mearsheimer’s wording one assumes ambition to be negative, as in dominating others and halting the ambitions of others, as the US wants to do to China. Limiting China’s ambitions — so much for win-win, as China is committed to. And why is limiting China good strategic reasoning by the US? Doesn’t the US trumpet so-called free markets?

Napolitano picks up on this and asks: “What are the reasons for limiting China’s ambitions if the ambitions are commercial in nature?”

Mearsheimer points to determinism,

And you know how the United States behaves. The United States is a highly aggressive state that runs around the world using its power quite liberally. Why do you think that if China had a powerful military that it wouldn’t do the same thing? The United States just doesn’t want any other power on the planet to be more powerful than it is. I think that any other country on the planet, if it had its druthers, would want to be the most powerful state in the system. And the reason is that the international system [Which system is Mearsheimer referring to: that overseen by the United Nations or the so-called rules based order? — KP] is a really dangerous place. It is in many ways a brutal jungle. All you have to do is look at what is happening to the Palestinians. If you were the Palestinians, wouldn’t you want your own state, and wouldn’t you want that your state to be really powerful, so that nobody, in effect, could mess around with you? I think the Chinese are driven by this mentality? [italics added]

Mearsheimer rejects that China’s reasons are just commercial. He posits instead a geopolitical determinism. Freedom for a country to choose its direction in the world apparently does not exist. Nation states are bound to follow a determined trajectory.

Mearsheimer assumes China will follow the US trajectory. He asks, “Why do you think that if China had a powerful military that it wouldn’t do the same thing?” [italics added]

Why did the Soviet Union dissolve? A commonly heard answer is that the military power that the Soviet Union once was was brought to its economic knees due to military overspending. Why is the US’s economic preeminence challenged by a serious competitor now? Does China have 700 to 900 foreign military bases (numbers vary according to source, but a lot)? This must cause a serious outpouring of money. Maybe that is why China wouldn’t pursue the same folly as the US? Moreover, China is steadfastly promoting peaceful win-win relations between and among countries. China’s economic success is based on these win-win relationships. By engaging in win-win relations, China wins and the other country wins. There is no need to dominate. China is able to receive the commodities, materials, and services that it desires (except when a competitor decides to limit “free trade”), and it continues to prosper as does its partner country.

Of course the Chinese don’t want to suffer another century of humiliation (but does that mean the Chinese want to oppress others as the West have been doing?) Besides, wasn’t Vietnam syndrome humiliating? Wasn’t the US military withdrawal from Afghanistan humiliating?

Relationships of domination and humiliation are not win-win. One side will be aggrieved in such a relationship and will seek another relationship, and more likely elsewhere with a trustworthy partner. It seems that China is aware of this dynamic.

Mearsheimer posits how the US should deal with China:

“I think the United States should go to great lengths to contain China.” Contain, meaning “to prevent China from dominating the South China Sea, to prevent China from taking Taiwan, and to prevent China from dominating the East China Sea,” and to make good relations with China’s neighbors in furtherance of this US objective; and avoid provoking a war with China.

Said the professor, “We should try to roll back Chinese military power; the United States should manage China-US relations to avoid war.” In other words, the US should dominate China, as is natural, according to the professor.

Given the multitude of wars carried out by the US abroad, it is surely self-evident that if a nation state wants to avoid wars and does not have a powerful ally, then a certain level of a defensive capability is a sine qua non. For the aggressive US, by far the highest spending military-industrial complex on the planet, to call out the strengthening of another country’s military, especially a country frequently excoriated and threatened by US government officials, must be viewed as blatant hypocrisy.

Hence, it is quite a conundrum Mearsheimer lays out: avoiding war by rolling back another country’s military power by virtue of it having greater military power. Supposedly, in this scenario, China will accede to the US curtailment (“rolling back”) of Chinese military might and not be provoked to war; it will give up its national aspiration to bring Taiwan fully back into the Chinese nation; it will allow itself to be humiliated once again by a foreign nation. Paradoxically, this scenario also calls on China to reject geopolitical determinism? It sounds a lot like Mearsheimer has constructed a pretzel of contradictions. How sensible, how probable is what the professor proffers?

Mearsheimer asserts that China seeks power that is self-serving – that is, power that is not shared as in a win-win scenario: “… We have a vested interest in not letting China shift the balance of power in its favor, and, therefore against us, in a major way.”

This raises many questions and requires elucidation. Who is the “we” here? One assumes Mearsheimer means the US. Is it in the “vested interest” of the masses in the US? It must be because to be vested otherwise would be undemocratic. While in the US millions sleep in their cars or under bridges each night, scrape through garbage receptacles for sustenance during the day, and beg for handouts, China has eliminated such extreme poverty. Shouldn’t that be a signal for the impoverished strata in other societies?

China is not the enemy. China is not perfect, and it doesn’t profess to be. It does not profess to be an indispensable nation. It does not proclaim to be a beacon on the hill. It does not list as a goal full spectrum dominance. Mearsheimer apparently thinks that the evolution of the capitalist US must also apply to socialist China. Nonetheless, it would seem more accurate to portray China, which in the earliest stage of socialism, as an alternative model to US capitalism, militarism, imperialism, and dominance.

Other nations state should seriously consider how socialism matched with their country’s characteristics might function for them.

• See also Kim Petersen, “Obstacles to the Peaceful Reintegration of Taiwan into the People’s Republic of China: Interview with author Wei Ling Chua.”

Kim Petersen is an independent writer. He can be emailed at: kimohp at gmail.com. Read other articles by Kim.

US vs China for Global Hegemony

China differs from Japan in '80s: politics combines with potential for growth

The United States' trade deficit with China hit $162 billion last year, making it the largest imbalance ever recorded with a single country. This year's deficit is already running 32 per cent above last year's pace, and political pressure is heating up to put tighter restrictions on imports from China.That is why Chinese currency reforms take on much greater importance, that the Chinese might have learned from the Japanese to resist U.S.-led political pressure for currency revaluation. Japan ran into trouble in the late 1980s, in part by abdicating control over the yen and letting the dollar-yen conversion soar from 259 in 1985 to 121 by the end of 1987. Many blame that for setting the stage for an asset bubble that eventually collapsed in Japan.There are also significant political differences between the two. While the Chinese have been more open to foreign investment than Japan, there are some concerns that the communist political structure means that the Chinese won't embrace all kinds of foreign involvement such as an American company buying a big Chinese company. In addition, Standard & Poor's chief economist David Wyss points out that China's huge population - which he estimates is 10 times as large as Japan's - means that China has the capability of taking over world production of just about everything.

CHINA REPLACING THE UNITED STATES AS WORLD'S LEADING CONSUMER

China developed it's Three Worlds Geo Political Policy to combat American and Russian Hegemony back in the 1970's about the same time after Mao's death that the slow privatization of the State began.

Under the post Mao regime, the Three Worlds Policy acted as the basis of China's international relations. The Reforms of Deng Zhao Ping, and others kicked off the transition from a State Capitalist economy, to a mixed market economy. Anyone outside a few misquided Stalinists and Trotskyists who still believes that China is in anyway socialist and not an emerging capitalist economy is sadly deluded.

Chinese stocks surge as government's shareholder reforms advance

You can't have trusts, and stockholders in a socialist economy, these are the symptoms of industrial capitalism as outlined by Marx, Lenin, and Hilferding. China has moved beyond being a state capitalist economy, into being an industrialized monoploy capitalist economy. Which even the old left at Monthly Review has come to recognize.

China and Socialism: Market Reforms and Class Struggle
Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett
Monthly Review July-August 2004, Volume 56 — Number 3

Unlike Social Democratic mixed economies in Europe, the Chinese model is not that much different from the MITTA in Japan. Today China is applying the Three Worlds Policy to its economic clout in the world economy in order to bolster its polticial and economic hegemony in the Asian Pacific and into the Middle East, The regions of the Stans, Afghanistan,Kazahstan, Krygistan, etc., and into Africa.

PetroKazakhstan sold for $4.18 billion
CALGARY -- Canadian-based oil company PetroKazakhstan Inc., which placed itself on the auction block, announced Monday it has entered into an agreement to be purchased by a subsidiary of China National Petroleum Corporation in a deal worth $4.18 billion US.

Japan could be defeated because it operates within the global economy. China's isolationism allowed it to do what Japan and Russia couldn't, develop its internal market operations to rely on external investment and distribution while having the backing of the surplus value produced under State Capitalism. China's privatization has the backing of the state, and it is rapidly creating not a free market but monopoly capitalism as a result of large scale fordist industrial production.

Center for International Private Enterprise
Economic Reform Today
Globalization, Trade and Democracy
Number 3, 1997
Reforming China's Trading System
by Will Martin

In other words the surplus value is now becoming exchange value in the global marketplace, while internal reforms have less of an impact on the state and politics, as they do on the new Chinese 'market' of monopoly capitalism. Capitalism does not need democracy to function. And China is proving that. WTO China Updates

China and the world economy
From T-shirts to T-bonds
Jul 28th 2005
From The Economist
Beijing, not Washington, increasingly takes the decisions that affect workers, companies, financial markets and economies everywhere

Hence the urgency of the Americans to secure their place in the Alberta Tar Sands and in the global battle with Chinese capital over oil companies.

US To Raid Oil Sands

Americas Oil Security: Alberta's Tar Sands

Chinese President set to visit Canada
Coincidentally while US VP and Halliburton Consultant Dick Cheney will be visitng Alberta's Tar Sands.

China appears to notch a win in oil race
PetroKaz deal could reinforce country's presence in region
Rudyard Kipling and other 19th century writers called it the Great Game: British-held India and Czarist Russia playing out their imperialist ambitions on the vast and largely uncharted black hole of Central Asia that lay between them. More than a century later, there's a new "Great Game" under way in Central Asia, and the prize is one of the planet's last oil frontiers. Russia to the North, India to the South, China to the East and the United States all want a piece of the oil-rich countries of the Caspian Sea basin, including the mainly Muslim former Soviet republics of Kazakhstan, Azerbaijan, Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan. Yesterday, a unit of China National Petroleum Corp. struck a $4.18-billion (U.S.) deal to buy Calgary-based PetroKazakhstan Inc. and its roughly 150,000 barrels a day of oil production in Kazakhstan. The apparent loser in the bidding was India's Oil and Natural Gas Corp.

Venezuela's oil company sets sights on China
Venezuela's oil company opened an office in China, a client that is becoming increasingly important to the oil-rich South American country, the state news agency reported yesterday. Oil Minister Rafael Ramirez, who is visiting China, told the Bolivarian News Agency the new office in Beijing will serve as a "bastion for forging relations with new strategic partners." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez has promoted a closer relationship with China, India and other Asian countries in an effort to secure new markets for oil aside from the United States. Venezuela currently ships 68,000 barrels of oil per day to China, compared 12,300 barrels daily last year. AP

Unlike Japan, China views this as much as an economic war as one by any other name. Or in Clauswitzian terms; War is international economics by any other name, and the USA is no longer the lone hegemon in this field. China unlike the USA plans in terms of long wave strategies, as does Japan, which leaves the US vulnerable to eventual economic, military and political defeat in the Asian Pacific Region as well as in the currently contested region of the 'Stans. US imperialism is subject to the limitation of a national isolationist sensibility, while China has no such compunction.

''Setting the Stage for a New Cold War: China's Quest for Energy Security''
However, just as China has for centuries engaged in competition for leadership of Asia, the developing world and status on the world stage, so the need for energy security has now raised the possibility of further competition and confrontation in the energy sphere. This competition has so far been limited to the economic sphere through state-owned oil and gas companies such as China Petroleum & Chemical Corporation (Sinopec), China National Petroleum Corporation (C.N.P.C.), its subsidiary PetroChina and China National Offshore Oil Corporation (C.N.O.O.C.). However, as oil prices rise and China imports an increasing amount of its energy needs, the competition is likely to spill over into the political and military spheres. There are already indications of this.

China: middle kingdom, world centre
Le Monde Diplomatique August 2005
China has announced that the yuan will no longer be pegged to the dollar; greater currency flexibility will permit Beijing to use monetary policy to control its economy. And the entry of its enormous labour force into the global economy will change the world balance of trade. China wants to bypass the Japanese-United States alliance in Asia and at the United Nations, and, through asymmetrical diplomacy, become a different kind of world power.

China: Containment Won't Work By Henry A. Kissinger
Nevertheless, ambivalence has suddenly reemerged. Various officials, members of Congress and the media are attacking China's policies, from the exchange rate to military buildup, much of it in a tone implying China is on some sort of probation. To many, China's rise has become the most significant challenge to U.S. security.Military imperialism is not the Chinese style. Clausewitz, the leading Western strategic theoretician, addresses the preparation and conduct of a central battle. Sun Tzu, his Chinese counterpart, focuses on the psychological weakening of the adversary. China seeks its objectives by careful study, patience and the accumulation of nuances -- only rarely does China risk a winner-take-all showdown.It is unwise to substitute China for the Soviet Union in our thinking and to apply to it the policy of military containment of the Cold War. The Soviet Union was heir to an imperialist tradition, which, between Peter the Great and the end of World War II, projected Russia from the region around Moscow to the center of Europe. The Chinese state in its present dimensions has existed substantially for 2,000 years. The Russian empire was governed by force; the Chinese empire by cultural conformity with substantial force in the background. At the end of World War II, Russia found itself face to face with weak countries along all its borders and unwisely relied on a policy of occupation and intimidation beyond the long-term capacity of the Russian state

''China's Geostrategy: Playing a Waiting Game''
t is common knowledge that China is the most important ascending world power, and one that has only begun to realize its economic and military potential. Before the World Trade Center bombings on September 11, 2001, neoconservative strategists in Washington identified China as the most significant future threat to U.S. interests and defined the Sino-American relation as one of "strategic competition" rather than "strategic partnership." Although the "war on terrorism" has taken precedence over the longer term conflict with China in Washington's geostrategy, the neoconservatives' pre-9/11 judgment was well founded and remains so.

The "ruling party" -- as the Communists in Beijing now call themselves -- sees China's ultimate interest as becoming the undisputed regional power center in East and Southeast Asia, and a major influence -- along with India -- in South Asia, and -- along with Russia -- in Central Asia. In order to achieve its goals, Beijing will have to edge Washington out of Asia by incorporating Taiwan and rendering Washington's security guarantees for Japan and South Korea less credible. Beijing's strategy puts Washington on the defensive with the expectation that, as time goes on, the balance of power will shift inexorably in Beijing's favor. That is why Washington's current National Security Strategy posits a window of opportunity of about a decade for the U.S. to achieve permanent strategic supremacy in the world.

At present, China is what historian John Gittings calls a "status-quo power that often punches below its weight in international politics." That is a realistic position for a power to take that expects its situation to improve over time, as it builds up its economy and military to full potential. For the moment, Beijing's interests are best served by adopting a "defensive" posture and a foreign policy geared to promoting stability. That is likely to change to a more assertive stance the more that China's power resources increase.

Beijing says it has right to develop South China Sea islands

Tue, March 22, 2022, 



China on Tuesday said it has the right to develop islands in the South China Sea, responding to criticism from the U.S. on Sunday that Beijing had fully militarized three islands in the region.

Speaking to reporters on Tuesday, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin called the islands "necessary national defense facilities" within Chinese territory in line with international law, according to The Associated Press.

Wang then criticized the U.S. of aiming to "stir up trouble and make provocations," which "seriously threatens the sovereignty and security of coastal countries and undermines the order and navigation safety in the South China Sea."


On Sunday, Adm. John C. Aquilino, the head of U.S. Indo-Pacific Command, said China had fully armed three small islands with anti-ship and anti-aircraft missile systems, lasers, jamming equipment and fighter jets.

Aquilino said Beijing was flexing its military muscles but also contradicted past assurances from Chinese President Xi Jinping, who promised not to militarize the artificial islands.

"I think over the past 20 years we've witnessed the largest military buildup since World War II by the PRC," Aquilino told the AP. "They have advanced all their capabilities and that buildup of weaponization is destabilizing to the region."

The contested nature of the waters was highlighted during the AP's trip aboard a P-8A Poseidon plane flying over the islands, when the pilots ignored radio messages warning it to stay away from the islands.

China has aggressively sought to expand its control of the South China Sea, amid competing claims from other countries including Vietnam and Taiwan. The U.S. has no claims but patrols the area in an effort to promote freedom of navigation.

Vice President Harris last year rebuked Beijing for intimidating other countries in the South China Sea.

"Beijing's actions continue to undermine the rules-based order and threaten the sovereignty of nations," she said at the time. "The United States stands with our allies and partners in the face of these threats."

US Indo-Pacific commander in provocative flight over South China Sea

Peter Symonds@SymondsWSWS

In a calculated provocation staged for the media, the head of the US Indo-Pacific Command, Admiral John Aquilino, on Sunday flew in a Navy reconnaissance plane deliberately close to Chinese-controlled islets in the Spratly group in the South China Sea.

Aquilino used the occasion to denounce China for militarising the islets and ominously warn that his mission was to be prepared to “fight and win” should conflict with China arise.

The unprecedented publicised flight by the Pentagon’s top commander in the region has a wider significance. Even as the US and its NATO allies escalate the conflict with Russia in the Ukraine, the Biden administration is deliberately heightening tensions with China over dangerous flashpoints in Asia—Taiwan and the South China Sea.

Aquilino pointed to the construction of missile sites, aircraft hangers and radar systems on Mischief Reef, Subi Reef and Fiery Cross Reef, saying it appeared to be completed, and speculated as to whether China would construct military infrastructure elsewhere in the South China Sea.

Admiral John C. Aquilino, left, Commander of the U.S. Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM), arrives at Clark Air Base, Pampanga province, northern Philippines on Sunday March 20, 2022. (AP Photo/Aaron Favila)

“The function of those islands is to expand the offensive capability of the PRC [People’s Republic of China] beyond their continental shores,” Aquilino claimed. “They can fly fighters, bombers plus all those offensive capabilities of missile systems.” The missile systems posed a threat to military and civilian aircraft, he said. “They threaten all nations who operate in the vicinity and all the international sea and airspace.”

According to Associated Press, “As the P-8A Poseidon flew as low as 4,500 meters near the Chinese-occupied reefs, some appeared to be like small cities on screen monitors, with multi-storey buildings, warehouses, hangars, seaports, runways and white round structures Aquilino said were radars. Near Fiery Cross, more than 40 unspecified vessels could be seen apparently anchored.”

The two Associated Press reporters on board breathlessly reported the Chinese radio messages to stay clear of the islets that were ignored by the US aircraft. Neither they nor the media outlets that published their report in any way challenged Aquilino’s remarks or even questioned what they were looking at on the screen monitors.

In fact, Aquilino’s comments stand reality on its head. While accusing China of aggressive intent, the Indo-Pacific commander was flying in a military aircraft within view of Chinese-claimed territory and thousands of kilometres from the nearest American territory. The South China Sea is immediately adjacent to the Chinese mainland and sensitive Chinese military installations, including key submarine bases on Hainan Island.

Over the past decade, the US has deliberately inflamed tensions in the South China Sea as a means of sowing divisions between China and neighbouring countries. In 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton told a regional forum of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) that the US had a “national interest” in the South China Sea.

Having previously largely ignored the various territorial disputes, Clinton’s remark signalled an aggressive intrusion into the region and the onset of an intensifying US confrontation with China. The following year, Obama formally announced the “pivot to Asia” to challenge China diplomatically, economically and militarily across the region. On the pretext of ensuring freedom of navigation and flight, the US has repeatedly sent warships and warplanes into waters and airspace claimed by China.

US preparations for war with China have proceeded apace. The Pentagon has completed repositioning 60 percent of its air and naval forces to the Indo-Pacific, and restructured and expanded its military bases. US military alliances and strategic partnerships aimed against China have been beefed up throughout the region.

Given the three decades of US wars of aggression in the Middle East and Central Asia, China is bolstering its military position in the strategic South China Sea. American military strategists regard US control of key waters close to the Chinese mainland, such as the South China Sea, as critical in any US war with China.

In congressional testimony last year, Aquilino warned that war with China was “much closer than most think.” His predecessor Admiral Phil Davidson had only days earlier told the Senate Armed Services Committee that the US could face conflict with China, particularly over Taiwan, within six years.

Speaking on last weekend’s flight, Aquilino claimed that Washington’s main objective in the region was “to prevent war” through deterrence. However, the real intent of the US military build-up throughout Asia is precisely the opposite, as was indicated in Aquilino’s threat: “Should deterrence fail, my second mission is to be prepared to fight and win.”

The Indo-Pacific commander accused China’s military expansion of being “destabilising to the region,” saying: “I think over the past 20 years we’ve witnessed the largest military build-up since World War II by the PRC.”

The “threat” posed by China is simply the pretext for the US preparations for war. The US military budget not only dwarfs that of China, but is larger than the military budgets of the nine next largest military powers. The Pentagon has been expanding its anti-ballistic missile systems in the Pacific and, following the US abrogation of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty with Russia, is stationing offensive intermediate-range nuclear missiles in Europe and preparing to do the same in Asia.

In its historic decline, US imperialism is determined to use every means, including its massive military, to maintain its global hegemony and regards Russia, and particularly China, now the world’s second largest economy, as its chief threats. The provocative flight by Aquilino in the South China Sea once again underscores the sheer recklessness of Washington’s foreign policy.

Having provoked a war in Ukraine aimed at miring Russia in an Afghanistan-type quagmire, the Biden administration is also inflaming tensions with China. Top White House officials, including Biden himself, have warned China of “consequences” if it provides material support to Russia in the Ukraine conflict. While “consequences” have been widely interpreted as punitive economic sanctions, US imperialism has a long track record of resorting to military provocations.

The New Imperialism of Globalized Monopoly-Finance Capital

EXCERPT 

The Imperialism of Monopoly-Finance Capital

A more realistic and thoroughgoing Marxian approach to the question of imperialism in our age, drawing on the fundamental parameters of classical imperialism theory while taking into consideration changing historical conditions, needs to center on capital accumulation. Here the crucial fact is the shift of manufacturing industry in recent decades from the global North to the global South. In 1980 the share of world industrial employment of developing countries had risen to 52 percent; by 2012 this had increased to 83 percent.33 In 2013, 61 percent of the total worldwide inward flow of foreign direct investment was in developing and transitional economies, up from 33 percent in 2006 and 51 percent in 2010.34

What needs to be explained, however, is that despite this tectonic shift of industry to the periphery, the basic conditions of center and periphery continue in most cases to hold. This is manifested in the seeming inability of countries in the global South, taken as a whole—and leaving out Greater China (including Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan Province)—to catch up economically with the nations at the center of the system. From 1970 to 1989 the average annual per capita GDP of the developing countries, excluding Greater China, was a mere 6.0 percent of the per capita GDP of the G7 countries (the United States, Japan, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, and Canada). For the period of 1990 to 2013, this had dropped to only 5.6 percent. Meanwhile, for the forty-eight Least Developed Countries, average annual per capita GDP as a share of that of the G7 declined over the same periods from 1.5 percent to a mere 1.1 percent. (China, the leading emerging economy, is the most important exception to this overall tendency. If Greater China is included among the developing countries, average annual per capita income of developing countries as a percentage of that of G7 countries rises from 4.7 percent in 1970–1989 to 5.5 percent in 1990–2013.)35

In 2014 The Economist magazine declared that the signs in the opening decade of this century that emerging economies, excluding China, were catching up with the rich countries of the developed capitalist world, turned out to be “an aberration.” Referring to a 1997 statement by World Bank senior economist Lant Pritchett, that the widening income gap between rich and poor nations was “the dominant feature of modern economic history,” The Economist announced that this trend has now reasserted itself. At the present rate of growth in the developing world, The Economist insisted, it would take developing/emerging countries as a group (outside of China) more than a century—and even possibly as long as three centuries—to catch up with the income levels of the rich countries of the center.36

The reasons for this seeming reversal of the fortunes of developing/emerging economies, which for a decade were widely thought to be making large gains, can be traced (apart from the effects of the Great Financial Crisis itself) to the contradictory effects of the growing outsourcing of industrial production by multinational corporations—aimed at exploiting inequalities in the world economy, particularly with respect to labor. This is known variously in corporate financial circles as “outsourcing” labor costs, the “global labor arbitrage,” “low-cost labor arbitrage,” or simply as the Low-Cost Country Strategy (LCCS). Lowell Bryan, director of the New York office of the investor’s publication McKinsey Quarterly, wrote in 2010 that:

Any company sourcing its production or service operations in a lower-wage emerging-market country…can save enormously on labor costs…. Even today, the cost of labor in China or India is still only a fraction (often less than a third) of the equivalent labor in the developed world. Yet the productivity of Chinese and Indian labor is rapidly rising and, in specialized areas (such as high-tech assembly in China or software development in India), may equal or exceed the productivity of workers in wealthier nations.37

This means that not only overall unit labor costs are far lower, but also that in areas of increasing productivity they can be expected to fall even further. Such cheap, high-productivity labor in emerging/developing countries, the McKinsey Quarterly told its investment clientele, is available in the hundreds of millions, even billions—while the entire U.S. labor force is 150 million.

Behind such dirt wages in the periphery lies the whole history of imperialism and the fact that in 2011 the global reserve army of labor (adding up the unemployed, vulnerably employed, and economically inactive population) numbered some 2.4 billion people, compared to a global active labor army of only 1.4 billion. It is this global reserve army—predominantly in the global South, but also growing in the global North—which holds down the labor income in both center and periphery, keeping wages in the periphery well below the average value of labor power worldwide.38

The analysis of management strategist Pankaj Ghemawat, in his 2007 book, Redefining Global Strategy, suggests that the wage savings to Walmart from labor-arbitrage in China may be well over 15 percent and conceivably on the order of 30–45 percent of Walmart’s total 2006 operating profit (also known as operating income—defined as revenue net of operating cost before interest charges and taxes). The Low-Cost Country Strategy is particularly important for the assembly stage of manufactured goods, which is the most labor-intensive phase of global production. Most production for export via multinational corporations in China is assembly work, with Chinese factories relying heavily on cheap migrant labor from the countryside (the “floating population”) to assemble products, the main technological components of which are manufactured elsewhere and imported into China for final assembly. The assembled products are then primarily exported to the countries in the capitalist core (although China has an expanding internal market for such goods).

Chinese companies get a cut from these exports; but the big winners are the multinational corporations. Apple subcontracts the production of the component parts of its iPhones in a number of countries with the final assembly in China subcontracted to Foxconn. Due in large part to low-end wages paid for labor-intensive assembly operations, Apple’s profits on its iPhone 4 in 2010 were found to be 59 percent of the final sales price. The share of the final sales price actually going to labor in mainland China itself, where production assembly takes place, is only a tiny fraction of the whole. For each iPhone 4 imported from China to the United States in 2010, retailing at $549, about $10 went to labor costs for production of components and assembly in China, amounting to 1.8 percent of the final sales price.39

As an expression of this general trend, subcontracting (also known in financial circles as Non-Equity Modes of International Production) is increasingly common among multinationals in such areas of production as toys and sporting goods, consumer electronics, automotive components, footwear, and garments. Such subcontracting on the terms and conditions set by multinational corporations also applies to services. Call centers that chose to move from Ireland to India in 2002 were reportedly in a position to reduce the wage rates paid to workers by 90 percent.40

In the international garment industry, in which production takes place almost exclusively in the global South, direct labor cost per garment is typically around 1–3 percent of the final retail price, according to senior World Bank economist Zahid Hussain. Wage costs for an embroidered logo sweatshirt produced in the Dominican Republic run at around 1.3 percent of the final retail price in the United States, while the labor cost (including the wages of floor supervisors) of a knit shirt produced in the Philippines is 1.6 percent. Labor costs in countries such as China, India, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Bangladesh were considerably lower than in the above cases.41 The surplus value captured from such workers is thus enormous, while being disguised by the fact that the lion’s share of so-called “value added” is attributed to activities (marketing, distribution, corporate salaries) in the wealthy importing country, removed from direct production costs. In 2010, the Swedish retailer Hennes & Mauritz was purchasing T-shirts from subcontractors in Bangladesh, paying the workers on the order of 2–5 cents (euro) per shirt produced.42

Nike, a pioneer in Non-Equity Modes of International Production, outsources all of its production to subcontractors in countries such as South Korea, China, Indonesia, Thailand, and Vietnam. In 1996, a single Nike shoe consisting of fifty-two components was manufactured by subcontractors in five different countries. The entire direct labor cost for the production of a pair of Nike basketball shoes retailing for $149.50 in the United States in the late 1990s was 1 percent, or $1.50.43

Imperialism also involves the race for resources, particularly strategic energy sources, such as hydrocarbons, but extending to all key minerals, as well as vital germplasm, foods, forests, land, and even water. For the core capitalist countries the issue of environmental limits has signaled—if anything—the need to control resources in the global South. The most extreme case of ecological imperialism is what Richard Haass (president for the past twelve years of the Council of Foreign Relations, and before that director of policy planning in the State Department under Colin Powell during the 2003 invasion of Iraq) is calling The New Thirty Years’ War in the Middle East, aimed at the control of a significant portion of world oil supplies. Moreover, this New Thirty Years’ War is only part of the U.S-led NATO alliance’s grand strategy to bring the whole vast geopolitical arc, now known as the “arc of instability,” from Eastern Europe and the Balkans to the Middle East and North Africa to Central Asia, within the triad’s sphere of influence—viewing it all as up for grabs following the Soviet Union’s departure from the historical stage in the early 1990s.44 So aggressive has this imperial advance been in the not quite quarter-century since the demise of the USSR that what is now being called a Second Cold War with Russia appears to be developing.

The growing race for resources behind the current geopolitical struggle is feeding a new extractivism, extending to every corner of the earth, and increasingly to the Arctic—where melting sea ice from climate change is opening up new realms for oil exploration. According to energy analyst Michael Klare this scramble for global resources can only point in one direction:

The accumulation of aggravations and resentments among the Great Powers stemming from the competitive pursuit of energy has not yet reached the point where a violent clash between any pair or group of them can be considered likely…. Nevertheless, the conflation of two key trends—the rise of energy nationalism and accumulating ill will between the Sino-Russian and U.S.-Japanese proto-blocs—should be taken as a dangerous sign for the future. Each of these phenomena may have its own roots, but the way they are beginning to intertwine in competitive struggles over prime energy-producing areas in the Caspian Sea basin, the Persian Gulf, and the East China Sea is ominous…. [I]f national leaders fear the loss of a major field to a rival state and are convinced that global energy supplies may be inadequate in a “tough oil” era, they may act irrationally and order a muscular show of force—setting in motion a chain of events whose ultimate course no one may be able to control.