Above: A huge green hydrogen project in Ordos City, Inner Mongolia, opened Thursday, says Sinopec. It uses the area's abundant solar and wind energy to generate electricity and directly produces 30,000 tons of green H2 p.a., made with with renewable energy and no carbon emissions. Read article →

China's gasoline demand has peaked, two years earlier than expected, due to the number of EVs on the road. Diesel demand for heavier vehicles will keep growing for a bit longer, but electric, fuel cell and battery-swapping account for 12% of light commercial vehicle sales and 4% to 5% of medium and heavy commercial vehicle sales. Ride-hailing EVs are more productive than gasoline, accounting for 50% of the kilometers traveled Didi’s ride-hailing platform in December. Read article →

BYD's profits rose 205%, to $1.5 billion, compared to $493 million last year driven by record deliveries, cementing BYD’s status as China's biggest-selling auto brand. Read article →

China has 1.079 billion netizens, up 11.1 million YoY, representing a 76% Internet penetration rate. Some data :

• The total number of domain names in China was 30.24 million
• The number of active users of IPv6 reached 767 million
• The number of broadband internet access ports has reached 1.11 billion
• The total length of optical cable lines reached 61.96 million km
• The cumulative traffic of mobile Internet reached 142.3 billion GB, up 14.6% year-on-year.  Read article →

Real wages grew 4.7% in 2022 says ILO. British wages grew 0.1%, American 0.3%, France -0.4%, Germany -0.7% and India -1.3%. "Why are real wages rising 18 times faster in China than the U.S., 44 times faster than Britain, while French, German and or Indian real wages are falling?" Read article →

China + BRICS trade rises 19% to $331 billion YTD, accounting for 10% of China's total foreign trade in . Exports grew 24% while imports rose 14%. Read article →

Deglobalisation is everywhere but in the trade statistics. Goods trade was at an all-time high in 2022, after years of slow growth.  US imports in 2022 were close to 40% above pre-COVID levels, providing little support for the notion of reshoring. Even if we focus just on US-China bilateral trade relations, US merchandise imports from China in 2022 were more than 30% higher than levels in 2017, despite the tensions and the tit-for-tat tariffs imposed during the Trump administration. Read article →

Nvidia's A100 and H100 chips have been put on a “no-export” list to prevent UAE or Saudi Arabia transshipping them to Russia and China. However, Huawei's GPU has capabilities and performance are comparable to Nvidia's. Read article →

Medical AI 40% CAGR through 2025, when its total market will $400 million. Chinese groups have produced at least 18 medical AI models and hosted “the world's first ‘double-blind trial’ in which AI doctors and human doctors face real human patients at the same time. Medlinker’s MedGPT scored just .3 points lower than doctors from top tertiary hospitals. Read full article →

At the Gaoyou Duck Group Food Processing Co., found livestream viewers asking if there are less salty salted duck eggs available. But if the pickling time is simply shortened, though the saltiness can be reduced, the egg yolk cannot achieve the desired texture. So Professor Wang Shucai's team, using high temperature and high pressure, let the salt quickly penetrate the egg white into the yolk, ensuring that the egg yolk has the desired texture. They built 10 rapid pickling huts, each for 100,000 "Low-salt salted duck eggs."  Read full article →

OceanEngine, ByteDance's digital marketing platform, has introduced an AI-driven scripting tool for live-streaming to assist Douyin merchants in efficiently creating “high-quality scripts.” This official service aids sellers and short video creators in expanding their influence on Douyin. OceanEngine announced that the new feature is free and has the capability to identify "sensitive words." This move underscores ByteDance's incorporation of artificial intelligence technology across its diverse businesses. According to a statement on its WeChat account, merchants utilizing the script-generation tool witnessed a 13% increase in the value of merchandise sold. Read full article →

35% of Chinese are overweight and 14% are obese. Obesity is more prevalent in men, with 41% vs 28% in women, and higher in the north. In 2020, authorities set a target of reducing childhood obesity by 70% in by 2030. Read article →

Shanghai is piloting a beverage health alert system as part of a countrywide initiative to combat health problems related to excessive sugar intake. Stores are displaying color-coded sugar warning signs on their shelves. Read article →

A five-year plan aims at better prevention and control of birth defects and reducing the incidence of birth defect-related fatalities and disabilities.. Read article →

Doctors from Sun Yat-sen University Ophthalmic Center traveled to the Maldives to inaugurate the first state-funded, standardized ophthalmology center built by China outside its borders. In the six months since, the new center has received over 4,400 patients and performed 402 surgeries; Chinese state media has hailed it as a way to stop “giving people fish” and start “teaching them how to fish.” Read article →

13% of Chinese are scientifically literate, 2.4% above 2020 and 6.7% above 2015. 16% and 8% of urban and rural residents respectively are scientifically literate. 29% of Americans are scientifically literate. Read article →

Zhang Zhizhen became the first Chinese man to beat a top-five opponent since the introduction of the ATP rankings in 1973 by stunning last year's runner-up Casper Ruud 6-4 5-7 6-2 0-6 6-2 in the US Open second round on Wednesday. Zhang, ranked 67th in the world, had come through another five-setter to beat American J.J Wolf in his opener. Read article →

If the bride is 25 or younger, Changshan county, eastern China, is offering couples a ‘reward’ of $200 or 1,000 yuan, as the latest measure to incentivise young people to get married amid rising concern over a declining birth rate.” Read article →

China is debating a draft law prohibiting preschools from teaching at an elementary school level, part of a campaign to foster a more equitable society as parents cope with the rising costs of after-school education. Read article →

Beginning in 1996, the issue of "massification"—if, when and how China send more 15% of 18-22 year-olds to university—became a heated issue. Ji Baocheng stated the MOE's position: "At the turn of the century, (i.e., 2000) the correct choice for Chinese higher education to adopt is the policy guideline of 'steady development'. Although an era of mass higher education will definitely come in China, the time is not yet right." Ji identified two macro-conditions—state education financing and graduates' employment difficulties—as bottlenecks constraining rapid development of higher education. He feared that, if China were to move to mass higher education too quickly, the economy would not be able to absorb the swelling ranks of graduates, and that could endanger social stability. The long-standing Chinese sense that college graduates are members of the elite and should work in the big cities, or at least in county-level work units, also constrained the expansion of enrollment. If college graduates were unwilling to accept positions in grass-roots units or rural areas, the government would be unable to provide elite-status jobs for all graduates. Read article →

The British Museum is facing mounting pressure to return Chinese artifacts, after reporting that around 2,000 items were “missing, stolen or damaged” two weeks ago. The museum is home to the biggest collection of Chinese antiquities in the West. On Chinese social media, related hashtags have more than 50 million views. Read article →

The new Guideline to build a high-quality and balanced basic public education system has two targets, 2027 and 2035. “It focuses on deepening the supply-side reform of basic education, further expanding quality education resources, and accelerating the construction of a high-caliber basic education system. By 2027, a provision and adjustment mechanism for primary, secondary school and kindergarten enrollments will be basically established in alignment with the country's new urbanization drive and demographic changes in the school-aged population. Kindergarten coverage will be further elevated, with the ratio of government-funded kindergartens surpassing 60%. All counties nationwide with a population of more than 200,000 will be equipped with special education schools, and the quality of inclusive education will be substantially raised”. Read article →

One of the world's leading theoretical physicists, Stanford's Steven Kivelson says, "Much of the physics that I think about is based on experimental work that is done in China. The entire field is highly dependent on and benefits from cooperation with colleagues in China. And on top of that, many of my best graduate students and postdocs come from China. Read more →

Taipei mayor leads delegation to Shanghai. “Taipei Mayor Wayne Chiang Wan-an called for peace and dialogue between Taiwan and the Chinese mainland as he led a delegation to Shanghai on Tuesday for a three-day visit aimed at easing cross-strait hostilities.” Read more →

Foxconn founder Terry Gou's independent leadership bid complicates Taiwan opposition efforts. He's a fourth contender in the already tense political race, challenging (DPP) Lai Ching-te  (KMT) Hóu Yǒuyí, and  (TPP) Ko Wen-je (柯文哲 Kē Wénzhé).” [Ed: Gou is a pragmatist, generally pro-reunification, and the richest candidate by far] Read more →

The Kingdom of Hawaii is still a nation-state, that it has its own citizens, issues its own passports and conducts its own diplomatic relations. Few people know that Hawaii is not legally a state of the US, and that the Kingdom has been trying for more than 100 years to end the illegal US occupation of Hawaii. Here is the story. Read more →

China sent police experts and equipment to the Pacific nation of Vanuatu in the midst of a political crisis that saw the Supreme Court rule the prime minister lost a no-confidence vote in parliament.” Read more →

The preamble of the Johannesburg Declaration states the principles of the institutions of a plural world order. It announces a new stage of maturity for this now central institution.

We further commit ourselves to strengthening the framework of mutually beneficial BRICS cooperation under the three pillars of political and security, economic and financial, and cultural and people-to-people cooperation and to enhancing our strategic partnership for the benefit of our people through the promotion of peace, a more representative, fairer international order, a reinvigorated and reformed multilateral system, sustainable development and inclusive growth.

This preamble does not call for BRICS or any one country of BRICS to be the new world leader. It calls instead for new ways of peaceful development for the world that genuinely enable all the world to flourish, not just the West, or the golden billion, as Vladimir Putin calls them.

It is a reasoned moral challenge to the leaders of the West. So far, some Western leaders, commentators and media talking heads have responded with some pettiness, as evidenced by the disinformation campaign about divisions within the BRICS in the lead-up to the summit. It would be a grave error to demonise BRICS, especially now that it is expanding to BRICS-11 and soon more. There is a good discussion of this on the recent Multipolarity podcast.

The Declaration's agreements:

• Preamble (paras 1-3), with the principles quoted above

• Partnership for Inclusive Multilateralism (paras 3-10), with criticism of “unilateral coercive measures incompatible with the principles of the Charter of the UN” and a focus on reform of the international organisations including the UN, WTO and IMF

• Fostering an Environment for Peace and Development (paras 11-25), that leads to peaceful resolution of differences and disputes through dialogue and inclusive consultations, and gives more weight to current conflicts in Africa, the Middle East, and Haiti, and more importance to the role of women and prevention of nuclear war, rather than the G7’s focus on Ukraine and its model of democracy.

• Partnership for Mutually Accelerated Growth (paras 26-51), which discusses multilateral economic cooperation and has decisions on local currencies, payment instruments and platforms, and the National Development Bank

• Partnership for Sustainable Development (paras 52-74) with declarations on sustainable development goals, climate change, health care, pandemic prevention, preparedness and response, education and skills, science and technology and energy

• Deepening People-to-People Exchanges (para 75-86) with initiatives to deepen people-people exchanges in business, media, culture, education, sports (including the BRICS Games in October 2023), arts, youth, civil society and academic exchanges

• Institutional Development (paras 87-94), with decisions on BRICS membership

It is an elegantly constructed declaration. Its rhetoric is of pluralism, generosity between countries with different values, and peaceful development that benefits  the whole world, especially the Global South, which countries have suffered from decisions by the West. This rhetoric is far more appealing than the harsh tones of the NATO Vilnius Summit declaration: shrill militarism, paranoid defence of unique democratic traditions, and denunciation of rivals as uncivilised. 

The two large decisions of consequence for the international order that were widely speculated on before the summit, and led some to anticipate an historic turning point, were BRICS expansion and ‘dedollarization’. On both issues the declaration has revealed a patient method, rather than publicity driven drama.  This patient method demands more respect from Western leaders, commentators and journalists, who turn international diplomacy and world history too often into panel show pantomime.

On BRICS expansion, six countries will become full members in January 2024. These countries are: Argentina, Egypt, Ethiopia, Iran, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates. These states may now be considered middle powers, and will participate in next year’s BRICS Summit in Kazan, Russia. Moreover, there is a set of rules, processes and arrangements to agree on expansion of the membership. South African leader and chair of the Summit, Cyril Ramaphosa, emphasised in the press conference that these rules and processes will support a further phase of expansion, perhaps even to be ratified at the 2024 Summit. Leaders also tasked Foreign Ministers to develop a BRICS Partners program By 2025, then, we might project that BRICS may well represent more than 40 per cent of the world economy, and over half of the world’s population.

On ‘dedollarisation’, leaders have strengthened the role of the New Development Bank and the BRICS Contingent Reserve Arrangement. Critically and patiently, Leaders tasked Finance Ministers and Central Bankers to develop a set of proposals by next year’s summit. These proposals will relate to national currencies, payment systems and platforms. In other words, next year the fates of the ‘petrodollar’ and the Western crutch of economic sanctions through the financial system will be decided by a summit comprising major economies subjected to sanctions, and these OPEC, oil-producing powers: Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates. As former Prime Minister Paul Keating once said to an American trained free-marketeer Opposition Leader, “I am going to do you slowly, brother.”

This patient method will broaden the networks governed by BRICS sustainably. The careful husbandry of the energy of these new networks will change world history. The dream of a homogenised world brought together under the monotheistic leadership of the USA, and its liberal rules-based order, has been exposed as a misunderstanding of the history of globalisation. As John Darwin wrote in the conclusion of After Tamerlane: the Rise and Fall of Global Empires, 1400-2000 (2007)

“The magnetic force of the global economy has been too erratic thus far, and too unevenly felt, to impose the cooperative behaviour and cultural fusion to which theorists of free trade have often looked forward. What we call globalisation today might be candidly seen as flowing from a set of recent agreements, some tacit, some formal, between the four great economic ‘empires’ of the contemporary world: America, Europe, Japan and China.” (p. 505)

But the agreements have broken down, and the set of great states has changed. A new plural, diverse world order is taking shape. BRICS Johannesburg is not a turning point but a tolling of the bell of all those bad histories of the West and the disastrous ‘grand strategies’ of the failing American elites. The Burning Archive.

Two words characterize United States (US) foreign policy — failure and counterproductive. Research US post-World War II foreign policy initiatives and learn of lost wars, unnecessary wars, counterproductive policies, unresolved issues, failed diplomacy, and downright mayhem. US foreign policy toward the People’s Republic of China (PRC) follows the trend.

The US State Department defines its China policy thus: "Strategic competition is the frame through which the United States views its relationship with the People’s Republic of China (PRC). The United States will address its relationship with the PRC from a position of strength in which we work closely with our allies and partners to defend our interests and values. We will advance our economic interests, counter Beijing’s aggressive and coercive actions, sustain key military advantages and vital security partnerships, re-engage robustly in the UN system, and stand up to Beijing when PRC authorities are violating human rights and fundamental freedoms. When it is in our interest, the United States will conduct results-oriented diplomacy with China on shared challenges such as climate change and global public health crises". 

All of this is boilerplate. Strategic competition, defend our interests, advance our economic interests, counter aggressive and coercive actions, stand up to violating human rights and fundamental freedoms, etc., are policies that apply to relations with most nations and often serve as excuses for interfering with another nation’s sovereignty. Left out of the State Department's definition of China policy, which is an agenda rather than foreign policy, are gaining mutual understanding on social, political, economic, and international issues and resolving any issues that may lead to friction, hostilities, and war.

The Department of Defense (DOD)  is more sanguine. In Tailoring U.S. Outreach to Indo-Pacific Allies, Partners, June 15, 2023, Jim Garamone, DOD News, outlines the DOD attitude toward China. “Globally and regionally, China is the pacing threat for the United States. China is actively seeking to overturn the international rules-based order that has kept the peace in the region since World War II.”

Just mentioning the unexplained and ill-defined” international rules-based order” immediately gives the chest-beating United States the moral high ground.

A US State Department  assessment: Addressing China’s Military Aggression in the Indo-Pacific Region, states: Across much of the Indo-Pacific region, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is using military and economic coercion to bully its neighbors, advance unlawful maritime claims, threaten maritime shipping lanes, and destabilize territory along the periphery of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This predatory conduct increases the risk of miscalculation and conflict. The United States stands with its Southeast Asian allies and partners to champion a free and open Indo-Pacific.

Common to these directives: 
(1) China is engaged in aggressive and coercive actions;
(2) China is actively seeking to overturn the international rules-based order that has kept the peace in the region since World War II; and
(3) China threatens maritime shipping lanes and destabilizes territory along its periphery.

I have searched the historical record, examined news reports, and sought wisdom from the almighty and I cannot find any of this to be true. Examination of US policies toward Beijing reveals that US policies are not framed to engage in mutual understanding and are framed to precipitate and engage in eventual hostilities. Bashing China and forcing China to react in a hostile manner is the simple US policy. Look at the record.

China is engaged in aggressive and coercive actions.

Where is China engaged in aggressive and coercive actions?
Skip internal actions. These are a matter of perspective, and all nations can, at times, appear to be aggressive and coercive toward their citizens. Talk to African Americans in the ghettos of America, the Native American population, Mexican-Americans, and even the Jan. 6 insurrectionists and ascertain if they feel that their government is aggressive and coercive. Talk to Rohingyas, Palestinians, Bahrain Shiites, Egyptian Salafists, Saudi Shiites, Indian Muslims, Mexican and Guatemalan Mayans, and a host of other threatened minorities in nations where the US has friendly relations and does not strongly criticize the governments for aggressive and coercive actions toward their citizens.

Search around and find only two places where China might be accused of engaging in aggressive and coercive actions — Taiwan and the South China Sea. The latter charge appears in item (3) “China threatens maritime shipping lanes, and destabilizes territory along its periphery,” and will be covered in a discussion of that item. Aggressive and coercive behavior by China is reduced to one place, Taiwan. Only one Place? Is the charge true in that one place?

History has Taiwan as a legally recognized part of China since the 17thcentury. The island of Taiwan has the trappings of a state but only several small countries — Belize, Guatemala, Haiti, Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, Paraguay, Saint Kitts and Nevis, Saint Lucia, Saint Vincent and the Grenadines, São Tomé and Príncipe, and Vatican City — and no major country, recognize Taiwan as a nation. Even the nation of Taiwan is a misnomer; there is no nation called Taiwan. According to its current Constitution, the official name for Taiwan is the Republic of China (ROC) and it is not independent of mainland China. Although present-generation Taiwanese imagine Taiwan as a country independent of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), the definition of ROC territories in its constitution includes mainland China. In the "One China Policy," first stated in the Shanghai Communiqué of 1972, the United States acknowledged that the Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are part of one China and that Taiwan is a part of China.    

From a legal view, Taiwan has never claimed independence. Both the PRC and the ROC agree there is only one China. The ROC claims the mainland is part of the ROC and the PRC claims Taiwan is part of the PRC. Who is more correct?

The two parties fought a Civil War. The communists won and formed the PRC. China encompasses an area of about 10 million Kms 2, has a population of 1.4 billion, and a GDP of $18T. The counterclaiming  ROC encompasses an area of about 36 thousand Kms 2,  has a population of 24 million, and a GDP of $800B.  

Shanghai, only one city in China, has a population and GDP almost equal to that of Taiwan. From my discernment of the facts, the entity that won the civil war and has a size, population, and economy that dwarfs the opposition is entitled to rule the whole ball of wax. China is not engaged in aggressive and coercive actions against Taiwan; Taiwan is engaged in aggressive and coercive actions against the Chinese people. The Chinese people from the People’s Republic of China own the maritime coastline, fisheries, minerals, mountains, rivers, lakes, and public places of Taiwan and its ownership is denied to them by the Taiwan government.

China is actively seeking to overturn the international rules-based order that has kept the peace in the region since World War II.
The international rules-based order has no agreed-upon definition. From China’s, as well as other nations’ perspectives, it means an order that assures US hegemony in the region. With that definition, China, assuredly, would actively seek to overturn it, and China would overturn it if China could identify the order. Where is there an international rules-based order in East Asia that has kept the peace in the region since World War II?

Peace in the region? Haven’t we had the Korean War, French Indo-China War, Vietnam War, Cambodian War, Pol Pot reign, Vietnam overthrow of Pol Pot, China annexation of Tibet, China/Vietnam War, China/Soviet War, General Suharto, with CIA assistance, overthrow of President Sukarno in Indonesia, where an estimated  500,000 to 1.2 million people were killed, East Timor insurrection,  Myanmar military takeovers, massacre of Rohingyas, massacres of Sikhs, Muslims, and Hindus in India/Pakistan violence, massacres of Tamil and terrorism against Sinhalese in Sri Lanka civil War, and…many more acts of violence, which have occurred almost every year after World War II and continue in contemporary times.  Where has the international rules-based order been applicable and where has there been peace in the region since World War II?

China threatens maritime shipping lanes and destabilizes territory along its periphery.

China has been aggressive in establishing sovereignty in the South China Sea. This is the one area where it must answer to its aggressiveness. For a fundamental reason, Beijing cannot threaten maritime shipping lanes; there are no major shipping lanes in the South China Sea. The following map describes the western Pacific shipping lanes and shows that the South China Sea has only two maritime lanes, both feeding Vietnam, a country that has no sizeable navy. US shipping from Pacific ports does not pass through the South China Sea, and, except for Vietnam, only vessels to and from Hong Kong navigate through that Sea.

As for “destabilizing territory along its periphery,” where does this happen? A border conflict with India exists and will never end. This is an ongoing problem but how is this destabilizing and where is there another place that can be described as destabilizing?

Conclusion

The US State and Defense Departments continue to speak “white men” words, saying anything they want against the East Asians, bashing China to advance their agendas and fomenting hatred against the Chinese people. They hope to have the distortions convince others to build alliances and subdue the PRC. Why subdue the PRC? The US fears that more of the PRC forebodes less of the USA. To US officials, the international arena is a zero-sum game, and what the PRC gains, the USA loses. A stronger China also forecasts a stronger challenge to US hegemony. This portentous prophesy does not have to happen and China has shown it does not want it to happen. After years of the “debase China strategy,” the US has little to show for its efforts and, by another counterproductive foreign policy, has assured China will grow economically and militarily stronger and will challenge US hegemony.

The first alliance is the enhanced trilateral security partnership, AUKUS, established in September 2021 with other white men from Australia and faraway United Kingdom. AUKUS “is intended to strengthen the ability of each government to support security and defense interests, building on longstanding and ongoing bilateral ties. It will promote deeper information sharing and technology sharing; and foster deeper integration of security and defense-related science, technology, industrial bases and supply chains.”

The initial initiatives demonstrate the true reason for the white men alliance The first initiative commits the US and UK to support Australia in acquiring nuclear-powered submarines for the Royal Australian Navy. The second initiative “intends to enhance joint capabilities and interoperability, focusing on cyber capabilities, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and additional undersea capabilities.” The true reason for AUKUS is to militarily challenge China.

The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue (Quad,) brings the United States, Australia, India, and Japan together in maritime cooperation. The dialogue has expanded to a broader agenda and includes security, economic, and health issues. The Quad’s dialogue has not moved forward smoothly and is now a loose grouping rather than a formal alliance. From the Council of Foreign Relations:

Japan initially emphasized the democratic identity of the four nations, whereas India seemed more comfortable emphasizing functional cooperation. Australian leaders have been reluctant about creating the impression that the group is a formal alliance.

A US proposal for a 14-nation economic initiative known as the Indo-Pacific Economic Framework for Prosperity is at an early stage. The US hopes this economic initiative will rectify ex-President Trump’s abandonment of the Trans-Pacific Partnership and the inability of the US to join The Association of Southeast Asian Nations, ASEAN.

US rhetoric, alliances, and military moves have disturbed China but have not deterred Beijing from its objectives. The Communist Party remains the central governing body for 1.3 billion people; the International Monetary Fund estimates that China’s GDP/PPP reached $33.01T in 2022, far ahead of US GDP/PPP of $26.85T; and economically and politically, China exhibits an increasing role in international affairs.

China provides funds for more than 100 countries for road, railway, power plants, ports, and other infrastructure projects. In the volatile Middle East, once the region where the United States exerted its most influence, the Shanghai International Port Group obtained a lease to operate a port in Haifa, Israel, and the PRC brokered a Saudi-Iran normalization agreement. Most of the impetus for the  BRICS, a group that is developing into a new global force able to challenge Western hegemony comes from its most powerful member, China. Original members — Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa — have met periodically and proposed several economic and financial issues for the bloc to consider. Their August 2023 summit still has not set direction or proposed action; instead the bloc extended invitations to Iran, Saudi Arabia, United Arab Emirates, Argentina, Egypt, and Ethiopia to join BRICS on Jan. 1, 2024. Four statistics express the global power contained in the expanded BRICS, in which China is the leading power.

• GDP of about $30.8 trillion, a 29.3% global share.

• Total population will reach 3.6 bln people, or 45% of the global population.

• Share of oil production will be about 43.1%.

• Share of global exports will be about 25.1%.

The fact that US foreign policy toward the People’s Republic of China has accomplished nothing beneficial to America and follows the trend of US foreign policies — failure and counterproductive — raises the question: What did the United States expect to accomplish with its retrograde policies? Did it expect the Chinese government, which is solidly entrenched and has no opposition, to change its policies and supplicate to US directives? Zero possibility in that happening.

History, from the Barbary Pirates War off the coast in Libya in 1803 to the NATO war against Libya in 2011, shows that the United States almost always eschews diplomacy and settles its imaginary and real disputes by war. In almost every year from its founding to today, the United States has been either directly or indirectly engaged in strife. 

Accustomed to being the world’s leading economy since 1893 and the world’s leading military power since World War II, the American government and its people find it difficult to share the royal position or be classified as second-rate. Combine the jingoist military superiority attitude with the intensive utterances of China being guilty of aggressive and coercive actions and gross violations of human rights and fundamental freedoms and we have the development of a mindset that prefers “better dead than red.” Unless the US State Department and Defense establishment change their policies toward China, the inevitable result is war. 

With American politics becoming more incoherent, more extreme, and more polarized, a consensus that avoids war becomes more difficult. Hopefully, the new generation that seeks war no more will apply pressure and develop a strong and effective pacifist movement. Read more by Dan Lieberman.

Born from Crisis: China’s Sovereign Leveraged Funds

1. Talent at the Top: Only the brightest, most idealistic people are are admitted to politics–a policy unchanged in 2200 years.
2. Data in the Middle: policies are implemented, tracked, and optimized based on terabytes of data. The PRC is the world's largest consumer of public surveys.
3. Democracy at the Bottom: ordinary people, all unpaid amateurs, assemble twice a year to check the stats and sign off on new legislation. Policies need a minimum of 66% support to become law. That's why 95% of Chinese say the country is on the right track.

For decades, Western media have been narrating the same story about China being this brutal “dictatorship” whose people are killed at the hands of the criminal communist regime, giving the Tiananmen Square massacre as a prime example of the brutality of the Chinese government, wherein supposedly scores of students were killed at the hands of the People’s Liberation Army. However, a new book emerged proving that these claims are false and have no foundation to them except for Washington’s aspirations to tarnish the image of the Chinese Communist Party.

Atrocity Fabrication and Its Consequences: How Fake News Shapes World Order, a new book by A. B. Abrams, highlights that there never were any killings in the infamous Tiananmen Square back in 1989 as had been spread by Western propaganda for decades, and it was revealed that the entire affair was but a mere attempt at showing China as the villain in the geopolitical arena. The book underlines that no killings, let alone a massacre as is proclaimed, took place in Tiananmen Square.

How did the U.S. succeed in manipulating the mainstream narrative and have millions upon millions of people believe that China initiated a mass murder of its own people—young college students—crushing them with tanks and shooting them down with machine guns? The answer is simple: the manipulation of public perception through the press. This could be done using media out of context and providing an incomplete version of the truth.

For example, the most infamous piece of media “documenting” the crime to ever exist is a video showing a tank marching onto a person alleged to have been a student, and right as the tank gets close enough to the young man and stops, the video is cut, with there being some text accompanying the video hinting or proclaiming that the tank went on to run over the protester. However, that could not be further from the truth. In reality, other protesters rushed to the scene and accompanied him from there as the tank was standing in place waiting for him to comply and get out of its way.

The book argues that all the acts committed by the United States were in a bid to “justify wars of conquest and exploitation” and generate multi-billion-dollar profits for the notorious military-industrial complex, as reported by CovertAction Magazine.

Abrams highlighted that the Tiananmen Square protests initially took place not as a push for Westernization or the downfall of the Chinese government. Instead, their primary focus was on reinforcing the principles of China’s 1949 Communist Revolution and addressing the issue of corrupt officials who had deviated from Maoist principles.

This movement encompassed not only students but also a significant number of workers, who exhibited a stronger anti-CCP stance. Their collective objective aimed at the establishment of a socialist democracy within the framework of the movement.

The book cited a cable from the U.S. Embassy in Beijing that WikiLeaks published in 2016. The leak included reports on the eyewitness account of a Chilean diplomat and his wife who were present when the PLA made it to Tiananmen Square to disperse the protesters. The pair made it in and out of the square numerous times without any harassment and observed no mass firing of weapons into the crowds. They never saw any use of lethal force, to begin with.

Moreover, the book cited former Washington Post Beijing Bureau chief Jay Mathews who, in 1998, admitted that “all verified eyewitness accounts say that the students who remained in the square when troops arrived were allowed to leave peacefully.”

It also cited Reuters  correspondent Graham Earnshaw, who spent the night of June 3-4 at the center of Tiananmen Square and reported that most of the students left the square peacefully with the remainder of them being persuaded to do the same.

As is customary, the main source the Western media used to claim that a massacre took place was an anonymous student from Qinghua University making claims to the Hong Kong press, who then made it to the British media.

Still, BBC‘s Beijing correspondent James Miles said there was no massacre.

Western reporting had conveyed the wrong impression and protesters who were still in the square when the army reached it were allowed to leave after negotiations.

The narrative was also completely spun out of proportion, with the perpetrators being painted as the victims of a crime that was never committed in the first place. The book underlined that those who did die in Beijing during the events lost their lives in street battles between the PLA and insurgents far from the square. Reports from the U.S. Department of State underlined that the unarmed PLA officers were attacked with petrol bombs, burning many alive.

Uyghurs, another ‘crime’ China committed

The hoax built around Tiananmen Square was a blueprint for U.S. media campaigns aimed at showing the Chinese government in a bad light, as Washington went on to accuse Beijing of perpetrating a genocide against the Uyghur people in Xinjiang province.

The book stressed that the claims about the so-called Uyghur genocide relied on nothing but hardline extremist U.S.-funded anti-China groups. Namely, they were funded by the CIA-affiliated National Endowment for Democracy, which was tasked with carrying out what the notorious spy agency had done alone under the covers for decades.

Amid the claims of Beijing genociding the Uyghurs, the Uyghur population in Xinjiang saw an increase of 25% between 2010 and 2018 instead of the population experiencing a contraction. Even facilities the West claimed to have been “concentration camps” in which Uyghurs were killed en masse and “brainwashed” or “indoctrinated” appeared to have been a logistics park, a regular detention center, and elementary and middle schools.

Xinjiang looks good, safe, and secure, and all the people I spoke with seemed happy about it, former London Metropolitan Police Officer Jerry Grey, who spent a lot of time traveling in Xinjiang, said.

“Uyghurs in China have been growing faster than the majority Han Chinese in part because they weren’t subject to the one-child policy, they have 20,000 mosques built […] Uyghur children can get into top universities easier than Han Chinese, and have halal foods prepared for them in canteens and they have a prayer area on campus,” Daniel Dumbrill, a Canadian businessman and Chinese political analyst said.

“Portraying an adversary as committing particularly egregious crimes, especially when one intends to initiate military action or other hostile measures against the adversary, has consistently provided an effective means of moving public and international opinion and justifying [US imperial] actions,” Abrams said in his book.

Yugoslavia

The book also shed light on the U.S. propaganda focused in the 1990s on Serb leader Slobodan Milosevic, a socialist who sought to keep Yugoslavia together, accusing him of genocide in Kosovo and elsewhere.

Milosevic, a socialist, aimed to maintain the unity of Yugoslavia and prevent its fragmentation. This effort was driven by his desire to counteract Western nations’ potential expansion of influence and the establishment of U.S. military bases in a strategically vital area.

Interestingly, the most severe instances of ethnic cleansing during the war were actually executed by the Croats through Operation Storm, a plan devised by the CIA.

The Clinton administration additionally provided support to the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which sought to establish an ethnically homogeneous Albanian state. This endeavor involved targeting Serbs and other minority groups.

Financing from the drug trade played a significant role in sustaining the KLA, leading the State Department to label it a “terrorist organization”. The NATO North Atlantic Council identified the KLA as the primary instigator of violence in Kosovo.

The narrative of genocide and the Serbs running concentration camps once again heavily relied on the testimony of an individual who openly admitted to not witnessing any killings—propagandist reporter Roy Gutman. This account was eventually discredited when a British journalist visited an alleged death camp, discovering that the inmates had voluntarily sought refuge from the nearby conflict in surrounding villages.

Yugoslavia was a highly successful state that united numerous contemporary Baltic nations under the banner of communism, and it met its demise when the United States and NATO waged a war against it, killing hundreds of civilians in the notorious bombing campaign it launched on the country in order to “sow democracy” there.

Syria

The same man who was one of the main reasons behind the collapse of Yugoslavia was almost able to do the same with Syria. Gutman played a major role in another similar war launched over a decade later against Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad.

The propaganda effort pushed by Gutman was similar to the one he peddled earlier, with it including the mass murder of people at the hands of the government without any evidence backing up these claims.

Western media and regimes falsely accused Al-Assad of carrying out attacks with chemical weapons against his own people while the attacks were likely carried out by U.S.-backed terrorists.

Back in November, the Grayzone website published a series of leaks that expose how senior officials of the OPCW censored this explosive finding in the Syrian city of Douma.

In its investigation, the website stated that “in the early days of the OPCW’s investigation of an alleged chemical attack in Douma, Syria, expert toxicologists ruled out chlorine gas as the cause of death for more than 40 civilians reported at the scene.”

The Korean War: Another ‘atrocity’

The Korean War, a war peddled by the United States that wound up splitting one people into two, was presented to the public as a “humanitarian intervention” aimed at rescuing the local population from communist forces. To establish this narrative, the Pentagon sponsored a propaganda film, titled The Crime of Korea narrated by Humphrey Bogart. This film falsely attributed atrocities committed by the South Korean government, with U.S. support, to the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea.

This narrative gained traction within the U.S. media and significantly bolstered the perception of the war as “morally justified”. An influential Timemagazine column titled “Barbarity” furthered this perspective by describing a communist massacre in Taejon, which subsequent investigations revealed was actually perpetrated by South Korean troops allied with the U.S.

Charles E. Potter, Chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Korean Atrocities and appointed by Senator Joseph McCarthy, notorious for McCarthyism, which was responsible for the persecution of anyone even thought to be affiliated with any leftist organization or held any left-wing beliefs, emphasized the inhumane acts committed by U.S. adversaries. He recounted gruesome incidents, such as a “Red Chinese” nurse using garden shears to sever a GI’s toes without anesthesia and American POWs being subjected to torture with bamboo spears and confinement in small iron cages until death, with maggots infesting their eye sockets.

However, the accounts presented by Potter contradicted the testimonies of American and British POWs, who indicated that their treatment by captors was generally decent, although they had to attend lectures on communism.

Meanwhile, U.S.-run POW camps subjected DPRK and Chinese prisoners to severe brutality. These inmates were massacred for singing revolutionary songs and subjected to violent coercion to renounce repatriation to their homelands. This strategy aimed to score Cold War propaganda points by portraying defection to the West as a desire born out of the perceived superiority of its political-economic system.

The campaign of propaganda against the DPRK extended well into the 21st century, with increasingly extravagant made-up tales to portray the country in a negative light. Many of these stories were propagated by DPRK defectors, some of whom were influenced or incentivized by South Korea and possibly the CIA.

Shin Dong-hyuk, a defector, collaborated with Washington Postcorrespondent Blaine Harden to write a highly successful book Escape From Camp 14: One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey from North Korea to Freedom in the West. However, this account was later revealed to be a fabrication.

Yeonmi Park, another defector, who charges a speaking fee of $12,500 on Western media outlets, even made the ludicrous claim that her friend’s mother was executed for watching a Hollywood movie.

Lee Soon-ok, yet another defector, testified before a House committee in 2004 that she had witnessed Christians being tortured and burned to death in DPRK political prisons. However, the head of the North Korean Defectors’ Association, Chang In-suk, contradicted this, asserting that Lee was never a political prisoner.

Abrams noted that fabricated reports about DPRK state executions of prominent figures often coincided with the surprising reappearance of these supposedly deceased individuals on camera.

In a CNN report from May 2015, it was alleged that DPRK leader Kim Jong Un had ordered the poisoning and killing of his aunt, Kim Kyong Hui. However, Mrs. Kim appeared in public in January 2020, highlighting the inaccuracy of the claim.

Abrams suggested that these false defector testimonies and biased media coverage were embraced in the West due to the “self-gratification” they provided, seemingly affirming the notion of Western superiority over the least Westernized state. Additionally, they often served as justifications for hostile policies, including economic sanctions, against the DPRK.

The book talks about the demonization of the Russian and Vietnamese governments, as well as that of Libya and Iraq in a bid to validate the Gulf War, while also revisiting numerous cases of U.S. propaganda aimed at subverting its foes while giving impetus to itself and its beliefs in a bid to uphold the unipolar system that it has been trying so hard to keep propped up—to no avail. The recounting of the countless crimes committed by the United States comes as no surprise to many as the latter has done so for decades, and continues to do so, exploiting its hold on the media to give itself the moral high ground over its geopolitical enemies. Monthly Review. Amazon.

The ISC (Needham) Report

The Report of the International Scientific Commission for the Investigation of Facts Concerning Bacteriological Warfare in Korea and China (the ISC report), published at the height of the Korean War, validated claims by North Korea and China that the US had launched bacteriological warfare (biological warfare, BW) attacks against both troops and civilian targets in those two countries over a period of several months in 1952.
   

The most vilified document of the 20th Century.

The report’s release in September, 1952, brought a withering international attack. It was roundly denounced by American and British politicians of the highest rank, ridiculed by four star generals, accused of fraud by celebrated pundits, misquoted by notable scientists, and scorned by a compliant Western press. Charges were made against the quality and truthfulness of its science. Its “unstated” political agenda was denounced. The ethics of interviewing captured US pilots was excoriated and its authors were publicly flayed as communist dupes. The report was red baited in the US halls of Congress and deemed unpatriotic to read, and therefore went unread and deliberately forgotten over the years, which has been the fate of Korean War history in general. In subsequent decades, volumes placed in American university library collections were quietly and permanently removed from circulation.
   
When the rare copy came up for auction, it was discretely purchased and disappeared from public view. This critical 67 year old truth commission document from the Korean War was slipping towards oblivion. For these very reasons, historians and truth seekers should exalt the wondrous rebirth of the ISC Report from near extinction with the publication of this new electronic edition. We welcome the sunshine that re-publication brings to a shadowy and suppressed chapter of American Cold War history. (from the introduction by Thomas Powell) 800 pages.  $9.99.