CHINESE WAY OF LIFE

BRUCE LERRO—Often the rise of China and the Middle East appears to many Westerners as something recent, maybe 30 years old. Before that? Is Western dominance beginning with the Greeks and Romans – right? Wrong, not even close! The rise of the East and the South has roughly a 1,300 year history of dominance from 500 CE to 1800 CE. What is happening in the East today is no “Eurasian Miracle”. With the wind of 1,300 years at its back, it is returning to its long historical prominence today.

In two my recent articles, Neocon Realists and Global Neoliberals Dead on Arrival and The Myopia of Anglo Saxons Rulers I attempted to show how narrow International Relations Theory is in its systematic exclusion of the Eastern and Southern parts of the world from its theoretical history. In his book The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics, John Hobson rightfully accuses the West of Eurocentrism, paternalism, and imperialism. But in an earlier book, The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization, he methodically shows how the West first depended on and then denied that Eastern and Southern civilizations were a source of most of their technological, scientific and cultural breakthroughs. This article is based on The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization

PETER MAN—Trump will redouble his trade war and low-intensity conflicts with China. He will ignore the Taiwan red line by meeting with Lai Ching-te to test China. He will give the DPP the green light to prosecute and imprison TPP (party leader Ko Wen-je already imprisoned) and KMT lawmakers in a reign of terror. Will China react angrily and issue more toothless protests? Or will they make the nation whole again swiftly and bloodlessly at the time of their choosing (hopefully before being forced to act)? Everything Trump does will hasten the fall of the empire, but he will be more concerned about consolidating his power in America. A hot war, especially a losing one, will scupper his plans. He will try to avoid it. Trump is not hard to understand. He is as predictable as gravity. His presidency will be a train wreck for America and its vassals. The rest of the world, who are not vassals, can humour him and let him bloviate about how great a deal-maker he is.

ERIC ZUESSE—America’s version of capitalism is this, corrupt capitalism; and another name for it is fascism. But America’s version of it is the worst type of that: it is imperialistic fascism. And this is the reason why honest political discussion of America’s imperialism, and even merely referring to “the U.S. empire,” is prohibited throughout all of the billionaires’ ‘news’-media. So, here, from a news-medium that is not controlled by any billionaire, is a knowledgeable expert discussion of that:

PEPE ESCOBAR—The plenum proved once more that “socialism with Chinese characteristics” – or, for the recalcitrant, Chinese-modified capitalism – is “people-centric”. The supreme values are national interest and the people’s interests – attested by the fact that large private corporations remain under the strategic control of the CPC.

It’s idle to try to find in the final communique at the end of the plenum any restrictions on private capital on the path to “universal prosperity”. The key point is that the role of capital should always be subordinated to the concept of “socialism with Chinese characteristics”.

JAMES PURTILL—China is installing record amounts of solar and wind, while scaling back once-ambitious plans for nuclear. While Australia is falling behind its renewables installation targets, China may meet its end-of-2030 target by the end of this month, according to a report.

What’s next?

Energy experts are looking to China, the world’s largest emitter and once a climate villain, for lessons on how to rapidly decarbonise. While Australia debates the merits of going nuclear and frustration grows over the slower-than-needed rollout of solar and wind power, China is going all in on renewables. New figures show the pace of its clean energy transition is roughly the equivalent of installing five large-scale nuclear power plants worth of renewables every week.