March Newsletter
Happy year of the Ox! The first hundred days of the Biden regime have brought a fresh wave of imperialist aggression abroad under the guise of domestic “recovery.” The war on China amps up, bolstered by the passage of the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). This year’s NDAA includes $2.2 billion allocated to the newly christened Pacific Deterrence Initiative (PDI), an anti-China corollary to the European Deterrence Initiative, under which NATO has amassed massive military buildups around Russia’s European borders. The PDI marks the emergence of China as the new “number one” priority of the Pentagon, and will significantly expand the U.S. military’s Indo-Pacific Command (INDOPACOM). Among the measures covered by this year’s PDI budget are long-range ballistic missile systems, space-based radar sensor systems, targeting networks, and strengthened infrastructural build-ups in non-incorporated territorial holdings in the Pacific as well as joint military exercises with Japanese, ROK, Taiwanese, and Singaporean forces.
Additionally, INDOPACOM has submitted a fiscal plan for the next six years, totaling $27 billion of spending to build a network of long-range missiles across the U.S.’s archipelagic empire of bases in Asia and the Pacific. INDOPACOM’s proposed plan would entrench military fortifications encompassing the areas from Okinawa to Taiwan, to Philippines, and Japan to Guam, Hawai‘i and Indonesia. These client states and neocolonial territories make up the three “island chains” of China’s encirclement, which U.S. strategists have long argued are the lynchpin to U.S. military supremacy over the Pacific, giving the U.S. the ability to choke off Chinese commercial and naval sea routes through the South China Sea, through which some 65% of China’s maritime trade passes.
Missed our infographic on the Pacific Deterrence Initiative and the expansion of the U.S. empire of bases to encircle China? Follow us and share the post on Instagram!
As Bruce Cumings once observed, “The post-war U.S. empire has not rested upon territorial exclusivity like the old European colonies. It has been an ‘open door’ empire, policed by a far-flung naval and military basing system and penetration of allied defense organizations.” This “open door empire,” also known as the “empire of bases,” continues to grow under Biden’s watch, heralding a continuation of U.S. Cold War empire-building strategies that seek to absorb not only Asia, but all of the Pacific into what Walden Bello described as an “American Lake.”
Aside from the PDI, the 2021 National Defense Authorization Act is filled with mention of the “China threat.” As we wrote back in July when the NDAA came under congressional review, China has become the bogeyman du jour to justify record military spending. When pressed to justify the bloated $740 billion bill, Senator Mitt Romney invoked a grim picture of a future world under Chinese domination:
“They intend to put us way in the headlights. Can you imagine the consequences, when a nation that does not believe in human rights, with only one party...when they have the overwhelming military force in the world. That’s where we’re headed.”
Preparations for war continue on multiple fronts: not merely military, but financial, diplomatic, and informational. It’s now clear that the U.S. openly anticipates confrontation with China in the decade to come. Mere misinformation campaigns to cultivate citizens’ consent for war are no longer enough; the 2021 NDAA makes clear that existing informational warfare will be accompanied by rapid militarization, every step of the way. In the face of these exponentially multiplying technologies of U.S. imperial war, what is the responsibility of those who live in the West?
Roundup of our latest:
KJ Noh traces the genealogy of U.S. geopolitical strategy in Asia and the Pacific, giving us an inside view of both the realpolitik of U.S. imperial expansion and the architects behind it. Concluding with an analysis of 21st century U.S. total informational warfare, Noh argues that the path to a kinetic war against China has been decades in the making. Once triggered, it could rapidly turn nuclear.
Our work is cut out for us: “In war, the first casualty is truth.” Our task is to prevent the first casualty, challenge the lies; the second, to organize and work for peace.
As we approach elections, the possibility of an October surprise increases. Remember:
Information war precedes, justifies, and enables kinetic war, therefore you must think critically and defensively; do not take anything attacking China at face value.
Evaluate everything for a) source b) logic, sense, rationality c) bracket & evaluate emotional triggers or trigger words d) look at counter-evidence/arguments
Make your own judgments, draw your own conclusions: seek truth from facts
—KJ Noh, “What Is to be Done?”
Within China, the socialist project continues the careful disciplining of private capital. Qiao’s translation of Li Xuran’s piece analyzes the freezing of Ant Group’s monster IPO within the context of China’s socialist market economy, in which traditional banking and financial services operate under state control for the public interest.
Recent discourse within the U.S. and Singaporean liberal-left has championed “Chinese privilege” as an analytic of power within Singapore and Asia at large. Qiao explores the dangerous ahistoricity of “Chinese privilege,” uncovering the intimate relation between British colonialism, U.S. imperialism, and the construction of race in Southeast Asia.
Yu Kuang unpacks the tragic February 2021 Texas snowstorm through a socialist lens. Far from a “natural” disaster or an exceptional state failure, Yu reads the tragedy as the logical outcome of a superstitious U.S. devotion to small government, “state’s rights,” and the abdication of political responsibility under a diffused federalist system. As a representative crisis of neoliberal capitalism, Yu frames the Texas disaster as a cautionary tale for those ideologues in China who have embraced a Western doctrine of privatization.
In Other News—Excerpts from Dongsheng Collective
US study of over 1,000 Chinese loans refutes allegations of "debt-trap diplomacy" and seizure of African assets for unpaid loans
Between 2000-19, China cancelled US $3.4 billion in debt and restructured/refinanced 26 loans; holding 20% of Africa's debt, China's bilateral negotiations offer tailor-made solutions, with 20 countries receiving debt relief in 2020
South China Morning Post, 21.02.2021
China Africa Research Initiative, 06.2020
To end extreme poverty, China spent US $247.5 billion and mobilized 10 million people since 2012
Three million CPC members were sent to the countryside – 1,800 of whom died – to lift 98.99 million people from absolute poverty; since 1980, China has accounted for 70% of global poverty reduction
South China Morning Post, 25.02.2021
Read the report "Chinese Poverty Alleviation Studies: A Political Economy Perspective"
China honors 1,981 role models in anti-poverty fight, including 97-year-old Xia Sen CPC member since 1938
After joining the Party at the revolutionary base of Yan'an at age 15, former Chinese Academy of Social Sciences researcher contributed to education for the poor – donating US $310,200 to schools and helping 182 students access university
Despite political pressure and state subsidies, Japanese multinationals refuse to decouple from China and continue to bet on Chinese market
Only 7.2% of Japanese companies consider leaving China (9.2% in 2019), where unrivaled combination of market size, skilled labor and sophisticated supply chain attract global leaders such as Panasonic (home appliances), Murata (electronic capacitors) and Nidec (electronic motors)
China boosts biodegradable plastics industry, with one company set to nearly triple global output of plant-based polylactic acid (PLA)
Spurred by China's plastic waste ban and state subsidies, BBCA Group will expand its PLA production by 2023 (50,000–700,000 tons/year); major PBAT and PBS bioplastics producers will increase output by 4.8 times (+1.24 million tons/year)
China surpasses US as India’s top trading partner in 2020 (US $77.7 billion total), despite political and military conflicts
India imported US $58.7 billion – led by heavy machinery, nuclear reactors, telecom equipment and appliances – and increased exports (+11%, US $19 billion), especially in iron/steel (+319%, US $2.4 billion) and ores/slag/ash (+62%, US $3.5 billion)
China plans to end Inner Mongolia's bitcoin "mining", a highly energy-intensive computing process, towards 2060 carbon-neutrality target
Cryptocurrency transactions require verification, or "mining" — US accounts for 7.2% globally and China 65%, including Inner Mongolia 8% —the Autonomous Region consumes the most energy in the country due to cheaper costs
South China Morning Post, 01.03.2021
What We’re Watching/Reading/Listening—cultural excerpts keeping us sane
Articles
Wang Zichen (Pekingnology)’s translations of the 14th Five Year Plan (FYP).
Samir Amin on Chinese socialism and the nature of Chinese political economic development since the Taiping Rebellion.
The latest issue of Monthly Review, in particular “Notes from the Editor” and Zhun Xu’s beautiful essay, “The Ideology of Late Imperialism: The Return of the Geopolitics of the Second Internationale.”
Film
Hi, Mom (2021). We haven’t seen this one yet but it’s on our lists, not least for being one of the highest grossing films in China this year. Let us know if you get your hands on a screener copy!
Finding Yingying (2020). A documentary about the 2017 murder of Yingying Zhang, a Chinese visiting scholar at the University of Illinois Urbana Champaign. This film broke our hearts in more ways than one: holding the unspeakable brutality that beset Yingying, we were reminded that ongoing U.S. imperial warfare in Asia contextualizes the racial-sexual violence Asian/American women continue to face today. Available through select theaters in the U.S.
Podcast
The Anti-Empire Podcast, hosted by Justin Podur. We’ve learned so much from Podur’s amazing podcast, and his newest episode ft. Carl Zha is an invaluable resource in the ongoing analyses of Western misinformation around Xinjiang. For our history-inclined readers, we recommend The Anti-Empire Podcast’s Civilizations Series, which has provided us great insight into the Opium Wars and the Taiping Rebellion.
Event
“Demystifying the China Syndrome: Challenging the Dominant Narratives,” sponsored by the PSC-International Committee on March 19th, 8PM. Register here!
Event description: The Chinese, Chinese-American, and Asian-American students and workers of our community face more threats and hostility, and the pandemic has only made the situation worse. The US has a long history of anti-Asian and particularly anti-Chinese racism. Politicians and the media reproduce discourses that demonize and dehumanize Chinese people. The increasingly belligerent China-bashing is called by some as “the China Syndrome”. Join us for this discussion on its origins, current manifestations and reflections on what can be done to oppose new techniques of ‘hybrid war’ that threaten the populations of both countries. We need money for education, not for war. Featuring speakers Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz, Yan Hairong, and Carl Zha.