Carlos Martinez, Author at Invent the Future

Responsibility for Ukraine crisis lies in Washington and Kyiv, not Moscow

The following article by Carlos Martinez, giving an overview of the causes of the escalating crisis in Ukraine, was originally published by CGTN on 26 February 2022.

Contrary to the superficial analysis in much of the Western media, the escalating crisis in Ukraine is not a product of any psychopathology on the part of Vladimir Putin. Nor has it emerged out of thin air. It represents the culmination of a storm that has been brewing for many years.

There are two key components of this situation that are crucial to understand.

First is the issue of Russia’s security. During talks with Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev and his team about the reunification of Germany in 1989-90, Western leaders made firm commitments that NATO would not seek to extend its borders eastward and that Russia’s legitimate security concerns would be taken seriously. Yet in the event, as Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Hua Chunying has commented, “the U.S. drove five waves of NATO expansion eastward all the way to Russia’s doorstep and deployed advanced offensive strategic weapons,” in a clear breach of the commitments made by George HW Bush and Helmut Kohl. Since the 1990s, 14 states in Central and Eastern Europe have joined NATO.

Sanctions in the New Cold War on China

The following article by Carlos Martinez features as a chapter in the forthcoming book Sanctions Kill – The World Stands Up. The article provides a detailed analysis of the sanctions imposed by the US and its allies on the People’s Republic of China and exposes the role they play within the escalating New Cold War.

Sanctions Kill – The World Stands Up will be published by World View Forum in early Spring 2022.

Background

The instinctive attitude of the United States towards the Chinese Revolution was of course one of hostility. In a protracted war between progress and reaction, between the future and the past, the governments of the US and the People’s Republic of China were, and are, are on opposite sides of the barricades. Hence shortly after the formation of the PRC in 1949, the US maintained a strict embargo on China.

With the move towards rapprochement in the early 1970s and a tacit agreement to ‘peacefully coexist’, the embargo was finally removed. Then with China’s strategic shift to integrate into the global economy, the trickle of trade and investment gradually expanded into one of the largest and most important economic relationships in the world, with bilateral trade volume currently standing at just over half a trillion dollars annually. Thousands of US businesses have generated enormous profits from their investments in China and (particularly in recent years) from selling to a vast and growing Chinese market.

Ruling classes in the West were, to a considerable extent, comfortable with incorporating China into globalised capitalism, to the extent that China’s role was limited to providing cheap, competent and well-educated labour. However, it was never the intention of the Chinese leadership to remain permanently at the lowest rung of the global economic ladder. China has pursued a patient strategy of welcoming foreign investment, setting up joint enterprises with Western companies, learning the latest technologies and management techniques, and building up its own advanced industry. Meanwhile it has invested very heavily in education and innovation. China’s R&D spending reached 378 billion USD in 2020 – 2.4 percent of its GDP and nearly three times the figure for the US.

As a result, China is on its way to becoming “a moderately developed socialist country by the middle of the 21st century”, as Deng Xiaoping predicted some 35 years ago.¹ China has become a world leader in network technology, in renewable energy, nuclear energy, high-speed rail, artificial intelligence, nanotechnology, quantum computing, and several other important areas. It is increasingly competing with the US in spaces that the US is used to dominating, such as cloud computing and industrial automation.

China plays a crucial role supporting progress and sovereignty in Latin America

This article by Carlos Martinez, which first appeared in the Morning Star of 4 December 2021, discusses China’s economic engagement with Latin America in recent decades; debunks claims that this engagement is a form of neocolonialism; and concludes that China’s solidarity with Latin America is an important support for sovereign development in the region.

In the last two decades, economic links between Latin America and the People’s Republic of China have been expanding at a dizzying rate. Bilateral trade in 2000 was just 12 billion USD (1 percent of Latin American’s total trade); now it stands at 315 billion USD. In the same time period, China’s foreign direct investment in Latin America has increased by a factor of five.

Since the launch of the Belt and Road Initiative in 2013, 19 of the 33 countries in the Latin American and Caribbean region have signed up to the China-led global infrastructure development strategy. Infrastructure projects have been a particular focus for Chinese firms. Writing in Foreign Policy in 2018, Max Nathanson observed that “Latin American governments have long lamented their countries’ patchy infrastructure.” China has “stepped in with a solution: roughly $150 billion loaned to Latin American countries since 2005.”

Preparing for War: Industrialization and the Fascist Threat – Lessons of Soviet History

In the third part of the new BreakThrough News series on the Soviet Union, Carlos Martinez is interviewed by Brian Becker about the period from 1929-39, specifically covering collectivisation, fast-track industrialisation, the shift in the global communist movement from ‘class against class’ to the United Front, attempts to form an anti-fascist alliance with the Western democracies, and the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. The 80-minute video is embedded below.

The rise and fall of the Soviet Union – lessons for socialists

In the first part of a new series on BreakThrough News, Carlos Martinez was interviewed by Brian Becker about the Russian Revolution; the popular basis for the revolution; the war of intervention; the extreme backwardness of pre-revolutionary Russia; and the world-historic achievements of the Soviet Union. The 70-minute video is embedded below.

Video explainer: Stop blaming China for the climate crisis

📺 In this brief presentation for the Friends of Socialist China YouTube channel, Carlos Martinez gives a comprehensive explanation of why the US and its allies’ attempts to push responsibility for the climate crisis onto China are hypocritical and ridiculous, and why cooperation on climate change is essential.

Progressives around the world oppose the propaganda war against China

On Saturday 9 October, Friends of Socialist China held a webinar focused on opposing the propaganda warfare being waged by the US and its allies against the People’s Republic of China. The event was co-sponsored by the Morning Star, the Grayzone, Pivot to Peace, the Geopolitical Economy Research Group, the International Manifesto Group, and Qiao Collective. The full webinar (along with individual speech videos) can be watched on YouTube. What follows is an event report by Carlos Martinez.

A condensed version of this article appeared in the Morning Star.

Introducing the event, Radhika Desai (Professor of Political Studies, University of Manitoba, Director, Geopolitical Economy Research Group) pointed out that, on the left, the most fundamental lie about China is that it is not building socialism but rather that it is just another capitalist country, indeed a particularly brutal capitalist country. Once this untruth is accepted, China can be treated as an enemy of progressive humanity – successes can be ignored, weaknesses exaggerated and accusations hurled.

For decades, the West constructively engaged with China at an economic and diplomatic level. But the capitalist powers were suffering under two illusions: first, that the Communist Party of China would transform itself into a social democratic or even a neoliberal party that would lead China towards the type of financialised, neoliberal, unproductive capitalism that prevails in the West; second, that China would remain on the bottom rung of the global economic ladder, providing low-cost manufacturing for goods consumed in the West.

Extended interview with Carlos Martinez about all things China

On 25 September, Carlos Martinez was interviewed on the Rebirth of Communism YouTube channel about China, discussing the following questions:

What is the nature of the propaganda war being waged against China?
What’s really happening in Xinjiang?
Why does much of the Western left support this propaganda war?
What are the reasons for the different levels of economic and social progress in India and China since the late 1940s?
Will China suffer the fate of the Soviet Union?
What does China’s project of being a ‘great modern socialist country’ by 2049 entail?

The video is embedded below.

Carlos Martinez interviewed on ‘By Any Means Necessary’ regarding the AUKUS military pact

Invent the Future editor Carlos Martinez was interviewed by Sean Blackmon and Jacquie Luqman on the Sputnik Radio show By Any Means Necessary on 17 September 2021. We discuss the recently-announced alliance between the US, Britain and Australia, and its clear purpose of advancing the war drive against China. Along with this, we talk about the historical imperialist and colonialist interests of the three countries, how the supplying of nuclear submarines to Australia raises the threat of nuclear confrontation, and the anti-China industry manufacturing consent for hostility against China.

Escucha”US Continues War Drive Against China With AUKUS Alliance” en Spreaker.

Summary of ‘The CPC: Its Mission and Contributions’

This article by Carlos Martinez, originally published on Friends of Socialist China, summarises the document ‘The CPC: Its Mission and Contributions’, recently released by the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee. An abridged version of the article appeared in the Morning Star on 1 September 2021. The article has been translated into Dutch by our friends at ChinaSquare.

On 26 August 2021, the Publicity Department of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee released an important document, entitled ‘The CPC: Its Mission and Contributions’. The publication, consisting in its English translation of over 28,000 words, clearly represents a wide-ranging discussion within the CPC, reflecting on its contributions of the last hundred years and its goals and challenges for the future.

Continuity

The document emphasises the basic continuity at the heart of the CPC’s mission. Since its founding in July 1921, the CPC has devoted itself to the project of building socialism, establishing China’s sovereignty, creating a better life for the population, and contributing to a peaceful and prosperous future for humanity.