Huawei hopes to sell 20 million Mate 60 phones this year. Apple sold 46 million iPhones in China in 2022. The average price of iPhones is the same as the Mate 60: $1,000.00 Read article →

Huawei splits $10 Bn with 131,000 staff, average folk got $73K. Folks who joined close to two decades ago are seeing payouts north of a quarter mil. Pretty good for an embattled co. Read article →

Week-on-week drop of legacy auto sales in China:
Nissan 33%
Honda 32%
Toyota 39%
Chevrolet 39%
Buick 53%
Hyundai 58%
Cadillac 61% Read article →

GDP growth, 2000 - 2020:
🇨🇳 China: 1266%
🇷🇺 Russia: 466%
🇮🇳 India: 440%
🇧🇷 Brazil: 316%
🇸🇦 Saudi: 300%
🇦🇺 Australia: 250%
🇹🇷 Turkey: 250%
🇰🇷 South Korea: 220%
🇿🇦 South Africa: 200%
🇮🇩 Indonesia: 175%
🇨🇦 Canada: 166%
🇺🇸 USA: 108%
🇬🇧 UK: 85%
🇩🇪 Germany: 77%
🇫🇷 France: 68% [The Spectator Index] Read article → 

The New York Times' Paul Krugman: "China is in big trouble”. We’re not talking about some minor setback along the way, but something more fundamental. The country’s whole way of doing business, the economic system that has driven three decades of incredible growth, has reached its limits. You could say that the Chinese model is about to hit its Great Wall, and the only question now is just how bad the crash will be. Wages are rising; finally, ordinary Chinese are starting to share in the fruits of growth. But it also means that the Chinese economy is suddenly faced with the need for drastic “rebalancing” — the jargon phrase of the moment. Investment is now running into sharply diminishing returns and is going to drop drastically no matter what the government does; consumer spending must rise dramatically to take its place. The question is whether this can happen fast enough to avoid a nasty slump.

Larry Johnson, retired CIA analyst: That was written in 2013 when China's GDP at purchase power parity reached $16.3 trillion. The number has since more than doubled to a projected $33 trillion in 2023. (In the same time span U.S. GDP(ppp) grew from $17 to $26 trillion.) But that hasn't influenced Krugman's conclusions. Two week ago he wrote another column that paints the same gloomy picture and prescribes the same false medicine:

At a fundamental level, China is suffering from the paradox of thrift, which says that an economy can suffer if consumers try to save too much. If businesses aren’t willing to borrow and then invest all the money consumers are trying to save, the result is an economic downturn. Such a downturn may well reduce the amount businesses are willing to invest, so an attempt to save more can actually reduce investment. 
...
The obvious answer is to boost consumer spending. Get state-owned enterprises to share more of their profits with workers. Strengthen the safety net. And in the short run, the government could just give people money — sending out checks, the way America has done.

How is giving checks (btw: no Chinese or European citizen uses those antique instruments) to people who are saving instead of consuming supposed to increase their consumption? I would presume that it would rather increase their savings. Giving more income to people who like to save to increase consumption is like pushing on a string.

David Fishman, an economist who lives in China and speaks Mandarin, had an interesting chat with a taxi driver (below). He concludes:

1. Even after buying a property, long-term considerations still drive Yang to save money, most prominently his daughter and parents.
2. Yang and his wife give up consumption in pursuit of their long-term goals, even working an extra job, to put away extra cash for those goals.
3. He associates loose/free consumption habits with youth and a lack of responsibility. His consumption today is strategic and intentional.
4. He is unperturbed by the prospect of real estate losing value, since he bought his house to live in, and doesn't intend to resell it.

Now, macro econ punditry is *not* my lane but, if I hear a pundit talking about Chinese consumers, and how they will/won't behave in response to some government policy, I will always wonder what their mental model of this generic Chinese consumer's behavior looks like.

To be credible, that consumer behavior model should probably look like Yang, willing to work an extra job & skip consumption, not out of today's financial necessity, but in preparation of being a good filial son, and so his 3-year old daughter can take dance lessons someday.

And that is Krugman's problem with diagnosing China's economy. People work hard in China. And they like to save instead of consuming all their income. They retire pretty early but live long (though that retirement age is likely to rise). So having a bit of money on the side will make for a nicer living in later years:

The official retirement age for men is 60. Women in managerial positions have a retirement age of 55, while blue-collar female workers can retire at 50.
Chinese people are simply not Americans. But Krugman's economic models presume that they are and he isn't willing or capable of looking beyond those.

Still he was onto something when he opened his column with this:

The narrative about China has changed with stunning speed, from unstoppable juggernaut to pitiful, helpless giant.
It is indeed a fact that the narrative about China's economy has changed way more than China's economic numbers. But Krugman fails to ask why.

Some argue that this narrative change serves investment interests:

First, the most salient preoccupations of Western commentators reflect the skewed distribution of foreign-owned capital within the Chinese economy. 
...
The second feature relates to the financial industry’s reliance on the art of political-economic storytelling to sell investment options.
But it is probably more a political instrument to support the general U.S. war against China.

Newsweek recently published a rather laughable story which asked if Shanghai (25 million permanent inhabitants) had turned into a 'ghost town'.

The Global Times editors see political motives behind such 'bad China' narratives:

If only Newsweek is doing this, then it is an isolated case, indicating the media outlet's problematic professional ethics and the negative impact it caused is not significant. However, starting from March or April this year, not only Newsweek but also other US and Western media outlets have been selectively using some specific data from a certain point or in a certain field to generalize, and even fabricate information to undermine, the Chinese economy. This is a coordinated and large-scale campaign, with consistent steps, intense actions, and extensive content, which is rare in recent years. Can we say that this is a coincidence?
The 'bad China' narrative is an economic phenomenon but is used for political reasons:

In the field of economics, there is a term called narrative economics, which uses storytelling to influence judgments, even at the cost of creating false information, to undermine the morale and confidence of the target and attempt to deter foreign investment, thereby having a substantial impact on the economy. The US has openly regarded China as its biggest competitor and even treats China as an imaginary enemy in many practical aspects. We cannot expect it to engage in fair competition with China. In order to win this "competition" initiated by itself, the US often resorts to any possible means. This perspective can explain the phenomenon in which the US is badmouthing the Chinese economy in a collective manner and can also roughly predict the US' future actions toward China, indicating that it aligns with the basic facts.
The problem the Gloom and Doom in Chinanarratives have is that they are propaganda. Propaganda does not change reality. It falls apart when confronted with facts.

War propaganda falls apart when a war is lost. Economic propaganda falls apart when the new numbers come in. Krugman's doom and gloom propaganda from 2013 was defeated by China's growth. His 2023 propaganda is likely to meet the same fate. Read article →   

It's around 4pm and I'm heading to the airport. I call a Didi car and get a guy almost instantly, just 20 meters away. He looks about my age, maybe a bit younger. "Hey man, you took my order so fast...do you just sit in the hotel parking lot waiting for an airport run?" "No, I just dropped someone here. The system gives us orders. Hey, bro, are you Chinese?"

"Do I look Chinese?"

"Hah, no...I guess you don't. But you sound Chinese, like you're from the north."

"Yeah, I learned Chinese up north. But you...you sound like you're from Guangxi."

"Yes, you have a good ear. I'm from Nanning. Actually, originally I'm from Chongzuo. I guess you don't know Chongzuo...it's a small place."

"Actually I do know Chongzuo, but I don't know anything about it. It's a city southwest of here, on the Vietnam border, right?" (崇左市)

"Yes. Wow, you even know Chongzuo. Lots of Chinese people don't know Chongzuo."

"I like geography, and I like to travel, so sometimes I will study the map to plan where I might travel someday. I know lots of city names and locations like this. Hey, do you like driving for Didi?"

"It's okay. Actually I have two jobs - in the morning I work for a company, helping to ship orders."

"Like a logistics job?"

"Yeah, I guess it's a logistics job. In the late afternoon and evening, I drive a car for Didi."

"Why do you work two jobs? Are you saving for a house?"

"No, I already bought a house in Nanning. I work two jobs because it makes me feel more relaxed, to have the extra income."

"Why do you need the extra income? Are you paying your home loan faster?"

"Mmm...with extra income I pay my loan faster, but also can save some money."

"Save? For what? Do you plan to buy a car, go traveling, buy some stuff? Since you have a house already, what are you saving for? What's the dream thing you want to buy?"

"Dream? No...haha. I don't have a thing I want to buy. But I need to save for my daughter's education".

"Oh, you mean like tuition, training classes?"

"Not just that. Other things. Maybe someday she will be interested in dance or music. These hobbies cost money. It's different now than when we were young. Kids need other activities. So I need to save for that. Also my parents..."

"Right, saving for kids and and parents in the future. I see. You know, some economic experts say is that Chinese people are always saving for future purchases, so they don't buy goods now like cars or cell phones, a consumption problem. Do you think that's true?"

Later, I checked hiring salary statistics for Nanning in Q2 2023 and found they matched well to his anecdotal descriptions, with the average monthly salary across the city at 8850 CNY and the median at 6985 CNY, ranking 28/38 of the largest Chinese cities. 

"Okay" I continue. "Then what about real estate? Is it affordable in Nanning? I saw some signs advertising for 6000 to 8000/sqm for an apartment". Is that normal?"

"Yeah, Nanning is a typical 'wages low, house prices high' city. 7000/sqm is an average price".

(While Yang considers these prices high, a 1:1 ratio of the average monthly wage vs 1 sqm of housing is really not bad vs. say, Nanjing or Wuhan, where that ratio is 1:5 or more, never mind Beijing or Shanghai, where that ratio is 1:10 or even 1:20 in downtown areas).

"What's the most expensive real estate in Nanning? Someone told me it's those four big towers next to the Yong River? I guess it's famous?"

"Oh, haha yeah. It's called uhh...凯旋1号? It's very expensive. But that's not a nice place to live. The neighborhood isn't good."

"Yes, I saw those buildings at night across the river. I guess it's too expensive - someone told me it's 30000/sqm. Almost no lights. It seems it's still mostly empty, no neighbors. And when people do move in, there will be so much noise from renovations..."

"Maybe not. I heard those luxury apartments come fully furnished".

"Yes, but don't Chinese people always renovate the apartment when they move in?"

He pauses for a second, thinking, then laughs into the rearview mirror at me. "That's right...we do like to do that. Hahaha."

We're pulling up to the airport. But I still have one more question about real estate.

"Do you think the value of houses will go down because of the economy? Are you worried?"

"I heard that. I guess so. But I don't worry about it. I bought my house already. I won't sell it."

So...conclusions. ofc, Yang is just one guy, but his life seems pretty typical of a middle-income family in a large-but-not-huge Chinese city. I'm not a macroecon guy, and definitely not a real estate guy, but here's what I got from this chat, in a social anthropology sense:

1. Even after buying a property, long-term considerations still drive Yang to save money, most prominently his daughter and parents.

2. Yang and his wife give up consumption in pursuit of their long-term goals, even working an extra job, to put away extra cash for those goals.

3. He associates loose/free consumption habits with youth and a lack of responsibility. His consumption today is strategic and intentional. 

4. He is unperturbed by the prospect of real estate losing value, since he bought his house to live in, and doesn't intend to resell it.

These facts form the reality of how he consumes - sociocultural habits that make him distinct from a Shanghai consumer, an American consumer, or a generic consumer in an econ textbook. If you want Yang to behave differently, your proposed policy solution must be fit for purpose. If I hear a pundit talking about Chinese consumers, and how they will/won't behave in response to some government policy, I will always wonder what their mental model of this generic Chinese consumer's behavior looks like.

To be credible, that consumer behavior model should probably look like Yang, willing to work an extra job & skip consumption, not out of today's financial necessity, but in preparation of being a good filial son, and so his 3-year old daughter can take dance lessons someday. David Fishman

China's PV capacity hit 500 GW, will double to 1 TW by 2026. Investment in solar PV construction hit ~$15.8 billion in the first half of 2023, outpacing other power generation sources. Despite land constraints in coastal regions, provinces like Henan and Shandong lead in distributed solar PV installations, with the nation halfway through its five-year solar installation target. Read article →

• 369.000 suspected traffickers were identified
• 82.000 were detained
• 35.000 were convicted 
• 880 were publicly executed.

Beijing's "Proposal of the People's Republic of China on the Reform and Development of Global Governance," outlined what Xi Jinping’s global governance looks like in practice. These first three sections expound on his Global Security, Development, and Civilization Initiatives, by:

1. Articulating China’s position on specific security issues, from the war in Ukraine to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to nuclear security and counterterrorism
2. Calling for synergy between Chinese, foreign, and UN-led development initiatives, more balance and equity in global development, support for globalization, and efforts to fight climate change and food insecurity
3. Rejecting so-called "universal values" and a one-size-fits-all definition of human rights in favor of respect for sovereignty and national circumstances

The document also looks forward, calling for multilateral management of emerging technologies. It pushes cooperation in cyberspace, rejects a politicized “small yard, high fence” approach to tech, and calls to harness AI for common development. Finally, it proposes reforms to global governance, including:

• Better prioritizing developing world interests
• Reforming the UN Security Council
• Improving macroeconomic coordination

That will increasingly put China at odds with the Western countries that built (and benefit from) from the current world order. Read more →

High-speed rail to Taipei is now feasible. Senior official from state planner says people on both sides of the Taiwan strait of long ‘dreamed’ of a high-speed rail link. Read more →

BRICS 11 now controls the Arctic Sea Route, the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC), BRI’s East West Corridors, the Persian Gulf, the Red Sea and the Suez Canal. That blends overland corridors with nodes on the Maritime Silk Roads, integrating the Heartland and the Rimland with a single strategic move in the geopolitical chessboard. Read more →

New radar reaches Australia: the PLAN's new radar system can detect a ballistic missiles in northern Australia, 4,500km (2,800 miles) away and track multiple targets within 3,500km, or to Guam. The radar is suitable for installation on newer Chinese warships, with the first system already in construction. While the line of sight can be affected by the Earth's curve, the unprecedented boost in search and tracking capabilities could give the PLA Navy a major advantage, the researchers said.

Radars in most military vessels have a working range of a few hundred kilometres, limited by the immense power required to extend their capability. The researchers said they overcame the problem, making the system suitable for newer ships with electric propulsion systems.

According to the paper, the new-generation active phased array radar is made up of "tens of thousands" of transceivers, an order of magnitude far greater than featured in more usual devices, the researchers said.

Each transceiving array unit can send and receive signals as an independent radar. When working together, these units can generate pulse electromagnetic signals as powerful as 30 megawatts - enough to wreck the electrics of any warship in existence.

A Beijing-based radar scientist who was not involved in the project said that until recently the idea of putting a 30 megawatt radar on a battleship was "more or less science fiction".

But China is under enormous pressure to develop better radars for its warships because of the increasing US military activities in Asia, said the scientist, who asked not to be named due to the issue's sensitivity.

"The more powerful our naval radar becomes, the more likely it is that we can suppress the US in the South China Sea."

Size can be a problem when developing long-range radar systems. For instance, Florida's 32-megawatt AN/FPS-85 radar - the world's most powerful, according to its owner the US Space Force - takes up more than 23,000 square metres (250,000 sq ft) of floor space, or three soccer fields.

Technological advances have significantly reduced the size of high-power radars, with some critical components available in larger quantities and at lower prices than ever before, thanks to the mass application of 5G technology.

But the power supply for their groundbreaking radar remained a challenge for Sun and his colleagues, who had to overcome the radar's tendency to produce extremely strong electric shocks when generating its powerful signals in rapid pulses.

To prevent damage to the other electronic devices within the confined space of a vessel, Sun's team had to separate the radar from the ship's power network. This would require some large, high-performance capacitors to act as a buffer, they said.

The researchers turned to high-speed train manufacturer China Railway Rolling Stock Corporation (CRRC), the world's largest maker of bullet trains that built the world's first mass production line for super capacitors in 2013.

High-speed trains in China are driven by high-voltage current to reach an operational speed of up to 350km/h (217mph), with powerful and reliable capacitors ensuring a smooth and stable energy supply over long distances.

Sun's team said test results suggested that customised capacitors made by CRRC for the radar could almost eliminate the power shocks it generates. And at slightly over 1 tonne, the entire power supply system with capacitors and other components is small enough to fit in a ship, they said. It is also surprisingly efficient, according to the researchers. Even at full capacity, the radar would only impose a constant load of 235 kilowatts on the ship's power supply network, which could be handled by the generators on mainstream warships, they said. Read more →

World’s most powerful radar chip. A research team has built a finger-sized chip that can generate radar signals with 2.4 kW peak power, one or two orders of magnitude above power-amplifying chips in most radars.The new chips operate in the X band – a high-frequency microwaves used by the military to identify threats and guide missiles – and can be mass-produced at relatively low cost. Read more →

Somebody's missing something!

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.