Geography Archives: Asia

A great hazard looms. Under duress and as chaos mounts, capital may find it useful to revert to the extremist, even brutal, measures figuring in its past.

THE current pandemic has brought to the fore, and with exceptional clarity, the fundamental contradiction underlying contemporary globalisation, namely, the contradiction between the interests of finance and those of the people. Indeed this contradiction, which characterizes the era of globalisation as a whole, has now come to a head.

This overlooked region of India is a beacon to the world for taking on the coronavirus, with the leftist government setting the bar for testing, tracing and treatment standards.

Cuba’s preparation for COVID-19 began on January 1, 1959. On that day, it laid the foundations for what would become the discovery of novel drugs, bringing patients to the island, and sending medical aid abroad. Coping with HIV/AIDS, dengue fever and Ebola helped Cuba develop the ability to cope with pandemics, both internally and abroad.

With the U.S. failing and China taking a leadership role in the international response to this crisis, could the COVID-19 crisis mark a turning point in the transition to a multipolar world in which China will be just as important as a world leader as the United States?

In the early weeks when the virus emerged in Wuhan, the Chinese government neither suppressed evidence nor did their warning systems fail.

Why did apparently stigmatizing names like Chinese virus or Wuhan virus keep making headlines? How have the Western media shaped the narrative of China’s response to the novel coronavirus? As the virus continues to wreck havoc, China Daily investigates how the Western version of propaganda plays out in the global battle against coronavirus.

China sends medical equipment abroad, Cuba sends doctors and cutting-edge drugs, but the U.S. fails to provide its people, doctors and nurses with basic tools and protection.

‘I believe that they have done no wrong because there is widespread hunger [amidst the lockdown] and people are helpless.’

Violent attacks against Asians in the United States has spiked as a consequence of the stigma driven by the Trump administration.

The bankruptcy of neoliberalism has been highlighted by the vastly different responses of the world’s two most powerful countries to the coronavirus pandemic.

In a show of solidarity, some of India’s opposition leaders have declared the much-delayed relief package (titled Pradhan Mantri Garib Kalyan Yojana) announced by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on March 26 to mitigate the effects of the Coronavirus pandemic on the poor as a welcome “first step”.

In a pandemic, a rational person would much rather live in a society governed by the norms of socialism than of capitalism, a society where people rally together to overcome a virus; than to live in a society where fear pervades and where stigmatization becomes the antidote to collective action.

How long the COVID-19 crisis will last, and what its immediate economic costs will be, is anyone’s guess. But even if the pandemic’s economic impact is contained, it may have already set the stage for a debt meltdown long in the making, starting in many of the Asian emerging and developing economies on the front lines of the outbreak.

Raza Naeem sat down with one of the most influential leftists of our world today to discuss politics, history and his new book

Raza Naeem sat down with one of the most influential leftists of our world today to discuss politics, history and his 2017 book

The pandemic has effectively provided a laboratory-like demonstration that people do better when states can plan ahead, apply national resources unequivocally to the public good, put science in the service of the people, and practice international solidarity. These are characteristics of socialist societies.

Red Lines host Anya Parampil provides a global Coronavirus update, explaining how China suppressed the pandemic with a determined and centralized strategy that was heavily criticized in the West.

The money trail of U.S. Sanctions leads to the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, which—behind the shadow of secrecy laws that effectively prohibit any form of public accountability—facilitates the theft of public wealth from targeted countries on a scale only previously accomplished through military invasion and occupation.

In a repeat of the gutter journalism used to justify the 2003 Iraq War, the New York Times has had to “yellow-cake” up a foul brew of innuendo, half-truths, misrepresentations, outright lies—spiked fiercely with stereotypes, racial hatred, and red-baiting—to makes its case for a China “cover-up.”