China: A Source of Hope, Not Fear
Bill Totten
Blatant lying and xenophobic propaganda are in the standard toolkit of US politicians and foreign policy professionals. China should not be a source of fear.
by Dee Knight
https://www.laprogressive.com (July 04 2024)
Visiting China is habit-forming - I made my second visit in less than a year in June. Last November I was part of a delegation to prove "China is not our enemy" {1}, which was an eye opener and an inspiration.
We landed first in Taiwan, offering a chance to see it's really part of Mainland China. We also visited Xinjiang, where we could see for ourselves {2} that the propaganda about "slavery" and "genocide" there was just part of the official US "hate China" narrative.
This time I was invited by friends at The China Academy, a new "think tank" based in Shanghai that produces Thinkers Forum {3}, a new and innovative journalism project that spotlights radical thinkers from everywhere.
They interviewed me last fall about "Why Socialism Is Catching Up in the US" (still on my blog {4}). This time they asked to review more sobering recent developments on the home front.
I told of a new call for a United Front Against Fascism, which harks back to 1969 when the Black Panthers launched a similar effort. I also focused on the surge in international solidarity stimulated by the US-backed Israeli genocide of Palestinians, and efforts to oppose US aggression against both Russia and China.
I highlighted the upcoming anti-Nato summit {5} July 6~7 in Washington DC, and the campaign against RIMPAC {6} - the naval war games roiling the Pacific waters around Hawai'i, involving numerous Nato countries. I explained how the "Stop RIMPAC" campaign could lead to support for resistance among active-duty soldiers and sailors, who seem like "sitting ducks" in the Western Pacific as well as the South and East China Seas. (It doesn't matter to war planners in Washington DC that the Pacific is not really part of the North Atlantic, where Nato was originally based.)
My point was to highlight efforts to stop US threats and attacks against China. Support for active-duty resistance among US soldiers and sailors became a strategic factor in helping the Vietnamese liberation forces defeat US aggression back in the 1960s and 1970s. This time, as retired US Army Colonel Ann Wright wrote {7} last month, "the world's largest naval war exercises are going to be held in the mid-Pacific from June 26 to August 2, and Nato is in the middle of it". If the soldiers and sailors refuse to fight, maybe the war won't happen!
The Importance of People-to-People Visits
People-to-people visits to China are super important now, to cut through official US antipathy against China - "a growing cancer among the US political class", as Danny Haiphong said in reporting on another recent peace delegation to China {8}.
US military commanders talk openly of war in 2025, and are forging a "Far East Nato" for that purpose. "All of this is a threat to our very existence and livelihoods", Danny says. People-to-people exchanges can help to avoid ordinary people getting drawn into the US war threats. "Solidarity means viewing each other as equals, and helping one another", Danny added.
Black Agenda Report editor Margaret Kimberley also took part in that Friends of Socialist China delegation. "I'm reminded how deprived of information we are in the US", she said. "We're propagandized to hate and fear nations the government doesn't like.
When US policy is said to represent the world, the biggest country is left out of the equation. Not only do we see a country outside the US sphere of influence, but very much standing on its own: modernization and common prosperity, peaceful development. 'Common prosperity' is a foreign concept in the US.
The major root of US animus against China is socialism. Hostility and jealousy are key to the official US view of China.
A "Playground for Elderly People"
Margaret said she saw a public park that was like "a playground for elderly people". Me too. On a casual evening walk near my hotel in Beijing, I saw dancing in the streets. At a street fair families and couples of all ages strolled past well-stocked booths offering pastry, ice cream, snacks, books, music, and more.
I spent 21 yuan ($3) for an ice cream cone, and the same for a croissant, then stopped to witness impromptu dance performances by retirees, dancing in formation, sometimes with a lead choreographer and sometimes not. In one case a 3-year-old girl imitated the seniors, to the pleasure of her mom.
In other corners of the promenade young people played "foot catch" with a floppy fabric shuttlecock, showing impressive skill with behind-the-back reverse kicks.
As I continued walking, on one corner about two blocks along the promenade there was a Huawei store - a virtual copy of Apple stores in the US - offering shoppers a variety of 5G smart phones and laptop computers, as well as shiny new electric cars. Behind the store a shopping mall stretched back, offering standard mall merchandise to delight and tempt every consumer pleasure.
It was a contrast from the penny-pinching ambiance of the street fair, suggesting an easy transition from moderation to modest opulence. I had a sense that people are carefree, and while most would content themselves with snacks, street music and ice cream, the temptations of more conspicuous consumption appear within reach. My guide told me most Chinese feel they are better off now than ever before.
Getting to this level of prosperity has been a long-term project. Michael Wong, a vice president of Veterans For Peace and co-founder of Pivot to Peace, sent a documentary about China's Poverty Alleviation Program {9}. PBS originally funded the documentary last year, but after the film was completed, showing the effectiveness of the program, PBS refused to show it.
The film is now instead available on the Chinese YouTube channel, CGTN. It details the intensive effort organized by the Communist Party to go to poverty-stricken areas across Western and rural China, identify the poorest people there, and help them overcome poverty. It was an epic effort, massively successful in helping hundreds of millions of people change their lives for the better.
Common Prosperity
The "common prosperity" slogan emerged 12 years ago in contradiction to the social and economic distortions - and injustices - that accompanied "reform and opening up". These distortions are quite evident in China today, where lavish investment has resulted not only in fabulous infrastructure development, industrialization, and enormous skyscrapers, but inequality between rich and poor. Without forgetting the historic achievement of lifting 800 million people from extreme poverty, it's useful to examine the actual direction of "market socialism".
Late model electric vehicles of many distinct brands clog the streets and highways, along with electric scooters and bicycles along, often sharing the road with heavy transport and construction vehicles. They make the vast metro underground, which is fast, clean, and quiet, all the more attractive!
City buses and tourist vans complete the cluster, forging a crawling mass of traffic. Emerging out of this logjam at the edge of the sprawling capital is a relief, especially as the road elevates upwards into cleaner and lighter air. The mountains outside the capital are lush, craggy, and beautiful. Fortresses and lookout towers begin to appear, heralding the start of the Great Wall, which climbs and extends long into the distance - for thousands of kilometers from East to West.
China's heritage as a great nation dating back thousands of years looms over its present realities like a suit of armor. The memory of a century of humiliation (following invasions from the West during the Opium wars from 1839 to 1856) provides a constant reminder of the limitless value of the revolution, with all the security and prosperity it has brought.
But the heritage of greatness - based in feudalism - seems to live on as a basis of Xi Jinping's call for "national rejuvenation". The desire for individual and/or family prosperity is evidently very strong, especially among rich folk and "capitalist roaders" who have benefited from Deng's dictum that "it's great to get rich", but also among the general population. This "national rejuvenation" seems to be a generalized desire for comfort and pride that can transcend class and class consciousness.
Big crowds of Chinese people of all ages thronged up the Great Wall - women in their eighties demonstrating determination to make the climb, together with their sons and daughters with kids from 4 to 12 in tow. It seems to show a desire to celebrate and "re-live" China's ages-long march to sovereignty and self-definition as a strong, proud, and dignified people-nation.
At the Ming Tombs our guide highlighted that the great emperor Zhu Di was ably supported by the admiral Zheng He, who led seagoing trade expeditions in the 15th century along the coasts of southern Asia and Africa, well before the pillaging voyages of Columbus, et al, in the West.
These historical roots are a living factor in China's confidence to press ahead with its development, in partnership with neighboring countries far and wide, determined to sustain its efforts in spite of Western determination to stop them.
While the US and its vassal states in both Europe and Asia strive and spend to "surround" and "contain" it, China's response has been to forge prosperous trading relationships across the globe, and develop alternate trading routes on both land and sea.
The message: China is unstoppable, and is succeeding in making "Common Prosperity and a Shared Future" more than a slogan both inside the country and among the majority of countries across the world, who are seeing the value of a "shared future" based on common prosperity.
Socialism with Chinese Characteristics
The role of the Communist Party of China (CPC) , with its nearly 100 million members, as China's leading political force, provides a measure of assurance that "socialism with Chinese characteristics" will be the context for China's "shared future." But the question arises: where are the CPC leaders heading?
Many of them occupy top leadership posts across all China's municipalities and provinces, where they guide thousands of development projects. Xi and the party's central leadership have conducted a relentless long-term anti-corruption campaign, for which the focus has most often been the corruption rooted in dealing with developers and construction magnates mainly interested in profit for personal gain.
And the proposed solution to poverty has been encouragement for poor farmers and local communities to set up profitable businesses. In fact the party's "capitalist roaders" have the initiative today, at least in part, despite Xi's efforts. But the party and state have a firm grasp of the "commanding heights" - the planning system, the banks, and the state-owned enterprises, which together provide guarantees of common prosperity.
A Chinese Marxist journal, Wenghua Zhongheng, takes an in-depth look at the role of the market in developing "productive forces" and harnessing the energies of both producers and consumers. It says:
Despite its achievements, China remains a developing country and faces significant economic, social, and political challenges as it seeks to advance beyond its "primary stage" of socialism. These challenges include:
* the need to reduce inequality, both between urban and rural areas and between regions of the country
* raise the income and social well-being of over 300 million (internal) migrant workers
* reduce high levels of youth unemployment
* reduce the high degree of economic dependency on a financialized real estate sector
* address the environmental consequences resulting from hyper-accelerated industrialization
* adapt to an aging population and declining birth rate
* revive Marxist political education within the Communist Party of China (CPC) and among the masses (a priority for Xi Jinping)
* navigate the hybrid warfare tactics employed by Western powers to try to contain China's progress
Even with impressive recent progress, China today faces the socialist challenges of how to prioritize people's basic needs for housing, education, healthcare, family planning, and so on. Danny Haiphong and Margaret Kimberley, and others on the Friends of Socialist China delegation, observed that these challenges are the current focus of the party leadership.
There is no homelessness in China, but currently there is a crisis caused by excessive investment in luxury apartment buildings, many of them empty - a haunting echo of the current US reality where vacant living spaces far exceed the more than 600,000 homeless people. Chinese social analysts observe that young people are delaying marriage decisions for a variety of reasons, including the cost of housing.
China's education and health care systems are vastly better than their US counterparts, but gaps and shortfalls remain. A major difference is that the Chinese leadership is engaged in serious efforts to confront these shortfalls and concerns, in consultation with the people.
China's Message of Success
The message of success that China offers the leaders of at least 150 countries across the world is to regain sovereignty through independent national planning and investment, with support from the new non-oppressive credit system provided by the BRICS bank. This is a significant improvement over the neo-colonial model offered by Western powers, which has led to deep indebtedness and impoverishment instead of national growth.
China's foreign policy specifically avoids dictating political direction or favoritism for any political group or tendency in the countries China helps. It thus "makes friends" with everyone, including such questionable partners as the leaders of India, Indonesia, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, and so on - all major partners of the US.
The positive impact of this wide-open partnership is "de-dollarization" - a drastic loosening of the economic strangulation imposed by US dollar dominance of world trade. A transformation of global trade can already be foreseen. But so can the response of the US and its vassals, who are fighting back to stop this existential threat to their domination.
The proxy war against Russia, and the genocide against Palestinians, are the most prominent manifestations of this reaction, together with the escalating threats of war against China. The question arises: can the empire be prevented from striking back? I think so.
The US and its vassals are losing in Ukraine, adding one more loss, following their debacles in Afghanistan and Iraq; and their prospects appear grim in the Middle East/West Asia, where Israel has failed to defeat the Palestinian resistance even as it continues to slaughter and starve very large numbers in both Gaza and the West Bank. Combined with de-dollarization, these defeats could change history, heralding the long-term demise of US imperialism and the colonial era as a whole.
To make these hopes a reality, we need solidarity with China, as the "key link" in global anti-imperialist efforts. Most importantly, we need to overcome the tendency among some Western "progressives" to echo official hatred and negativity toward China. We should also avoid "perfectionism" in viewing China's progress and trajectory.
The mere fact that the US and its vassals are targeting China means we must defend it. We are in fact very fortunate that China is offering something of great value to the entire world: common prosperity and a shared future.
Tourism Lessons
In touring the Forbidden City - the ancient government center that looms behind the current National People's Congress and other government buildings - I viewed gargantuan halls, nested one after the other in so many nests that I lost count. They all have names evoking peace and harmony.
The walls of all the halls held the offices and living quarters of the thousands of ministers conducting the empire's business. We saw one hall dedicated to regular testing for admission to the imperial civil service - a contribution of Confucius from the 5th century BCE that I believe lives on in the infamous "Gaokao" testing system that controls entry to China's leading universities, thus determining the fate of most Chinese youth.
It's a mixed blessing - a meritocratic vehicle for China's "best and brightest" to staff ministries and state-owned enterprises, which also subjects children to years of stress and discipline to pass just one fateful exam.
The CPC provides a kind of alternative to the Gaokao system, as it recruits new young members through the League of Communist Youth, for which entry qualifications include consciousness-oriented criteria such as leadership, self-discipline, and community service. The thousands of young cadre who went to China's poorest regions as part of the campaign to uproot extreme poverty probably came largely from this source.
Our tour included several huge Buddhist temples. Many of the visitors burned incense and "kowtowed" repeatedly before entering each of the several shrines. It showed the continued vitality of religious observation among Chinese people. My guide said Buddhism has the most adherents, totaling about 15% of China's population, but Daoism also has influence, as well as Islam.
The party and government specifically recognize freedom of religious belief and practice, and self-determination for the 55 national minorities who share China with the Han majority. Chinese Communism is based on the science of historical materialism, and is thus essentially atheist and non-religious, but the CPC and the Chinese government defend and protect the rights of religious and national minorities - a policy enshrined in the Chinese Constitution.
My guide said the most popular and influential Buddhas come from Tibet. This made me think how silly and cynical it has been for the US to pretend to "free Tibet" from China, just as it attempted to convince people in the West that the Uyghurs of neighboring Xinjiang were subjected to "genocide". I was part of a US peace delegation to Xinjiang last November, during the cotton harvest, in which we witnessed for ourselves that there is neither "slavery" nor "genocide" there.
The cotton harvest uses mechanical harvesters - just like those used in the US today and in recent decades - in stark contrast to the US slave system that existed for more than three centuries. The cynical use of these loaded terms by Trump's Secretary of State Michael Pompeo was clearly an example of his own admission that "we lied, we cheated, and we stole - it's the glory of America!" Pompeo's presidential ambitions were scotched by those words.
Of course blatant lying and xenophobic propaganda are part of the standard political toolkit of US politicians and foreign policy professionals, from Teddy Roosevelt to John Foster Dulles to Michael Pompeo to Antony Blinken. They serve the interests of oil barrons and nation robbers miraculously disguised in the robes of "Manifest Destiny" and the Monroe Doctrine.
National Rejuvenation Through Infrastructure Development
Taking the "bullet train" at Beijing's huge South Terminal is itself a testament to China's current drive for "national rejuvenation". The terminal is large enough to house any major US train terminal many times over, with literally dozens of train routes spanning out in all directions, to the hundreds of major Chinese cities.
The high-speed "bullet trains" and the tracks they run on were mainly developed over the recent quarter century, adding to the already extensive standard rail system. Together with the "metro" subways developed for the roughly three dozen principal cities, and new highways and bridges, this massive infrastructure development has been a major driver of China's explosive modernization drive. The price is low for using the trains, so they're full. Chinese people seem to be constantly on the move.
This infrastructure development was China's economic response to the 2008 global financial crisis. Instead of sustaining a negative impact of the crisis, China's economic development accelerated - not only assuring steady employment for its hundreds of millions of workers, but also providing a "safety valve" or "rescue hatch" that cushioned the blow of the crisis for numerous capitalist countries. The experience served as a model for many of the countries now clamoring to become part of the BRICS system.
In Hangzhou I visited the Grand Canal Museum, and saw evidence that developing infrastructure has been part of China's heritage for centuries. It started in the 5th century BCE, first linking a series of local canals, then expanded in the 7th century AD as the North-South Canal; then in the 13th century it was expanded again and became the Hangzhou-Beijing Grand Canal.
About a thousand miles long, it was the first and largest canal in the world, and was the primary freight transport route between China's north and south until the early 20th century, when rail transport largely replaced it. It was a factor in unifying the country, and facilitating dynamic development of internal commerce. It helped make Hangzhou among the most prosperous in China.
Goodbye, China!
Returning to Shanghai-Pudong airport, I arrived by car from Suzhou - possibly the nicest city in China. My guide there took me to the old Tongli village which we traversed on a canal boat. Suzhou is thousands of years old, much older than nearby Shanghai, which was a fishing village not far from Suzhou, the provincial capital at that time.
There is so much more to say and write about China. Its past, present and future offer continuous fascination. It should not be a source of fear, but rather of solidarity and hope for the future.
Also see: https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/nato-taking-over-the-pacific
Links:
{1} https://covertactionmagazine.com/2023/12/01/traveling-to-prove-china-is-not-our-enemy/
{2} https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/eyewitness-xinjiang
{3} https://thechinaacademy.org/thinkersforum/
{5} https://www.unacpeace.org/
{7} https://www.laprogressive.com/war-and-peace/nato-taking-over-the-pacific
{8} https://www.youtube.com/live/wdh41MxswTE
{9} https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuaJGPZCBYU&t=80s
The opinions expressed here are solely the author's and do not reflect the opinions or beliefs of the LA Progressive.
https://www.laprogressive.com/foreign-policy/china-a-source-of-hope