Month: July 2020

Trolled by a Trump

This article was written for the Chinese website Guancha, and was published on 23 July 2020. The original English text appears below.

The extreme sensitivity of the US to any reporting of the real situation of China-US relations was revealed by the following event. On Tuesday 14 July, I tweeted the following:

China will soon be the world’s largest economy. It’ll be the first nation to reach that status whose rise isn’t built on colonialism, slavery & genocide, but rather on hard work, good economics & effective governance. This should earn China love, but it earns it hate in the West.

This statement was almost immediately met with a fierce attack on Twitter by the son of the US president, Donald Trump Jr!

Why this extreme sensitivity from a Trump family member about a statement of obvious truth? Of course, there’s only so much you can say in Twitter’s 280 characters, but I wanted to have some input into the discussion in the West about the so-called ‘China threat’. Although there has been increasing hostility to China’s rise over the course of the past decade – starting with the launch of the ‘Pivot to Asia’ by the Obama administration in 2011 – anti-China rhetoric in the West has reached new levels of hysteria this year.

Western government and media are both constantly attacking China on the following false lines:

  1. The National Security Law is an attack on the freedoms of the people of Hong Kong and violates China’s legal obligations under the Sino-British joint declaration of 1984.
  2. The Uyghur people are being subjected to torture, mass incarceration and forced sterilisation.
  3. China caused the Covid-19 pandemic and didn’t do enough to stop it spreading.
  4. Chinese technology companies are working to provide their government with sensitive data about other countries.
  5. China uses “predatory economic practices” (in the words of Mike Pompeo) to give its companies an unfair advantage in global competition.

Since March this year, when the pandemic struck New York, this propaganda has become so loud as to be deafening, as the US administration desperately tries to find a way to deflect US attention away from its terrible failure to contain the virus. The US propaganda echoes across the Atlantic, as the British government – committed to a ‘Hard Brexit’ in which it withdraws from the EU Single Market and Customs Union – follows instructions from the US in the hope that this will lead to a good US-UK trade deal.

Because people in Britain, where I live, are exposed to anti-China propaganda on a daily basis, myself and others try to put forward another, more accurate, side to the story: to show people that China’s rise doesn’t need to be considered as a threat; that China deserves credit for its achievements in overcoming the Century of Humiliation, joining the ranks of the technologically-advanced countries, and lifting hundreds of millions of people out of poverty. We hope to promote the idea that friendly win-win cooperation between the world’s great countries is both possible and desirable.

So that’s the context for sending the tweet mentioned above. This tweet quickly became popular, with several thousand ‘likes’. Somehow, after a few hours, it reached the feed of a certain Donald Trump Jr, son of the sitting US president. Trump Jr reposted the tweet, along with the comment:

Who’s gonna tell him? This is literally the most laughable thing on twitter today. The communists spreading their propaganda hard today.

For the next 48 hours, my Twitter notifications became completely unusable, as I was receiving many hundreds of messages an hour from Trump supporters in the US telling me I was an idiot, that China is a colonial power, that China has only become successful by copying American technology, and so on.

Somewhat ironically, a large number of these Trump supporters criticised me for not caring about the human rights of the Uyghur population in Xinjiang, claiming they were being denied freedom of worship. Given that Trump introduced a Muslim travel ban in 2017; given that Mike Pompeo is well known for his horrible anti-Muslim rhetoric; and given the US record in bombing Muslim-majority countries in the Middle East, it may seem surprising that American right-wingers are so concerned about the Uyghur people. The reality is of course that they’re not concerned about the Uyghur people at all – they’re simply looking for any opportunity to criticise and slander the People’s Republic of China.

Thankfully some prominent and intelligent people, not only in the West but in China, for example Zhao Lijian and Wang Wen, supported my message, and this online Twitter battle wasn’t too one-sided.

This social media fight between myself and Donald Trump Jr has a much broader significance, and is in fact a reflection of the key global political struggle of this era: between the forces of peaceful multipolarity and ‘win-win’ development on the one hand, and the forces of aggressive hegemonism on the other.

The reason that China’s rise, when translated into the language of US policymakers, is a ‘China threat’ is that China’s emergence as a major economic power means that the era of US unipolar dominance is coming to an end. It is simply not realistic to expect that the global economy and the framework of international relations will continue to operate primarily in the interests of the US (or more specifically, the US ruling class).

Working through the UN, the G20, the WTO, along with regional organisations such as the SCO, and developing the broadest possible economic cooperation via the Belt and Road initiative, China is helping to construct a more democratic, multipolar system of international relations. This is a “rising tide that lifts all boats” – a world in which multiple centres of power, in both competition and cooperation, create an equilibrium that promotes long-term peace and rising prosperity.

Unfortunately, elements of the US ruling class are struggling to adapt to this new reality, hoping instead that they can create a ‘New American Century’. In terms of global politics, this is the real meaning of ‘Make America Great Again’: Make America Hegemonic Again. Many of these forces have oriented to Donald Trump, because his idea of ‘greatness’ is the easy road, denying the need for any major strategic shift, denying the inevitable nature of a new global reality. Indeed as Kishore Mahbubani has written, Trump “has divided America on all his policies, except one: his trade and technological war against China.”

A clash of civilisations is neither necessary nor inevitable. If the fundamental national interest of both the US and China is to improve the wellbeing of their populations, it’s obvious that the two countries should cooperate towards that end and avoid major conflict. Humanity faces several very serious problems – climate change, war, hunger and pandemics among them – and they require global cooperation to solve.

The key political task for progressive and pro-peace forces worldwide is to unite to oppose a New Cold War. As Samir Amin put it, “the creation of a front against hegemonism is the number one priority today, as the creation of an anti-Nazi alliance was the number one priority yesterday”.

Towards this end, some activists have set up an international initiative called No to the New Cold War, which will have its first public meeting on Saturday 25 July (9pm CST). Speakers at this meeting include Wang Wen, Yang Hanyi, Martin Jacques, John Ross, US peace activist Medea Benjamin, Venezuelan minister Carlos Ron, and the Chinese-American group Qiao Collective.

More information can be found at www.nocoldwar.org

Labour should not be parroting Trump’s anti-China Cold War rhetoric

This article originally appeared in the Morning Star

There’s been a worrying upsurge in anti-China propaganda on both sides of the Atlantic. While imperialist hostility towards China’s rise has become an intrinsic characteristic of the current era – particularly since the launch of the ‘Pivot to Asia’ by the Obama administration in 2011 – the rhetoric has become increasingly hysterical and absurd over the last few months.

There are currently four main lines of attack being pushed on a daily basis by the US and British ruling classes:

  1. The newly-introduced National Security Law is an attack on the basic freedoms of the people of Hong Kong and violates China’s legal obligations under the Sino-British joint declaration of 1984.
  2. The Uyghur population of Xinjiang is being repressed in any number of indescribably brutal ways, including through mass incarceration in ‘re-education camps’ and forced sterilisation.
  3. China – as a result of its secrecy, incompetence, vindictiveness, or some combination thereof – didn’t give the world sufficient warning of the Covid-19 outbreak and must therefore bear responsibility for the havoc being wreaked by the pandemic.
  4. China’s technology companies are providing, or seek to provide, secret information to the Chinese state, and therefore their involvement in Western economies should be actively restricted.

Unsurprisingly, it’s the US government leading the charge. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accuses China of having “broken multiple international commitments including those to the WHO, the WTO, the United Nations and the people of Hong Kong”. He rails against China’s “predatory economic practices, such as trying to force nations to do business with Huawei, an arm of the Chinese Communist Party’s surveillance state.”

This is a bi-partisan position in the US, sadly. Democratic presidential contender Joe Biden is keen to prove he’s also every bit the China hawk, threatening sanctions and promoting a zany and totally unfounded smear about the forced sterilisation of Uyghur women. Even progressive congresswomen Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib have joined in with this mindless China-bashing.

In both the US and Britain, relations with China are at their lowest point for decades. It’s no surprise that the Boris Johnson government, instinctively Atlanticist and desperately pursuing a post-Brexit trade agreement with the US at almost any cost, is largely parroting Trump’s line.

Having agreed in January to Huawei having a role in the development of Britain’s 5G infrastructure, the government is now considering dropping Huawei so as not to be “vulnerable to a high-risk state vendor”. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab has stated there’ll be “no return to business as usual” in Britain’s relations with China. Meanwhile, leading government officials have been vocal in their criticism of Hong Kong’s new National Security Law, going so far as to offer some three million Hong Kong residents the opportunity to settle in Britain and apply for citizenship.

Those of us who stand for peace and for mutually beneficial cooperation between Britain and China might hope that the Labour Party would provide some meaningful opposition to the government’s reckless behaviour. Unfortunately the indications thus far are that Labour is enthusiastically climbing aboard the New Cold War bandwagon.

Shadow foreign secretary Lisa Nandy has been actively promoting anti-China propaganda and pushing the Tories to take a harder stance against China, for example urging that action be taken against British businesses that are “complicit in the repression” in Hong Kong (ie that don’t actively support the riots).

While Nandy’s words might bring disappointment to socialists, progressives and peace activists, they were at least welcome in certain quarters: notorious right-wing blogger Guido Fawkes celebrated the “welcome change in Labour Party policy – standing up to, rather than cosying up to despotic regimes.”

Nandy’s position is however positively nuanced in comparison to that of Stephen Kinnock, Shadow Minister for Asia and the Pacific, who accuses China of promoting its “model of responsive authoritarian government” worldwide. Kinnock describes the ‘golden era’ of Sino-British relations, inaugurated during the Cameron government, as being an “abject failure” in which Britain had “rolled out the red carpet for China and got very very little in return”.

It therefore seems that the Labour leadership in its current incarnation is moving towards unambiguous support for the US-led New Cold War on China. It’s particularly demoralising that, with a few honourable exceptions, most notably Diane Abbott, the Labour left isn’t currently putting up any serious resistance to this dangerous trajectory.

While very few Labour MPs have spoken of the dangers of a New Cold War, John McDonnell has recorded a histrionic (and hopelessly one-sided) denunciation of the Chinese state’s alleged mistreatment of the Uyghur Muslims. Apsana Begum has repeated these tropes in parliament, claiming that when the Chinese government celebrates its successful suppression of the East Turkestan Islamic Movement’s murderous bombing campaign, its “definition of terrorism is troublingly vague”. The usually-excellent Claudia Webbe has called on the government to “oppose state-sanctioned violence” in Hong Kong, choosing to ignore the United States-sanctioned violence of separatist protestors.

This is all frankly disastrous and worrying. The US administration is leading a very serious escalation of the New Cold War, trying to isolate China, trying to demonise it, trying to undermine it and to prevent its economic rise. The propaganda ‘soft war’ with regard to Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Covid-19 is combined with moves towards economic ‘decoupling’ along with ‘hard war’ encirclement measures, including ramped up and provocative patrols in the South China Sea.

A New Cold War will bring no benefit whatsoever to ordinary British people. It will mean fewer jobs, reduced investment, reduced export markets and increased prices on imports. All this will be accompanied by rising anti-Asian racism and a renewed momentum along the ideological dead-end of empire nostalgia. Even the relatively more sane representatives of the ruling class such as Jeffrey Sachs recognise the danger of this wave of sinophobia “spiralling into greater controversy and greater danger”, resulting in a US-China Cold War that’s “a bigger global threat than the coronavirus.”

What British people need to do, in the interests of peace and progress, is to push for respectful, friendly and mutually beneficial relations with China. Opposing the New Cold War must become a key priority for the labour and anti-war movements.

Activists in Britain and the US are organising an international online meeting against the New Cold War, to take place on Saturday 25 July at 2pm BST. Speakers include Medea Benjamin, Vijay Prashad, Qiao Collective, Wang Wen, Jenny Clegg and Kate Hudson. More info at www.nocoldwar.org