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Blinken attacks China for seeking peace in Ukraine

In this insightful article for Fighting Words, Chris Fry summarizes the latest efforts by the Biden administration to slander – and escalate tensions with – China.

The article starts by describing Antony Blinken’s recent accusations that China is sending – or “contemplating sending” – military assistance to Russia. Chris notes the twisted irony of this accusation, given that “the US has supplied more than $100 billion in military aid to Ukraine so far, with more on the way,” and given that the US government is quite clearly implementing a strategy directed not at bringing about peace or saving Ukrainian lives, but at defeating and weakening the Russian Federation and expanding NATO’s hegemony in Europe.

It is presumably not a coincidence that this accusation is being amplified at a time when China has put forward an important position paper on the Ukraine conflict, calling for the abandoning of Cold War mentality, a resumption of peace talks, and an end to illegal sanctions. China’s peace proposals – grounded firmly in international law and consistent with the principles of the UN Charter – are resonating with governments throughout the world, particularly in the Global South. Therefore the US is doing what it can to tarnish China’s reputation as a responsible power.

Chris also highlights the US’s increasingly desperate attempts to stoke tensions in relation to Taiwan Province. With the anti-independence Kuomintang having scored an important victory in Taiwan’s local elections last year – and having good prospects in next year’s presidential elections – the US is fast-tracking its provocations, which “seek to provoke a justified but costly Chinese military attack on Taiwan and thus ‘justify’ a US war against China.”

China’s response to such provocations has been measured and proportional; as such the US strategy is failing. Nonetheless, notes the author, “progressives and anti-war activists must prepare now to muster their forces.”

Unable to intimidate the leadership of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) over its balloon being shot down by U.S. Air Force jets along with three other balloons in a missile-firing frenzy, President Biden, through his war hawk Secretary of State Antony Blinken, is now accusing China of “contemplating sending lethal aid” to the Russian Federation.

Speaking to “Meet the Press” on February 9 after meeting with Chinese top diplomat Wang Yi in Munich, Blinken arrogantly attacked China for its relations with the Russian Federation while it maintains strict neutrality in the conflict:

“Publicly, they present themselves as a country striving for peace in Ukraine,” he said … “But privately, as I said, we’ve seen already over these past months the provision of nonlethal assistance that does go directly to aiding and abetting Russia’s war effort.”

Wang Yi: However difficult the situation is, peace should be given a chance

On February 18, Wang Yi, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs, delivered a keynote speech at the 59th Munich Security Conference.

Towards the start of his speech, entitled Making the World a Safer Place, Wang recalled that they had last gathered in the German city three years ago at the start of the Covid-19 pandemic. That experience had shown that: “We can overcome challenges when we stand together; we can win victory when we trust each other.”

However: “Three years on, the pandemic is contained, but the world is not yet safer. Trust between major countries is lacking, geopolitical rifts are widening, unilateralism is rampant, the Cold War mentality is back, new types of security threats from energy, food, climate, bio-security and artificial intelligence keep emerging.

“Standing at a critical juncture of history, human society must not repeat the old path of antagonism, division and confrontation, and must not fall into the trap of zero-sum game, war and conflict.”

Stressing the need to respect the sovereignty and territorial integrity of all countries, Wang Yi noted that, “interference in other countries’ internal affairs, in whatever name, disregards and defies the basic norms of international relations” and warned that violations of the One China Policy, “pose real threats to peace and stability across the Taiwan Strait.”

Calling for the peaceful settlement of disputes, Wang Yi said that, “however difficult the situation is, peace should be given a chance,” adding that, with regard to the conflict in Ukraine, “China’s position boils down to supporting talks for peace. We will put forth China’s proposition on the political settlement of the Ukraine crisis, and stay firm on the side of peace and dialogue.”

China’s top diplomat also asserted that: “The world should not be a place where the rich stay rich while the poor remain poor. Efforts should be stepped up in implementing the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the legitimate right to development of all countries, especially developing countries, should be effectively protected.” Refuting the idea that China would renounce the path of peaceful development as it became stronger, he insisted that, “China’s experience shows that the path of peaceful development has worked, and worked well.”

After his speech, Wang Yi took questions from his audience, a number of which focused on the state of China-US relations following the US shooting down of an unmanned Chinese airship that had strayed off course due to climatic conditions. He described this incident as, “a political farce manufactured by the United States” and continued:

“This mind-boggling and hysterical act is a hundred percent abuse of force and a clear violation of common practice and relevant international conventions. China will never stand for this, and has lodged strong protest with the US. Each day, balloons fly across the sky in large numbers. Does the United States want to shoot them all down? What the US has done is not a sign of strength, but exactly the opposite. China urges the US to stop doing such absurd things out of domestic political needs.”

Describing China’s policy towards the United States as clear and transparent, Wang Yi added that it was based on, “mutual respect, peaceful coexistence and win-win cooperation, and, based on these principles, exploring the right way for the two major countries with different social systems, histories and cultures to get along with each other.”

The following articles were originally carried on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

Making the World a Safer Place

Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, 18 February 2023

Keynote Speech by Director Wang Yi
Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and
Director of the Office of the Central Commission for Foreign Affairs
At the 59th Munich Security Conference
Conversation with China

Munich, 18 February 2023

Dear Friends,
Colleagues,

I am delighted to join you in person at the Munich Security Conference (MSC) after three years, and meet face to face with friends old and new.

I recall vividly how I came here with the Chinese delegation three years ago when COVID-19 just struck. I presented China’s efforts in fighting the virus and urged solidarity among countries in face of the trying times. The international community gave China valuable understanding and support, for which we are deeply grateful.

Humanity’s three-year fight against COVID tells us a simple truth: as President Xi Jinping repeatedly stressed, we are members of one global village, and we belong to one community with a shared future. We can overcome challenges when we stand together; we can win victory when we trust each other.

Three years on, the pandemic is contained, but the world is not yet safer. Trust between major countries is lacking, geopolitical rifts are widening, unilateralism is rampant, the Cold War mentality is back, new types of security threats from energy, food, climate, bio-security and artificial intelligence keep emerging.

Balloon shootout: Pretext for war with China

In this article for Fighting Words, Chris Fry discusses the latest developments in – and motivation for – the US’s bizarre War on Balloons. Chris notes that by far the most plausible explanation for the appearance of the first “spy balloon” is that provided by the Chinese government: that it was a meteorological research balloon that had accidentally drifted off-course. Hawkish US politicians and journalists claimed that China was attempting to gather information about the Montana nuclear missile base, and yet: “One could easily go onto the internet to find the location of the Montana missile base. And no balloon could possibly find the location of any of the nuclear missile-carrying submarines the U.S. has stationed around the world under water.” Meanwhile, if international surveillance is the hot topic, “no country conducts more aggressive spying on countries than US imperialism, which it combines with its regime change strategy to overturn governments that it is unable to bend to its will.”

What is the rationale for this manufactured “spy balloon crisis”? The author reminds us that “Biden was a supporter of the Bush doctrine of ‘preemptive strike’ and the Iraq war”, and compares the balloon narrative with the Gulf of Tonkin (phantom) incident of 1964, which was used by the Johnson administration to drive public support for a major US military intervention in Vietnam. Chris points out that the US has been steadily undermining the One China policy and giving strong support to separatist forces in Taiwan Province, with the aim of “provoking China to launch a quite justified but costly war to recover its Taiwan province.” However, it’s increasingly likely that next year’s elections in Taiwan will bring the pro-unification Kuomintang back to power on the island. Chris opines that, for this reason, “the Biden administration is trying to find any pretext, even as absurd as a weather balloon, to spark a war with China before the current pro-independence regime in Taiwan is kicked out next year.”

The author concludes by calling on progressive and anti-war forces in the West to develop a mass peace movement to stop this reckless behavior on the part of the US and its allies.

A stealth F22 fighter, costing some $350 million, managed to shoot down its first aircraft on February 4, a large Chinese balloon off the South Carolina coast. The People’s Republic of China (PRC) stated that it was a weather research device and apologized that it inadvertently passed over U.S. territory because of unexpected wind currents.

But the Biden administration, the Congress and the Pentagon launched a full-scale tirade, accusing China of using balloons to spy on nuclear missile silos, intercept messages and, most importantly, “violating U.S. sovereignty.” The corporate media has whipped up a frenzied campaign of mass hysteria.

Of course, every country, particularly the U.S., proclaims the right to conduct reconnaissance of other countries’ weapons systems that target them. China has more than 500 satellites circling the planet, which obviously makes balloon surveillance superfluous. But no country conducts more aggressive spying on countries than U.S. imperialism, which it combines with its regime change strategy to overturn governments that it is unable to bend to its will.

Flap over Chinese balloon a colossal demonstration of warped thinking in the US

In the following article, originally published in Global Times, Ken Hammond, Professor of East Asian and Global History at New Mexico State University and a member of our advisory group, dissects the grotesque over-reaction to the accidental intrusion of a Chinese meteorological balloon into US airspace and notes that “all this would be funny, if it weren’t so dangerous.”

Situating the recent development against a background that begins at least with President Obama’s 2011 ‘Pivot to Asia’, Ken notes that, sadly, the “rather ridiculous” and “absurd” behaviour on the part of the US, is “just the latest round in the ongoing effort to demonize China, to prepare the American people for possible conflict, and to ensure that most Americans have only the most one-sided and hostile kind of knowledge and information.”

Noting that a new world order has begun to emerge, Ken points out that: “China has been a leading example of this, having raised the material conditions of the lives of its people over the past 70 years, extending life expectancy, drastically reducing infant mortality, improving housing, providing educational opportunities, and creating national health care systems which saved millions of lives through the course of the COVID-19 epidemic.”

The accomplishments of the Chinese people since the founding of the People’s Republic in 1949, “are a source of justifiable pride for their country, and serve as an inspiration for many people around the world, but for American elites they represent an existential threat. The rich and powerful in America do not want to share the wealth created by working people with those who actually produce it, in their own country or elsewhere.”

American military and political leaders, and the front pages of the corporate media, have been devoted to the denunciation of China for allowing a balloon to float across the Pacific Ocean and across North America. Although spokesmen for the Pentagon had acknowledged that the balloon actually posed no threat to the US and that any information the so-called spy balloon might gather would be only a redundant version of information routinely available to satellites and already widely known in intelligence circles around the world, pundits and politicians have been almost hysterical to outshout one another and demonstrate their hatred and aggressive intentions toward China. All of this would be funny, if it weren’t so dangerous.

It has been clear for a long time now, since at least the “Pivot to Asia” announced by former president Barack Obama in 2011, that the US has embarked on a campaign to isolate and contain China, to try to disrupt China’s development and derail its efforts to improve the lives of its people and the peoples of other developing countries around the world. The American military maintains bases all around China, and US intelligence agencies operate highly sophisticated listening posts to monitor communications and other kinds of information sources within China. American spy planes routinely fly just beyond the limits of China’s airspace, sometimes even venturing into that airspace, to gather information. And of course the US has a long history of “overflights” by the infamous U-2 aircraft to spy on Cuba, the former Soviet Union, and other countries, not to mention the many American surveillance satellites which track over China every day.

China balloon is pretext for US provocation

In the following article Margaret Kimberley, Black Agenda Report Executive Editor and Senior Columnist, joins the dots between the Biden administration’s seemingly insane reaction to a Chinese meteorological research balloon and the longstanding attempts by Washington to bully China into complying with US imperialist strategy.

Margaret writes that, with its bipartisan manufactured hysteria, US politicians “hope to find or create a provocation that will result in congressional and public support for sanctions or even military action.” Furthermore the US government aims to provoke a dangerous over-reaction from China which would serve to deepen public support for anti-China aggression. Thankfully, Margaret observes, the US administration “isn’t smart enough to deal with a nation acting with intelligence and maturity,” as China does.

One terrible byproduct of this Cold War hysteria is a rising trend of anti-Asian racism. “These sentiments start at the top with presidents, congress, and supposedly reputable media. Despite any alleged differences they join together at the opportune moment to spread fear or use nonsense for already ridiculous and dangerous purposes.”

The People’s Republic of China has a space program. They have a space station where they deploy their taikonauts. China has satellites orbiting the earth. Yet despite these advances, we are told that this same country would send a balloon, visible to the naked eye, to spy on the United States. The more logical explanation is just what the Chinese said: a balloon conducting meteorological research was blown off course. There have been several previous instances of such equipment flying in or near U.S. territory .

The mixture of hysteria whipped up by the Biden administration and their mouthpieces in corporate media were fodder for jokes and internet memes. However, U.S. actions which created this incident are part of a pattern of provocations and dangerously amateurish diplomacy.

Joe Biden began his term in office by attempting to bully Beijing. Secretary of State Antony Blinken and National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan met with their Chinese counterparts in early 2021 and proceeded to insult them very publicly . The interaction was so bad that Yang Jiechie, Director of the Central Commission on Foreign Affairs, felt compelled to say, “Well, I think we thought too well of the United States. We thought that the U.S. side will follow the necessary diplomatic protocols.” Relations between the two nations have gone steadily downhill ever since.

The Biden administration is now using the same failed playbook it used against Russia and hoping to somehow snatch victory from the jaws of defeat with China. They hope to find or create a provocation that will result in congressional and public support for sanctions or even military action. But their Ukraine policy should be jettisoned instead of copied elsewhere. In instigating Russia to act in Ukraine, Biden succeeded in severing relations between Russia and EU nations, and ended their natural gas sales, to the detriment of Europe. But Russia prepared for sanctions while the Biden team engaged in wishful thinking. Remember when he said the sanctions would, “turn the ruble to rubble?” Ukraine suffers from this miscalculation more than any other country and the U.S. is left to commit desperate acts, such as its probable involvement in the explosion of the Nord Stream pipelines. Their fantasy foreign policy consists of escalating tensions for the sake of doing so.

Hypocrisy, histrionics and hot air: the US and one Chinese balloon

The following Morning Star editorial analyses the ongoing propaganda blitz in relation to the Chinese weather balloon that drifted over the continental United States. Noting that “both the US parties of the ruling class have been falling over each other to sound more confrontational and shout louder for escalation and more aggression towards China,” the author concludes that this escalating rhetoric signifies US determination to continue pursuing a New Cold War.

The editorial points to the shameless hypocrisy of the US complaining about its sovereignty being violated by China, given “the innumerable very real and outrageous US transgressions against China’s national and territorial sovereignty.” These include “the ring of US bases surrounding China from the Pacific to the Indian Ocean and the Middle East”, as well as the “aggressive manoeuvres of massive US fleets, thousands of miles from the US, in the South China Sea and all across the Pacific.”

The editorial makes a powerful call for the left to oppose the drive to war and to expose the monopoly media offensive against China – “and the racist and anti-communist tropes which characterise it.”

You would have struggled to miss the sensationalist coverage of the Chinese weather balloon which drifted over the continental United States last week, only to be heroically downed by a $400,000 sidewinder missile.

The Chinese government has been clear from the outset that the balloon is from China and is a civilian airship, mainly for meteorological research.

It asserts that the balloon was blown off course and was never intended to pass over the US and that this was an unfortunate accident which should be dealt with sensibly and calmly.

Eager to never let a good crisis go to waste or, in this case, fabricate one out of thin (or perhaps hot? …) air, the US government has responded with hysteria and sabre-rattling of the highest order.

The US military establishment has been feverishly declaring that the very obvious and apparently helpless balloon is a sophisticated spying device and that the “deliberate” act by China amounts to a gross threat to sacrosanct US “national security” and a violation of its territorial sovereignty.

US media whips up anti-Chinese hysteria over balloon flight

In the below article, which was originally published by the World Socialist Website (WSWS) on February 6, and which has lost none of its pertinence in the ensuing days, Andre Damon demolishes the lies spread regarding the Chinese unmanned civilian airship shot down by the US military and exposes the war-mongering agenda that lies behind the propaganda.

Underlining the seriousness of the incident, Andre notes that it is the first US attack on a Chinese aircraft since the Korean War and continues: “While the specific purpose of the balloon cannot be definitively stated, the notion that the Chinese government is seeking to secretly obtain vital information on US nuclear weapons by means of a gigantic and clearly visible object slowly passing through US airspace is, to put it mildly, ludicrous.

“Far more likely is the account given by Beijing that the high-altitude balloon was conducting meteorological surveillance and was blown off course, entering the United States on January 28.”

He points out that NASA (the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration) has launched dozens of similar balloon missions as, according to a University of Hawaii Professor, they “offer flight opportunities for unique science investigations that require, or can be done in, near-space.”

The article further notes that: “In publications that are written primarily for those within the state apparatus, a more sober assessment can be found. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a leading think tank connected to US intelligence agencies, commented on Friday that ‘the most likely explanation is that this is an errant weather balloon that went astray.'” Which, incidentally, is exactly the explanation consistently offered by the Chinese side! Perhaps that is the reason for the author’s following observation: “But in the media, such an appraisal is nowhere to be found.”

The article links the present campaign to both previous build-ups prior to US acts of military aggression and the present campaign against China, noting that, “This type of wall-to-wall media hysteria was used to justify the 1991 Gulf War, the 1998 bombing of Yugoslavia, the 2001 invasion of Afghanistan, the 2003 invasion of Iraq, and the 2011 bombings of Syria and Libya. All of these claims…turned out to be nothing more than hot air.”

It adds that: “Even as the US and NATO powers recklessly escalate the war with Russia over Ukraine, the ruling class is preparing for a conflict with China, for which the war against Russia has been viewed as a necessary precondition.”

Just days before the ‘balloon incident’, US Air Force General Mike Minihan had forecast that the US may be at war with China as early as 2025.

Over the past four days, the American population has been subjected to a barrage of war propaganda over the claim that China sent a huge balloon visible to the naked eye to spy on US nuclear bases.

The media machine is operating at full throttle. Since the balloon’s existence was publicly announced last week, breathless coverage provided minute-by-minute updates on the progress of the floating white balloon as it slowly traversed across the continental United States. The story led every newspaper for days, was the first item on the evening news broadcasts, and dominated the 24-hour cable news networks.

On Friday, former President Donald Trump called for the balloon to be shot down—a demand that was repeated by Republican and Democratic politicians. On Saturday, under orders from Biden, the US Air Force shot down the balloon in the first US attack on a Chinese aircraft since the Korean War.

A day after the existence of the balloon was publicly announced, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken canceled his scheduled trip to China, which had been promoted as part of a supposed rapprochement between the two countries.

All of the media coverage has accepted the unsubstantiated claim that the airship was a secret Chinese “surveillance balloon” specifically targeting US military installations.

Foreign Ministry statement on US claim of downing a Chinese unmanned airship

We reprint below an initial statement from China’s Foreign Ministry regarding the US attack on a civilian unmanned airship. The Foreign Ministry expresses its strong disapproval and protest, noting that it had repeatedly informed the US side of the civilian nature of the airship and that its entry into US skies was due to force majeure and totally unexpected. China had asked the US to handle matters in a calm, professional and restrained manner, but what the US had done was a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice. China, it concluded, reserves the right to make further responses if necessary.

The statement was originally carried on the website of the Chinese Foreign Ministry.

China strongly disapproves of and protests against the US attack on a civilian unmanned airship by force. The Chinese side has, after verification, repeatedly informed the US side of the civilian nature of the airship and conveyed that its entry into the US due to force majeure was totally unexpected. The Chinese side has clearly asked the US side to properly handle the matter in a calm, professional and restrained manner. The spokesperson of the US Department of Defense also noted that the balloon does not present a military or physical threat to people on the ground. Under such circumstances, the US use of force is a clear overreaction and a serious violation of international practice. China will resolutely safeguard the legitimate rights and interests of the company concerned, and reserves the right to make further responses if necessary.

US issues ludicrous spy balloon charge against China

The below article, which was originally carried by the World Socialist Website (WSWS), is a timely and succinct rebuttal of the ever more hyped war hysteria being stirred up by US imperialism by means of faux outrage at the accidental intrusion of a Chinese civilian airship, mainly used for meteorological research, into the airspace above the United States.

The article notes that the idea that China would use such outmoded means to conduct surveillance over sensitive nuclear sites – as alleged by the US – is patently ridiculous. However, the hysteria points to Washington’s increasingly strident war propaganda and the potential for this to be used to trigger military conflict. It also quotes China Daily as noting: “Surveillance balloons being used as military technology dates back to the early 20th century, the technology is outdated one can hardly imagine any nation like China still resorting to it today.”

It has however been given as the reason for US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken to indefinitely postpone a visit to China that was reportedly to have taken place this weekend. However, it is noteworthy that the Chinese Foreign Ministry had not confirmed the dates for this visit – which was agreed in principle when Presidents Xi Jinping and Joseph Biden met in the margins of the G-20 Summit in Bali last November – making it at least possible that the two sides had failed to reach a consensus related to the visit and that therefore the US may have chosen to seize on an apparent excuse to call it off.

The article further notes that the extraordinary output of anti-China propaganda that has ensued is, “entirely hypocritical to say the least,” considering not least the ongoing intelligence gathering by US aircraft and spy ships operating close to the Chinese mainland. Moreover, the US move to delay or scrap Blinken’s visit comes, “amid a mounting series of aggressive and provocative moves by the US against China.” These include last week’s visits to South Korea and the Philippines by Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin, in which the US regained access to five military bases in the latter country; increased efforts to sabotage China’s hi-tech industries; plans by the new US House of Representatives Speaker Kevin McCarthy to visit Taiwan; and the leaking of an internal memo by Air Force General Michael Minihan, predicting that the US could be at war with China by 2025 and ordering his commanders to make detailed preparations.

As the article concludes: “It is Washington that is escalating its confrontation with China.”

The past several days have seen feverish accusations by US authorities and media outlets of an alleged Chinese spy balloon “hovering” over ballistic missile launch sites in Montana.

From China’s response and expert accounts, however, it appears that a clumsy, hard-to-manoeuvre, high-altitude weather test balloon was blown by winds across North America. On its current course, the balloon was expected to drift off the US east coast on Saturday.

The claim that China would use such outmoded and difficult-to-control means to conduct surveillance over sensitive nuclear war sites, rather than sophisticated low-orbit satellites, is patently ridiculous. But the hysteria points to the increasingly strident war propaganda emanating from Washington against China, as well as the potential for such an incident to be inflated to trigger a military conflict.

The Pentagon said it had readied fighter jets, including F-22s, to shoot down the craft if ordered to do so by President Joe Biden. On Friday, the White House abruptly used the incident to postpone a major two-day visit to Beijing by Secretary of State Anthony Blinken.

Prominent figures in the US ruling establishment, including 2024 Republican presidential candidates ex-president Donald Trump and former South Carolina governor and UN ambassador Nikki Haley, demanded that the US military immediately shoot down the balloon.

Biden apparently took Pentagon advice not to blow up the errant balloon, citing the danger of falling debris from the craft, which was said to be the size of three buses. Yet the administration took the confrontational step of calling off Blinken’s trip, just before he was due to embark. The top-level visit had been agreed between Biden and Chinese President Xi Jinping at a summit last November in Indonesia. Blinken was due to meet Xi to discuss the worsening US-China relations.

Standing against NATO and AUKUS a key issue for the peace movement

On Saturday January 21, Britain’s Stop the War Coalition organised its first-ever trade union conference.

Speakers included former Leader of the Labour Party, Jeremy Corbyn MP; President of the RMT rail workers union Alex Gordon; Deputy President of the PCS civil service union Martin Cavanagh; Alex Kenny from the National Education Union; Liz Wheatley of public service union Unison; Ricardo de la Torre of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU); Daniel Zahedi of the junior doctors section of the British Medical Association (BMA); striking ambulance worker George Solomou; José Nivoi from the Autonomous Collective of Dockworkers in Genoa, Italy, who have repeatedly prevented arms shipments from being sent to conflict zones in the Middle East; Deputy President of Stop the War Andrew Murray; Stop the War Convenor Lindsey German; and veteran anti-war campaigner Salma Yaqoob.

China specialist Dr Jenny Clegg, who is a member of the Friends of Socialist China advisory group, introduced and led a well-attended session on the AUKUS pact between Britain, Australia and the United States, and on the ‘coming war on China’. She was joined on the panel by Dr. Kate Hudson, General Secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), and Warren Smith of the Australian Maritime Union.

We reproduce Jenny’s opening remarks below, which present an admirable and concise summary of the regional situation. Their cogency and urgency are only underlined by the subsequent visit of NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg to Japan and South Korea.

Introduction

The Ukraine war, Russia, and NATO, have been demanding the attention of the anti-war movement, but there is also a whole other dimension to Global Britain that is unfolding in the Asia Pacific.

Some might say that the US and NATO want to weaken Russia before moving on to China in the future – in fact war preparations are accelerating right now in the East.

Progress on AUKUS

The announcement of AUKUS in September 2021 was a surprise, made with no democratic debate. It came as the new Queen Elizabeth aircraft carrier was engaging in multiple joint military exercises in the South China Sea – flying the flag for Johnson’s Global Britain, demonstrating the new Indo Pacific tilt, but the F35 fighter jets it carried actually belonged to the USAF.

The key feature of the AUKUS pact was seen to be the US and UK agreement to assist Australia in acquiring nuclear powered submarines. BAE systems declared itself ready to support production. However, over the last year, as the US and UK have tried to wangle their way around the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) without apparent success, the deal has struggled and it is not certain that the US and UK can take on the building work given their own nuclear submarines programme commitments.

However, AUKUS is more than just the submarines: it is about Australian militarisation, about advancing military technologies and military industrial cooperation. BAE systems, Rolls Royce and MBDA have long had subsidiaries in Australia helping to supply its armed forces.

Presentation: Give Peace A Chance – China and the World Today

This presentation by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez was given at a webinar organised by the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA) Education Commission on the theme ‘Give peace a chance – China and the world today.’ The webinar took place on 22 January 2023.

Carlos discusses the current state of US-China relations, the reason for the deterioration in recent years, the bipartisan nature of the New Cold War, the dangers of ‘decoupling’, and the possibilities for moving towards a trajectory of peace and cooperation. He also answers the assertion that the hostility between US and China is a case of inter-imperialist rivalry, and explains why ‘Neither Washington Nor Beijing’ is a reactionary slogan, the effect of which runs counter to the aims of peace, progress, multipolarity and socialism.

Decoupling from China, Russia suicidal for Europe

This article by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez, originally published in Global Times, discusses the record of the Biden administration in ramping up Cold War hostilities against China and Russia, and its attempts to get Europe on board with its strategy for protecting US hegemony. Carlos points out that “Anti-Russia and anti-China positions are harming the people of Europe”: sanctions on China’s semiconductor and solar energy industries are utterly self-defeating, and sanctions on Russian energy are feeding directly into a very serious cost of living crisis. He concludes that “the countries of Europe would be well advised to exercise foreign policy independence and to make decisions based on the needs of their own populations, which are calling out for peace, prosperity and a sustainable future.”

When Joe Biden was elected in November 2020, many around the world were hoping for a change of course in the US’ reckless new Cold War.

US-China relations have always been complex and difficult; yet from the early 1970s onward, the trajectory had been toward deepening economic cooperation and a nuanced handling of the contradictions immanent in the relationship. Even with the Obama-Clinton “Pivot to Asia,” which signaled the US’ shift in geostrategic focus toward China containment, there was still significant and productive cooperation between the two countries – most notably in the drafting of the Paris Agreement.

Donald Trump came to power with a promise to stop China “raping” the US economy. Blaming China soon became the new magic wand for explaining away the problems of US capitalism without having to deal with any of the real underlying causes of American decline. Singaporean academic and former diplomat Kishore Mahbubani noted that, rather than blaming China for everything, living standards in the US might improve if America stopped fighting unnecessary foreign wars and used its resources to improve the well-being of its people.

The Trump team initiated a trade war, imposed a ban on Huawei, and sought to ban TikTok and WeChat. They aimed to generate mass anti-China sentiment by engaging in flagrant racism, most infamously blaming the coronavirus pandemic on China. They introduced sanctions and issued disgraceful slanders. So it was assumed that surely, things would only get better under Biden.

Webinar: Give peace a chance – China and the world today (22 January)

On Sunday 22 January (at 11am EST, 8am PST, 4pm GMT), the CPUSA Education Commission is organizing a webinar on the theme Give peace a chance – China and the world today. There will be a presentation by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez, followed by discussion and Q&A.

Demonizing China’s Covid policies is fearmongering

In this insightful article for Global Times, Friends of Socialist China advisory group member Ken Hammond provides an overview of China’s evolving strategy for dealing with the Covid-19 pandemic – a strategy that has saved literally millions of lives to date.

Ken also discusses the extraordinary hypocrisy of the Western media’s portrayal of this strategy. For almost three years of Dynamic Zero Covid, “terms like ‘draconian’ were constantly used to criticize China’s measures to control and contain the virus”. Now restrictions have been loosened and “China is denounced for recklessly endangering its people and the rest of the world” – in spite of the fact that “governments in America and Europe have effectively abandoned any efforts to deal with the pandemic over the past year.”

The author makes the important point that this hypocritical reporting is part of a broader campaign of demonization – a reflection of rising anger among the US ruling class as all hopes fade away that China might be subjected to a ‘color revolution’ and become “a compliant, subordinate component of the American-dominated global capitalist order.” Ken opines that the relentless China-bashing is the product of a social class that has come to fear “the loss of the power and privileges they have so long enjoyed based on the extraction of wealth from working people around the planet.”

This demonization campaign creates a dangerous situation, fomenting conflict and standing in the way of the development of cooperation and understanding. People who support peace and progress should firmly oppose the propaganda war on China.

China’s COVID policies have saved millions of lives over the past three years. Yet those policies were attacked by some Western politicians, media pundits, and academics every day. Terms like “draconian” were constantly used to criticize China’s measures to control and contain the virus. China’s achievements in managing the epidemic were unmatched anywhere in the world, yet an ordinary citizen of a Western country can have very little idea of that given the relentless demonization of China to which they are regularly exposed.

Now, in the context of new scientific understandings of the latest variants of the virus, and in an effort to balance the ongoing need to protect the lives of the Chinese people with the goal of carrying forward the development of their economy, a new set of policies and practices is being implemented, relaxing many of the restrictions and controls which have been used over the last three years. One might expect that this would be welcomed in the West, yet quite the opposite has been the case.

China is now denounced for recklessly endangering its people and the rest of the world, even as governments in America and Europe have effectively abandoned any efforts to deal with the pandemic over the past year. Well over 1.1 million people have died in the US. The same media voices, like the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, or The Guardian, which railed against China’s so-called “oppressive” COVID policies, now spout a steady stream of condemnation of China’s efforts to pursue a more flexible, adaptive COVID policy package.

Video: How the US’s Taiwan policy makes war with China a self-fulfilling prophecy

In this important episode of The Socialist Program on BreakThrough News, Brian Becker and Ken Hammond conduct a detailed discussion about the US strategy of fomenting tensions across the Taiwan Strait. Taking as their starting point a recent article in the Wall Street Journal entitled ‘To Deter China, Taiwan Must Prepare for War’, Brian and Ken describe how the US is deliberately and determinedly creating instability in the region, encouraging Taiwanese separatism and undermining the One China Principle in order to create a potential war scenario that will slow down China’s rise and undermine popular support for the CPC-led government. The geopolitical context, of course, is that of a global New Cold War in which US imperialism is hitting out in all directions in order to perpetuate American global dominance and reverse its process of decline.

Brian and Ken note that China’s position in relation to Taiwan has not changed in the course of many decades: China is very clear that the Taiwan question is an internal affair and will be resolved by Chinese people on both sides of the Straits. The CPC has consistently stated – including most recently at its 20th National Congress in October 2022 – that it aims to achieve reunification by peaceful means. While the Western media narrative is that recent escalated tensions are due to Chinese truculence, what has changed isn’t the Chinese position but the US’s steady erosion of the One China Principle and its flouting of international law – including its recent commitment to provide direct military aid to Taiwan.

Brian and Ken also observe that, sadly, this strategy has bipartisan support within US ruling circles and that meaningful opposition to imperialist aggression will have to be based on the action of the masses of the people fighting for peace.

Wave of anti-Asian racism fuelled by the New Cold War

We are pleased to publish below the text of the speech by an activist from the Goldsmiths Anti-Imperialist Society, given on 17 December at the second of two online seminars on the theme ‘The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and its World Significance’, organised jointly by Friends of Socialist China and the International Department of the Communist Party of China.

The speech focuses on the problems faced by minority communities in Britain, particularly people of Chinese descent in the context of a rising New Cold War, linking the recent rise in anti-Asian racism to the ‘yellow peril’ narrative pioneered in Britain in the 19th and 20th centuries – part of a campaign of demonisation connected to Britain’s attempts to impose colonial domination on China. Today’s anti-Asian racism represents “the imperialist legacy of the Yellow Peril in the 21st century, propagated by the New Cold War.” In spite of these problems, the speech concludes on an optimistic note, observing that there is a “growing number of young people who are fighting back against the propaganda that seeks to divide us and isolate us from each other”. This generation is building a united front based on opposing racism, imperialism and capitalism, and stands “in solidarity with our Chinese comrades and all our siblings in the Global South in self-determining and working together to create a fairer, multilateral world.”

I would like to use this opportunity to thank Friends of Socialist China and the Communist Party of China for hosting this meeting here today. My speech is from the perspective of an activist in anti-racist collectives. When I refer to the term ‘black’ in this speech it is used as an umbrella term referring to African, Asian, Arab, Caribbean and all non-white communities.

As a member of the Chinese diaspora, a British Born Chinese, it brings me great joy to speak with you all, though the topics of what I will be sharing will not be so joyous. In sharing my lived experience and material analysis of the current socio-political environment, I hope to share insight on what it is like to live as a Chinese in Britain and the impact of anti-China rhetoric on Asian communities.

After the murder of George Floyd, the Black Lives Matter movements that emerged around the world highlighted the institutional racism embedded in every aspect of western society, from how the media portrays Black children in negative, stereotypical ways to how the police brutalise Black people. Institutional racism towards Asian communities is perhaps not as overt as it is towards our African and Caribbean siblings but it is equally as insidious.

Racism against Asian communities has relied on the same vestiges of Yellow Peril that never left British shores after it arrived on the coattails of the Opium Wars almost two centuries’ ago. This “Yellow Peril” is the fear of the East – the anxiety that the so-called Orient was coming to colonise and conquer the West in the same way it has done. Historically, the Yellow Peril was enshrined in law such as the Chinese Exclusion Act in the US and Home Office policies that led to the deportation of Chinese seamen in Liverpool, UK. How many of us here know that 6 Chinese seamen survived the sinking of Titanic? Now Chinatowns are bustling hubs of culture and commerce. But there was a time when some Chinatowns were formed as self-contained protective enclaves against the tides of white supremacists intent on driving Asian immigrants out of their jobs.

For a while, the concept of the “model minority myth” has acted in counter to the yellow peril: quelling fears of Asian world domination with stereotypes of the typical Asian being smart but submissive, adept at assimilating, unthreatening to the white worker. Though it may seem harmless at first glance, Asians have been required to fulfil the role of the quiet, unassuming worker in order to be accepted as legitimate citizens. But this acceptance has been conditional. The Asian diaspora lives in the duality of being the Yellow Peril or the Model Minority. When the Asian diaspora has fought back or challenged anti-China, anti-Asian rhetoric, they – we – are no longer seen as friends but foes. Spies, saboteurs, traitors to the state.

When the Covid pandemic hit in 2020, this awoke the dormant beast of Yellow Peril once more. It became acceptable to spread vitriol, fake news, and disinformation as long as the precedent was set that there was no blame to be placed on the British state or the UK government for mismanagement of the pandemic.

Instead of reflecting inwards on how it could have handled the pandemic better, the British state opted to blame China for its failure to curb the early waves and with the mainstream media’s help, made China culpable for the deaths of hundreds of thousands in the UK. This was internalised by the general public.

“China” became synonymous with Asian which became synonymous with everything bad in the world. The novel coronavirus wasn’t just associated with China or Chinese people; Chinese people were seen as the virus itself. Everyone who looked Chinese became a sitting target for abuse and hatred; it did not matter their ethnicity nor place of birth.

Jenny Clegg on the complex and evolving US-China relationship

On the proposal of the International Department of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (IDCPC), Friends of Socialist China (FoSC) and the IDCPC jointly organised two online seminars, with participation by invitation, on the theme of, ‘The 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China and its World Significance’, on December 10th and 17th.

A total of 36 supporters and friends of FoSC from England, Scotland, Wales and the north of Ireland, from various nationalities and walks of life, and from a broad range of progressive organisations and areas of struggle, participated, the majority of them in both events.

The first seminar focused on expert presentations, with the speakers being:

Liu Genfa, Deputy Director, Department of International Exchange, Training and Development of the China Executive Leadership Academy, Pudong;
Qu Bo, Associate Professor and Director, Institute of International Relations, China Foreign Affairs University;
Dr Hugh Goodacre, Managing Director of the Institute for Independence Studies and Lecturer in the History of Economic Thought at University College London(UCL);
Dr Jenny Clegg, China specialist and former Senior Lecturer in Asia Pacific Studies at the University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN).

The second seminar concentrated more on an exchange of views and experiences, with younger comrades taking the lead. The speakers were:

Ms Wang Yingchun, Deputy Director General of Bureau VII of the IDCPC;
Ms Li Na, Communist Youth League Branch Secretary of Bureau VII of the IDCPC;
Eben Williams, Member of the International Committee and Chair of the Glasgow branch of the Young Communist League;
Fiona Sim, Organiser with Goldsmiths Anti-Imperialist Society

We plan to publish those of the papers for which we have the text on our website in the coming period and hope to organise more such joint activities with our comrades in the IDCPC in the new year.

Below is the speech given by Jenny Clegg at the session on December 10th. Jenny’s presentation explores in some detail the complex and evolving relationship between the US and China, as well as providing an overview of (and raising some questions for discussion in relation to) China’s socialist modernisation.

My contribution comes in two parts – firstly I focus on the US-China relationship with a view to making some assessment, at the current international conjuncture, of the recent Xi-Biden meeting on the sidelines of the G20 Bali summit. Secondly I raise some issues about China’s last stages of socialist modernisation.

The US-China relationship: the background

The US China relationship has become the dominant influence on the overall dynamics of international relations.

China’s rise counters US hegemonism; it challenges the system of imperialist rule-making; at the same time China’s socialist orientation shows there is an alternative to capitalism.

These three intertwined contradictions are fundamentally antagonistic but as Mao suggested antagonistic contradictions can also be handled in a non antagonistic way – of course depending on the circumstances. Today it is amidst the increasingly complex context of polycrises – of climate change, the pandemic, debt and economic recession, and now the Ukraine war – that we see the US and China engaged in a sharpening trial of strength.

Join hands in building global mass opposition to the New Cold War

On 22 October 2022, Friends of Socialist China co-editor Carlos Martinez spoke at a teach-in organised by Hamilton Coalition to Stop War on the theme ‘Geopolitical Conflict and the Prospect for Peace’. Carlos’s remarks focused specifically on US-China relations and the various twists and turns they’ve gone through since the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. Carlos describes the nature of, reasons behind and dangers associated with the escalating US-led New Cold War on China, and concludes by urging “progressive and peace-loving people the world over join hands in building global mass opposition to this insanity.”

We embed the video of Carlos’s speech below, along with the text.

I’d like to talk about the journey that US-China relations have taken over the years.

We talk about there being a New Cold War, but China was also one of the key targets of the original Cold War.

In terms of the rise of McCarthyism, the extreme militant anti-communism of the Truman administration, the genocidal war against Korea: a great deal of this was connected to the whole “loss of China” discourse. How could US imperialism just helplessly allow the most populous country in the world, of massive historical and strategic importance, to have a communist revolution, to join the socialist camp, to enter into an alliance with the Soviet Union?

One of the early acts of the Cold War was to prevent The People’s Republic of China from taking up its rightful place at the United Nations. Between 1949 and 1971, it was the so-called Republic of China – that is to say, the breakaway capitalist dictatorship in Taiwan – that represented China on the Security Council and in the General Assembly.

And for those two decades, relations between the US and China were characterised by outright hostility and an attempt by the US to blockade China – militarily, economically and diplomatically.

Then in the early 1970s, strategists in the US decided on a path of engaging with China – for a variety of reasons, including that its policy of non-recognition simply wasn’t viable, especially given the support China enjoyed among the newly-liberated countries of Africa and elsewhere. But the most important reason was almost certainly that the US thought it could strengthen its position vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, which by this point was involved in a bitter ideological split with China that lasted from the early 1960s until the late 1980s.

Circuits of War: on Biden’s technological offensive against China

This article by Italian social theorist Marco d’Eramo, which originally appeared in Sidecar (a blog published by New Left Review), provides a detailed and insightful analysis of the “chip war” being waged by the US as part of its broader New Cold War on China. D’Eramo explains the profound importance of the semiconductor industry to the overall trajectory of modern technology, and describes the extent to which semiconductor supply chains are today dominated by the US. While China uses more than 70 percent of the world’s semiconductor products, it only produces 15 percent – and these are not of the latest generation of chip design.

The Biden administration has announced wide-ranging and unprecedented restrictions on the export of semiconductors, with a view to protecting its dominance of the industry at all costs. D’Eramo quotes Martin Wolf in the Financial Times saying that the chip war launched by the Biden administration is “far more threatening to Beijing than anything Donald Trump did. The aim is clearly to slow China’s economic development. That is an act of economic warfare… It will have huge geopolitical consequences.”

The author however observes that Biden’s chip war will not be plain sailing, as it relies on the cooperation both of major US technology companies – which earn handsome profits from exporting to China – but also the US’s allies abroad, including for example Germany, which “has grounded its economic – and therefore political – fortunes in its relationship with China, its principal commercial partner (with $264 billion worth of annual trade).” In this context, Chancellor Scholz’s recent trip to Beijing “seems like a major act of insubordination.”

Another factor, not directly addressed by the article, is the record of Chinese socialism in overcoming this sort of difficulty. For example, very few would have thought that China could develop its own nuclear deterrent, carrying out its first successful test of an atomic bomb in 1964, at a time when it was still a poor and backward country, blockaded by the US and without the support of the Soviet Union, with which it was engaged in a bitter ideological dispute. Even with the seemingly unbreachable gap between the US and China in terms of semiconductor technology, the likely effect of these new US restrictions will be to accelerate China’s own research and investment in the sector. A decade ago, China wasn’t the global leader in renewable energy technology; today it is. We shouldn’t be surprised if China is able to catch up with the US in the coming years.

A world war was declared on 7 October. No news station reported on it, even though we will all have to suffer its effects. That day, the Biden administration launched a technological offensive against China, placing stringent limits and extensive controls on the export not only of integrated circuits, but also their designs, the machines used to ‘write’ them on silicon and the tools these machines produce. Henceforth, if a Chinese factory requires any of these components to produce goods – like Apple’s mobile phones, or GM’s cars – other firms must request a special licence to export them.

Why has the US implemented these sanctions? And why are they so severe? Because, as Chris Miller writes in his recent book Chip War: The Fight for the World’s Most Critical Technology (2022), ‘the semiconductor industry produces more transistors every day than there are cells in the human body’. Integrated circuits (‘chips’) are part of every product we consume – that is to say, everything China makes – from cars to phones, washing machines, toasters, televisions and microwaves. That’s why China uses more than 70% of the world’s semiconductor products, although contrary to common perception it only produces 15%. In fact, this latter figure is misleading, as China doesn’t produce any of the latest chips, those used in artificial intelligence or advanced weapons systems.

The Biden-Xi summit and our need to resist a cold war against China

The following editorial, published by the Morning Star following the meeting between the Chinese and US presidents in Indonesia, makes a number of important points. It states that: “Western media has attacked every Chinese administration since it became clear economic reforms were never intended to lead to Western-style market primacy — when Hu Jintao retired a decade ago pundits were bewailing China’s ‘lost decade’ under his leadership since it had still not dispensed with the dominant role of public ownership (it still hasn’t).”

Refuting the claim that China is pursuing isolationist policies, it notes that the Belt and Road Initiative has eclipsed the World Bank as the biggest source of development credit worldwide and that China is the biggest trading partner of a majority of nations. It adds: “US policy has created the cold war. It is the product of an effort to maintain the hegemony of Washington and the Washington consensus — an international economic pecking order no socialist should support… The lesson is clear. Support for the new cold war on China is contrary to everything the left stands for — it’s a threat to peace and a defence of a grossly unjust world order… A serious socialist left should neither accept nor ignore the normalisation of anti-China aggression. It serves the interests of our ruling class — and undermines our own.”

Joe Biden claims a new cold war with China can be avoided.

Washington and Beijing have a responsibility to “manage our differences”, the US president says.

Fine words, and welcome, if the three-hour head to head between Biden and Xi Jinping has actually opened a path to greater co-operation.

We must hope so. China and the United States are the world’s largest economies, the world’s biggest emitters of greenhouse gases, the world leaders in scientific development.

Arresting global warming is one crucial area where it is difficult to see how progress can be made unless the breakdown in relations between Washington and Beijing is reversed.

But given the barrage of misinformation that substitutes for fact-based assessments of China across the West, we need to take Biden’s description of the cold war with a pinch of salt.

The narrative pushed openly by the Biden administration and parroted by the gormless war hawks who lead Britain’s Conservative and Labour parties is that the democratic West faces an existential threat from rising “authoritarian powers,” notably China and Russia.