“Every good tree bringeth forth good fruit; but a corrupt tree bringeth forth evil fruit. A good tree cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Every tree that bringeth not forth good fruit is hewn down, and cast into the fire. Wherefore by their fruits ye shall know them.”

-Matthew 7:20

On January 17, President Xi Jinping delivered remarks to the annual Davos Summit where a coterie of billionaires with larger than life aspirations for reshaping the world into a new techno-feudal dystopia conglomerated for several days of self-congratulatory speeches and networking.

As could be expected, Xi’s speech garnered a fair bit of hysteria from many nationalists across the Trans Atlantic who are obviously not reacting well to the ugly fact that their governments have been hijacked and their lives threatened by a very sociopathic supranational entity that wants to reset the clock on human civilization.

One particular nationalist news outline named LaRouche PAC- historically supportive of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), took the occasion of Xi’s remarks to suffer an uncomfortable meltdown with a January 22 editorial authored by Robert Ingraham stating:

“Xi’s speech was reprehensible. Despite the references to ‘global cooperation’ and ‘win-win,’ his remarks can only be read as a veiled attack on Donald Trump and an unambiguous endorsement of the Davos agenda. He endorsed ‘holistic’ environmentalism, carbon neutrality, and a ‘complete transition to a green economy.’ He endorsed the Trans-Pacific Partnership, praised free trade and condemned protectionism. He expressed effusive admiration for the COP26 agenda, as well as the WTO and WHO. Perhaps, most disgusting was his strong praise (twice in his speech) of the United Nation’s genocidal policy of ‘sustainable development.’ “

Although LaRouche PAC was but one of many news outlets decrying Xi’s speech as proof of China’s complicit role in the WEF’s Global Great Reset, I decided to direct the thrust of my defense of Xi to this organization for two reasons.

• They otherwise represent many very good ideas which I sincerely believe could play an important role in putting out the fires engulfing civilization… as long as they don’t self-sabotage by giving into simple-minded populism when it matters most.
• The author of the editorial has conducted some of the best historical research I have ever read which should have inoculated him from making the sorts of inexcusable errors in judgement which will do great damage to the minds of his own readers, his organization, and the cause of truth more generally.

Perhaps my words are harsh, but I hope to demonstrate in the following response, that I am absolutely serious in my claim that the author is misguided in his analysis of China’s motives.

Claim 1: “China Supports Decarbonization and is thus Evil”

For those who have come to discover that COP26 de-carbonization targets are actually driven by an intention to dismantle industrial civilization (and the means of sustaining modern population levels), congratulations. You have earned an intellectual edge to cut through misinformation lacking in those cave dwellers who still wish to believe that Greta Thunberg, Prince Charles and Bill Gates are climate experts or that the world will end in a hellish oven in 12 years unless we radically alter our collective behavior and shut down industrial civilization pronto.

To those who have stepped out of the cave on this issue, Xi’s public remarks have certainly drawn some confusion. Does the Chinese President actually support the “globalist” depopulation agenda? Does he support the dismantling of advanced industrial civilization?

If we focus on those actions beyond the mere surface words used by Xi at Davos, the answer is a resounding “no”.

Eurasian vs Trans Atlantic “Decarbonization”

China’s approach to “decarbonization” and “sustainable development” are very different from those dominant in the NATO-Five Eyes cage on numerous levels. Unlike the western occupied states who are being told to brace for a reduction in living standards, production, and even ownership of possessions under a new age of scarcity, China’s “green agenda” is geared towards hydrocarbon development with a focus on natural gas, coal, oil and nuclear.

In terms of China’s robust nuclear power sector (which emits zero CO2), theirs is the only nation currently utilizing EVERY single third and fourth generation reactor design existent including molten salt thorium, and fast breeder reactors with more advanced initiatives to break through to practicable commercial fusion than any other state.

While China is also a leading investor in so-called “renewable” energy including windmills and solar panels, unlike the Trans Atlantic community, they have not made their capital-intensive industrial productive bases reliant on these low intensity, unreliable and expensive forms of electricity, preferring to use “green” energy principally for residential consumption.

It is also no secret that China has become the world’s primary user of concrete, steel, iron, and other minerals vital for building large scale megaprojects emblematic in the evolving Belt and Road Initiative.

Claim 2: “China Supports TPP and is Thus Evil”

To say Xi “is pro-Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP)” is beyond simplistic.

As Pepe Escobar explains extraordinarily well, there is a fight over who will shape the rules of globalization 2.0.

The globalization 1.0 that has run rough shod over the world for 50 years is dead in the water waiting only for the immanent snap to break the ship apart like a new Titanic being pulled into the dark abyss. This collapse is not actually a flaw in the system as many conjecture, but was in fact always designed to be a time bomb from the moment the dollar was floated off the gold reserve in 1971 to the current systemic bubble breakdown.

The question is thus not ‘WILL the system collapse’ but rather: WHO will shape this new system and upon WHAT operating system will its rules be based?

Will it be an open system capable of creative growth and self-directed improvement or would it be a closed system defined by the assumed immutable laws of entropy and diminishing returns? Would the system be zero sum (win-lose) or would the whole be more than the parts (win-win)?

The Obama-era TPP which Trump rightfully killed in 2016 was nothing but a blatant economic assault onto both the Peoples’ Republic of China specifically the Sovereign Nation State system generally. This assault was premised on several factors:

1. A) Binding all TPP-member nations of the Pacific into a top-down NAFTA-like system controlled by London and Wall Street.
2. B) Giving corporations the right to sue nations directly for breaking the rules of TPP’s version of “free trade” (which in truth were never free as multinational private interests like those coordinating through such outlets as the World Economic Forum were always working to stay in control).
3. C) Cutting off China from its neighbors since the pre-2016 version of TPP always excluded China.

The “TPP 2.0” to which Xi is referring is only “TPP” in name.

In regards to its operating system, this version looks more like an extension of the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership) launched in 2020 as the largest trade deal in history involving 15 Pacific nations representing 30% of the world’s population.

Does it involve free trade? YES. Is this version of free trade being used to justify the imperial rape of poor nations? NO.

Free Trade Governed by What Intention?

It should be an obvious fact that much evil has been done behind the cover of “free trade” since Adam Smith wrote his infamous Wealth of Nations in 1776.

From opium wars, to potato famines, to repeated Indian genocides, to modern cases of pillage under globalization, British “free trade” has often been used as a means to get nation states to turn off their security systems while bandits robbed them naked.

The difference between the Chinese vs Anglo-American versions of free trade comes down to INTENTION.

Where the Anglo-American variants were designed to destroy national development, the Chinese (or earlier U.S. Hamiltonian System) variations are inextricably tied to the industrial improvement of all participating nations. Where one intends to divide, conquer and destroy, the other intends to unite, cooperate and create. Big difference.

One might here scream: “YOU CAN’T KNOW INTENTIONS!”

As Jesus once responded to the question: “you will know them by their fruits”. A materialist would not know how to process this, but anyone looking at world history would quickly recognize that in politics, using words that make your intention transparent will nearly always undo your objectives. We love John F. Kennedy’s robust candor, but his murder after only 1000 days in office resulted in the destruction of many great goods which a more wise and savvy statesman like Benjamin Franklin would never have permitted to occur.

Let me say it one more way: sometimes bad men committed to bad acts use good words and sometimes good men committed to good acts use bad words. How do you know their intention or goodness? Not through their words, but through their fruits.

China’s Hamiltonian Fruits

China has provably pulled over 800 million souls out of abject poverty while the unipolar system of empire has only created decades of starvation, poverty and war. China has launched trillions of dollars worth of productive long-term credit through state-owned banks tied not to speculating on debts, but building actual infrastructure both within their own nation and internationally.

Where our western system is entirely dependent on hyperbolically increasing rates of speculative/fictitious capital, the Chinese system is premised on PHYSICAL systems of production and value. An Evergrande bubble popping in the west would be an atomic force of destruction, whereas in China, it is an extremely containable aberration.

IF the LaRouchePAC-affiliated author attacking Xi actually read the original works of economist Alexander Hamilton (which the author professes openly to have done), he would know that the American System which he espouses is not intrinsically against free trade, nor is it always pro-protectionism.

What Did Hamilton Create?

The point Hamilton made in his reports to congress of 1791 was that every bankrupt, undeveloped state of the new nation were condemned to disastrous internal division and chaos. During its first 7 years, America was a financial wreck waiting to be retaken by the British Empire. Each state controlled its own economic priorities, currency issuance and none of the 13 states even had free trade among each other making it not much of a union at all.

This lack of unity among the early confederacy made the formation of common action impossible. Without a power of common action, there was no weapon sufficient in power to do battle with the highly centralized globally extended financier oligarchy centered in the heart of London.

Hamilton solved this crisis by federalizing the many local unpayable state debts incurred during the war and converting them into assets of a new national banking system that began issuing credit for comprehensive national infrastructure goals. Although each state lost some of its personal liberty “to do whatever they wanted”, trade barriers were broken down, a national currency was launched and this quantum leap allowed the young nation to not only survive but thrive. Under Hamilton, debts were no longer usurious inflation machines, but rather self-liquidating “national blessings” serving the interests of the entire people. China’s tendency to cite Hamilton in their state-news coverage is also not a coincidence on this point.

In the first several decades of the Hamiltonian program, America’s population grew four-fold, technical knowledge, industrial productivity, interconnectivity and inventions grew in leaps soon challenging the world’s largest empire.

Mr. Ingraham might be surprised to know that Hamilton was not a dogmatic supporter of tariffs, supporting free trade as long as it was shaped by a unifying intention to develop the many parts of the whole to their fullest industrial and creative potential. This was the essential purpose of the General Welfare clause of the Constitution including the important Article I Section VIII.

Hamilton’s later follower Friedrich List (who coined the term “American System of Political Economy” in 1828) used this system to unite a disjointed Germany under a “Zollvereine” (aka: custom’s union) driven by free trade among the regional divergent states for the first time in history. Under List’s program, national credit tied to internal improvements (rail, canals, new industries and pure science) launched Germany into the modern age.

Wherever this system was applied (including 19^th century Russia) population growth improved in quantity and quality, harmonious relations between the member states improved, oligarchism lost its hold onto its hosts and creative change governed the self-perfectibility of the increasingly open systems.

These were good fruits.

British Free Trade, like “Globalization 1.0” ALWAYS used nice words, but bore rotten fruit.

Wherever it was applied, British Free Trade destroyed economic sovereign nation states, crippled long-term planning, dismantled the regulation of private capital, and always divided to conquer.

Adherents to this system indoctrinated across Anglo-American Ivy League universities found themselves assimilated ever more into myopic money crazed fiends incapable of seeing a whole beyond their local self-serving identities… which was just the way an oligarchical elite running the system like a nightmarish video game always wanted it.

Claim 3: “Xi Spoke Well of WTO and is Thus Evil”

The World Trade Organization (WTO), much like the UN Charter, has many fine words and rules of economic conduct embedded in it. IF said rules and words were followed, neither organization would do any harm to anyone and might in fact do quite a lot of good.

The problem isn’t with the nice words promoting healthy competition, fairness, or freedom to trade.

The problem is found in the MINDS of those forces who wrote many of those rules with the intention of breaking them.

WTO rules, much like the British demands for national obedience to free trade that kept the tiny island in the dominant alpha position over the majority of the world during the 19^th century, were meant to be believed by credulous victims, but were always understood to be just another tool of colonialism and slavery by those shaping the Great Game.

In this sense, the WTO of 1999 has much in common with Adam Smith’s 1776 Wealth of Nations.

Does Adam Smith extoll the virtues of evil or promote the right of a hegemon to control the weak?

Not at all.

One would find many laudable words in his text and if the world was truly an equal playing field of nations living together aspiring for improving their quality of life and without any internationally extended financier oligarchy, then one would be hard pressed to find anything wrong with it at all.

The problem, as Ben Franklin, Hamilton and many of the most potent founding fathers understood (or Friedrich List afterwards), is that Adam Smith was just a political hack who never actually believed anything he himself wrote. As historian Anton Chaitkin points out in volume 1 of Who We Are, Adam Smith was directly tied to the inner echelons of the British Empire and had been groomed for years by none other than Lord Shelburne himself before publishing his Wealth of Nations (not coincidentally the same year of the U.S. Declaration of Independence).

Smith and his oligarchical masters in London always understood that they were the true owners of his “hidden hand” which they wished their victims believed were the “magical ordering principles” of the unregulated marketplace.

BRI-oriented free trade zones as we have seen applied in the past seven years are shaped by the intention to build real measurable infrastructure and industrial powers among all participating states. Whether we look at the Africa-China Free Trade Agreement, China-Pakistan Economic Corridor, China’s RCEP, China-EAEU deals or China-South America free trade agreements, we see the opposite of anything done during the dark years of the British Empire or post-JFK age of imperial capital. Rather than looting and debt slavery, we have seen the largest explosion of industrial growth, large scale infrastructure, manufacturing and education pop up wherever these treaties have been applied. The intention is just very different from anything seen in the age of globalization 1.0.

China knows that if the UN Charter and WTO rules can be actually enforced for once, within the context shaped by the $3+ trillion Belt and Road Initiative, then globalization 2.0 becomes governed by rules that are fundamentally anti-oligarchical, pro-population growth, pro-nation state, pro-cooperation and anti-depopulation.

Good fruit.

Claim 4: “Xi said good things about WHO and COVID Cooperation and is thus Evil”

A final word must be said about Xi’s World Health Organization/pandemic response remarks.

It may not be popular to state this, but I’m going to do it.

To date, China still has not fully purged the transhumanist-oriented west leaning fifth column set into motion during the 1980s under the reign of Soros’ agent Zhao Ziyang.

During Zhao’s period of influence over China’s government, vast infusions of transhumanists, monetarists and technocrats shaped China’s modern deep state. Many of these parasites were thankfully flushed in phases starting in 1989, again in 1997, and with the most recent purge launched with Xi’s ascension in 2012 with over 1.5 million officials nailed on corruption charges to this day.

Despite these purges, there is still a World Economic Forum/Anglo-American presence felt within certain quarters, seen most clearly in “the Shanghai Clique” centered around former President Jiang Zemin and his coterie of western leaning billionaires like Jack Ma who have at various times made attempts to subvert China’s economic sovereignty.

Russia also suffers from its own deep state problems built up during the Gorbachev-Yeltsin years.

Unlike China which has maintained national controls of banking, Moscow’s technocratic deep state still enjoys more influence over their Keynesian-infested liberal central banking system which is closely linked up to Russian big pharma giants (see: Sberbank as one of many instances).

Unlike North America or Europe, China has always provided alternative COVID remedies that do not simply fixate on vaccines or shutting down their economy on behalf of computer models. China’s use of hydroxychloroquine-zinc and various eastern medicine treatments have been provided from the get-go to great effect resulting in a 0.6% covid death rate compared to America’s. China has made it clear that it has no idea if COVID emerged out of one of the 200+ Pentagon connected biolabs, or if a future genetically targeted creation will be released onto their society as was outlined in blood curdling detail in the 2000 PNAC document Rebuilding America’s Defenses. What is clear is that since January 2020, they have responded to COVID as if it were a possible war scenario.

Just as in the case with Russia, we have seen numerous clashes between various regional powers and the federal government on the issue of mandatory vaccination protocols.

Unlike most western governments whose federal institutions have become the primary enforcers of tyrannical vaccination mandates (vs. regional/state government resistance), the opposite pattern is seen in both Russia and China.

In these Eurasian states, it is the federal government that has principally intervened against the tyrannical excesses of local authorities cattle herding their citizens.

The leaders of both Russia and China are fighting not only for the survival of their own civilizations but something much bigger than themselves. Moreover, they not only intend to emerge from this fight alive, but in a dominant position as the system crumbles and globalization 2.0 is brought online.

It is hard for some Americans to accept the fact that their beloved republic has fallen to a fascist coup. It is hard to accept that Donald Trump may not have the moral or intellectual capacity to do anything about this, and it is hard to accept that the USA does not currently have the internal fortitude to change itself without a broader global change being forced upon it externally by nations of Eurasia.

Sometimes the truth is a bitter medicine. But a bitter medicine that saves the patient is always better than a sugar-coated poison.

The author can be reached at matthewehret.substack.com

The virtual, special address by President Xi Jinping to the World Economic Forum’s 2022 Davos Agenda exhibits all the elements of a riddle inside an enigma.

At first, it certainly could be interpreted as a simultaneous message to the Empire of Chaos and global public opinion.

Much more than prescribing “effective doses against unilateralism, decoupling and ideological antagonism” – not so subtle allusions to the usual suspects – Xi most of all positioned China as the indispensable driver of Globalization 2.0.

The address was simultaneous to the announcement of China’s GDP growth at 8.1% in 2021 and commodity trading reaching new highs: the center of global manufacturing is the world’s biggest exporter for the 8^th consecutive year.

The implementation of the word’s largest free-trade zone, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) across Asia-Pacific, will just solidify the trend.

Trade with the myriad partner nations of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) increased by 23.6% – and that essentially means increased Global South trade. Foreign direct investment (FDI) in China increased by 20.2% in dollar terms: once again, as in 2020, China was the top FDI destination on the planet.

The whole trade/commerce landscape should even improve in 2022 when the China-EU Comprehensive Agreement on Investment (CAI) is fully ratified. France, currently presiding the EU Council, is manifestly in favor.

Compounding the trends, China’s GDP per capita has reached $12,551, crucially above the notorious “middle income trap”; above the global average GDP per capita; and now entering “high-income country” territory, as defined by the World Bank.

Xi’s key message, when it comes to addressing “Davos Man” – the trademark WEF audience – was unmistakable: China is and will continue to remain the safest of havens for global Capital. The Masters of the Universe – from BlackRock down – duly nodded their approval.

But then, there are “countercurrents”. And that ominous, imminent global economy crisis.

Take me to the river

Now we enter the deeper enigma of how interpenetrated Xi’s vision and the Davos agenda may, or may not, be.

Xi’s main theme is multilateralism. And that’s the context in which he introduced his rich “countercurrents” metaphor. Xi de facto held the collective West as “countercurrents” in the river of History – incapable of stopping its inexorable flow to the sea.

Yet these “countercurrents”, as Xi defines them, are not merely trying to stop the flow of economic globalization. He leaves it subtly implied they are trying to stop the flow of Globalization 2.0 as led by China: a very strong economy working in tandem with an arguably successful “zero Covid” policy.

He didn’t even have to refer to the West. He just needed to suggest that China forged its own way to tackle the current challenges. And the Chinese way beats the West’s.

The global economy is being confronted, across the board, by manpower shortages – from harvest workers to truck drivers to supermarket cashiers. Costs for everything from raw materials to container shipping went through the roof. Supply chains are horribly over-extended and in many cases broken.

The hegemonic narrative blames exclusively the proverbial Covid-19 variants for the very real possibility of causing the mother of all supply chain breakdowns that may hit most of the planet in 2022.

In contrast, variants of guerrilla analysis sustain that the global economy is being deliberately being driven over the cliff. The supply chain breakdown is being facilitated by the multi-restriction “war on Covid” – which directly subverts production, trade and services.

Global Capital would never allow a comprehensive public debate about the toxic role of the financial system – which has been kept under artificial respiration since 2008, with central banks unleashing storms of helicopter money, inflating real state markets, stocks, precious metal prices. In real life, what’s nearly inevitable next in the horizon is the bursting of a massive stock and real estate bubble all across the West.

A de facto collapse of the global economy would provide the ultimate “opportunity” (Klaus Schwab’s terminology) for the WEF’s Great Reset – which remains the real Davos Agenda. But according to the hegemonic gospel, that would happen because of Covid – not because of the implosion of the financial casino.

For nearly two years, we have been living through the progressive enshrinement of techno-feudalism – one of the overarching themes of my latest book, Raging Twenties.

In lightning speed, the techno-feudalism virus metastasized into an even more lethal, wilderness of mirrors variant, with cancel culture enforced by Big Tech all across the spectrum and science routinely debased as fake news across social media.

The average citizen remains discombobulated to the point of lobotomy. Giorgio Agamben defined the whole process as a new totalitarianism.

What does Capital really want?

It’s open to debate to what extent Xi actually endorses the ultimate “opportunity” offered by Covid-19: a Great Reset that essentially refers to the replacement of a dwindling manufacturing base by automation, in tandem with a reset of the financial system.

The concomitant wishful thinking envisages a global economy that will “move closer to a cleaner capitalist model”, as embodied, for instance, in the delightfully benign Council for Inclusive Capitalism in partnership with the Catholic Church.

It was up to William Engdahl to ask the crucial question: Will the Federal Reserve Crash Global Financial Markets As a Means to Implementing Their “Great Reset”?

Xi using Davos as a convenient P.R. platform does not necessarily mean China subscribes to the Davos Agenda. Davos, after all, has nothing to do with multilateralism.

Last December, the WEF actually postponed Davos 2022 from January to early summer. It remains to be seen whether this may have something to do with the advent of Cyber Polygon, a cyber pandemic gamed by the WEF in July 2021.

Herr Schwab himself defined it as “a comprehensive cyber-attack [that] could bring a complete halt to the power supply, transportation, hospital services, our society as a whole. The Covid-19 crisis would be seen in this respect as a small disturbance in comparison to a major cyber-attack.”

So our current – global – predicament may be just a “small disturbance” compared to what comes next. And has already been gamed.

No one, from Zeus to Shiva, knows what comes next – apart from NATO expanding to outer space. Yet it’s very telling that the distinct possibility of a global economic crash – while Xi promotes Globalization 2.0 led by China – is happening simultaneously to

NATO provoking Russia into war and the US demonizing China to Kingdom Come.

A collective West “led” by unspeakable mediocrities looks at the Russia-China strategic partnership as if it was something like a double-headed Anti-Christ. Xi, for his part, seems not to be impressed: watching the river flow, like a Taoist Bob Dylan, he has just dismissed these mere “countercurrents” with a wave of his hand.

For many observers around the world, the cordial and cooperative relations between Russia and China are inspiring, precisely at a time of mounting international tensions and belligerence.

Russia’s President Vladimir Putin hailed the bilateral relations between Russia and China as a model for inter-state cooperation in the 21st century.

In a videoconference this week with Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, the two leaders expressed warm greetings of friendship. Putin described the border between their countries as representing “a belt of eternal peace and good-neighborliness”.

President Xi said that both nations based their sound relations on principles of mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs, in accordance with international law and the UN Charter. Both countries, too, he noted, were committed to advancing people-centered development as a genuine manifestation of democracy and human rights.

Referring to the United States and its Western allies, the Chinese leader adroitly remarked how “international forces” had appointed themselves the right to meddle in the affairs of China and Russia under the duplicitous guise of advocating democracy and human rights. In doing so, these foreign powers were “trampling” all over international law and stoking dangerous tensions.

It is hard to disagree with that assessment. Just in recent weeks, the United States and its allies in the G7, NATO and European Union have been amplifying accusations against Russia and China over alleged malign conduct. It’s all sound and fury signifying little in the way of substance. Step back from the shrill rhetoric and sensational claims and what is actually apparent is an attempt to manipulate public opinion into accepting Western aggression towards Russia and China. The poachers are making themselves the gamekeepers in an audacious inversion of reality.

The Western powers arrogantly assume the right to rebuke over a bewildering array of issues. There is a vast media campaign of public perception management going on. In short, propaganda and psychological gaslighting.

Russia and China are accused of “authoritarianism”; of abusing human rights; of threatening Ukraine on the one hand and Taiwan on the other. China is condemned for alleged “genocide” against its Uighur people and “as a result” the U.S. and its allies are conducting a diplomatic boycott of the Winter Olympic Games in Beijing.

The evidence for all these tendentious claims is flimsy if non-existent.

The United States and the European Union are relentless in their accusations of a Russian military build-up and threat to invade Ukraine. Sanctions are drawn up to potentially cripple the Russian economy. But where’s the evidence or even credible logic? The U.S. and European governments and Western media have not reported any substantive evidence to back up their claims against Russia. Moscow has consistently and categorically rejected these claims as “hysterical nonsense”.

Russian troops are on Russian territory. The supposed satellite images depicting military build-up “on Ukraine’s borders” are of Russian troops in established bases such as Yelnya in Smolensk Oblast hundreds of kilometers from the border. Meanwhile, American and NATO warplanes and warships are increasingly menacing Russia’s borders in unscheduled maneuvers thousands of kilometers from their bases.

This is all ludicrous and is hardly worthwhile rebutting every accusation since it is time-consuming to do so. Provocative narratives are distractions from reality.

The germane point is this: the U.S. and its Western allies are self-anointed to throw pejorative claims at Russia and China when the reality is they are hurling bricks in glasshouses. Washington and its European partners have run amok for decades, destroying nations with illegal foreign wars, killing en masse civilians from drone assassinations and indiscriminate bombings. These criminal governments have no shame in smearing others with accusations that resonate a thousand-fold with the appalling reality of their own heinous misconduct.

Just look at some events this week. Russia has called on the United States and its NATO allies to agree on a mutual basis for security in Europe pertaining to its borders. So far, the U.S.-led military bloc has rebuffed Moscow’s reasonable concerns. NATO’s secretary-general Jens Stoltenberg arrogantly dismissed Russia’s appeals for the bloc to cease its eastward expansion. (Somehow it seems fitting that this automaton is reportedly applying to become the next head of Norway’s central bank after he steps down from NATO. It’s all just careerism and payoffs for Stoltenberg, who, as the quip goes, is more secretary than general.)

Then we have the European Union’s unelected wooden president Ursula von Der Leyen announcing that the bloc has prepared sanctions that will have “massive consequences” on Russia’s economy “in the event of further military aggression on Ukraine”. Based on what? What aggression is she talking about? The one that the United States intelligence agencies have told her to mouth like a ventriloquist? She is certainly not referring to the aggression of the U.S. and NATO funneling billions of dollars of weapons into a Neo-Nazi regime in Kiev that is waging a war against a civilian population in Southeast Ukraine for the last nearly eight years. (Russian President Putin is correct to describe that siege as resembling genocide.)

Western media report breathlessly on how Russia and China have “seen their relations deteriorate with the West”. But such media don’t explain or investigate why such deterioration is happening.

It is essentially instructive that the United States and its European powers are self-evidently behaving as Neo-colonialists and imperialists. They presume to have the superior right to interfere in other nations based on self-righteous arrogance and self-serving machinations.

It is absurd that the United States is declaring a diplomatic boycott of China’s Olympic Games given its own legion of flagrant violations and crimes against humanity, past and present. Australia and Canada have living legacies of genocide and yet they too have the brass-necks to pontificate to China about unsubstantiated claims of human rights abuses.

Going down this cynical, hypocritical path is par for the course for Western states. It is their inherent modus operandi. But ultimately it is futile. It inevitably leads to conflict and war.

Western relations towards Russia and China are becoming crystal clear in their incorrigible belligerence. The United States and its capitalist-imperialist partners-in-crime simply cannot coexist with other nations in peace and cooperation. The principles of peace and lawful respect for others are anathemas.

The toxic, destructive behavior of Western powers is more and more a transparent disgrace in today’s world. By contrast, Russia and China are proof that an alternative basis of international relations is possible. And fortunately, both are strong enough to prevail for the sake of peace.

United States President Joe Biden held his first direct dialogue with China’s President Xi Jinping amid spiraling tensions between the world’s two biggest economies. Professor Francis Boyle gives his take on the “big event” in a brief interview below.

First though, some background. It seems oddly complacent that it has taken nearly 10 months since Biden entered the White House for these leaders to finally get around to engaging in substantive talks given the urgent context of fraught relations.

Some observers will see the conference held online on November 15 as a welcome move to put the brakes on a dangerous dynamic that is potentially leading towards military confrontation. But a closer look beneath the optics of the meeting reveal that there was no removal of the fundamental source of tensions, which is US hegemonic ambitions, according to Boyle.

The online summit was initiated by Biden and lasted for more than three hours. The American side gave the event high-profile TV coverage. Chinese media tended to welcome the meeting as signaling a possible turning point for improved relations. However, while both leaders appeared to be cordial there was little sign that Washington has changed its fundamental position of antagonizing China, a policy that is leading to armed conflict in particular over Taiwan.

Professor Francis A. Boyle comments in the following interview that both sides remain entrenched in opposing positions. He notes that President Xi warned the Americans that China would not tolerate any interference promoting Taiwan’s independence. For his part, Biden said the US maintains its so-called One China Policy recognizing Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan. But at the same time, Washington retains “strategic ambiguity” which gives itself license to supply Taiwan with military weapons, a policy that is emboldening Taiwanese declared independence from the mainland.

From the White House readout of Biden’s comments, the US side also arrogates a presumptive right to lecture China over alleged human rights abuses. Objectively speaking, this US position is cynical and provocative given its blatant hypocrisy over its own record of gross human rights abuses, past and present, as Boyle has extensively documented in his scholarly and legal work over several decades. For Biden to keep pushing this arrogant charade as with previous administrations is proof that Washington is not capable of conducting relations based on mutual respect, which Xi called for.

Boyle points out that the disastrous retreat by the US from its failed war in Afghanistan is largely motivated by Washington’s geopolitical need to confront what it views as the primary challenge to its global power stemming from an ascendant China and an emerging multipolar world. Afghanistan does not represent “an end to American wars”, as Biden claimed. It is more a conservation and redirection of imperial power. In that regard, the online summit with Xi initiated by Biden is merely more deception and duplicity by the US side, which does little to mitigate dangerous tensions.

Francis Anthony Boyle is Professor of International Law at the University of Illinois College of Law. He is an alumni cum laude of Harvard School of Law. Boyle has served as counsel for Bosnia-Herzegovina and an advisor to the Palestinian Authority. He is a long-standing critic of US policy supporting Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories which he has condemned as genocide. Boyle has denounced US governments over foreign policy that systematically promotes war and the oppression of indigenous peoples. He is author of numerous books, including The Criminality of Nuclear Deterrence; Destroying Libya and World Order: The Three-Decade US Campaign to Terminate the Qaddafi Revolution; World Politics and International Law; Destroying World Order: US Imperialism in the Middle East Before and After September 11; and Foundations of World Order: The Legalist Approach to International Relations.

Interview

Question: After the online summit this week between US President Joe Biden and Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping, do you see any grounds for optimism for US-China relations improving and “veering away from conflict” as President Biden put it?

Francis Boyle: No. President Xi read the riot act to Biden on Taiwan. So far, I have seen no evidence that Biden is backing down on his support for the Taiwan independence movement.

Question: Was it significant that the summit was requested by Biden in the first place?

Francis Boyle: Yes. This was basically a public relations gesture by Biden to convince the American people and the world that he was really doing something to calm the situation down when in fact on the ground in Taiwan and in the seas of the Taiwan Strait and in the South China Sea he is doing the exact opposite. I am sure President Xi is paying attention to what Biden is doing, not what he is talking about in a virtual summit that Biden broadcasted in the media for propaganda purposes. As Machiavelli said in The Prince, the Prince must learn to be a fine liar and hypocrite. That’s Joe Biden!

Question: Biden told Xi that the US still supports the One China Policy. Do you see this statement lowering tensions over Taiwan?

Francis Boyle: Of course not. Indeed, right after the meeting the Biden administration announced there is going to be a high-level meeting between US defense experts and Taiwan defense experts. Biden basically slapped Xi in the face right after their “summit”.

Question: Biden mentioned various human rights concerns in China. Xi did not mention human rights concerns in the US Does that indicate US policy is still hampered by arrogance and presumption of superiority?

Francis Boyle: Of course. Like all US administrations going back to Jimmy Carter, they have all used “human rights” as a propaganda weapon against their designated adversaries. Meanwhile, look at what successive recent US governments have done to the Palestinians, or the Libyans, or the Iraqis, or the Syrians, or the Somalis, or the Yemenis, or the Afghans, etc. Massive death and destruction all over the Middle East and Central Asia.

Question: China’s President Xi often talks about how China is no longer the weak giant of former times when the US and European imperial powers dominated it as for example during the 19th Century Opium Wars. Would you agree that there is a new historic reality of US imperial decline in a multipolar world where China is more than capable of determining relations?

Francis Boyle: Yes. The United States government just suffered the most catastrophic defeat since Vietnam in Afghanistan. They have learned nothing from it. Indeed, Biden said that they are leaving Afghanistan in order to better confront China. QED.

At the recent semi-successful United Nations COP26 conference on climate change there was an unexpected revelation that the U.S. and China had engaged in some thirty virtual meetings on the subject over the past year. Their decision to “jointly strengthen climate action” was very welcome from the environment point of view, and even more welcome because it demonstrated that Washington and Beijing could actually get along in one aspect of international relations. It also raised the question as to whether they could ever sit down together and discuss the equally pressing problem of looming conflict.

When U.S. climate envoy John Kerry announced the agreement he acknowledged that although “the United States and China have no shortage of differences” it seemed that “on climate, cooperation is the only way to get this job done.” In this, however, he seemed to be taking a different track to President Joe Biden, who played into the ever-welcoming hands of Washington hawks on November 2 when he castigated Presidents Xi and Putin for non-appearance at the COP gathering. This, he declared, was a “big mistake” and contrasted with the fact that “we showed up” but “they didn’t show up… It is a gigantic issue and they just walked away. How do you do that and claim to have any leadership mantle?”

It is barely credible that the President of the United States would state that the Presidents of the world’s other most important countries are not effective leaders. The BBC’s record of his diatribe is disturbing, as it demonstrates a desire for confrontation rather than a genuine preparedness to calm things down. He said that “the fact that China is trying to assert, understandably, a new role in the world as a world leader — not showing up, come on.” He continued by declaring that Russia’s wilderness was burning while President Putin “stays mum” about the problem. He did not know, or deliberately ignored the fact that, as the BBC reported, “before Mr Biden’s speech Mr Putin virtually addressed a meeting on forest management at the COP26 summit on Tuesday, saying that Russia takes the ‘strongest and most vigorous measures to conserve’ woodlands.”

There was little surprise that as COP26 was drawing to a close, President Xi warned against a return to “Cold War-era” divisions when it was made known that he and President Biden would meet on November 15. He said plainly that “attempts to draw ideological lines or form small circles on geopolitical grounds are bound to fail,” and China’s Ambassador to the United States, Qin Gang, expanded on the subject at a function in Washington of the National Committee on U.S.-China Relations, saying that China “always bears in mind the fundamental interests of the people of both countries and the whole world, and handles China-U.S. relations from a strategic and long-term perspective”.

Most people are aware that China has a long-term view on its place in the world, and even President Biden, in his message to the gathering, declared that “from tackling the Covid-19 pandemic to addressing the existential threat of climate crisis, the relationship between the U.S. and China has global significance. Solving these challenges and seizing these opportunities will require the broader international community to come together as we each do our part to build a safe, peaceful and resilient future.” He did not, however, place any emphasis on bilateral negotiations, which was left to President Xi, who wrote that “China-U.S. relations are at a critical historical juncture. Both countries will gain from cooperation and lose from confrontation. Cooperation is the only right choice.”

President Xi’s desire that China should get together with the United States specifically to plan a joint way ahead for a peaceful future has not been echoed in Washington where, as reported by the Straits Times, “the White House deputy press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre stated that Washington and Beijing had ‘an agreement in principle’ to have a virtual summit before the end of the year.” Her explanation was that “this is part of our ongoing efforts to responsibly manage the competition between our countries,” while stressing that it was “not about seeking specific deliverables.” In other words, don’t let anybody get their hopes up that Mr Biden would pursue collaboration that will lead to improved bilateral relations. He might not go so far down into the insult sewer as to reiterate his previous public declaration that Mr Xi doesn’t have a “leadership mantle”, but it is unlikely there will be long-term substance.

It is not surprising that Mr Biden is reluctant to compromise, because the Pentagon and its associates have already notified the world they consider China to be menacing and that the United States should “meet the pacing challenge presented by the PRC’s increasingly capable military and its global ambitions”.

In its November 3 Report to Congress, the Pentagon details “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China” and presents the Pentagon’s case for continuing to expand the U.S. military and acquire even more staggeringly expensive weaponry. As the New York Times reported, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Mark Milley, said that China “is clearly challenging us regionally, and their aspiration is to challenge us globally… they have a China dream, and they want to challenge the so-called liberal rules-based order.” The Washington Post noted the Report’s concern about China’s global vision, in that it “already has established a military base in Djibouti, on the Horn of Africa. To support its goals, it wants to build more facilities overseas and is considering more than a dozen countries that include Cambodia, Pakistan and Angola. Such a network could interfere with U.S. military operations and support offensive operations against the United States.”

The Pentagon’s warning that China’s establishment of a military base in a foreign country constitutes a threat is absurd to the point of risibility, especially in the context of the U.S. military footprint which extends to “750 military base sites estimated in around 80+ foreign countries and colonies/territories.” Further, it is calculated that the U.S. spends more on its military than the combined defence budgets of eleven major countries : China, India, Russia, United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, Germany, France, Japan, South Korea, Italy, and Australia.

It is not surprising that William Hartung and Mandy Smithberger wrote in TomDispatch on November 9 that “The arms industry’s lobbying efforts are especially insidious. In an average year, it employs around 700 lobbyists, more than one for every member of Congress… A 2018 investigation by the Project On Government Oversight found that, in the prior decade, 380 high-ranking Pentagon officials and military officers had become lobbyists, board members, executives, or consultants for weapons contractors within two years of leaving their government jobs.” And of even more concern for the workings of democracy it is sinister, in the words of Dan Auble, that “defence companies spend millions every year lobbying politicians and donating to their campaigns. In the past two decades, their extensive network of lobbyists and donors have directed $285 million in campaign contributions and $2.5 billion in lobbying spending to influence defence policy.”

Good luck to Mr Biden. Let us hope that he will sacrifice popularity for peace and that he will bear in mind the words of his illustrious predecessor President Eisenhower, sixty years ago, that “In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.” Indeed it has risen. But the world would benefit enormously if Joe Biden terminated its ascent by coming to terms with China and Russia.

In a new article promoting the CIA’s new mission center focused on China and the need to pour more resources into countering Beijing, Bloomberg also accidentally makes the case that many of the Chinese government’s controversial domestic policies are entirely justified and completely necessary.

Citing anonymous government officials alongside bloodthirsty psychopath John Bolton, the article “China Is Evading U.S. Spies — and the White House Is Worried” argues that “a stronger pivot to China can’t come soon enough” and reminds readers of last year’s House Intelligence Committee report which claimed that “Absent a significant realignment of resources, the U.S. government and intelligence community will fail to achieve the outcomes required to enable continued U.S. competition with China on the global stage.”

But in their efforts to justify the need for greater focus on espionage campaigns in China, the article’s multiple authors explain that the US intelligence cartel has been floundering on that front precisely because of the authoritarian policies which western institutions have been aggressively criticizing China for implementing.

NEW: A lack of top-tier intelligence on Xi Jinping’s inner circle is frustrating senior Biden administration officials, according to current and former officials who have reviewed the most sensitive U.S. intelligence reportshttps://t.co/61iFBHT3P2

— Peter Martin (@PeterMartin_PCM) November 10, 2021

“Xi’s sweeping efforts to change China’s domestic politics and consolidate his control also have taken a toll on American intelligence,” the article says. “The shift from a system of ‘collective’ leadership under former Presidents Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao toward one dominated by Xi means that the CIA has had to go from focusing on the inner circles of seven or even nine top leaders to, effectively, just one.”

“Chinese academia, the media and civil society organizations are all closely controlled by the government, further compounding the challenge of reporting on the country,” the article adds.

“CIA officers in China face daunting challenges posed by China’s burgeoning surveillance state, which has blanketed Chinese cities with surveillance cameras and employs sophisticated facial recognition software to track threats,” claim the article’s authors.

Bloomberg explains that China’s anti-corruption measures have made it much harder to recruit CIA assets, writing, “Xi’s broad anti-corruption campaign, which has punished more than 1.5 million officials, has also led to greater scrutiny of Chinese officials’ income, making payments to potential sources far more problematic, two former officials said.”

“Those efforts were detailed extensively in 2017 by the New York Times, which said as many as a dozen U.S. sources were executed by China, with others jailed, in what represented one of the worst breaches ever of American spying networks,” the article also notes.

So Beijing’s anti-corruption crackdowns, widespread surveillance and strict control over Chinese society is making it harder for the CIA to undermine that nation, and now the CIA is expressing its frustration through the billionaire media. Which shows that China is acting entirely in self-defense when it implements these policies.

The agenda of western journalists become clear when they complain about how China’s anti-corruption campaign spearheaded by Xi Jinping (whom even the CIA admits in internal documents is “not corrupt” & “doesn’t care about money”), prevents the US from bribing Chinese officials https://t.co/O0if6YAhSw

— Josh || 김은총 (@JoshC0301) November 10, 2021

When people complain about Chinese authoritarianism and lack of transparency, what they’re really complaining about is that China is defending itself against a nonstop assault from the US-centralized empire which seeks to bring Beijing to its knees.

The heavy-handed domestic policies of US-targeted nations like China are not morally comparable to the censorship, propaganda, secrecy, surveillance and other authoritarian measures you see in the US and its lackey states, because US-targeted nations are actively defending themselves against a hostile foreign aggressor who won’t be content until all nations on Earth bow to its dictates.

These are not the same thing. One is a weaker government acting defensively, the other is a globe-spanning power structure that if given the opportunity will topple your government using mass-scale psyops, espionage, special operations, color revolutions and proxy conflicts to force your nation and its people to subordinate its interests to those of the US empire. Sure it would be great if all the world’s populations were free to say and read and do whatever they want without government interference, but to pretend we live in a world where populations aren’t deprived of those freedoms in response to a nonstop assault by a global juggernaut is to live in a fantasy land.

There is a slow motion third world war underway between the US-centralized empire and the few remaining nations which have successfully resisted its aggressive attempts to absorb them into its folds. Nations like the US use propaganda, censorship, secrecy and surveillance to advance those aggressions, while nations like China use them defensively. This is a fundamental difference, and to pretend it isn’t is to ignore the reality of the power dynamics at play.

It’s so silly how the US war machine uses the word “defense” to describe the machine by which it inflicts nonstop aggression upon the world. “Department of Defense”. “The defense industry”. The US war machine doesn’t “defend” anything, it attacks relentlessly and maliciously. Defense is what the nations who resist those aggressions are doing.

caityjohnstone.medium.com

In a Financial Times op-ed, “Investors in Xi’s China face a rude awakening” (August 30, 2021), George Soros writes that Xi’s “crackdown on private enterprise shows he does not understand the market economy… Xi Jinping, China’s leader, has collided with economic reality. His crackdown on private enterprise has been a significant drag on the economy.”

Translated out of Orwellian Doublethink, the “crackdown on private enterprise” means cutting back on what the classical economists called rent-seeking and unearned income. As for its supposed “drag on the economy,” Mr. Soros means the economy’s polarization concentrating wealth and income in the hands of the richest One Percent.

Soros lays out his plan for how U.S. retaliation may punish China by withholding U.S. funding of its companies (as if China cannot create its own credit) until China capitulates and imposes the kind of deregulation and de-taxation that Russia did after 1991. He warns that China will suffer depression by saving its economy along socialist lines and resisting U.S.-style privatization and its associated debt deflation.

Mr. Soros does recognize that China’s “most vulnerable sector is real estate, particularly housing. China has enjoyed an extended property boom over the past two decades, but that is now coming to an end. Evergrande, the largest real estate company, is over-indebted and in danger of default. This could cause a crash.” By that, he means a reduction of housing prices. That’s just what is needed in order to deter land becoming a speculative vehicle. I and others have urged a policy of land taxation in order to collect the land’s rising site value, so that it will not be pledged to banks for mortgage credit to further inflate china’s housing prices.

Warning about the economic consequences of China’s falling birth rate, Soros writes: “One of the reasons why middle-class families are unwilling to have more than one child is that they want to make sure that their children will have a bright future.” This is of course true of every advanced nation today. It is most extreme in the neoliberalized countries, e.g., the Baltics and Ukraine – Soros’s poster countries.

Soros gives his game away by stating that “Xi does not understand how markets operate.” What he means is that President Xi rejects rapacious rent-seeking, exploitative free-for-all, and shapes markets to serve overall prosperity for China’s 99 Percent. “As a consequence, the sell-off was allowed to go too far,” Soros continues. What he means is, too far to maintain the dominance of the One Percent. China is seeking to reverse economic polarization, not intensify it.

Soros claims that China’s socialist policies are hurting its objectives in the world. But what he really is complaining about is that it is hurting America’s neoliberal objectives for how it had hoped to make money for itself off China. This leads Soros to remind Western pension fund managers to “allocate their assets in ways that are closely aligned with the benchmarks against which their performance is measured.” But the tragedy of financializing pensions is that fund managers are rated on making money financially – in ways that hurt the industrial economy by promoting financial engineering instead of industrial engineering.

“Almost all of them claim that they factor environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG) standards into their investment decisions,” Soros writes. At least, that’s what their public relations advisors advertise. Exxon claims to be cleaning up the environment by expanding offshore oil drilling in Guyana, etc. As for “social standards,” the neoliberal mantra is trickle-down economics: by making our stock prices rise, by stock buybacks and higher dividend payouts, we are helping wage-earners earn a pension, even though we are offshoring and de-industrializing the economy, de-unionizing it and “freeing” the economy from consumer and workplace protection laws.

Soros has a radical solution, which he suggests “should obviously apply to the performance benchmarks selected by pensions and other retirement portfolios: … The US Congress should pass a bipartisan bill explicitly requiring that asset managers invest only in companies where actual governance structures are both transparent and aligned with stakeholders.”

Wow. Such a bill would block Americans from investing in many American companies whose behavior is not at all aligned with stakeholders. What proportion: 50%? 75? More?

“If Congress were to enact these measures,” Soros concludes, “it would give the Securities and Exchange Commission the tools it needs to protect American investors, including those who are unaware of owning Chinese stocks and Chinese shell companies. That would also serve the interests of the US and the wider international community of democracies.” So Mr. Soros wants to block the United States from investing in China. He seems not to see that this is President Xi’s objective also: China doesn’t need U.S. dollars, and is in fact de-dollarizing.

George Soros is obviously upset that President Xi is not Boris Yeltsin, and that China is not following the kleptocracy dependency that warped Russia’s economy. Soros thought the ending of the Cold War would simply let him buy up the most lucrative rent-yielding assets, as he has aimed to do in the Baltics and Ukraine. China said “No,” so it is not deemed to be a “market economy,” Soros-style. It has not made its social organization marketable, and has avoided the financial dependency that makes “markets” a vehicle for U.S. control via sanctions and foreign buyouts.

counterpunch.org

The next century will vindicate China and other nations that believe in a world of cooperation and peaceful prosperity.

China’s lavish celebrations this week on the centennial of the Communist Party of China (CPC) were not only a great national event but also a reminder to the rest of the world of huge historic achievement. That achievement will undoubtedly change the course of world history over the next century.

Founded on July 1, 1921, the CPC was the driving force that led to the formation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949. Since its earliest founding father Mao Zedong (1893-1976), there have been at least five generations of leaders.

Current President Xi Jinping, who turned 68 last month, is the first leader who was born after the founding of the PRC. Xi delivered an hour-long rousing speech in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square this week to hail the centennial of the ruling CPC. Throngs of people cheered and applauded ecstatically while an impressive military display showcased China’s most advanced defense capabilities, including a flyover by J-20 stealth fighter jets.

Xi noted in his address that the CPC had delivered on its first centennial goal which was the building of “a moderately prosperous society in all respects”. He then went on to declare: “This means that we have brought about a historic resolution to the problem of absolute poverty in China, and we are now marching confidently toward the second centennial goal of building China into a great modern socialist country in all respects.”

China’s leaders proudly proclaim to have adapted Marxism to “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

There is no doubting the success over the past century. China has advanced from a largely peasant society racked by poverty and hunger to become the world’s second-biggest economy after the United States. It is now the top trading partner with the European Union, the world’s biggest economic bloc of nations.

In a few years, it is reckoned that China will surpass the US. China’s cities can boast of tremendous feats in engineering and infrastructure. While many Western nations are crumbling from chronic underinvestment, the PRC is vigorously developing apace.

Today, China speaks with confidence on the world stage as an economic and military superpower. A century ago, it was bullied and harassed by America and various European colonial powers. The transformation is almost mind-boggling.

President Xi said China would not tolerate “sanctimonious preaching” by Western states and he warned that any attempt at aggression would be smashed against “the great wall of China’s 1.4 billion people”.

Some western scholars might dispute the authenticity of China’s socialism, but it seems clear nevertheless that its planned economy which is people-centered has outperformed Western corporate capitalism whose contemporary hallmark is massive indebtedness, inequality and social decay.

The past year of global pandemic is proof of China’s efficient governance. Its death toll from the Covid-19 virus is a tiny fraction of that incurred by the United States and other Western nations. Indeed, China has virtually eradicated the disease and has returned to strong economic growth while Western countries are still languishing with lockdowns and rampant infections. Beijing’s success in managing the pandemic speaks of efficient governance and egalitarian public health resources.

Another remarkable historic achievement is that China’s development has not involved conflict with and subjugation of other nations. By contrast, how many wars and conflicts has the United States and its Western allies engaged in during the same period? How many millions of lives have been destroyed by these imperial powers whose warmongering is a concomitant of capitalist economics?

Since President Xi took office in 2013, China has embarked on a world-changing Belt and Road Initiative. The vision is to build a world for common humanity through mutual partnership and development. Over 100 nations have so far joined and benefited from China’s BRI, from Asia to Africa to the Americas. Russia has emerged as a key partner with China in implementing the vision of a multipolar and mutual world order.

The “old powers” of the United States and Europe cannot abide such a global direction because their capitalist paradigm is predicated on domination and exploitation.

This is why Washington and its European lackeys have become frenetic in their efforts to demonize China (and Russia) with all sorts of spurious allegations. This is inflaming international tensions and is dangerously stoking the risk of war. It is to their eternal shame that Western states are jeopardizing global security in order to cling to their anachronistic ambitions of hegemony.

China can claim a 5,000-year-old civilization of which the past 100 years have seen astounding progress for its people. Western powers have inflicted perhaps 500 years of predatory ruination on the rest of the world and have little to show for it that can be recommended. The next century will vindicate China and other nations that believe in a world of cooperation and peaceful prosperity.

We’re talking about the fifth plenum of the 19^th Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Central Committee, which started this past Monday in Beijing.

The plenum congregates the 200 members – and another 100 alternate members – of the civilization-state’s top decision-making body: the equivalent, in Western liberal democracy terms, of the Chinese Congress.

The outline of what will be the 14^th Chinese Five-Year-Plan (2021-2025) will be announced with a communiqué at the end of the plenum this Thursday. Policy details will be streaming in the next few weeks. And everything will be formally approved by the National People’s Congress (NPC) in March 2021.

For all practical purposes, this should be regarded as what China’s leadership is really thinking.

Meet “China’s system”

President Xi has been quite busy, delivering an extensive work report; a draft of the five-year plan; and a full outline of China’s top targets all the way to 2035.

Xi has been forcefully stressing a “dual circulation” strategy for China; to increase the focus on the domestic economy while balancing it with foreign trade and investment.

Actually a better definition, translated from Mandarin, is “double development dynamics”. In Xi’s own words, the aim is to “facilitate better connectivity between domestic and foreign markets for more resilient and sustainable growth”.

One spectacular achievement we already know about is that Xi’s goal for China to reach the status of a “moderately prosperous society” has been met in 2020, even under Covid-19. Extreme poverty has been eliminated.

The next step is to deal long-term with the absolutely critical issues of crisis of global trade; less demand for Chinese products; and varying degrees of volatility caused by the unstoppable rise of China.

The key priority for Beijing is the domestic economy – in tandem with reaching key tech targets to enhance China’s high-quality development. That implies building high-end, integrated supply chains. And then there’s the tortuous road of implementing necessary institutional reforms.

Crucially, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is “guiding” companies to invest in core technology; that means semiconductors, 5G applications, the Internet of Things (IoT), integrated circuits, biomedicine.

So everything is, once again, all about the Chip War – which is at the heart of AI, 5G, supercomputing, quantum computing, material science, biotechnology, new energy vehicles and space science.

China’s leadership is very much aware that the real high stakes revolve around the next generation of chip technology.

Enter the concept of China’s system: or how to fight the “U.S.-initiated cold war in high technology”.

“China’s system” has been developed by IT expert Ni Guangnan. It aims to “replace U.S. technologies in core areas including the key IT infrastructure, in which the U.S.-led IOE system, an acronym for an IT network based on major three supplies – IBM, Intel and Oracle – have the monopoly. With self-developed servers, database and storage, the system could be based on chipsets with lower performance with no need for 14-nanometer (nm) or 7-nanometer chip fabrication – prime targets of the U.S.-led crackdown.”

Various calculations in China roughly agree that by the end of this year the economy is set to be 72% the size of the U.S.’s. The State Council forecasts that the Chinese economy will overtake the EU in 2027 and the U.S. by 2032.

But if measured by PPP (purchasing power parity), as both the IMF and The Economist have already admitted, China is already the world’s largest economy.

The fifth plenum once again reiterates all the goals inbuilt in Made in China 2025. But there’s more: an emphasis on the “2035 vision” – when China should be positioned as a global tech leader.

The “2035 Vision” concerns the halfway point between where we are now and the ultimate target in 2049. By 2035 China should be a fully modernized, socialist nation and a superpower especially in science and technology and Defense.

Xi had already stressed it way back in 2017: China will “basically” realize “socialist modernization” by 2035. To get there, the Politburo is seeking an extremely ambitious synthesis of “scale, speed, quality, efficiency and safety”.

Beyond Westphalia

Considering that the Trump administration has been engaged on a relentless offensive since May 2018, it was only since last July that the CCP leadership has been consistently preparing China for what it considers a lengthy and fierce struggle with the U.S.

That has elicited quite a few comparisons with what the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping referred about Mao Zedong in 1938. Mao at the time said that China should “be on the defensive first before gathering enough strength to fight to a strategic stand-off and eventually win the ‘protracted war’” against the Japanese invasion.

Now we have a weiqi strategy all over again. Beijing will only launch what amounts to a concerted counterpunch across the chessboard when it’s able to close the tech gap and establish its own domestic and global supply chains completely independent from the U.S.

Beijing will need a major soft power P.R. operation to show the world how its drive in science and technology is aimed as a global good, with all humanity benefiting, irrespective of nations. The Chinese Covid-19 vaccine should be setting the example.

In a recent podcast discussing one of my latest columns on Lanxin Xiang’s book The Quest for Legitimacy in Chinese Politics,

Brazilian China expert Elias Jabbour came up with a stunning formulation.

Jabbour echoed top Chinese scholars when he stressed China won’t behave as an aggressive Westphalian state: “The subversion of Westphalia by China came from the fact it incorporated the Russian Revolution to 1949. China is laying out for the future an order that may subvert Westphalia.”

So what we have here is that the foremost concept of Xi’s China – whose best English translation reads as “community with a shared future for humanity” – is actually the subversion of Westphalia. A subversion from within.

Jabbour reminds us that when Mao said that only socialism may save China, he meant save it from the treaty of Westphalia, which facilitated the dismemberment of China during the “century of humiliation.”

So in the end a strategic marriage between Marx and Confucius in Xi’s China is more than feasible, transcending geopolitics as we know it, which was born as a national ideology in France, Germany and Britain.

It’s as if Xi was trying, as Jabbour noted, to “go back to original Marxism as a leftist Hegelianism”, geared towards internationalism, and mixing it with the Confucius view of tianxa, “all under heaven”. That’s the master idea behind “community with a shared future for humanity.”

One can always dream that another world is indeed possible: think of a cultural renaissance of the overwhelming majority of the Global South, with a fruitful cross-fertilization of China and Asian economies, the evolving decolonization struggle of Latin America, and the weight of the African diaspora.

But first, the next Chinese five-year plan has got to roll.

In turn, trying to out-hawk the Republican incumbent, the Biden campaign paints Trump as being “soft” on China and having been “played” by Chinese counterparts over trade, the corona pandemic and allegations about human rights.

Biden, the former vice president in the previous Obama administrations, has vowed to impose more sanctions on China over allegations of rights violations. He claims to be the one who will “stand up” to Beijing if he is elected to the White House in three months’ time.

Last week, Biden declared he was “giving notice to the Kremlin and others [China]” that if elected to the presidency he would impose “substantial and lasting costs” on those who allegedly interfere in U.S. politics. That’s war talk based on worthless intel propaganda.

Trump meanwhile asserts that no-one is tougher than him when it comes to dealing with China (and Russia for that matter).

Given the Trump administration’s reckless policy of ramping up hostility towards China in recent months, that begs the question: how could a future Biden administration begin to be even more aggressive – short of going to war?

Relations between Washington and Beijing have plummeted to their worst levels since the historic detente initiated by President Richard Nixon in the early 1970s. The precipitous downward spiral has occurred under President Trump’s watch. So, how exactly could a prospective President Biden make the relationship more adversarial?

The truth is both Trump and Biden are equally vulnerable to domestic partisan criticism about their respective dealings with China. The belated high-handed approach that both are trying to project is pockmarked with risible hypocrisy.

The Trump campaign scores a valid point when it recalls how former Vice President Biden smooched and feted Chinese leaders with economic opportunities in the American economy.

Likewise, Trump stands accused of lavishing praise on Chinese President Xi Jinping while ignoring the impending coronavirus pandemic because Trump’s top priority was getting a trade deal with China.

The fact that both American politicians have U-turned with regard to China in such nasty terms must leave the authorities in Beijing with a deep sense of distrust in either of the would-be presidents.

Biden at one time waxed lyrical about his close relationship with Xi, but as his bid for the presidency heated up, Biden stuck the proverbial knife in the Chinese leader calling him a “thug”.

For his part, Trump previously referred to Xi as a “dear friend” while dining him with “beautiful chocolate cake” at his Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida, but his administration has since slammed the Chinese leader as “authoritarian”. Trump’s racist slurs over the pandemic being “Kung Flu” and “Chinese plague” must give President Xi pause for disgust with the falseness.

At the end of day, can either of these presidential candidates be trusted to pursue principled U.S.-China relations going forward? The toxic anti-China campaigning by both indicates a level of puerile treachery which foreshadows no possible return to any kind of normalcy.

One distinction perhaps between Trump and Biden is the latter is promising to repair relations with Western allies to form a united front against China. To that end, a hawkish confrontational policy under Biden may have more impact on U.S.-China relations than under Trump. Trump has managed to alienate European allies with his broadsides over trade tariffs and NATO spending commitments. Although Trump’s Secretary of State Mike Pompeo has recently urged “an alliance of democracies” to confront China, that rallying call is likely to fall on deaf ears with European allies irked by Trump’s brash style. Biden on the other hand could bring a more unified Western policy of hostility towards Beijing (and Moscow) by affecting a more appeasing attitude towards Europe. In that way, Biden would be more preferred by the Pentagon and foreign policy establishment than Trump, just as Hillary Clinton was in 2016.

However, it is doubtful that Beijing is paying too much attention to what either candidate is saying or posturing at. If both of them can flip so much from talking softly to shouting loud anti-China profanities then their individual characters may be deemed malleable and unscrupulous. Both have shown a shameless streak in stoking anti-China bashing for electioneering gain. Trump pulled that trick last time out in 2016 when he railed against China for “raping America” only for him to discover “deep friendship” with Xi following that election. Now he has reverted to hostility out of self-serving calculation to whip up anti-China sentiment among voters. And Biden is apt to do the very same.

Forget about such fickle personalities when it comes to reading U.S. policy towards China. Beijing will be looking at the longer trajectory of how U.S. policy turned towards a more militarized approach with the “Pivot to Asia” under the Obama-Biden administration in 2011. Indicating how Deep State continuity transcends Democrat or Republican occupants of the White House, the next major indicator was in the Pentagon planning documents of 2017 and 2018 under Trump which labelled China and Russia as “great power rivals”. The American “ship of state”, it may be concluded, is therefore set on a collision course with both Beijing and Moscow in terms of ramping up a confrontational agenda. Who sits in the White House scarcely matters.

For Trump and Biden to trade barbs about which one is “softer” on China or Russia is irrelevant in the bigger picture of U.S. imperialist ambitions for global dominance. The logic of a waning American empire and the concomitant inherent belligerence to compensate for the perceived loss of U.S. global power are the issues to follow, not whether Trump or Biden clinch the dog-and-pony race to the White House.