Mirror and mismatch: China and the global politics of the far-right


By Chenchen Zhang

Published 9 April, 2026

First published at Transnational Institute.

The far-right label is not easily applied in China, but nevertheless there is a rising tide of xenophobia, militaristic nationalism, racism, anti-feminism, and social conservatism in Chinese online discourse and sometimes within the state. The global fight against fascism requires movements worldwide to connect with grassroots activists within China and among the diaspora pushing for liberatory futures.

Is there a far right in China? What are its characteristics? How does it coincide with or differ from the far right elsewhere?

It can be tricky to talk about ‘left’ and ‘right’ as ideological labels in China because of the political and moral baggage associated with them. As the ruling party is nominally ‘communist’ and has historically referred to dissidents as ‘rightists’ (youpai 右派), the public tends to use ‘left’ and ‘right’ as a shorthand for describing attitudes towards the regime: ‘left’ as supporting the establishment and ‘right’ as being against it, such as the liberal intellectuals (ziyoupai 自由派) advocating constitutionalism and liberal democracy.

Members of the Chinese intelligentsia and the wider online public, however, increasingly recognise that both pro-regime and anti-regime camps are themselves divided into left and right orientations. The debate among intellectuals about Trump and Trumpism, broadly described as ziyoupai, in particular revealed the schism between left-leaning and right-leaning liberals. This has led some observers to identify a far-right (jiyou 极右) current within Chinese dissidence, characterised by racism, libertarianism and the rejection of progressive social movements.1

Academic discussions usually describe xenophobia, militaristic nationalism, Islamophobia, racism, anti-feminism, and social conservatism as right-wing. However, given the baggage of ‘left’ and ‘right’ in Chinese political culture, supporters of the regime rarely consider themselves to be ‘right-wing’, even if their views are overtly racist, misogynistic, chauvinist, and xenophobic. Anti-Americanism is typically considered to be on the ‘left’ given the anti-imperialist association. For example, known for his hawkish stance towards the US and Japan, Ai Yuejie, formerly a professor of military thought, is revered among some online communities self-identifying as ‘far left’ (jizuo 极左) or ‘Maoist left (maozuo 毛左). One of his best-known quotes, which his fans cite as a motto, encapsulates the principle of ‘might makes right’: ‘Dignity lies only at the tip of the sword; truth exists only within the range of artillery’. This means that those who are labelled as ‘far left’ in popular culture may in fact espouse militaristic, ultranationalist, and authoritarian ideologies more commonly associated with the right.

Interestingly, while conservative Chinese nationalists are unlikely to self-identify as right-wing, many are now comfortable with describing themselves as ‘conservative’. In other words, ‘progressive’ and ‘conservative’ are generally used in line with international conventions.

So, after this lengthy preface, yes, there are far-right discourses and ideological currents in China, both among nationalists and dissidents, even though supporters of the regime may consider themselves to be leftists. Like the far right elsewhere, these coalesce around racial nationalism and the backlash against social-justice movements. For conservative nationalists, feminism, LGBTQ movements, labour movements, and other forms of human rights activism are also de-legitimatised as instruments of ‘Western imperialism’, exemplifying the appropriation of the anti-imperialist language. This is not limited to China, but also seen in other countries in the Global South, and indeed in the Global North as well.2 In my forthcoming book, I highlight the transversal convergence across not only conventional geopolitical, but also ideological, boundaries in the post-liberal conjuncture, where we often see ideological cross-fertilisation in any number of ways.3

Reactionary politics everywhere do not have a coherent agenda. They may be rejecting similar things (whether immigrants or ‘wokeism’) but with very different proposals. Compared to the traditionalists or libertarians who have a stronger influence in the US, Chinese conservative and authoritarian techno-nationalist discourse is less concerned with safeguarding ‘traditional values’ than with upholding techno-scientific reason against the chaos and moral decay attributed to ‘postmodernism’, while remaining favourable towards globalisation and state capitalism. If the Silicon Valley techno-libertarianism is about ‘the government should do nothing to hinder technological progress’,4 then for the Chinese techno-authoritarians, the government should do everything to pursue and guide technological progress. They share a common aversion to democratic processes and progressive movements, along with various forms of racism and misogyny. However, both official and popular nationalisms in China are rooted in postcolonial developmentalism, where political sovereignty is most important, and the ethics of cultivating a neoliberal and entrepreneurial self is tied to the project of national development.

How about the Chinese state? And how is this influenced by what’s happening elsewhere in the world?

This is another reason for why it is difficult to talk about China in discussions of the far right. The Chinese state presents itself as anti-imperialist and, of course, socialist. The fact that there are no elections and no political movements allowed outside the official apparatus also contributes to China’s marginalisation in far-right studies, which tend to prioritise electoral politics. In a wonderful article on the global politics of the far right, Anievas and Saull talk about a set of ‘common enabling conditions’ that ‘laterally connect Modi’s India and Bolsonaro’s Brazil with the “UKIPisation” of Britain and ‘Trumpification’ of America insofar as the neoliberal-driven de-industrialisation of the “advanced” capitalist powers was internationally entwined with the large-scale processes of “accumulation by dispossession” most dramatically experienced by such “late” state-led industrialisers like the BRIC states and, most notably, China’.5 The article and the special issue it introduces, however, engage little with China itself beyond how its portrayal as a threat enable far-right politics in the US. Unlike Modi-ism or Erdoğan-ism, the one-party system and the socialist state probably make the usual frameworks and languages of analysis inadequate or a poor fit when it comes to China's relationship with the global politics of the far right.

We can indeed situate Xiism within broader contestations of the ‘liberal international order’ from other emerging powers such as India and Türkiye.6 Rather than being an external challenger, China has been integral to both the relatively stable hegemony of global neoliberalism in the 1990s and 2000s, and to the intensification of the post-liberal contestations we now witness. This represents a partial and selective rejection of some aspects of the liberal international order, such as the normative hierarchy that tends to stigmatise or impose ‘symbolic disempowerment’ on nations or subjects considered illiberal,7 which co-exists with embracing other aspects, such as globalisation, multilateralism, and the United Nations (UN) system. In contrast to the anti-globalism of the Western far right, Kumral notes that for emerging powers, neoliberal globalisation continues to be seen as ‘opportunities for upward mobility for national economies in international stratification’.8 She argues that Modi and Erdoğan synthesise neoliberalism with developmentalism, offering ‘selective redistributionist policies that target the poorest sections’, providing the rising middle class with a ‘master development narrative of a rising Turkey/India in a period of global hegemonic transformation’ and a re-imagining of past empires.9 Xiism runs parallel to these projects in many aspects, being embedded in the ‘common enabling conditions’ mentioned earlier, including the shifting economic power relations and capitalism’s ‘spatial fix’ of manufacturing jobs, which has contributed to different attitudes towards globalisation in the North and the South. As Eli Friedman puts it, if the social ‘dissolution wrought by neoliberal capitalism has revitalized fascism in the West, it has been similarly important in the rise of ethnonationalist dictatorship in China’.10

Intersecting with these economic processes is postcolonial identity politics, which often takes the form of civilisational discourses that assert one’s identity and cultural particularities against ‘Western hegemony’ or ‘cultural imperialism’. This is not particularly new. For example, the Guomindang’s (the Nationalist Party) conservative revolution in the 1930s was doing very much the same: justifying authoritarianism and social conservatism through claims about cultural authenticity and resistance to Western imperialism.11 However, in contemporary China and shaped by the post-Cold War international order, we also see arguments about security in addition to those about authenticity. Certain values or movements are framed both as ‘not ours’ (not Chinese) and as instruments of regime-change attempts threatening national security. Among the cultural elites, conservative intellectuals in China have been influenced by figures such as Samuel Huntington and Carl Schmitt in their articulation of China as a ‘civilizational state’. Drawing heavily on Huntington and in an explicitly gendered language, Gan Yang, a prominent conservative philosopher based at Tsinghua University, characterised the earlier pursuit by Türkiye and Russia of ‘Westernised’ modernisation as ‘self-castration’, whereby they lose their own racial-civilisational identity.12 Jiang Shigong, another state-adjacent intellectual and a Schmittian legal theorist, argues that the prevailing discourse of ‘integrating with the world’ in the 1990s and 2000s means that ‘we’ have lost ‘our civilisational impulse and political will to defend ourselves’.13 Ironically, again, these prominent intellectuals of conservative civilisationism, such as Gan Yang, Jiang Shigong, and Zhang Weiwei, are known as the ‘new left’ despite their affinities with European and US conservative thought.

As I have recently argued,14 civilisational discourse becomes a vehicle for claiming difference internationally and suppressing difference domestically. At the international level, Xi’s ‘Global Civilisation Initiative’ advocates diversity and warns against ‘imposing one’s values and models onto others’. Domestically, assimilationist ethnic policy is accompanied with the re-centring of zhonghua minzu (Chinese nation or race-nation)15 and zhonghua wenming (Chinese civilisation) as key concepts in the country’s political discourse. Under the slogan of ‘forging a strong communal consciousness of the Chinese nation’, assimilationist policies seek to erase and securitise difference, while turning a depolitcised, exoticised version of ethnic difference into resources for tourism and consumerism. These policies scale back a range of preferential policies that ethnic minorities used to enjoy, infringe on cultural and religious rights, and remove minority languages as medium of instruction in formal education.16 At the same time, we see abundant scenes of minority ‘singing and dancing’ in domestic and external propaganda as a display of ‘diversity’ and ‘unity’, which reduces living religious and cultural traditions to exoticised patriotic performances.17 With the rise of ecotourism, as Guldana Salimjan argues, the rebranding of Indigenous lands as Han ecotourist destinations to appreciate ‘untainted nature’ is marked by land dispossession and labour injustice.18

What about in terms of social media and internet discourse? Do we see similar threads of xenophobia, misogyny, and reactionary social violence in Chinese social media that we see in other parts of the world?

Absolutely. My previous work has focused extensively on the transnational circulation of far-right narratives and tropes in the digital sphere.19 A lot of this is misinformation and conspiracy theories about demographic and cultural crises of ‘the West’. So, when internet users in China deploy the same imaginaries about ‘Western civilisation’ being undermined by ‘non-white’ immigrants and ‘woke’ ideologies as Western far-right actors, it’s about the decline of ‘the other’, told as a cautionary tale with a sense of geopolitical Schadenfreude. The cautionary tale serves to bolster ethnonationalist anxieties and delegitimise domestic social movements in a fashion of “this must never happen in China’. We have seen the rise of grassroots Islamophobic influencers or muhei (穆黑), who mobilise both globally, circulating scripts of Islamophobia, and more locally rooted patterns of prejudice.20

Many of the anti-immigration narratives are about portraying crises of ‘the other’, although they sometimes extend to China’s own immigration policy (statistically China has one of the lowest shares of foreign-born residents worldwide). The online backlash against the new regulations on foreigners’ permanent residency in 2020 provides one such example. Apart from ‘racist coverage of African immigrant communities in Guangzhou’,21 the backlash also features themes that reflect certain locally specific grammars of grievance. This includes the longstanding perception that foreigners get special preferential treatment, and the discontent with unequal status among Chinese citizens themselves due to the hukou system — which produces an unequal citizenship regime that disadvantages rural migrant workers, who are often excluded from urban social citizenship and welfare provisions or included but on a differential basis.22 While this institution is unique to China, it is commonly observed in the affective politics of right-wing populism that grievances about inequalities or marginalisation are weaponised and channelled towards hatred against the ethnocultural other. Han supremacist narratives online also frequently frame ethnic minorities in China as undeservingly privileged and Han males as being victimised.23

In the more recent backlash against China’s newly introduced K-visa, which is intended to attract talent in the fields of science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM), we also see that blatant racism is entangled with socioeconomic anxieties. Ultranationalist influencers are spreading a wave of misinformation that claims that Indians were already ‘studying the visa’ and would come to China in large numbers, taking an already shrinking number of graduate jobs. These online posts reproduce racist stereotypes about Indians having ‘fake diplomas’ or ‘lack of hygiene’, while also tapping into widespread anxieties about economic slowdown and the lack of job opportunities. On the previous point about ideological fusion, some defenders of the Chinese regime on X (formerly Twitter) use an apparently socialist rhetoric to justify anti-immigration ethnonationalism, claiming that China is a socialist ‘ethno-state’, and that multiculturalism and immigration are the products of neoliberalism.24

Feminism has emerged as one of the most powerful mobilising issues in China’s digital sphere. Like reactionary movements elsewhere, the rise of misogyny and anti-feminism is a reaction to the growing influence of feminism and gender-related debates in public discourse. Some online communities known as the Chinese manosphere, and the techno-nationalist discourse I discussed earlier, have a strong misogynist undertone. Furthermore, anti-feminism is often geopoliticised. Feminists are stigmatised by anti-feminist nationalists as agents of ‘foreign hostile forces’ or as ‘connected to Islamists’,25 exemplifying the kind of right-wing intersectionality26 that fuses different and often contradictory talking points (Islamophobia and anti-feminism) that we also see elsewhere.

An interesting political slur that has gained currency among nationalist influencers in recent years is zhiren 殖人, supposedly meaning a colonial or ‘mentally colonised’ person. Critics of the regime in general, but feminists and queer activists in particular, are often labelled zhiren. It is of course a longstanding and widespread phenomenon to discredit social groups who hold dissenting political views by calling them traitors, collaborators, or otherwise ‘anti-national’. However, I read the explicit invocation of colonial here as symptomatic of a newly emerging and distinctively post-liberal sensibility (different from, say, anti-imperialism in the Maoist era) as the moral authority of the liberal order erodes. Rather than (or in addition to) denouncing perceived external hierarchies, the accusation of coloniality is turned inwards to target the internal other, whose identification with progressive values is recast as colonial subservience and national betrayal.27

How does Chinese popular discourse and the official state discourse respond to the demonisation of China by some elements of the right in the West?

Demonisation feeds into victimhood nationalism, which is useful in distracting attention from debates on concrete issues to moralised narratives about injury and humiliation.28 However, popular or official nationalism does not consider demonisation to be only from elements of the right. Sinophobia from the right tends to more blatant forms of racism, as seen in Trump’s rhetoric about ‘kung flu’ and ‘China virus’ during the COVID-19 pandemic. This of course invited strong reactions and led to the a ‘narrative battle’ of blame games with US and China accusing each other of causing the virus.29 But nationalists equally resent ‘demonisation’ from the centre and progressive liberals, which is seen as condescending and rooted in a sense of moral superiority. Some might regard this as more despicable than animosity based on straightforward racism or strategic calculation. Indeed, conservative nationalists largely favoured Trump over the Democratic candidate in both the 2016 and 2024 elections.30 In a global survey conducted by the European Council on Foreign Relations after Trump’s re-election but before he assumed office, more Chinese respondents saw his return a ‘good thing’ for US citizens, for the world and for China than those who saw it a ‘bad thing’ or were neutral.31

For conservative nationalists, apart from ideological affinities regarding gender and ethnicity, it is believed that since both US parties are anti-China, Trump is at least less interested in ‘preaching’ liberal values abroad or funding the ‘zhiren’ in China (a talking point used by some nationalist influencers during the 2024 US election). Trump’s newly released National Security Strategy in fact echoes Chinese techno-nationalist views in this respect: it criticises the liberal universalist agenda of promoting democracy and no longer approaches the US–China rivalry through the framework of democracy versus authoritarianism, but as a matter of strategic and geo-economic calculus.32 The competition might be ruthless, yet they share the same post-liberal political sensibilities.

Samuel Huntington, a US conservative, and John Mearsheimer, an International Relations (IR) neo-realist, have both been highly influential in shaping Chinese international thought in both intellectual and popular spaces. Convinced that all US actors are ‘anti-China’ anyway, Chinese nationalists consider strategic competition (realist IR) or ‘clashes of civilization’ (Huntington) to be more reasonable and honest grounds for hostility than the neoconservative or liberal internationalists’ moralised interpretation of world order. Leaving aside the factor of great power rivalry, far-right European leaders are well-regarded in popular and official discourse. Victor Orbán is a clear example, and Georgia Meloni has also been given favourable coverage in both state and social media.

Is there resistance to these trends of reactionary nationalism? What form does it take?

Yes. Resistance comes from a range of different positions: progressive liberals, feminists, queer activists, anticolonial internationalists, dissident Marxists, or dissident Maoists who speak an older form of Maoist language.33 As I mentioned before, digital feminism has been thriving within China’s online public sphere even though the space for offline mobilisation has diminished. Feminist discourses in China are extremely diverse, including currents that are, for example, neoliberal, trans-exclusive, or classist. There is no monolithic picture. However, feminist voices form one of the most distinctive digital counter-publics that offer an alternative to state-sanctioned or grassroots narratives of masculinist nationalism. One of the surprisingly lively spaces is podcasting. Some of the most successful podcasts are led by women who are critical and culturally progressive. Their popularity among younger and well-educated urban women have also brought commercial sponsorship and partnerships.

Despite stringent censorship, the digital ecosystem remains decentralised, allowing the existence of anonymous, informal, and non-institutionalised forms of publication. Yawen Li has, for example, detailed some of the initiatives of anticolonial internationalists in China, who run publications or WeChat accounts focused on colonialism, patriarchy, capitalist exploitation, and resistance across the world.34 From Ukraine to Palestine, Chinese internationalists refuse to align their expression of solidarity with the geopolitical interests of either China or ‘the West’. Jing Wang has written about how Chinese Muslims strategically voice dissent online in the shadow of both censorship and anti-Muslim sentiments.35 For many ordinary internet users, non-engagement with such racist, misogynist, and ultranationalist messaging is also a form of resistance.

There is also the incredible growth of diaspora Chinese communities engaged in feminist, anti-racist, decolonial, and anti-authoritarian activism, especially after the ‘whitepaper movement’ of late 2022.36 These growing spaces of transnational activism draw on feminist ethics of care and solidarity, challenging and critiquing patriarchal power structures and the dualistic geopolitical imaginary of ‘authoritarian China’ versus the ‘free world’ that shaped earlier forms of pro-democratic advocacy among the diaspora.37 In an ongoing project on digital counter-publics and transnational Chinese feminism, my collaborators and I have been working with queer feminist Chinese organisers across Europe, Japan, and North America to understand how they theorise and practise transnational solidarity beyond binaries and rooted in the interconnections of different structures of domination. Chinese diaspora activists have also done extraordinary work in mobilising for Palestine’s liberation and against genocide through collectives such as the Palestine Solidarity Action Network (PSAN). Their work provides a transnational analysis of connections between settler-colonial violence in Palestine and Xinjiang, standing against US imperialism without glossing over Chinese authoritarianism and colonialism.

How can we build global alliances against the far right that better integrate Chinese perspectives?

I think it’s essential to build global alliances that better integrate Chinese perspectives. The starting point would be listening to and building alliances with grassroots organisations from within China and in the diaspora. As I have said, there are many creative forms of resistance to authoritarian and conservative nationalism within China and among the diaspora. The Western left space is not particularly used to hearing voices that are critical of both Western imperialism and non-Western authoritarianism, as well as drawing linkages between them. Sometimes, the concern about racism and not wanting to encourage imperialist foreign policies leads to an unwillingness to engage with criticisms of the Chinese state, including those from Chinese nationals and from minoritised groups in China.

Yao Lin conceptualises this as what he calls ‘interregimatic missolidarisation’. By this he means an ostensibly supportive relationship that does not really correspond to struggles against injustice or oppression within a different regime. This is not only due to cultural or linguistic distance, but also because of the ways in which different structures give rise to different forms of injustice, creating both experiential and discursive barriers to transnational solidarity.38 Our conversations with diaspora Chinese organisers engaged in anti-racist, queer, feminist, and decolonial work reflect this. Their lived experiences are often exoticised or dismissed by ‘mainstream’ civil society, and they find it easier to connect with or be understood by other immigrant groups.

This also brings to mind Shadi Mokhatari’s critique of the ‘uncritical anti-imperialist solidarities’ and the victimhood politics of the ‘anti-imperialist-branding states’. Here again, allegedly anti-imperialist actors mis-solidarise with the oppressor, conflate the state with citizens at large, as well as essentialist notions of culture, and disregard the agency of the oppressed.39 A particular strand of decolonial discourse has been characterised by this kind of misguided anti-imperialism and cultural essentialism. In The Politics of Decolonial Investigations, for example, Walter Mignolo argues that countries like China and Russia are leading the process of ‘de-Westernization’ and ‘civilizational resurgence’ against ‘neoliberal globalism.40 This vision of the so-called ‘multipolar civilizational order’ bears a disturbing resemblance to that of the European far right, where racial-civilisational categories are defined in terms of ontological and epistemological difference and ‘indigenous’ civilisational identity is placed in opposition to the ‘globalist’ order.41

For me, then, solidarity requires calling out this misplaced equation of geopolitical opposition with decolonisation or emancipation. It requires listening to and understanding the lived experiences of activists from across the Global South who are organising against authoritarianism and imperialism. Historically speaking, and in the aftermath of 1989, overseas Chinese pro-democracy politics tended to be aligned with the right in Europe and the US. But this is changing. Younger diaspora groups are now looking for new languages and imaginaries, creating decentralised spaces of resistance and solidarity. They are already building transnational alliances against the far right in many ways. What remains is for established left-wing movements to recognise, engage with, and support these emergent transnational practices.

• 1

  Wang, D 王大卫. (2023) ‘当代中国极右、中右、中左、极左的相互关系 [The relationship between the far right, the centre right, the centre left, and the far left in contemporary China]’. 中国民主季刊 China Journal of Democracy. https://chinademocrats.org/?p=945

• 2

  Zhang, C. (2023) ‘Postcolonial nationalism and the global right’. Geoforum, 144: 103824; Altinors, G., Chacko, M. D., Davidson, M., Kazharski, A, Valluvan, S. and Zhang, C. (forthcoming) ‘The uses and abuses of the anticolonial in global reactionary politics.’ International Political Sociology. 

• 3

  Zhang, C. (2026, forthcoming) Easting the West: Theorizing the postliberal conjuncture from China. Oxford: Oxford University Press. 

• 4

  Bronzwaer, S. (2025) ‘Het Westen Is Superieur En Moet Altijd Winnen, Vindt Palantir. Zo Kijkt Dit Invloedrijke Techbedrijf Naar de Wereld.’ NRC Handelsblad, 10 October. https://www.nrc.nl/nieuws/2025/10/10/het-westen-is-superieur-en-moet-altijd-winnen-vindt-palantir-zo-kijkt-dit-invloedrijke-techbedrijf-naar-de-wereld-a4908882

• 5

  Anievas, A. and Saull, R. (2023) ‘The far-right in world politics/world politics in the far-right’. Globalizations, 20(5): 715–30, p. 721. 

• 6

  Borrowed from Møller Mulvad, Xiism can be understood as an emergent and contested hegemonic project reflecting the current approach of China’s party-based power bloc to global order and domestic politics. See Mulvad, A. (2019) ‘Xiism as a hegemonic project in the making: Sino-Communist ideology and the political economy of China’s rRise.’. Review of International Studies, 45(3): 449–70. Broadly speaking, this includes further concentration of power, a shift from integrating into the existing capitalist world system to actively reshaping it, and a re-assertation of ethno-civiliszationism that I will turn to below. 

• 7

  Bettiza, G., Bolton, D., & Lewis, D. (2023) ‘Civilizationism and the ideological contestation of the liberal international order.’ International Studies Review, 25(2), viad006.

• 8

  Kumral, S. (2023) ‘Globalization, crisis and right-wing populists in the global south: The cases of India and Turkey’. Globalizations, 20(5):752–781, p. 754. 

• 9

  Ibid., p. 774.

• 10

  Friedman, E. (2024) ‘The cost of China’s prosperity’, Boston Review, 24 September. https://www.bostonreview.net/articles/the-cost-of-chinas-prosperity/

• 11

  Tsui, B. (2019) China’s Conservative Revolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• 12

  Gan, Y. 甘阳 (2008) ‘如何避免‘自宫式’的现代化 [How to avoid self-castration style modernisation]’, 9 June. https://www.aisixiang.com/data/19119.html

• 13

  Jiang, S. 强世功 (2022) 中國香港：文明視野中的新邊疆 [China’s Hong Kong: The new frontier between civilizations]. Hong Kong: Joint Publishing, p. 328.

• 14

  Zhang, C. (2025) ‘(Un)Civilizing the Paris Olympics opening ceremony: Competing narratives of civilization, “coloniality,” and transversal alignment’. Global Studies Quarterly, 5(3). https://doi.org/10.1093/isagsq/ksaf098

• 15

  Leibold, J. and Chen, J. (2025) ‘Han-centrism and multiethnic nation-building in China and Taiwan: A comparative study since 1911’. Nationalities Papers, 53(5): 983–1000.

• 16

  Roche, G. and Leibold, J. (2020) “‘China’s second-generation ethnic policies are already here’.” Made in China Journal, 5(2): 31–35.

• 17

  Anonymous. (2021). ‘You shall sing and dance: contested ‘safeguarding’of Uyghur Intangible Cultural Heritage’. Asian Ethnicity, 22(1), 121-139. 

• 18

  Salimjan, G. (2023) ‘Ecotourism as racial capitalism: Ecological civilisation in settler-colonial Xinjiang’. Inner Asia, 25(1): 91–110. 

• 19

  Zhang, C. (2020) ‘Right-wing populism with Chinese characteristics? Identity, otherness and global imaginaries in debating world politics online’. European Journal of International Relations, 26(1): 88–115; Zhang, C. (2024) ‘Race, gender, and occidentalism in global reactionary discourses’. Review of International Studies, 1–23. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0260210524000299

• 20

  Stroup, D. R. (2024) ‘Loathsome Hui parasites: Islamophobia, ethnic chauvinism, and popular responses to the 2020 Wuhan coronavirus outbreak’. Ethnic and Racial Studies, 47(5): 1057–1084.

• 21

  Speelman, T. (2023) ‘How China’s online nationalists constrain policymaking – the case of foreigners’ permanent residency reform’. Journal of Contemporary China, 32(144): 879–896. 

• 22

  Zhang, C. (2018) ‘Governing neoliberal authoritarian citizenship: Theorizing Hukou and the changing mobility regime in China’. Citizenship Studies, 22(8): 855–881.

• 23

  Zhang, C and Zheng, M. (forthcoming) ‘The tyranny of meritocratic nationalism: unpacking the online backlash against a Tibetan cyberstar’. Nationalities Papers. 

• 24

  E.g. https://x.com/zhao_dashuai/status/1982779314463527318

• 25

  Huang, Q. (2023) ‘Anti-Feminism: four strategies for the demonisation and depoliticisation of feminism on Chinese social media’. Feminist Media Studies, 23(7): 3583–3598.

• 26

  Ravecca, P., Schenck, M., Fonseca, B., & Forteza, D. (2023) ‘What are they doingright? Tweeting right-wing intersectionality in Latin America’. Globalizations, 20(1), 38–59.

• 27

  Zhang, ‘(Un)Civilizing the Paris Olympics’.

• 28

  Zhang, C. (2022) ‘Contested disaster nationalism in the digital age: Emotional registers and geopolitical imaginaries in COVID-19 narratives on Chinese social media’. Review of International Studies, 48(2): 219–242.

• 29

  Jaworsky, B. N., & Qiaoan, R. (2021) ‘The Politics of Blaming: the Narrative Battle between China and the US over COVID-19’. Journal of Chinese Political Science, 26(2): 295–315.

• 30

  Hernández, J. C., & Zhao, I. (2017) ‘‘Uncle Trump’ Finds Fans in China’. The New York Times, 9 November. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/world/asia/trump-china-fans.html(external link); Qian, Z. K., & Pun, N. (2025) ‘Mirror China: Chinese nationalism, American populism and their ideological transference’. Inter-Asia Cultural Studies, 26(3): 439-455.

• 31

  Ash, T. G., Krastev, I., & Leonard, M. (2025) ‘Alone in a Trumpian world: The EU and global public opinion after the US elections’. European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR), 14 January. https://ecfr.eu/publication/alone-in-a-trumpian-world-the-eu-and-global-public-opinion-after-the-us-elections/

• 32

  National Security Strategy of the United States of America. November 2025. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2025/12/2025-National-Security-Strategy.pdf

• 33

  Self-identified Maoists or maozuo may be pro-regime or dissident. The pro-regime ones are sometimes labeled “royalist” (baohuangpai 保皇派). The aforementioned Ai Yuejin, for example, was adamant that he was a royalist. Dissident Maoists consider the CCP today to be revisionist, counterrevolutionary, and imperialist. The “royalists” have pushed back against the “China is imperialist” thesis (known as zhongdilun 中帝论) and sought to frame grassroots labour and feminist movements in China as an instrument of capitalist imperialism. 

• 34

  Li, Y. (2024) ‘Spectres of Anticolonial Internationalism in Contemporary China’. Made in China Journal, 9(1): 60–67.

• 35

  Wang, J. (2024) ‘Networked Islamic counterpublic in China: Digital media and Chinese Muslims during global pandemic of COVID-19’. new media & society, 26(6): 3068-3087.

• 36

  The ‘white paper movement’ refers to a wave of protests in late 2022, in China and across the Chinese diaspora, in which participants held up blank sheets of paper to call for an end to stringent zero-COVID policies. Some of these protests also voiced broader demands for freedom and democratic rights.

• 37

  Li, P. (2021) ‘From the “Chinese national character” debates of yesterday to the anti-China foreign policy of today’. Made in China Journal, 6(3): 47–53.

• 38

  Lin, Y. (2025) ‘Interregimatic solidarity and antiauthoritarian resilience’. International Feminist Journal of Politics, 27(4): 761-784. 

• 39

  Mokhtari, S. (2025) ‘The Reverse Savages, Victims, Saviours metaphor of human rights’. Review of International Studies, 1-22.

• 40

  Mignolo, W. D. (2021) The politics of decolonial investigations. Duke University Press.

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  Davidson, M. (2025) ‘On the concept of the pluriverse in Walter Mignolo and the European New Right’. Contemporary Political Theory, 24(3): 469–489.

Killing and Indifference

by Andrew P. Napolitano | Apr 10, 2026 | 

Is personal freedom a reality or a myth? Does the government execute the will of the governed or the will of those who finance its officials? Does the Bill of Rights restrain the government? Are the levers of government power pulled by those the governed have elected or those we don’t see? Do elections change anything?

Can the president kill people whom he suspects might commit a crime? Aren’t even those who would cause great harm entitled to due process? Isn’t everyone entitled to a fair trial in front of a neutral judge and jury before any punishment can be administered?

Aren’t all persons legally innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty? Isn’t this presumption of innocence the linchpin of American jurisprudence? At trial and before punishment, isn’t it the government’s obligation to prove every element of the crimes charged? Isn’t there no such thing in American jurisprudence as a presumption of guilt?

Aren’t punishments prescribed by law? Can the president make up a punishment and direct the military to administer it to folks he thinks are probably guilty of criminal behavior? Can federal officials perform unlawful acts with impunity just because they are ordered to do so by the president? Is “probably guilty” a sufficient legal standard for punishment?

In war, can the combatants morally target civilians and their structures? Is war waged against the people of a given country, or against its government and military assets? What happens when there is killing without consequence?

Which is worse, a president who kills whomever he wishes or a Congress that funds the killing and is indifferent to the moral, constitutional and legal consequences?

Can the president morally bomb civilians “into the Stone Age” in a country where the civilian population has little control over the government? Why kill or ruin large numbers of civilians whose liberation you have urged?

What is the purpose of a Constitution if it is not followed? Why take an oath to uphold and defend the Constitution and then not do so? Why limit war making to the Congress but then ratify the president’s war making as if the Constitution authorized it? If the U.S. bombs other countries to temper their offensive military appetite, who or what will temper America’s offensive military appetite?

Can Congress fund a war it has declined to declare? Why are undeclared wars now commonplace? What to do about a Congress that escapes its constitutional duties? Which is worse, a president who fights an undeclared war or a Congress that does nothing about it?

What is Congress afraid of? Where in the Constitution is the president empowered to spend billions killing foreign persons in an undeclared war? From what source does the president derive power to destroy a foreign land? Why was there no great American debate about war before the president began his killings?

Can the president order killings because he is in the mood for it or because it is fun? Doesn’t the Constitution establish a system of checks and balances so that one of the three branches of the federal government cannot amass power at the expense of either of the other two? Don’t the Constitution and history lay out the functions and powers of the branches of government, and aren’t they supposed to check each other so as to assure personal freedom?

What good are treaties if they’re not followed? Why are treaties the supreme law of the land along with the Constitution itself and all federal statutes? Why does the government violate treaties like the Geneva Conventions and the United Nations Charter that U.S. officials wrote and U.S. presidents signed or acknowledged and the U.S. Senate ratified?

Can the president choose which laws he personally will obey and which he will personally violate? Can the government legally break its own laws? Can the president spend money from the U.S. Treasury that has not been authorized by Congress? Can the president impose a sales tax on all goods entering the U.S. from foreign countries? Can the president pick and choose which statutes to enforce and which to ignore? Why is computer hacking a crime, unless it’s done by federal agents?

Can the president put his own name on American cash? Can he put an image of his face on all your cash? Does Congress still write the laws and appropriate funds, or does the president now do these things on his own?

Is the president required to tell the truth? Is the government required to tell the truth? Why is it that the government can lie to the people but it is a crime to lie to the government? Does the government work for us, or do we work for the government? Does the government know more about us than we do about it?

What happens when the government is untruthful and the people believe it? Isn’t truth the essential bond between the government and the governed in a free society? Doesn’t the government derive its just powers from the consent of the governed? What happens when the government does things to which the governed have never consented?

Are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness truly inalienable individual rights that every person has because they are integral to our humanity, or are these words just Thomas Jefferson’s musings written to arouse a reluctant public to challenge a king? Was the bloody revolution that was brewing on the east coast of North America 250 years ago a just war?

If the colonies could justly secede from London, why can’t the states justly secede from Washington? Is the right to leave the government without surrendering your property not a natural right integral to our humanity? What happens if you tell the government to take a hike?

Can the president terrify the whole country by threatening to wipe out an entire civilization across the globe? Why do presidents kill innocents?

Andrew P. Napolitano, a former judge of the Superior Court of New Jersey, is the senior judicial analyst at Fox News Channel. Judge Napolitano has written seven books on the US Constitution. The most recent is Suicide Pact: The Radical Expansion of Presidential Powers and the Lethal Threat to American Liberty. To find out more about Judge Napolitano and to read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2025 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO – DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM

The Unwarranted Iran War: US-China Stakes, Regional Costs, Global Losses

After 1 month of hostilities and no exit plans, the economic and human costs of the US-Israel joint war against Iran are soaring in the region, increasingly global and testing US-China ties.

by Dan Steinbock | Apr 9, 2026 |

Originally set for March, the high-stakes summit between US President Donald Trump and Chinese President Xi Jinping was postponed for about “five or six weeks,” due to the U.S. focus on military operations in Iran.

The delay suggests that the Trump administration grossly underestimated Iran’s resilience.

The summit will take place under the shadow of the worst energy crisis since the 1970s.

US-China stakes in the crisis    

The crisis itself illustrates the differential stakes the two major powers have in the outcome. US military exposure is high, due to its military bases and fleets in the Gulf, whereas China’s armed presence is minimal. As a result, US strategic position is militarily stretched, whereas China’s is economically exposed.

Furthermore, US energy vulnerability is low, thanks to its domestic production. By contrast, China’s energy exposure is high, due to its import dependency. Accordingly, the US is only moderately exposed to an adverse economic impact in the Gulf, whereas in China that effect will be more substantial.

Even if the Trump administration’s initial “decapitation” strike succeeded tactically, as its proponents argue, it has failed strategically. The Iranian leadership remains intact and the command dispersed.

After 1 month of the unwarranted war, the U.S. enjoys escalation dominance, but it has been stalemated. US and Israel have air superiority, yet Iran retains strategic denial via missiles, proxies, and Hormuz leverage.

Unwarranted devastation    

The crisis has spread across the region and beyond. It has caused a severe disruption to global oil flows, threatening 20% of global consumption – some 20 million barrels per day – that typically passes through Hormuz. Over 94% of normal traffic through Hormuz collapsed already in mid-March.

In one of the largest energy shocks since the 1970s, oil has soared by more than 50%, up to $110-120, with supply down by 11 mb/d (million barrels per day). Global system has suffered a highly adverse impact with airspace closures, rerouted shipping, and data infrastructure hits.

In Iran alone, some 1,900-3,500 people have been killed, with up to 17,000-20,000 wounded. The US-Israel strikes have caused widespread damage, with more than 90,000 civilian installations hit, including schools, hospitals, and residential buildings.

Over 3.2 million people are internally displaced in Iran, primarily fleeing major urban centers. In Lebanon, that figure is over 1-1.2 million; that’s every fifth or sixth Lebanese.

A 2-Month War Scenario

At the end of March, the White House assessed that a mission to pry open Hormuz would push the conflict beyond his timeline of 4-6 weeks. As a result, President Trump reportedly told his aides that he’s willing to end the war without reopening the chokepoint. Let’s presume the report is not fake news and the war will continue toward the end of April.

From the military perspective, the U.S. continues its air and missile war, even if the naval campaign to reopen Hormuz may or may not intensify. Limited ground and Marine deployments may or may not occur. If Americans engage, Houthis in Yemen and Iraqi militias join in the conflict.

Despite Trump’s repeated “mission accomplished” claims, there is no decisive victory. Gradual attrition prevails as Iran’s infrastructure continues to be degraded.

War fatigue rises in Israel, where anti-government demonstrations escalate. Iranian missile barrages have depleted Israel’s stockpile of high-end interceptors, forcing a shift toward rationing and relying on less capable systems.

In the US, the Pentagon continues to downplay the costly toll of Iranian missiles, even though by late March many of the 13 military bases in the region used by US troops were ”all but uninhabitable.”

Oil price stabilizes around $120–150, but remains volatile. The supply disruption is persistent.

Spillovers changing the region 

After 1 month of hostilities, every country in the primary battlefield – Iran, Lebanon, Syria, Iraq and Israel – is likely to suffer an adverse GDP impact of up to -6 to -30%.

In most Gulf states, that impact is already at -3 to -12%, which threatens to defer the ambitious modernization projects in the region for years.

In the proximate Middle East, most economies, including Egypt, Turkey and Jordan, are taking hits of -2 to -6%. When such negative shocks come after two years of regional stabilization by Israel with US support, it leaves these countries vulnerable.

By the end of April, the regional impact is likely to amount to -4% to -7%. Add another month and it will climb to -6% to -12%. Gulf economies alone could see a plunge of −5% to −15% in severe scenarios.

Some are indirectly affected via an inflation shock (Morocco, Tunisia). Big Gulf actors like Saudi Arabia, UAE and Qatar benefit from price gains, but suffer from disruption.

Several economies – Iraq, Jordan, Gulf states – cope with high stress, due to fiscal strains and security pressures.

Only low-exposure gas exporters like Algeria benefit in the short-term, but no regional state is immune to rising fiscal pressures and geopolitical risks.

If hostilities prove extended, Lebanon and Yemen will teeter at the edge of state or infrastructure breakdown. The same goes for Iran, as long as the White House mistakes PM Netanyahu’s ambitions with US national security.

Strategic options and priorities                        

The Trump White House is burning almost $1 billion daily in the war. Critics argue that the first month of spending totals close to $37 billion. The administration is seeking $200 billion supplemental funding from the Congress. By contrast, China avoids war costs but must absorb energy and trade shock.

In a 2-month war the US pays in strategy (overextension), whereas China pays in economics (energy shock).

What about the next 4 weeks?

In terms of its strategic options, the US seeks to keep Hormuz partially open. It could release some of its stockpile of crude oil to mitigate economic shocks. It can push non-MENA supply (US shale, Atlantic basin). In the short term, it can tolerate high prices to avoid deeper entanglement.

China, too, can draw down reserves. It can also secure long-term contracts (Russia, Central Asia). It could quietly buy discounted Iranian barrels. And it can engage in limited escort and diplomacy to stabilize energy flows.

Regarding their respective postures in the Middle East, the US is likely to persist in what it calls controlled escalation. China will stress its role as a non-military actor. It willl focus on diplomacy and economic ties. It will position as a mediator and avoid security commitments.

US priority is – or at least should be – not to  get trapped in MENA. By contrast, China’s priority is to let US absorb the security costs, while avoiding sanctions and escalation in bilateral relations. 

What if regional war lingers 

If diplomacy fails, regional war emerges as an alternative scenario, as hostilities escalate from Iran and Lebanon to Gulf, Iraq, Yemen, even beyond. A sustained closure of Hormuz would amplify the supply shock undermining global prospects.

The number of deaths doubles, regional displacement exceeds 5 million. Brent oil climbs to $120-150, even $150-200 in the worst scenarios. If infrastructure is damaged, far greater losses loom ahead.

Some analysts declare it’s the 1970s déjà vu all over again. They are wrong. Since global economy is today more integrated, the negative ramifications will reverbarate worldwide, not just regionally. Even in the most benign scenario, the world economy will pay a hefty price, through the prolonged high-cost equilibrium.

The Iran crisis has exposed the region’s structural contradiction. On the one hand, the Gulf is an energy superpower (40% global gas reserves). But it is also a highly fragile, chokepoint-dependent system. In this delicate equilibrium, Hormuz holds systemic lever because it controls both oil exports (Gulf states, Iraq, Iran) and liquefied natural gas (Qatar).

The lesson is simple but harsh: With energy disruption everyone loses, as the region morphs from an energy exporter hub to a geopolitical shock epicenter.

The original version was published by China-US Focus on April 4, 2026.

Dr. Dan Steinbock is an internationally recognized visionary of the multipolar world and the founder of Difference Group. He has served at the India, China and America Institute (US), Shanghai Institutes for International Studies (China) and the EU Center (Singapore). For more, see https://www.differencegroup.net 

DRAFT BARON BONESPURS

US ‘Automatic’ Draft Registration Begins in December

Amid war build-up, Selective Service System sends the White House its plan to identify and locate potential draftees

by Edward Hasbrouck | Apr 10, 2026 |

On March 30th, the Selective Service System (SSS) sent the White House its proposed regulations for “automatic” [sic] draft registration for review and approval before they are made public. This is the first visible step in the transition from trying to get young men to sign themselves up for a military draft, to trying to sign them up “automatically” by aggregating data requisitioned from other Federal agencies.

This year-long process began with the enactment of the SSS proposal for “automatic” registration in December 2025. The new scheme is supposed to go into operation in December 2026.

[Excerpt from Selective Service System FY 2026-2027 Annual Performance Plan]

The SSS has been keeping a low profile to avoid calling attention to its attempt to lay new groundwork for a draft in the middle of a major military escalation. The SSS hasn’t issued a press release in the four months since the enactment of the “automatic” registration law, has no details of its plans for “automatic” registration on its website, and has delayed responding to my FOIA request for those plans. This has led to hasty and credulous reports in the last few days by journalists who saw the notice of the proposed rules but hadn’t followed the legislation, didn’t know to expect this next step in the process, and weren’t aware of the widespread and increasingly organized opposition to this plan.

This isn’t a Trump 2.0 initiative. Documents released in response to one of my FOIA requests show that the legislative proposal for “automatic” draft registration was drafted during the Biden Administration by the former Trump 2016 Oregon state campaign director, Jacob Daniels. Still at the SSS today, Daniels is one of the Trump loyalists who got jobs at the SSS during Trump’s first administration. But both support and opposition to Selective Service has been and remains bipartisan.

Most of the latest news articles have said that all male U.S. citizens and residents “will be registered automatically” by the SS. What they should say is that the SSS will try to identify and locate all potential draftees. Whether that is possible, much less whether the SSS will succeed, is questionable.

In addition to the practical problems of determining who is subject to the draft (which is many cases depends on factors absent from existing Federal records) and their current postal mailing addresses (ditto), the switch to a new registration system requires jumping through many regulatory hoops. The eight months remaining before the new law takes effect aren’t much time to complete this process.

The law directing the SSS to try to register potential draftees “automatically” leaves most of the details to the SSS to establish through regulations. The SSS has completed the first step in this process by drafting proposed regulations and submitting them to the White House “Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs” (OIRA). OIRA has up to 90 days to review the proposed rules, approve them, or send them back to the agency for revision, but most OIRA reviews take significantly less time than this.

Once a proposed rule is approved by OIRA, the Administrative Procedure Act generally requires publication of the proposed regulations as a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking” (NPRM) in the Federal Register, a window usually of at least 30 or 60 days for the public to submit comments on the proposal, and consideration of those comments by the agency before it publishes a final rule.

The NPRM for “automatic” draft registration could be published in a few weeks, or not for months.

The SSS is a tiny agency being given unprecedented authority to demand access to data from all other Federal agencies. The attempt to register potential draftees “automatically” will be a large, complex exercise in data collection, data sharing, and data matching between the SSS and other agencies.

Multiple elements of this process will require notice and comment and/or other approvals pursuant to the Privacy Act, Paperwork Reduction Act, and Computer Matching Act.

The SSS has a history of disregard for these requirements for notice, comment, and approval of its data collection, use, and sharing. If the SSS fails to promulgate the required notices or obtain the required approvals for “automatic” registration, those failings may provide a basis for lawsuits against the SSS.

The Privacy Act of 1974 requires each Federal agency to publish a notice in the Federal Register (with an opportunity for public comment) including specific information about each of system of records about U.S. citizens or residents. The notice must include the sources, recipients, and uses of the data. Maintaining such a system of records without first publishing a complete notice is a crime on the part of the responsible agency officials or employees. “Automatic” registration will require new sources of registration data from other agencies and therefore a revised Privacy Act notice.

Even before the start of “automatic” registration, the SSS gave DOGE access to the registration database in early 2025, and in late 2025 proposed sharing its registration data with more other agencies for immigration enforcement and other purposes.

Objections to that proposal were submitted by anti-militarist, civil liberties, and privacy organizations. It’s not clear whether those objections have been considered yet by the SSS.

The Paperwork Reduction Act requires an agency to publish first a 60-day notice and then a 30-day notice in the Federal Register and then get approval from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) before collecting information from members of the public. The OMB approval number must be included on any form, Web site, or app through which information is collected.

The SSS has been collecting information for decades through its “Request for Status Information Letter” form, but has never requested or received approval from OMB for this form. The form does not display an OMB control number, making it flagrantly illegal.

The “automatic” registration law allows the SSS to demand information from a registrant if it is needed to complete their “automatic” registration. The new forms and/or Web pages to be used for this purpose will need to be published for comment and will then need OMB approval. Because of the two required notice-and-comment periods, this process takes at least three months.

The Computer Matching and Privacy Protection Act of 1988 requires advance notice in the Federal Register, a Privacy Impact Assessment, due-process procedures for individuals who are denied benefits on the basis of data matching, and an annual cost-benefit review and report to Congress for each data matching program by a Federal agency that is used to determine eligibility for, or compliance with, any Federal benefit program.

The SSS has argued that this law didn’t apply to any of its activities, at least prior to the attempt at “automatic” registration. None of the Computer Matching Act notices required annually for each daat matching program have been published by the SSS in the Federal Register since 2017.

New and expanded computer matching programs will be central to the attempt to register potential draftees “automatically”. These programs will be subject to the Computer Matching Act. It remains to be seen whether the SSS will continue to ignore this law even as it dramatically expands its computer matching programs.

Meanwhile, there’s still a chance for Congress to recognize its mistake and avert this impending fiasco by repealing the Military Selective Service Act (MSSA) before the attempt at “automatic” registration begins. The Selective Service Repeal Act could be reintroduced as a standalone bill, and/or proposed as an amendment to the NDAA for Fiscal Year 2027. The NDAA will probably be enacted by the “lame-duck” Congress in late 2026, after the elections but before new members of Congress are seated.

“Automatic” registration was enacted with no public awareness, hearings, debate, or budget review. It’s a bad idea, and it won’t work. The chances for repeal of the MSSA may depend on how soon and how widely “automatic” draft registration is recognized as not only bound to fail but a data grab for DOGE and an enabler of more aggressive war planning and policies.

The task of anti-draft awareness-bulding, mobilization, and action is increasingly urgent and important in the face of new military escalations. Repeal of the MSSA should be on the agenda of all anti-war organizations and a demand raised at all anti-war actions.

Edward Hasbrouck maintains the Resisters.info website and publishes the “Resistance News” newsletter. He was imprisoned in 1983-1984 for organizing resistance to draft registration.

REVANCHIST REACTIONARIES

Argentina lawmakers approve glacier law reform to boost mining

09.04.2026, dpa

Photo: Fede J. Ciarallo/dpa

Argentina's lower house of Congress on Thursday approved a controversial reform of the country's glacier protection law, easing environmental safeguards to allow new economic projects, particularly in mining.

Lawmakers voted 137 to 111 in favour of the measure after hours of debate, the newspaper La Nación reported. The upper house had passed the bill in February.

Under the reform, only glaciers and surrounding high-altitude areas deemed essential to water supply will remain under strict protection. Provincial authorities will play a central role in determining which areas qualify.

The government of right-wing libertarian President Javier Milei described the overhaul as "historic," saying it would restore "genuine environmental federalism" and enable a more pragmatic approach to resource use.

Officials argue the previous law discouraged investment and led to legal uncertainty. The reform is intended to unlock billions of dollars in projects, particularly in lithium extraction and mining.

Opponents say the changes weaken environmental protections and favour the mining industry. Several opposition lawmakers have said they plan to challenge the reform in court, arguing it may be unconstitutional.

Argentina has enforced comprehensive glacier protections since 2010, banning most industrial activity in and around roughly 17,000 glaciers, as there are considered critical water reserves.

The country's glaciers have been shrinking for years, largely due to climate change. Milei denies that Earth's rising temperatures are driven by human activity.

(c) 2026 dpa Deutsche Presse Agentur GmbH