Geography Archives: China

There is a lot of concern over the possibility of a trade war between China and the US. In early April President Trump announced that his administration was considering levying $100 billion of additional tariffs on Chinese exports, after the Chinese government responded to a previously proposed U.S. tariff hike on Chinese goods of $50 billion by announcing its own equivalent tariff hikes on U.S. exports. And the Chinese government has made clear it will again respond in kind if these new tariffs are actually imposed.

That China and the U.S. are moving in opposite directions is not a new trend, but it has been brought into sharper focus in the Trump era. Growing anxious about its diminishing international authority, the U.S. demonstrates increasing hostility towards China.

Imagine a newly elected president of the United States calling in his inaugural speech for an “ecological civilization” that ensures “harmony between human and nature.” Now imagine he goes on to declare that “we, as human beings, must respect nature, follow its ways, and protect it” and that his administration will “encourage simple, moderate, green, and low-carbon ways of life, and oppose extravagance and excessive consumption.”

“The economic base built in Mao’s era laid the foundation for a sovereign capitalist development.”

Ever since Larry Summers and Alan Heston produced what become known as the “Penn World Tables” comparing prices and thereby the purchasing power of currencies across countries, the urge to use some deflator of market exchange rates to compare incomes across countries has been strong.

For those of us dedicated to revolutionary politics, taking control of this history is a crucial step towards building of international solidarity in the fightback against capitalist globalization and emergent neofascism, which is rearing its ugly head across the globe.

“The simple facts of Mao’s career seem incredible.… Indeed Mao’s achievement is almost beyond our comprehension.” – John King Fairbank, The United States and China.

The hegemony of international finance capital, which led to economies “opening” themselves up to the vortex of global financial flows, demolished both Nehruvian dirigisme and East Asian neo-mercantilism. And the same hegemony has now brought the world capitalist economy to a crisis from which it is in no position to recover.

No one likes to think about how extreme weather events could devastate food production which could cause global panic and disaster. However, scientists, led by Chris Kent, of the Met Office, focused their initial efforts on how extreme weather would affect maize, one of the world’s most widely grown crops. Along with maize other staple crops could be affected including those of rice, wheat and soya beans.

China’s leadership has called in recent years for the creation of a new “ecological civilization.”  Some have viewed this as a departure from Marxism and a concession to Western-style “ecological modernization.”  However, embedded in classical Marxism, as represented by the work of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, was a powerful ecological critique.  Marx explicitly defined […]

  During Barack Obama’s visit to Australia in November 2011, the US and Australian governments announced the establishment of a permanent Marine presence in Darwin, located on South East Asia’s doorstep.  By 2014, some 2, 500 Marines plus associated hardware such as military aircraft, tanks, artillery, and amphibious assault vehicles will be based near the […]

On October 10, the Chinese government announced that it will increase its stakes in the four largest commercial banks, which are already largely public-owned.  The move is designed to “support the healthy operations and development of key state-owned financial institutions and stabilise the share prices of state-owned commercial banks”. But why was this move considered […]

The Financial Times reports that Iran and China are “in talks about using a barter system to exchange Iranian oil for Chinese goods and services, as U.S. financial sanctions have blocked China from paying at least $20 billion for oil imports.”  According to the story, Tehran and Beijing are now discussing how to “offset” the […]

Thirty years ago, a highly successful vilification campaign was launched against Mao Zedong, saying that a massive famine in which 27 to 30 million people died in China took place during the Great Leap period, 1958 to 1961, which marked the formation of the people’s communes under his leadership.  The main basis of this assertion […]

  Moscow against UN Security Council Taking Up Syria — Source MOSCOW, May 11 (Interfax) — Moscow is against the Syria issue being put before the UN Security Council, a Russian Foreign Ministry source said on Wednesday. “Syria mustn’t be discussed in the Security Council, that is obvious,” the source told Interfax. China Calls on […]

Various observers have noted this week that China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016.  This comes from the International Monetary Fund’s (IMF’s) latest projections, which were made in its semi-annual April World Economic Outlook database.  Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first […]

I was reading abundant materials and books to make good my promise of continuing writing on the Reflection of April 14 about the Battle of Girón when I had a look at the recent news that came yesterday, which were also as abundant as they are everyday. You could pile up mountains of news on […]

  The dark cloud hanging over the future of nuclear power because of the unfolding crisis in Japan may have a silver lining in China by increasing attention to reactor safety. Within days of the earthquake that crippled the nuclear plants in Japan, the Chinese government abruptly suspended approvals for new plant construction, suspended work […]

  China’s Foreign Ministry on Sunday expressed regret over the multinational military strike against Libya, saying that it did not agree with resorting to force in international relations. “China has noticed the latest development in Libya and regrets the military strike against Libya,” Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu said. China, as it always, does not […]

  Bahrain’s Progressive Democratic Forum issues the following statement as the Bahrain’s rulers deploy riot police and mercenaries to attack peaceful protesters camped in Pearl Square. Dear comrades, Security forces raided at dawn today on Pearl Square, which was the centre of protests in the Bahraini capital Manama, and used all means of force, including […]