Tag Archives: China

China’s Marxist “Profound Revolution” Is Here, And Nobody In The West Is Ready, by Michael Every

Posted on September 5, 2021 | 1 comment

It’s important not to forget that Chinese communists are communists, especially if you’re putting money into Chinese investments. From Michael Every at Rabobank via zerohedge.com:

Pro-Fund or Profound Revolution?

Summary

  • Developments in China continue to confound market optimists, with new talk of a “profound revolution” towards a new target of “Common Prosperity”
  • Rather than simply react to these events, we analyze the history of Marxist-Leninist-Maoist Thought to try to put current moves under Xi Jinping Thought in a larger context
  • This also provides a framework of a hypothetical Marxist policy path forwards
  • We briefly discuss the meaning of Common Prosperity over time, and how it is a bellwether
  • We conclude with likely market reactions to an economy not saying “because markets”

“Profound Revolution”?

Political developments in China have been front page news in the financial press over the past few months. Beijing’s crackdown on Ant Financial, largely dismissed by Wall Street, then spread to Didi and on to the broader sectors these championed, fin- and transport-tech; then it grew to encompass swathes of the economy, from tech to health to education to property to private equity to gaming.

In terms of tech, there are now sharp limits on IPOs in the US (mirrored from the US side) and new algo/pricing and data regulations that require Beijing to hold on to it; the private tuition field was made non-profit; there has been a sharp reduction in credit to property developers along with the official message that “houses are for living in, not speculation”, and rental increase caps of 5% annually; under-18s have been limited to just 3 hours of computer gaming a week, in allotted slots; and private equity has been cut off from residential investment.

Beijing has also called for curbs on “excessive” income, and for the wealthy and profitable firms “to give back more to society.” (Tencent already pledged $15bn.) This is also matched by: a social campaign against excessive business drinking, “unpatriotic” karaoke songs, and celebrity culture; ‘Xi Jinping Thought’ made obligatory at all schools and universities; and, as Bloomberg puts it, controls on social media financial commentary – “China to Cleanse Online Content that ‘Bad Mouths’ its Economy”.

This has all taken place under the slogan of “Common Prosperity”. (And for those who need the market-facing implications of this first, please see What is to be done?)

Going further, commentary reposted by Chinese state media on 30 August stressed these changes are a “profound revolution” sweeping the country, warning anyone who resisted would face punishment. It added: “This is a return from the capital group to the masses of the people, and this is a transformation from capital-centred to people-centred,” marking a return to the original intention of the Communist Party, and “Therefore, this is a political change, and the people are becoming the main body of this change again, and all those who block this people-centred change will be discarded.”

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The U.S. Has A Plan For What’s Next in Afghanistan – It Does Not Include Peace, by Moon of Alabama

Posted on September 2, 2021 | 1 comment

The US government will do its best to sustain chaos and violence in Afghanistan. From Moon of Alabama at moonofalabama.org:

Secretary Antony Blinken @SecBlinken – 1:34 UTC · Aug 31, 2021I want to drive home today that America’s work in Afghanistan continues. We have a plan for what’s next, and we’re putting it into action.

The codename for the plan which Secretary Blinken is putting into action has not been officially released. It will likely be called “Eternal Revenge” or something similar.

The U.S. is not a good loser. Nor are President Biden and Blinken. They will take revenge for the public outcry their chaotic evacuation of troops and civilians from Afghanistan has caused. The Taliban will be blamed for it even as they, following U.S. requests, had escorted groups of U.S. citizens to the gates of Kabul’s airport.

One can anticipate what their plan entails by looking at the process that led to yesterdays UN Security Council resolution about Afghanistan. The full resolution has not been published yet but the UN reporting on it gives the gist:

Security Council urges Taliban to provide safe passage out of Afghanistan

Thirteen of the 15 ambassadors voted in favour of the resolution, which further demands that Afghanistan not be used as a shelter for terrorism.Permanent members China and Russia abstained.

As the resolution only ‘urges’ it is obviously minimal and not binding. It is not what the U.S. had set out to achieve. It wanted a much stronger one with possible penalties (see ‘holding … accountable’ below) should the Taliban not follow it.

Prior to the UNSC meeting France and Great Britain had proposed to create a ‘safe zone’ in Kabul. That request has been silently dropped – likely over Chinese and Russian concerns about Afghanistan’s sovereignty.

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Here Come the Terrorists. Again, by Philip Giraldi

Posted on August 27, 2021 | Leave a comment

The military-industrial-intelligence complex is in search of new enemies. From Philip Giraldi at strategic-culture.org:

President Joe Biden is being praised in some circles because he finally ended the war in Afghanistan that in all likelihood should never have begun. President George W. Bush initiated the conflict on a series of lies about 9/11 and the Taliban role in that attack and what followed. After bringing about regime change, he decided to remake the country into a western style democracy. President Barack Obama subsequently allowed a “surge” which actually increased the militarization of the conflict and made things worse. The joint effort produced no free elections but delivered instead tens of thousands of deaths and a huge hole in the US Treasury. Bush and Obama were followed by President Donald Trump who actually promised to end the war but lacked the conviction and political support to do so, handing the problem over to Biden, who has bungled the end game but finally done the right thing by ending the fiasco. Biden also has been right to accede to a withdrawal of the last US combat troops from Iraq by year’s end, a move that will considerably ease tension with the Baghdad government, which has been calling for such a move since last January.

But America’s war on those parts of the world that resist following its self-defined leadership is not about to go away. An interesting recent article in the foreign policy establishment The Hill written by a former senior CIA operations and staff officer Douglas London sees an Orwellian unending war against major adversaries Russia and China. Derived from his own experience, he concludes that sustained and enhanced clandestine actions should now replace conventional military forces confrontation, which has been somewhat outdated as an option due to the development of relatively cheap missile technologies that have undermined classic conventional weapons. Some of the clandestine activity he appears to recommend would undoubtedly fall under cover of classic espionage “plausible denial,” i.e. that the White House could disavow any knowledge of what had occurred, but sabotage and cyber-attacks, particularly if implemented aggressively, would quickly be recognized for what they are and would invite commensurate or even disproportionate retaliation. This would amount to an all-out semi-covert war against powerful adversaries which could easily escalate into a shooting war.

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How Russia-China Are Stage-Managing the Taliban, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on August 19, 2021 | Leave a comment

It looks like the Taliban leadership is going to do its best to fit Afghanistan into the Russia-China axis. From Pepe Escobar at unz.com:

The Taliban delegation with Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi in Tianjin on July 28th

The first Taliban press conference after this weekend’s Saigon moment geopolitical earthquake, conducted by spokesman Zabihullah Mujahid, was in itself a game-changer.

The contrast could not be starker with those rambling pressers at the Taliban embassy in Islamabad after 9/11 and before the start of the American bombing – proving this is an entirely new political animal.

Yet some things never change. English translations remain atrocious.

Here is a good summary of the key Taliban statements, and here (in Russian) is a very detailed roundup.

These are the key takeaways.

  • No problem for women to get education all the way to college, and to continue to work. They just need to wear the hijab (like in Qatar or Iran). No need to wear a burqa. The Taliban insist, “all women’s rights will be guaranteed within the limits of Islamic law.”
  • The Islamic Emirate “does not threaten anyone” and will not treat anyone as enemies. Crucially, revenge – an essential plank of the Pashtunwali code – will be abandoned, and that’s unprecedented. There will be a general amnesty – including people who worked for the former NATO-aligned system. Translators, for instance, won’t be harassed, and don’t need to leave the country.
  • Security of foreign embassies and international organizations “is a priority.” Taliban special security forces will protect both those leaving Afghanistan and those who remain.
  • A strong inclusive Islamic government will be formed. “Inclusive” is code for the participation of women and Shi’ites.
  • Foreign media will continue to work undisturbed. The Taliban government will allow public criticism and debate. But “freedom of speech in Afghanistan must be in line with Islamic values.”
  • The Islamic Emirate of Taliban wants recognition from the “international community” – code for NATO. The overwhelming majority of Eurasia and the Global South will recognize it anyway. It’s essential to note, for example, the closer integration of the expanding SCO – Iran is about to become a full member, Afghanistan is an observer – with ASEAN: the absolute majority of Asia will not shun the Taliban.

For the record, they also stated that the Taliban took all of Afghanistan in only 11 days: that’s pretty accurate. They stressed “very good relations with Pakistan, Russia and China.” Yet the Taliban don’t have formal allies and are not part of any military-political bloc. They definitely “won’t allow Afghanistan to become a safe haven for international terrorists”. That’s code for ISIS/Daesh.

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If You Live In Taiwan, It’s Time To Worry, by Stephen Bryen

Posted on August 18, 2021 | Leave a comment

There have got to be a lot of countries worried right now about what a US defense commitment is worth, but Taiwan is probably the most worried. From Stephen Bryen at The Epoch Times via zerohedge.com:

Taiwan needs to worry about American reliability. Unlike Afghanistan, where the United States had committed its forces for two decades, Taiwan has no U.S. forces and no assurance that the United States will come to their defense if attacked by China.

The United States has a bad habit of walking out on its allies and friends. The list is long. It includes Vietnam and Cambodia, Iraq and Afghanistan, and Iran. In all of those cases, one way or another, the United States, for its own reasons, took a hike.

Obama pulled U.S. troops from Iraq, opening the door to Iran. While the United States has a few thousand soldiers still in Iraq in training and advisory capacities, they’re under siege and it’s unlikely the United States will protect them.

In fact, President Joe Biden has said the United States will end combat missions in Iraq by the end of 2021. Unless U.S. troops are pulled out in the middle of the night, as they were in Afghanistan, they’ll quite possibly have to shoot themselves out while exiting.

Carter let Iran collapse into chaos and refused to support the Shah. Prior to that time, the United States had massively supplied Iran with weapons and military advisors. But when the Shah asked for help, he got none. The collapse of the Shah’s regime, without U.S. backing, was a foregone conclusion.

Nixon let Vietnam and Cambodia go down the drain, trying to cover their tracks with the so-called Paris Peace Accords that required U.S. troops’ withdrawal from Vietnam, a key demand of North Vietnam. South Vietnam hung on for a while, but without U.S. airpower and support, they couldn’t win against a North Vietnamese army supported by Russia and China.

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‘Splitting’ Russia and China Is Harder Than It Looks, by Daniel Larison

Posted on August 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Beware geo-strategic geniuses and their brilliant plans. The world is not a neat chess board, it’s a lot of messy people and their rulers trying to ride a tiger. From Daniel Larison at daniellarison.substack.com:

Kupchan is offering precisely nothing tangible that the Russian leadership would find appealing.

Charles Kupchan claims to have found the “right way” to split Russia from China:

If Russia is to be drawn westward, it will result not from Washington’s overtures or altruism but from the Kremlin’s cold reassessment of how best to pursue its long-term self-interest. An offer from Washington to reduce tensions with the West will not succeed on its own; after all, Putin relies on such tensions to legitimate his iron political grip. Instead, the challenge facing Washington is to change the Kremlin’s broader strategic calculus by demonstrating that more cooperation with the West can help Russia redress the mounting vulnerabilities arising from its close partnership with China.

Kupchan has to say that an offer to reduce tensions won’t succeed because he isn’t really making that offer anyway. The gestures that he says the U.S. should make are largely rhetorical. He suggests abandoning the “democracy vs. autocracy” framing of Biden administration policy statements. That’s all very well and I agree with it, but Russia isn’t being offered anything real that would convince them that hedging and cooperating with the U.S. and its European allies are worth doing. Assuming that it is still possible to “split” Russia from China, it isn’t going to happen unless the U.S. and its allies can make Russia a sufficiently tempting offer. But Kupchan is offering precisely nothing tangible that the Russian leadership would find appealing.

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China Won’t Be Taking Over the World, by Joseph Solis-Mullen

Posted on August 12, 2021 | 2 comments

The Chinese are smart people, no doubt, but rule by statist bureaucracy carries the seeds of its own destruction, no matter how smart the people are who are running it. This article is a welcome counterweight to the many alternative media articles that have recently hailed China as the dominant power for the next few centuries. From Joseph Solis-Mullen at mises.org:

While the US has its problems, future global Chinese supremacy won’t be one. Far from being in a position of overwhelming strength, China and its Communist leadership face imminent multifront domestic crises that will threaten the existence not only of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) but the existence of the Chinese state as a unified whole. Further, there are several insurmountable obstacles to it seriously disturbing core US interests or expanding its influence much beyond its own coasts before this happens.

First, China’s geography is terrible if projecting power is a state aim. Endless flatlands running into Mongolia and Siberia to the north, deserts and mountains to the west, more mountains and dense jungle to the south, while its eastern coast is ringed by states terrified of an expansionist China. Korea, Japan, and the Philippines, along with other affected regional actors such as Vietnam, Indonesia, and India will work hard to keep China boxed in. One of the most trade-dependent countries of the existing order, China faces hazardous supply chain access in the event of any conflict in the South or East China Seas.

China’s internal geography breeds its own problems. For one thing, it is seriously strapped for foodstuffs. A shocking statistic: on a per capita basis it has less arable agricultural land than Saudi Arabia. What farmland China does have requires enormous amounts of petrochemical fertilizers and laborers to keep even moderately productive. Further, lacking interconnected east-west-flowing waterways, moving mass amounts of produce around internally is expensive and inefficient over the vast distances that locally produced foodstuffs must travel to the highly populated eastern seaboard provinces. The world’s largest food importer by far, it is heavily reliant on the continued stability of global supply chains and access to markets.

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How Many Enemies Does America Want? by Doug Bandow

Posted on August 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

The US government has enough enemies without adding Russia and China to the list. From Doug Bandow at antiwar.com:

U.S. Should Stop Pushing Russia Into China’s Arms

The exciting days of America as the unipower, the essential nation, the hyperpower, the sole superpower, the embodiment of worldly glory and virtue, are long over. That heady moment, evident to all after the fall of the Berlin Wall and collapse of the Soviet Union, ended with the Bush administration. George H.W. Bush’s 1992 election defeat indicated that the American people had quickly lost their enthusiasm for imperial overreach.

The surprise new president, Bill Clinton, was confident and ambitious, but found that battling warlords and creating nations was not for the faint-hearted. Only a few months into his tenure came the infamous “Black Hawk down” incident. The score: Somalia 1, America 0. Clinton withdrew U.S. forces, ending any fantasy that Bush’s “what we say goes” was reality outside of rarefied diplomatic forums.

Not that Clinton’s foreign policy crew got the message. The administration applied starvation as policy against Iraq’s Saddam Hussein, whom Washington had befriended after his invasion of Iran. Clinton’s ambassador to the United Nations, Madeleine Albright, explained “We think the price is worth it” when questioned about the reported deaths of a half million Iraqi children. Lamenting his failure to amass a more consequential presidential record by fighting a real war or two, Clinton was left with intermittent bombing of Iraq, which achieved nothing of note, and a brief Balkan campaign that always and everywhere disposed ethnic Serbs while ignoring war crimes committed by everyone else.

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All Roads Lead To The Battle For Kabul, by Pepe Escobar

Posted on August 11, 2021 | Leave a comment

Afghanistan is going to be a mess, but the Taliban will probably end up running the country under cover of some sort of fig-leaf coalition. In other words, pretty much the situation before the US invaded 20 years ago. From Pepe Escobar at The Asia Times via zerohedge.com:\

City after city have fallen from government to Taliban control but Afghanistan’s end-game is still unclear…

Afghan militia fighters keep watch at an outpost against Taliban insurgents at Charkint district in Balkh Province in June. Photo: AFP / Farshad Usyan

The ever-elusive Afghan “peace” process negotiations re-start this Wednesday in Doha via the extended troika – the US, Russia, China and Pakistan. The contrast with the accumulated facts on the ground could not be starker.

In a coordinated blitzkrieg, the Taliban have subdued no less than six Afghan provincial capitals in only four days. The central administration in Kabul will have a hard time defending its stability in Doha.

It gets worse. Ominously, Afghan President Ashraf Ghani has all but buried the Doha process. He’s already betting on civil war – from the weaponization of civilians in the main cities to widespread bribing of regional warlords, with the intent of building a “coalition of the willing” to fight the Taliban.

The capture of Zaranj, the capital of Nimruz province, was a major Taliban coup. Zaranj is the gateway for India’s access to Afghanistan and further on to Central Asia via the International North-South Transportation Corridor (INSTC).

India paid for the construction of the highway linking the port of Chabahar in Iran – the key hub of India’s faltering version of the New Silk Roads – to Zaranj.

At stake here is a vital Iran-Afghanistan border crossing cum Southwest/Central Asia transportation corridor. Yet now the Taliban control trade on the Afghan side. And Tehran has just closed the Iranian side. No one knows what happens next.

The Taliban are meticulously implementing a strategic master plan. There’s no smoking gun, yet – but highly informed outside help – Pakistani ISI intel? – is plausible.

First, they conquer the countryside – a virtually done deal in at least 85% of the territory. Then they control the key border checkpoints, as with Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Iran and Spin Boldak with Balochistan in Pakistan. Finally, it’s all about encircling and methodically taking provincial capitals – that’s where we are now.

The final act will be the Battle for Kabul. This may plausibly happen as early as September, in a warped “celebration” of the 20 years of 9/11 and the American bombing of 1996-2001 Talibanistan.

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Has the US Begun Its “Great Retreat”? by The Saker

Posted on August 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

At some point the grandiose assumptions and posturing behind the American Empire are going to run head on into the realities of US deficits and Russian and Chinese military and economic capabilities. From The Saker at unz.com:

French Retreat in 1812

I have to begin this column by admitting that “Biden” (note: when in quotation marks, I refer to the “collective Biden”, not the clearly senile man) surprised me: it appears that my personal rule-of-thumb about US Presidents (each one is even worse than his predecessor) might not necessarily apply in “Biden’s” case. That is not to say that “Biden” won’t end up proving my rule of thumb as still applicable, just that what I am seeing right now is not what I feared or expected.

Initially, I felt my the rule still held. The total US faceplant in Alaska when Blinken apparently mistook the Chinese for woke-neutered serfs and quickly found out how mistaken he was.

But then there was the meeting with Putin which surprised many, including myself. Initially, most Russian observers joined one of two groups about the prospects for this summit:

  1. This summit will never happen, there is nothing to discuss, Biden is senile, his Admin is filled wall to wall with harcore russophobes and, besides, the (US) Americans are “not agreement capable” (недоговороспособные) anyway, so what is the point?
  2. If the summit takes place, it will be a comprehensive failure. At best a shouting match or exchange of insults.

Neither of these happened. Truth be told, we still do not really know what happened. All we have are some vague declarations of intent and worded pious intentions. And even those were minimalistic! In fact, after the summit most Russian observers, again, broke into two main camps:

  1. “Biden” threw in the towel and gave up. Russian won this round. Hurray!
  2. “Biden” only changed tactics, and now the new US posture might well become even more aggressive and hostile. Russia is about to see a major surge in anti-Russian provocations. Alarm!

I think that both of these grossly oversimplify a probably much more complex and nuanced reality. In other words, “Biden” surprised many, if not most, Russians. That is very interesting by itself (neither Bush, nor Obama nor Trump ever surprised the Russians – who knew the score about all of them – in any meaningful way).

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