Geography Archives: China

Just three years ago, Americans had a neutral view of China (and nine years ago it was strongly favorable). Today, the same polls show that 66 percent of Americans dislike the country.

The absence of a strong world peace movement with the capacity to prevent this buildup by the United States is of considerable concern for the planet. The need for such a movement could not be greater.

The Russian-Chinese entente emerged as one of the most significant templates of international politics in the recent period since the hugely consequential developments in Ukraine in 2014 that led to western sanctions against Moscow, which in turn galvanised the latter’s ‘pivot to Asia’. 

The Communists were determined to eradicate disease. In the 1930s, Mao joined the Chinese Communist Party’s Public Health Commission; in 1934, when he was in the Jiangxi Soviet, Mao placed public health at the top of the list for party work.

The Trump Administration has spread the conspiracy theory that the new coronavirus came out of the Wuhan Institute of Virology. This accusation, which seeks to transfer responsibility for the pandemic to the Asian giant, has been rejected by the Chinese authorities for being without foundation.

Rather than respond by focusing blame for the crisis squarely where it belongs—on Trump’s incompetent, reckless and self-centered management—and working to beat back the dangerously rising anti-Asian sentiment in this country, Biden and some of his supporting super PACs are choosing to adopt rather than challenge the anti-China premise of the attacks.

Vijay Prashad talks about China’s response to the COVID-19 crisis, especially in the light of the accusations that are being leveled against the country

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.”

In December 2019, several people began to develop infections in Wuhan (People’s Republic of China); early signs indicated that the virus had emerged out of the Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, but there is no certainty about that verdict.

On Wednesday, 15 January, China and the United States agreed to suspend their full-scale trade war. From February 2018, the United States placed tariffs on Chinese goods that entered the US market, and then China retaliated. This tit-for-tat game continued for almost two years, causing massive disruption in the global value chain.

Why is war, or the threat of it, a permanent feature of our society? The most common answers point to contingencies–the psychology of particular world leaders, for example, or the specific gains to a company to be made from a conflict. Alternatively, they rely on universal claims that religion causes eternal strife or that conflict is part of our human nature.