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US hegemony and its perils

On 20 February 2023, China released a comprehensive report, US Hegemony and its Perils, detailing the numerous ways in which US imperialism manifests itself throughout the world. “Under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights”, the US has waged endless war, organized color revolutions, undermined governments that refused to play by its rules, and applied economic coercion – all for the sake of creating and maintaining a favorable global environment for US profiteering; of dominating the world’s resources, land, labor and markets. “The United States does whatever it takes to rob and enslave the people of any country with underground resources.”

The document cites the US’s record of military intervention, starting with its expansion across the North American continent in the 18th and 19th centuries, and continuing with its imposition of hegemony over Latin America, and then its savage 20th and 21st century wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Yugoslavia, Iraq and Syria. “In recent years, the US average annual military budget has exceeded 700 billion US dollars, accounting for 40 percent of the world’s total, more than the 15 countries behind it combined. The United States has about 800 overseas military bases, with 173,000 troops deployed in 159 countries.”

The document further analyzes the US’s use of the dollar’s position at the center of the international monetary system to harvest unearned profits; further, “using its control over international organizations, it coerces other countries into serving America’s political and economic strategy.”

The report concludes by calling on the US to “quit its hegemonic, domineering and bullying practices”, to adopt the principles of non-interference and respect for sovereignty, to pursue a path of peace and cooperation, and to operate within a framework of international law.

At a moment in history where imperialist politicians and media are pointing the finger at China, labelling it as “aggressive” and a “threat to Western values”; and when many on the Western left are pursuing an absurd line of “neither Washington nor Beijing”, this document provides a powerful and valuable analysis of the state of global politics and the toxic role being played by the US ruling class.

The report was first published in English on the website of the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Introduction

Since becoming the world’s most powerful country after the two world wars and the Cold War, the United States has acted more boldly to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries, pursue, maintain and abuse hegemony, advance subversion and infiltration, and willfully wage wars, bringing harm to the international community.

The United States has developed a hegemonic playbook to stage “color revolutions,” instigate regional disputes, and even directly launch wars under the guise of promoting democracy, freedom and human rights. Clinging to the Cold War mentality, the United States has ramped up bloc politics and stoked conflict and confrontation. It has overstretched the concept of national security, abused export controls and forced unilateral sanctions upon others. It has taken a selective approach to international law and rules, utilizing or discarding them as it sees fit, and has sought to impose rules that serve its own interests in the name of upholding a “rules-based international order.”

This report, by presenting the relevant facts, seeks to expose the U.S. abuse of hegemony in the political, military, economic, financial, technological and cultural fields, and to draw greater international attention to the perils of the U.S. practices to world peace and stability and the well-being of all peoples.

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.

Dorise Nielsen: groundbreaking communist MP in Canada, people’s hero in China

We are pleased to republish this article by Mike Wu, originally carried in People’s Voice, newspaper of the Communist Party of Canada, about the revolutionary life of Dorise Nielsen.

Born in England in 1902, she settled in Canada in 1927. Politicised by the Great Depression, she joined the Communist Party of Canada around the time she met the legendary Norman Bethune, when she was fundraising to help send Canadians to join the International Brigades in Spain. In the 1940 federal election, she was elected as the first communist member of parliament in Canada or indeed North America.

During the McCarthyite conditions of the Cold War, she moved to China in 1957, traveling under the alias Judy Godefroy. She became a Chinese citizen in 1962. She worked in a number of capacities in China, moving to the Foreign Languages Press in the late 1960s.

Dorise died in Beijing on December 9 1980. A speaker at her memorial service, held at the Babaoshan Cemetery for Revolutionaries, said that she “had a deep love of China and the Chinese people, she lived a very simple life and was never extravagant, her feeling for the construction of socialism was profound.”

NB. The article refers to Dorise as the only Canadian in Beijing at the time she moved to China. However, another Canadian citizen, Isabel Crook, was also in Beijing (working at the same institution – the Beijing Foreign Studies University).

Norman Bethune is a well-known figure in the history of Canada–China relations. But there is another legendary figure: Dorise Nielsen, the first Member of Parliament from the Communist Party of Canada, went to China in her later years to support the Chinese people’s socialist construction, until her death in Beijing in 1980.

Dorise was born in London, England in 1902 and settled in Saskatchewan in 1927 to work as a public school teacher. Dorise initially did not concern herself with politics, until the Great Depression broke out in 1929.

During the Depression, Dorise saw with her own eyes how workers, farmers, the ill and the old struggled under capitalism. In 1933, the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) held its first convention and approved the Regina Manifesto, which described capitalism as an unjust and inhumane system that concentrated power and wealth in a small elite while leaving most people in poverty.

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.

Will the US push on Taiwan determine Canada’s Indo-Pacific policy?

In the following article, originally carried by The Canada Files, William Ging Wee Dere analyses the fallout from Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan, and the continued provocations by the United States, joined by a number of its junior imperialist partners, with particular reference to the impact on different political and economic circles in Canada.

William notes that just days before the Pelosi visit, a Taiwanese delegation was in the Canadian capital Ottawa, lobbying for support for its application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) trade deal.

However, he notes that divisions are opening up within the Canadian ruling circles – for example, some corporations were not happy with having to dismantle Huawei equipment for ideological reasons, disguised as security concerns, whereas the military industrial complex sees confronting China as a way to make billions of dollars.

“Within the ruling class,” he argues, “there are some with a bit of backbone to stand up to the US Cold War mentality against China.” Unfortunately, this does not include the spineless Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

For their part, the writer concludes: “Anti-imperialists are pushing for an independent Canadian policy free from the US domination and in the interest of the Canadian people. It is in our interest to engage with China in a normal and respectful manner without name-calling and prejudice.”

William Ging Wee Dere is the author of ‘Being Chinese in Canada, The Struggle for Identity, Redress and Belonging.’ He was a leading activist in the two-decade movement for redress of the Chinese Head Tax and Exclusion Act. According to The Canadian Encyclopedia:

“The Chinese head tax was enacted to restrict immigration after Chinese labour was no longer needed to build the Canadian Pacific Railway. Between 1885 and 1923, Chinese immigrants had to pay a head tax to enter Canada. The tax was levied under the Chinese Immigration Act (1885). It was the first legislation in Canadian history to exclude immigration on the basis of ethnic background. With few exceptions, Chinese people had to pay at least $50 to come to Canada. The tax was later raised to $100, then to $500. During the 38 years the tax was in effect, around 82,000 Chinese immigrants paid nearly $23 million in tax. The head tax was removed with the passing of the Chinese Immigration Act in 1923. Also known as the Chinese Exclusion Act, it banned all Chinese immigrants until its repeal in 1947. In 2006, the federal government apologized for the head tax and its other racist immigration policies targeting Chinese people.”

US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s provocative and reckless middle of the night visit (Aug 2) to Taiwan has shifted the status quo of the island province to Beijing’s advantage. Turning a bad thing into a good thing: the dialectical method often used by Mao Zedong during the Chinese revolution, is how the Chinese reacted to Pelosi’s 17-hour trip to Taiwan. The People’s Liberation Army used this opportunity to test out their equipment and resources in a war game situation, since, unlike the US, Canada and other Western powers, China has not had any actual experience in warlike combat in over 40 years.

The Chinese people now fully understand that the US and its Western allies cannot be trusted to maintain the One-China policy, internationally recognized since 1971 by the United Nations and the global community including Canada and the US. The US is back-sliding on the issue of Taiwan independence, with its economic and military deals and the many political delegations to the island since the Trump administration. Activities by both US political parties are egging on Taiwan’s ruling Democratic Progressive Party towards independence under the American sphere of influence.

Only 12 days after Pelosi’s visit, another delegation of US lawmakers visited Taiwan on Aug 14. The 5-member delegation, led by Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts, will meet President Tsai Ing-wen and other officials to discuss U.S.-Taiwan relations, regional security, trade, investment among other issues. Other Western countries from the European Union are lining up for their pilgrimage to Taiwan. Canada has a trade office in Taipei. Will Canada follow suit with a delegation to the island and will Canada continue to provoke China by sending its frigates through the Taiwan Strait?

China wants peaceful reunification with Taiwan

China has accelerated its pace for a peaceful reunification of Taiwan with the mainland. The Chinese White Paper on Taiwan was released on August 10, 2022. Observers noted the conciliatory tone of the Paper which says in part,

“We will work with the greatest sincerity and exert our utmost efforts to achieve peaceful reunification. But we will not renounce the use of force, and we reserve the option of taking all necessary measures. This is to guard against external interference and all separatist activities. In no way does it target our fellow Chinese in Taiwan. Use of force would be the last resort taken under compelling circumstances.”

Canada responded in its usual wish-washy approach to international affairs by tailing behind the US. With the other countries in the G-7, it issued a statement condemning China’s military exercises around Taiwan following the Pelosi visit. At the same time, without embarrassment, Canada sent two naval frigates and an undisclosed number of military personnel to the Rim of the Pacific (Rimpac) war games under the US command.

Taiwan separatists on the Offensive

Days before Pelosi’s visit to Taipei, a legislative delegation from Taiwan’s ruling DPP visited Ottawa to gain support for its application to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). Taiwan applied to join the trade pact September 2021, less than a week after China’s application. Taiwan is campaigning to break out of its diplomatic isolation in trying to join various international organizations. China and Taiwan previously worked out an agreement for the island province to join the World Trade Organization under the name of Chinese Taipei. It is not certain that such a compromise can be reached again now that Western countries are more aggressive in pushing for Taiwan separation.

This July, Chiu Chih-wei headed the Taiwanese delegation which met with Liberal MP Judy Sgro, chair of the Canada Taiwan Parliamentary Friendship Group and Conservative MP Michael Cooper who promised to revive his private member’s bill to support Taiwanese membership in international organizations. Chiu is taking this occasion to promote Canada-Taiwan relations: “Given the anti-Chinese sentiments [in the West], we have to use that macro environment for momentum.”

Canada’s Indo-Pacific Strategy

Meanwhile, there appears to be division within the Canadian economic, political, military and security establishment on how to deal with China and the developing multi-polar international world order. The government has enlisted a coterie of academics, economic and business experts as an Advisory Committee to work out a made-in-Canada policy on the Indo-Pacific region. Apparently, from a leaked draft, the division or the hang-up is whether China should be considered as a strategic threat in the new policy statement.

Countries in the G7 and Canada’s western allies have developed Indo-Pacific strategies much in line with the American policy that came out in February 2022. The American strategy uses loaded words such as, “economic coercion,” “bullying,” and “harmful behaviour” to describe China’s involvement in the Indo-Pacific region and clearly identified China as an existential threat.

A Globe & Mail article gave prominent space to Peter Jennings, former head of the weapons manufacturers financed Australian Strategic Policy Institute as he lambasted Canada for not taking an aggressive enough position on China. He said that Canada is not being taken as a serious player by the “big boys” since it was not invited to join the QUAD (a security alliance of the US, India, Japan, and Australia), or the military AUKUS alliance (containing the UK, and again the US, and Australia).

Countering Jennings, the G&M article attributed to Stephen Nagy, a senior associate professor of politics and international studies at Japan’s International Christian University as saying that countries in the Indo-Pacific region would want Canada to distinguish itself from the U.S. in its approach. “I think the last thing they want is something that seems like it’s just a carbon copy of a U.S. strategy, because they would like to see Canada as an independent actor that can bring value to the region,” Nagy said. “It has to be built on an engagement process that recognizes the needs of the region, and how they reflect Canadian interests,” including mitigating climate change, he added.

Nagy is also a Senior Fellow of the McDonald-Laurier Institute. Although Nagy seems to sound sensible here, the MLI has supported the independence of Taiwan. The Canada Files Editor-in-Chief, Aidan Jonah, exposed that the MLI receives financing from the Taiwan area government and it essentially acts as the lobby for the DPP in Canada.

Divisions on Canada’s approach to China

This division in the draft of the Indo-Pacific Strategy reflects the divisions within Canada’s ruling class. There are those that wish to continue engaging in business with China. Witness the years-long delay on Canada’s decision on banning Huawei. Corporations like Bell and Telus, likely to lose millions in hardware replacement, were not happy to dismantle Huawei equipment for ideological reasons under the guise of security. They will likely ask Ottawa for compensation.

Lurking behind the scenes are the security and military establishment who are pushing the government to take a hardline towards China. Then, there is the military-industrial complex that stands to make billions by producing weapons, such as the F-35 jet fighters and the new frigate program, to confront China.

Within the ruling class there are some with a bit of backbone to stand up to the US Cold War mentality against China. This includes politicians like former PM Jean Chrétien and ex-cabinet minister and former Royal Bank chief economist, John McCallum, among others, who campaigned for the release of Meng Wanzhou, Hauwei’s CFO. This push was against having Canada just follow the bidding of the US in its war to cripple Huawei, the world leader in 5G and 6G technology. Another former cabinet minister who advocates engagement with China is Pierre Pettigrew, a member of the Advisory Committee and who is also chair of the board of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, which promotes closer trade ties with China.

However, Prime Minister Trudeau appointed the hawkish Jody Thomas, formerly deputy minister of defence, as his new National Security Advisor in January 2022. She replaced another anti-China hawk, Vincent Rigby, who was in the job for less than two years. Rigby still argues that “the China threat has to be acknowledged” and that an Indo-Pacific Strategy that “doesn’t deal with China will undermine our credibility.” Thomas, also, does not appear to be a fan of engagement with China. In true aggressive cold war mindset, she pushes for the deployment of the Canadian navy to contain China, “The deployment of the Navy in particular to the South China Sea is one of the messages that can be sent.” As deputy defence minister, Thomas pushed alongside Five Eyes “allies” such as the US, for the cancellation of the joint winter survival training of the Canadian Armed Forces with China’s People’s Liberation Army in 2019. The training was supported by Global Affairs Canada but the Canadian military was not able to withstand the weight of the US which “urged” the cancellation.

An indication of the belligerent nature of Canada’s Department of National Defence is the latest pronouncement by Minister Anita Anand to continue to deploy two navy frigates under Operation Projection and Operation Neon in the Indo-Pacific waters to menace the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea over US instigated sanctions.

Mélanie Joly, minister of foreign affairs, outlined what she would like to see in an Indo-Pacific Strategy, “Canada is actively investing in the Indo-Pacific region to support a free, open and inclusive Indo-Pacific that contributes to a rules-based international order.” This much bandied about phrase, “rules-based international order,” has replaced the American “liberal international order.” It gives whoever says it a tone of moral superiority, but therules are never spelled out. Nancy Pelosi’s visit to Taiwan province violated the international rules of sovereignty and territorial integrity, yet according to the West, the rules are what the Americans define them to be. Canada routinely sends its frigates through the Taiwan Strait which China claims to be its territorial waters, but Joly says they are “international waters.” Joly’s assertion is not based on any international rules *or decisions?*.

On the far right of the Canadian spectrum are other hawkish anti-China forces. They are pushing the Taiwan independence pressure point to try and destabilize China. These forces are members of the Conservative party; academics in the Munk School of Global Affairs, whose director Janice Gross Stein, is co-chair of the Advisory Committee; polemicists in right wing organizations like the McDonald-Laurier Institute; and agit/prop specialists of the various anti-China journalists in prominent national mainstream media.

Using their platform in the House of Commons: former Conservative leader Erin O’Toole, aspiring leader Pierre Poilievre, and MP’s like Michael Cooper are pushing for a de-facto recognition of Taiwan independence. Cooper spoke about his proposed private member’s bill in a tweet, where he claimed that “Canada cannot fully support #Taiwan on the world stage until we recognize it at home. It’s time for Canadian institutions & corporations to stop calling Taiwan a province of China.”

These various forces in the Canadian political establishment are competing to set Canada’s policies in the Indo-Pacific, and its relationship with the People’s Republic of China for decades to come. Anti-imperialists are pushing for an independent Canadian policy free from the US domination and in the interest of the Canadian people. It is in our interest to engage with China in a normal and respectful manner without name-calling and prejudice.