An interpretation of the CPC’s 20th congress report: the western media’s omertà on the China model of modernization and its disingenuous response to the CPC’s self-revolution

At the just concluded 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC), General Secretary Xi Jinping’s report, on behalf of the 19th Central Committee¹, provides a comprehensive summary of the party’s extraordinary achievements over the past decade and a vision for the future development of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era. In many ways, this report reflects the CPC’s major innovations in Marxist and socialist theory and presents new possibilities for the major challenges facing all of humanity. But the Western media, due to their own bias, have either ignored or maliciously misinterpreted these important messages. All peace-loving and progressive people who are concerned about the world should cross these barriers of bias and carefully interpret this important report.

The CPC’s 20th Congress coincided with major changes in the world not seen in a century. The contradiction between an increasingly economically and socially weakened, but still militarily powerful, U.S. imperialism, and the peoples of the Global South and non-Western countries is becoming increasingly antagonistic. The United States has coerced most European countries and Japan into supporting the dangerous path of NATO expansion. They are also deploying dozens of military bases in Africa. The U.S.-led West has no answers to the serious challenges facing the world. In this new era, China’s ambition to build a modern socialist state is exactly what people around the world need.

In this article, we will discuss three key points from the 20th Congress report that have direct relevance to the global South.

1. The significance of the China model of modernization.
2. Achieving the longevity of political parties and nations through self-revolution.
3. The direct relevance of the security-related content of the 20^th Congress report to the world.

The China model of modernization: A new hope for human civilization

According to the report, the China Model of Modernization offers a new option for the modernization of mankind. The Western media are completely silent on this important statement; not only because they lack the capacity and background to understand this new concept in depth, but also because they realize that China’s achievements in socialist modernization will break the monopoly of the Western developed capitalist countries on the “modernization” discourse and the allegation that socialism has failed to solve economic problems. Overall, China’s success in various fields constitutes an existential threat to the Western hegemonic system.

In the centuries-long history of Western hegemony, “modernity” has been equated with “Westernness”. The West acquired the “so-called original accumulation”² of capital through brutal plundering, colonization, and the slave trade, and destroyed the basis for development of the colonized countries in the Global South. The Westerners, who had expropriated their wealth through violence and brutality, anointed themselves as “modern” and lecture the nations of the Global South from above. When Fukuyama spoke of the “end of history,” the “modern” in his eyes was undoubtedly the vision of neoliberalism. The Western system of “modernization” does not offer the Global South the opportunity to develop. Rather, privatization and open markets result in vampiric-like blood sucking of the life of the working classes in the neo-colonies. This Western system does not address the key question of the need for genuine political sovereignty in the Global South, nor does it answer the question of how it can gain the ability to “stand up” as China did in 1949.

Today, under the imperialist-imposed neoliberal system, the neo-colonial plundering of Africa continues and is directly responsible for the continued poverty of the local peoples. Burkina Faso, a West African country of just 22 million people, mines over $2 billion worth of gold alone each year, yet the profits from these natural resources are siphoned off by European, Canadian, and Australian mining companies, leaving 40% of the country’s people earning less than $2 a day³. Niger’s uranium, the Democratic Republic of Congo’s cobalt and lithium, and Nigeria’s oil, these rich natural deposits, instead of bringing economic development to Africa, have made them targets for manipulation by developed Western countries, leaving them with poverty, chaos, and a badly damaged ecosystem. The ecological disasters caused by Shell Oil in Nigeria and Exxon Mobil in Ecuador are the most vivid examples.

China’s modernization, by contrast, redefines and de-stigmatizes the concept of “modernization” from a socialist perspective. The importance of the China model of modernization has been demonstrated by the amazing economic, political, and social developmental achievements of socialist China in the following ways.

First, China’s model of large-scale modernization (both in population and land mass) has involved and benefited the entire Chinese people. In 1949, when socialist China was founded, its economy accounted for less than 5% of the world’s total; its national income per capita was 20% lower than India’s; and it ranked as the 11th poorest country in the world (based on per capita PPP adjusted GDP). By 2021, China’s economy accounted for 18% of the world economy and its per capita income was 2.7 times that of India’s. What’s more, China has fully eradicated absolute poverty, achieved universal nine-year compulsory education, and covered more than 95 percent of its population with basic health insurance. In 2021, the CPC launched initiatives to comprehensively promote rural revitalization and solidly advance common prosperity. This ensures that the country’s rural population, 700 million people, with relatively low-income levels, will benefit from economic development.

When China began its reform and opening up in the 1980s, Deng Xiaoping’s slogan of “let some people get rich first” and the rapid growth of the private and foreign-invested economy caused some socialists in the Global South to wonder whether China had deviated from the socialist line. The facts are now available to lay those doubts to rest. Deng Xiaoping also explained socialism this way:  “Poverty is not socialism” and “Those who become rich first will lead those who become rich later to achieve common prosperity”. Those ideas are becoming China’s reality today. From this decades-long process, we can see that generations of leaders of the CPC have taken up the mission of their respective times and continued the practice of enriching the country and strengthening the people.

Second, the China model of modernization attaches importance not only to economic development, but also to the spiritual civilization and moral development of the people. It may not be easy to see the moral level of a population in times of peace and plenty, but in the face of an emergency like a global epidemic, it is possible to see the state of a society’s spiritual civilization. In the face of an epidemic that has claimed millions of lives globally, with over one million in the United States alone, the ruling elite in the United States, the most developed country in the world, lied to its citizens, persuading them that the epidemic was over, while using insider information to make profits in the stock market. Eight states governed by Republican governors, including Florida, Arizona, Utah, and Texas, banned the mandatory wearing of face masks in schools. In a large department store in Flint, Michigan, a security guard was shot and killed, simply because he told a customer that her children needed to wear masks in the store. As the grandmother of six grandchildren, I am deeply concerned about the extreme individualism and the serious moral decline in American society.

In contrast, the Chinese people have demonstrated a high level of morality in the face of the epidemic. The CPC mobilized 4 million grassroots organizations⁴ – every residential community, the lowest level of society – to provide services to the people related to epidemic prevention and control. These included managing and organizing food supplies, arranging large-scale nucleic acid testing, isolating and escorting infected people to hospitals, and regular visits to the elderly. In return, the Chinese people showed mutual trust, strict discipline, selflessness, and small personal sacrifices to dynamically clear the epidemic nationwide and safeguard people’s lives and production. This is the result of the spiritual civilization inspired by and under the leadership and organizational capacity of the Communist Party of China.

Third, Chinese modernization is sustainable because it neither plunders other countries nor nature. In the past decade, an amazingly short period of time, China has led the world in reversing the inevitable historical consequences of industrialization. No other major country in human history has modernized to this level without invading and plundering other countries. It is unlikely that the countries of the global South will ever again follow such a path of modernization. With 4.2% of the world’s population, the United States accounts for 13% of the world’s carbon emissions and 13.7 tons of carbon dioxide emissions from fossil fuels per capita, three times the global average. Even though a significant portion of U.S. manufacturing has moved to China, its per capita carbon emissions are still 67% higher than China’s⁵. If developing countries were to use the United States as a benchmark for modernization, the planet’s natural environment would be quickly overwhelmed as the process has already begun. The Western modernization narrative concludes that many, if not all, countries of the global South will not be able to modernize.

General Secretary Xi Jinping already pointed out⁶ when he was the leader in Zhejiang Province back in 2005: “Green water and green mountains can bring golden mountains, but golden mountains cannot buy green water and green mountains. Green water and green mountains and golden mountains can produce contradictions, but also dialectical unity”. The concept of harmonious coexistence between man and nature is influenced by traditional Chinese culture, but more importantly, the CPC is determined to lead the Chinese people along the path of high-quality, sustainable development, maintaining the original intention of serving the people. Protecting and restoring the environment while developing the economy, and even setting the ambitious goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2060, requires a long-term strategic vision, strong governance execution, and a high level of science and technology. This is a world away from capitalist societies.

The Western media often smear the Belt and Road Initiative as a “debt trap” for the global South, but the reality in Africa exposes their lies. China owns only 13% of African countries’ debt⁷; the average interest rate of Africa’s debt to China is only 2.7%, while the average interest rate of Africa’s debt to Western private capital (35% of Africa’s total debt) is 5%⁸. China’s infrastructure investment in sub-Saharan Africa is more than twice that of Western countries combined; and China never imposes a political agenda on another country based on debt. The West lends the money they plundered from developing countries through institutions like the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank. It then holds them hostage to a series of liberalizing reforms that destroy the foundations of industrialization in those countries and their social services like health and education. They are the ones to blame for the constantly expanding debt trap of the global South.

In Argentina, the Shanghai Electric Power Construction Co., Ltd. built the largest installed capacity of photovoltaic power plant projects in South America, to meet the electricity needs of 120,000 households⁹, and drive the development of the surrounding areas’ roads, schools, hospitals, tourism, and other infrastructure construction. The U.S.’s highly publicized Power Africa Initiative added a total of 12.5 gigawatts of power generation capacity to Africa from 2013 to 2021¹⁰, while the Belt and Road Initiative added 36.6 gigawatts of power generation capacity to Africa over the same period¹¹. In Ethiopia, Kenya, Nigeria, Mali, and other African countries, China has launched a series of clean energy cooperation projects. China is expected to complete 49 power projects in sub-Saharan Africa by 2024, equivalent to 20 percent of the total installed capacity in the region over the same period, the vast majority of which are renewable energy projects¹². China is proving to the world, in practice, that the China model of modernization can lead to successful and peaceful new forms of solidarity and cooperation. It can provide developing countries with ideas and frameworks and inspire them to create their own new indigenous development models.

Anti-corruption: A courageous self-revolution

In the report of the 20th Congress, it stated that “self-revolution” was “the second answer in breaking free from the historical cycle of the rise and fall of governance”. This is an assertion full of historical weight. China has a history of 5,000 years and dozens of dynasties, at least 10 of which have ruled for more than 100 years. The Han, Tang, Song, and Ming dynasties were all full of vitality at the beginning of their establishment, but all of them lost that vitality at the end of their reigns, due to the corruption of the big landowning class. In 1945, Chairman Mao Zedong said in Yan’an: Only when the people rise up to supervise the government will the government dare not slack off – this is the “first answer” referred to in the report of the 20th National Congress¹³.

In 2016, at a conference celebrating the 95th anniversary of the founding of the CPC, General Secretary Xi Jinping asked the entire Party to take the political courage of self-revolution, focus on solving the outstanding problems of the Party itself, enhance the Party’s ability for self-purification, self-improvement, and self-renovation, and overcome the four dangers of mental slackness, incompetence, detachment from the masses, and corruption. In 2011, former General Secretary Hu Jintao put forward these four dangers. “Self-revolution” is a direct response to these four dangers, and a solution for the CPC to break out of the historical cycle of thousands of years of human history in which rulers have been unable to stop their own decay and deterioration and have finally lost their dominant position.

Since the 18th National Congress, the Communist Party of China has cracked down on corruption, with discipline inspection and supervision organs nationwide filing more than 4.6 million cases. These included 553 investigations of cadres managed by The Organization Department of the Central Committee of the CPC, who disciplined more than 25,000 cadres at the department and bureau levels, and more than 182,000 cadres at the county level. The people’s satisfaction with the “clean” government and other anti-corruption work has risen from 75 percent a decade ago to 97.4 percent¹⁴. In the latest amendment to the CPC’s Constitution, it is clearly stated that the Party’s self-reform is a journey to which there is no end¹⁵. All of this demonstrates how the CPC, which has been in power for 73 years, is removing the sloth and corruption from its ranks through active and persistent self-revolution and liberating the people from historical cycles of governance failure, as experienced by the various dynasties in China.

Ironically, the Western media have deliberately misinterpreted the CPC’s anti-corruption campaign, narrowly portraying it as an excuse for internal power struggles and the purging of dissidents. This is partly the result of the consistent Western propaganda war, and partly because Western societies, especially the United States, have completely legitimized and institutionalized corruption under the ruling elite. If the Western media were to report and interpret China’s anti-corruption campaign in depth, it would reflect the reality that corruption is deeply rooted in their own societies.

A fundamental problem facing any society is how to distribute the total surplus created collectively by that society. As the productive forces of society become more advanced, more surplus value is created. This surplus can be distributed either to the working classes that produced it or to the treasury of capital and the exploiting class, to the reproductive needs of society (such as health care, education, research, and other public goods) or to the military and war. In capitalist societies, the vast majority of surplus value is legally distributed to the bourgeoisie, leaving only a minimum amount of surplus value for social reproduction. Western ideologies cleverly divert attention away from the question of the legal right to exploit and distribute capital and focus on the narrower issue of corruption in its defined legal sense. They cleverly devise legal frameworks that allow a small elite to legitimately rotate between the state apparatus and business, allowing public officials to be captured by various private business interests while in office and to accept delayed bribes from private businesses after leaving public office.

At an airport in a less developed country, a border control agent might take a traveler’s passport and review it ominously, imploring the traveler to slip him a $10 bribe. This is irrefutable corruption. But isn’t it also corruption when a public official does not take a penny in bribes while in office, but then uses his or her insider knowledge of the political system and hidden network of contacts to influence policy making after leaving office, receiving a high salary of millions of dollars from the big corporations that benefit from it? This is a common career path for members of the U.S. Congress. Dozens of members of Congress, who were in office between 2017 and 2019, have become corporate lobbyists, consultants, or business representatives¹⁶. Isn’t it corrupt for a public official to use the power at his or her disposal to create policies that benefit a company and then be hired by that company at a high salary after leaving office? Carla Peterman, a former member of the California Public Utilities Commission, was hired as a highly paid vice president of Southern California Edison immediately after leaving public office in 2018, after spending six years as a government official overseeing the company .¹⁷

Former President Bill Clinton and his wife, former Secretary of State Hillary, earned more than $150 million from paid speeches between 2001 and 2016¹⁸. During Trump’s presidency, private prison contractors, microlenders, and other special interests held as many as 137 events at properties he owned, allowing the politician and businessman to profit to the tune of tens of millions of dollars¹⁹. During the epidemic, some 240 U.S. government officials held between $9 million and $28 million in stock in drug, manufacturing, and biotech companies that eventually won government procurement contracts related to the epidemic²⁰. Hundreds of U.S. military officers have booked high-paying positions in private security businesses in the UAE before they even retire, including former Defense Secretary and four-star general Jim Mattis²¹. All of these actions are not considered corrupt in the U.S. political ecosystem. The political elite simply removes the word “corruption” from the dictionary and claims that they are never corrupt.

In fact, these means of enrichment are only superficial manifestations of corruption in Western capitalist countries where corruption forms the root of their political systems. The political elites in power in the United States are all representatives of capitalist interests. Of the 14 U.S. presidents elected after World War II, only Harry S. Truman had a peak net worth of no more than $1 million²². Eleven senators, in 2011, had an average of $14 million in assets and 512 representatives had an average of $6.59 million²³, with the vast majority of lawmakers being representatives of the richest bourgeoisie. U.S. presidential elections require significant monetary investment, especially the most recent ones: in the 2016 election cycle, both parties invested more than $2 billion each; in 2020, the two parties combined to spend $14.4 billion on campaigns, with Democrats spending more than $8 billion²⁴. After being funded by interest groups to get elected, presidents then use their power to give back to the interest groups. For example, most Republican presidents received huge funding from energy companies; Reagan took office and lifted price controls on oil and gasoline, and Bush Jr. refused to implement the Kyoto Protocol. From the Democratic Party, Clinton, and Obama, after receiving funding from the information technology industry, actively promoted the Information Superhighway program and cyber security construction and assisted U.S. technology companies to expand their global monopoly, catapulting them into the richest companies in the world.

Under this political system of rotating interest groups, the wealth of the big bourgeoisie has skyrocketed while the working class has benefited very little from U.S. economic growth. Since 1980, the richest 10% of the U.S. population has accounted for more than half of all economic growth, while the working class with below median incomes has received only 10% of economic growth. In each of the three periods of economic growth over the past three decades, the top 10 percent of income earners have received about half of all income growth²⁵. Households with incomes below the median have seen almost no income growth over the two decades from 2000 to 2020²⁶. The money-driven political system guarantees that the rich can get richer ad infinitum, while working people do not benefit from economic growth and bear a heavy price in economic downturns. This is the worst kind of systemic and actual corruption demonstrated in Western capitalist countries. The West is incapable and unwilling to regulate the expansion of capital.

In contrast, the disorderly expansion of capital in China has been effectively curbed in the past few years, and financial capital was explicitly made to serve the real economy. When emerging Internet companies tried to bypass financial regulation and expand their leverage indefinitely, they were subject to severe controls. Meanwhile, the median income of rural residents nationwide increased 1.72 times in a decade, indicating that ordinary people shared the fruits of economic development. Of the 2,296 delegates to the 20^th National Congress, only 18 were private sector executives, and most of these executives are also from small and medium-sized enterprises²⁷. In a press conference at the congress, a leader of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection clearly pointed out that leading cadres should be prevented from becoming spokespeople and agents of interest groups and powerful groups²⁸. This sends a clear signal: China’s ruling party will not let money corrupt its original intention of serving the people; it will not allow China to, once again, go into the historical cycle of the rise and fall of governance.

Under China’s socialist system, public ownership is the mainstay of the economy, with multiple ownership economies developing together; distribution according to labor is the mainstay, with various forms of distribution co-existing. This means that the dominant portion of surplus created by society is regulated by the state on behalf of the population, and private enterprises are allowed to earn reasonable profits from the socialist (not capitalist) market. In the West, corruption, in the legal sense, is a secondary issue, as capital legally robs the vast majority of surplus value. Whereas the surplus created in socialist societies is not legally appropriated by a few as it is in the West, it must be carefully protected to serve the people. With the advancement of science and technology, the overall surplus of society grows enormously. This means that corruption cannot be eradicated once and for all, and the Party’s self-revolution will be a journey without end. The latest revision of the CPC’s constitution²⁹ enshrines that the people’s representatives do not dare to, cannot, and do not want to be corrupted. This is a difficult problem. The development of the experience, ideas, and principles of the CPC is a tremendous contribution to human understanding of how to transcend the barbarism of capitalism and establish a governance structure that is capable of self-correction over a long span of time.

The unipolar hegemon of the world today, the United States, is only 200 years old, a country that has not yet experienced the historical cycle of the rise and fall of governance. By way of contrast, the small Zhou Dynasty state of Lu, where Confucius, the founder of Confucianism, influenced Chinese culture for 2,000 years, was 800 years old³⁰. An emperor of China’s Tang Dynasty once said, “Learn from history to know the rise and fall” ³¹. Contemporary Chinese leaders not only adhere to communist ideology but are also influenced by China’s long history. For them, the successes and failures of political decisions are judged in the context of thousands of years of Chinese history. It is a pity and a peril for the world that the lack of knowledge of history often prevents Westerners from understanding the political views of Chinese leaders.

Security: For the future of the world

The focus of Western media and think tanks on the 20th Congress report seems to be on the key word “security”. Reuters notes that “security” is mentioned 89 times throughout the report. The Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS), a U.S. think tank, sees this as a way to “blame China’s woes on external efforts to contain and undermine it”³².

These analyses are blind to the most obvious fact: humanity is on the verge of a world war, even a nuclear one. It is the U.S.-led NATO that is leading the world into this dangerous situation. On October 20, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Zakharova said that NATO’s continued military support and weaponry to Ukraine is bringing NATO closer to the brink of direct military conflict with Russia³³. Just a few days ago, NATO began conducting nuclear deterrence exercises³⁴, and the U.S. military expects Russia’s annual nuclear exercises to take place in late October³⁵, meaning NATO and Russia will conduct their respective nuclear exercises simultaneously. From the promise before the collapse of the Soviet Union that NATO would not expand eastward, to the successive absorption of several former Soviet republics into NATO, to the 2018 constitutional amendment of Ukraine to make NATO and EU membership its primary national strategy, to the direct support of Ukraine with economic sanctions and military aid in the Russian-Ukrainian conflict, and to the current demonstration to Russia with nuclear deterrence exercises, the tension between Russia and Ukraine is entirely driven by NATO’s escalation.

At the same time, the U.S. military and diplomatic elite are lobbying Washington to further increase military spending in preparation for “defeating Russia and China in overlapping timeframes”³⁶. In the unipolar global hegemonic mindset, any independent power (especially a nuclear power) is a threat to the U.S. empire, and the only way to eliminate it is for China and Russia to submit to the U.S. system of global hegemony. This war thinking prompted President Biden to propose a record $800 billion military budget³⁷ and to stand by while House Speaker Pelosi visited Taiwan, China, to stir up Chinese national sentiment. China has shown a high degree of restraint in response.

The arrogant Western elites think that Taiwan is China’s weakness and that they can contain China by provoking Taiwan to become independent. They underestimate the importance that the Chinese people attach to history and national sentiment. As early as the 12th century A.D., the Song Dynasty government had established an administration in Taiwan³⁸. In 1945, China won the war against fascism, liberating Taiwan, which had been occupied for 50 years, from the Japanese invaders. Taiwan is an inseparable part of China, and the Taiwan issue is an internal matter of China. On this issue, three U.S. presidents, Nixon, Carter, and Reagan, have reached a consensus with China in the form of three joint communiqués between the two countries. From a national security perspective, it is unacceptable to China that missiles deployed in Taipei could attack Shanghai and Beijing in just 10-15 minutes if Taiwan were to become “independent” and under Western control.

After hundreds of years of a humiliating history of being invaded, divided, oppressed, and plundered by Western countries, the Chinese people have finally established a new socialist China under the leadership of the CPC and achieved unimaginable achievements in socialist construction since the British colonialists launched the Opium War. Taiwan is the last scar left by China’s century of humiliation, and the Chinese people have a great determination and fighting spirit to maintain the unity and territorial integrity of their motherland. Ignorance and disregard for China’s history and national sentiments can lead to serious strategic miscalculations by the West and even lead the world into the abyss of war.

The United States maintains 750 military bases in 80 countries and territories outside its territory, including about 400 large bases with more than 200 military personnel³⁹. U.S. military bases are located throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, and Latin America, and cost $55 billion to operate each year. Since 2001, overseas military bases have supported U.S. wars or military operations in at least 25 countries. In Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Syria, and Yemen, U.S. forces have killed millions of innocent civilians. The U.S. has also waged hybrid wars against Cuba, Venezuela, Iran, North Korea, Russia, China and other countries to create “controlled chaos” through propaganda, diplomacy, economic, financial, political, and cultural pressure, thereby interfering in the internal affairs of other countries, undermining the foundations of their independence and autonomy, and even overthrowing their legitimate regimes.⁴⁰ China’s emphasis on security is a necessary caution against the expanding U.S. hegemony and an important force in maintaining world peace.

General Secretary Xi Jinping pointed out in his report that China has always adhered to the foreign policy purpose of maintaining world peace and promoting common development, and is committed to promoting the building of a community of human destiny, providing new opportunities for the world with China’s new development, and promoting the building of an open world economy. As John Bellamy Foster, editor-in-chief of the Monthly Review, said⁴¹, “The causal agent in the two global existential crises now threatening the human species is capitalism and its irrational quest for exponentially increasing capital accumulation and imperial power in a limited global environment. The only possible response to this unlimited threat is a universal revolutionary movement rooted in both ecology and peace, turning away from the current systematic destruction of the earth and its inhabitants, and providing as its alternative a world of substantive equality and ecological sustainability, namely socialism.” The CPC emphasizes the topic of security, not for the sake of narrow national hegemony, but to advocate security for the survival and development of the world’s peoples, and for a better future for humanity yet to come.

A beacon of light at the beginning of a new era

As Marx and Engels said in the Communist Manifesto, “… oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes “. The world currently stands at the beginning of a potentially decades-long new era, in which we will witness the end of the U.S. global empire. The neoliberal system is crumbling under the weight of numerous internal contradictions, historical injustices, and economic unviability. Without a better alternative, the world will descend into even greater chaos.

Thus, the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of China is significant not only for China, but even more so for the world, especially for developing countries in the global South. The China model of modernization, the determination of the CPC for self-revolution, and China’s sense of responsibility for world peace, as summarized and envisioned by General Secretary Xi Jinping in his 20th Congress report, will light the way to a socialist future for the countries of the global South.

Endnotes

1. ↩ Nikkei Asia, Transcript: President Xi Jinping’s report to China’s 2022 party congress
2. ↩ Marx, Karl. Value, Price and Profit. Section VII: Labor Power. New York: International Co., Inc, 1969.
3. ↩ Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, When Will the Stars Shine Again in Burkina Faso?: The Forty-First Newsletter (2022)
4. ↩ The China Quarterly, Rebuilding Authority: The Party’s Relationship with Its Grassroots Organizations
5. ↩ World Population Review, Carbon Footprint by Country 2022
6. ↩ China Daily, Lucid waters and lush mountains are invaluable assets
7. ↩ South China Morning Post, China hits back at Africa debt-trap claims with loan write-off offer
8. ↩ Reuters, African states’ private debts three times that owed to China
9. ↩ Reuters, On South America’s largest solar farm, Chinese power radiates
10. ↩ USAID, Power Africa Annual Report 2021
11. ↩ Business & Human Rights Resource Centre, Chinese energy investment concentrates on hydropower in Africa and coal in Asia, research shows
12. ↩ Seetao, China-Africa clean energy cooperation is gaining momentum
13. ↩ The China Story, Dynastic cycle and shadows of the past over Xi’s China
14. ↩ Global Times, Anti-corruption, the vital starting point from where the world understands CPC: Global Times editorial
15. ↩ Xinhua News, (CPC Congress) Full text of resolution on Party Constitution amendment
16. ↩ Vox, Capitol Hill’s revolving door, in one chart
17. ↩ The Orange County Register, It’s time to stop the worsening revolving door in California
18. ↩ CNN, $153 million in Bill and Hillary Clinton speaking fees, documented
19. ↩ CREW, Special interest groups likely spent more than $13 million at Trump properties. They got what they paid for.
20. ↩ The Wall Street Journal, As Covid Hit, Washington Officials Traded Stocks With Exquisite Timing
21. ↩ The Washington Post, UAE Relied on Expertise of Retired U.S. Troops to Beef Up Its Military
22. ↩ USA Today, The net worth of every US president from George Washington to Donald Trump
23. ↩ Ballotpedia, Net worth of United States Senators and Representatives
24. ↩ Open Secrets, Most expensive ever: 2020 election cost $14.4 billion
25. ↩ Washington Center for Equitable Growth, New data reveal how U.S. economic growth is divided
26. ↩ Advisor Perspectives, Updated: U.S. Household Incomes – A 50+ Year Perspective
27. ↩ Financial Times, Corporate China shut out of Xi Jinping’s party congress
28. ↩ Business Standard, Chinese Prez Xi’s anti-corruption drive probed nearly 5 million officials
29. ↩ Xinhua News, Full text of resolution on Party Constitution amendment
30. ↩ China Knowledge, The Regional State of Lu
31. ↩ Chandler Institute of Governance, Tang Taizong: A Golden Age of Governance
32. ↩ CSIS, China’s 20th Party Congress Report: Doubling Down in the Face of External Threats
33. ↩ Anadolu Agency, EU military assistance to Ukraine makes it party to conflict: Russia
34. ↩ NATO, NATO’s annual nuclear exercise gets underway
35. ↩ Time, U.S. Eyes Planned Russian Nuclear Exercises Amid NATO War Games
36. ↩ Foreign Policy, Washington Must Prepare for War With Both Russia and China
37. ↩ Reuters, U.S. House passes bill boosting Biden’s record defense budget
38. ↩ Taiwan Affairs Office of the State Council PRC, Basic facts about Taiwan
39. ↩ Quincy Institute, Drawdown: Improving U.S. and Global Security Through Military Base Closures Abroad
40. ↩ Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research, Twilight: The Erosion of US Control and the Multipolar Future
41. ↩ Monthly Review, “Notes on Exterminism” for the Twenty-First-Century Ecology and Peace Movements