During the Chinese revolution, progressive forces of the world lent every possible support to it. At that time, it was widely believed that most of the Chinese people consumed opium and were always in a stupor. Additionally the country’s economy lay totally shattered. It was said that the people in China went to the market with a bag full of currency notes and returned with a pocketful of goods. It was the Communist party and its dynamic leader Mao-Tse-Tung who were trying to give a new life to the Chinese people. After the conclusion of the 30-year revolutionary march a new government assumed power. The progressive and liberal people all over the world celebrated the epoch making event. The Chinese revolution aroused great hopes among the people who were still struggling to free themselves from the clutches of imperialists. They expected (now People’s Republic of) China to help them if not materially, at least morally.

After China became a People’s Republic, Jawaharlal Nehru, among world’s eminent leaders, extended a warm welcome to the new nation and saw it as a symbol of resurgent Asia. In order to fortify our friendship with China, Nehru sent a goodwill mission to that country. The delegation was led by Tapasvi Sunder Lal and among others consisted of Shakir Ali Khan, who was popularly known as Sher-e-Bhopal and R. K. Karanjia, the editor of Blitz. While the people of China were struggling, India sent a medical mission to China under the leadership of Dr. Kotnis. Later a film was made on the services rendered by Dr. Kotnis and his team members. The film titled Doctor Kotnis Ki Amar Kahani became very popular. Nehru did everything possible to consolidate our friendship with China. “Hindi Chini bhai-bhai” became a very popular slogan both in India and China. Nehru thought that both India and China could jointly work for the creation of a new world. For many years, the US and other Western countries refused to recognise the existence of Communist China. Nehru did a lot to secure an appropriate position for China in the comity of nations.

He insisted that China should be invited to the historic Bandung conference. Both India and China agreed that ‘Panchsheel’ should guide the relations between the two nations. But various liberation movements of the world felt disappointed when the People’s Republic of China refused to play the role which Soviet Union had played after the establishment of socialist regime there. Soviet Union aided liberation movements, including the South African movement against apartheid and the Palestinian movement.

Besides liberation movements, the Soviet Union also helped newly liberated nations to build their economic base. Nehru continued to help China but issues relating to border disputes alienated the two countries. Not only with India,China also had border disputes with other countries including Vietnam. And the day came when China and India came face to face in 1962. It seems that China nearly abandoned Communist ideology and devoted its entire energy in turning the country into an economic power. In my opinion China’s war-like postures and the 1961 communal riots in Jabalpur (Madhya Pradesh) shattered Nehru completely. Nehru might have lived longer but for the war with China and Jabalpur communal riots.

China established communist regime with great socio-economic ideals but it soon abandoned them and turned into an ultra nationalist country. On the other hand, Nehru continued to uphold high ideals. Gandhi, Patel and many other Indian and world leaders considered him a visionary. He always favoured a peaceful solution of disputes between nations, and was prepared to sacrifice narrow interests of the country for that. He was bitterly criticised by opposition parties after an outbreak of violent clashes with China. One well-known Member of Parliament called him a traitor while participating in the Lok Sabha debate on the Chinese aggregation. I know the name of the MP but I am not mentioning his name because he is no more.

Not only did China betray us but it also joined hands with Pakistan which was an ally of the US and a totalitarian country. There is evidence that during the armed conflict between India and Pakistan in 1965 the Chinese leaders did everything possible to add fuel to fire and later even tried to sabotage the Tashkent meeting. 

Like Nehru, Prime Minister Modi also tried to develop friendly relations with China and like Nehru he must be feeling betrayed. But let the opposition avoid using the unparliamentary language which they used against Nehru. At this hour let us collectively face the crisis and we can analyse pros and cons of the situation after normalcy returns. 

*The author is a veteran journalist and political analyst.

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The Supreme Court dismissed a petition seeking direction to Centre to approach the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against China. The petitioner prayed that the direction to the Centre should be for approaching ICJ for 600 billion USD as damages from China

Advocate Jaya Sukin appearing for the petitioner said that the petition should be considered as a representation by the government itself. The plea, filed by Madurai resident K K Ramesh, had alleged that COVID-19 has been “deliberately created by China as biological weapon against India”. The plea stated that since individuals cannot approach the ICJ, the Centre should be directed to do the same as per Article 93(1) of the UN Charter.

The plea also referred to the miseries of migrant workers, how they were stranded and also the disastrous impact on the economy caused due to the virus. It also raised the issue how the virus did not spread to other cities of China as much as it spread to the rest of the world including India.

The Supreme Court bench comprising CJI SA Bobde and Justices Dinesh Maheshwari and AS Bopanna refused to entertain the PIL.

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At a time when tensions are mounting between India and China, citizens are calling for the boycott of Chinese goods, the Prime Minister is calling for an ‘Atmanirbhar Bharat’ (self-reliant India) and the promotion of local companies, Chinese firm Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co. Ltd (STEC) has emerged to be the lowest bidder for the construction of the 5.6 km underground section between New Ashok Nagar and Sahibabad of the Delhi-Meerut RRTS (Regional Rapid Transit System), various media reports cited.

This essentially means that though the bid was under evaluation, the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC), a joint sector company of the Government of India and the states of Haryana, Rajasthan, Uttar Pradesh and Delhi, would end up awarding the design and construction of twin tunnels from New Ashok Nagar to Sahibabad and an underground station at Anand Vihar to STEC.

Metro Rail News reported that according to a disclosure by the National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC), five national and multinational companies had submitted their financial bids for the project, the details of which are:

• Shanghai Tunnel Engineering Co. Ltd. (STEC): Rs 1,126 crore (L-1)

• Larsen & Toubro Ltd. (L&T): Rs 1,170 crore (L-2)

• Gülermak Agir Sanayi Insaat ve Taahhut A.S. (Gulermak): Rs 1,326 crore (L-3)

• Tata Projects Ltd.- SKEC JV: Rs 1,346 crore (L-4)

• Afcons Infrastructure Ltd.: Rs 1,400 crore (L-5)

While STEC belongs to China, L&T and Afcons Infrastructure are Indian companies headquartered in Mumbai. Tata Projects is also an Indian company which is in a joint venture with SK Engineering & Construction which is a South Korean firm for the bid, while Gülermak Ağır Sanayi Insaat ve Taahhut is a Turkish construction and contracting company.

As per this development, STEC has to complete the tunneling work within 1,095 days as soon as the NCRTC issues it a Letter of Acceptance (LOA) once the bid has been evaluated.

However, the news of this contract has met with heavy objection by so-called nationalist organizations and citizens alike. In light of this, Swadeshi Jagran Manch (SJM) an affiliate of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) which backs swadeshi or indigenous initiatives, has put forth its views demanding that the BJP government at the Centre cancel the financial bid of the STEC keeping in line with its ‘self-reliant India’ ideology and award the tender to a domestic company instead.

Speaking to the Print, SJM National Co-Convener Ashwani Mahajan explained that the organization asked Nitin Gadkari, Road Transport and Highways Minister, to cancel the bid over two issues.

“First is, when we are promoting ‘Atma Nirbhar Bharat’ to encourage domestic companies, how can the government award contracts to a Chinese company? Second is security and quality issues. After the Covid pandemic, the trust factor is one of the major concerns with Chinese firms. We have earlier opposed Huawei participation in 5G trials on security issues and now we are pitching for the domestic industries,” Mahajan told The Print.

He added, “Earlier also, the Government of India rejected several tenders to promote the ‘Make in India’ programme. This is the perfect opportunity to promote domestic companies even if their quote is slightly higher. Also, we can’t trust the Chinese any more. We are attracting investments from other countries. If we will award contracts to them, how the concept of making India self-reliant will work.”

SJM has also begun a ‘Boycott China’ campaign urging people to stop promoting Chinese brands and governments from importing Chinese goods, apart from inviting tenders from Chinese companies. For this, SJM also held a protest along with some Army veterans outside the Chinese Embassy in Delhi on June 17, 2020 which resulted in the detention of some protestors by the Delhi Police.

चीन की कायराना हरकत के लिये स्वदेशी जागरण मंच ने चीन दूतावास के पास प्रदर्शन किया.. दिल्ली पुलिस ने प्रदर्शनकारियों को हिरासत में लिया https://t.co/Bn6G9Id1lX

— ASHWANI MAHAJAN (@ashwani_mahajan) June 17, 2020

While the SJM is protesting the bid with full fervour and the citizens have erupted in anguish over the same given the escalations between India and China, it doesn’t seem that the NCRTC is going to budge from its stand. An official speaking to The Print categorically ruled out the chance of rejecting STEC’s bid unless it was found that they had adopted “unfair means” for the same.

It is ironical that while the PM and members of the Centre engaged in pomp and show to promote the Atmanirbhar Bharat Abhiyan and push Indian companies to better the economy post the Covid-19 lockdown, it has once more backtracked on its words thus bringing to the fore its audacity to lie to the citizens and display its powerlessness in getting its act on track.

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On May 29, US President Donald Trump made a shocking announcement, terminating the relationship with the World Health Organisation. Addressing the media from the White House lawn Trump said, “Because they have failed to make the requested and greatly needed reforms, we will be today terminating our relationship with the World Health Organisation and redirecting those funds to other worldwide and deserving, urgent, noble public health needs.”

The US President alleged that the WHO had been pressured by China to cover-up the Coronavirus crisis when it first originated in China. Trump said, “Chinese officials ignored their reporting obligations to the World Health Organisation and pressured the World Health Organisation to mislead the world when the virus was first discovered by the Chinese authorities.” He added, “China has total control over the World Health Organisation despite only paying USD 40 million per year, compared to what the United States has been paying which is approximately USD 450 million a year.”

Accusing China for the global crisis caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, Trump said, “The world is now suffering due to the maleficence of the Chinese government. China’s cover-up of the Wuhan virus allowed the disease to spread all over the world instigating a global pandemic that has cost more than one hundred thousand American lives and over a million lives worldwide.” Trump said, “The world needs answers from China. We must have transparency. Why is it that China shut off infected people from Wuhan to all other parts of China? It went nowhere else. I didn’t go to Beijing. It went nowhere else, but they allowed them to freely travel throughout the world including Europe and the United States.”

Trump also continued his tirade against China blaming it for the failure of the American economy. Trump said, “China’s pattern of misconduct is well known. For decades they have ripped off the United States like no one has ever done before. Hundreds of billions of dollars were lost dealing with China, especially over the years during the prior administration.” He added, “China raided our factories, offshored our jobs, gutted our industries, stole our intellectual property, and violated their commitments under the World Trade Organisation. To make matters worse, they are considered a developing nation, getting all sorts of benefits that others including the United States are not entitled to.”

But Trump did not stop at merely blaming China for the pandemic or economic collapse. He also accused them of industrial espionage and said, “Today I will issue a proclamation to better secure our universities’ vital research and to suspend the entry of certain foreign nationals from China who we have identified as potential security risks.”

This open targeting of China by a person holding an office as powerful as that of the President of the United States could have implications for not just international relations between US and China, and the economies of both countries, but could also pose a potential threat to Chinese Americans and people of Chinese or East Asian origin, living, working in or vising the United States who could now be accused of being spies!

Racial tensions are already high in the United States in wake of the killing of George Floyd, an African American man, by a Derek Chauvin, a Minneapolis policeman, with protests, rioting and looting being reported from across the country. Already media persons including CNN’s reporter Omar Jiminez as well as his crew were arrested live on national television by the police while covering the unrest and protests in Minneapolis. Meanwhile, Wave 3 news reporter Kaitlin Rust and her camera person were shot at with rubber bullets, once again live on TV while covering the civil unrest in Louisville.

Meanwhile, officer Derek Chauvin, who was seen in a viral video pressing his knee on the neck of Floyd who was lying helplessly on the ground before he died, has now been arrested. His wife has also reportedly filed for divorce.

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The Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants Union recently encouraged staff to join protests at Hong Kong’s international airport. It should be noted that Cathay Pacific itself clarified in a note to the Global Times that it was not the event’s organiser, and that the protest didn’t constitute industrial action by its employees.

The message: a trademark umbrella during the original 2014 protests. Shutterstock

There have now been eight consecutive weeks of anti-government protests in Hong Kong. They started in opposition to (now suspended) extradition legislation, which would have seen suspects in the special administrative region sent to mainland China, but have since grown into a wider movement calling for the resignation of Carrie Lam, the leader of Hong Kong.

But while it is attracting global attention now, the movement has a long history that puts the unprecedented move of Cathay Pacific’s flight aviation union in context.

A student strike in late September 2014 saw the birth of Occupy Central with Love and Peace (OCLP). The occupation took hold of several key areas of the city that year, with campaigners employing non-violent civil disobedience. It officially lasted for 79 days, although its legacy is still being written.

Back then, the movement was focused on the right to universal suffrage, a fair and transparent electoral system, and ultimately an open democratic process. Pacifist symbols (yellow umbrellas, protective face masks and eye goggles) were deployed against police aggression (pepper spray and tear gas) – and the so-called “Umbrella Revolution” was born.

In 2017, 20 years after Britain’s colonial role of the territory came to an end, Lam, Beijing’s favoured candidate, was appointed Hong Kong’s leader, a move widely criticised by pro-democracy campaigners.

Further controversy followed a year later with the opening of the Hong Kong-Zhuai-Macau Bridge, which was described by independent lawmaker Claudia Mo as an “umbilical cord” to China.
 

Resistance

The mainland, over time, has been tightening its grip. But recent events at Hong Kong’s international airport and across the city show just how strong the resistance to perceived Chinese influence has become.

The well-educated middle classes are also front and centre of this resistance movement. In Annals of the American Association of Geographers, I argued that the mobilisation of professional, politically-oriented Hong Kong Chinese has seen the movement employing the “weapons of the well-educated”.

The phrase refers to political scientist and anthropologist James C Scott’s important 1980s work Weapons of the Weak, which explored peasant resistance in Malaysia. He described “the ordinary weapons of relatively powerless groups: foot dragging, dissimulation, desertion, false compliance, pilfering, feigned ignorance, slander, arson, sabotage, and so on”.

Hong Kong: protests are sweeping the city. Shutterstock

In modern Hong Kong, however, a very different demographic has been taking a stand. There, justice is being called for by locally born, Hong Kong citizens, many of whom were, or are, students at the city’s universities. This makes the movement harder to ignore and more difficult to silence.

Evolving protest

But the current protests have led me to revise this thinking further and to conclude that the protests have now become the “weapons of the well-connected”. The protests have been reinvigorated by further support from much of the city’s expatriate community, a topic I am currently researching. As part of this, I interviewed a 20-something half British, half Malaysian Chinese working in Hong Kong. Reflecting on their involvement in the anti-extradition protests earlier this month, they stated:
 

I do want to reiterate that these events have completely altered my view of HK [Hong Kong] society – particularly the police. You grow up thinking that the police are on your side and will always protect you … but I no longer trust the police and I don’t like them. The force used was completely unnecessary and an abuse of power and authority.

I also think the way that the bill [the controversial extradition law] was very quickly rushed through the system was a complete abuse of authority by Carrie Lam and her government. When I was tear gassed the second time, I was away from the large crowd that the police were kettling. The riot police were standing in a line and had their backs to me; we were about 200 metres behind them – unmoving and unarmed. It suddenly went silent and then I saw at least five gas canisters beneath my feet. ‘Surreal’ doesn’t begin to cover it.

They powerfully finished the interview by saying: “As much as I am now anti-police and anti-establishment, I have never felt more proud to call myself a Hong Konger; and I think many people will feel the same way.”

The role of city workers in the protests certainly shows how things have evolved since the 2014 Umbrella Revolution, which was an overwhelmingly local movement. While the political outlook of Hong Kong’s business elite had previously been largely apolitical, the perceived Chinese encroachment is now so great that even organisations are beginning to speak out.

The protests have already been aided by UK government support, causing increased tensions with the Chinese ambassador in London – and now they have the support of the Cathay Pacific Airways Flight Attendants Union. Hong Kong’s future as a special administrative region of China is unclear, but the connections forged with the international business community have changed the nature of protest in the city. And China will likely find it harder and harder not to listen.

Courtesy: The Conversation

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Millions of people in Hong Kong have come out to stop a proposed law that would have allowed China to try accused criminals, including political dissidents, in Chinese courts. Reuters/Athit Perawongmetha

On June 15, in response to massive popular resistance, Chief Executive Carrie Lam announced she would suspend a vote on a proposed new law that would allow China to extradite suspects accused of certain crimes and prosecute them in Chinese courts.

For over a week, some 1.3 million people had gathered daily outside Hong Kong’s legislature to protest the legislation, which protesters say China will abuse to extradite political dissidents. They managed to postpone a June 12 vote by blocking entry to the legislative building. Days later, consideration of the law was indefinitely postponed.

That temporarily protects Hong Kong’s judicial system, one of the island territory’s few remaining areas of government autonomy from China.

Protesters are now demanding that the bill be withdrawn, not just suspended. If the law comes up for vote at a later date, it will likely pass in Hong Kong’s legislative council, where pro-China forces dominate.

‘One country, two systems’

Chinese rule over Hong Kong, an island territory off the coast of Shenzhen, has long been disputed.

The British colonized Hong Kong in the 1800s following the Opium Wars. But China never accepted this territorial claim, and insisted throughout the 20th century that Hong Kong belonged to China.

In 1997, after a decade of negotiations between the United Kingdom and China, Hong Kong returned to China – with some strings attached. Knowing that Hong Kong had developed under a Western system of government, then Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping made Hong Kong a “Special Autonomous Region” and agreed to give the island a 50-year transition period to come fully under Chinese rule.

Under this system, Hong Kong would retain its judicial system and legislative council, affording the island relative independence in its day-to-day operations. But Hong Kong would belong to China. The arrangement became known as “one country, two systems.”

Controversially, full suffrage and free elections were not part of the 1997 deal.

For two decades, though, the “one country, two systems” arrangement seemed to give Hong Kong relative autonomy from Chinese interference.

Then, in 2014, China announced that people would be allowed to vote in Hong Kong’s 2017 chief executive election only from a short list of preapproved candidates.

Thousands took to the streets to demand universal suffrage. To protect themselves from police spraying tear gas at the front lines, they used umbrellas, giving rise to the name the “Umbrella Movement.”

Umbrella Movement protesters face off against police, Sept. 28, 2014. Reuters/Bobby Yip

In the years since the uprising, I have interviewed numerous democracy activists in Hong Kong as part of my academic research into the evolution of social movements.

Many participants told me that they believed the 2014 Umbrella Movement had ended peacefully because China didn’t want another Tiananmen Square on its hands. In 1989, Chinese soldiers opened fire on student protesters in Beijing, killing hundreds and raising global uproar.

Emboldened by international support for the Umbrella Movement, Hong Kong’s young activists have continued their efforts to protect their independence from China. Nine Umbrella Movement leaders ran for local office in Hong Kong in the territory’s 2015 elections.

In 2016 elections, two pro-independence politicians even won seats in the legislative council. However, they were quickly expelled for “failing” to properly recite their loyalty oaths at a swearing-in ceremony.

In 2017 Carrie Lam, a candidate loyal to Beijing and the driving force behind the extradition law, was elected Chief Executive – Hong Kong’s highest public official.

Creeping Chinese influence

Under Lam’s leadership, traditionally pro-democracy politicians were removed from office. Some were even arrested and jailed as dissidents.

Hong Kong Chief Executive Carrie Lam. Wikimedia Commons

Today, only 24 pro-democracy politicians remain in Hong Kong’s 70-seat legislative council.

Increasing Chinese influence on the island territory also threatens Hong Kong’s clout as a major economic hub.

For decades, Hong Kong’s relative autonomy has made the island territory an appealing place to do business in Asia. But under stronger Chinese rule, financial markets and regulatory systems in Hong Kong may become less reliable as they begin to reflect the national interests of China – not those of the free market.

The American Chamber of Commerce and several prominent Hong Kong business leaders have publicly spoken out against the extradition law.

“Spiriting people away over the border would undermine business confidence,” one hedge fund manager told the nonprofit human rights organization Hong Kong Watch.

Human rights at stake

Hong Kong’s legal system is now the only surviving pillar of “one country, two systems,” which was created to give Hong Kong autonomy over its legal, economic and financial affairs.

If the postponed extradition law passes, there will be no meaningful remaining barriers between democratic-leaning Hong Kong and authoritarian China.

For many in Hong Kong, that’s an intolerable future.

An assessment by the World Justice Project, a nonprofit organization that works to advance the rule of law worldwide, ranks Hong Kong 16th and China 82nd worldwide based on their constraints on government powers, absence of corruption, open government, fundamental rights, order and security, regulatory enforcement, civil justice and criminal justice.

China is a known violator of human rights. It systematically surveils and represses ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs, a Muslim population in China’s northwest region, and restricts internet access. The government has jailed hundreds of human rights lawyers since 2015.

Political dissidence is not tolerated in China. The late Nobel Peace Prize winner Liu Xiaobo, was sentenced in 2009 to 11 years in Chinese prison for “inciting subversion of state power.” He died in prison in 2017 after being denied travel abroad for cancer treatment.
Hong Kong, on the other hand, has a rich history of mass demonstrations.

Hong Kong protesters carry umbrellas – a symbolic reminder of the 2014 Umbrella Movement, June 17, 2019. Reuters/Athit Perawongmetha

In Hong Kong’s 1966 Star Ferry riots, people protested the British colonial government’s decision to increase transit fares. And every July 1 since 2003 – the anniversary of the 1997 transition from British to Chinese rule – people have taken to the streets pleading for universal suffrage.

“One country, two systems” has allowed Hong Kong residents to openly disagree with policymakers in a way mainland Chinese cannot. As required by Hong Kong’s legal system, democracy protesters arrested for their political activism are given legal representation, trials and serve time in Hong Kong’s well-regulated prisons.

The extradition law’s threat of trial and punishment in China would have a chilling effect on future democracy demonstrations there.

If “One country, two systems” falls, what remains of Hong Kong’s democracy will go down with it.

Courtesy: The Conversation

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The marked difference between the latest sanctions and previous rounds has been the criticism of them voiced by European states, who previously had accepted what had been imposed by Washington. So has US unlateralism gone too far?

While the most recent round of sanctions aims to put further pressure on Tehran for regime change and to support American regional allies, such as Israel and Saudi Arabia, they also have an indirect beneficiary in the form of the US’s biggest global rival, China. And this has wider implications for the region.
 

The Middle Kingdom meets the Middle East

While European firms have explored ways to circumvent American sanctions or seek waivers, the threat of sanctions is likely to scare away many firms from doing business in the country. This will leave a void that China is likely to fill. As a result, Chinese firms will gain a near monopoly on Iranian oil and trade.

While Chinese imports of Iranian oil have initially experienced a slight decline, it is possible that this is one of Beijing’s ploys to see whether deals serving China’s interests are offered by an increasingly isolated Iran. For while Iran has been receptive to Chinese investment in the past, it has equally sought European investment to balance this out and to prevent China from playing too dominant a role in the country. The sanctions have now made China’s dominance all the more likely.

China increasingly is building its influence in a region that has traditionally been dominated by the US. This may see Tehran become more amenable to Chinese global initiatives, such as the Belt and the Road Initiative (BRI) and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO).

The former is likely to see further Eurasian integration under China’s watch, while the latter, as a loose military alliance, is likely to be attractive to Iran as a deterrent to regime change.

But while these moves follow the common pattern of Chinese foreign policy, most notably Beijing’s willingness to take greater risks and conduct business in shunned nations, they have wider implications for the region and the wider world.
 

The way of Mao

Beijing has long been adept at exploiting developments in the international system for its own benefit – and Iran is the latest example of this. In this case, it is filling the void left by European firms that have been scared off by the threat of sanctions.

This raises questions about the utility of sanctions at a time when they have become a cornerstone of the Trump administration’s diplomatic arsenal. While there have been cases of sanctions being successful, most notably in ending apartheid rule in South Africa, they have rarely suceeded in changing state behaviour in recent years.

But possibly the most significant implication is how sanctions have led to widespread de-dollarisation, whereby the dominant global status of the dollar has been challenged. Since sanctioned states are no longer attached to the established system, it is easier for them to adopt an alternative way of operating. An example is the Petro Yuan – whereby China’s oil imports have been priced in yuan rather than in dollars – which has been adopted by oil-rich states targeted by sanctions, most notably Russia and Venezuela. The sanctions on Iran will only exacerbate this process.

Mao: still influential. Shutterstock

The Petro Yuan is evidence that China is challenging the established US-centric system and seeks to provide an alternative. This is reminiscent of Mao Zedong’s strategies for guerrilla warfare, where an insurgent seeks to make the government irrelevant over a long period of time before overthrowing it. By building ties with sanctioned nations and creating alternative international institutions, China is deploying a similar strategy on a global scale in an effort to bypass the the US.

As a result of this, there has also been wider Sino-Russian cooperation, such as in Syria. There, China is poised to play a role in rebuilding the country alongside Russia’s military assistance to it, having found common ground in their concerns over Islamic militancy .
Russia and China were also signatories of the Iran deal and have been dissatisfied with Washington’s abandonment of it. Trump’s present strategies have often been described as a “reverse Nixon”, seeking further ties with Russia to counter China. But the situation in Iran is more likely to see China and Russia jointly challenge the US.

By withdrawing from the deal, Trump has also split the Western world and while it is easy to turn Iran away from the table, it will be tougher to get it back there.
 

What next?

As a result of these developments, China has become one of the wild cards of the Middle East, challenging and changing the established system there. This also questions the utility of sanctions in the long-term since nations under longstanding sanctions are more open to alternative systems.

By providing an alternative, China seeks to challenge the established system by making it irrelevant. While China has abandoned Mao’s ideology, his strategies continue to be influential.

While the sanctions were seen as an attempt to preserve American dominance in the region, they will have consequences that will indirectly challenge this. This is one US play that could badly misfire.
 

Tom Harper, Doctoral Researcher in Politics, University of Surrey

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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China is the top source of plastic bottles, bags and other rubbish clogging up global sea lanes

Bigstock

Bangladesh has been listed among the top polluters of the world’s oceans. The country ranked 10th in polluting the oceans in 2010, said a report compiled by a team of researchers based in the United States and Australia, who analyzed plastic waste levels in the world’s seas.

The team of researchers was led by Jenna Jambeck, an environmental engineer at the University of Georgia.

Bangladesh dumped 0.79 million metric tons of plastic waste in to the oceans in 2010, the Statista Portal reports.

Meanwhile, China and Indonesia are the top sources of plastic bottles, bags and other rubbish clogging up global sea lanes. These two countries account for more than a third of plastic accumulation in global waters, according to the report published by sciencemag.org.

Infographics by Statista

In 2010, China dumped 8.8 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste, with an estimated 3.53 million metric tons of it ended up in the ocean.

The same year, Indonesia dumped a total of 3.2 million metric tons of mismanaged plastic waste and it is estimated that 1.29 million metric tons became marine plastic debris.

These countries are followed by Philippines, Vietnam, Sri Lanka and Thailand, ranked by the amount of plastic waste they dump in the oceans.

India came out at 12th position with 0.60 million metric tons of plastic waste dumped in the oceans, while Pakistan is ranked at 15 position by dumping 0.48 million metric tons of plastic the same year.

The United States is also guilty of polluting oceans with plastic, but at a much lower level than China. Annually, 0.11 million metric tons of waterborne plastic garbage comes from the United States.

Courtesy: Dhaka Tribune

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Shutterstock

How did the United States get rich?
The textbooks tell us it was the “free enterprise” genie. The Founding Fathers, they say, had the foresight to construct a political and economic vision of a commercial republic, committed to private property, open markets, and individual liberty. Slavery was the only major stain on this vision — until our “new birth of freedom” extinguished it in war.

Despite protectionist spasms when the country was young, America emerged as the champion of the “liberal economic order” after the Second World War — and now is the time to defend it against a rising China and an economically illiterate commander-in-chief, they say.

The Rise of the “Yankee Leviathan”
This story, unfortunately, is mostly false.

As the economic historian Paul Bairoch has written, America is the “mother country” of protectionism. The very first act passed by Congress was the Tariff of 1789, and the United States consistently maintained some of the world’s highest tariff levels throughout the 19^th century, when it became an economic powerhouse. What the economists call “infant industry protection” was essentially pioneered in the United States, reflecting Alexander Hamilton’s view that “capital,” without government support, “is wayward and timid in lending itself to new undertakings.”

And despite our present sanctimonious lecturing to China, we weren’t too keen on the sanctity of intellectual property, either. This was one of Charles Dickens’s many gripes about the United States, as he saw pirated editions of his novels proliferate across the Atlantic without any copyright constraints. Echoing modern American policymakers and business leaders, he complained that “I am the greatest loser alive by the present law.”

Of course, times have changed. American tariffs have, on the whole, decreased, and we are no longer proudly ripping off innocent British novelists.

Nonetheless, this history matters. For one thing, other countries know it well — and are trying to copy it. Chinese leaders may claim to offer a new and exciting “Beijing Consensus” stemming from the unique genius of the Communist Party, but they are doing little more than putting the American model on steroids.

Although the methods are different, the key ingredients are remarkably similar to those of the late 19^th Century “Yankee Leviathan“: the suppression of organized labor; the creation of a cheap, easily exploitable migrant underclass; national infrastructure programs; and, yes, protectionism. China has just done it all faster and more brutally.

Kicking Away the Ladder
Our current strategy, to paraphrase Friedrich List, is to “kick away the ladder.”

Britain perfected this art after the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, becoming the leading proponent of free trade only once it had conquered a third of the world with a mixture of raw naval power and the highly restrictive Navigation Acts, which entrenched the catchy principle of “English trade for English vessels” over nearly two centuries.

The Founding Fathers and many subsequent American leaders were smart enough to see through the British game. China probably did, too, but — with no central political authority in a degenerating “century of humiliation” — had no means of countering it.
Now, however, the picture has changed dramatically.

China has the power not just to protect “infant industries” through tariffs, currency manipulation, or subsidies, but also to withstand American attempts at “hitting back” in a tit-for-tat spiral: inflicting reciprocal pain in politically important U.S. states, and absorbing economic coercion through government spending and redistribution.

What has changed less is the American appetite for protectionism. The most globally significant U.S. industries receive government largesse in a wide variety of forms. Subsidies for agribusiness; generous tax breaks for tech giants; unmonitored and seemingly unlimited contracts for defense companies — these sectors of the economy have hardly pulled themselves up by their bootstraps.

Warnings from History
In this context, condemnation of China’s inadequate enthusiasm for free markets is obviously unprincipled.

But maybe it is smart. After all, international politics is inherently dishonest and hypocritical, especially when incumbent and emerging superpowers are involved. President Trump is not the only one who wants us to win at this game without moral compunction.

A similarly calculating approach worked for Britain. At least until the patience of Germany — its primary economic and strategic rival — ran out.

After unification in 1871, shrewd politicians like Otto von Bismarck led Germany through a rapid industrial revolution that would have undoubtedly impressed Xi Jinping, and carefully avoided antagonizing their superior but declining competitor.

Eventually, however, their less sober successors wanted a piece of the global imperial pie. They were also tired of lectures on “democracy” and “liberalism” from a British government that would offer none of these things to the Indians or the Irish — and didn’t hesitate to use military force against its own miners.

Germany and Britain fell into what Graham Allison calls “Thucydides’ Trap“: war between rising and falling nations.

As the American president becomes more bombastic, belligerent, and unpredictable in his approach to China, we ought to remember these eerie historical analogues, rather than inflate delusions about our role in the global economy.

If we look honestly at our own history, we can begin to understand China’s current and future goals. Then, we can think about our best methods of accommodation or — gasp! — “appeasement.” This, of course, carries domestic political costs. But compared to the long-term costs of escalation, it is cheap.
 

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But a study we conducted of one Chinese region provided an opportunity to test the most common hypothesis – that witchcraft accusations act as punishment for those who do not cooperate with local norms. According to this theory, witch tags mark supposedly untrustworthy individuals and encourage others to conform out of fear of being labelled. However, some empirical studies have shown that witch labelling instead undermines trust and social cohesion in a society.

Our study is based on 800 households in five villages in south-western China. We examined the social behaviour of those who were labelled with a “witch” tag, and compared it with those who were not. The work, published in Nature Human Behaviour, was the basis of a long-term collaboration between scientists from University College London, the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and Lanzhou University.

To determine the social networks and cooperation between households, we conducted house-to-house surveys, asking who had children, marriages and partnerships with whom. We also collected data on gift-giving, and on working groups on farms during harvest and planting seasons to see who was helping other households with their farming. All these measures gave rise to four social networks between households based on kinship, reproductive partners, gifts exchanged or farm work.

Magic poison

While in the area, we were occasionally warned not to eat in certain households, as women there were believed to be supernatural “poison givers”. The label they used – “zhu” or “zhubo” – is sometimes also translated as “witch”. It was common knowledge which homes were so labelled and we were surprised to find it accounted for 13% of the households.

The tag was one of the strongest predictors of assortment on social networks. Those from tagged households rarely had children or partnerships with those from untagged households, nor did they exchange gifts or work on each others’ farms very often. However, tagged households were helping each other and reproducing with each other, which mitigated the costs of exclusion from mainstream social networks.

We also played an “economic game” in the villages, where each person was given a small sum of money and asked to donate any proportion of it they wished to the village (to be divided among all the players). We found no evidence that those tagged as “witches” were any less cooperative in this game than any others.

In fact, we found that labelled households were very similar to other households, except the tagged households were more likely to be headed by women and were actually slightly wealthier than average.

We also discovered that the process of acquiring the label was opaque. Even victims often did not know who had started a rumour about them, they may just begin to notice others avoiding them. Some sources report such tags running in the family, with daughters inheriting the status from their mothers. Hence the origin of the slur could have occurred long ago.

Interpreting the results

Anthropologists who believe that the fear of loss of reputation (by witch labelling or other reasons) can be a huge driver of cooperation in the wider community often back their arguments with laboratory experiments using economic games. Such experiments also show that those who punish transgressors can gain reputational benefits themselves.

However real world examples of this are hard to come by. Most studies of witchcraft are not quantitative and do not examine social networks as we have done. While this study suggests there is no evidence that those labelled with this harmful tag were uncooperative, it does not fully explain why such accusations stick in some cases and not in others.

Our conclusion is that witch accusation has evolved from competition between households. Labelling may have become a way for people to get ahead of their rivals and gain a competitive advantage in reproduction or resources. However, the sources of competition may be different in different cases.

Giant Buddha Statue of Leshan, Sichuan, China. Ariel Steiner/wikipedia, CC BY-SA

There are other explanations that may apply too. All around the world conceptions of witchcraft share many common features. For example, middle aged women are the most common victims, and accusations of poisoning are frequently involved. But there are also many differences. Another idea for the origins of witchcraft denunciations is that they are common when patriarchal institutions are trying to establish dominance over matriarchal ones. This could possibly also apply in this case as Buddhism, the most common religion in the area, is more male-dominated whereas the traditional social structure in the region is “matrilineal”, where descent is usually traced through the female line.

A patriarchal dimension to witchcraft accusations could also explain the prevalence of women as victims both in traditional societies, and even in modern contexts that can resemble “witch hunts”, such as online bullying specifically targeting women.

The more research we do, the closer we can get to understanding and tackling the mechanisms behind these practices that can be devastating for women across the world.

Ruth Mace, Professor of Anthropology, UCL

This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article.

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