To mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat in World War II, Qiao Collective is pleased to publish transcripts from two recent interventions into the roiling debate over its historical legacy. Together, these pieces invoke the defeat of Japanese imperialism not as a static historical event, but as a touchstone of anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation that can and must be reinvigorated today.

Editor’s Introduction

On September 3, 2025, China marks the 80th anniversary of its victory in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression. Often reduced in Western narratives to a secondary theater of World War II, China played a central role in the defeat of fascism. An estimated 20 to 35 million Chinese people gave their lives in this titanic struggle for national liberation, a toll equalled in absolute terms only by the Soviet Union’s losses in its Great Patriotic War against Nazi Germany, and in relative terms by the sacrifices of other Asian nations resisting Japanese occupation.

The centerpiece of this year’s commemoration is a military parade in Beijing’s Tiananmen Square, bringing together heads of state and government from 26 countries including most of China’s Eurasian neighbors. While headlines have focused on the top billing accorded to Russia and the DPRK, equally notable is the glaring absence of any official delegates from the Western Allies of WWII. Under pressure from the largely unreformed and unrepentant Japanese government, the West’s snubbing of China’s commemoration reflects a memory culture more fractured along the lines of the New Cold War than ever before. China’s commemoration, which by no coincidence follows the largest-ever summit of the multilateral Shanghai Cooperation Organization, has itself become a flashpoint of the New Cold War as US media now accuses China of “revisionism” for its recentering of anti-imperialist struggle in Asia as a pillar of fascism’s defeat. 

This polarization was already well in motion during the 70th anniversary parade in 2015 and has only deepened since then (as we noted in our own 75th anniversary remembrance in 2020). In Europe, the revisionist narrative equates fascism with communism, rehabilitating Ukraine’s Nazi collaborators and their modern-day heirs as the vanguard of Western civilization against an “Asiatic” Russia. It also severs the Nazi Holocaust from the history of Western colonial genocides, as its current Zionist iteration proceeds in Gaza with full support from both Germany and the other NATO countries that take undue credit for the Nazi defeat in WWII.

In East Asia, of course, the ink was barely dry on Japan’s Instrument of Surrender when the United States took its place as imperial hegemon. Nonetheless, the legacy of its wartime atrocities beset US strategic planning with uneasy contradictions throughout the Cold War. In Japan itself, occupation forces gladly rehabilitated the most monstrous and unrepentant war criminals in order to build it up as an anticommunist outpost of US power. But in two of the nations that had suffered the most under Japan’s colonial rule, shared memories of the liberation struggle stubbornly bridged the political divides violently imposed by US imperialism: uniting Chinese on both sides of the Taiwan Strait, and Koreans on both sides of the DMZ.

Today, the unifying history of shared struggle against Japanese occupation is breaking down under an unprecedented ideological offensive by the US and its proxies, even as their hegemony wanes globally. In South Korea the far-right regime of Yoon Suk-yeol made humiliating concessions to Japan on war reparations in order to facilitate a trilateral alliance with the US directed squarely against China. While Yoon’s December 2024 coup attempt brought that particular regime to an untimely end, it finds an ideological echo in Taiwan’s current separatist leadership. Under the ruling Democratic Progressive Party, Taiwan has banned serving officials from attending the Beijing parade and strongly discouraged war veterans from joining their former comrades in remembrance, all while diminishing both Japanese atrocities and the Communist Party’s outsize role in ending them.

To mark the 80th anniversary of Japan’s defeat, Qiao Collective is pleased to publish transcripts from two recent interventions into this roiling debate over its historical legacy. The first was delivered by Zang Ruxing (臧汝興) of the Labor Party of Taiwan at a conference hosted in late July 2025 by Okinawa-based anti-militarist organization ZENKO (National Assembly for Peace and Democracy). The second is from a speech by one of our members, Charles Xu, at a Los Angeles rally organized by anti-imperialist Korean diaspora organization Nodutdol to commemorate Korea’s Liberation Day. Together, these pieces invoke the defeat of Japanese imperialism not as a static historical event, but as a touchstone of anti-imperialist struggle for national liberation that can and must be reinvigorated today.  

Report Manuscript at ZENKO Sagamihara 2025

臧汝興 (Zang Ruxing), Labor Party of Taiwan

Dear comrades, greetings!

We progressives have long emphasized the importance of international solidarity, especially when it comes to the issue of anti-war struggle. But never before have we felt the urgency of international anti-war solidarity so acutely. The reason is that we are witnessing East Asian powers rushing to prepare for war under the command of the United States—most notably Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea.

The U.S. regards us as its unsinkable aircraft carriers, deploying military forces and infrastructure wherever it sees fit to serve its own interests.

From the perspective of the people of East Asia, it is as if we are all on a small ship navigating treacherous waves stirred up by the United States. Therefore, we must find a common direction through exchange and understanding, and work together to overcome this crisis. This is one of the key reasons why international people’s solidarity against imperialism and war is so important.

The far-right forces in Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan are also strengthening their own forms of solidarity. The far-right in South Korea continuously seeks to deepen military cooperation with Japan and is obsessed with glorifying Japan’s colonial invasions of the past. Needless to say, Taiwan's ruling far-right Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) is no exception. They are fervent admirers of Shinzo Abe. After his death, parks and statues were erected in his honor in Kaohsiung, the DPP's stronghold.

Next to Abe’s statue stands a proudly displayed model warship—an offering from the DPP. Many of you may not be familiar with this ship. It is the "Yomogi No. 38 Patrol Boat", a Japanese vessel which was sunk by the U.S. military near Taiwan at the end of 1944. All 145 crew members aboard perished, and their memorial tablets are now enshrined at Yasukuni Shrine. DPP supporters have held memorial ceremonies for them. The military police seen at the site are not real soldiers but DPP supporters dressed up in military uniforms.

Yoon Suk-yeol, the far-right president of South Korea, has also maintained close ties with Taiwan’s far-right DPP government. Recently, it was revealed through investigation that just one week before declaring martial law last year, Yoon secretly dispatched his Intelligence Commander, Moon Sang-ho, to Taiwan, requesting that the DPP issue a statement of support after martial law was declared in South Korea. And indeed, immediately after the declaration on December 3, the DPP posted a statement of support.

In South Korea, an investigation is underway into the main culprits and accomplices of the internal conflict under martial law. But let us be clear: the DPP was Yoon's accomplice abroad.

Last month in Taipei, a war game simulation was held involving 13 Taiwanese generals and 4 retired generals from Japan and the United States, simulating a defense scenario for the Taiwan Strait. Couldn’t this too be seen as their own version of “international solidarity”?

Among the participants were Shigeru Iwasaki, former Chief of the Joint Staff, and Tomohisa Takei, former Chief of Staff of the Maritime Self-Defense Force. Because cross-strait relations are a domestic issue for China, in order to avoid openly interfering in China's internal affairs, all foreign participants in this war game were retired officers.

In recent years, as tensions have grown in the Taiwan Strait, such war games have been conducted with increasing frequency. In the latest simulation, the scenario involved the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) occupying offshore Taiwanese islands in 2030, surrounding the main island, and launching an amphibious assault.

Japan’s simulated actions included: raising the combat readiness level, requesting an emergency budget from the National Diet, recalling its ambassador to China, defending U.S. bases in Japan under the Self Defense Forces law, initiating joint Japan-U.S. operational plans, and dispatching escort ships to protect Japanese vessels. Notably, no combat troops were directly deployed.

In response, Taiwanese separatist forces and media voiced strong dissatisfaction—but not toward Japan. Rather, they criticized Taiwanese experts who participated in the simulation for failing to launch a preemptive strike when the PLA came within nine nautical miles. They argued that only by provoking China could Japan be given a pretext to intervene.

In that regard, they were correct on just one point: Japan has no valid pretext to intervene.

From July 9 to 18, Taiwan conducted its first-ever military drill simulating combat in urban areas. The nine-night, ten-day exercise was also unprecedented in length and marked the largest-ever mobilization of reservists.

This was carried out at the request of the United States, who also supervised Taiwan's preparedness. Photos from the exercises showed U.S. military personnel in civilian clothes, hiding their identity.

In the drill, retired U.S. General Robert Abrams, a former U.S. Forces Korea Commander, served as an advisor to Taiwan's Chief of the General Staff. This is seen as preparatory work for the "One Theater" concept proposed by Japan in March—an attempt to draw even the U.S.-South Korea alliance into a war in the Taiwan Strait.

The inclusion of urban warfare in the exercise was also a U.S. directive. During the exercise, no evacuation of civilians was conducted. Considering Taiwan's high population density, such evacuation would likely be impossible. The war that the U.S. is preparing Taiwan for is one in which the people themselves will be used as human shields.

Taiwanese separatists love to say: “A Taiwan contingency is a Japan contingency.” But we absolutely reject this notion.

The U.S. and separatists continue to push us toward a terrifying “Taiwan emergency.” But we firmly believe that cross-strait relations can and must be resolved peacefully through exchange and mutual understanding.

This is not just about the Taiwan issue—it applies equally to peace across East Asia as a whole.

With that, I conclude my report. Thank you very much for your attention.

National Liberation Day: 80 Years of Occupation, 80 Years of Resistance

Charles Xu, Qiao Collective

It's good to be with you everyone. My name is Charles and I'm a member of Qiao Collective, an anti-imperialist diaspora Chinese media collective and a proud member of the US Out of Korea coalition.

Eighty years ago to the day, the Empire of Japan surrendered to the Allied Powers. They told us this surrender would be unconditional and absolute. But everything about the official ceremony gave the game away. It took place on a US Navy ship. Seven of the nine signatories were white colonial powers. China, to be sure, was represented by the comprador regime of Chiang Kai-shek. But all the other peoples who paid the heaviest price to throw off the Japanese yoke – in Korea, the Philippines, Vietnam, Indonesia, and all throughout Asia – had no one there to accept the surrender but their own colonial overlords.

Because that was the real condition for Japan’s surrender. That it would transform overnight from America’s imperial rival to its forward base against Asian communism. That its former colonial subjects would gladly trade the Rising Sun for the Stars and Stripes. That we would accept puppet rulers who answered not to Tokyo but to Washington—often the very same puppets! Well, let me ask you: did we? Did we? 

Of course not! And because our peoples issued such a resounding and unanimous “no,” imperialism drowned our homelands in blood. It forced our forebears to fight not just American occupiers, but millions of their own kin to liberate their own land. Yet against those seemingly insuperable odds, the allied peoples of China, Korea, and Vietnam dealt world-historic defeats to imperialism in 1949, 1953, 1954, and 1975. 

But for both Korea and China the ultimate task of national liberation remains unfulfilled to this day. History has shown our peoples that we must cross that finish line hand in hand, or not at all. Because in 1895, what did Japan do after waging a war on Korean soil, over Korea’s sovereignty? It annexed Taiwan from China. And in 1950, on the very same day the US intervened with full force in Korea’s civil war, it sent its Seventh Fleet into the Taiwan Strait and froze China’s civil war indefinitely. 

Then as now, US military planners look ravenously at maps of Asia and see both Taiwan and South Korea as “unsinkable aircraft carriers” anchoring the “first island chain” encircling China. Their client regimes have stood in unbroken anticommunist solidarity, not just with their imperial masters but with each other. Chiang Kai-shek offered Chinese troops to Syngman Rhee. Taiwan’s modern-day secessionist ruling party endorsed Yoon Suk-yeol’s coup last year. And as we gather now on the eve of Ulchi Freedom Shield, the US occupation is openly scheming to expand its mandate—and that of the 3.6 million Korean troops under its operational command—from the 38th parallel all the way to the Taiwan Strait.

Let me conclude by quoting a speech by Chinese diplomat Wu Xiuquan at the UN in November 1950, after his country entered the War to Resist US Aggression and Aid Korea. “American imperialism,” he said, “by its aggression against Korea and Taiwan … is now following the old track of aggression against China and Asia on which Japanese imperialism set forth in 1894-95, only hoping to proceed with greater speed. But after all, 1950 is not 1895; the times have changed, and so have the circumstances.” 

To that I would add: 2025 is not 1950 either. The desperately poor, war-ravaged nations that together faced down nuclear annihilation then are now prosperous nuclear powers themselves. But in both China and the DPRK, the historical memory of that victory is stronger now than it’s been in decades. War today wouldn’t just mean genocide for our homelands, as they’re rehearsing right now in Gaza. It would mean suicide for the aggressors, right here on their own stolen land. And that’s why we in the diaspora, and all who stand with us—in Nodutdol, in Qiao Collective, in all the organizations gathered here today—owe it to ourselves, to each other, to our billions of comrades and compatriots across the Pacific, and to our ancestors to finish the task they started 80 years ago: by destroying the US war machine before it destroys us all.

Qiao Collective is pleased to present an original translation of a video essay by Chinese political analyst Jianghuqizi (江湖弃子), exploring in detail the dialectic of colonial counterinsurgency, collaboration, and anti-colonial resistance through martyred Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar’s semi-autobiographical novel The Thorn and the Carnation and its many parallels with China’s War of Resistance against Japan.

Editor’s Foreword

As the Zionist project continues to show its true, ugly colors, the parallels between the Chinese and Palestinian struggles grow clearer each day. For the Chinese people, Israel’s genocidal offensive in Gaza evokes painful, sobering memories of their own history. In 1931, following the annexation of Taiwan 36 years prior, the Imperial Japanese Army began its formal conquest of Mainland China as it annexed Northeast China and formed Manchukuo, a Japanese puppet state.

Over the next 14 years, over one million Japanese settlers occupied the Northeast. They took control of Chinese farmland and formed segregated communities not dissimilar to the modern-day Israeli settlements. Throughout the Second Sino-Japanese War between 1937 and 1945, Japan made its way through China, conquering vast swaths of land and slaughtering over 20 million Chinese (the second-highest number of total casualties, following the Soviet Union).  While Imperial Japan formally surrendered in 1945, China’s path to victory was paved with inner turmoil, ideological struggle, and painful tragedy.

Chinese political commentator content creator Jianghuqizi (江湖弃子) articulates the similarities between the Chinese and Palestinian struggles against occupation in his video essay “Shattering the Iron Wall,” part of a long-running series on Israel and Palestine. Jianghuqizi’s essay begins with a discussion of the infamous traitor Wang Jingwei before a lengthy analysis of Star Wars, Japanese and Israeli occupation strategy, and their Fanonian effects on the colonized psyche. He details the life and work of Yahya Sinwar, drawing from Sinwar’s autobiographical fiction The Thorn and the Carnation. Recalling painful memories of the Second Sino-Japanese War, Jianghuqizi masterfully shows that commonalities between China and Palestine run more than skin deep.

Qiao Collective is proud to transcribe, translate and present Jianghuqizi’s latest work. For a detailed history of Chinese support for the Palestinian struggle, we invite a close reading of our four-part essay, The Gates of the Great Continent: Palestine, China, and the War for Humanity’s Future.

Introduction

In 1942, the infamous hanjian¹ Wang Jingwei² climbed the Polaris Pavilion in northern Nanjing. During his journey, he recited a poem by the late Jin Dynasty poet Yuan Haowen. He wrote,³

On the Double-Ninth Day I climbed the Polaris Pavilion. While reading Yuan Haowen’s ci poem, I was struck by the line “Like a painting: mountains and rivers in my lost fatherland; / In drunkenness I forget about the rise or the fall [of states].” It stirred endless sorrow in my heart. So I composed the following song.

A soaring city tower leans against a gray sky;

Wild geese glide leisurely below.

Across the land the rustle of fallen leaves.

Yellow chrysanthemums hold back the sinking sun.

My palms have pounded all the railings;

My chest weighs heavy with a lump;

An airy landscape stretches before my eyes.

I ask the green mountains, the emerald waters:

How many rises and falls can you stand? 

Yuan Haowen, witnessing the fall of the Jin Dynasty, refused to serve the ascendant Yuan Dynasty, living the remainder of his years in hiding, editing Jin Dynasty literature and history. Wang’s line “My palms have pounded the railings” was borrowed from the famous patriotic poet, Xin Qiji, whose grandfather Xin Zan served the Jin Dynasty. Xin Qiji fled southwards to Song Dynasty territory, where he spent his life dreaming of resisting the Jin, and for the Song Dynasty to reclaim the land that was once their own.⁴

Yuan Haowen and Xin Qiji. One was left a faithful orphan by the fall of the Jin Dynasty. The other dedicated his life to resisting the very same regime during its golden age. Nonetheless, the sands of time are not driven by sheer will alone. Yuan Haowen’s loyalty didn’t save the Jin Dynasty. Xin Qiji’s passionate resistance could not recover lost Song land. History, a never ending cycle of rise and fall, carries the people, who, unbeknownst to themselves, drown in its tides.

The above poem, written by Wang Jingwei, was written as a question to himself. Facing a seemingly indefatigable Imperial Japanese Army, he questions whether he has made the correct choice. 

As he looked towards the lush tree-covered mountains surrounding Nanjing mountains, perhaps he would wonder, one day, far away beyond the western seas, if there would be another hero, facing an equally Sisyphean endeavor. A hero using his last breaths to hurl his wooden club towards his loathsome fate.

Not just a wooden club, but a torch. A torch that set our hero aflame, illuminating the road for the Palestinian people. 

Under Wang Jingwei’s rule, Nanjing appeared at peace. But peace shrouded a system of slavery. Under Yahya Sinwar, Gaza has been reduced to rubble, a rubble of resistance.

Who is right, and who is wrong? Sinwar gives an answer in his autobiography:⁵

A minute of living with dignity and pride is better than a thousand years of a miserable life under the boots of the occupation.

The Tarkin Doctrine and the Iron Wall

Why do the Israeli Occupation Forces inflict unnecessary violence on civilians, and why did the Imperial Japanese Army lead a massacre in Nanjing? These are two separate questions united by a single answer, which is that invading forces require military superiority to kill and pacify the resistance. 

In Star Wars, Grand Moff Wilhuff Tarkin stated that state terror is the foundation of the Empire’s rule. Demonstration of oppressive military might, rather than military might itself is the most efficient means of preserving internal stability and the loyal subservience of the surrounding periphery. Known as the Tarkin Doctrine,⁶ this ideology is the basis by which the Empire constructs the Death Star and destroys Princess Leia’s home planet, Alderaan.

Prior to the founding of Israel, during the 1920s, Ze’ev Jabotinsky, the spiritual father of current Israeli ruling party Likud, proposed the Iron Wall Doctrine, a series of ideas nearly identical to the Tarkin Doctrine. The Iron Wall doctrine correctly recognizes that Israel, as an outside colonial entity, would never be able to earn the genuine respect of the Palestinian people. The only way for Israel to exist would thus be an unbreakable, impermeable iron wall.

The practice of occupation, whether it be Japanese expansionism or Zionism, inflicts atrocities upon innocent civilians as a matter of military strategy. It hopes to use an unending barrage of attacks to create an atmosphere of terror, where the people are unwilling to stand up for themselves. The goal is to trick the occupied people into mistakenly believing that they have lost control of their own destiny. The occupied are deceived into seeing their imperialist occupiers as gods that threaten to take their lives at any moment. They are made to believe that the only means of living is to serve these gods. 

The practice of occupation, whether it be Japanese expansionism or Zionism, inflicts atrocities upon innocent civilians as a matter of military strategy. It hopes to use an unending barrage of attacks to create an atmosphere of terror, where the people are unwilling to stand up for themselves.

However, this is merely the first step of oppression. Soon, the oppressed come to the sober realization that they are indeed oppressed. But a sizable portion of these people, facing the might of imperialism, lose hope. To combat their hopelessness, they lie to themselves, convincing themselves that there is some good in their occupiers, concluding that there is so called legitimacy in their occupiers’ governance. 

The lie is nonetheless temporary. When the occupied come to their senses, they realize that they cannot breach the iron wall, yet simultaneously refuse to accept their fate. Following this realization, they begin to hate themselves and internalize the supremacy of their occupiers.

At the same time, the occupiers may exercise benevolence. For example, Israelis once gave lower class Gazans work permits, allowing them to work in occupied Palestine. And Hamas, in the interest of national sovereignty, had no choice but to destroy these permits. Resistance fighters were trapped between their nation and the struggles of survival, which Sinwar depicts in his autobiography. He writes of a middle-aged man who begged the resistance not to destroy his work permit, saying that he had a family of eight to feed. The resistance fighters intimately understood this reality, and denied his request with tears in their eyes, ripping his permit apart.

Incidents like these caused a handful of Palestinian laborers to sell resistance intelligence to the Israelis. Stories like these run abound. A Shin Bet spy would give an imprisoned Palestinian child a piece of bread and blanket in exchange for intelligence. These supposed acts of kindness coming from the Iron Wall, were designed so that the imprisoned would forget about the wall itself. The Palestinian child, given bread and a blanket such that they would cease to wonder who caused them to go cold and hungry in the first place. 

Palestinians grew to hate themselves and turned towards Israel. Simultaneously, the coldhearted oppression created an epidemic of Stockholm Syndrome, such that Israelis could give away a tiny drop of kindness and see an unimaginable amount of intelligence in return.

These two phenomena combined together to create the broad, popular base for Fatah’s surrender. When Israel created the impermeable Iron Wall, Fatah became the executors of Israeli governance. When the Japanese Army demonstrated a seemingly insurmountable, violent offense and military might, Wang Jingwei and his cohort of hanjian chose to surrender.

To this day, the Iron Wall Doctrine has demonstrated the fidelity of its theoretical foundations.

When Israel created the impermeable Iron Wall, Fatah became the executors of Israeli governance. When the Japanese Army demonstrated a seemingly insurmountable, violent offense and military might, Wang Jingwei and his cohort of hanjian chose to surrender.

Betrayal

However, upon reading Sinwar’s autobiography, one realizes that Sinwar is not as vengeful towards the Israelis as expected. In his work, he describes quite a few kind, humane Israeli employers, some of whom would even cross the border to Gaza to attend their Palestinian employees’ weddings. 

As for Palestinian traitors, however, Sinwar had much to say and zero mercy. And sadly, under Israel’s Iron Wall, traitors were everywhere. In the first chapter, Sinwar writes of an incident where a Palestinian civilian is singled out for providing intelligence about resistance fighters to Israel. This civilian lamented that all he gave was information on products that the resistance had purchased, not knowing that it would lead to death.

These were, according to Sinwar, the ignorant masses that unknowingly lived off the flesh and blood of their own kin. The Palestinian people had not undergone systematic information security training. They had no idea that seemingly innocent and exchangeable intelligence was in fact, lethal. At the same time, the Israeli security apparatus obtained other intelligence through means of force, torturing their prisoners. 

These leaks led the resistance to retaliate against civilians. In his autobiography, Sinwar writes about how all factions of the resistance would treat the informants. Retaliatory measures included capital punishment, flogging, public execution, forced consumption of sand, interrogation through branding, and even live burial. 

Sinwar denounces these acts of uncontrolled violence as “grave errors,” criticizing the lack of legal solutions to an increasingly severe informant problem. In other words, under enormous pressure from Israel, the Palestinian resistance weakened, and their reckless, violent treatment of informants deepend the mistrust the civilians had towards the resistance. A rift emerged between resistance forces and civilians. Israel continued their seduction and recruitment of informants, which the Palestinian resistance, trapped in chaos and violence, failed to stop. 

This is a paramount problem in a war of resistance. The enemy’s strength allows them to buy out informants at relatively low cost. When informants run rampant, resistance forces cannot trust one another, creating a chain of suspicion. And when resistance forces lack trust among each other, they cannot communicate their wartime strategy, never mind fighting as a united front. This causes power to disperse, which in turn causes the resistance to become less and less effective. 

Informants continued to grow in number. And when informants were indiscriminately killed, inevitably, there were civilians who were killed either unintentionally or erroneously. For a resistance that was already in critical condition, the consequences were severe. Sinwar illustrates this in his biography, where the resistance kills a civilian mistakenly believed to be an informant. His family, suffering an unrightable injustice, have no choice but to turn towards Israel. 

[Sheikh Ahmed] Yassin, the founder of Hamas, valued Sinwar because Sinwar did not let his hatred of informants affect his judgment. He hated informants with every fiber of his being, but always stressed the importance of creating a security apparatus designed to handle these very situations. He stressed that this apparatus required strict internal standards. In the 1980s, Sinwar founded Hamas’ security agency, Majd. His writings tell us that he was neither a butcher nor a madman, but the opposite. He was a rational fighter for the resistance. Refusing to be blinded by vengeance, he worked tirelessly to find the long path to victory. 

A fork in the road

On this long road, the Palestinian people considered giving up. On some level, the Iron Wall Doctrine is scientifically sound. When the Palestinian people face Israel’s insurmountable military strength, there were many voices from within Palestine calling for so-called peace. These voices led to the signing of the 1993 Oslo Accords.

Today, many scholars criticize Hamas’ resistance strategy, asserting that Hamas’ violent attack on Israel is what led to the present tragedy. All I can say is, these scholars are either malicious or full-blown idiots. As one of the greatest historical victims of non-violent resistance, somehow there are Chinese people who still believe that non-resistance can be exchanged for peace. When China faced Japanese invasion, the Nanjing government⁷ would often be led astray by the Japanese, who claimed that they did not seek expansion. During the Marco Polo Bridge incident,⁸ the same government continued to believe that so long as they fulfilled Japan’s demands, the two sides would be able to enter negotiations and peacefully resolve the issue at hand. 

Today, many scholars criticize Hamas’ resistance strategy, asserting that Hamas’ violent attack on Israel is what led to the present tragedy. All I can say is, these scholars are either malicious or full-blown idiots. As one of the greatest historical victims of non-violent resistance, somehow there are Chinese people who still believe that non-resistance can be exchanged for peace.

Sinwar spent nearly 20 years in an Israeli prison. While incarcerated, he self-studied Hebrew and translated books written by Shin Bet officers. This process enabled Sinwar to develop a deep understanding of his enemy. In his autobiography, Sinwar criticizes the Oslo Accords, whose signing Hamas denounced as meaningless. Sinwar described the accords as a “strategic goal,” which provided Israel a means to delay an imminent crisis.

A month following the Marco Polo Bridge Incident (August 25th, 1937), the Communist Party of China stated clearly in “For the Mobilization of all the Nation's Forces for Victory in the War of Resistance"⁹ that the challenge brought by the Marco Polo Bridge Incident and the occupation of Beiping (Beijing) and Tianjin marked the start of a large-scale Japanese invasion of China. They remarked that the Japanese had already begun to mobilize throughout China. Their so-called “non-expansion” propaganda was simply a smokescreen, obscuring their offensive. 

Unfortunately, the imprisoned Sinwar saw much further than the Palestinian people. The existence of the Oslo Accords allowed the transformation of Israel’s gradual annexation of the West Bank from a cold hard invasion to the subtle expansion of its settlements. And among the Palestinians crying for peace, it seems that it was only Sinwar and his organization, Hamas, who foresaw this outcome and unambiguously opposed the Oslo Accords.

In May of 1935, the Japanese China Garrison Army released a statement denouncing the Republic of China-sponsored assassination of Bai Yuhuan, the editor-in-chief of Zhenbao, a Tianjin-based pro-Japanese newspaper. The statement libelously denounced the Chinese Volunteer Army for entering a demilitarized buffer zone in Northeast China defined by the Tanggu Truce.¹⁰ Along with the statement, the Japanese Army once again expanded its troop presence in China. The Republic of China government sought damage control, and dispatched He Yingqin¹¹ to negotiate with Yoshijiro Umezu.¹² The two signed the He-Umezu Agreement, which guaranteed “the suppression of all anti-Japanese activity in China” and the removal of Chinese troops from the front line. As a result, China effectively lost all sovereignty in Hebei and Chahar¹³ Provinces, and Chinese people were forbidden from resisting the Japanese.

At the time, the Nanjing Government stated that He Yingqin did not formally sign the agreement, but in 2018, Taiwanese authorities revealed that Chiang Kai-shek had personally directed He Yingqin to accept the terms of the agreement. The documents revealed that Chiang wanted to publicly reframe the withdrawal of troops as a reorientation to destroy the communists in the name of defense. At the same time, knowing that the agreement would be unpopular, Chiang had He Yingqin inform Japanese authorities that Nanjing would acquiesce to Japanese demands, but request that the deal be made verbally, rather than in writing. The Japanese agreed to this request, and to this day, there is no written record of the He-Umezu Agreement.

The contents of this agreement highlights the difficulty faced by the resistance. It shows us that even under such dire straits, people are susceptible to the enemy’s supposed compromises. The Nanjing government continued to accept supposed “peace proposals” offered by the Japanese, demonstrating a willingness to give up its own territory in exchange for an end to the war. 

But despite the Republican government’s compromises, the Japanese invaders refused to stop. Instead, the Japanese invaders’ voices grew in strength. In other words, one by one, Nanjing’s concessions fed into Japanese expansionist ambitions. 

This is precisely why Hamas under Sinwar’s leadership cannot accept any compromises with Israel. While Israel proposes a softer 1:1 prisoner exchange, Hamas remains steadfast in its demand for Israel to release all Palestinian political prisoners. 

The wooden club destroys the Iron Wall

Based on the above, we observe a few points:

1. Israel is incomparably strong. Israel’s governance over Palestine did not happen overnight. It was not done through reckless violence, but through a systematic, step-by-step oppression of the Palestinian people.

2. Israel will use any means necessary, including international treaties and so-called “suggestions for peace” to accomplish its goals. 

3. Israel maintains a comprehensive intelligence network inside of Palestine. Under Israel’s oppressive rule, a portion of the Palestinian public’s will to fight is insufficient.

These factors both reflect the Iron Wall, and make up the Iron Wall itself. It exists on the border between Gaza and Israel, splitting Gaza from Israeli-occupied soil. It exists in the militarized zones of the West Bank that split apart Palestinian settlements. It exists in media narratives, which report Israeli benevolence to suppress the strength of the Palestinian anti-colonial resistance. It exists in the heart of the Palestinian people, who lose faith in their own futures.

The Iron Wall, both tangible and intangible. 

Yet everything changed when the war broke out in October. Under Sinwar’s command, Hamas commando units crossed the Iron Wall under the cover of rocket fire. In Israel-occupied land, they captured their occupiers. They put Gaza on the world stage, putting on display Israel’s violent bloodthirst for all to see. And the Palestinian people have realized they control their own destinies. What’s interesting is that in his original essay, Jabotinsky warned Israelis that their plan could only work if the Wall was absolutely airtight. As long as there was a sliver of hope, the occupied would forever strive to break free from Zionism.

Despite the martyrdom of Hamas’ leadership and rank-and-file, the cracks in the Iron Wall grow bigger every day. The wooden club wielded by Sinwar has transformed into a great torch and has shattered Jabotinsky’s Iron Wall. Sinwar teaches us that we do not need a Dongfeng missile to win, nor do we need swarms of fourth generation heavy duty fighter jets. Even if all we have left is a wooden club, we can resist our occupiers. 

Remember, comrades! As long as you have the will to fight, a wooden club is just as lethal as the Dongfeng missile!

Sinwar teaches us that we do not need a Dongfeng missile to win, nor do we need swarms of fourth generation heavy duty fighter jets. Even if all we have left is a wooden club, we can resist our occupiers.

1. 汉奸, or traitor to the Chinese people. Commonly used as a derogatory epithet for Chinese individuals who collaborated with foreign imperialist powers at the expense of the Chinese nation. arrow_upward


2. Leader of the Japanese collaborationist regime based in Nanjing from 1940-45, known officially as the “Reorganized National Government of the Republic of China.” His name is synonymous with “quisling” in modern-day China. arrow_upward


3. Translation sourced from: Yang Zhiyi. Poetry, History, Memory: Wang Jingwei and China in Dark Times. University of Michigan Press, 2023. https://doi.org/10.3998/mpub.12697845. arrow_upward


4. A note on the dynastic Chinese history referenced here: the Song Dynasty (960-1279) lost northern China to the Jurchen-led Jin Dynasty (1115-1234) in a series of wars culminating in the Jin capture of imperial capital Kaifeng in 1127, after which the Song court retreated south of the Yangtze River to present-day Hangzhou. The Mongol Empire conquered the Jin Dynasty in 1234 and subsequently defeated the Southern Song, bringing all of China under the rule of the Yuan Dynasty (1271-1368). arrow_upward


5. Al-Sinwar, Yahya. The Thorn and the Carnation (Part I), 2024. arrow_upward


6. From the Chinese 塔金主义. English language Star Wars fandom uses the term “Tarkin Doctrine” as a reference to Imperial Communiqué #001044.92v, though other less common terminology include “Tarkinism” and the “Doctrine of Terror” (https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Tarkin_Doctrine/Legends) arrow_upward


7. Another term for the Republic of China. arrow_upward


8. On July 7th, 1937, at the Marco Polo bridge outside of Beiping (presently known as Beijing), the Japanese army requested to search the Chinese town of Wanping for a missing soldier. The Chinese army refused, and the two sides exchanged fire. This incident is generally regarded as the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War and of World War II in Asia. arrow_upward


9. https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-2/mswv2_02.htm arrow_upward


10. The Tanggu Truce was a ceasefire and unequal treaty signed between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan on May 31, 1933. The truce formally ended the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which had begun in September 1931. arrow_upward


11. At the time, the Acting Chairman of the Peiping National Military Council. arrow_upward


12. At the time, commander in chief of the (Japanese) Kwantung Army. arrow_upward


13. A former Chinese province whose territory is currently contained within present-day Inner Mongolia. arrow_upward

As Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza enters its sixth month, Qiao Collective presents an urgent intervention from Charles Xu on the Palestinian resistance and the place of China, its people, and their revolutionary legacy in the global solidarity movement. 

This essay details China’s near-unconditional support for Palestinian armed struggle in its early phase, and the enduring bonds forged between both peoples even through the Oslo Accords and the resistance’s turn toward political Islam. It then analyzes the balance of forces since October 7 through the lens of Mao’s writings on guerrilla war, and also draws parallels between the mutually-reinforcing sovereign technological projects of China and the Axis of Resistance. Through the interlocking stories of former Red Guard Zhang Chengzhi and the Japanese Red Army, it argues that Palestine must be the fulcrum for any pan-Asian liberation struggle.

Table of Contents

1. Part I: Palestine and China at the High Tide of National Liberation

2. Part II: Al-Aqsa Flood, or People’s War in the New Era

3. Part III: Smashing Walls, Building Firewalls, and Breaking the Digital Siege

4. Part IV: Declaration of World War

Part I: Palestine and China at the High Tide of National Liberation arrow_upward

Imperialism is afraid of China and of the Arabs. Israel and Formosa are bases of imperialism in Asia. You are the gate of the great continent and we are the rear. They created Israel for you, and Formosa for us. Their goal is the same.

— Mao Zedong to visiting Palestine Liberation Organization delegates, Beijing, 1965

Imperialism has laid its body over the world, the head in Eastern Asia, the heart in the Middle East, its arteries reaching Africa and Latin America. Wherever you strike it, you damage it, and you serve the World Revolution.

— Ghassan Kanafani, quoted in The 1936-39 Revolt in Palestine (1972)

Between these two striking images of imperialism – drawn by perhaps the most iconic Chinese and Palestinian revolutionaries of the twentieth century, both literary giants in their own right – we can discern a common thread. Mao and Kanafani each envisioned their enemy as an active, intentional, even organic force, concentrating its energies on the eastern and western extremes of Asia. Both identified Israel as the “heart” of the Empire, its battering ram against the “gate” of the Orient. The corollary to their insight is that Palestine’s century-long struggle against Zionist colonialism is the fulcrum of pan-Asian revolution, and its liberation would be an event of equal if not greater world-historic importance than China’s own.

In their respective national historiographies the State of Israel and the People’s Republic of China (PRC) were born just one year apart, in 1948 and 1949 respectively. Legally speaking the former was midwifed by both sides of the nascent Cold War with United Nations blessing; in actual fact it was born in blood, through the originary genocide of the Palestinian Nakba. The latter emerged through equally violent struggle against the colonial yoke, and within a year would find itself at war with imperialist armies flying that same UN banner. From today’s vantage point it is a fact rich with historical irony that at the time, much of the global left viewed both developments as historically progressive.

In those early years China itself was by no means free of such analytical limitations when it came to Zionism and the Palestinian national question, as Johns Hopkins scholar Zhang Sheng points out. Though never as effusive about Israel’s potential as the Soviets initially were, PRC leaders at first broadly shared their view that it was “a progressive, left-leaning state that could potentially become an ally in the struggle against Western hegemony.” Zhang notes that deeply contradictory positions could be found within the same officially-sanctioned publications. For instance, The Truth of the Palestinian Issue (1950) condemned Zionism as the “vanguard of the imperialist conspiracy to enslave Palestine,” while simultaneously decrying the “aggressive invasion” of Israel by Arab monarchies helmed by Jordan, a “running dog of British imperialism.”

For its part, Israel unilaterally extended diplomatic recognition to the PRC as early as 1950, well before any other country in the Middle East. The People’s Daily, official organ of the Communist Party of China (CPC), welcomed this gesture but state leaders wisely opted not to reciprocate. Unofficial relations would almost immediately sour over Israel’s backing for the US-led intervention in the Korean War. They would further deteriorate as China made diplomatic and cultural overtures to Arab and other Islamic countries, in a process often mediated by Hui and Uyghur dignitaries who advanced a vision of pan-Islamic resistance to Western imperialism. By the time of the 1955 Afro-Asian Conference in Bandung, hosted by the fiercely anti-Zionist Indonesian leader Sukarno, China was unequivocally backing the right of return for Palestinian refugees.

Shortly thereafter came the joint Israeli, British, and French invasion of Nasser’s Egypt in October 1956, just months after the latter had become the first Arab country to establish relations with the PRC. Iraq would follow suit in 1958 when the 14 July Revolution overthrew the Hashemite monarchy; almost simultaneously, US Marines invaded Lebanon to violently put down a revolutionary challenge to its comprador regime. Amid these clarifying developments, China came increasingly to envision itself as a “home front of the Arab people’s struggle against imperialism” and to mobilize its people accordingly, as noted by Fudan University historian Yin Zhiguang. The battle lines were at last being firmly drawn, just in time for the Palestinian national movement to erupt emphatically onto the world-historical stage.

This new phase of struggle began in 1964 with the founding of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) as a political organ not subordinate to any other Arab state. A year later China became the first non-Arab country to extend formal diplomatic recognition to the PLO, which moved quickly to open an embassy in Beijing. Its support for the Palestinian armed struggle extended well beyond the rhetorical: Lillian Craig Harris notes that “between 1964 and 1970 the Palestinians fought with Chinese-made weapons, implying that the PRC was [their] exclusive supplier among the big powers.” This aid reportedly included AK-47s and other Soviet-model light arms, anti-tank artillery, US-model rocket launchers, and radio equipment, predominantly delivered through Syria and Jordan. Starting in 1967, the PLO also sent multiple contingents of a dozen or so fighters each (mostly drawn from the leading faction Fatah) to China for months-long training regimens in the theory and practice of guerrilla warfare.

Across factional divides, Palestinian revolutionaries were almost unanimously effusive in their gratitude for China’s moral and material solidarity. Ahmed Shuqairy, the first chairman of the PLO, went so far as to claim that “Palestinians should feel grateful not to other Arabs but to the gallant and generous Chinese people, who helped our revolution movement long before the Arab heads recognized the PLO. It is not, as some seem to think, propped up by Nasser or any other Arab leader." His successor Yasser Arafat, who would visit China fourteen times during his 35 years at the helm of the movement, credited the PRC as “the biggest influence in supporting our revolution and strengthening its perseverance.” George Habash, founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), insisted that “our best friend is China. China wants Israel erased from the map because as long as Israel exists, there will remain an aggressive imperialist outpost on Arab soil.”

China’s affinity for the cause of Palestinian liberation in fact had deeper roots than this simple convergence of strategic interests. As Harris points out, “despite great differences, the Palestinian arena is the Arab world situation which comes closest to fitting the Chinese experience of revolution against an imperialist invader.” Allusions to the 1937-45 War of Resistance against Japan, which elevated the CPC’s capacity for “protracted people’s war” to new heights, abounded in Chinese statements of solidarity with Palestinian guerrillas. In Mao’s aforementioned 1965 address to visiting PLO delegates, for example, he mused that

You are not only two million Palestinians facing Israel, but one hundred million Arabs. You must act and think along this basis. When you discuss Israel, keep the map of the entire Arab world before your eyes … peoples must not be afraid if their numbers are reduced in liberation wars, for they shall have peaceful times during which they may multiply. China lost twenty million people in the struggle for liberation.

Chinese leaders also took their historical cues from the anti-Japanese struggle, where the Communists formed a United Front with their bitter ideological enemies in the Kuomintang, when judging how to allocate support between different factions of the PLO. Far more than strict theoretical alignment they prioritized political and military unity, displaying a marked preference for Fatah’s cross-class nationalism over the avowedly Marxist-Leninist PFLP (particularly during the latter’s campaign of airline hijackings). In his 1965 speech, for instance, Mao cautioned his audience: “Do not tell me that you have read this or that opinion in my books. You have your war, and we have ours. You must make the principles and ideology on which your war stands. Books obstruct the view if piled up in front of the eye.” And during another visit in 1971, premier Zhou Enlai recommended “that Palestinian organizations merge in one genuine unity that will have only two organs: one for leading the armed struggle, and the other political, and that the PLO will become the main nucleus of the Palestinian people.”

Throughout this period, China’s rhetorical militancy in defense of the Palestinian armed struggle – and to some extent the volume of its material support – also admittedly waxed and waned in accordance with political exigencies. It peaked in the aftermath of Israel’s disastrous defeat of multiple Arab armies and subsequent occupation of Gaza, East Jerusalem, the West Bank, the Golan Heights, and the Sinai in the Six-Day War of 1967. This of course only amplified the prestige that accrued to the Palestinian fedayeen when they defeated an Israeli invasion of Jordan at the 1968 Battle of Karameh. Suitably emboldened, they went on to launch a full-scale revolt against the Jordanian monarchy in 1970 – with China’s full-throated endorsement, as Radio Peking exhorted them to “fight on against the Jordanian military clique and their American militarist masters until final victory.”

This “Black September” uprising ended in catastrophe, with PLO forces thoroughly routed and expelled from all their territorial bases in Jordan. Afterwards, China markedly dialed down its sponsorship for such insurrectionary activity and turned towards rebuilding state-to-state relationships with Arab governments. This proceeded in tandem with its budding rapprochement with the United States and its 1971 entry into the UN, carried atop a wave of support from African and Arab states (and, interestingly, Israel). Nonetheless, China remained Palestine’s most steadfast ally among the great powers. During the 1973 Arab-Israeli War it stood alone in refusing to endorse UN Security Council Resolution 338 on the grounds that it failed to “explicitly provide for the restoration of the national rights of the Palestinian people,” and later boycotted the Geneva peace conference for excluding Palestinian representatives. In keeping with its ideological polemics against Soviet “revisionism,” China denounced the USSR’s support for negotiated Arab-Israeli peace settlements in both 1967 and 1973 as a great-power betrayal of the Palestinian cause.

Throughout all these twists and turns, popular manifestations of Chinese solidarity with the Palestinian liberation struggle continued unabated. Beginning in 1965 with the first PLO visit to Beijing, Nakba Day (May 15) was officially designated as “Palestine Solidarity Day” and commemorated annually with mass public rallies of 100,000 or more in Tiananmen Square. The short propaganda documentary “巴勒斯坦人民必胜” (“The Palestinian people must win,” 1971) features newsreel footage of enormous demonstrations against the 1956 Suez Crisis and the 1967 Six-Day War, including people’s delegations to the embassies of Palestine, Egypt, and Syria. Similarly large crowds are shown greeting Yasser Arafat on his 1970 visit to Beijing.

Belying the Western image of China during the Cultural Revolution as a closed and xenophobic society, people-to-people connections were also forged at a more profoundly intimate level. The aforementioned Ghassan Kanafani, for example, traveled to China and India in 1965 and documented his experiences in a little-known revolutionary travelog entitled «ثم أشرقت آسيا», or “Then Asia Shone.” During the Chinese leg of his journey he visited Beijing, Shanghai, and Hangzhou, meeting with Marshal Chen Yi and recording his observations not just of landmarks like Tiananmen Square and the Great Wall but also of mosques and agricultural collectives. Pondering the preserved monuments of the imperial past, he saluted the country's long tradition of rebellion: “If I were Chinese, my admiration for what the emperors did for themselves would be exceeded only by what the people did to the emperors!” His comments on poverty were equally moving and prophetic:

Poverty, if we want to use a more brutal word, is that ogre which has ravaged China throughout its long history and which the revolution has not yet been able, due to its age and China’s many problems, to turn into a servant, but has successfully put in a cage ... It seems that the vitality of the revolution and its desire to mobilize human energy runs ahead of its financial capacity, and the Chinese are proud of what their bare hands can do while awaiting the future, when they are confident they will be able to finance their well-being. They have put to work the 1,300 million arms they have to build the road to the future without a moment of waiting.

Kanafani’s literary compatriot Abu Salma, a poet who went on to chair the General Union of Palestinian Writers and Journalists, was similarly moved while visiting China to write the following lines (as quoted by Yin Zhiguang):

We have fought the same fight.

We have endured the same suffering.

Now we’re in Beijing.

We can spread our wings and fly.

The strong people here

all have sprouted wings.

We are united in our struggle,

The glory will be ours!

We shall wear laurels on our heads,

And smiles on our faces.

When dark clouds cover the firmament,

A wild wind sweeps through the universe.

When Mao’s smile appears on the horizon,

Earth’s skies become clear for miles and miles!

Beyond such temporary visits of a personal or diplomatic nature, a small but enduring Palestinian expatriate community also formed in China, mostly comprising dissident journalists and intellectuals exiled by hostile Arab host governments. The PRC also offered scholarships to several dozen Palestinian students per year, creating a community sufficiently robust to form the General Palestinian Students’ Union in 1981. As recounted by Mohammed Turki al-Sudairi, these students remained politically active even after the Cultural Revolution’s high tide of mass mobilization ebbed: “major protests and rallies were held throughout 1979, 1980, 1982, and 1983 in connection with such regional events as the signing of the Camp David Accords by Egypt, the American bombing of Libya, the Israeli invasion of Lebanon, and turning points in the Lebanese civil war such as the Sabra and Shatila massacres.”

These events charted an inexorable direction of travel for China in its relations with the PLO, which since the 1974 Arab League Summit had been designated the “sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people.” It was a path prophetically laid out by Lillian Craig Harris as early as 1977, when she wrote: “Whether China would consider the Palestinians to have ‘sold out’ if they accepted a West Bank state with agreement against attacks on Israel to secure more territory is another question. Yet indications are that Chinese pragmatism could stretch to swallow even a non-revolutionary Palestine if the benefit for China were a state with which it entertained good relations.”

That is indeed exactly what happened with the 1988 Palestinian Declaration of Independence, which implicitly acknowledged the 1947 UN Partition Plan and retreated from the PLO’s express commitment to a one-state solution. As in 1965, but with considerably less fanfare, China was one of the first non-Muslim-majority countries to recognize the newly declared State of Palestine. By the time Arafat signed the Oslo Accords in September 1993, extending unreciprocated recognition to Israel and abandoning all claim to 78% of historic Palestine, China had already had diplomatic relations with the Zionist state for over a year. It was just one of around 25 predominantly socialist, ex-Soviet, and/or former Eastern Bloc countries that had done so since the fall of the USSR and the nearly simultaneous initiation of the “peace process.” The PLO’s capitulation at Oslo simply provided ex post facto cover for the vast majority of Palestine’s non-Arab allies to follow it into normalization.

China’s role in this process, while hardly atypical, did involve a number of ironic historical peculiarities. One was that it had initiated informal economic ties with Israel years prior to the formal establishment of diplomatic relations, largely as a means to evade Western arms embargoes imposed after the 1989 Tiananmen protests. (Israeli-sourced military technology had the added benefit of being extensively battle-tested against Soviet weapons systems in the course of numerous wars against Arab states.) For Israel’s part, then-Deputy Foreign Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was reported in November 1989 to have said, “Israel should have taken advantage of the suppression of the demonstrations in China, while the world’s attention was focused on these events, and should have carried out mass deportations of Arabs from the territories. Unfortunately, this plan I proposed did not gain support.” Needless to say, it would not be his last chance.

Another irony which has acquired supreme importance since October 7, 2023 is that a broad and ideologically diverse coalition of Palestinian resistance forces has at long last achieved the kind of operational unity that Mao-era China had always dreamed of. Gaza’s Joint Operations Room spans an ideological range much broader than that represented at any time in the PLO, running from Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad to the Marxist-Leninist PFLP and DFLP. Yet this united front formed in explicit opposition to the Fatah-led PLO, and its main external sponsor is not China but the Islamic Republic of Iran – also heir to an anti-imperialist revolution but of markedly different character.

All this said, China maintains warm symbolic ties to a number of these formations, as does the CPC with the Marxist ones on a party-to-party basis. The latter in turn have reciprocated, for example by publicly endorsing China’s policy in Hong Kong (see statements by the PFLP and DFLP) and more recently hailing its diplomatic efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza. Despite intra-Palestinian tensions over normalization and security cooperation with Israel, these positions are broadly in line with the State of Palestine’s official opposition to “interference in China’s internal affairs under the pretext of Xinjiang-related issues.” As the world watches in horror the incontrovertible scenes of genocide relayed in real time from Gaza, this stance on Xinjiang – while hardly atypical for the Global South – stands in stark contrast with the small but vocal minority of diaspora Uyghur separatists who expressed admiration for Zionist ethnonationalism and voiced solidarity with Israel after October 7.

With the genocide entering its sixth month, official rhetoric from China has also recently taken a harder and more overtly pro-resistance edge. Most notably, at a February 2024 International Court of Justice hearing on the legality of the Israeli occupation, PRC Foreign Ministry legal advisor Ma Xinmin made waves by affirming that the “Palestinian people’s use of force to resist foreign oppression and complete the establishment of an independent state is an inalienable right.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 3070 of 1973 – inscribed into international law at the high tide of anticolonial struggle – he reiterated the legitimacy of Palestinian resistance “by all means, including armed struggle,” which is categorically “distinguished from acts of terrorism.” For its part, Hamas quickly responded by expressing its appreciation for this uncharacteristically bold intervention.

There is also a strong case to be made that China’s more methodical diplomatic approach in the post-Mao era – coupled with its growing challenge to US hegemony under Xi Jinping – has helped shape a more propitious regional environment for the Palestinian resistance. Helena Cobban, for instance, asserts that “the Beijing-aided reconciliation between Saudi Arabia and Iran transformed the politics of the entire Gulf/West Asia region, and in some ways made the October 7 action more feasible for Hamas’s leaders. The reconciliation reestablished China as a power with major influence within West Asia after an absence of more than five hundred years … the crisscrossing relationships that had been built up among BRICS members old and new provided a rich network of ‘postcolonial’ solidarity for the anticolonial national liberation struggle Hamas’s leaders and supporters saw themselves as fighting.”

All this said, it remains a common sentiment within China’s anti-imperialist left that, in the words of Yin Zhiguang, “with the demise of ideological politics within China, the discursive influence once achieved by New China's diplomacy is also fading.” In a message to the author, Zhang Sheng reiterated this point even more forcefully: “Mao era China's support for Palestinian people's righteous struggle for liberation is one of the most glorious pages of the PRC's history of internationalism, and I still feel proud and inspired today reading about this period of history. Until today, China is still a true friend of Palestine, and we will always stand in solidarity with the Palestinian people's struggle for liberation and self-determination. Unfortunately, I have to painfully admit that some of these glorious traditions have faded away after the Reform, and I truly wish that China could have done more to speak out against Israeli invasions and against the ongoing genocide in Gaza.”

In other words, we must look beyond the staid realm of official statements and state-to-state relations in order to truly understand the significance of China and the rise of multipolarity for the Palestinian resistance after October 7. In the remainder of this essay we will turn towards other, deeper manifestations of the indissoluble bond between both peoples and their respective revolutionary processes.

Part II: Al-Aqsa Flood, or People's War in the New Era arrow_upward

Mao Zedong says: the enemy advances, we retreat; the enemy camps, we harass; the enemy tires, we attack; the enemy retreats, we pursue. His theorizing on guerrilla warfare can be described as the flea war.

The conundrum of “how would a nation that is not industrial win over an industrial nation” was solved by Mao. Engels saw that nations that are able to provide capital are more likely to defeat [their] enemies. Meaning that economic power has the final word in battles because it provides the capital to manufacture arms. Mao’s solution however was to emphasize non-physical (or non-material) elements. Powerful states with powerful armies often focus on material power; arms, administrative issues, the military, but according to Katzenbach, Mao emphasized time, space (ground), and the will. What that means is to avoid large battles leaving ground in favor of time (trading space/ground with time) using time to build up will, that is the essence of asymmetrical war and guerrilla war.

— Basel al-Araj, “Live Like a Porcupine, Fight Like a Flea” (2018)

Notwithstanding Mao’s admonition to his PLO visitors to avoid book worship – including and especially of his own works – his writings on guerrilla warfare had by then become canon, and for good reason. Xinhua News Agency reported that the theoretical syllabus for Palestinian guerrillas training in China included "Problems of Strategy in China's Revolutionary War" (on the 1927-36 phase of the civil war between the CPC and KMT) and “Problems of Strategy in Guerrilla War Against Japan” (on the CPC’s need to maintain guerrilla tactics even in an anti-Japanese United Front with the KMT). 

Even as the ideological coordinates of the Palestinian armed struggle moved away from the left-nationalism and Marxism of the 1960s-70s and in a more Islamist direction, the precepts of people’s war retained a timeless quality. Time and again they were taken up (sometimes piecemeal) and creatively adapted to suit contemporary conditions, as in the above passage from polymathic revolutionary intellectual and martyr Basel al-Araj. The current conjuncture in the wake of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood is no different – five months at the time of writing into Israel’s genocidal assault on the people of Gaza, which has slaughtered well over 30,000 martyrs but left the resistance and its fighting capacity stubbornly and miraculously intact.

In this section we aim not to provide a detailed military assessment of the Gaza war and its broader regional repercussions, for which we are eminently unqualified, but to explore some of its key dimensions through the lens of Mao’s writings on guerrilla war. We take as our point of departure the analysis of our comrades in the Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), who characterize Gaza as simultaneously (and perhaps at first glance paradoxically):

• An open-air prison or concentration camp, already subject to near-genocidal siege conditions prior to October 7 and now converted into a mass death camp;

• The foremost popular cradle of the Palestinian revolution, i.e. “the organ, the beating heart, by which Palestinian resistance is carried out against the Zionist enemy”;

• The “only liberated Palestinian territory” and viable base area for large-scale resistance operations, starting with Israel’s 2005 “disengagement”;

• And the focal point of the regional Axis of Resistance.

Given the unspeakable horrors transmitted daily from Gaza’s killing fields, the first characterization now utterly dominates mainstream conceptions of the enclave. But Palestinians more than anyone else – even and especially those suffering directly under this murderous onslaught – are adamant that it not be allowed to monopolize our understanding of Gaza’s place at the heart of the struggle. To that end we now consider each of the others in turn.

Gaza as popular cradle

Many people think it impossible for guerrillas to exist for long in the enemy's rear. Such a belief reveals [a] lack of comprehension of the relationship that should exist between the people and the troops. The former may be likened to water, the latter to the fish who inhabit it. How may it be said that these two cannot exist together? It is only undisciplined troops who make the people their enemies and who, like the fish out of its native element, cannot live.

— Mao Zedong, Chapter 6 of “On Guerrilla Warfare” (1937)

Mao first posed this famous metaphor with guerrilla fighters as his audience, in a context where (especially during the civil war) they frequently had to contend with anti-communist ideological conditioning and mass suspicion of all armed formations as “bandits.” While the comparison with the Palestinian armed resistance is inexact, its deep level of implantation within the fabric of society for over 75 years is by no means an automatic byproduct of Zionist oppression. It requires careful and intentional cultivation, and in this sense we can think of the popular cradle as a complementary doctrine for the masses themselves: on how to act collectively as the “water” within which the guerrillas swim.

The Palestinian Youth Movement defines the concept thusly: “The Popular Cradle works as the organ of our struggle by conceptualising resistance as both a normal and necessary state of being and creating a resistance-enabling environment in which the popular masses financially, socially, and politically sustain the resistance and readily accepts the consequences of supporting armed struggle against Zionist settler colonialism.” Historical instances of the popular cradle in action include the widespread adoption by civilian men of the now-ubiquitous keffiyeh, over the then-customary Ottoman-style fez, in order to help armed revolutionaries blend into crowds during the Great Revolt of 1936-39. A more recent example in the same spirit occurred in 2022, when hundreds of men in the West Bank refugee camp of Shuafat shaved their heads in order to thwart Israeli efforts to apprehend or kill the bald resistance fighter Udai Tamimi.

In their analysis PYM considers the entirety of the Gaza Strip to constitute a single, massive popular cradle for the resistance – at a qualitatively larger scale than is practicable in the territorially-fragmented West Bank under the collaborationist Palestinian Authority. As Max Ajl writes, the extraordinary heroism and sumud (steadfastness) of Gazan civilians under Israel’s genocide vindicates this judgment resoundingly: “the popular cradle brings the word resistance beyond armed men to doctors going to their deaths in lieu of abandoning their patients and women and men in the Gaza Strip’s North – facing white phosphorus rather than abandoning their homes. It is precisely the strength of the civilian commitment to the national project that provokes US-Israeli extermination … to break Hamas by breaking its cradle.”

Another, more quantitative measure of the popular cradle’s endurance can be derived from public surveys of Palestinians before and after October 7. Of course even in “ideal” conditions, to say nothing of those currently endured by Palestinians in both Gaza and the West Bank, such polls have major limitations as meaningful barometers of mass sentiment. Nor do their results necessarily reflect the dialectical process through which the masses form a collective political subject in the course of true people’s war. With all these caveats, however, it is undeniable that Al-Aqsa Flood catalyzed a qualitative upsurge in the popular embrace of armed resistance. Two months into the war, the Palestinian Center for Policy and Survey Research recorded a doubling of support for Hamas (from 22% to 43%) and a dramatic increase in support for armed struggle generally (from 41% to 63%) compared with surveys before October 7.

This remarkable outcome strongly recalls Amílcar Cabral’s trenchant observation that in Guinea-Bissau’s unfavorably flat physical terrain – a problem even more acute for Palestinian guerrillas – “the people are our mountains.” Returning to the Chinese example, the triumphs and travails of the resistance since October 7 also evoke Edgar Snow’s moving summation of the Long March in Red Star Over China:

In one sense this mass migration was the biggest armed propaganda tour in history. The Reds passed through provinces populated by more than 200,000,000 people … Millions of the poor had now seen the Red Army and heard it speak, and were no longer afraid of it … Many thousands dropped out on the long and heartbreaking march, but thousands of others – farmers, apprentices, slaves, deserters from the Kuomintang ranks, workers, all the disinherited – joined in and filled the ranks.

Gaza as liberated territory

The problem of establishment of bases is of particular importance. This is so because this war is a cruel and protracted struggle. The lost territories can be restored only by a strategical counter-attack and this we cannot carry out until the enemy is well into China. Consequently, some part of our country — or, indeed, most of it — may be captured by the enemy and become his rear area. It is our task to develop intensive guerrilla warfare over this vast area and convert the enemy's rear into an additional front. Thus the enemy will never be able to stop fighting. In order to subdue the occupied territory, the enemy will have to become increasingly severe and oppressive. A guerrilla base may be defined as an area, strategically located, in which the guerrillas can carry out their duties of training, self-preservation and development. Ability to fight a war without a rear area is a fundamental characteristic of guerrilla action, but this does not mean that guerrillas can exist and function over a long period of time without the development of base areas.

— Mao Zedong, Chapter 8 of “On Guerrilla Warfare” (1937)

The aforementioned Long March was in many ways the paradigmatic example of the conception of strategic depth that Mao articulates here. In that grueling ordeal the Communists maximally exploited the sheer vastness of China’s territory, as they would do again after Japan’s invasion. On the other hand the applicability of this passage to a besieged coastal enclave just 25 miles long and five miles wide, with one of the highest population densities on earth, may not be immediately obvious. But if we examine the long arc of Palestinian struggle at multiple spatial and temporal scales, this principle indeed comes into operation time and again.

It could be argued that up until the First Intifada erupted in Gaza’s Jabalia refugee camp in 1987, Palestinian guerrillas faced the opposite conundrum from that spelled out by Mao. That is to say, after the successive blows of 1948 and 1967 the entirety of historic Palestine came under Zionist occupation, with virtually all Palestinians therein under nearly undifferentiated military rule. This essentially left organized guerrilla formations with only rear areas – mainly refugee camps in Lebanon and Jordan – and little to no frontline or base area to speak of within occupied Palestine itself. (One of the few exceptions, in a further testament to Gaza’s centrality to the resistance, was a series of Egyptian-sponsored raids originating from the territory in the lead-up to the 1956 Suez Crisis: a distant historical precursor to Al-Aqsa Flood.)

During this earlier period, resistance groups had to creatively adapt the precepts of guerrilla war to the conditions of exile. As pointed out in the 1971 documentary Red Army-PFLP: Declaration of World War (on which more in Part IV): “They make no distinction between front line and rear … for them there is no difference between urban guerrillas and [rural] guerrilla warfare. Urban guerrillas learn on the battlefield, and masses of people make the battlefield their home.” At another point in the film, a PFLP cadre explains that “it is here, the Jerash Mountains stretching along the border between Israel and Jordan, that we choose to be our battleground, to build our base to start war and expand revolution.” The reasoning behind this decision – to build a base sandwiched between two (at the time) mutually-antagonistic bastions of imperialism – recalls that of Mao in “Why is it that Red political power can exist in China?” (1928): “The prolonged splits and wars within the White regime provide a condition for the emergence and persistence of one or more small Red areas under the leadership of the Communist Party amidst the encirclement of the White regime.”

As recounted in Part I, the crushing of the Black September uprising rendered even this tenuous foothold on the border of Jordan and occupied Palestine impossible to maintain. In subsequent decades a series of military and diplomatic maneuvers by Israel and its imperialist backers, principally the United States, further eliminated one rear area after another in calculated fashion. Chief among these were Israel’s brutal 1982 invasion of Lebanon (to which the PLO had fled from Jordan and from which it was forced to flee again), followed by its 1985-2000 occupation of south Lebanon; and since 2011 the US-led proxy war on Syria, which paid host to multiple rejectionist factions after the Oslo accords. Alongside these came Israel's normalization agreements with Egypt in 1979, Jordan in 1994, and four other Arab states in the 2020 Abraham Accords, as well as the creation of the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a counterinsurgent force in the occupied territories themselves.

Israel’s unilateral “disengagement” from the Gaza Strip in 2005 would appear to have bucked this trend, though as PYM points out it was motivated more by the Palestinian “demographic threat” to the rather thin Jewish settler presence there. If Zionist authorities also felt secure in entrusting Gaza to the PA for continued “pacification,” they were swiftly disabused by Hamas’s victory in the 2006 legislative election and its subsequent takeover of the territory in 2007, following an abortive Fatah-led coup attempt. These events effectively converted the Strip into a de facto liberated territory and base area – albeit under crushing blockade – where Hamas and other resistance factions could, in Mao’s words, “carry out their duties of training, self-preservation, and development.”

Whether Gaza could be qualified as “strategically located” was another question entirely. Hemmed in from the west by the Mediterranean Sea and on all other sides by the joint Israeli-Egyptian blockade, the apparent lack of strategic depth enjoyed by the resistance – to say nothing of the civilian population – was made painfully clear by a succession of punishing military onslaughts in 2008, 2012, 2014, and 2021 even before the apocalypse of 2023-24. 

On paper, this is a far more disadvantageous position than that faced by any CPC revolutionary base area after the Long March. Yan’an, for example, was chosen as the destination of that arduous trek partly for its closeness to the anti-Japanese front and to Soviet supply lines (as well as those from the rest of KMT-held North China after the formation of the Second United Front). And when the civil war resumed in force after World War II, the new CPC base in Manchuria directly bordered both the Soviet Union and north Korea, which offered expansive rear areas and near-inexhaustible supply lines for both men and materiel.

But famously, and more crucially than ever before in the wake of October 7, the Gaza-based resistance has compensated for its conspicuous lack of lateral strategic depth by constructing a gargantuan tunnel network 300 to 450 miles in length (according to the latest Israeli estimates). In other words, as Justin Podur points out, they have literally built vertical strategic depth into the ground. In this way they make up not just for the limited size but also other deficiencies of the physical terrain, as Louis Allday notes: “Gaza’s geography lacks the mountainous and/or dense forested areas that were crucial in other successful guerrilla warfare campaigns—the network of tunnels now effectively fulfills that role.” Max Ajl sums up their combined political, technical, and strategic achievements in terms that echo Cabral: “The resistance … has alloyed ideological commitment, willingness to sacrifice for their people, and technological ingenuity into armed capacity capable of going head-to-head with a nuclear power from underground tunnels, the ‘rear base’ and physical strategic depth needed for guerilla insurgency. The concrete is their mountains.”

Indeed the near-total devastation of Gaza’s built infrastructure – both a byproduct and an intentional manifestation of Israel’s genocidal aims – has turned concrete into “mountains” even above ground as well. Jon Elmer of the Electronic Intifada has highlighted that resistance forces now routinely use the rubble from Israeli airstrikes as advantageous terrain to attack invading ground troops from all angles. At times they even “walk through walls” as former IDF chief of staff Aviv Kochavi once boasted of doing, through homes not yet depopulated of their civilian inhabitants, in his quasi-Deleuzian counterinsurgent operational theory. Even as Israeli forces boldly claim “full operational control” over most of the Strip, penning some 1.5 million civilians into Rafah for what they believe to be a final eliminatory push, the resistance retains its capacity to wage a guerrilla war of maneuver even as far north as Gaza City. Just as Mao prescribed, everywhere they “convert the enemy’s rear into an additional front. Thus the enemy will never be able to stop fighting.”

The Axis of Resistance: encirclement and counter-encirclement

If the game of weiqi is extended to include the world, there is yet a third form of encirclement as between us and the enemy, namely, the interrelation between the front of aggression and the front of peace. The enemy encircles China, the Soviet Union, France and Czechoslovakia with his front of aggression, while we counter-encircle Germany, Japan and Italy with our front of peace. But our encirclement, like the hand of Buddha, will turn into the Mountain of Five Elements lying athwart the Universe, and the modern Sun Wukongs  – the fascist aggressors – will finally be buried underneath it, never to rise again.

— Mao Zedong, “On Protracted War” (1938)

When Mao wrote these words a year before the outbreak of World War II in Europe, China’s war of resistance against Japan could justly have been considered the epicenter of the world anti-fascist struggle. It would be no exaggeration to say that Gaza occupies this position today. As such we cannot ignore that as the Zionist “front of aggression” encircles and seemingly lays waste to the very possibility of human life in Gaza, the resistance there compensates for its lack of strategic depth not just through tunnel warfare but through its own “front of peace”: the Axis of Resistance. Primarily comprising the Lebanese resistance formation Hezbollah, the Ansarallah movement of Yemen (also known as the “Houthis”), and the Islamic Resistance in Iraq, the non-Palestinian members of this alliance have since October 7 leveraged their strategic locations and access to state-level resources – and in Ansarallah’s case, de facto state status – to effect an asymmetric counter-encirclement of Israel and its regional backers.

The activities of the Islamic Resistance in Iraq serve to illustrate the recursive nature of “encirclement” in this context. Though their membership substantially overlaps with that of the Iraqi state-sponsored Popular Mobilization Forces, they lack some of their allies’ long-range firepower and have only rarely been able to target Israel directly. But their area of operation includes dozens of US military bases – globally part of a world-encircling network of around 800, but locally quite isolated and exposed. The Islamic Resistance has exploited this fact to maximum effect given its capabilities, launching over 170 attacks on US bases in Iraq and Syria since October 17 in a campaign both to expel occupying forces from the region and to raise the costs for their support of the Israeli genocide. One of these attacks scored a major coup on January 28, 2024 by killing three US troops at the Tower 22 base in Jordan.

More strategically located vis-à-vis Israel, and with decades more fighting experience from its victorious fifteen-year campaign to liberate southern Lebanon and its historic defeat of another Israeli invasion in 2006, is Hezbollah. Starting on October 8, just a day after Al-Aqsa Flood, it has by its own count launched over a thousand cross-border operations mainly against Israeli military bases, surveillance posts, and settlements in the north. According to statements by Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah on January 5 and February 4, Hezbollah has thereby forced the evacuation of 230,000 settlers from northern occupied Palestine; tied down 120,000 Israeli ground troops and fully half of its navy and air force, leaving them unavailable for the assault on Gaza; and inflicted over 2000 direct casualties. According to a recent survey, 60% of Lebanese believe “the presence of the resistance, its demonstration of its growing strength, and its revealing of an important aspect of these capabilities during the current confrontations” are responsible for preventing a comprehensive Israeli attack on the country.

The most creative and unlikely intervention has come from Yemen’s Ansarallah, the de facto governing authorities of a country that has itself suffered eight years of unremitting siege and bombardment from US-backed Saudi and Emirati forces. Since November 18, when they sensationally boarded and captured the Galaxy Leader, they have enforced a blockade on Israeli-bound or Israeli-linked shipping through the Bab al-Mandab strait at the southern end of the Red Sea. In total Ansarallah claims to have targeted at least 48 vessels affiliated with Israel (or the US and UK, since the latter began launching joint airstrikes on Yemen on January 11) and has pledged to continue until the Israeli siege on Gaza ends. Contrary to patronizing Western narratives that paint their actions as mere piracy, Max Ajl emphasizes that “the Yemeni armed forces understand themselves as fighting a mass mobilizing peoples’ war, based on ideological hardening of troops and sophisticated tactics to neutralize technological superiority, learned during their apprenticeship with Hezbollah.”

In an ironic echo of the practice of corporate “over-compliance” with US sanctions on Iran and Cuba, four of the world’s five largest shipping companies have suspended their Red Sea routes entirely. Freight volume passing through the Red Sea has plummeted by a stunning 80% from pre-crisis levels according to the Kiel Trade Indicator; traffic specifically at the southern Israeli port of Eilat has cratered by 85%. Given its centrality to global trade, much attention has focused unsurprisingly on China’s positioning. Its public rejection of US entreaties to join the ill-fated “Operation Prosperity Guardian,” and its condemnation of unilateral aggression against Yemen, is probably not unrelated to the growing trend of vessels signaling “all Chinese crew” to avoid targeting by Ansarallah. Meanwhile state-owned shipping company COSCO has stopped traffic to Israeli ports entirely, following in the footsteps of its Hong Kong subsidiary OOCL and Taiwan-based Evergreen’s refusal to handle Israeli cargo.

According to historian Amal Saad, the Axis of Resistance has thus managed to impose an entirely new like-for-like strategic equation on Israel in the wake of October 7: “displacement for displacement” in the case of Hezbollah, and “siege for siege” for Ansarallah. Together this constitutes a regional counter-encirclement that partially negates any strategic depth Israel may enjoy vis-à-vis Gaza alone, even with the active collusion of its neighbors Egypt and Jordan. Khalil Harb notes the unprecedented nature of this strategic conjuncture: “For the first time in its 76-year history … the occupation state is today grappling with buffer zones inside Israel.”

A common Western smear against the Axis is that its various members act essentially as proxies for their main state sponsor, the Islamic Republic of Iran. Their actual operational practice since October 7 has conclusively refuted this charge. In a January 3 speech commemorating the anniversary of Qassem Soleimani’s martyrdom, Hassan Nasrallah pointed out that the late Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps commander had always pushed for resistance factions to avoid dependence on Iran and attain material self-sufficiency and operational autonomy – objectives which have now been met. “In this grand vision,” he noted, “no one commands another. We discuss. We share opinions. We learn from each other. But each one decides his own pathway in his own country based on what is good for his country.” 

From a technical standpoint, Max Ajl notes, “Iranian weapons and training are free, representing ‘the possibility of access to weapons for the poor.’ Indeed, their blueprints are often open-access or freely shared from Iran to its state and sub-state partners.” This dynamic stands in stark contrast to the dependency that the United States forces on most of its Global South vassals (particularly in the region, e.g. Egypt and Saudi Arabia) as captive markets for its domestic arms industry. Rather it loosely resembles, albeit in an even less transactional form, China’s active efforts to promote industrialization and scaling of the value chain by its partners in the Belt and Road Initiative. Indeed, Matteo Capasso has convincingly argued that China’s single greatest material contribution to Palestinian resistance today is its deepening bilateral trade with Iran, enabling the country to support its Axis partners in building out their autonomous capabilities even under a vicious US sanctions regime.

In Palestine itself this essentially decentralized form of coordinated resistance has been mirrored in the “unity of the fields” between Gaza, the West Bank, and the ‘48 territories. With the Unity Intifada of May 2021, “for the first time in nearly two decades, Palestinian resistance, whether armed or unarmed, was no longer confined to a single territorial enclave.” Unfortunately  that volume of open resistance within ‘48 Palestine has not been matched since October 7, owing to depoliticization and normalization within nearly all nominally legal Palestinian formations. But the year 2023 did witness a remarkable 350% increase in West Bank resistance operations over the previous year, from 170 to 608.

Regarding the unity of the fields, in terms that apply equally to the broader regional practice of the Resistance Axis since October 7, Abdaljawad Omar remarks aptly that

This ambiguity means that the occupying state must design its military operations taking into account the possibility of any small confrontation developing into a multi-front regional war. At the same time, the lack of clarity of the concept gives the possibility of evasion, such that the resistance determines when to intervene, or what its red lines are, or when the response will be broad and from all geographies, and when it will be limited and from a specific location, or when there will be no response at all.

Part III: Smashing Walls, Building Firewalls, and Breaking the Digital Siege arrow_upward

In the last section we explored the Axis of Resistance and its pursuit of material self-sufficiency, as well as Basel al-Araj’s incisive Mao-inspired analysis of asymmetric warfare against a technologically superior enemy. Building on that foundation, we now turn to two intentionally under- or misreported facets of the current conjuncture:

1. The sovereign technological innovations developed by the Palestinian resistance under siege conditions in Gaza, particularly in the fields of weaponry, counterintelligence and counter-surveillance, and information warfare; and

2. How these are enabled, reinforced, and amplified by China’s own project of sovereign technological development and delinking from Western digital monopolies – a target of renewed opprobrium since the start of the war.

Both phenomena are manifestations, under vastly different circumstances, of what Max Ajl describes in the context of the Resistance Axis as “the dialectical relationship between technological upgrading, defensive industrialization, and armed defensive capacity to secure the space for expanded reproduction in peripheral or embattled nation-states.”

Since October 7 the Qassam Brigades (the armed wing of Hamas) have released a near-daily stream of videos displaying an impressive range of indigenously developed weaponry. Most feature their use in active combat, while some actually show selected aspects of the development, manufacture, and/or testing process. Perhaps the most paradigmatic example – and by far the most visible from the privileged standpoint of Israeli settlers, especially before October 7 – is the vertiginous rise in sophistication of Hamas’s rockets. These have evolved from the first-generation Qassam Q-12, which had a maximum range of around 12 kilometers, to the recently unveiled Ayyash-250 whose 250-kilometer range puts essentially all of occupied Palestine within reach.

Other indigenously produced weapons have made frequent appearances in ground combat; most have been ingeniously adapted based on prior designs from past and present allies of the Palestinian resistance. The Yassin anti-tank rocket-propelled grenade, for example, is based on a modified Soviet model and features in almost every Qassam combat video. The Shawaz explosively formed penetrator, specially designed to penetrate Israeli vehicles’ reinforced armor, is believed to be inspired by devices used by the Iraqi resistance against the 2003-2011 US occupation. And the al-Ghoul sniper rifle, whose manufacture and testing feature prominently in a Qassam video from late December, is based on the Iranian AM50 Sayyad design.

Great historical significance attaches to many of these weapons’ names. Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the revolutionary cleric who initiated the Great Revolt of 1936-39, gave his name both to the Brigades and to several generations of their iconic rockets. Sheikh Ahmed Yassin co-founded Hamas in 1987. And Yahya Ayyash and Adnan al-Ghoul were both leading engineers who pioneered the Qassam Brigades’ bomb and missile development programs, martyred in 1996 and 2004 respectively. Indeed the organization’s engineering prowess is no accident: as Abdaljawad Omar points out, it was actually a product of their religious conservatism in a way that may strike Western observers as paradoxical, given the strong post-Enlightenment association of science and technology with secularism. In the Palestinian context, Hamas regarded the humanities and social sciences (with some reason) as vectors of Western influence and bastions of the political left, and thus preferentially steered its student cadres into engineering and the “hard” sciences.

This remarkably prescient decision preceded by decades the Hamas takeover and Israeli siege on Gaza, which respectively enabled and necessitated the development of such an expansive indigenous weapons industry. In its logic and foresight we can find distant though compelling echoes in the developmental strategies pursued by China in recent decades. For example the Four Modernizations (in agriculture, industry, defense, and science and technology), proposed by Zhou Enlai in 1963 and officially adopted in 1977, set a technocratic direction of travel for Deng Xiaoping’s reforms after the “ultra-left” ideological upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. More recently, we can observe an intriguing parallel with the rising influence in Chinese online discourse of the so-called “Industrial Party,” which advocates “pure” technological developmentalism as a nominally non-ideological alternative to both the Maoist and New Left and the liberal Right (both of which it categorizes pejoratively as the “Sentimental Party”). 

Another constant throughline in the history of Gaza’s homegrown arms industry is the ingenious sourcing of materials repurposed from former and current colonial foes. Specifically, a 2020 Al-Jazeera documentary revealed that the Qassam Brigades have routinely recycled unexploded shells left over from previous Israeli bombing campaigns, and even from wrecked British warships that were sunk off the coast of Gaza during World War I. They have also produced rocket casings using pipes that were installed during the pre-2005 occupation to siphon water into Israel from Gaza’s heavily depleted aquifer. Per a recent report in the New York Times, Israeli intelligence officials believe that “unexploded ordnance is a main source of explosives for Hamas,” particularly those used to devastating effect on October 7. Between this recycling and outright expropriation from Israeli bases, they admit, “we are fueling our enemies with our own weapons.”

In this respect too we can discern a historical irony reminiscent of the Chinese experience. In the final phase of the civil war, the nascent People’s Liberation Army captured billions of dollars’ worth of US weapons supplied to the KMT; one veteran recalled that “nearly 95 percent” of the arms displayed in the 1949 victory parade were of Western or Japanese manufacture. In subsequent decades, China would rely on Soviet models as the basis for a domestic arms industry that it eventually employed to defend against potential attack from the Soviets themselves. With the vertiginous rise and equally dramatic collapse in relations with the United States, this cycle then repeated itself with Western prototypes – partially sourced from Israel itself, as noted in Part I, due to reliable battle-testing against Soviet systems.

These advances in resistance arms production – miraculous as they were, especially under Gaza’s extreme conditions of technological dependency and de-development even before October 7 – obviously could not come close to matching the enemy. Indeed Israel has long distinguished itself not only as the region’s only nuclear-armed state, and by far the world’s largest recipient of US military aid, but as a self-styled “startup nation” at the cutting edge of high-tech surveillance, information warfare, counterinsurgency, and the automation of mass death. Just as crucial to the success of Al-Aqsa Flood as Hamas’s own capabilities were their efforts to conceal them, and to neutralize Israel’s advantages by cultivating a false sense of security in its own insuperable technological dominance.

Nowhere was the Zionist regime more spectacularly humbled for this colonial hubris than in the simultaneous disabling of the Iron Dome and the Gaza “smart wall” on October 7. In a combined arms operation executed simultaneously at over thirty distinct locations, the former was overwhelmed by rocket fire, which “drowned out the sound of gunfire from Hamas snipers, who shot at the string of cameras on the border fence, and explosions from more than 100 remotely operated Hamas drones, that destroyed watchtowers.” After the wall was breached, so precise was the Qassam Brigades’ intelligence that within an hour they had overrun eight military bases including the one housing the elite signals intelligence Unit 8200. At every location their first step was to cut off communications, in a poetic reversal of the blackouts Israel has so routinely inflicted on Gaza before and since.

Those blackouts were just one manifestation of Israel’s near-total control over and intentional de-development of Gaza’s communications system. As Nour Naim writes in her essay “Artificial Intelligence as a Tool for Restoring Palestinian Rights” (in Gaza Writes Back, 2021): “The dependence of the Palestinian infrastructure on Israel’s infrastructure, whether that entail the internet, landlines, or cellular communications, has given Israel as an occupying power enormous monitoring capabilities.” In order to conceal the years of preparation that laid the groundwork for October 7, the resistance adapted accordingly in a way that exploited Israel’s own narcissistic techno-solutionism. As the Financial Times reports, “Hamas has maintained operational security by going ‘stone age’ and using hard-wired phone lines while eschewing devices that are hackable or emit an electronic signature.”

Elsewhere in her essay, Naim notes that “while Israel uses 5G technology and prepares for 6G, Israeli restrictions limit people in Gaza to 2G.” This practice recalls the United States’ largely failed efforts to thwart the large-scale deployment of 5G infrastructure by Chinese firm Huawei, especially throughout the Global South. Its parallel campaign to force Huawei out of at least Western smartphone markets through sanctions and export controls proved rather more successful. As with Israel – albeit with less extreme methods and more global scope – both moves quite transparently aimed to de-develop an enemy while preserving US surveillance capabilities in its captive export markets. (Amusingly, the resulting lack of direct Western experience with Huawei phones led to unfounded speculation that Hamas had used them to evade Israeli surveillance – an incredible marketing pitch if it were only true!)

In the wake of the utter debacle suffered by the entire Israeli state apparatus on October 7, various exculpatory narratives have arisen in order to absolve key actors of responsibility. One floated in the New York Times by self-interested “dissident” officials, which nonetheless arguably has some measure of validity, is that Benjamin Netanyahu intentionally helped “prop up” the Hamas administration in Gaza for most of his time in office. As the claim goes, he hoped to keep the organization “focused on governing, not fighting,” entrenching the political divide with the Fatah-led West Bank and foreclosing the possibility of a viable Palestinian state. Hamas for its part was perfectly content to appear “contained” while using the breathing room thus acquired to plan for Al-Aqsa Flood.

Here again we see a loose though compelling parallel with China, in particular the decades-long US strategy of “engagement” beginning with President Nixon’s rapprochement in the early 1970s. There the intent was to further entrench the already terminal Sino-Soviet split within the socialist camp, directly enlist the PRC into a US-led anti-Soviet bloc, and contain it for the foreseeable future to the periphery of the capitalist world system. China, conversely, appeared to accede to this plan while conscientiously pursuing a complementary strategy of “hiding its strength and biding its time” (韬光养晦) – with results that are now plain for all to see. 

Incidentally, per the aforementioned New York Times story, one concrete form of assistance allegedly rendered by Netanyahu was to cover up a “money-laundering operation for Hamas run through the Bank of China.” This was an early-2010s instantiation of what has since October 7 become a veritable cottage industry of Western media narratives accusing China of direct material support for the Palestinian resistance. For the anti-imperialist left such stories may serve as a form of wish-fulfillment, but we must of course recognize their primarily Sinophobic function in an ideological environment that normatively and legally equates resistance with “terrorism” of a distinctly “antisemitic” nature.

On the more substantive end of the spectrum, there are strong indications that many of the relatively inexpensive drones used to disable the Gaza “smart wall” on October 7 were sourced from Chinese commercial manufacturer DJI. If true, as seems highly plausible, this simply testifies to China’s economies of scale and the transformative leveling effects of asymmetric drone warfare in general – also on prominent display in Ansarallah’s celebrated use of $2000 drones, each of which the US Navy requires a $2 million missile to intercept. A similar dynamic is at play with reports from Israeli TV channel N12 claiming that the occupation army had discovered a “‘massive’ cache of Chinese-made weapons being used by Hamas militants in Gaza.” Even this highly questionable source admitted that the origin of this alleged arsenal was most likely the large second-hand and/or black market rather than direct provision approved by the Chinese state. 

More speculatively, the notorious Israeli “China watcher” Tuvia Gering has suggested that Ansarallah’s anti-ship ballistic missiles are based on a decades-old Chinese design, the HQ-2, adapted by Iran into the Fateh-110 and supplied to Yemen in modified form as the Khalij Fars-2. (He derives this assessment from a self-described Chinese “military analyst” on Douyin whose actual qualifications are in question.) Whatever the case may be, the US navy has claimed that Ansarallah is the first entity ever to use such missiles in combat. If so, this would join the “first known instance of combat occurring in space” as a most unlikely technological milestone by Yemen, the poorest country in the Arab region and one of the only de facto state governments in the world acting fully on its obligations under the Genocide Convention.

Other reports in Israeli media highlight the growing perceived “security threat” from the country’s extensive economic entanglement with China, an ironic consequence of the latter’s drive toward full normalization starting in the 1990s. One such story claimed that Israeli electronics firms have since October 7 faced significantly heightened “bureaucratic obstacles” from PRC-based suppliers: “The Chinese are imposing a kind of sanction on us. They don't officially declare it, but they are delaying shipments to Israel.” A co-founder of Shin Bet’s cyber unit has also warned that “when it decides the time is right, China may be able to stop the operations of critical infrastructures in Israel,” such as the Chinese-operated port of Haifa.

Within the repressive domestic political environment of the United States, on the other hand, a more insidious narrative has emerged that sees a controlling Chinese hand behind the vast and sustained outpouring of popular solidarity with Palestine. This has included innumerable campus walkouts and sit-ins, dramatic traffic stoppages, direct actions targeting weapons manufacturers and other institutions complicit in Zionist genocide, and mass mobilizations including two marches in Washington, D.C. that drew 300,000 to 500,000 people. As early as October 2023, former Speaker of the House of Representatives Nancy Pelosi was recorded telling pro-ceasefire protestors to “go back to China where your headquarters is” – referencing a notorious New York Times hit piece from August which smeared numerous anti-imperialist organizations as CPC front groups, including protest organizers Code Pink.

Pelosi’s almost cartoonishly McCarthyist jibe hewed closely to what has been probably the most enduring genre of Sinophobic narratives since October 7. These are specifically directed at China’s remarkably successful project of safeguarding its digital sovereignty by building the so-called “Great Firewall,” delinking from Western platform monopolies, and carefully cultivating its own domestic platforms especially for social media. (Indeed the University of Bonn’s Center for Advanced Security, Strategic and Integration Studies ranks China second only to the United States in its “Digital Dependence” index.) In mainstream Western media these features of the Chinese internet are almost universally derided as the creations of a paranoid and totalitarian surveillance state, with an all-encompassing censorship apparatus that enjoys near-total control over online public expression. 

In fact this narrative stems from seething resentment that China has created a media and information environment for over a billion internet users that is relatively insulated from Zionist hasbara and entirely free from Western platform censorship. (Admittedly, and inevitably given the size of its user base, the Chinese internet does have its own share of pro-Israel influence operations. But their actual impact has been sharply delineated along class lines, and largely restricted to an increasingly embattled stratum of “rightist” intellectuals still enamored with the civilizational discourses of Western liberalism.) This general phenomenon also manifests to some extent outside China, with Palestinian resistance factions like the Qassam Brigades and Saraya al-Quds enjoying relatively unrestricted access to Russia-based Telegram as a platform for their communications. The contrast with, for example, Meta’s censorship of even “moderate” pro-Palestinian content – so extreme as to draw harsh rebukes even from Human Rights Watch – is painfully obvious.

Especially in the fevered early months of Western coverage regarding the war, a number of absurdly overblown stories in this vein gained traction and then rapidly faded away. One of these in early November alleged that two of China’s largest homegrown mapping apps, created by Alibaba and Baidu, had removed Israel’s country name from regional maps in the aftermath of October 7. (The viral claim seems to have originated with a Falun Gong-linked Twitter account and then spread like wildfire to supposedly “reputable” Western media outlets.) The truth was that owing to Israel’s own illegal occupation of the territories seized in 1967, and its calculated refusal to define its own borders, its name had not been visible on either app since at least May 2021. Interestingly, Baidu Maps displays the 1947 UN Partition Plan boundaries in addition to Israel’s much more expansive de facto borders after the Nakba of 1948 – possibly an oblique acknowledgment of the latter’s manifest illegitimacy.

Looking instead at the dominant Western (and global) rival to Alibaba and Baidu Maps, Yarden Katz has shown that a totalizing Zionist settler ideology is firmly embedded in Google’s mapping operations at all levels. In 2013 the company paid $1.1 billion to acquire Waze, which directly “emerged from the Israeli army’s Unit 8200.” Even more consequentially, “Google Maps similarly gives a Zionist view of the land. For Google Maps, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, and the terms ‘West Bank’ and ‘Gaza’ have in the past been replaced with ‘Israel.’ Google Maps has also displayed large swaths of the West Bank as blanks, reminiscent of Google co-founder [Sergey Brin]’s sense that what isn’t Israel is ‘just dirt.’”

Around the same time, the fallout of October 7 reignited the ongoing Sinophobic witch hunt directed at TikTok due to its ownership by China-headquartered company ByteDance. In an op-ed entitled “Why Do Young Americans Support Hamas? Look at TikTok,” Republican US Representative Mike Gallagher cited a Harvard/Harris poll indicating that a remarkable 51% of Americans aged 18 to 24 believe that the October 7 Palestinian resistance operation was justified. For this “morally bankrupt view of the world,” he placed the blame not on younger generations’ extraordinary political maturity in the face of the Zionist propaganda offensive, but squarely on TikTok: a vector for political socialization supposedly “controlled by America’s foremost adversary, one that does not share our interests or our values: the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).” In a measured but laconic riposte, the company itself was forced to respond by pointing out that “attitudes among young people skewed toward Palestine long before TikTok existed.”

Interestingly, Gallagher extended a backhanded compliment of sorts to China’s attainment of digital sovereignty elsewhere in the article: “We know of TikTok’s predatory nature because the app has several versions. In China, there is a safely sanitized version called Douyin … Put differently, ByteDance and the CCP have decided that China’s children get spinach, and America’s get digital fentanyl.” Putting aside the absurd and racist invocation of a reverse “Opium War,” this line betrays a fundamental unease among Western ideologues – tied to the mast of a rapidly crumbling Zionist hegemony – that the Chinese internet remains, by design, maddeningly beyond their grasp.

It should come as no surprise then that the most persistent line of attack on China’s digital sovereignty has directly targeted the country’s netizens, a perennial object of orientalist fascination. In Western media coverage since October 7 two dominant narratives have converged seamlessly: the equation of anti-Zionism with antisemitism, and the supposed unknowability of Chinese public opinion under a totalizing censorship regime. Reporting on a deluge of outraged comments on the Israeli embassy’s official Weibo page, for instance, the New York Times in late October opined: “It is hard to say whether the anti-Israeli positions in state media and antisemitism on the Chinese internet are part of a coordinated campaign. But China’s state media rarely veers from the official position of the country’s Communist Party, and its hair-trigger internet censors are keenly attuned to the wishes of its leaders, quick to remove any content that sways public sentiment in an unwanted direction, especially on matters of such geopolitical importance.”

Another contribution to this genre came from the US state-owned propaganda outlet Voice of America, which in late December reported that “over the past two months, netizens in China have cheered for Hamas and shared cartoons featuring Hamas fighters on Bilibili and other Chinese social media platforms.” The story conveniently neglected to add that said cartoons originated on English-language Twitter, where they received an equally rapturous response before propagating across the Great Firewall. That said, it did acknowledge the growing community of Chinese armchair military analysts who enthusiastically dissect combat videos from the Palestinian resistance for domestic audiences, such as Bilibili user 黑猫星球 (Black Cat Planet) whose work has already graced this article. In this author’s personal estimation, they are every bit the equal of Jon Elmer’s excellent resistance dispatches for the Electronic Intifada. 

What such stories actually convey to bona fide anti-imperialists (not VOA’s target audience of course) is just how little fundamentally separates us across national, linguistic, and technological divides. Other examples over the past months include a veritable tidal wave of translations of “If I Must Die,” a poem by martyred Gazan writer and English professor Refaat Alareer, into other languages beginning with one in Chinese. More recently, Chinese netizens saluted the sacrifice of US airman Aaron Bushnell, who self-immolated in front of the Israeli embassy in Washington, D.C. on February 25, 2024 in protest of the genocide, with an outpouring of heartfelt tributes and striking visual art.

And try as they might to propagate a narrative of rampant online antisemitism, even Voice of America could not obscure the real historical basis for ordinary Chinese people’s enduring solidarity with the Palestinian cause. “In the comment section of these videos,” the aforementioned story notes, “netizens left messages praising Hamas. They compared Hamas's attacks on the Israeli army to the Chinese Communist Party's counterattack against the Japanese during World War II. One highly liked comment read, ‘It can be said that in them, we can see the figures of the Northeast Anti-Japanese United Army fighters among the white mountains and black waters in the old days.’”

Part IV: Declaration of World War arrow_upward

Now, as in the worldwide revolutionary upsurge of the 1960s-70s, the strongest emotive and analytical connections between China’s historical experience and the Palestinian resistance come through the memory of the Second Sino-Japanese War. Far fewer, in either China or (especially) the West, are likely aware of the contributions made by Japan itself – or rather, a small but impactful minority of Japanese people – in cementing that affective bond in the consciousness of the global left.

Throughout the 1960s Japan was wracked by massive revolutionary upheavals seeking to end its subordination to the United States, which had rehabilitated and largely reinstalled the WWII-era fascist leadership and converted the country into a massive rear base for imperialist aggression against Korea, Vietnam, and China. From these struggles emerged a plethora of armed New Left formations, some of which (most infamously the United Red Army) sadly consumed themselves in fratricidal violence. Seeking a literal way out of these internecine battles, the Japanese Red Army (JRA) was founded in 1971 on a doctrine that sought to expand the armed struggle from its domestic fetters and into the heartlands of world revolution.

As originally formulated by the JRA’s founding chairman Takaya Shiomi, this “international base theory” would have relocated their operations to secure bases in established socialist states, predominantly in the Eastern Bloc. Fellow Red Army leader Fusako Shigenobu soon amended this proposal, arguing that “battlefields of the struggle in transition to liberation and revolution should be our international bases.” Foremost among these active revolutionary battlegrounds in her analysis was Palestine; under her leadership the JRA relocated shortly after its founding to the refugee camps in Lebanon and cemented a close military alliance with the PFLP.

It was just a year later, in May 1972, that the JRA exploded into the popular consciousness and cemented its reputation – for heroism throughout much of the Arab world, and for “terrorism” in the West – by mounting an attack at Lod Airport in Tel Aviv. The operation led to 26 deaths; in an early precursor to the narrative battle surrounding October 7, official accounts paint it as a cold-blooded massacre, while the JRA and other eyewitnesses insist the attackers had a clear military objective (the airport control tower) and most victims were killed in the crossfire. In any case, Zhang Sheng notes that by striking so deep within occupied Palestine the JRA had scored what “was regarded by some as the first victory against Israel, which crippled the myth of Israel’s invulnerability.” The propaganda value of the operation was certainly not lost on Israeli leaders, who months later assassinated PFLP spokesman Ghassan Kanafani and his niece in direct retaliation.

The JRA’s first year of operations also produced an enduring piece of militant documentary filmmaking, Red Army-PFLP: Declaration of World War (Sekigun-PFLP: Sekai senso sengen, or 赤軍PFLP・世界戦争宣言). Co-directed by Masao Adachi – who subsequently took a three-decade hiatus from cinema to join the JRA in Lebanon, eventually returning to direct a dramatization of the Lod Airport operation and more recently a biopic of Shinzo Abe’s assassin – it features extensive interview footage with Shigenobu, Kanafani, and iconic PFLP fighter Leila Khaled. In one such interview Khaled relays a global appeal from the JRA-PFLP alliance: “Japanese comrades, and revolutionary comrades in China, Vietnam, and the rest of the world, let us posit the following slogan and persist in fighting for its realization: ‘Anti-imperialist revolutionary forces of the world, unite!’”

Elsewhere the film repeatedly alludes to revolutionary China’s centrality as a source of theoretical inspiration and an active participant in the struggle. One JRA narrator proclaims that “the ‘Anti-Imperialist/Anti-Zionist/Third World War’ that our PFLP brothers propose and practice, and the ‘Anti-America/Anti-Japan War’ of our Chinese brothers, are, in our own words, one and the same with what we propose and practice as the ‘World Revolutionary War.’” Another scene shows PFLP guerrillas studying an Arabic edition of Quotations from Chairman Mao Zedong (the “Little Red Book”), while a moving five-minute musical interlude is set to all three verses of the “Internationale” in Chinese.

Over its three decades of existence, the Japanese Red Army had few if any direct equivalents (especially outside the Arab world) as an organized co-belligerent and de facto foreign brigade of the Palestinian armed resistance. Lillian Craig Harris’ 1977 article does include an intriguing note to the effect that: “In November 1971 Fatah said that an undisclosed number of Chinese youths had volunteered to join the Palestinian guerrilla organizations through an offer made to the PLO office in Peking. However, Fatah did not say if it had accepted this offer and no Chinese ever appeared in Palestinian fighting units.” But the JRA’s dedication to the cause did find a spiritual echo, and a direct homage, in the extraordinary life story of Zhang Chengzhi: the first Red Guard of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.

Zhang was born in Beijing in 1948, to ethnic Hui Muslim parents who nonetheless gave him a secular revolutionary upbringing. Later in life he would attach deep significance to the fact of his birth just months after the Nakba, lamenting in a 2012 speech at a Palestinian refugee camp in Jordan: “In the year I was born, the rope suddenly broke, the world tilted and collapsed, and justice was denied in Palestine. From that year on, your peaceful and beautiful homeland of Palestine was suddenly occupied, massacred, and ravaged by colonialism. 1948 – I didn't know that I was born the same year as those babies who were expelled from their homes, deprived of their land, and born on the miserable refugee road.”

Zhang was studying at Beijing’s Tsinghua University High School when the Cultural Revolution commenced in May 1966. By his own account he coined the term “Red Guard” in his signature to an anonymous big-character poster, and co-organized the very first contingent of rebel youths by that name – sparking a mass movement that would soon engulf the whole country with Mao’s encouragement. After the end of the Cultural Revolution, the country’s cultural and literary intelligentsia (including many former Red Guards) was dominated by “scar literature” that repudiated the entire experience as a traumatic and nihilistic “ten years of chaos.” Zhang however resolutely bucked the trend, never renouncing his revolutionary idealism and obstinately hewing to what he called the “Red Guard spirit.”

In 1968 he was voluntarily “sent down” to the countryside of Inner Mongolia where he worked at various times as a shepherd and a primary school teacher. Afterwards, with the reopening of institutions of higher education, he enrolled at Peking University to study archaeology with a particular focus on China’s national minorities and on the history of Japan. Through his close study of the Jahriyya sect of Chinese Sufi Islam – which had been historically distinguished for centuries by its poverty, asceticism, and resistance to dynastic authority – he reconnected with his Hui Muslim heritage and experienced a religious awakening. He converted in 1987, explaining that “a beautiful thread links the Red Guards with the Jahriyya … As a Red Guard, [when I found the Jahriyya] I found my real mother among the people.”

Zhang spent the next four years writing an exhaustive chronicle of the Jahriyya, History of the Soul, which became a somewhat unlikely bestseller in the early 1990s. During his aforementioned 2012 visit to five Palestinian refugee camps in Jordan, he personally donated $100,000 in proceeds from a limited-edition reprint of this book to 470 families, recalling in his speech that Muslims of diverse sects and backgrounds from all across China had contributed as a form of zakat (almsgiving). By then his political trajectory – as an unrepentant ex-Red Guard and (as it were) “born again” Muslim – had thoroughly convinced him that global Islam was a critically underappreciated and under-studied pole of resistance to Western imperialism, and indeed had been one since the Crusades.

Throughout the early 2000s Zhang penned a series of searing indictments of Israel’s murderous assaults on Gaza, in terms whose relevance to the current genocide are wholly undiminished. Writing in 2009, he drew an analogy to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising that closely anticipated martyred poet Refaat Alareer’s comments a day after October 7, on the “Gaza ghetto uprising against a hundred years of European and Zionist colonialist occupation”:

In 1943 Mordechai Anielewicz, a young man wielding a grenade, confronted the Nazis in the Warsaw Ghetto. However, today’s Mordechai is no longer a Jew but a Palestinian living in a ghetto called Gaza. Countless young people who support Hamas in its struggle with Israel are today's Mordechai. The enemy they face is no longer the Nazis, but the Nazi-fied Israel.

In 2014 Zhang reflected on the agony of grieving Palestinians in Gaza, broadcasting their loved ones’ maiming and martyrdom in real time as an act of guerrilla resistance to the Zionist information war:

In the footage captured by Gaza refugees on their mobile phones, corpses are piled up, blood is splattered, people are crying, and children are wailing in horror at their broken legs … Can a civilized magazine print rows of baby corpses wrapped in shrouds? Can today's readers accept photos of fathers crying while holding the bodies of their little daughters whose legs or arms were blown off, whose intestines were blown out? Even though the media does not act as an intermediary, news still spreads rapidly. Every tear, every drop of blood, and every speechless corpse is spread subconsciously and in despair. It is sent to Tencent, Facebook, and all social networks. It is sprinkled with salt into the sea and spread to thousands of homes around the world…

In the same piece he almost seems to anticipate by a decade South Africa’s landmark decision to haul Israel before the International Court of Justice for the crime of genocide:

They seem to know that ‘moments’ are fleeting. They seem ready to head to the International Court of Justice. They believe more than others that justice is not dead … As if to echo my feelings, in the South African demonstrations that broke out immediately, Black people held high placards that read: ‘Gaza! Your courage and your firm belief make us ashamed!’

Given his lifelong solidarity with the Palestinian resistance – holding steadfast through all the historic permutations of official Chinese diplomacy – and his extensive experience in Japan, it was only natural that Zhang Chengzhi would pen an eloquent tribute to the Japanese Red Army and its leader Fusako Shigenobu. It is worth reading in full; even machine translation can barely dull his electric prose. But we choose to highlight here one particular passage, where he situates the JRA’s solidarity with Palestine as a world-historic rebuke of Japan’s sordid colonial history and past betrayal of the pan-Asian project:

The twentieth-century revolution was the only—and I mean the only—rebuke of Japanese militarism and of five centuries of global colonialism and imperialism. At the same time, confronting Japan's sinister 150-year history of enslaving its neighbors in Asia, only the ‘Arab [Japanese] Red Army’ went against the grain and rebelled, defying Japan’s colonial project of ‘leaving Asia to join Europe.’ As the name suggests, the Arab Japanese Red Army was a group of sons and daughters of Japan who threw themselves into the Arab world, that is, into the embrace of Mother Asia.

Elsewhere Zhang had written of his deep regret that the Cultural Revolution had taken such an inward turn in practice, depriving him of the opportunity to emulate the JRA and throw himself directly into the revolutionary battlegrounds of Vietnam and Palestine:

We didn’t know at the time that we were rallying the leftwing and progressive students of countless countries across the globe into a great tide of global righteousness … It had two nuclei: the Vietnam War and global support for the Palestinian liberation movement. But the strict regulations of the political education I received up to the age of eighteen meant that I was incapable of imagining or participating in this.

And it did not escape his attention that the JRA’s return to “the embrace of Mother Asia” was rooted in a spirited and militant defense of the Chinese Revolution, and owed it a profound debt for helping to defeat Japanese colonialism:

It was us and the Chinese Revolution that had a strong influence on them. But it must be said that they bravely supported us in turn. After the trial of the Japanese Red Army faction, several memoirs were published stating their original intent to ‘break the encirclement of China’ … They also had a complicated side, but they were China's lifelong supporters and best friends

Zhang Chengzhi’s forceful interventions continue to leave their mark on younger generations of China’s anti-imperialist left. Zhang Sheng, for instance, reminisced in a message to the author that “this epic anthem of idealism, which the Chinese and Japanese leftists composed using their entire youth and life more than 50 years ago, for the first time played in front of me through Zhang Chengzhi's words, and largely shaped my nascent understanding of internationalism and Palestinian struggle for liberation in my early age. Therefore, it is definitely not an exaggeration to say that Zhang Chengzhi is the first spiritual teacher of mine on Palestinian studies.” 

In 2022, Indian historian and director of the Tricontinental Institute for Social Research Vijay Prashad pointedly asked, “Is Asia Possible?” That is to say, can there be a viable progressive pan-Asian project after the original one “burned to a crisp because of Japanese expansionism” and was suffocated by “the tentacles of US imperialism and the malignancies of the Cold War”?

The Japanese Red Army’s salutes to their Chinese comrades, and Zhang Chengzhi’s heartfelt reciprocal tribute, together answer this burning question in the affirmative. In their heyday it was the Palestinian struggle that helped forge a socialist pan-Asianism: uniting liberatory forces from two nations, at the other end of Mao’s “great continent,” that had once been locked in bitter colonial war. As Palestine today returns to its rightful place as the cradle of the world revolution, and the United States musters all the forces of reaction in its drive to extinguish China’s counter-hegemonic challenge, we must never lose sight of this history.

Today in the heart of the empire, progressive forces in the Chinese, Korean, and other Asian diasporas are following in the footsteps of our revolutionary forebears, combating Zionism on all fronts and connecting it to the continued imperialist division of our own homelands. We, like so many millions of others, are building on this rich historical legacy to expand the regional Axis into an “international popular cradle of the resistance.” Let us build and build; then just as surely as Mao predicted, on the eve of the last great world anti-fascist struggle: “Our encirclement, like the hand of Buddha, will turn into the Mountain of Five Elements lying athwart the Universe, and the modern Sun Wukongs  – the fascist aggressors – will finally be buried underneath it, never to rise again.”

The author would like to extend his heartfelt appreciation to Miriam Osman and Yara Shoufani of the Palestinian Youth Movement for their assistance in research, and to Zhang Sheng for his insights on Mao-era relations between Palestine and China.

This translation of Lan Bozhou’s groundbreaking 1987 narrative interview of two survivors of the White Terror provides a deeply personal look into the period of martial law and mass anti-communist violence in Taiwan. Lan traces the history of Chinese nationalism and anti-imperialism—and its suppression by the KMT—in Taiwan through the biography of Dr. Guo Xiucong (郭琇琮), a martyr of Taiwan’s martial law period.

Editor’s Introduction

The defeat of the Imperial Japanese Army in World War II marked the return of Taiwan to Chinese sovereignty after fifty years. Yet Taiwanese celebration after five long decades of colonial rule would be short-lived: the island was returned to a country embroiled in a violent, decades-long struggle between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Kuomintang (KMT, Nationalist Party). The KMT and CPC’s tenuous cooperation—which helped China emerge victorious out of World War II—quickly dissolved following the removal of Imperial Japan from the world stage.

The Chinese Civil War resumed in full force in 1945. This period in Chinese history was marked by uncontrolled inflation, corruption, and a series of unequal treaties. The right-wing KMT regime had a decades-long record of mismanagement and corruption and ruled over the semi-colonized country with an iron fist. In exchange for their own security, KMT officials essentially sold their young nation’s sovereignty to the United States. 

Across the Taiwan strait, the KMT regime planted their corrupt, rotten roots. Taiwan was not spared by the economic plight facing the rest of the country. The Taiwanese people quickly realized that while they once again belonged to their own country, they had in fact returned to a right-wing, fascist dictatorship incapable of serving the people’s needs. Tension began building up between KMT national and provincial authorities and the Taiwanese people, culminating in what is now known as the “228 Incident.”

The 228 Incident began on February 27th, 1947, when a loose cigarette dealer was apprehended and beaten by Tobacco Monopoly authorities. The spark had set the struggle aflame, and the day after, the Taiwanese people of all walks of life took to the streets in protest of the KMT regime. What followed was a series of strict crackdowns, ultimately leading to a declaration of martial law on the island lasting 40 years. The end of this period—known as the White Terror—in 1987 marked the expansion of personal freedoms and the beginning of multiparty elections in Taiwan, currently dominated by the KMT and the Democratic Progressive Party (DPP).

The 228 Incident, as a symbol of the White Terror, is a touchstone of contemporary Taiwanese political memory. Yet in popular discourse, the memory of 228 is dominated by its use by both parties to entrench liberal democracy and justify continuing anticommunism. This framing strips the 228 Incident from the broader, China-wide struggle against the KMT in favor of liberal binaries of democracy versus authoritarianism and wàishěngrén (外省人, KMT-affiliated arrivals to Taiwan from the Mainland) versus běnshěngrén (本省人, Fujianese and Hakka Chinese migrants who populated Taiwan since the Ming and Qing dynasties). Perhaps most importantly, this popular narrative violently erases the nationalist and class character of the resistance against the KMT before and after the 228 Incident. Decades of anticommunist, anti-Chinese education has consequently obliterated any significant left-wing power in Taiwan. The mainstream Taiwanese interpretation of the 228 Incident thus serves a dual purpose. Not only does it erase the legacy of widespread communist organizing in Taiwan, it  subsequently appropriates Taiwan’s history of left-wing resistance in service of the language of Western liberalism. This takes many forms, from the explicitly anticommunist education under the KMT to a contemporary anti-China, revisionist history forwarded by the DPP.

In this context, Qiao Collective is pleased to publish a translation of Lan Bozhou’s “A Beautiful Century.” This landmark investigative piece was originally published in the short-lived left-leaning magazine Renjian in 1987, just weeks after the end of 40 years of brutal martial law. One the first journalists to publicly detail the 228 Incident in Taiwanese media (news of the incident had spread across mainland China as events unfolded), Lan Bozhou profiles Dr. Guo Xiucong (郭琇琮), a martyr of the White Terror period through the recollections of his widow, Chen Zhihui, and comrade-in-arms Cai Hanting, survivors of the same period. Recounting the lives of Guo and his family, comrades Chen Zhihui and Cai Hanting piece together the components of a post-colonial Taiwanese identity rooted firmly in the legacies of the Chinese May Fourth Movement, Marxism, and the CPC.

As groundbreaking as Lan’s piece is, the text contains painful signs of Taiwan’s anti-communist past and present. Fearing persecution, the two interviewees are given pseudonyms. References to the CPC and communism are downplayed, if not outright censored, instead replaced with vague allusions to an “organization.” In the thirty-seven years following this piece’s original publication, Lan Bozhou has given further context surrounding the life of Guo Xiucong in other written and visual media. Our translation attempts to be textually faithful to the original work, and we supplement certain sections with further information in the footnotes. 

As the DPP and U.S. continue to fan the flames of cross-strait relations, we encourage our readers to undergo careful study of Taiwan and Taiwanese political history, a history both unique and deeply intertwined with that of the mainland. For more information, we encourage readers to explore Taiwan: An Anti-Imperialist Resource.

Foreword

Between late-February and mid-March, 1947, the Taiwanese people rose against officer Chen Yi’s administration. The restoration-era uprising included not only the Taiwanese masses, but a handful of exceptional young Taiwanese intellectuals.

The uprising, having undergone violent suppression, ended in tragic defeat. Of those who survived, many intellectuals struggled in their disillusionment, yet through their anguish they managed to carve an ideological path forward. At once, the incident led them to dismantle and further re-examine their motherland, sucking them into the intellectual and political whirlpool of the [Chinese] Civil War, where they bravely engaged in the arduous struggle over their newly-reborn motherland.

In 1950, the Korean War broke out, and the United States Seventh Fleet encircled the Taiwan strait.

An international event seemingly removed from the Taiwanese people, this incident had far-reaching consequences from Taiwan.

The “free world,” under the banner of the Stars and Stripes planting itself in Asia quietly led a full-on, thorough, and resolute political purge that quietly unfolded on Taiwanese soil.

Dr. Xu Qiang (许强) of Jiali, Tainan of the first graduating class of Taihoku Imperial University School of Medicine (presently National Taiwan University School of Medicine), earned his doctorate at the age of 27. The Japanese praised him, calling him “Asia’s first nominee of the Nobel Prize in Medicine.”

Wu Sihan of Baihe, Tainan left the School of Medicine, Kyoto Imperial University in secret to join the underground anti-Japanese resistance in Mainland China. After his return to Taiwan, he abandoned medicine to join the Taiwanese labor movement.

These two became embedded in the 1947 uprising through radically different relationships, and both were murdered during the 1950 purge.

November, 1950. Dr. Xu Qiang, Wu Sihan, and others reached the end of a painstaking, prolonged interrogation. They were sent to the court of martial law to hear their sentencing.

Over the next few days, fourteen people were sentenced to death. Among them was the subject of this piece, Guo Xiucong, whose life history will begin to take shape, piece by piece…

An unmarked grave of history

These past two months, I fumbled my way around these desolate grounds, finding fragmented, silenced, traumatized remnants of history. I felt in particular, during a censored era, how history divided the “imperial court” from the “people.” The former were feeble hoodwinks, while the latter were unmistakably powerful in their truth.

I kneel to a silenced, gagged history, my heart pounding in shame, remorse, and devotion. Bit by bit, I humbly listened to the People’s history, a voice powerful in its profound courage.

Following Renjian’s call for a “People’s history” of Taiwan, I, but 27 years old, fell into an unmarked grave of history, worn away by an intentional cover-up.

These past two months, I fumbled my way around these desolate grounds, finding fragmented, silenced, traumatized remnants of history. I felt in particular, during a censored era, how history divided the “imperial court” from the “people.” The former were feeble hoodwinks, while the latter were unmistakably powerful in their truth.

I kneel to a silenced, gagged history, my heart pounding in shame, remorse, and devotion. Bit by bit, I humbly listened to the People’s history, a voice powerful in its profound courage.

By luck, I ended up tracing the footsteps of an extraordinary group of people who, in their youth, witnessed the end of WWII and the restoration of Taiwan.¹ They were all medical graduates of either Taihoku Imperial University or well-known universities in Japan; they were all veterans of the anti-Japanese resistance; and their hopes of Taiwanese restoration were soured by the Chen Yi administration and channeled into rage and rebellion. They were all participants in the February 1947 uprising, and witnessed in anguish and disappointment its eventual failure. At the time, amidst the intensity of the Chinese Civil War, they rediscovered what it meant to have a country. In 1950, the Korean War broke out, beginning the great power clash between East and West. Under a comprehensive purge, a generation of young Taiwanese partisans and their families were hunted down and killed. These firebrand youths, under the violent cyclone of history were thereafter buried deep underground by the roar of a rapidly growing society. The passage of time continued to erode away their memory and they disappeared, seemingly without a trace.

Hope in a newfound identity

Their anti-Japanese resistance; secretly studying vernacular Chinese (白话文) and Mandarin (普通话) under Japanese rule; their joy when hearing of Japanese surrender and the return of freedom to Taiwan; their rage and resistance to the corrupt Chen Yi regime… I, a writer not yet 30, see a unifying ideology underscoring their resistance: that we are one and the same [本是同根]. After the violent suppression of 228, they were left reluctant. What is China? What is the motherland? Where does Taiwan go from here? These were heavy questions, and burdened their hearts, longing for answers. After 1947, as the Chinese Civil War sharply changed course, they contemplated Taiwan’s role in the endless complexity of modern Chinese history.

With their study, the haze cleared before their eyes. They arrived at a newfound identity, a self-discovery that had given them the answer and showed them hope and the great work ahead. The future of Taiwan, the future of China, they found a clear, resolute answer.

Yet, in 1950, under the framework of a budding cold war, they were captured and killed during a global purge. Under the banner of “freedom,” they were silenced, eradicated, left to rot.

In 1948, one year after the 228 incident, the people of Jeju Island rose up. The US teamed up with the Syngman Rhee regime to violently and thoroughly suppress the movement, killing 70,000 people.

As I approached this forgotten era, concepts once clear as day blurred. “Freedom” and “slavery”; “liberators” and “slaughterers.” Yet amidst such confusion arose a living breathing ideology and history.

From this unmarked grave of history, to my surprise, I found another kind of power. Under the threat of cover-up, the truth breathed life into the People’s history.

Those denouncing the murders of 228 were merely shoveling more dirt onto the grave. They appropriated the grave and placed a tombstone befitting only to their own needs, away from the People. They dared not excavate the living breathing memories that made up the People’s history of Taiwan.

My heart trembled as I approached the grave, clasping my hands together, kneeling in prayer. This left-behind history was seemingly limitless in what it could teach me, buried in the grave of Taiwan’s most brave, selfless, passionate, and purest of heart. Investigating these moments in history, it was as if I conquered my disillusionment and overcame my fear. I washed from their names the sands of time, and their memories resurfaced once again. A new generation of Taiwanese youth can now revisit an overturned history and find within themselves a new identity, one full of hope and life.

A field of hanging laundry

Chen Zhihui (陈至慧): My name is Chen Zhihui. In 1950, I was detained alongside Dr. Guo Xiucong, and we were both sent to a military detention center.²

I was allowed recreational time once a day. I’d make up an excuse to “use the restroom” and head to the square where the male detainees hung their laundry. Every day, I recognized Xiucong’s clothes, and fish through the waistband of his underwear for his note. Passing notes in military detention, they would execute you for being caught! And here Xiucong and I were, risking our lives to talk to each other. On that day, he left a short, six-word note: “Article two, Clause one. Death Sentence.”

Dr. Guo was punished under Article two, Clause one. At that time, for that clause, the only road led to death.

I clutched the note, my heart aching. I could barely stay standing. But I still left cautiously. In military detention, we were used to seeing fellow youths sentenced to death. After half a year, in the early mornings we would hear other political prisoners walk away to the firing squads. In their last breaths, they let out slogans with all their might. In truth, I knew very early on that Dr. Guo Xiucong wasn’t going to make it. And yet, to this day as soon as I face this cruel, cruel truth, it brings me unbearable pain. That night, I couldn’t sleep among the sobbing of the 47 people who shared my cell.

The next morning, I scribbled on a small piece of paper: “If I make it out of here alive, I will write your life story. In 33 short years, you have accomplished what others couldn’t do in 50 – no, 100 years. I’ve already thought of a title: A Beautiful Century [Japanese: 美しき世紀; Chinese: 美好的世纪]. I’m worried it’s a little tacky, that you wouldn’t like it.”

I went back to the square the next day and found Xiucong’s note: “Don’t worry about a tacky title. As long as you write down my ideals, beliefs, and actions, I can rest easy!”

Dreaming of Schweitzer

As far as I know, Dr. Guo comes from a family of graduates of the imperial provincial exam (举人). The Guo clan, alongside the Pan and He clans, were three distinguished families from Shilin [district, Taipei]. Shortly after the Japanese occupied Taiwan, Dr. Guo Xiucong’s grandfather led a militia of able-bodied men who, like him, refused to become Japanese slaves. Hiding in Zhishanyan (芝山岩), they killed six Japanese teachers. The elder Guo later hid his entire family in Mengjia (艋舺, present day Wanhua 万华, Taipei).

Dr. Guo Xiucong was influenced from a young age and grew up with anti-Japanese nationalist sentiments. Because his family was well-off, he was able to study at Huashan Elementary school (桦山小学), a school for Japanese nobility. After graduating, he entered Taipei No. 1 High School (present day Taipei Municipal Jianguo High School). Under the Japanese colonial education system, Taiwanese students at No. 1 High School were few and far between. His classmates included Koo Chen-fu and Lin Tingsheng… people who made different choices and had led very different circumstances across the twists and turns of history. Imagine, Dr. Xiucong died nearly 40 years ago, and these people are living with dignity! Who’s lucky? Who’s unlucky? Let’s let history speak for itself.

Before the 228 incident, a sudden cholera epidemic broke out across Taiwan. Dr. Xiucong went all around the province treating patients and promoting public health practice. He went deep into the mountains, serving our indigenous compatriots by treating their illness and teaching them out to read. He earned their trust as a friend. I worked as his assistant. I remember one day, he turned to me and sighed. “I wish I could stay here in these mountains, and do what Schweitzer had done in Africa!³ But no, not in these chaotic times. We have to change society, for the pursuit of survival and self-respect of all Taiwanese people. Only then can my wishes come true. Only then can I serve as a doctor in these remote lands.”

Oh, motherland!

After graduating from Taipei No. 1 High School, Guo Xiucong’s ideology was shaped by the May 4th Movement’s arrival to Taiwan. He was steadfast in his belief in saving China through science, and through his hard work, graduated at the top of his class. He entered the Tokyo Institute of Technology. But his father didn’t support his pursuit of engineering, and even went to Japan himself to bring his son back to Taiwan.

His father said, “You’re studying engineering now, and what will you do in the future?”

Guo Xiucong replied, “I’ll return to the Mainland and build up China. I’m going to work for China’s scientific development!”

His father then threatened him. “If you don’t come back to Taiwan and go to medical school, I’m cutting you off!”⁴

Guo Xiucong laughed, “I won’t make you any money for you as a doctor!”

His father said, “It's up to you, as long as you come back to Taiwan for medical school!”

In truth, Dr. Guo was an outstandingly gifted and brilliant individual, all his father wanted was for his son to be by his side. After a month of studies in Japan, Guo Xiucong packed his bags and returned to Taiwan.

Back in Taiwan, Guo Xiucong entered Taihoku College [presently National Taiwan Normal University]. During his three years of study, he was a gentleman and a scholar, excelling in activities ranging from equestrian to swimming and track and field, from music to ideology.

In 1942, Guo Xiucong began at the Faculty of Medicine at Taihoku Imperial University. As a medical student, he became nationalist, firm in his identity as a Chinese person. Much of this was due to a certain Professor Xu, who arrived in Taiwan from Peking University.

In 1941, Professor Xu was recruited by Mitsui and Mitsubishi to teach vernacular Chinese and Mandarin to their businessmen.⁵ When not teaching, Professor Xu recruited progressive, nationalist youths and taught them written Chinese and spoken Mandarin. He brought with him 1930s era literature, works by authors including Lu Xun, Ba Jin, and Lao She.

Synergy Society (协志会)

Dr. Cai Hanting (蔡汉廷): My name is Cai Hanting. During the 1950s, as a part of the “Taiwan University Medical Student Case” I was arrested, sentenced to, and later survived 15 years in prison.

I must have heard Guo Xiucong’s name for the first time while studying at Taipei No. 1 High School! Upperclassmen would talk about brother Guo, who made a name for himself all across Taipei when he was at Huashan Elementary School, where he once cursed out Japanese colonial officials while they were on inspection. When I entered the Taihoku Imperial University’s pre-med course at Zhishanyan, I finally had the chance to get to know the man I had come to admire. It was at a Presbyterian church near Shilin Station. Under the guidance of Pastor Chen Sizhi, the “Synergy Society” used music, including singing and instruments, to organize Shilin-area students.⁶

Every morning, brother Guo, then a medical student at Taihoku Imperial, brought his little sister, a student at the No. 3 Girls High school (presently, Taipei Municipal Zhongshan Girls High School) to wait for the train at Shilin Station. Whenever he wore his four-pointed hat – symbolizing the highest honor for us students – and strolled the streets of Shilin, neighbors and onlookers would give him their compliments.

Indeed, during the later years of Japanese rule, among Taiwanese youths, Guo Xiucong stood out as the best of the best. In the “Synergy Society,” there were other idealistic Taiwanese youths as well. I remember an upperclassmate named He Bin (何斌), a medical student who also excelled in literature, philosophy, and the arts. A resident of Shilin Avenue, he was three grades ahead of brother Guo.

After graduating, He Bin served as a dermatologist at NTU. Following the 228 incident, much like all of us educated Taiwanese youths, he felt disillusioned. The corrupt, violent bureaucratic dictatorship shattered his love for the motherland. In his despair he began to ponder. He pondered modern Chinese history, and the ongoing Civil War before finding a new direction. Clutching to ambitious ideals, He Bin charged headfirst and went from Hong Kong back to the Mainland in search of a new national consciousness.

There was also Jiang Wenkeng (姜文铿), who studied at the Private Taipei High School [presently Private Taibei [泰北] High School]. He too was an ideological early bloomer, a progressive youth. A Hakka from the from Guanxi Township, Xinzhu, he knew brother Chen Xiucong’s sister through Pastor Chen’s “Synergy Society.” Later on he entered the Faculty of Law at NTU, and started dating Chen’s little sister afterwards? When the 228 incident occurred, he chaired the NTU Self-Determination Alliance and was detained and sentenced to 15 years in prison. He spent 15 years on Green Island [formal penal colony]. Separated from him by a great sea, Guo’s little sister spent those 15 years in prolonged loneliness before seeing Wenkeng again. To this day, I’m not sure how the two of them are doing.

Thinking back to the days singing at the “Synergy Society” fills me with warmth and joy! brother Guo and I both sang tenor. You know, back then I had no idea how brother Guo got so good at Mandarin. During the final years of Japanese rule, brother Guo the Taihoku Imperial student would use Mandarin to sing Su Wu Mu Yang (苏武牧羊) and Man Jiang Hong (满江红). Only later on did I learn that he had been learning our motherland’s language and characters under Professor Xu starting all the way back in 1941.

One day after school, per usual I was heading to the “Synergy Society” when I heard someone say that brother Guo disappeared! They said it was because he was with Professor Xu from the motherland, and they were speaking Mandarin and cheering for the “The Three Principles of the People” when the Japanese Military Police captured them.⁷

Brother Guo was freed after restoration. Japanese torture had left his ribs broken, and he was sent to the hospital for surgery. They removed his festering ribs and it took two weeks in the hospital for him to recover.

At that time, even though Taiwan had already been recovered, the Japanese army still had control over Taiwan. On October 10th of that year, the first National Day after restoration, the students at Shilin came together and publicly celebrated National Day.⁸ This was the first time Taiwanese compatriots were allowed to celebrate National Day after Mr. Sun Yat-sen founded the Republic. Everybody was ecstatic. At the celebration, I saw brother Guo lead the crowd to sing our national anthem and the anthem of our national flag in his perfect, unaccented Beijing dialect. I thought to myself, Guo must have gone through special training, otherwise how would he know these songs?

Before 228, the brother Guo I knew was still an anti-Japanese nationalist…

Shattered Dreams

Every day Taiwanese people, who once welcomed the motherland’s leadership into Taiwan, gradually grew disappointed. The political repression and economic dictatorship brought upon by Chen Yi of the central government had pushed the Taiwanese people to their limits.

Chen Zhihui: Dr. Guo Xiucong had been in prison for three years at the time of restoration. He was freed personally by Colonel Zhang Shide of the Taiwan Branch of the Three Principles Youth Corps.

The KMT knew that Dr. Guo Xiucong knew how to rally the educated youths of Taiwan, and tried their best to recruit him. But he didn’t have political ambitions, and declined, citing his unfinished degree.

After release, Dr. Guo Xiucong went back to school to study for a makeup graduation exam. He passed without a hitch and finished school as a part of the first graduation class of a post-restoration NTU. After graduation, he worked at the NTU hospital as a surgeon, lecturer, and chief of the Taiwanese provincial public health authority’s office of epidemic prevention. By then, Taiwan had been restored for over a year.

Every day Taiwanese people, who once welcomed the motherland’s leadership into Taiwan, gradually grew disappointed. The political repression and economic dictatorship brought upon by Chen Yi of the central government had pushed the Taiwanese people to their limits.

At this time, a ship that arrived in Taiwan from the Mainland brought cholera. Dr. Guo Xiucong occasionally published columns in the paper encouraging vaccination and other sanitary measures.

This must have been when I first met Dr. Guo Xiucong! Before the war, I had studied nutrition in Japan, and paid a lot of attention to the cholera epidemic. It worried me a lot. As a professional and person of character, he was well-respected and admired. I met Dr. Guo Xiucong through Zhang Yuefeng, a high school classmate of mine. At the time, she was coworkers with Dr. Guo Xiucong at the ministry of health.

I still remember our first date at Taipei New Park [presently 228 Peace Park]. That day, we shared with each other our views towards the cholera epidemic and public health. It was also at that time when Dr. Guo Xiucong invited me to join their ranks, which I accepted.

I was so naive back then, I really thought that he wanted me to work with them at the public health authority. I had no idea that the job entailed traveling around the entire province, investigating both medical and social conditions. This even included investigating changes post-228.

Dr. Guo Xiucong had a warm soul and was a profoundly deep person. I think of myself as someone who matured early. When I was in fourth grade, I had already read classics La Dame aux camélias and Jane Eyre, which I had taken from my dad’s bookshelf. Nonetheless, on our dates, I could feel Dr. Guo Xiucong’s growing worries, I felt powerless. I could feel a latent fire growing within, waiting to burst.

Every time we went out on a date, Dr. Guo would hand me a book. The next time we saw each other, like an academic advisor, he would carefully and patiently pick at my brain, dissecting any new insights I had picked up from the reading. I remember that the books were mostly Chinese works from the 1930s, works by authors like Lu Xun, Ba Jin, Lao She, Ding Ling, among others. It was then, under his guidance, when my nationalist consciousness grew.

Dr. Guo Xiucong, who had once traveled all the way to the Keelung Port to welcome our motherland's leadership into Taiwan, began criticizing Chen Yi’s corrupt, arrogant, bureaucratic dictatorship. In early 1947, before the 228 incident, Dr. Guo Xiucong published an article in the Shin Sheng Daily. He wrote about how he had grown hopeless in the face of Chen Yi’s governance, writing from a nationalist angle, with hopes to reform Taiwanese society democratically.

At that time, Dr. Guo Xiucong’s father, who was high up in the Chang Hwa Bank, grew increasingly anxious regarding his son’s political statements. He worried that his son’s politics would be disastrous for his family; and thus a great rift had formed between father and son.

His father had trouble understanding: their family was rich. They enjoyed status and lived well. How did he produce such an “anti-government” son?

Dr. Guo Xiucong told his father: “The Guo family has a proud tradition of opposing oppressive governments.” He criticized his father’s “obedience and conservatism, worrying only about the needs of the family.” “Didn’t you want me to grow into an accomplished, capable person? Didn’t I listen to you when you told me to study medicine? Father, there are three types of doctors. The first stops at treating illness. The second not only treats illness, but finds the root cause. The third is like Dr. Sun Yat-Sen. He sees the people’s illness, the country’s illness. He’s a doctor who saves our country. That is the kind of doctor I aspire to be.”

This is how Dr. Guo spoke to his father.

2/28

Cai Hanting: I woke up early on the morning of February 28, 1947 and my father told me that the night before at Taiping Ding (Presently, North Yanping Street), the Chen Yi regime killed a woman running a cigarette street stall. Nearby, the people rose up, having endured over a year of rage. They rushed towards the police station and demanded that the killer be tried for execution. My father also told me, it was chaotic outside, and to stay inside if possible.

That day, I had errands to run near the NTU main campus, so I had to go out. I waited an hour for a bus that never arrived, and decided to walk to school instead. Approaching Roosevelt Street, I heard others on the street heading towards the State Monopoly Bureau, petition in hand. Out of curiosity, I joined them.

The petition didn’t have that many signatories (maybe 20-30, who were all neighbors with the cigarette seller). But the employees of the Monopoly Bureau were so scared, they nearly emptied the entire building! With nobody to submit their petition to, the people grew angry, and took a few boxes of tobacco and torched them on the spot.

Later on, the people, led by a wooden two-wheel cart loaded with a large drum as it was pulled along the street. They had taken to the streets in protest. I saw a middle-aged man vigorously beating the drum. He was wearing a white headband, on which he had written “XX PETITION BRIGADE.”

When the march reached the radio station next to New Park, some people suggested that they rush the station building and broadcast news of the incident throughout the entire province. As a result, the spontaneous representatives of the people entered the radio station and explained their demands to the announcer. The announcer had no other option but to broadcast them.

After the broadcast, the march marched towards the regime office via the NTU hospital. At this time, the crowd had grown larger and larger. Of those that had joined the march, many were unemployed. I stood at the edges of the crowd and looked from afar. The people’s representatives had nearly entered the administrative building. The doors then shut, and suddenly we heard the sound of gunfire from the roof sweep through the crowd. A handful of protesters were shot and fell to the ground.

In the plaza, the center of the crowd crouched down; others fled out of fear. I hid behind a tree, my body in a cold sweat. Even after the gunfire subsided, the crowd were too scared to get up.

At this time, I suddenly saw a Jeep emblazoned with American flags approaching, piloted by a young American soldier. I saw a man, around 40-50 years old, signal the Jeep to stop. The Jeep slowed down and inched forward, and they collected the bodies of the wounded and dead before slowly driving off.

I took the chance to run towards the train station. By then, the streets had fallen into chaos. The people would pull over and assault any wàishěngrén passing by. Near the station, I saw an elderly wàishěngrén dressed in a Cheongsam. An angry běnshěngrén called at him to stop, another went and struck him. The old man sank to his knees, begging for forgiveness, and he was let go.

Near the north gate, I saw a man wearing military pants crouching in a gutter holding a dossier. A chill ran down my spine and instead I hurried back home.

That night, I turned on the radio receiver. The police announced a state of martial law in Taipei. But back then, radios were uncommon, and the news didn’t travel quickly. After martial law, from time to time stories about the Chen Yi regime taking advantage of the situation to loot and plunder.

The radio played music all night. I later heard that Dr. Xie E (谢娥), a National Politician on the radio.⁹ She announced to the public that there had been no gunfire by the central government. She said that the injuries were caused by the large crowd and the subsequent trampling.

The morning of the second day, an enraged crowd surrounded her hospital and demanded that she explain the previous night’s broadcast. Some of the more firebrand members of the crowd took her furniture and other assets and threw them into the street before setting them on fire. On the walls of her home, they hung a large poster that said “This is the end of the corrupt and degenerate officials and their running dogs!” Her neighbors responded immediately, and hung up their own poster, which said “Many thanks to the people, who have punished a toxic insect for us!”

Chen Zhihui: It finally happened. The monopoly office inspector incident ignited the people’s rage, which had built up over a year of suppression. At that time, Dr. Chen Xiucong and I were deeply in love. He would show up at my door and give me updates.

It must have been the day of February 28th. Using connections he had built up as a traveling physician, he quickly called forth our indigenous compatriots from Xindian.¹⁰ With a line of banana farmers, workers, and fishermen from Tamsui alongside students from Shilin to join the people in their march. He made preparations to go to militarized zones in the outskirts of town to obtain weapons for a protracted war.

On March 1st, nervous and excited, I accompanied Dr. Guo Xiucong to Shiqiao Tou (presently, an intersection of North Yanping Road and West Chang’an Road). We met up with Wang Tiandeng and Lin Miesheng, among others. We prepared to march towards the regime office to protest. I remember that Mr. Lin Miesheng spoke to Dr. Guo Xiucong in his capacity as the Chair of Humanities at NTU. He told him that we absolutely cannot hurt any innocent wàishěngrén compatriots.

In the afternoon, we arrived at the radio station to link up with Song Feiwo (宋非我). He was born and raised in Taipei City. In his early years, he worked in a mine in Keelung, and participated in the Taiwanese New Drama movement in the 1930s. In 1946, he starred in Walls (壁) and Luohan Fuhui which played at Zhongshan Hall in Taipei City, which led him to his censure and ban from acting. He had a radio program, “Tudi Gong Travels Taiwan,” where he publicly criticized the government, which was well-received by the public. Through his radio program, he called forth the people from across the province, “Unite in our fight!”

That day, along the streets of Taipei, walls were plastered with slogans and fliers. “Down with the Chen Yi Kingdom.” “Wake up, Taiwanese Compatriots! Fight for bread! For freedom! For democracy!” “No compromises, only armed struggle!” “We won’t sit as our compatriots are shot and detained!”

In Taipei, everywhere you looked, there were soldiers, military security guards, and police, all armed. Patrol cars cruised back and forth. We heard the sound of constant gunfire, and blood flowed down the street, glimmering in the sunlight. Students walked out of their classes, factories were on strike, and merchants closed their storefronts. Everything had come to a halt; Taipei was a dead city.

On March 2nd, at 10 am, NTU, Yanping High School, the Law and Commerce College (presently, Taipei City University, the Normal College, and many other high schools convened a student meeting at Zhongshan Hall. There were thousands in attendance. At the meeting, they attacked the rampant corruption in the Chen Yi regime and demanded “political democracy” and “freedom of education.” At the meeting, they produced fliers to pass to city residents and encouraged the people to unite in armed struggle.

Dr. Guo Xiucong saw that Chen Yi was biding time. Dr. Guo believed that victory would only come through armed struggle. And so, he organized a covert meeting, where he assigned Xu Qiang to the student movement and Wu Sihan to organize workers and farmers. He ensured that they all stayed in contact and arm themselves as soon as possible.

At this time, Dr. Guo Xiucong even urged me to organize the female students and form a team of medics to join the front lines. But my father, worried about my safety, forbade me from leaving the house. So I’m not familiar with the specifics of the armed struggle.¹¹

In Taipei, everywhere you looked, there were soldiers, military security guards, and police, all armed. Patrol cars cruised back and forth. We heard the sound of constant gunfire, and blood flowed down the street, glimmering in the sunlight. Students walked out of their classes, factories were on strike, and merchants closed their storefronts. Everything had come to a halt; Taipei was a dead city.

Cai Hanting: Between February 28th and March 4th, Taipei was in constant downpour. Under these conditions, the streets fell quiet. The Organizing Committee held a meeting at Zhongshan Hall and decided to “unite all the people in the province; to reform the political system and address the 228 incident.”¹² At this time, the entire province is facing a swarm; governing agencies have been paralyzed. The Taipei Organizing Committee sensed the need to unite the province and immediately decided to notify all 17 province-level cities to form their management committees and deepen their own work.

In the afternoon, a classmate passed on to me an order from the Student Alliance. I was to arrive at an assembly at 6 pm that day. After linking up with classmates there, as a group, we were to be brought to the old hall at the Normal University. There were already hundreds of people seated in the hall, sitting in groups on the floor. It was an orderly meeting. I remember that night it was windy and a little chilly. Suddenly, I saw a person with a handkerchief covering their face, guiding the constant inflow of student brigades streaming into the hall. I recognized the voice as that of brother Guo. We recognized each other at the same time, and he put his index finger over his lips, urging me to keep quiet. To this day, I remember looking past his glasses into his two eyes, glimmering with a mythical light.

Later on, Brother Guo stood at the front of the brigade and with a roaring voice, announced there had been infighting within the Organizing Committee. He shared that some may have compromised with Chen Yi. In response, he said, we must tighten our organizing and strengthen our power and struggle till the end.

That night, our task was to seize the armaments from the police stationed at the southern airport. At Xindian, our indigenous compatriots arrived, bringing with them Japanese swords, hunting rifles, and bamboo poles. Unarmed students took bamboo poles and fashioned them into weapons, sharpening the ends one by one. We had prepared to our fullest and waited for the remaining brigades to arrive before departing. We waited until 4 in the morning, and nobody had come. Brother Guo then resolutely gave the order to retreat, and for everybody to return home.

After that day, I didn’t see the elusive brother Guo for a while.

Chen Zhihui: On March 6th, instigations by vigilantes, led by Detective Lin Dingli, and the loyalist service led by Xu Dehui, Taipei City descended into chaos. Lootings followed assaults one after the other. I didn’t see Dr. Guo Xiucong for several days. Word on the street was that there were large shipments of weapons from Shanghai that arrived in Taipei to suppress the revolt. These rumors, bit by bit, revealed themselves to be true.

My father insisted that I do not leave the house. He said to me, “Look outside, this situation is untenable. If Xiucong shows up, tell him to hide until after things calm down! The organizing committee is on Chen Yi’s hitlist!”

At dinnertime on March 7th, I heard a broadcast from the Organizing Committee’s communications lead, Wang Tiandeng. He reported that the Organizing Committee’s “Handling Outline” and the 42 proposals outlined in the Proposal for Reforms were rejected by Chen Yi and Ke Yuanfen (Chief of Police). At the end, he solemnly called upon all peoples of the province and announced, “the Organizing Committee has completed its mission. From now on, all peoples in the province must unite. Only together can our strength stand tall in the face of oppression!”

But those two days, I heard no news of Dr. Guo Xiucong. I heard he had ordered students to lay low, to avoid pointless martyrdom.

Cai Hanting: On March 8th, the situation had taken a sharp turn for the worse. Military police arrived in Keelung from Fuzhou. The residents of Taipei oscillated between fear and rage. Before the sun had gone down, the streets had gone quiet, and everyone shut their doors and turned off their lights. It was a dead city, though you’d occasionally hear a crying infant.

Around or after 10 pm, the sound of machine gun fire pierced the sky. It came from around Yuanshan, and subsequent sounds of gunfire dispersed into the clouds. We heard no signs of humans. I hid in the dark and dared not sleep. The army really did come, and I was anxious, not knowing what had become of brother Guo or my other comrades.

On the second day, the radio announced martial law once again. Hundreds of unarmed corpses lay before the Yuanshan Armory, all high school students, 18-19 years old…

Chen Zhihui: The 21st Division had arrived. From the 9th onward, Taipei was covered by the sounds of gunfire. The streets were lined with bloodied bodies. Every day, the radio announced new orders from the garrison headquarters: civil servants must return to work. Workers must return to work. Students must return to the classroom. But many of those who left the house never came back. There was an omnipresent melancholy and all-encompassing fear that blanketed the city.

Brother Guo had finally sent a messenger, who told us that he had evacuated by boat to Sanchong.

Depression

Chen Zhihui: Following a suggestion from Professor Xu, throughout this time period Dr. Guo Xiucong organized under the alias Lin Yijun (林逸俊). He kept his face covered and luckily avoided arrest and assassination. Nonetheless, he hid in Sanchong for over a month.

In April of 1947, Dr. Guo Xiucong’s father passed away from a lung illness. Dr. Guo took off his glasses and grew a beard. He also wore a workers uniform, and covertly returned to his family’s home, where almost nobody recognized him. For an entire year afterwards, he roamed throughout with this disguise.

Dr. Guo Xiucong later told me that up until the arrival of the 21st Division, the student brigade only had 50-something guns and very little gunpowder. The Huashan Armory, which they had seized, was low on stock. Considering the massive supply deficit, he knew that if they continued the fight, they would pay an even greater, bloodier price. And so, he ordered all indigenous, worker, peasant, and student brigades into hiding. After March 9th, numerous student leaders were killed, one after the other.

Nowadays, I often think, Dr. Guo must have been remorseful. After the incident, he entered a long ideological depression. Where would Taiwan go? Dr. Guo Xiucong painstakingly contemplated this question…

This was May of 1947. His teacher, Professor Xu introduced him to a person by the last name Cai.¹³ Undoubtedly, for Dr. Guo, meeting Cai marked another turning point in his life. I’m not clear on the details, but I do know that Cai led him to redefine his understanding of the Chinese’s people’s struggle.¹⁴ His heart, on the search for a national consciousness, had found a new home.

After his father’s death, the Guo estate in Shilin, which consisted of 11 mansions, served as a shelter for Guo Xuicong’s friends, who came from all walks of life. The Dr. Guo Xiucong that I knew had few materialistic desires; he looked up to Tolstoy’s compassion. Every holiday, Xiucong’s father provided aid to Shilin’s impoverished. Xiucong once told his father, to his face, “true charity would be to take our family’s property and land, and redistribute it to these people…”

After the both of us were detained, I once passed him a note which read, “I can’t tell you how much I wish that one day, future generations will rename the East Road in Shilin after you.”

Dr. Guo Xiucong chastised me. “Individualist heroism is a worthless ideology, we have to work on our worldviews, Zhihui.”

But believe it or not, the selfless Xiucong was actually extremely stingy. Before we married, while we were still dating, all he’d bring would be a bag of peanuts, or a stalk of sugarcane! When we went to the movies, I would have to buy tickets! I could never wrap my head around this. How could the heir of the Guo family be like this? One time, he asked me to borrow my necklace. I asked him what in the world he’d do with it, and he replied that one of his friends needed money badly, and that he’d first pawn the necklace and lend his friend the money. After his friend’s paycheck came in, he’d return it to me.

He managed to hide away in Sanchong, avoiding the apex of the violence. After returning to Shilin, Dr. Guo Xiucong was hired by the Ministry of Health. The health minister was a Dr. Jing Libin (经利彬), who had arrived from the Mainland, previously serving as the dean of Peking Union Medical College. He admired Dr. Guo Xiucong’s work ethic and passion, and charged him with promoting basic health and sanitation in the area. At the time, people would say to Xiucong, “Keep it up, and you’ll be the Dean of NTU Hospital in no time!” Little did they know, he thought nothing of these individualist pursuits!

In 1948, Dr. Guo Xiucong spent some time abroad.¹⁵ He returned to China rejuvenated! Somehow, he put even more time into his work, and was busier than ever! The dark cloud of 228 had been swept away. I saw in his eyes a newfound shining light.

“Reformed Taiwanese Opera”

Those days, Dr. Guo Xiucong and I, already married, would often travel for work to the shadier areas of Taipei. We were tasked with investigating the social conditions of and around Wanhua and the Kang San Hotel. He traversed these ancient backstreets nearly every day. Perhaps out of fear of getting snitched on, he’d ask me to dress up like a Madame and accompany him. Sitting at food stalls, we’d chat with the girls working there. After a while, he finally finished his investigative report. He surveyed their family backgrounds and health problems, and presented a detailed, thorough analysis.

Dr. Guo Xiucong was always working on himself. To better his own work, he learned to speak and dress like the working class. Before long, he fit in with the rest of them. He loved to sing Taiwanese folk music, especially works by Lyu Quansheng (吕泉生). After our daughter was born, he’d cradle her in his arms before bedtime, singing her lullabies. He loved popular Taiwanese music, like Mayflower (五月花) and He bian chun meng (河边春梦). I once asked him why he, a well-educated intellectual, chose to sing simple folk music. He looked at me sternly and corrected me. “These songs are not lowly… these are songs loved by the working people. If we are to work with the people, of course we have to like their music too!”

Later, Dr. Guo Xiucong joined the Taiwanese Provincial Postal and Telecommunication Workers’ Union. At their school, he used entertainment to educate the workers. During the summer of 1948, we staged five performances of a reformed rendition of the traditional Taiwanese opera, Madame White Snake (白蛇传), at Zhongshan Hall.

Dr. Guo Xiucong served as the writer and director. The musical director was Jiang Wenye (江文也), who adapted the music for an orchestra with both Chinese and Western instruments. The actors were a mix of NTU students and union workers. I remember that Dr. Guo Xiucong even taught Jiangxi folk dance using traditional Hakka tea-picking songs. The five worker opera performance made a brief slash in the Taipei cultural circles. Dr. Guo Xiucong later left the union after clashing with a Mandarin teacher surnamed Ji, who had arrived from the Mainland.

Purge

It must have been Dr. Guo Xiucong’s petit bourgeois upbringing – Cai didn’t bring him into underground work right away. At that time, the government was trying their best to woo Guo in. If he was a normal person with normal, selfish ambitions, today he might be a veteran, expert politician sitting in the Legislative Yuan, at the ripe age of 69! After a period of close observation, Cai finally organized Dr. Guo into doing some work.

Xiucong’s active organization skills alongside his existing reputation among the masses attracted a crowd of passionate, idealistic students. He even brought me to chair a book club, where I read old Russian authors, like Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, and Gorky with a handful of students.

One night in the fall of 1949, as we laid in bed together, not yet asleep, Dr. Guo Xiucong suddenly said to me, “You have to mentally prepare yourself, there may be a day when the two of us are martyred.”

As a new mother who was also woefully politically ignorant, these were definitely words I did not want to hear. I held onto our newborn. Even under Japanese rule, I had never heard of killings for ideological reasons.

Dr. Guo Xiucong went to the study and took out a copy of Pearl S. Buck’s book, The Patriot. He turned to a section for me to read. The text described over a hundred patriotic youths sentenced to death by the Yangtze River. I then understood that under chaotic times and a savage political environment, this was indeed a possibility…

Cai Hanting: On May 13, 1950, intelligence agencies requested that President of NTU, Fu Sinian (傅斯年, also romanized as Fu Ssu-nien) arranged a meeting between intelligence officials and a few deans of the Medical School. Fu Sinian agreed and notified Wei Huoyao (魏火曜), head of the NTU hospital. It was a Saturday and there was a scheduled meeting between department chairs. Intelligence officers stood before the chair’s office and waited for Xu Qiang, Chair of Internal Medicine, Hu Xinlin (胡鑫麟) (the father of violinist Hu Naiyuan 胡乃元), Chair of the Ophthalmology Department, and Weng Tingfan (翁庭藩), first Chair of Internal Medicine…

Xu Qiang and Hu Xinlin were detained in the parlor. Weng Tingfan had to attend to family matters and returned to Miaoli, temporarily avoiding arrest. Intelligence officers first took Xu Qiang and other detainees to an unknown location. I was a recent graduate at the time, and I had just begun work at the hospital. But because I had once borrowed a few books from Dr. Xu Qiang, I was jailed as well. In fact, we didn’t do anything, aside from reading a handful of political and ideological banned books.

Chen Zhihui: Politically, we were carelessly unalert, and we had no idea that the security apparatus had been following us since our performance of Madame White Snake. After the NTU Guangming Daily and Keelung Middle School were both sniffed out, countless bright eyed youths were detained. Only then did Dr. Guo Xiucong and I flee Taipei to dodge arrest.¹⁶

Dr. Guo Xiucong was such a workaholic! We had fled to avoid persecution, but wherever he went, he connected with the local organization and continued working.¹⁷ We passed through Taichung, Tainan, Kaohsiung, and Lanyang and visited almost every single indigenous village. Later, I started to miss our newborn, and Dr. Guo Xiucong had to take me back to Taipei.

Somebody must have turned on us. When we returned home, that night, intelligence officers surrounded the four corners of our home. I once again left behind our 6 month old newborn, we escaped through an underground tunnel in his house. I heard our neighbors cover for us, telling the spies, “I heard they went to the Mainland.”

Cai was arrested at the end of April, 1950. At the time, we had no idea. It was only after we were detained and thrown in jail that I found out that Cai had confessed to everything. He was the first to snitch on Dr. Guo Xiucong. I’m not sure if Dr. Guo knew about this, and I’m even less sure about how he would take the news. His ideological mentor, his political role model turned him in! How could you explain that?

Cai Hanting: That afternoon, we were detained. I filled out the paperwork and handed over my clothes, belt, shoes to the police for a strip search. I entered the cell, and behind me I heard the loud thud of an iron door closing. Right then and there, I was paralyzed in fear.

I leaned on the wall by the cell door. Suddenly, I saw a man leave a narrow cell, dragging his feet along the corridor. He held on to the wall for support as he slowly limped his way out. I saw blood flowing down his legs, which were red and swollen. It was here that I saw those shining eyes behind the glasses.

“Ah! Brother Guo!” I couldn’t help but call out his name. In silence, it was those eyes of his in their resolute compassion that brought peace to my state of shock. The police escorted him out, still limping.

“Enough is Enough”

In the detention center, Cai’s cell was diagonal from ours. When he was called out for questioning, nearly every single detainee booed him as he walked past their cells. But not Brother Guo. He didn’t show a trace of malice towards Cai. Not only did he refuse to curse at Cai, unlike the rest of us, he once even told me that Cai was the person he respected the most in this world.

After Cai was detained, he snitched on the entire organization, leading to the height of the 1950s purges. When revolutionaries become traitors, the people will never look at them the same. But Brother Guo always saw the best in people, even the snitches. I never understood how he looked at Cai, a man hated to the bone by so many of us, with so much forgiveness and respect. A character of such generosity! Cai ratted out on countless precious patriotic lives in exchange for a prominent position in the intelligence bureau, and passed away only recently.

There was a clear pattern, every time Cai left questioning, a new batch of comrades were jailed. Even Brother Guo was reaching his limit. One day, as Cai was being escorted out, as he passed the cell we shared, Brother Guo spoke up, “Brother Cai, say no more, enough is enough…”

One day, Brother Guo suddenly turned to me and laughed, “It all makes sense to me now. This time, I think I’ve met my match. All you all did was read a few books, you should be out of here in a few months! But me, I’ve already lived an extra seven years. I should have died at the hands of the Japanese military police. I got lucky, that’s all. It’s unfortunate though, I wish I could have lived a few more years, done some more work. There’s so much to be done!”

Later, the central government offered him to confess to the entire province in exchange for a second chance.¹⁸ They tempted him with a cushy official job, and even brought up Chen Duxiu as an example. They told him, a petit bourgeois guy like him would surely be criticized and fall from grace one day. But Brother Guo stood resolute, unwavering.

In the end, Brother Guo, Xu Qiang and other core leadership were sent to the Green Island military court, and I never saw him again.

I’ve already lived an extra seven years. I should have died at the hands of the Japanese military police. I got lucky, that’s all. It’s unfortunate though, I wish I could have lived a few more years, done some more work. There’s so much to be done!

Bloodstained Gold

Chen Zhihui: We were hiding in Chiayi at a friend’s house in May of that year. It was the night of May 2nd! After the lights went out, the police knocked on the door with the butt of their rifle, and pulled us out of bed. Our friends, the Xu brothers, were both graduates of the NTU Faculty of Law. Later on they were both shot dead.

That night we were taken to the detention center in Yanping Road in Taipei. Shortly after jailing him, they cuffed together Dr. Guo Xiucong’s legs together with 11-pound cuffs. I couldn’t take it. He would occasionally pass me notes to keep me comforted.

It was only later on that I found out that we had escaped Shilin by a thread. The police searched the entire nearly 18,000 square foot estate. My father was forcibly taken in for questioning, and my younger brother was taken to Taichung to search for us. My father was locked up for three months, where they pressured him for our whereabouts and travel history. After Dr. Guo Xiucong and I were detained.

A few degenerate officers tried to extort my father, saying they had to call three different people to get him out. Each call would cost 20 bars of gold. He believed them and sent 60 bars before they left him out.

After Dr. Guo Xiucong, my loving husband, was sentenced to death, the same lowlifes approached me. They said that they could save Xiucong’s life in exchange for 80 bars of gold. My father knew that it was a scam, but out of desperation for his son-in-law he sold 4 buildings and paid them off, but Xiucong’s fate was already sealed.

Be Brave and Live On

Chen Zhihui: It was four or five in the morning on November 28th, 1950. Shouts and political slogans roared throughout the prison cells. The detention rooms, normally dead silent, flared up in rage.

I was crowded in a cell and peered through the tiny window. The sky yearned to be clear. I had already lost my mind. I knew that it was the last cry of Brother Xiucong and his comrades, Xu Qiang and Wu Sihan.

The day before their execution, in the laundry field I received Xiucong’s last note. On a tiny strip of paper, he wrote a few short words.

“Zhihui, take care of mom and dad. Please have me cremated, and spread my ashes across this land. Maybe it will help someone grow ong choy one day! Please, be brave, and live on…”

1. Chinese: 光复 (restoration, retrocession, return) arrow_upward


2. When published, this article changed the names of the interviewees. Her real name, which is used openly in other texts/interviews, is Lin Xuejiao (林雪娇). arrow_upward


3. Referring to Albert Schweitzer, Alsatian physician and theologist. arrow_upward


4. Guo Xiucong, alongside many of his Taiwanese comrades, were trained as medical doctors. In a later interview, Lan Bozhou explained that in Japanese-occupied Taiwan, local Taiwanese faced intense job discrimination. Medicine was one of the few professions accessible by the Taiwanese population. And thus, the young vanguard of the anti-Japanese and anti-KMT resistance largely consisted of medical doctors. arrow_upward


5. As Lan Bozhou explains in a 2023 interview, as the Japanese Empire expanded across Asia, they needed to train and teach Mandarin to a colonial civil service in Southern China and Southeast Asia. arrow_upward


6. Lan Bozhou in a later piece emphasizes that the Synergy Society was founded by He Bin as a youth organized aimed at promoting local Han Taiwanese culture. It was organized under the context of the Japanese-directed kōminka (皇民化, lit. “becoming subjects of the emperor”) movement in Taiwan, which aimed to fully convert colonial subjects in Japanese-occupied territories such as Korea and Taiwan into Japanese citizens. This included the adoption of Japanese names, customs, and the renunciation of one's ancestors and heritage. Many of Taiwan's past and present leadership, such as Lee Teng-hui and Tsai Ing-wen hail from families who have undergone this procedure.
   
   He Bin and later on, Guo Xiucong, used Synergy Society to promote local Taiwanese culture and resistance to the Japanese regime during amidst the kōminka movement. They did this through the use of the arts, promoting local Chinese music in botMandarin and Minnan dialects. In addition to cultural work, the Synergy Society also hosted more overtly political activity. Guo Xiucong and other core leadership of the Synergy Society covertly studied Dr. Sun Yat-sen's Three Principles of the People. They were ardent believers in several key elements of the Three Principles, including land reform, limits on Capital, and anti-imperialist resistance.
   
   Following the restoration of Taiwan, the Synergy Society's organizing activities reached a new apex. It transformed into a site of political education, Mandarin lessons, and political music and art. Guo Xiucong was heavily involved in these activities, which including teaching Shilin resident's the ROC national anthem as well as March of the Volunteers, an anti-Japanese song written during the WWII and later became the national anthem of the PRC. arrow_upward


7. Lan Bozhou later clarifies that his arrest occurred after the US enters WWII, and was preparing for armed resistance once Chinese troops reached Taiwan. The Japanese military police arrested Guo Xiucong, Cai Zhongru, and many other anti-Japanese student leaders for their research of Chinese literature, study of Mandarin, and other anti-Japanese activities.
   
   In 1943, after the IJA retreated from Southeast Asian, Japan ramped up its recruitment of infantry from Taiwan, an important line of defense for the Japanese empire. In January 1944, the Japanese authorities in Taiwan began to actively encourage Taiwanese subjects on the island to adopt Japanese surnames, signifying the peak of the kōminka movement. At the same time, Allied forces were also bombing Taiwan. arrow_upward


8. As Japanese occupation came to a close, the details of their surveillance over anti-Japanese activity in secondary and post-secondary schools were revealed to the public. Per Lan Bozhou, this led to (1) rapid expansion of student organizing and (2) the widespread recognition of Guo Xiucong as a student leader. Guo Xiucong and the Synergy Society organized the first celebration of the Double 10 National Day in Taiwan. arrow_upward


9. Guo's contemporary. Alongside Guo, she was a physician who developed a Chinese nationalist consciousness -- studying Mandarin, etc. arrow_upward


10. Refers to the Taiwanese yuánzhùmín (台湾原住民, lit. “original peoples of Taiwan”). See Notes on Terminology #3 in Taiwan: An Anti-Imperialist Resource for more information. arrow_upward


11. On March 4th, underground CPC member Li Zhongzhi (李忠志) organized a cohort of former prisoners of the Japanese occupation, including Guo Xiucong. Organizing through universities including NTU main campus, the Normal College, the NTU College of Business, Yanping College, they created three squadrons, of which Guo Xiucong commanded the second, which assembled at the Normal College. On March 5th at 2AM, the third squadron led by Li Zhongzhi consisting of Atayal fighters stormed the Jingwei Military Armory, taking it over with relative ease. They then joined the second squadron and attacked the Machangding Armory. The two squadrons had assembled a sizeable collection of weapons, and proceeded to attack nearby military and police stations. At dawn, the three squadrons marched on the Central Administrative Office. arrow_upward


12. Beginning on March 1st, the 228 struggle was conducted on two fronts. The first front consisted of the Organizing Committee meeting at Zhongshan hall, which was consisted primarily of the local gentry and people's representatives. The second, in response to the inaction of the Organizing Committee, began preparing the public for an armed struggle. At the heart of the armed was the Taiwan Working Group of the Communist Party of China, at that time an underground organization, which was tasked with supplying weaponry to the resistance. arrow_upward


13. Refers to Cai Xiaoqian (蔡孝乾) (1906-1982), then-Taiwan Provincial Secretary of the Communist Party of China. Born under Japanese occupation, Cai Xiaoqian participated in left-wing organizing in Taiwan and was an early member of the CPC Youth League and Taiwanese Communist Party. After the Taiwanese Communist Party was broken up by Japanese authorities, he joined the Communist Party of China, and was the lone Taiwanese participant in the Long March. He returned to Taiwan in 1946 and served as an organizer of the underground CPC. He is referred to solely by his last name in the text. arrow_upward


14. Even prior to 228, the Taiwan Working Committee of the CPC had already been eyeing Guo Xiucong. The underground party secretary, Liao Ruifa (廖瑞发), a survivor of leprosy, approached the Guo household one afternoon with a box of cash disguised as a cake. Guo was away at work at the time. Liao bet that Guo Xiucong, as a man of principle, would be unable to accept such a bribe, and personally hand-delivered the package, unopened, back to Liao that night. Liao used the opportunity to recruit Guo Xiucong into the CPC. Guo Xiucong, at Liao's invitation, formally joined the Communist Party of China in June of 1947, where he led various youth groups. arrow_upward


15. In a later interview, Lan Bozhou clarifies that this refers to a trip that Guo Xiucong took to Hong Kong, where he met other key organizers of the CPC. It was in Hong Kong where Guo Xiucong attended a screening of the White-Haired Girl (白毛女), inspiring him to use the arts to foster political education upon his return to Taiwan. arrow_upward


16. In October, Guo Xiucong conspired with Lin Qiuxing (林秋兴) to bring a detailed provincial map of Taiwan to Hong Kong, where it would be transported to the Mainland. Prior to departing the port of Keelung, Lin Qiuxing caught and arrested prior to departure. arrow_upward


17. As Guo Xiucong evaded KMT authorities in Taiwan, he continued to organize with the CPC. He founded the Lanyang Working Group as he traveled through Yilan and Luodong. arrow_upward


18. The authorities would have required Guo Xiucong to confess in a province-wide radio broadcast for a second chance, demonstrating the sheer level of influence Guo Xiucong had over the people of Taiwan at the time. arrow_upward

With the 2022 Winter Olympics about to open in Beijing, China finds itself in the crosshairs of multiple Western propaganda offensives. From a “diplomatic boycott” by the United States and its allies over spurious charges of genocide in Xinjiang, to the media spectacle surrounding Peng Shuai, and a torrent of bad-faith criticism leveled at China’s zero-Covid policies. Critics of the Olympics on the Western left have by and large actively propagated, or at least refused to rebut, these narratives in the buildup to the Beijing Games.

In this essay, Charles Xu exposes these narratives for the new Cold War propaganda they are. At the same time, he draws from valuable left analysis of the Olympic movement’s historical imbrication with white supremacy to explore China’s fraught relationship with international sports. In the 1950s and 60s, the nascent PRC treated the Games as a stage to assert its legitimacy and challenge Western hegemony over international sport. The history of that protracted struggle is invaluable for understanding the geopolitical stakes of Beijing 2022.

Globetrotter is cross-publishing this article in adapted and serialized form over the course of the Olympics: part 1, part 2, part 3

The incredible disappearing diplomatic boycott

On February 4, the 2022 Winter Olympics are set to open in Beijing. With this, the Chinese capital will become the first city to have hosted both the Summer and Winter Games. It will also make the People’s Republic of China the first country in the Global South ever to host the Winter Olympics, which have historically been dominated by Europe and North America (home to the top 14 countries in the all-time medal table). China remains the only Asian host nation in history besides Japan and South Korea, both of which are advanced capitalist states embedded firmly within the US economic and military sphere of influence.

These milestones have gone almost entirely unremarked-upon in Western media coverage leading up to the Games, which instead paints China as a uniquely “authoritarian” and therefore undeserving host. On this as with virtually every issue of geopolitical import, corporate media march in lockstep with their respective governments in their drive toward a new Cold War against China. The United States led the way in announcing a “diplomatic boycott” of the Beijing Olympics on December 6, 2021, citing allegations of “genocide and crimes against humanity in Xinjiang and other human rights abuses." It was followed by Britain, Canada, and Australia (i.e. all but one of its “Five Eyes” allies), as well as Japan and a smattering of small north European countries. 

No shortage of irony besmirches these allegations. Japan remains largely unrepentant for its brutal invasion and colonial rule over much of East and Southeast Asia in the first half of the 20th century, which killed around 20 million people in China alone. The Five Eyes, constituting a majority of “boycott” participants, are united not just by the English language but by a common history of settler colonialism, Indigenous genocide, and violently enforced regional and global hegemony. The authors of this dismal spectacle are therefore in no moral position to levy such charges against China—charges which themselves have been repeatedly and thoroughly exposed as a mixture of gross exaggerations and outright falsifications, not least by hundreds of Uyghurs’ testimonials from within Xinjiang. 

The Five Eyes, constituting a majority of “diplomatic boycott” participants, are united not just by the English language but by a common history of settler colonialism, Indigenous genocide, and violently enforced regional and global hegemony.

These allegations are just one expression of the pervasive Orientalism framing Western coverage of China, under which Chinese voices may exercise no legitimate speech save to clamor for Western salvation from Communist Party despotism. Implicating Chinese people at every level, from whole nationalities like the Uyghurs to individuals in China and the diaspora, this Orientalism was in full effect during the manufactured controversy around tennis star Peng Shuai. In November 2021, she posted an explosive and troubling exposé on her extramarital affair with former Vice Premier Zhang Gaoli which immediately went viral on Weibo. The post’s rapid deletion, and Peng’s week-long absence from social media, led to a veritable torrent of performative concern over her whereabouts and safety—pushed by all corners of Western sports media as well as Steve Simon, the white American chairman of the Women’s Tennis Association. No amount of personal assurances from Peng herself, in public and impromptu interviews, sufficed to tamp down the now-universal speculation around her “forced disappearance” or the willful mistranslation of her post to imply sexual assault. This lurid story’s timing and its implication of Chinese sports in particular made it irresistible to Beijing 2022 boycott campaigners, who are predictably using it to fearmonger over athlete safety and surveillance at the Games themselves.

Thus far, China’s official responses to the diplomatic boycott have combined ridicule at apparent backtracking by the US (which quietly requested, and received, visas for 46 consular officials) with boilerplate appeals to avoid politicizing the Games. Foreign Ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian, for instance, objected that the move “seriously violates the principle of political neutrality of sports established by the Olympic Charter.” While this is to be expected at an official level, it elides the manifestly and unavoidably political nature of international sport, and the modern Olympics in particular. To properly understand the conflict over Beijing 2022, we must examine the ideological underpinnings of the Olympic movement and its long history of imbrication with global white supremacy and Euro-American hegemony. It is a history in which the People’s Republic of China, in its quest for legitimacy and international recognition in the face of imperialist aggression, has played an outsize and especially fascinating role.

The sordid racial and colonial history of the Olympics

The following historical overview will draw extensively on two book-length studies. The first is Power Games: A Political History of the Olympics (2016) by Jules Boykoff, a former professional soccer player and current professor of political science at Pacific University in Oregon. He is perhaps the foremost critic of the Olympics and their often baleful social impact on host cities from an anti-capitalist standpoint, albeit one strongly colored by Western human rights discourses, especially in relation to China as discussed below. The second study is Olympic Dreams: China and Sports, 1895-2008 (2008) by Xu Guoqi, a historian at the University of Hong Kong who writes from a perspective broadly aligned with contemporary Chinese liberalism. 

White supremacy and a particularly aristocratic vein of Eurocentrism were inscribed into the modern Olympics from the very beginning.

As Boykoff notes, white supremacy and a particularly aristocratic vein of Eurocentrism were inscribed into the modern Olympics from the very beginning. Case in point is Baron Pierre de Coubertin, who in 1894 founded the International Olympic Committee. A prototypical ideologue of scientific racism, de Coubertin lamented what he called “the natural indolence of the Oriental.” Nonetheless he pressed for the inclusion of African athletes, if only because they were supposedly wracked by “a thousand jealousies of the white man and yet, at the same time, the wish to imitate him and thus share his privileges.” These ideological underpinnings left a lasting impact on the spirit and structure of the international games: the 1904 St. Louis Olympics featured the grotesque spectacle of the Anthropology Days, an event intended (and rigged) to “prove,” through head-to-head athletic contests, that “primitive men are far inferior to modern Caucasians in both physical and mental development.”

Infamously, these tendencies reached a sinister climax with the 1936 Berlin Games, an unabashed Nazi propaganda coup that left a New York Times correspondent with the impression that “this is a nation happy and prosperous almost beyond belief; that Hitler is one of the greatest, if not the greatest, political leaders in the world today.” Linking the 1936 games to the one at present, some have condemned the blatant hypocrisy of the US government leading a symbolic “boycott” of Beijing 2022 after wholeheartedly endorsing Berlin 1936. Opposing commentators in corporate media tendentiously treat the latter as the original “Genocide Olympics” and a precedent for the former. Easily forgotten in all these comparisons, however, is that a robust campaign was mounted for a US boycott in 1936. It was ruthlessly quashed by American Olympic Committee president Avery Brundage, who opined that

Boycotts have been started by the Jews which have aroused the citizens of German extraction to reprisals. Jews with communistic and socialistic antecedents have been particularly active, and the result is that the same sort of class hatred which exists in Germany and which every sane man deplores, is being aroused in the United States.

After his election in 1952 as president of the IOC, Brundage wrote admiringly that “Germany in the 1930’s had a plan which brought it from almost bankruptcy to be the most powerful country in the world in a half dozen years. Other countries with dictators have accomplished the same thing in a smaller way.” His embrace of overtly white nationalist regimes extended during his presidency to apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia—which he fought fiercely (if futilely) to keep in the Olympic fold—and to the Jim Crow South in his home country. So synonymous was his name with white supremacy in sport that he earned the moniker “Slavery Avery.” In 1967, Black American athletes organized through the Olympic Project for Human Rights (OPHR) explicitly demanded “removal of the anti-Semitic and anti-Black personality Avery Brundage from his post as Chairman of the International Olympic Committee.”

In 1968, the OPHR issued a novel call to boycott the Mexico City Games, not over the choice of host, but rather the anti-Black racism pervading the entire IOC apparatus. No such boycott occurred, but Tommie Smith and John Carlos’ iconic Black Power salute on the Olympic podium nonetheless immortalized the campaign. Brundage was predictably apoplectic at this gesture, which he labeled a “nasty demonstration against the United States flag by Negroes,” and ordered both athletes suspended from the US team. While the OPHR did not achieve all its aims—Brundage lasted four more years as president—it was instrumental in securing the expulsion of apartheid South Africa and Rhodesia from the Olympic movement. And its boycott call anticipated the principled withdrawal of 29 mostly African countries from the 1976 Games, after the IOC refused to ban New Zealand for permitting its rugby team to tour South Africa.

For the first eight decades of their existence, efforts to boycott the Olympics emanated almost exclusively from the working class and oppressed peoples—and were met with ferocious condemnation from the United States and its allies.

The IOC remains to this day a self-selected and self-perpetuating bastion of Euro-American chauvinism and aristocratic privilege. Fully one-tenth of its active and honorary members hold hereditary royal titles (though these now include a strong Gulf Arab contingent), and its only “honour member” [sic] is Henry Kissinger. Every IOC president save for Brundage has been European; French and English remain the only working languages. Thus for the first eight decades of their existence, efforts to boycott the Olympics emanated almost exclusively from the working class and oppressed peoples—and were met with ferocious condemnation from the United States and its allies. When those same forces of reaction now call for a “boycott” of Beijing 2022, they leave no doubt as to what they actually fear: a rising China challenging their heretofore untrammeled domination of global sport.

China’s long Olympic battle for legitimacy

In 1949 the Communist Party of China decisively prevailed over Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) after 22 years of civil war, forcing the latter to flee to Taiwan. The founding of the People’s Republic brought a definitive end to a “century of humiliation” inaugurated by the First Opium War, which had seen colonial powers reduce China to the “sick man of Asia.” This sickness had been a byword for the weakness, internal rupture, and forced narcotic dependency of the Chinese body politic—transposed inevitably onto the racialized Chinese body. 

Overcoming these scars, in all their physical and psychological manifestations, was the guiding principle for sports policy in the People’s Republic. Only through this lens can we understand why it fought in such an obstinate, pugnacious, and unabashedly political way for a place in the Olympic movement on its own sovereign terms. China turned the Games into a battleground in its contest for legitimacy with the KMT regime on Taiwan and its imperialist backers, elevating the dispute to “the main burden of Olympism” in the words of IOC chancellor Otto Mayer. As with the parallel struggle for recognition by the United Nations, this one ended after three eventful decades in unqualified triumph.

China fought in an obstinate, pugnacious, and unabashedly political way for a place in the Olympics on its own sovereign terms, turning them into a battleground in its contest for legitimacy with the KMT regime on Taiwan.

The KMT-led Republic of China had sent a solitary athlete to the 1932 Los Angeles Games, followed by larger delegations in 1936 and 1948—the latter, incredibly, as the KMT was losing the most decisive campaigns of the civil war to the Communists. After the regime’s flight to Taiwan, its National Olympic Committee (NOC) gave the IOC pro forma notice that it had relocated to Taipei with no further explanation. Throughout this period, the Soviet Union had pointedly snubbed the “bourgeois” IOC in favor of organizing its own proletarian Red Sport International, complete with “Spartakiad” games to rival the Olympics. But by Helsinki 1952, the Soviets were ready to join the existing Olympic movement in force (ultimately finishing a close second to the US in the medal count) and duly urged the fledgling PRC to do so as well.

From its very first approach, the People’s Republic boldly insisted on what would become known as the one-China policy: that it was the sole legitimate representative of the Chinese nation including KMT-occupied Taiwan. The IOC ultimately fudged on the question and extended a last-minute invitation to Beijing as well as Taipei. Nonetheless Mao Zedong, Liu Shaoqi, and Zhou Enlai personally approved the decision to send a team, which arrived in Helsinki the day before the closing ceremony and could not take part in any competition. But merely being there was an unalloyed boon to the PRC’s legitimacy, especially as the rival Taipei-based National Olympic Committee had withdrawn in protest. Avery Brundage, then vice president of the IOC, complained bitterly that “I did everything in my power to prevent them from taking part. Unfortunately, I had only one vote and because many others present did not feel the same way I was out-voted.”

This initial success was not to be repeated. At Melbourne 1956 it was the PRC’s turn to withdraw in protest as Taipei’s delegation insisted on competing under the name “Republic of China.” Two years later, Chinese IOC delegate Dong Shouyi entered into a bracing war of words with Brundage, calling him “a faithful menial of the US imperialists bent on serving their plot of creating ‘two Chinas’” in a resignation letter that concluded:

A man like you, who stains the Olympic spirit and violates the Olympic Charter, has no qualification whatsoever to be IOC president … I feel pained that the IOC is today controlled by an imperialist like you and consequently the Olympic spirit has been grossly trampled upon. To uphold the Olympic spirit and tradition, I hereby declare that I will no longer cooperate with you or have any connection with the IOC while it is under your domination.

Dong would not be the last Chinese representative to evoke an idealized “Olympic spirit” in opposition to the Americans who arguably embodied the real one in all its racist ugliness. He would, however, be the last Chinese delegate to serve on the IOC until 1979.

Interestingly, this two-decade hiatus (which actually amounted to a 28-year absence from the Olympic Games) saw the two most severe diplomatic incidents surrounding the China question at the IOC. Both centered on the KMT regime’s untenable claim to represent the entire Chinese nation as the “Republic of China,” and both ended in bitter defeats for it, even as Beijing was de facto boycotting the entire Olympic movement. In effect, the PRC substituted state-to-state diplomacy—first with the Soviet bloc and then with Western powers after the Sino-Soviet split—for a formal presence within the institutions, closely mirroring its geopolitical strategy.

While de facto boycotting the entire Olympic movement, China substituted state-to-state diplomacy for a formal presence within the institutions, closely mirroring its geopolitical strategy.

The first episode occurred in 1959, not long after Dong Shouyi’s angry resignation, when Soviet delegates to the IOC insisted that Taipei’s NOC change its name on the self-evident grounds that it “[could not] possibly supervise sports in mainland China.” The IOC as a whole readily agreed, with even the arch-anticommunist Avery Brundage reluctantly assenting. The US mainstream press exploded in outrage; absurdly, Brundage himself was deluged with hate mail alleging he had succumbed to “communist blackmail.” The State Department called the decision “a clear act of political discrimination” and even President Dwight Eisenhower condemned it. But the decision stood, and the whole affair ended in another embarrassing fudge, with Taipei competing under the name “Taiwan” at Rome 1960 and quietly reverting to “Republic of China” thereafter.

The second, even more damaging incident took place in the lead-up to Montreal 1976. After establishing diplomatic relations in 1970, the PRC informed Canada in no uncertain terms that the Taipei NOC should not be allowed to compete as the “Republic of China.” After lobbying earnestly but unsuccessfully for the IOC to recognize Beijing instead of Taipei, Pierre Trudeau’s government proposed that athletes from Taiwan compete under the neutral Olympic flag. The IOC grudgingly assented at the last minute, but not before debating whether to move the Games to the US or cancel them entirely; the Taipei NOC angrily withdrew.

Official reactions from Canada’s domineering southern neighbor were again apoplectic. US President Gerald Ford and the head of the US Olympic Committee seriously discussed the possibility of boycotting or trying to take over the Games at the last minute. This of course did not come to pass, but Canada took a significant reputational hit in the United States—a testament to China’s growing ability to exploit contradictions within the imperialist bloc. Canada’s independent China policy under Pierre Trudeau stood in stark contrast with that of his son Justin, who marched in shameful lockstep first with Trump’s judicial kidnapping of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou, and now with Biden’s “diplomatic boycott” of Beijing 2022 over Xinjiang.

Ironically, just a few years after savaging the Canadians, the US would follow in their footsteps by establishing diplomatic relations with the People’s Republic and (formally) cutting ties with Taipei under the one-China policy. This paved the way for the IOC to resolve the two-China question later in 1979 in its own unique way: by readmitting Beijing and allowing athletes from Taiwan to compete under the name “Chinese Taipei.” Deng Xiaoping personally approved this compromise in an early foretaste of the future “one country, two systems” settlements that would return Hong Kong and Macau to Chinese sovereignty.

The PRC’s delayed return to the Olympic movement, contingent in many ways on bilateral ties with the US, contrasted sharply from its triumphant entry into the UN in 1971. On that occasion, an impressive coalition of African and other Third World countries—many fresh from their own national liberation struggles—had secured recognition for Beijing and expulsion of the KMT regime over the strident objections of the US and most of its allies. By 1979, however, the basis for unity within the socialist and non-aligned camps had so thoroughly collapsed that China and many other Global South countries readily joined the US-led boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics over the Soviet military intervention in Afghanistan.

Instead, mainland China made its long-delayed and triumphant return to Olympic competition at Los Angeles 1984—a Games remembered locally as an orgy of Reaganite neoliberalism, American jingoism (amplified by the Soviet-led boycott), and militarized police terror that helped create the conditions for the 1992 Rodney King uprising. They nonetheless marked a high point in US-China relations, with PRC athletes being warmly feted by the hosts. This goodwill was not dampened in the slightest when the women’s volleyball team sensationally defeated the hosts to win gold, in one of the most iconic moments of Chinese sports history. There was ample reason to believe, even after the trauma of the 1989 Tiananmen incident and subsequent US sanctions, that enough of it remained to propel Beijing to victory in its first bid to host the Olympics.

Beijing’s Olympics and the poverty of “human rights” discourse

Unfortunately by the time Beijing launched its bid for the 2000 Olympics, US policy had begun to shift perceptibly from the honeymoon years of rapprochement. Gone was the incentive for even arch-reactionaries like Nixon and Reagan to embrace the PRC effusively in the name of hard-nosed anti-Soviet realpolitik. With the end of the first Cold War, anticommunism also receded as a guiding framework for US imperial rhetoric, in favor of a universalized (if richly hypocritical) weaponization of neoliberal “human rights.” This was a discursive terrain tilted heavily toward bourgeois democracies in the imperial core, on which China was hardly more equipped to compete than it had been in the Mao era.

Sure enough, the US mainstream press united in opposition to Beijing’s bid, with the New York Times anticipating the facile and now-omnipresent analogies with Nazi Germany: “The city in question is Beijing in the year 2000, but the answer is Berlin 1936.” Bipartisan majorities in both houses of Congress vehemently urged the IOC to reject the bid on human rights grounds. In the event, Beijing led in every round of voting until the last, when it narrowly lost to Sydney 45-43. It later emerged that the Sydney organizing committee had not only secured the two-vote margin via outright bribery (par for the course for the IOC), but had secretly commissioned an anti-China smear campaign laundered through a London-based human rights group. The bonds between white Anglo settler colonies prevailed, and Sydney 2000 became the stage for a truly noxious whitewashing of Australia’s genocide against Aboriginal peoples.

Still smarting from its defeat and the naked hypocrisy of Western powers around the “politicization” of the Games, Beijing nonetheless forged ahead with a bid for the 2008 Olympics. This time it won with ease, aided by widespread sympathy for the circumstances of the 2000 loss, as well as a slick PR campaign designed to neutralize the attack lines that had sunk its previous attempt. Bid committee official Wang Wei assured the IOC that “with the Games coming to China, not only are they going to promote the economy, but also enhance all the social sectors, including education, medical care and human rights.” Despite strenuous efforts to weaponize large-scale unrest in Tibet in the months leading up to the Games, even limited boycott appeals from Western campaign groups went nowhere. The 2008 Beijing Olympics went down in history as China’s “coming-out party” and a seminal moment in its growing self-confidence as a rising world power.

Between 2008 and 2022, China’s growing confidence in its own model freed it from the need to address Western imperialists in their favored (and deeply hypocritical) discursive terms.

It is telling that Jules Boykoff, on whose work in Power Games I have relied so heavily, makes no mention at all of this widespread popular perception of the Beijing Games or their significance in the broader arc of Chinese history. Instead he treats them as an exclusively elite project and focuses entirely on critical narratives, a tendency he has doubled down on in his most recent commentary on Beijing 2022. Possibly the most revealing line is his response to Beijing’s assurances from the 2008 bid: “This human-rights dreamscape never arrived. It’s telling that today, neither China nor the IOC are vowing that the Olympics will spur democracy.” It does not occur to Boykoff to see this as a positive development: that China’s growing confidence in its own model frees it from the need to address Western imperialists in their favored (and deeply hypocritical) discursive terms. As the New York Times put it succinctly, “Where the government once sought to mollify its critics to make the Games a success, today it defies them…China then sought to meet the world’s terms. Now the world must accept China’s.”

This reflects a broader analytical lacuna in campaigns that take the Olympics themselves as an undifferentiated political target: they fail to account for the positions of different host countries vis-à-vis the imperialist world system. To flatten “the Olympics” or “human rights” as universal categories is effectively to privilege normative Western understandings of both. In practice this leads to grossly uneven and asymmetrical treatment of Olympics hosted by self-styled democracies in the imperial core—historically the overwhelming majority—versus the few that are not. To be sure, local anti-Olympics campaign groups are undoubtedly justified in fighting the social dislocations they bring to host cities everywhere. (Full disclosure: I have previously worked with one such group, NOlympics LA, which does valuable work connecting the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics to gentrification and racialized policing.) 

But where was the outrage over the illegal US invasion of Afghanistan, when Salt Lake City hosted in 2002? Over Britain’s war crimes there and in Iraq, when London hosted in 2012? Over Japan’s continued refusal to acknowledge its colonial crimes against humanity, when Tokyo hosted in 2021? The indictment of entire host countries as “human-rights nightmares” (Boykoff’s crude label for China and Kazakhstan, when Beijing and Almaty wound up as the only finalists for 2022) seems to be reserved for nations outside the imperial core. The nascent transnational anti-Olympics movement must overcome these ideological blinders if it is ever to match the coherence of the great anti-racist mobilizations that shook the IOC in the 1960s and ‘70s. Presently there seems little cause for hope, with leading figures like Boykoff and his fellow “left” sportswriter Dave Zirin uncritically propagating State Department lines on both Xinjiang and Peng Shuai in their coverage leading up to Beijing 2022.

The indictment of entire host countries as “human-rights nightmares” seems to be reserved for nations outside the imperial core. The anti-Olympics movement must overcome these ideological blinders if it is ever to match the coherence of the great anti-racist mobilizations that shook the IOC in the 1960s and ‘70s.

Postscript: New Emerging Forces

I have intentionally saved for the end what is possibly the most fascinating historical episode I uncovered in my research. What, you might ask, was the People’s Republic of China up to in the world of international sport during its two decades in the Olympic wilderness? The story of “ping-pong diplomacy” with the United States and other Western powers is already well-documented, reflecting an obvious Northern historiographical bias. But in an age of growing calls for “decoupling” between China and the West, and for South-South cooperation via the Belt and Road Initiative among other projects, the buried history we must uncover is that of the Games of the New Emerging Forces (GANEFO).

GANEFO emerged from a bold act of anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist solidarity by the Indonesian government of Sukarno, the visionary anticolonial leader and co-founder of the Non-Aligned Movement. In 1962, Indonesia, as hosts, pointedly refused to invite Israel and the Taipei-based KMT regime to the fourth Asian Games and was summarily suspended from the IOC. In response, Sukarno proclaimed that

The International Olympic Games have proved to be openly an imperialistic tool … Now let’s frankly say, sports have something to do with politics. Indonesia proposes now to mix sports with politics, and let us now establish the Games of the New Emerging Forces, the GANEFO … against the Old Established Order.

His bracing rhetoric paralleled Dong Shouyi’s earlier broadside against Avery Brundage, but shorn of any residual attachment to a mystical “Olympic spirit.” China enthusiastically jumped in to help organize and promote GANEFO in 1963, covering travel costs to Jakarta for 2,200 athletes from 48 countries, overwhelmingly based in the Global South. It left with a bumper crop of athletic victories—topping the overall medal table, followed by the Soviet second-string squad and the Indonesian hosts—and effusive goodwill from athletes across the emerging Third World.

There would never be another GANEFO, owing to the horrific US-backed coup that ousted Sukarno and installed Suharto’s military dictatorship in 1965. But this piece of history remains more vital than ever to recover. Because the lesson of Beijing 2022 and the moves toward a diplomatic boycott, however farcical, is that the US and its Northern clients will never fully accept China as a legitimate member of their elite club. In their current position as hosts, PRC officials may feel understandably constrained in denouncing the “politicization” of the Games. But they and the Chinese people should never forget that politicizing the Olympics is a long, hallowed tradition for the workers and oppressed nations of the world. The People’s Republic of China has a storied place in that tradition of which it can be justly proud.

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Reflecting on Chinese company Lenovo’s controversial decision to back an American 5G system standard in 2016, Chen Xianyi passionately describes China’s resurgent socialist ethos—encapsulated in the CPC’s call for common prosperity and the masses’ growing insistence on the role private capital must play in China’s socialist construction.

The original text on Utopia 乌有之乡 can be found here: 这是一场伟大的斗争. Chen Xianyi is a Utopia contributor from the Kunlun Strategic Research Institute.

2021 will go down in history.

With everything going on the average person may have not yet realized how extraordinary 2021 was, but it will go down in history. It will not just be remembered because of the rampant global pandemic, but also because it was the year that the masses spontaneously held what came to be known as “A Great Discussion on the Criterion of Truth.” [1] The discussion was ostensibly about right and wrong in the context of transferring and privatizing state-owned assets, but, as the discussion went on, it became a theoretical referendum on Right and Wrong in general, on the direction of national reform and development.

It feels like it was only yesterday that Lenovo voted for Qualcomm’s proposal at the world 5G standard-setting body, forcing China’s Huawei out of the game, thus leaving this particular 5G standard in the hands of the United States. The national anger from 2020 is still palpable today, akin to anger about the “21 Demands” from 1919. [2] The difference is that in 1919 it was foreigners who oppressed us, while this time around it was our own countrymen that did us in. Unfortunately, despite widespread anger and condemnation, no punishment was meted out to Lenovo for profiting from Chinese people while doing the bidding of the West. Instead, Lenovo continued to be a standard-bearer of domestic private enterprise, of 40 years of “Reform and Opening Up.” In fact, criticism of Lenovo was decried as “a resurgence of ultra-left forces,” and a statement of solidarity with Lenovo was signed by hundreds of well-known entrepreneurs. These PR efforts had the goal of silencing widespread skepticism of Lenovo.

Thus, amid public anger, the “Right and Wrong” of this incident quietly became history.

Although the Lenovo scandal seemed to be behind us, it turns out the discontent it triggered in the masses was not.

Nobody saw him coming, but a young blogger called “Mingde” lit a fuse on the tailcoat of this young history. He boldly exposed the fire sale of Lenovo’s state-owned assets and brought the matter back to the forefront. [3] Then, through a series of videos, the famous social commentator Sima Nan drew the attention of hundreds of millions, transforming the scandal into a tidal wave of national concern and solidarity. [4] Later still, Professor Zhang Jie described the ins and outs of the incident with scientific rigor and a truth-seeking spirit, fanning the flame no less than Sima Nan’s reports did. [5] The result of all of this was that a patriotic spirit fueled a critical bombardment and widespread boycotts, and thus every last shred of the solidarity that hundreds of entrepreneurs had theatrically extended to Lenovo vanished.

The people’s increasing concern with the direction of state enterprises, and with any resistance against the march towards common prosperity, is now unstoppable. This is unprecedented.

Not long ago it was unheard of to question “Reform and Opening Up” or domestic private entrepreneurs. They stood as unmovable as Mount Tai, intimidating anyone who would dare say “no” to Lenovo. But today is different. Even if this particular incident does not reach a satisfying resolution, even if it hazily fades away, the general public is now awake. The people’s increasing concern with the direction of state enterprises, and with any resistance against the march towards common prosperity, is now unstoppable. This is unprecedented. From the highest governmental office to the stalls in the streets and alleyways, everyone’s eyes are wide open and focused on these matters.

This is a great struggle.

It is a struggle about Right and Wrong and the theoretical basis of Reform and Opening Up. Lenovo finds itself playing this historical role because of its recklessness, because it gave up its national character. Lenovo thought that the backing of a world hegemon like the United States meant that it would get away with anything it wanted. Lenovo thought that if it hung up the big banner of “Reform and Opening Up” as decoration it could trample on the will and the laws of 1.4 billion people. They underestimated the political acumen of the people, their ability to tell Right from Wrong on matters such as the donation of computers to the U.S. military, such as fire-sale of state assets, such as lavishing 100 million yuan salaries upon themselves amid Party calls to make unremitting efforts towards common prosperity, such as how they set back the development of the country’s high-tech industry through the manipulation of government policies for personal gain, such as their indefensible covert cooperation with the U.S., etc. Lenovo’s litany of scandals has made a mockery out of the generous tolerance extended to them by 1.4 billion people.

This is a great struggle. It is great because the people spontaneously stood up to defend Marxism and Mao Zedong Thought, and because the people spontaneously began to educate themselves. This is a Marxist self-education movement. The people, especially a large number of intellectuals, began to re-read Capital and re-read the classic works of Marxist political economy. They needed to understand how these so-called theoreticians who claim to understand capital theory and Western economics have used those bizarre Western theories to deceive our people and our society over the last few decades. In many bookstores, we found that people began to look for and buy classic works of Marxism, especially the six books that Chairman Mao once recommended to CPC members, including "The Communist Manifesto", "Das Kapital" and "Critique of the Gotha Program" as representative classics. People are looking for answers from classic original works. The process of reading is also the process of people's self-education. People have gradually understood that those super-rich who have become monopoly compradors are no longer our fellow travelers. What they want to do is to fully implement privatization in socialist China, so as to disintegrate and destroy our socialist system.

People have gradually understood that those super-rich who have become monopoly compradors are no longer our fellow travelers. What they want to do is to fully implement privatization in socialist China, so as to disintegrate and destroy our socialist system.

This is a great struggle. It is great because the people, through a series of shocking revelations, saw through it all. The compradors and their dreams of monopoly care nothing for the people. Immense wealth is not enough for them, they want China to adopt the Western system, where the rich also have complete political control. They envy that arrogant and extravagant lifestyle, one that goes beyond even the lifestyles of the Liu Wencais and Huang Shirens that we once suppressed.  History teaches us that these people are simply biding their time until they can launch a decisive strike on the political realm.

“Zero Tolerance,” a recent TV series on CCTV, explored a large number of corruption cases against government officials such as Sun Lijun. It showed that behind every individual corrupt official and collusion case there is a massive network of financial support and cooperation funded by the super-rich. To put it bluntly: the compradors and their bureaucrats are our enemies. The future of this country hinges on whether we achieve victory in this struggle.

This is a great struggle. It is great because the stakes are high. People understand the painful historical lessons of the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe; the misleading promise of “Peaceful Evolution.” Today it would seem that the CPC Central Committee, with Comrade Xi Jinping at its core, has grasped the problem by the root, putting forward the goal of “Common Prosperity” for a new era. Over time it will become more and more clear that the reason why this goal took root so quickly in Zhejiang is because the challenges faced there are directly related to the future of this country and its people as a whole. The super-rich compradors, and their bureaucrats, and the scholars who provide them all with theoretical cover, all hate and fear “Common Prosperity” above all. Like their counterparts in the United States, they deeply hate this pursuit. As one of many US officials remarked: “the Chinese people are becoming rich, and it will be a huge disaster for the world.” The super rich in China are no different. When the Central Committee put forward the goal of “common prosperity,” they panicked and did everything possible to sabotage the implementation of this strategic decision. Thanks to these actions, millions today clearly see their sinister natures and dark hearts.

I’m afraid that this is a struggle in which patriotic Chinese citizens cannot stand on the sidelines. Because this is a struggle against an all-out anti-socialist offensive, a struggle for the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation, for the realization of the dream of Chinese people. In order to emerge victorious in this struggle to defend the great principles of socialism, we must stand together as one.

[1]  “Two Whatevers” on Wikipedia. [web]   

[2]  “21 Demands” on Wikipedia. [web] 

[3] Mingde’s 6’s articles on Lenovo listed here 

[4] Sima Nan: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sima_Nan  

[5] Professor Zhang Jie’s Youtube Channel

Originally anonymously published on Zuoyi23’s WeChat and Zhihu pages, the following article explores the rise and fall of the capitalist class in China. Employing a sharp, dialectical lens, the author takes a critical look at how the relationship between the state and capital continues to shape the relationship between the capitalist and working classes in China—and how young workers are returning to Marxist critique to shape the future. 

The original text on Zhihu can be found here: 资本的复兴和脑力无产者的左转 (zhihu.com)

Editor’s Note: The following piece was originally published on December 18th, 2020, shortly after the halt of Alibaba’s IPO and months before the Chinese government instituted a series of new regulations throughout the private sector. It was then subsequently re-published on leftist sites such as Utopia (乌有之乡).

The author details but a small fraction of the previously long-unseen contradictions in Chinese society resulting from the Reform and Opening Up period. During the 1990s and 2000s, changes in labor relations, political economy, and the flow of capital seemed to spell the end of socialist construction in China—indeed convincing many Western scholars and leftists that China had sold out to the capitalist class.

However, China’s recent sharp turn in state regulation of key industries such as education, tech, and housing—decried as a “crackdown” on capitalism in Western media—reflects the long-term strategy of capital accumulation. In recent months, the Chinese government has kneecapped multiple multibillion-dollar industries, massively devalued the assets of billionaires, and has begun one of the largest transfers of wealth from monopoly capital to the public, all while eliminating extreme poverty in the country.

In light of the author’s concise description of the Chinese capitalist’s rise and fall, we are reminded that Marx and Engels had theorized that socialism, and subsequently communism, could only be realized under an abundance of capital. Using the market as a means of capital accumulation rather than an end in and of itself, the Communist Party of China’s ongoing project of socialist construction has lifted the living standards of over 1 billion people. Despite difficulties faced by the Chinese people, we share the author’s call to look forward to what the future brings.

2020 was a special year. It was a year where unpropertied mental laborers (脑力无产者) took a left turn (to a critical viewpoint of capitalism). It was also the first year where unpropertied physical laborers felt a clear crisis.

Since 1978, China’s capital development has gone through three significant stages. Linked with these three stages of development, the social status of capitalists and the consciousness of laborers have also gone through three different stages. 

1978 - 1992

This period is the first stage of China’s capital development. In this stage, capital was summoned from nonexistence and created a nationwide unified commodities market, labor market, and financial system.

Before 1978, to be an exploitative capitalist was not only shameful, it was illegal. After Reform and Opening Up, it was under these conditions where the first cohort of capitalists (initially individuals in the city and countryside) came of age.

In 1981, discussions within the Party revolved around a particular question: whether private employment of labor constituted exploitation under a socialist system. The debate dragged on, and ultimately concluded that under 8 employees did not qualify as exploitation, while over 8 employees did. However, capital development proceeds at a breakneck pace, and this 8-person restriction was broken in no time.

In January of 1983, the central government issued the “Three No’s” regarding employment of over 8 persons: do not promote, do not publicize, and do not be too quick to ban. Under such an ambiguously supportive environment, capital developed rapidly, and as a class, capitalists in China re-emerged on a land of worker-peasants. 

While capitalists were busy enriching their families, they lacked any sort of associated social prestige. They couldn’t enter the National People’s Congress, join the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, or join the Party. They weren’t even sure if they could keep their homes built on exploited labor, since 10 years prior, our Party had confiscated all capitalist property.

In cities, the working class had their iron rice bowls. But the capitalists, before all this they were just unemployed educated youth, good-for-nothing loafers, and all sorts of miscellaneous vagrants looked down upon by the proletariat. To these nouveau-riche capitalists, the proletariat were backhanded in their praise, “So you’ve got some stinkin’ money now—in two days the country will take it away anyway.”

In the countryside, migrant workers began to appear. The cooperative enterprises formed in the socialist period broke up to become “township enterprises” and were given away to all sorts of “skilled persons,” ushering in the start of capitalist development. Local farmers became the reserve force of the employed workforce in these township enterprises. Besides agricultural production, they worked part-time in both township enterprises. Working both fields simultaneously, this remarkable phenomenon was known as “leaving the land but not the hometown.”

Would the country even confiscate these assets? Were they prepping the capitalists up for slaughter? Not even the capitalists themselves knew. In 1987, to comfort the capitalist class, the Great Architect [Deng Xiaoping] gave a significant, meaningful speech where he said, “Now us in China are discussing the question of employment. I’ve spoken with many comrades, and there’s no need to show that we are ‘moving’ on this issue, and we can wait and see for another few years.” Of course, in order to reduce resistance, the Architect also comforted the traditional old guard cadre by saying, “currently most employers are small businesses and consist of villagers hired by their own village enterprises. Compared to the over 100 million other workers, this represents a tiny number. Looking at the big picture shows us how this is really a small, small point. Moving on this issue is easy, but if we move, it will look as if our entire policy changes. Yes we will have to act, since we do not aim to polarize. However, when and how we move, we must do our research.” However, this research ended up taking tens of years.

1988. Nearly 10 years after the start of capital development; after capitalists had become a rising class; after the reemergence of migrant workers. A year when workers could only dream of a free apartment; when a university student’s highest honor was to earn a spot as a cadre. In 1988, the constitution was revised, and the private economy finally gained legal recognition.

The juncture of two eras: from a planned economy to market economy, from a socialist to a capitalist system; from a house commanded by laborers steered to a church of capitalism.

At this juncture, capitalists lacked the prestige that would typically correspond to all the money they controlled. Not only were they banned from the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference, their children had fewer opportunities to enter universities compared to those of worker-peasants, of course a tiny disparity compared to admission to the civil service. The table below describes the rate of college admission of the children of persons of social classes compared to the capitalist class. In 1982, the university admission rate of a laborer’s child was 3.23 times greater compared to a capitalist’s child, while a farmer’s child’s rate of admission was 2.13 times greater compared to a capitalist’s child. In 1990, the children of urban workers had an admission rate that was 10.78 times higher than that of a capitalist’s child and the children of farmers had 6.22 times higher an admission rate.

And after 1992, everything changed.

1992 - 2008

This period marks the second stage of capital development. Deng Xiaoping’s southern tour unveiled the curtain of this stage; clarified the direction of capitalist development; finalized the discussion of whether China was socialist vs. capitalist in character; and cleared any obstacles for capital to roam across China. 

This stage was marked by several landmark incidents, including the Zhili fire at the end of 1993, which tragically claimed the lives of 87 women workers. This incident was an announcement that governance over the laborer had reemerged. For tens of years afterwards, labor existed under the foot of capital, where it had to either live or die in humility.

Cheap labor costs; a relaxed merchant sector; a large educated population; complete infrastructure; and the world’s supply chain. These factors enabled China’s rapid capital development and the country’s transformation to a paradise of capital accumulation. 

Before 1992, other than a small subset of merchants, most capital was found among “capable people”—individual entities within villages. After 1992, many within the system cashed in, throwing down their iron rice bowls and turning to private enterprise. A large number of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) were bought out by managing cadre, who thus became the owners. A business census between 1997 and 1998 revealed that the greater abundance of social resources led to the cadres who left the system earning 1.9 times greater net profits compared to the average.

At this stage, illegal gray market activity surfaced. According to estimates by Dai Jianzhong [a professor at the Beijing Academy of Social Sciences], between 1992 and 1997, 270 billion RMB was lost to tax evasion by private enterprises, about 5% of all revenue during that period.

Bosses made more and more and enjoyed stability in social status. The July 1, 2001 speech brought up that enterprise heads “through honest labor and work, through legal operations, have made contributions to the development of our socialist society’s predictive forces. United alongside laborers, farmers, intellectuals, cadres, and the People’s Liberation Army, they are the builders of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” If these people “recognize the guiding principles of the Party, struggle for and follow the Party’s line, have been thoroughly vetted, and fit the proper requirements and conditions,” they should be “absorbed into the party.” Starting that year, capitalists were let into the Party, and the organization of exploiters was legalized. Not only could the boss enter the party, they could enter all levels of the National People’s Congress and participate in governance.

The more capitalist, the thirstier for political status, and the more eager to enter the party—Party businesspeople at heart. The “Report on An Investigative Analysis of Large-Scale Private Enterprises in the All-China Federation of Industry and Commerce” (2000-2014) reported the following results:

In the city, free housing and healthcare benefits were gone, and changes to SOEs ended the dream of the iron rice bowl. In the midst of the downfall of SOE workers, a new generation of migrant workers emerged as the main body of the working class. After China entered the World Trade Organization (WTO), the number of migrant workers skyrocketed. Between 2003 and 2008, the annual increase of migrant workers increased by 6 to 8 million. These people had no concept of free housing benefits or free healthcare. Growing up in the era of Reform and Opening Up and working in the capitalists’ factories, they thought that the exploitation of their labor was a god-given truth, the law of the land. Amidst a earth-shatteringly significant shift in laboring bodies, memories of the past were wiped in favor of an ideological shift that further entrenched the foundational legitimacy and prestige of capital.

In the countryside, after a small economic renaissance problems emerged. The anxiety brought on by the ”Three Rural Issues” [agriculture, rural areas, and farmers] carved itself into the collective memory of the end of the century. However, after China’s entry into the WTO, outstanding problems magnified in intensity. The youngest and strongest farmers flowed into cities, leaving the countryside to wither. Slowly but surely, the rural issue entered the spotlight.

At this time, be it in terms of wealth, status, or prestige, the space between capitalists and migrant workers widened. Capital had been completely legitimized; nobody talked of how many employees constituted exploitation. Exploit? If you don’t, someone else will. Being exploited means getting a job opportunity, and you best be thankful. After 2005, there were incidents where people attempted to attack the capitalists by exposing their dark, inhumane management buyout of SOEs—to reveal their original sin. However, public opinion barely batted an eye, with some even suggesting forgiving the capitalists, for if we investigate further, we would find that most capitalists had sinned.

Capitalists were progressing forward, while migrant workers groveled. Between these lines, a new group emerged. This group emerged and flourished following China’s urbanization, global capitalism, and the birth of the information technology industry. As lawyers, accountants, finance professionals, managers, scientific researchers, this group was defined by their technical and managerial skills. Perhaps due to their position in the workplace as managers—specific skills that render them irreplaceable or position in monopolies industries—some of them had better work environments, stronger capacity to organize, and thus higher salaries. These people were the emergent petit-bourgeois: professors, high-level teachers, department managers, some workers in the financial sector, engineers at large companies, workers in the IT industry, etc. Others in this group who worked in lower-level skilled worker or managerial positions, earned a slightly higher salary compared to their physically laboring counterparts. This group formed the unpropertied mental laboring class, including programmers, low-level finance employees, departmental clerks, elementary and middle school teachers, company technicians, etc.

Under the age of rapid capital development, the emergent petit bourgeois’ voices roared loud and clear. They cursed the planned economy period, siding with the mainstream, singing of praise of a gradual emergence. Every advance of capital left them beyond excited, with their plump capital bosses dripping oil to feed their meager ambitions.

Mental laborers held onto their petit bourgeois dreams. They shared office spaces, ate at the same table, held similar backgrounds, and spoke the same language. Consequently, they held similar ideologies as the petit bourgeois. The mental laborers upheld the competition and believed that they too could change their destinies through their own blood, sweat, and tears. They drank their boss’s kool-aid while watching ‘successology’ videos, listening to Jack Ma’s lectures, and daydreaming of a brighter future.

Aligned in interest and spirit with the capitalists, the emergent petit bourgeois and the mental laborers seduced by middle-class life made up the earliest users of Zhihu and other new media. Of course, on these platforms, this group of people spoke for the interests of capital while answering and discussing all sorts of questions.

2008 - Present

This is the third stage of capital development, the stage where capital falls from its own success. 

During the early period of this stage, capital grew stronger. Chinese capital relied on upholding the national system and Keynesianism to speed past the rest of the world to become the world’s second largest economy. Upholding this system, Chinese monopoly capital blew past England, Germany, Japan, and France to become number two. In 2007, 30 of the Global 500 companies were Chinese, a figure that increased to 106 in 2015.

At this stage, as a class, farmers declined rapidly. The movement of young and able-bodied workers into the cities left behind what became known as the “Unit 993861”—99 referring to the elderly (Double Ninth Festival), 38 referring to women (International Women’s Day), and 61 referring to children (Children’s Day). Currently, in the countryside, due to a plethora of reasons, many have returned to either part time or full time farming after years away, unable to continue laboring in the cities. According to a series of reports in Changes in Social Stratification and Class Division in Contemporary China, 67.91% of full time farmers “were once employees or salaried workers, in other words they were once laborers who later on returned to farm in the countryside. Most returned after reaching a certain age.” The small-scale farmer, as a group, will inevitably die out in the market economy.

At this stage, there are two important contradictions that are developing rapidly that are leaving a deep mark on China.

First, the rapid development of Chinese capital has left the domestic market more and more narrow as surplus capital flowed outwards. After 2012, there was an instance where such outflow increased, where starting in 2014, China became a net capital exporter. There are limits to the world market, and Chinese exports necessitates competition with counterparts from the UK, France, US, Germany, Italy, Japan, and other old imperialist countries. This led some of the monopoly capital of some of these countries to lose profits, not something the US monopoly capital class wants to see. In reality, since Obama’s Pivot to Asia in 2012, the US solidified its China containment strategy, publicized further under Trump.

Second, working class rebellions are more and more commonplace. Thanks to their continued resistance, their real wages experienced a phase of fast growth between 2003 and 2015. Wage growth peaked in 2010; capitalists would refer to this as “increasing labor costs” and subsequent decreasing profits in the low-end manufacturing sector.

The basic contradictions of capitalism accelerated even more quickly under the above two contradictions. Large scale excess manufacturing capacity led to a decline in China's GDP growth rate beginning in 2013, and the economy entered a new period, the “new normal.” To protect the economy, China initiated two large scale stimulus policies in 2009 and 2014. After continued economic stimulus, housing prices skyrocketed.

The home owning petit bourgeois are still living in their golden age, while petit bourgeois who aren’t homeowners, alongside the large mental laboring class sigh as they even consider the prospect. Following a decline in profits, the pressure exerted by capital on the unpropertied grew. Following an increase in housing costs, the hope they placed on capital became uncertain.

Since 2018, the contradiction between foreign and domestic interests have increased. People who ordinarily pay no attention to political matters have begun discussing social issues. Be it due to “bride prices,” salaries, housing prices, or having been made redundant, people have felt the pressure from living in a society burdened by capital. 

These people continue to browse Zhihu and other new media platforms. Before, they acted as mouthpieces for capital. Now, they spontaneously curse it.

This group of people, unlike any other group in the world, possesses a unique trait: they grew up learning about historical materialism. No matter whether or not they dismissed concepts like “class”, “exploitation,” or “surplus value” in the classroom, such consciousness was widely instilled in these people. When capital grows, these people disregard these concepts. But when capital disappoints and heartlessly squeezes them, Marxist concepts come rushing back into their minds. They begin calling entrepreneurs “capitalists,” describe their actions as “exploitation,” and use “class” to look down on them.

Some of them have taken quite a left turn, and post online the knowledge they once learned in their textbooks: exploitation, class, capitalist, surplus value. Some of them go beyond, studying books beyond what was once required: Selected Works of Mao Zedong, Marx & Engels Collected Works, Lenin’s books, and histories left ignored or covered up.

They engage in heated online debates, fighting off against xiaofenhong of varying degrees of purity, capitalists, and a large sector of the lumpenproletariat. Of course, some will disguise their chauvinism in Marxist language. 

The sudden onset of the pandemic in 2020 magnified everything. Oppression felt heavier, housing prices remained high, and work felt seemingly less stable. A beautiful life felt less and less certain.

The arrogance and cruelty of the capitalists, built up over decades of rapid development went too far to their heads. “996” is a blessing, businesses are pro bono, and entrepreneurs even gave themselves a holiday. They even proposed that businesses shouldn’t have to respect labor law for two years after their founding.

All this has led to a sharp turn in how Zhihu users viewed capitalists in 2020.

However, this group represents a fairly small proportion of laborers, a group dominated by physical laborers who have yet to experience such a strong awakening. Their wages were already low, and they weren't working to buy homes in big cities. They lived at the lower rungs of society, and had even more limited access to information and were a little worse at abstract thinking. As a group they remained unchanged.

That isn’t to say that the physical laboring proletariat are not changing. Salaries haven’t caught up with the cost of living. “In 2017, a room was 300 yuan, now it’s 550,” “I go to my second job after getting off of work, where do I have time to rest?” Their complaints increased in number. Not only this, but with the economic downturn, many laborers returned to their ancestral homes, losing their incomes—an economic crisis just waiting to happen.

2020 has been a special year. A year where the mental laborer took a left turn—to be critical of capitalism—and where the physical laborer felt a clear crisis.

The storm is far far away, but the mental laborers’ left turn has sent a clear signal. Clouds are coming together and the sound of thunder is looming. Those sharp enough flashes of lightning in the dark night, signs of historical dialectics approaching. And the minority of youth have already opened their arms in embrace. 

[1] Per the National Bureau of Statistics’ related standards, small-sized capital was defined as businesses whose turnover was lower than 30 million RMB in industrial sections and lower than 10 million RMB in other sectors. 

[2]  Defined as those that fall outside of the confines of small or large capitalist.

[3]  Designated as owners of private enterprise larger than a designated size.

In light of its selective reporting, Qiao Collective has decided to republish our full comments submitted for The Nation’s recent article on China and the U.S. left.

In December 2021, Qiao Collective received an email inquiry from David Klion, requesting our comments for an article on China and the U.S. left, to be published in The Nation. Klion conveyed that others interviewed for the article had repeatedly brought up our work. He posed the following questions: 

• How, when, and why did the Qiao Collective form? Who were the key individuals responsible for organizing it?

• How is the Qiao Collective funded? 

• What is the current active membership? (And what does it mean to be a member? How does one become a member? 

• What is the Qiao Collective's relationship (if any) to the Chinese Communist Party? 

• How is Qiao governed/managed? 

• How is a group consensus formed?

• Finally: the Critical China Scholars published an open letter criticizing Qiao's position on Xinjiang in late 2020. Do you have any response to that letter?

What follows is Qiao Collective’s response to those questions posed. Given the accusatory nature of the questions, we did not respond to each one comprehensively. Additionally, we included further context about our Collective’s theory of change and our stance on the responsibility of the U.S. left to unequivocally oppose U.S. imperialism. The majority of this context was left out of the final article, which was published on January 8, 2022. We take issue with Klion and The Nation for making ample room for wild accusations of our supposedly “authoritarian, fascistic” position, while declining to let us speak for ourselves in our own words. In light of this selective reporting, and as an open invitation for interested readers to engage our work and come to their own conclusions, we are publishing our response to Klion’s questions in full: 

Qiao Collective formed in January 2020 in response to our concern over anti-China propaganda during the early days of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. We are a group of students, artists, researchers, and young professionals in the US, UK, and Canada who contribute as volunteers in our spare time. Our members all belong to the broader Chinese diaspora, with family connections to mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and throughout Southeast Asia. We do not receive funding outside of our Patreon account, and we have zero institutional affiliation. Qiao Collective does not maintain any formal relationship with any political party, be it in China or the countries in which our members reside, including the Communist Party of China. Despite this lack of institutional support, we are thrilled by the rapid growth and attention we have gained in the less than two years since our founding, which we attribute to the hunger in English-language media spaces for critical left commentary on China that challenges dominant Western media narratives.       

With regards to the Critical China Scholars letter: Although Qiao Collective is not affiliated with any academic institution, we are glad that our work has received attention and support in and out of academic and political circles. Our goal is to challenge imperialist, orientalist narratives that dominate Western circles, which have historically and continue to manufacture consent for aggression against China. The Xinjiang resource list we compiled, to which Critical China Scholars was responding in their letter, includes a variety of perspectives ranging from both state and non-state Chinese sources (including testimonials by Uyghurs living in Xinjiang) as well as Western-based media and media criticism. We encourage readers to engage with the resource itself and come to their own conclusions.   

We believe this is a crucial time for left forces in the US and beyond to come together in principled opposition to the warmongering escalation against China and its peoples. The suspicion and slander afforded to overseas Chinese who question the Western “common sense” about China is part of a broader orientalist discourse that denies political agency to Chinese people who are committed to safeguarding the legacy and gains of the Chinese revolution. We continue to insist that the first priority for left anti-imperialists in the US is to oppose and undermine their own nation’s imperial violence, not to delay anti-imperialist action with hand wringing about the social contradictions of Global South nations caught in the crosshairs of Western imperialism. The myriad contradictions facing 21st century China are real and pressing, but they cannot be resolved through imperialist intervention or disconnected engagements from Western onlookers.

Read more of our work:

What Does Critique Do? — On the Critical Predation of China

Xinjiang: A Report and Resource Compilation

Why China’s Vaccine Internationalism Matters

The Fallacy of Denouncing ‘Both Sides’ Of The U.S.-China Conflict

The political speech of the Chinese diaspora has a long history as a site of critique and co-optation by U.S empire and its enabling discourses. Amidst a new apex in Cold War Sinophobia, we trace the revolutionary and reactionary framings of “overseas Chinese” as a political category, from Qing-era anti-colonialism to 20th century Cold War liberalism and beyond.

This essay was originally published in Monthly Review’s July-August 2021 issue.

In May 2017, Yang Shuping took the podium before a packed auditorium. Sporting a black commencement gown streaked by the University of Maryland’s gold sash, Yang stood by university dean Wallace Loh as he tried to pick out Yang’s parents in the sea of seats before them. “You must feel very proud of your daughter. We certainly are proud of her,” Lowe remarked as Yang’s mother stood, holding a bouquet of red roses to audience applause. 

Unbeknownst to them, this simple commencement ritual would spark international controversy. In keeping with the genre of the graduation ceremony, Yang’s speech mobilized tropes of struggle, hardship, triumph, and almost maudlin optimism. But filtered through her experience as a Chinese international student, Yang’s remarks presented a highly politicized affirmation of U.S. exceptionalism and an accordant repudiation of her native China. 

Yang’s coming-to-America story hinged on positioning U.S. liberalism as a welcome release from Chinese oppression. Recounting her first arrival at Dulles International Airport, Yang described her “first breath of American air,” contrasting the “sweet and fresh” air to her hometown in China, where she reported wearing a face mask whenever leaving the house for fear of getting sick. “When I took my first breath of American air,” Yang waxed poetically, “I put my mask away.”

“The fresh air of free speech,” as Yang put it, was a privilege only to be found in the United States.

Yang’s liberation from the ostensibly oppressive constraints of her face mask served as a metonym for her transformation from oppressed Chinese subject to liberated U.S. pupil. Recounting her childhood exposure to the U.S. concept of “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” Yang claimed these “strange, abstract, and foreign” words had little meaning to her—until she came to the United States. “The fresh air of free speech,” as Yang put it, was a privilege only to be found in the United States.

The speech—while lauded by peers and praised by a tearful Dean Loh as capturing “some of his deepest feelings” about the United States as an “American by choice”—nonetheless provoked backlash from Chinese netizens and media outlets who saw in Yang’s embrace of U.S. exceptionalism as a “bolstering [of] negative Chinese stereotypes.” Yang was held to account not only by her ostensible compatriots but by fellow Chinese students at the University of Maryland: the Chinese Student and Scholar Association quickly released a video response titled “Proud of China UMD,” in which Chinese international students criticized Yang’s “stereotypical comments” and shared prideful stories about the culture, cuisine, and climate of their Chinese hometowns.[1]Quickly, the backlash against Yang’s speech became the story itself. The Washington Post chastised “nationalist netizens” who “force[d]” Yang to make an apology; the BBC similarly derided these “angry student patriots” as the “new Red Guards.”[2]

In deriding the critiques of Chinese students and commenters who chastised Yang’s speech as that of hysterical nationalists, mainstream media’s backlash to the response was premised on its own policing of legitimate political discourse.

In deriding the critiques of Chinese students and commenters who chastised Yang’s speech as that of hysterical nationalists, mainstream media’s backlash to the response was premised on its own policing of legitimate political discourse. The controversy exhibits the ways in which the political speech of overseas Chinese has long been circumscribed by the dictates of liberal universalism. Students such as Yang are compelled either to prostrate to an edifying project of assimilation to U.S. liberal democracy, or be branded as illiberal “Red Guards” unfit for serious political discourse. This discursive context has long mobilized overseas Chinese to affirm the universalism of Western liberalism in opposition to a Chinese despotism defined either by dynastic backwardness or communist depravity. The question: Can overseas Chinese speak for themselves in the face of what Mobo Gao has described as the West’s “hegemonic right to knowledge?”[3] Or will all such speech that challenges U.S. presuppositions of liberal selfhood and Chinese despotism simply be tuned out as illiberal noise?

The controversy over Yang’s remarks signaled the accruing symbolic power of overseas Chinese students amid heightened Cold War antagonisms toward China. As of 2019, there were some 372,000 Chinese students enrolled in U.S. universities, 120,000 in the United Kingdom, and many more studying in Canada, Germany, and Australia. This sizable population exists at the intersection of multiple, often contradictory, geopolitical impulses. On the one hand, overseas education has long been seen as a route toward channeling technical and managerial skills toward China’s national modernization, and the neocolonial regime of academic knowledge production means that Western degrees continue to bear social status for upwardly mobile Chinese professionals. On the other hand, Chinese overseas students have historically been framed as a target of Western liberal soft power—as proxies for a neocolonial project of molding China in the U.S. image.

In 2019, there were 372,000 Chinese students enrolled in U.S. universities and 120,000 in the United Kingdom. This population exists at the intersection of multiple, often contradictory, geopolitical impulses.

While international U.S. education has long been mobilized as a means of “making the world like us,” the presence of a growing body of Chinese international students willing to voice their political disjunctures with Western liberal truisms represents a unique threat to the ideological regimes of U.S. exceptionalism and the “civilizing mission” of overseas education.[4] Amid broader generational trends such as the Chinese millennial turn away from U.S. culture and commodities, some have noted the apparent collapse of Chinese visions of the United States as the “lighthouse country” (灯塔国)—a beacon of modernity, technological prowess, and liberal governmentality to be imitated by Chinese bourgeois reformists.[5] In particular, Xi Jinping’s doctrine of “four confidences” represents a canonized repudiation of longstanding currents of Chinese neoliberal political thought that viewed Western liberal democracy as a model for China’s modernization. Preaching confidence in China’s chosen path, its guiding theories, its political system, and its culture, this rearticulation of Chinese national self-confidence has been decried by Western onlookers as part of China’s ideological challenge to U.S. hegemony.

This increased confidence among Chinese overseas students in the legitimacy of the Chinese model has led to ideological clashes that trouble the neat presumption that exposure to Western liberal education will evangelize Chinese international students into the dogma of bourgeois democracy. In this context, Chinese international students have transformed from a symbol of liberal edification into agents of Chinese communist infiltration: when the Chinese Students and Scholars Association at the University of California, San Diego, protested the selection of the Dalai Lama as the campus’s 2017 commencement speaker, other campus voices argued they were “doing the work of the Chinese government” and pledged not to allow Chinese government “propaganda” to encroach on academic freedoms.[6] The international spotlight afforded to the Hong Kong protests of 2019 similarly sparked campus clashes: at Australia’s University of Queensland, Chinese students clashed with pro-Hong Kong student protesters, some of whom hoisted signs reading “No ChiNazi” and occupied the university’s Confucius Institute, part of a network of cultural and language partnerships affiliated with the Chinese government.[7] Once again, a serious engagement with the political speech of Chinese students was deferred in favor of a nationalist and racially charged narrative of “communist creep” into the liberal safe haven of Australian higher education. A parade of Western liberal commentators emerged to pontificate on how, exactly, Chinese overseas students dared to articulate their own understanding of Chinese politics rather than embracing the tenets of bourgeois democracy and “self-determination.” As one U.S. university professor bemoaned: “Chinese international students are studying for years in the United States without adopting democratic values.… Clearly, we’re not doing a very good job teaching them.”[8]

These flashpoints quickly fueled racist speculation that Chinese overseas students, far from being proxies to mold China into the Western capitalist model, were in fact duplicitous agents of the Chinese state intent on undermining the West itself. In a salacious article titled “The Chinese Influence Effort Hiding in Plain Sight,” the Atlantic compared Chinese students in Germany, the United States, and Australia to “mushroom tendrils spreading unseen for miles beneath the first floor,” invisible to European leaders yet growing in nefarious power.[9]

In 2020, the Donald Trump administration issued an executive order canceling the visas of thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers in the United States who had ties to universities affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army.

Calls for political action soon followed. In 2019, assistant secretary of state for educational and cultural affairs Marie Royce called on educators to contribute to “integrating international students,” bemoaning the fact that Chinese overseas students “live in a propaganda bubble” by nature of consuming Chinese media and using Chinese social media apps like WeChat.[10] The following year, the Donald Trump administration issued an executive order canceling the visas of thousands of Chinese graduate students and researchers in the United States who had ties to universities affiliated with the People’s Liberation Army—a list which includes hundreds of Chinese universities, from those run by China’s military academy to top civilian universities that provide STEM scholarships through the PLA.[11] Not to be outdone, Republican senators Tom Cotton and Marsha Blackburn unveiled even more onerous legislation to prohibit visas for all graduate-level Chinese international students in STEM fields.[12]

The starkly opposed receptions afforded to Yang Shuping and her fellow compatriots derided as “Red Guards” and “security threats” speaks to the binary construction of overseas Chinese people in the Western imagination. On the one hand, they represent the chance to affirm the hegemony of Western liberal ideology: by “liberating” Chinese subjects from the ostensibly repressive confines of socialist society, overseas Chinese people affirm the superiority of “fresh, American air” and serve as authentic mouthpieces for neocolonial agendas that seek to transform China into an object of Western intervention and modernization. On the other hand, when overseas Chinese rebuke the magnanimous hand of Western assimilation, they are framed by the trope of the Oriental invasion, infiltrating Western societies at risk to body, family, and nation.

In an era of renewed Cold War aggression towards China, historicizing the workings of multicultural empire and the strategic inclusion of the Chinese diaspora therein reveals the justifying discourses of U.S. imperialism.

If the branding of Yang Shuping as a “traitor” by Chinese “nationalist netizens” appears uncouth, it nonetheless speaks to an explicit strategy of the United States and other Western nations to instrumentalize overseas Chinese people in service of a paternalistic, antagonistic posture toward the People’s Republic of China. In this configuration, Yang’s story is representative of a broader genre of multicultural empire that wields the confessional speech of newly incorporated Chinese Americans as part of a campaign to delegitimize China’s socialist project. In an era in which a renewed Cold War posture toward China is obscured through the uplifting of ethnic Chinese testimonies of Chinese depravity and U.S. excellence, historicizing the workings of multicultural empire and the strategic inclusion of the Chinese diaspora therein reveals the justifying discourses of U.S. imperialism.

National Humiliation, National Rejuvenation

The United States has long viewed the Chinese diaspora—and overseas Chinese students in particular—as a vehicle through which to direct China’s development in favor of U.S. commercial and geopolitical interests. In the early twentieth century, as the United States jockeyed with European powers and Japan in the so-called scramble for China, the overseas education of Chinese elites was posed as a strategic avenue to advance U.S. interests. As Russian, German, and Japanese military incursions into China threatened to collapse the fragile “open door” system that preserved the appearance of China’s territorial integrity and, more importantly, the open competitive access for foreign commerce in China’s ports, the possibility that the United States would be compelled to force its own sphere of influence in China via military power appeared imminent. Yet, secretary of war William Howard Taft posed the Americanization of Chinese elites as a “more subtle and strategic policy than using gunboats to open China to American influence.”[13] University educators such as Edmund James, the president of the University of Illinois, gave similar advice. Writing to president Theodore Roosevelt, James put forth a model of ideological, not military, intervention: “The nation which succeeds in educating the young Chinese of the present generation will be the nation which…will reap the largest possible returns in moral, intellectual, and commercial influence.… We should to-day be controlling the development of China in that most satisfactory and subtle of all ways—through the intellectual and spiritual domination of its leaders.”[14] In 1908, President Roosevelt would heed James’s advice and institute the Boxer Indemnity Scholarship Program, remitting some $13 million to the Chinese government to be devoted to the U.S. education of select Chinese students. Described by Roosevelt as an “act of friendship” between the two countries, the measure was in fact an attempt to shape China’s destiny toward U.S. interests. 

In the early twentieth century, as the U.S. jockeyed with European powers and Japan in the so-called scramble for China, the overseas education of Chinese elites was posed as a strategic avenue to advance U.S. interests.

While such programs, alongside decades of missionary penetration of China, attempted to foster the “intellectual and spiritual domination” that reformers like James sought, efforts to paint the United States as a magnanimous great power alternative to European colonial encroachment were undermined not only by the growing U.S. role in the neocolonial China trade, but also by racist Chinese exclusion immigration laws that singled out Chinese migrants to be subjected to humiliating inspections, indefinite detentions, and outright bans on entry to the United States. In this context, overseas Chinese encounters with the humiliations of anti-Asian racism in the United States formed a politicizing crucible that connected racism abroad to the colonial domination of China at home. Far from evangelizing overseas Chinese people toward convergence with a U.S. model of modernity, these experiences created new movements for national self-determination and self-strengthening within and beyond the transnational Chinese community. These diverse emergent political currents—from Qing reformism to anticolonial nationalism and revolutionary republicanism—proved the capacity of overseas Chinese to mobilize a political identity in service of aims beyond the preordained machinations of U.S. aspirations. Far from neocolonial proxies of Western soft power, the overseas Chinese earned the honorific title of “the mother of revolution” in recognition of their role in fostering China’s 1911 republican Xinhai Revolution.[15]

The 1905 Chinese boycott of U.S. goods represents one moment on a longer timeline of transnational Chinese activism that mobilized experiences of overseas racism toward a nationalist, anticolonial project. Subjected both to “unequal treaties” at home that created segregated colonial concessions in port cities like Shanghai and to racist Chinese exclusion laws in the United States, Canada, Australia, and beyond, overseas Chinese sojourners, students, and laborers alike forwarded an analysis that linked both forms of racism to the weakness of a feudal Qing government that had become a glorified mediator of foreign incursions into China.

The humiliations of Chinese exclusion were circulated through political pamphlets, such as those of the Baohuanghui (保皇會) reformist party, which sought to mobilize readers toward a vision of reformist self-strengthening. As political thinkers such as Liang Qichao toured Chinese overseas communities in Hawai‘i, San Francisco, and beyond, they vividly depicted the ritualized humiliation of Chinese migrants subjected to body measurements, fingerprinting, and photography in the nude upon arrival to immigration detention centers such as Angel Island. As Liang wrote: “the Chinese immigrants coming to America have not yet committed any crimes, but they are treated as criminals.”[16] These testimonies coalesced a transnational Chinese political identity on principles of national and racial pride and anticolonialism. 

A song circulated by a Baohuanghui chapter in Burma in 1905 mournfully depicted the treatment of overseas Chinese, linking it to China’s own national weakness in the face of foreign imperialist powers:

Watch a European with a dog wagging its tail, both landed, walking away slowly.

Chinese should be grieving, lower than a dog.

Why so despicable, so disgraceful?

Our one country is too weak, no good,

Tears come down like rain

When looking at the general situation and our fatherland.[17]

In 1904, resumed U.S.-China negotiations threatened the indefinite extension of Chinese exclusion laws codified by the 1894 Gresham-Yang Treaty, giving rise to popular protests aimed at bolstering what reformers and revolutionaries feared would be the Qing court’s weak negotiating hand. Bringing together immigrant associations such as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association, overseas Chinese merchants, and Chinese reformists and revolutionaries, the 1905 boycott movement protested the humiliations of Chinese exclusion and called for national strength in the face of both colonial incursions and overseas discrimination.

The testimonies of overseas Chinese who bore the brunt of U.S. racism became a kind of transnational folklore that mobilized the 1905 boycott movement of U.S. goods.

The testimonies of overseas Chinese who bore the brunt of U.S. racism became a kind of transnational folklore that mobilized the boycott movement. Stories such as that of Feng Xiawei—a laborer from Guangdong who was wrongfully detained in an immigration raid in Boston and later returned to China before committing suicide in front of the U.S. consulate in Shanghai on July 16, 1905—spread the boycott through public remembrances of martyrdom. In a letter written before his death, Feng had warned of the mass movement to come if exclusion laws were extended: “many Chinese will follow me to die in protest if the treaty is not repudiated.”[18] Similarly, Tom Kim Yung, the military attaché of the Chinese legation in Washington DC, was popularized as a martyr of the boycott movement after he committed suicide at the Chinese consulate in San Francisco in 1903, after having been arrested and beaten by local police.[19] Through public vigils and commemorations throughout China and its diaspora, these fallen overseas Chinese became martyrs for the boycott and the nationalist movement it helped propel.

Importantly, the crude force of global anti-Chinese racism helped transnational currents of Chinese politicization to partially transcend boundaries of geography and class. Merchants, activists, scholars, students, and manual laborers in China, Hawai‘i, the Philippines, and Singapore came together in unity to boycott U.S. goods. Liang Qichao described this spirit of camaraderie in Shanghai: “From millionaires to poor workers, millions of people are of one mind, and we must not stop until we win back our rights.… The foreigners in Shanghai have become worried, saying that China, the sleeping lion, has awakened.”[20] Emblematic of the power and unprecedented nature of the boycott, U.S. newspapers described the movement as a “commercial menace” and speculated it may represent a “forerunner of an anti-foreign agitation.” The Baltimore Sun reported in September 1905 that even some of the wealthiest U.S. tycoons in Shanghai may not be “able to weather the storm.”[21]

This same overseas network of Chinese merchants, students, sojourners, and laborers would form the base for the dissemination of propaganda, financial support, and safe havens in the runup to the Xinhai Revolution that overthrew the Qing court in 1911. But later events of the twentieth century would prove the inadequacies of the bourgeois democratic model as a conduit for the liberation of China’s peoples. Having overthrown the monarchical system, the young Republic of China continued to face backward industry, a new capitalist class society, the influence of feudal warlords, and, most importantly, lacked real national recognition in an imperialist international system. Despite Chinese military support in Europe’s “great war,” China was marginalized from the Allied powers Paris Peace Conference in 1919. That conference’s transfer of German concessions in Shandong to Japan, rather than retrocession to China, proved the endurance of the colonialist domination of China and the persisting era of national humiliation. It was not until the formation of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 that Mao Zedong could credibly announce that the Chinese people had “stood up,” rejecting the colonial incursions suffered by its Qing predecessor and the foreign manipulation of which the rival U.S.-backed Kuomintang was long accused.

After decades of support for the exiled Kuomintang, the United States saw Communist Party leadership as a closing of China’s long-sought open door. Having now “lost” China, these changes fundamentally refigured the strategic significance of the Chinese diaspora in the eyes of U.S. officials. The racial regime of Chinese exclusion that had animated a transnational Chinese alliance in support of China’s national liberation gave way to Cold War tactics of contingent Chinese inclusion that sought to presage the U.S. battle for “hearts and minds” by symbolically integrating loyal Chinese Americans. Meanwhile, the lingering enforcement apparatus of the exclusion era was mobilized to target overseas Chinese with perceived loyalties to “Red China.” In this context, the precondition for Chinese diasporic political subjectivity was its allegiance to a hostile U.S. stance toward the new People’s Republic and an unquestioning loyalty to both the United States and the Kuomintang regime in Taiwan known by Cold Warriors as “Free China.” These early Cold War years enshrined new strategies of racial liberalism and multicultural empire that assimilated the Chinese diaspora into a militarized project of Cold War anticommunism.

The Cold War Mandate of Chinese American Inclusion

Following liberation from Japanese occupation and the fleeing of Kuomintang troops to Taiwan, the United States emerged as the primary antagonist facing New China. As Mao identified U.S. imperialism as “the common enemy of the whole world,” racism against overseas Chinese was invoked as evidence of the hypocritical support the United States pledged toward “Free China.” In this context, the People’s Republic of China attempted to once again mobilize the racism faced by overseas Chinese in service of a project of national rejuvenation—now one of socialist development. For instance, a 1951 pamphlet published by the People’s Republic of China Office of Overseas Chinese Affairs included the testimony of a Chinese national living in San Francisco, describing the contradictions of a United States that preached a “special friendship” with the Chinese people that was never extended to Chinese nationals in the United States. As the pamphlet described: “Every Chinese in America has experienced mistreatment by the American Imperialist Immigration Authorities.”[22]

Cold War racial liberalism framed the Chinese diaspora in new ways: “overseas Chinese” emerged as a category of targeted U.S. propaganda that aimed to have the Chinese diaspora “be denied to the Peking Regime.”

These charges of U.S. racism, white supremacy, and imperialism from Chinese, Soviet, and nonaligned third world nations chipped away at the U.S. self-designation as leader of the “free world.” Socialist, anticolonial revolution was the only way toward real self-determination and an end to the fetters of neocolonialism in a supposedly postcolonial era. Aware of the ramifications of these allegations for U.S. influence in the third world, the Cold War ushered in a new regime of racial liberalism—what Jodi Melamed has described as the “incorporation of antiracism into postwar U.S. governmentality.”[23] Prototypical discourses of U.S. Cold War racial liberalism framed the Chinese diaspora in new ways: “overseas Chinese” emerged not as a politicized identity of transnational Chinese anticolonialism, but a category of targeted U.S. propaganda and strategic integration that, in the words of a 1954 U.S. Information Agency (USIA) memorandum, aimed to have the Chinese diaspora “be denied to world communism…and the Peking Regime.”[24]

The new paradigm of racial liberalism presented unprecedented opportunities for Chinese American civic inclusion after decades of legally mandated exclusion, segregation, and discrimination. Chinese American political elites—from elected officials to old Chinatown organizations such as the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association—exploited these newfound opportunities for political power and representation. But this civic power was predicated on a willingness to wield Chinese ethnicity and U.S. patriotism in service of U.S. foreign policy objectives—decisively wedding Chinese American racial “progress” at home to a militarized regime of Cold War anticommunism abroad.

The political ascent of Hiram Fong, the first Asian American U.S. senator and a Republican representing occupied Hawai‘i, is illustrative of the opportunities to be found under the auspices of a multicultural Cold War empire. As speaker of the Hawai‘i House of Representatives, Fong yoked the movement for Hawaiian statehood to the Cold War “battle for hearts and minds” in Asia. Like others, Fong recognized that granting statehood to Hawai‘i, with its majority-Asian population, would help dispel suspicions in Asia about U.S. racism—particularly anti-Asian immigration quotas that remained on the books until 1965. In a 1950 testimony before Congress, Fong argued that Hawaiian statehood would do in Asia what the Marshall Plan did in Europe—“win friends for our democratic way of life” by refuting communist allegations of U.S. racism, without incurring the equivalent costs of the Marshall Plan.[25] 

Fong’s political success was no doubt grounded in his ability to wield his ethnic identity as proof of U.S. racial tolerance in the face of propagandized communist “totalitarianism.” As Newsweek put it amid Fong’s first senatorial run in 1959: “Imagine a Chinese in the U.S. Senate—how would Red China like that?”[26] Once in office, Fong made good on the promise of instrumentalizing his ethnic identity to advance U.S. foreign policy objectives. In October 1959, Fong embarked on a diplomatic tour of U.S. allies in Asia, in what was described in the New York Times as a “one-man people-to-people program” designed to “promote Asian appreciation of democracy as practiced in the United States.”[27] It was a delegation only Fong could accomplish, for “the color of his skin and the shape of his eyes tell his story to an Asian audience before he begins to speak.” Fong himself described his tour’s mission of preaching to ethnically Chinese people in Southeast Asia on the question of national loyalties and inclusion: “They say that a picture tells more than 10,000 words. I hope that my appearance in the flesh will do the same.” On the heels of the genocidal U.S. intervention in Korea, Fong’s delegation speaks to the uses of “diversity” in rendering U.S. Cold War imperialism as a project of “spreading democracy” rather than a militarized project of anticommunist invasion and occupation.

By the mid–1950s, the State Department and CIA had both identified the overseas Chinese as a strategic target for psychological warfare and anticommunist propaganda.

Fong’s foreign diplomacy was part of broader efforts to sever the political linkages between socialist China and overseas Chinese populations. By the mid–1950s, the State Department and CIA had both identified the overseas Chinese as a strategic target for psychological warfare and anticommunist propaganda. In the eyes of the U.S. government, the sizable population of ethnic Chinese living in countries like the Philippines, Indonesia, and Singapore was considered a latent “fifth column” of communist mobilization. Identifying the “critical importance” of overseas Chinese to U.S. Cold War efforts, ethnic Chinese in the United States were mobilized to produce and disseminate testimonials of U.S. exceptionalism to encourage Chinese diasporic allegiance to their host countries and not “Red China.” For instance, the USIA launched a popular Chinese-language magazine called Free World Chinese, which featured success stories of Chinese and other Asians in the United States as evidence of free world liberal exceptionalism.

Voice of America, a radio broadcast unit of USIA, similarly tapped Chinese American figureheads to perform the ideological work of U.S. empire. Chinese American screenwriter Betty Lee Sung was tapped to write a Voice of America series titled “Chinese Activities,” depicting a rose-tinted view of life for Chinese people in America. As Sung would later recount: “What would interest the Chinese in China and Southeast Asia more than learning about how their compatriots lived and were treated in a country that represented to them the ‘mountain of gold,’ the ‘land of the beautiful,’ and presently archenemy of the Chinese communists?”[28]

Beyond token individuals, Chinese American communal institutions were also courted to cooperate with the goals of the U.S. foreign policy establishment and its geopolitical allies. The Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association (CCBA), a longstanding intermediary between the Chinese American community and U.S. immigration authorities, emerged during the Cold War as an avatar of both Kuomintang and U.S. anticommunist repression in the Chinese diaspora. For pledging loyalty to “Free China,” many CCBA executives were rewarded with positions in the Kuomintang party and the Nationalist government. These loyalties were tapped to crush any political sympathies in the Chinese American community to the People’s Republic: when Chinese Americans in San Francisco hoisted the People’s Republic of China flag in celebration of China’s founding in 1949, pro-Kuomintang thugs disrupted the celebration and beat the attendees.[29] The following day, posters were plastered throughout Chinatown listing some fifteen diaspora supporters of the People’s Republic and offering a $5,000 reward to anyone willing to kill them.[30] In New York, the consul general of the former Republic of China complained to authorities of the “hoisting of the new flag of the bogus regime in Chinatown.”[31]

In 1950, the Chinese Consolidated Benevolent Association helped establish the Chinese Six Companies Anti-Communist League and declared that “99.7 percent” of Chinatown was on the right side of the Korean War.

These acts of anticommunist repression were coupled with public displays of patriotism for both the United States and the Kuomintang regime. Various CCBA organizations officially condemned Mao’s leadership, denounced China’s entrance into the Korean War, and protested against potential People’s Republic of China representation in the UN General Assembly. Partisan publications like the Chinese Nationalist Daily urged Chinatown leaders to “prove to the American people that we are against communism.” Chinatown leaders met the call—in 1950, the CCBA helped establish the Chinese Six Companies Anti-Communist League and declared that “99.7 percent” of Chinatown was on the right side of the Korean War.[32] The League formed with the express objective to support the U.S. intervention in Korea and “cooperate with Americans in general and help them differentiate between friend and enemy among the Chinese.” Doing so entailed public performances of patriotism, such as a February 1951 fundraising rally in which participants carried signs proclaiming “Down with Red Imperialists,” “Chinese Americans Are Loyal Citizens,” and “Help Free China.”[33] With their knowledge of the community landscape and their shared interest in suppressing the diaspora left, the CCBA increasingly took on a role as community broker for state repression. For instance, when the Kang Jai Association, a locality organization for men from Hainan, declined to sign a CCBA declaration of loyalty following China’s entrance into the Korean War, their headquarters were raided by U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and eighty-three of its members were detained.[34]

In differentiating “friends and enemies,” Cold War Chinese American inclusion was premised on a binary between “model minority” anticommunist allies and “yellow peril” communist sympathizers. While Cold War racial liberalism afforded new opportunities for civil inclusion for Chinese Americans willing to embrace the legitimizing fictions of U.S. imperialism, it also created conditions for state-sanctioned anticommunist repression for those alleged to have the wrong international sympathies. Programs such as the Chinese Confession Program, overseen by the INS from 1956 to 1965, are illustrative of the binary of assimilation and repression that governed U.S. mediation of Chinese diasporic communities during the Cold War. Sparked by a Hong Kong embassy official’s concerns that the longstanding “paper son” system utilized by Chinese migrants to evade Chinese Exclusion restrictions could become a “criminal conspiracy” to be exploited by Chinese communists, the INS called for Chinese American paper sons and their descendants to come forward to “confess” and normalize their immigration status. In this way, officials hoped to close the books on the paper son system through which Chinese migrants used fraudulent family immigration records to evade onerous exclusion laws and, later, national quotas that remained in place until 1965.

Under the spirit of McCarthyism, the 1950s “Chinese confession” immigration program was wielded to uncover and reprimand potential communist activities in the Chinese American community.

The Confession Program attempted to reckon decades of distrust between Chinese Americans and immigration officials with the benevolent promise of normalizing the status of paper sons and their families “if at all possible under the law.”[35] And yet, under the spirit of McCarthyism, the program was also wielded to uncover and reprimand potential communist activities in the Chinese American community. As the 1954 FBI report Potentialities of Chinese Communist Intelligence Activities in the United States alleged, leftist diaspora groups such as New York City’s Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance were “alleged to be under Communist control.”[36] Based on these tenuous associations, membership lists of the Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance and subscription lists for their affiliated Chinese Daily News were used as evidence in immigration hearings, leading many to cancel their subscriptions and leave the group. Two prominent Laundry Alliance members committed suicide because they could “no longer endure the constant FBI harassment.”[37] While the INS promised that it would “assist [paper sons] to adjust their status if at all possible under the law,” it exercised no such benevolence when it came to those affiliated with left-wing organizations. Paper sons such as Louie Pon, a member of Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance, were routinely denied relief and stripped of citizenship “as a matter of administrative discretion.”[38] While the confession program was posed as a program of racial liberalism and inclusion, its anticommunist bent revealed its lingering racism. INS reports boasted of the agency’s “special attention” to the “problem of the subversive class of Asiatic origin”—selectively transposing the nineteenth-century figure of the unassimilable alien onto the Chinese communist.

In a telling juxtaposition, the targeted repression of Chinese American leftists was coterminous with refugee relief programs that sought to “rescue” Chinese refugees who, in “voting with their feet,” had spurned Chinese communism and represented a symbolic coup for the United States. Organizations such as Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals, which launched with $50,000 in CIA seed funding, sought to resettle Chinese refugees with professional and technical training with a “plea to the American people…that these people must be saved for service to Free China.”[39] In a confession of the class character of the refugee program, Aid Refugee Chinese Intellectuals leaders compared the “hundreds of coolies” entering the United States “simply because they have relatives” to the legislative obstacles encountered in their efforts to relocate elite intellectuals. Dramatic solicitations for financial support were supplemented with moralizing calls to support families who “thought enough of freedom to hazard the agony of exile rather than bow to Communism.” A “gift of $350,” one advert read, “will save one Chinese for freedom.”[40] Once resettled in the United States, Chinese refugees were assumed to owe a debt to the United States. A declassified CIA document from 1964 titled Windfall from Hong Kong described a program “exploiting the emergency mass admission of Red China refugees” that had presented the intelligence community with an “exceptional opportunity” to collect information. As the author of the brief curtly described: “When the government pays for the transportation and arranges for the livelihood of a political refugee, it has the right to ask certain things of the refugee in return.” In this case, that meant “providing information of value” about the nature of China under Communist leadership that might advance Cold War aggression toward the United States’s “most difficult intelligence target.”[41] Once more, the Chinese diaspora’s price of admission for the “American dream” was their submission to the mandates of U.S. Cold War foreign policy.

“Free Speech” in a Discursive Cage

The contemporary escalation of Cold War aggression on China—heralded by the Barack Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and intensified by both the Trump and Joe Biden administrations—retains the twentieth-century ideological configuration of the Chinese diaspora. The tactics of racial liberalism that mandated the easing of explicit anti-Asian immigration policy in favor of selective civic inclusion for patriotic Chinese Americans and anticommunist Chinese refugees have only become more sophisticated in an age of neoliberal multiculturalism. Where 1950s Cold Warriors spoke of the “special relationship” between the United States and China to justify the U.S. embargo on China and the propping up of Chiang Kai-shek’s Taiwan regime as “Free China,” contemporary Sinophobia is structured by a similar profession of solidarity with an abstract “Chinese people” posed alongside righteous opposition to the Chinese state and the leadership of the Communist Party.

The value of ethnic Chinese willing to testify to the “depravities” of China’s system is reflected in the prevalence of Chinese-descent Cold Warriors who pepper the staffs of corporate media China desks and defense think tanks.

Rampant targeted prosecution of Chinese nationals in the STEM fields now coexists with the elevation of Chinese American government officials, journalists, and researchers as foot soldiers of Cold War Sinophobia. The roundup of Chinese American scientists such as Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Chen Gang, accused of grant fraud for receiving research scholarships from Chinese entities, can be defended as “race neutral” in a multicultural system in which trade hawks such as Katherine Tai, the Biden administration’s U.S. trade representative, is heralded as the first Asian American woman to hold the role.[42] The value of the confessional speech of ethnic Chinese willing to testify to the “depravities” of the Communist Party of China is reflected in the growing prevalence of Chinese-descent Cold Warriors who pepper the staff directories of corporate media China bureaus and defense industry think tanks. While vapid multiculturalism poses these native informants as authentic affirmations of U.S. superiority, historicizing the Cold War roots of such confessional speech betrays a more complicated truth: the political subjectivities of the Chinese diaspora have long been shaped not by a liberal ideal of “free speech,” but by the illiberal confines of Cold War anticommunism that uplifted a Chinese American brand of U.S. exceptionalism while silencing all dissent.

In the midst of a sharp rise in anti-Asian violence in the United States over the past year, the severe curtailment of Chinese American political discourse has become all the more evident. This violence, above all, has been structured by Sinophobia: countless victims of racist violence have recounted being told to “go back to China” or being labeled as carriers of the “Chinese virus.” In a telling convergence, the Georgia police chief who described the Atlanta spa shooter as “having a bad day” was linked to Facebook posts depicting T-shirts declaring COVID-19 as “imported…from Chy-na.” 

Yet, the liberal response to Sinophobic violence has not been a critique of U.S. empire’s Cold War posture toward China, but instead the deployment of claims to American belonging that reflects a fervent reinvestment in U.S. liberal democracy as the only legible framework for a viable Asian American future. This rehearsal of Asian American belonging and calls for civic inclusion in the face of “perpetual foreigner” tropes strips anti-Asian violence from the discursive and political conditions from which it arises. Rather than rejecting the fictions of U.S. liberalism and multiculturalism, this political genre professes a deep faith in their future realization, reifying American exceptionalism and its inexorable capacity for liberal progress.

The liberal response to Sinophobic violence amidst the pandemic has not been a critique of U.S. empire, but claims to American belonging and a reinvestment in U.S. liberal democracy as the only framework for an Asian American future.

The colliding political projects of institutionalized Sinophobia and a neoliberal promise to “Stop Asian Hate” has circumscribed the possibilities for Chinese American political speech in new ways. Increasingly, the confessional genre of the Chinese American political essay is predicated on a repudiation of Chinese national affiliation as one of guilt and shame. As one essayist wrote in the wake of the Atlanta massacre, “to live conscientiously as a Chinese person is to assume a perpetual state of guilt.”[43] The performance of Chinese liberal guilt enables the reification of U.S. exceptionalism in a moment of crisis: in the face of anti-Black police executions and the persistence of the U.S. settler state, it is Chinese “authoritarianism” that Chinese Americans are tasked with denouncing.

It is a trope within this genre to say that Chinese people in America who exercise the right to political speech are engaged in a freedom they would not be allowed in China. The irony is that despite being held up as exemplars of freedom, tolerance, and opportunity, Chinese diasporic figureheads of U.S. liberalism remain deeply circumscribed by Cold war anticommunism and its racist undertones. “Freedom” to speak has only been afforded to those willing to stake their right to speak on the backs of those crushed by an increasingly aggressive U.S. empire. As the confessional testimonies of Chinese Americans are rallied once more to reinvigorate U.S. Cold War imperialism, seeing through the ruses of multicultural empire is paramount. Until the Cold War binaries of “free world” liberalism and Chinese “authoritarianism” are undone, the Chinese diaspora will not be able to speak on its own terms.

[1] “#Proud of China UMD,” Youtube video, posted by Esme Jiang, May 22, 2017.

[2] Carrie Gracie, “The New Red Guards: China’s Angry Student Patriots,” BBC, May 26, 2017.

[3] Mobo Gao, Constructing China: Clashing Views of the People’s Republic (London: Pluto, 2018).

[4] See Liping Bu et al., Making the World Like Us: Education, Cultural Expansion, and the American Century (Westport: Praeger, 2003).

[5] He Huifeng, “China’s Millennials, Generation Z Leading Nation Away from Hollywood Films, American Culture, US Brands,” Southern China Morning Post, March 20, 2021.

[6] Elizabeth Redden, “Chinese Students vs. Dalai Lama,” Inside Higher Ed, February 16, 2017.

[7] Christian Harrison and Georgia Forrester, “Heated Hong Kong Protest at Auckland University,” Stuff, October 2, 2019.

[8] Jonathan Zimmerman, “My Chinese Students Don't Want You to Talk About Hong Kong. Clearly, We're Failing Them,” USA Today, November 13, 2019.

[9] Didi Kirsten Tatlow, “The Chinese Influence Effort Hiding in Plain Sight,” Atlantic, July 12, 2019.

[10] “Assistant Secretary Royce Remarks at the EdUSA Forum,” United States Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs, July 30, 2019.

[11] Edward Wong and Julian Barnes, “U.S. to Expel Chinese Graduate Students with Ties to China’s Military Schools,” New York Times, May 28, 2020.

[12] “Cotton, Blackburn, Kustoff Unveil Bill to Restrict Chinese Stem Graduate Student Visas & Thousand Talents Participants,” Office of Senator Tom Cotton, May 27, 2020.

[13] Madeline Hsu, The Good Immigrants: How the Yellow Peril Became the Model Minority (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2017), 44.

[14] Hsu, The Good Immigrants, 42.

[15] For more on this contested framing, often attributed to Sun Zhongshan (Sun Yat-sen), see Jianli Huang, “Umbilical Ties: The Framing of the Overseas Chinese as the Mother of the Revolution,” Frontiers of History in Modern China 6, no. 2 (2011): 183–228.

[16] Quoted in K. Scott Wong, “Liang Qichao and the Chinese of America: A Re-Evaluation of His ‘Selected Memoir of Travels in the New World,’” Journal of American Ethnic History 11 no. 4 (1992): 16.

[17] Quoted in Jane Leung Larson, “The 1905 Anti-American Boycott as a Transnational Chinese Movement,” Chinese America: History and Perspectives (2007): 194.

[18] Sin-Kiong Wong, “Die for the Boycott and Nation: Martyrdom and the 1905 Anti-American Movement in China,” Modern Asian Studies 35, no. 3 (2001): 571.

[19] “Arrest and Death of Tom Kim Yung May Bring International Trouble,” San Francisco Call, September 15, 1903.

[20] Larson, “The 1905 Anti-American Boycott as a Transnational Chinese Movement,” 193.

[21] “Chinese Bitter in the Boycott: Believe That Hundreds of Chinese Have Been Killed in America,” Baltimore Sun, September 14, 1905.

[22] Quoted in Meredith Oyen, “Communism, Containment, and the Chinese Overseas,” in The Cold War in Asia: The Battle for Hearts and Minds, ed. Zheng Yangwen et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2010), 77.

[23] Jodi Melamed, Represent and Destroy: Rationalizing Violence in the New Racial Capitalism (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2011).

[24] Ellen Wu, The Color of Success: Asian Americans and the Making of the Model Minority (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2015), 171.

[25] Hawaii Statehood: Hearings on H.R. 49, S. 156, S. 1782, Before the Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs, U.S. Senate 81st Cong., 2nd Session (1950) (statement of Hiram Fong, speaker of the Hawaii House of Representatives and Cochairman, Hawaii Legislative Hold-Over Committee of 1949), 187.

[26] Quoted in Wu, The Color of Success, 37.

[27] Robert Trumbull, “Senator Fong Shows Asia the Twain Meet: U.S. Senator Fong On A Visit to Asia,” New York Times, October 11, 1959.

[28] Betty Lee Sung, Mountain of Gold: The Story of the Chinese in America (New York: Macmillan, 1967). U.S. consulates in Singapore and Hong Kong similarly arranged in 1952 for the Chinese-American artist and memoirist Jade Snow Wong to tour ethnic Chinese communities in Southeast Asia. U.S. Information Agency officials made clear their intention: Wong’s success in the United States “would be a much-needed testimonial to the opportunities our society offers to citizens of so-called ‘minority races.’”

[29] “Chinese Split Brings Row in San Francisco,” Los Angeles Times, October 11, 1949.

[30] Charlotte Brooks, “Numbed with Fear: Chinese Americans and McCarthyism,” PBS, December 20, 2019.

[31] “Communist Flags Fly in Chinatown: Consul Protests, but Display Is Held Legal,” New York Times, October 11, 1949.

[32] Wu, The Color of Success, 115.

[33] Wu, The Color of Success, 116.

[34] John Edward Torok, “‘Chinese Investigations’: Immigration Policy Enforcement in Cold War New York Chinatown, 1946–1965” (dissertation, University of California, Berkeley, 2008), 119.

[35] Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington DC: Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1957).

[36] Federal Bureau of Investigation, Potentialities of Chinese Communist Intelligence Activities in the United States (Washington DC: Federal Bureau of Investigation, 1954).

[37] Renqiu Yu, To Save China, To Save Ourselves: The Chinese Hand Laundry Alliance (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994), 198.

[38] Annual Report of the Immigration and Naturalization Service (Washington DC: Immigration and Naturalization Service, 1965).

[39] Hsu, The Good Immigrants, 144.

[40] Hsu, The Good Immigrants, 142.

[41] Charles F. Turgeon, “Windfall from Hong Kong,” Central Intelligence Agency, Studies in Intelligence 8 no. 1 (1964): 67.

[42] “Katherine Tai Unanimously Confirmed as First Asian American US Trade Representative,” Guardian, March 17, 2021.

[43] Yangyang Cheng, “The Grieving and the Grievable,” SupChina, April 9, 2021.

Illustration by Tings Chak

On the occasion of the 100 year anniversary of the Communist Party of China’s founding, we share comments solicited from our Weibo followers reflecting on the historic juncture.

The centenary of the founding of the Communist Party of China marks a historic juncture for the Chinese nation and its pursuit of a modern socialist society. 100 years since its founding, the CPC counts more than 90 million members and is embedded in every layer of Chinese social and political life—including a party branch in space—realizing Mao Zedong’s pronouncement that “communists are like seeds and the people are like the soil. Wherever we go, we must unite with the people, take root and blossom among them.”

Yet this milestone comes at a time when Western powers are attempting to divide China’s people and its government, preaching “solidarity” with the Chinese people while advancing geopolitical aggression on the CPC and its program of socialist construction. This rhetoric undermines the deep linkages between a party oriented “from the masses, to the masses” and Chinese people of all walks of life who have channeled their efforts towards common pursuit of China’s development as an anti-imperialist, socialist nation. A solipsistic inheritance of the colonial “white man’s burden,” Western liberalism renders the Chinese people an inert, passive force awaiting Western “liberation” from an authoritarian regime, rather than an agent of history and the constitutive force of the party’s coordinated pursuit of a Chinese dream. Unsurprisingly, Western media has used the occasion of the party’s centenary to hammer this narrative home, opining on the party’s “iron grip” and “legacy of subjugation” and depicting national festivities and President Xi Jinping’s commemorative remarks as a “pugnacious” display of authoritarian excess.

In this ideological context, we solicited comments from our Weibo followers, asking them what they might share with our (largely Western) readership on the occasion of the CPC’s centenary. These excerpted comments, brief and assorted as they are, provide a small window into the conversations, family stories, and aspirations circulating amongst Chinese people from all walks of life at this historic juncture.

All comments have been anonymized and translated into English from the original Chinese.

“To the U.S.—

China has a long and complicated history. In the modern era, with the nation’s survival on the line, we have tried all sorts of approaches to governance. But in the end, only the Communist Party has brought us prosperity and independence. During peaceful times, the Communist Party has changed and evolved, reaching a level unimaginable by the West. Today, trying to prove the feasibility of capitalism or other alternative ideologies is meaningless, for the forebears of China have proven with their own lives the futility of such choices.”

***

“Despite the West’s numerous slanders, I always believed in our party and look forward to its success. Because of the situation our country is in, this is our best choice. I have also always stood with my country and party, and look to a brighter, better future.”

***

“I originally planned to talk about how my family forebears fought bandits in Guangxi, but as Zhang Fuqing came to my mind, I realized that they were only performing a normal task assigned by our party.”

Editor’s note: Zhang Fuqing was a veteran of the war of liberation (Chinese Civil War) who was awarded the Medal of the Republic, China’s highest order of honor, for his service. He kept his award hidden from his family and village for 70 years until it was discovered during a local governmental survey of military veterans. Zhang’s story captured the public imagination and became a national story, and Zhang was commended as a model for all by President Xi Jinping.

***

“In the early 90s, while I lived next to Shanghai’s West Nanjing Road, Shanghai’s busiest commercial street, I saw a BMW drive by. “Wow, so that’s a luxury BMW,” said the Shanghainese aunties and uncles, eying the car enviously. 30 years have passed, and yesterday I checked out a BMW 4S, finding the price reasonable. The scene of the BMW driving past West Nanjing Road appeared vividly in my mind.”

***

“CPC members did not fear death when rushing to the front lines during the pandemic. During a flood, they do not fear death when diving into rushing waters during rescue missions.  After an earthquake, they run to the epicenter and rescue those trapped. During war, they are the first in line to fight. Joining the party itself is an extremely difficult process. It means accepting sacrifice and preparing to give up one’s own life for the people and the nation. Western democracies have no such political parties.”

“Joining the party…means accepting sacrifice and preparing to give up one’s own life for the people and the nation. Western democracies have no such political parties.”

***

“The CPC took 28 years to wrestle political power, then 30 years to establish the foundations of industrialization, experiencing numerous twists and turns in experimentation before finally. After 40 more years, the CPC has soared, setting an incomparably high bar.”

***

“Because this year coincides with the 100th anniversary of the CPC, this year we’ve seen a flurry of content surrounding the Party’s history in China’s domestic film and television media. TV shows that discuss revolutionary history, such as Awakening Age and Glory and Dreams have received wide acclaim. Additionally, I expect that the Museum of the Communist Party, which just opened this past June in Beijing, will help everyone better understand the history of the CPC.

The next 100 years will be less involuted, and the people will have greater choice. Recently China is increasingly focusing its attention on vocational education, which if successfully developed, may really alleviate involution. In my opinion, vocational education is but one step in expanding educational resources. Increasing the status of newly-employed vocational school graduates should also be on the agenda.

For the people abroad, I hope that they understand the CPC’s dedication towards economic development, poverty elimination, and especially foreign aid given to fight the pandemic. We believe that “true prosperity is when everyone is prosperous.” Additionally, we would like to introduce the struggle of our revolutionary icons throughout the course of the Party’s history to the foreign public, just like how we learn the struggles of their own.”

***

“From the people, strength in the people, serving the people!”

***

“What does the Party’s centenary meant to me?

One hundred years of the great party, the party of humble, arduous origins. To be able to accomplish what it has today, the Party has gone through a lot, and the people have gone through a lot. Although I’m a member of neither the Party nor any offshoot organization, I believe a party that always centers the will of the people and undergoes ceaseless self criticism has the power and ability to lead the people in their pursuit of a prosperous life. As an ordinary person, I myself am not that capable, nor am I particularly ambitious. But I know that one needs a country to have a home, and only when governance is stable are ordinary people able to live happily. To me, the Party’s centenary is a turning point, reminding me that it is enough just to take every step mindfully, and to live a resolute, steadfast life. I congratulate the party on remaining true to its original aspirations, sticking to its mission, and giving the Chinese people two one hundred-year goals of struggle [to achieve a moderately prosperous society by 2021 and become a developed socialist nation by 2049]. For these goals, I hope that in my work, I can contribute as well.

I believe a party that always centers the will of the people and undergoes ceaseless self criticism has the power and ability to lead the people in their pursuit of a prosperous life.

What do I hope for the next 100 years of the Party?

I hope that the Party can strengthen its internal governance, and properly manage and control the two-faced, fence sitters, the black-hearted, and the fake leftist within the party. A chain is only as strong as its weakest link, grasp the Party’s ideology firmly.

Share a family story about the Party from any historical period

Actually, as someone from a family that is both religious and that has had historical connections to the KMT, my family doesn’t really bring up the idea of joining the party. However, during every family reunion, the older generations will express their gratitude for the ever-improving lives. My grandmother was born during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (WWII, Second Sino-Japanese War) and lived through the Defense of Hengyang [longest defense of a single city of the entire Second Sino-Japanese War]. She later married my grandfather, a soldier, and ended up in a small remote city in China’s interior during the Third Front [The Third Front Movement was a massive industrial development by China in its interior starting in 1964]. However, she never saw herself as having lived a bad life, only that people must live; that life is good so long as each day is better than the last. If the country is good, then the government is good, then life is good. During the early days of the pandemic, my entire family was in Hubei, and my mother was stuck in Wuhan. On the eve of the Lunar New Year, my grandmother cried in despair. But upon seeing the People’s Liberation Army enter Wuhan and the entire country rallying behind Hubei, my grandmother grabbed my hand and said, “the central government has come, the People’s Liberation Army has come, so I can relax.” Later on I served as a volunteer fighting the pandemic, and my father worked hard to donate supplies to hospitals. As a family, we fought and beat the pandemic in peace. 

“As an ordinary person living in a socialist country, I don’t expect you to support how our Party, our country, or our people go about their business. But much like how you revere liberal democracy, our party and country respect and protect each citizen’s legal right to be free from harm.”

What would you like to tell Americans about the communist party?

Frankly, sometimes, people in the same family don’t understand or support one another, so never mind reconciling the opposing ideologies of capitalism and socialism. As an ordinary person living in a socialist country, I don’t expect you to support how our Party, our country, or our people go about their business. But much like how you revere liberal democracy, our party and country respect and protect each citizen’s legal right to be free from harm. We also believe in supporting a healthy economy. China has a huge population, and we live in complex circumstances. Very few matters can be illustrated truthfully with just a few pictures and sentences. If you want to criticize a party or a country, please do so with respect, and try to at least understand first before expressing your views. This way, we will accept your critique, continue to improve, and become better versions of ourselves. As an ordinary person, I think that the political system and political party that brings the most people a happy, prosperous life is the most suitable for this country, is it not?”

***

At the height of India’s COVID-19 crisis, some Chinese netizens saw retribution for the Modi government’s aggressive posture towards China. In this essay, Chinese blogger 红色卫士 (Red Defender) instead insists on internationalist solidarity and a distinction between the right-wing Modi government and the working class and low-caste peoples who suffer the most under his regime.

Editors’ note: This essay was originally published in Utopia (乌有之乡) on May 5th, 2021, as India’s daily reported new COVID-19 cases surpassed 400,000. As heartbreaking images of families searching for oxygen tanks, overflowing hospitals, and makeshift funerary pyres circulated around the world, Chinese officials proclaimed support for India’s pandemic fight and pledged aid—eventually sending the largest-ever consignment of oxygen concentrators to New Delhi. Yet an undercurrent of schadenfreude emerged amongst some Chinese netizens, who saw in India’s crisis retribution for the Modi government’s aggressive stance towards China as seen in 2020 border clashes in Ladakh and India’s role in the U.S.-led anti-China “Quad” alliance.  

In this essay,  红色卫士 (Red Defender) takes this narrow nationalism to task, calling for criticism of the right-wing Modi regime alongside solidarity with India’s working class and low-caste peoples who suffer the most under their reactionary government. Critiquing national chauvinism as a means to divide internationalist struggle and distract from domestic contradictions, the author insists: there is no enmity between the working class people of each country.

There is no enmity between the working class people of each country. Rather than being duped by the bourgeoisie into stirring hostilities under the banner of “patriotism,” we should instead unite to mutually resist our capitalist oppressors.

In recent days, the pandemic in India has rapidly deteriorated. Without a doubt, it is India’s working class people who suffer the most. 

We have always advocated treating our neighbors with kindness, as indicated by the words “世界人民大团结万岁” (“Long Live the Great Unity of the World's Peoples”) inscribed on the banner atop the Tiananmen gate tower.

So it is perplexing that some of our nation’s pundits took the opportunity to jeer at India in order to flaunt their own superiority.

For example, one Weibo account posted a picture of a rocket launching in China juxtaposed with a picture of deceased COVID-19 victims being burned in India, with the caption “China lighting flames vs. India lighting flames.” The message is as clear as day: China is strong and resilient, whereas India is in hot water.

This post was also endorsed by Fudan University’s famous lecturer Shen Yi, who describes India as “foul” and “bastardly.” Another post comparing “China’s Houshenshan vs. India’s Huoshenshan” also conveys a similar message (Huoshenshan is the emergency capacity hospital rapidly built in Wuhan during the height of China’s pandemic).

It is without a doubt that China is strong, but is it really appropriate to draw comparison with the catastrophe that the Indian people are facing? Wouldn’t that be rubbing salt in their wounds, treating their suffering as mere spectacle for us?

We should treat others as we want to be treated; what would the Indian people think when they see their suffering being exploited to fulfill our own egos? For a major nation that proclaims itself as “a country of etiquette,” wouldn’t it be out of line to affirm China’s strength and prosperity this way?

If we uphold this attitude, should the banner that reads “Long Live the Great Unity of the World's Peoples” even continue to be on display?

Even [Chinese journalist and editor of the Global Times] Hu Xijin felt the need to take a stand. While he expressed indifference towards the opinions of the average netizen, he called for official accounts to maintain a humanitarian attitude and not hurl tasteless insults towards others.

But neither official accounts nor the online masses have any justification for resenting the Indian people. As Mr. Hu has said, if government officials should regulate their conduct and express sympathy, what reason is there for us ordinary people to not do the same?

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I understand, some of us might be bitter towards India because of the border hostilities it has provoked against us, but we must assign blame correctly. It is the reactionary government that caused the border conflicts; the ordinary people of India not only have nothing to do with them, but they actively oppose the reactionary government. Did we not witness guerilla forces from the Communist Party of India carrying out armed struggles in the countryside?

Of course India’s reactionary government needs to be criticized, but we must pay attention to exactly what we are criticizing and why we are criticizing it.

Of course India’s reactionary government needs to be criticized, but we must pay attention to exactly what we are criticizing and why we are criticizing it.

The Communist Party of India has stated that, with the support of imperialist powers, Modi’s pro-Hindu fascist regime is brutally oppressing the working class Indian people, curtailing the 44 labor laws down to four to appease the interests of imperialist finance capital.

Modi has always opposed the working masses under the pretense of “economic development.” India used to have fairer labor protections, but Modi tore them to shreds. Without a doubt, this was all done in the service of domestic and foreign capitalists.

Although India is said to be “the world’s largest democratic nation,” its state apparatus is repressing progressive democratic movements and imprisoning those who dare to resist. To defend ourselves against imperialism and the reactionary regime, the working class people must start a revolution and mobilize the “criticism of weapons.” 

This criticism and struggle against India’s reactionary government is for the sake of India’s proletariat and the liberation of the people.

But the tone of those like Shen Yi is antagonistic towards India as a whole, stoking the flames of animosity. The Modi regime often stirs conflict with neighboring nations, especially against China, to create an external distraction from internal strife. This of course is loathsome.

But even though the Indian government as well as Western media and officials often slanders China, as a major socialist power, do we have to use the same underhanded tactics?

What we should do is to learn from Chairman Mao and support the Indian people’s resistance, not deride them for the sake of our own pride. Only then can we win the respect of others and expand our united front to deliver a crushing blow to reactionary imperialist powers.

If we ridicule the plight of other nation’s people, wouldn’t that play right into the hands of hostile forces which stoke nationalism in order to distract from domestic contradictions? 

We the Chinese people are smarter than this. We must not fall into the trap set up by overseas powers. They want to sow discord by stroking ethnic and national tensions so that the spoils will fall to them.

We must not forget the teachings of Chairman Mao to separate imperialism from the people living in imperialist nations. He always abided by this principle when dealing with nations such as the United States and Japan. This is a method rooted in dialectic and class analysis.

He opposed U.S. imperialism, but he never poked fun at the country’s racist treatment against African Americans, instead warmly offering support towards the Civil Rights Movement. He opposed Japanese imperialism, but was sympathetic towards the Japanese people, believing that they are victims of militarism as well.

Indeed, even if the Modi regime’s border conflict against China leads to the successful occupation of Chinese territories, is that going to help the inhabitants of slum areas afford housing, healthcare, and an education?

Indeed, even if the Modi regime’s border conflict against China leads to the successful occupation of Chinese territories, is that going to help the inhabitants of slum areas afford housing, healthcare, and an education?

If these contradictions are transferred onto foreign countries, would that make lower castes and Brahmans see each other on equal footing? What do the ordinary people stand to gain from war, other than serving as cannon fodder? Who else other than politicians and capitalists profit from it?

What enmity is there between China and the working class people around the world? Last year, when the pandemic in China was at its peak, the people of India supported our pandemic prevention efforts and prayed for us.

Throughout history, China has always despised the act of paying back kindness with scorn; those who antagonize and deride the people of India are bringing shame to the nation.

Japanese imperialism burned and pillaged China during the War of Japanese Aggression, but there were Japanese people with a conscience who were sympathetic to China and opposed the emperor. Many Japanese Communists even joined China’s 八路军 (Eighth Route Army) to oppose their nation of birth. Field marshal 聂荣臻 (Nie Rongzhen) adopted two Japanese orphans, and this friendship continued after the war.

These examples fully demonstrate that there is no enmity between the oppressed working class people of the world, so rather than being duped by the bourgeoisie into stirring hostilities under the banner of “patriotism,” we should instead unite to mutually resist our capitalist oppressors.

There is no enmity between the oppressed working class people of the world, so rather than being duped by the bourgeoisie into stirring hostilities under the banner of “patriotism,” we should instead unite to mutually resist our capitalist oppressors.

Of course we should express our love for our country, but it is not the bourgeois love of country which we express.

Chairman Mao insisted on internationalism, inscribing the motto “Long Live the Great Unity of the World's Peoples” on the Tiananmen gate tower. In all parts of the world, he supported popular struggle and opposed the reactionary states. This is why he won the respect of the masses and became a mentor for revolutionaries around the world.

But now, there are those who seemingly wanted to tear down the legacy he had built, are they not?

After the founding of New China, U.S. imperialist forces invaded China’s neighbors in an attempt to “contain” the spread of socialism. Chairman Mao gave immense sympathy and support to the people of those nations. One such example is him sending military reinforcements to Korea and Vietnam, making massive sacrifices to support their struggle against the United States.

Professor Shen Yi had said that those who sympathized with India are “social justice warriors,” who should demonstrate their sympathy by helping burn firewood there. If that’s the case, then Chairman Mao would be considered a dupe for sending aid towards neighboring nations. Whoever was sympathetic towards Korea or Vietnam at the time should be sent there to be firebombed by U.S. imperialism while the rest can live idly in China. This is precisely a display of opportunism towards international issues.

Proletarian parties and communists, on the other hand, are adamant internationalists. In 1848, the first page on The Communist Manifesto declared: “Proletarians of all countries, unite!” This has been the tenet of socialism to this day.

Atop the Tiananmen gate tower lay the words “Long Live the Great Unity of the World's Peoples.” Meanwhile, some individuals gained a substantial following advocating for nationalism and agitating ethnic rivalries.

Even our opinion leader Old Hu has to be extremely careful when dealing with these people, and still he was lambasted viciously. As someone who is very experienced in public discourse, this was the issue that overwhelmed him.

Is that not deserving of our caution?

Chairman Mao teaches us: “Who are our enemies? Who are our friends? This is a question of the first importance for the revolution.” We must take this lesson to heart.

As rich nations stockpile COVID-19 vaccines, China is providing a lifeline to Global South nations spurned by Western pharmaceuticals and excluded by the West’s neocolonial vaccine nationalism. So why is China being smeared for its efforts?

United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called it “the biggest moral test” facing the world today. World Health Organization Director General Tedros Adhanom warned of a “catastrophic moral failure” whose price would be paid with the lives of those in the world’s poorest countries.    

Such cautionings of inequitable global vaccine distribution have been shunted to the margins; instead, optimistic chatter of “returning to normal” is circulating once again as Global North citizens line up for their long-awaited COVID-19 vaccine. But normal, as ever, is relative: public health advocates warn that some countries may not be able to even begin their vaccination campaigns until 2024.      

Vaccine apartheid is here, and it is revealing once more the ways our world continues to be structured by the geopolitical binaries of colonialism, capitalism, and racism. The People’s Vaccine Alliance reports that rich countries have bought enough doses to vaccinate their populations three times over. Canada alone has ordered enough vaccines to cover each Canadian five times over. Until March, the United States was hoarding tens of millions of AstraZeneca vaccines—not yet approved for domestic use—and refusing to share them with other countries (only under immense pressure did the Biden administration announce it would send doses to Mexico and Canada). Israeli officials, lauded for delivering a first dose to more than half of its citizens, have likened their responsibility to vaccinate Palestinians living under apartheid to Palestinians’ obligation to “take care of dolphins in the Mediterranean.” The European Union has extended controversial “ban options” which allow member states to block vaccine exports to non-EU nations. Meanwhile, countries like South Africa and Uganda are paying two to three times more for vaccines than the EU.          

As of June 1st, 2021 China has exported 323.3 million vaccine doses, compared to 143.8 million exported by the EU and a measly 7.5 million exported by the United States, the world’s biggest vaccine producer.

While the Global North hoards global vaccine stockpiles, China—alongside other much-maligned states such as Russia and Cuba—is modeling a very different practice of vaccine internationalism. As of April 5th, the Foreign Ministry reported that China had donated vaccines to more than 80 countries and exported vaccines to more than 40 countries. Science analytics firm Airfinity reported that as of June 1st, 2021, China had shared 323.3 million domestically-manufactured vaccines with other countries through donations and exports. By contrast, the EU had exported 143.8 million and the United States a measly 7.5 million jabs, despite being the world’s largest vaccine manufacturer. China has also partnered with more than 10 countries on vaccine research, development, and production, including a joint vaccine in collaboration with Cuba.   

Crucially, China’s vaccine sharing has provided a lifeline to low-income Global South nations who have been out-bidded by rich nations racing to stockpile Western-made vaccines. Donations to African nations including Zimbabwe and Republic of Guinea, which both received 200,000 Sinopharm doses in February, have allowed those countries to begin vaccine rollouts for medical workers and the elderly rather than wait months or even years for access to vaccines through other channels. Just a week after Joe Biden ruled out sharing vaccines with Mexico in the short term, the country finalized an order for 22 million doses of China’s Sinovac vaccine to fill critical shortages.

Even more, Chinese vaccine aid has reached countries isolated from global markets by sanctions and embargoes enforced by the United States and its allies. In March, China donated 100,000 vaccines to Palestine, a move praised by the Palestinian health ministry for enabling the inoculation of 50,000 health workers and eldery in Gaza and the West Bank who have been cut off from accessing Israeli vaccine rollouts. Venezuela, with many of its overseas assets frozen by U.S. sanctions, received 500,000 vaccines donated by China in a gesture praised by Nicolás Maduro as a sign of the Chinese people’s “spirit of cooperation and solidarity.” China’s international vaccine policy follows the broad pattern of China’s early pandemic aid, which similarly equipped low-income and sanctions-starved nations with the tools to combat the pandemic at home.  

From Venezuela to Palestine, Chinese vaccine aid has reached countries isolated from global markets by sanctions and embargoes enforced by the United States and its allies.

In the face of a global pandemic that the U.S. alliance has used as a political cudgel against China, China’s vaccine internationalism has been a natural outgrowth of its philosophy of mutual cooperation and solidarity. From rapidly sequencing the viral genome and making it immediately publicly accessible to world researchers, to sending medical delegations to dozens of nations around the world, China’s pandemic response has been guided by a simple axiom of global solidarity. Xi Jinping made China the first nation to commit to making a COVID-19 vaccine a global public good in May 2020, meaning any Chinese vaccine would be produced and distributed on a non-rivalrous, non-excludable basis. In a telling contrast, that commitment came just as President Donald Trump threatened to permanently freeze U.S. funding to the World Health Organization in an attempt to punish the organization for daring to work cooperatively with Chinese health officials. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has similarly emphasized vaccine solidarity, urging his colleagues at the United Nations Human Rights Council in February that “solidarity and cooperation is our only option.” Wang chastised countries that he noted are “obsessed with politicizing the virus and stigmatizing other nations” and implored that global vaccine distribution be made “accessible and affordable to developing countries.” China’s record to date shows it is working to follow through on the lofty rhetoric its officials have used to implore global solidarity to defeat the pandemic. 

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Because China’s vaccine internationalism models a form of multilateral cooperation beyond the scope of U.S. hegemony, it has been met with relentless media propaganda designed to cast China’s vaccination efforts as shady, manipulative, and unsafe. In November 2020, the Wall Street Journal gleefully announced that Brazil had suspended trials of the Sinovac vaccine following an “severe adverse event.” Jair Bolsonaro, the right-wing Brazilian president and Trump ally, declared it a “victory.” Casual observers would reasonably assume that there were serious safety issues with the Chinese vaccine; only closer reading would fill in the crucial context, that the cause of death of the participant was in fact suicide. A similar ruse was exploited in January, as headlines blasted that a Peruvian volunteer had died in the midst of a Sinopharm vaccine trial. Again, behind the salacious headlines was a crucial detail: the volunteer, who died of COVID-19 complications, had received the placebo rather than the vaccine.  

Because China’s vaccine internationalism models a form of multilateral cooperation beyond the scope of U.S. hegemony, it has been met with relentless media propaganda designed to cast China’s vaccination efforts as shady, manipulative, and unsafe.

Brazil’s case is particularly instructive: a preliminary experiment to vaccinate an entire township of Serrana with China’s CoronaVac reduced COVID-19 deaths by 95%. The news of CoronaVac’s efficacy in Brazil comes after months of political obstruction of deployment of the Chinese vaccine by the right-wing Bolsonaro regime.

As study after study shows the efficacy of Chinese and Russian vaccines, the media has turned to painting vaccine aid and exports as a dangerous form of “vaccine diplomacy.” Human Rights Watch nonsensically described China’s vaccine aid as a “dangerous game,” citing conspiracies about the research development of Chinese-made vaccines. The New York Times wondered if China had “done too well” against COVID-19, claiming that the government was “over-exporting vaccines made in China in a bid to expand its influence internationally.” Headline after headline bemoaned that China was “winning” at vaccine diplomacy, making clear that Western pundits view the lives of Global South peoples as pawns in a zero-sum game valued only insofar as they further the interests of Western hegemony.   

Some advocates say the bias against Chinese vaccines is based both on geopolitics and racist notions of scientific expertise. Achal Prabhala, coordinator of the AccessIBSA project, which coordinates medical access in India, Brazil and South Africa, said “the entire world—not just the West—is incredulous at the idea that you could have useful science in this pandemic come out of places not in the West.” Yet he emphasized the importance of Chinese and Indian vaccines as a “lifeline” to low and middle-income countries, both in addressing vaccine gaps in the developing world and as a “useful cudgel” for negotiations with Western pharmaceuticals. 

Despite mainstream media tropes of Chinese “vaccine diplomacy,” it is the United States—not China—whose pharmaceutical companies are employing exploitative tactics to profit from vaccine sales. Pfizer, for instance, has been accused of “intimidating” Latin American governments in their vaccine sale negotiations, asking countries to put up embassy buildings and military bases as collateral to reimburse any future litigation costs—leading countries like Argentina and Brazil to reject the vaccine outright. One can only imagine the media hysteria which would ensue were Sinopharm to be caught demanding overseas military bases as collateral for its vaccine exports. But because it is a U.S. company, Pfizer’s medical neocolonialism has been absolved and flown under the radar. 

Despite allegations of Chinese vaccine opportunism, it is the United States which has politicized its recent foray into vaccine exports. During his first meeting with leaders of the “Quad,” an anti-China alliance likened to NATO and consisting of the United States, Australia, India, and Japan, Joe Biden announced his intention to use the alliance to produce one billion vaccines for distribution in Asia in an explicit bid to “counter” China. It is telling that while China stresses global cooperation through channels such as COVAX (to which it has donated 10 million doses) the WHO, and the UN peacekeeper’s vaccination program, the United States is pursuing vaccine diplomacy through a highly-politicized military alliance designed to contain China. Likewise, despite the Biden administration’s lofty rhetoric about its leadership over a global “rules-based order,” it is the United States which has violated a UN Security Council resolution demanding a global military ceasefire to facilitate pandemic cooperation with recent airstrikes in Syria.    

Perhaps most egregiously, the United States and other rich nations have blocked a proposed World Trade Organization waiver on intellectual property restrictions which would enable Global South countries to manufacture generic versions of COVID-19 vaccines. Proposed by South Africa and India with the backing of China, Russia, and the majority of Global South nations, Global North obstruction of vaccine IP waivers in the WTO makes clear that the status quo of vaccine apartheid is not an accident, but a product of deliberate policy by Western nations to put the profits of their pharmaceutical companies above the lives of the world’s poor. In an attempt to save face, the Biden administration announced in May its ostensible support for waiving IP restrictions on vaccine production. Yet after seven months of U.S. obstruction, the Biden administration’s change of heart is unlikely to yield immediate results, and experts say India’s and South Africa’s proposal could remain gridlocked in WTO negotiation for months.

Obstruction of vaccine IP waivers in the WTO makes clear that the status quo of vaccine apartheid is not an accident, but a product of deliberate policy by Western nations to put the profits of their pharmaceutical companies above the lives of the world’s poor.

With Global North nations stockpiling vaccines and experts warning that new rounds of vaccinations may be necessary to combat COVID-19 variants, critical vaccine shortages are here to stay. China’s manufacturing power and macroeconomic policy puts it in a position to continue to be the world leader in vaccine production. As of April, China’s Sinovac announced it had reached the capacity to produce a whopping 2 billion doses of CoronaVac per year, thanks in part to Beijing district government efforts to secure the company additional land for vaccine production. China’s vaccine production builds on the successful model of state intervention and coordination through which state-owned enterprises and private companies rallied to construct hospitals, manufacture PPE, and coordinate food supplies during China’s February 2020 outbreak. 

The vaccine policies forwarded by China versus the U.S. and its allies serves as a microcosm for two very different worldviews: where China has insisted on global solidarity to defeat the pandemic, the Western world has refused to ease the pressures of its neocolonial regime. While China supports bids for vaccine equity in the WTO and UN, the Global North is bolstering vaccine apartheid for the sake of corporate profits. These differences alone ought to be enough to put to rest vacuous assertions that render U.S.-China conflict as a matter of “competing imperialisms.”  

Xi Jinping stressed at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic a commitment to “protect people's lives and health at all costs.” Not when it is profitable, not when it is geopolitically expedient—at all costs. Western obstruction of efforts towards vaccine equity forwarded by China, Cuba, South Africa, and other Global South nations only reveals the very different calculus which governs the West’s continuing neocolonial regime. 

Reflecting on the spur of anti-Asian racism this past year, Chinese Canadian writer Xin interrogates the renewed enthusiasm for representational politics in North American discourse. This deceptive liberal schema, she argues, stakes Asian American political recognition upon the creation of a diasporic native informant class designed to propel U.S. empire’s denunciation of Asian socialism.

During the course of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been an exponential increase in violence against Asian Americans: in New York alone, it’s been reported that violence rose by 1900%, fueled by anti-Asian sentiment. The “Stop AAPI Hate” database reported 2,808 incidents of anti-Asian discrimination between March 19 and December 31 of last year. However, the stereotype of Asian Americans as the “model minority”—as a group that has class privilege, upward mobility and values “hard work”—has restricted the ways we talk about this discrimination and injustice.

As someone from a liberal immigrant family, I grew up with my parents reminding me that being in so-called “North America” would be better for my life, that I would be able to achieve all of my dreams and succeed as an individual. Of course, the version of success they had in mind consisted of a six-figure salary and a higher socioeconomic class than when they first arrived in Canada. To this day, they still strongly believe in the myth of North American exceptionalism, which they consider in stark contrast to ingrained tropes of Asian authoritarianism: because “the government in China is too controlling—here, we have the freedom to succeed at anything as long as we work hard enough!” Yet this model minority mindset, which is all too common amongst immigrant families, foundationally undercuts the fight against both white supremacy and imperialism. The assimilation-bound ideology of the Asian American bourgeoisie must be unlearned if we are to be successful in dismantling the stronghold of U.S. imperialism in the Asia-Pacific.

Imagine my grief when I learned about the violence committed against Asian Americans, all due to the supposed connection between our race and COVID-19. How can so-called “North America” be the “land of opportunity” of my parents’ dreams for me when anti-Asian racism and white supremacy continue to run rampant? I spent most of my time in grade school and high school desperately trying to fit in with my white peers, shrugging off my Chinese heritage and distancing myself from those living in the "authoritarian state" of China, all in the hopes that my friends would see me as “Canadian,” as one of them. My parents desperately wanted me to assimilate as well, constantly reminding me that I would be able to succeed in the West and only in the West because the CPC is “controlling” and “authoritarian,” using immoral and undemocratic tactics to keep their citizens obedient and submissive. 

For many Chinese immigrant families, distrust of socialism is born largely by former class character. For example, before the Cultural Revolution, my mother’s family owned a large area of land, enlisting peasants to work and farm the property. During the Cultural Revolution, my mom’s aunt had to marry someone from a lower socioeconomic class in order to save her family and avoid having their assets seized by the state. So, it’s no surprise that they are grateful for the “freedom” that Canada grants and feel compelled to express their gratitude in various ways, something that scholar Mimi Nguyen calls the “gift of freedom”. My parents express their gratitude by indoctrinating me into thinking that the democratic system of the Western world will always be better than living under the rule of the CPC. These words and sentiments led to my own commitment to support the West, which came at the expense of disapproving China and the CPC. I grew up apolitical, only speaking out to voice my dislike of the “Communist regime” my parents had fled from and my concern for the people of my homeland I presumed were “suffering” under an authoritarian government. Unbeknownst to me, I had internalized the latent anticommunism of many immigrant parents. 

For many Chinese immigrant families, distrust of socialism is largely borne by former class character.

What I also failed to realize was that with my anti-China remarks, I was ultimately feeding the Western imperialist machine, giving it the rhetorical fuel it needs to increase warmongering fears against China and establish the West as a global stronghold. With its bastion of military bases across Asia and the Pacific, the U.S. has established itself as the military and economic hegemon in the region. Yet it maintains its coercive, violent presence in Asia as the “gift of freedom and democracy.” Weaponizing the confessional speech of Asian diaspora populations about our “authoritarian” homelands, the U.S. government has actively transformed its illegal occupation into a white savior fantasy of uplift and goodwill.

In reality, the increased military presence is an explicit method in which the U.S. is able to establish themselves as a constant threat to China. The U.S.’s empire of bases serve as a reminder that China’s political futures and possibilities are always constrained by U.S. “containment,” in which retaliation is but a hop and skip away. The U.S. is also able to use this opportunity to write their state as a “nation of immigrants” and “the leader of the free world,” making it their mission to “free” any persons suffering in the socialist bloc.

As I progressed through high school, I slowly began to learn that my efforts would be for naught; white people would never accept me as one of their own. So I started to reconnect with my heritage, albeit in superficial, aesthetic ways: bubble tea and shallow understandings of Chinese culture. This particular paradox of attempting to reconnect with one’s homeland while simultaneously assimilating into the West is extensively discussed by Frantz Fanon in The Wretched of the Earth, a work I had the opportunity to read this past summer, and one I would strongly recommend to any colonized person to learn about their relationship with their colonizers. In one particular chapter—“On National Culture”—Fanon writes about the three stages that a colonized intellectual progresses through leading up to the point of revolution. Reading this chapter made me realize that most, if not all, diaspora have experienced the first stage: “proving that he has assimilated [into] the colonizer’s culture.”  This is where all of us attempt to fit into the West, at the expense of losing our culture, because our motivations to advance in a Western state lead to tunnel vision, where our only focus is to assimilate. The second stage is where most Chinese diaspora stagnate:

...the colonized writer has his convictions shaken and decides to cast his mind back. But since the colonized writer is not integrated with his people, since he maintains an outsider’s relationship to them, he is content to remember. Old childhood memories will surface, old legends will be reinterpreted on the basis of a borrowed aesthetic, and a concept of the world discovered under other skies.

By presenting their puddle-deep image of their culture to the West, diaspora are able to vacuously reconnect to their culture while still attempting to be accepted in the imperial core. The multiculturalism within the West allows for diaspora to superficially celebrate—and commodify—our cultures, while rewarding us for denouncing the political projects of our countries of origin. Because diaspora are only able to maintain an outsider’s relationship to their past, they can only discover and understand their past on a shallow plane “under other skies”, which Fanon uses to reference the nations in which diaspora reside. If we are to successfully organize and work towards dismantling Western hegemony, we must move beyond a surface-level cultural identification with our homelands and forge real political solidarities with them.  

By presenting their puddle-deep image of their culture to the West, diaspora are able to vacuously reconnect to their culture while still attempting to be accepted in the imperial core. The multiculturalism within the West allows for diaspora to superficially celebrate—and commodify—our cultures, while rewarding us for denouncing the political projects of our countries of origin.

The focus on Asian American representation and those chosen as figureheads are carefully selected to reaffirm ideologies of U.S. liberalism and imperialism, making it detrimental to the fight against Western imperialism on an international and national scale. It’s telling that instead of standing with their comrades in their home nations or focusing on domestic issues (e.g. Black liberation, Indigenous sovereignty, and the destruction of Western hegemony over the hemisphere), mainstream Asian American culture celebrates the empty fruits of so-called representation, a liberal gesture staked on assimilation, mistaking partial recognition for political power. 

Asian assimilation into the U.S. imperialist class is contingent upon becoming a native informant and confirming imperialist U.S. talking points about China.

More often than not, Asian assimilation into the U.S. imperialist class is contingent upon becoming a native informant and confirming imperialist U.S. talking points about China. For example, in an interview with CNN, Andrew Yang, who is currently running for New York mayor, voices the importance of distinguishing between the Chinese people from the government, and proceeds to blame the latter for their lack of transparency about the virus. His distrust and dislike of the CPC only act as confirmations of the negative depiction of the Chinese government in the West. Another example is California Congresswoman Judy Chu: when Senator Marsha Blackburn tweeted "China has a 5,000 year history of cheating and stealing. Some things will never change," Chu refrained from commenting on the matter; her silence signaled a complicit agreement with Blackburn. One wonders: if Chu had spoken out against a Senator, what kind of backlash would she have experienced? When the film Mulan was released by Disney in 2020, Western film critics and political activists were quick to take to social media, rallying for the boycott of the film because female lead Liu Yifei defended the PRC position on Hong Kong. On the other end of the spectrum, Yang Shuping, an international Chinese graduate from the University of Maryland, was celebrated for her graduation speech, in which she shared anti-China and pro-America remarks. The contrast between Liu Yifei and the rest of the individuals make it clear that the politics of Asian Americans representation are often used to justify the ideologies of U.S. imperialism, with those who toe the U.S. line being rewarded and those who challenge it being spurned and silenced.

Our focus should not be on assimilating into the West, but rather organizing our communities, educating ourselves, and standing with the exploited peoples of Asia and the Pacific, whose lifeways and survival have and continue to be under threat by U.S. militarization.

With the increased violence against Asian Americans and the rising tensions with China, it is without a doubt that our focus should not be on assimilating into the West, but organizing our communities, educating ourselves, and standing with the exploited peoples of Asia and the Pacific, whose lifeways and survival have and continue to be under threat by U.S. militarization. For too long, the focus of the Asian American community has been solely on gaining representation within Western media and politics, but any gains in Western society have only fueled U.S. imperialism in the Asia-Pacific. To create a world where the people of the Asia-Pacific do not suffer under U.S. imperialism, where they are free to reclaim control over their futures, we must turn our focus from increasing our representation in the Western sphere to educating ourselves and working to dismantle the influence of U.S. hegemonism and imperialism.

A designer and researcher, Xin finds joy reading about the history of communism and eco-socialism in her free time. She is also an avid fan of vintage films and hiking.

Yu Kuang unpacks the tragic February 2021 Texas snowstorm through a socialist lens. Far from a “natural” disaster or an exceptional state failure, Yu reads the tragedy as the logical outcome of a superstitious U.S. devotion to small government, “state’s rights,” and the abdication of political responsibility under a diffused federalist system.

As a representative crisis of neoliberal capitalism, Yu frames the Texas disaster as a cautionary tale for those ideologues in China who have embraced a Western doctrine of privatization.

This article was originally published in Utopia under Yu’s pen name, USA另一面 (The Other Side of the USA).

“屋漏偏逢连夜雨，船迟又遇打头风”

“A leaking roof facing overnight rain / a late ship encountering headwinds”

—Feng Menglong, Stories to Awaken the World

A United States still struggling through the pandemic was also recently hit by a major snow storm. To date, 37 states have already faced emergency winter conditions, with the southwestern state of Texas being hit the hardest, where temperatures have dropped below -20 degrees Celsius (-4 degrees Fahrenheit).

This is equivalent to China’s Guangdong province suddenly entering into a Northeastern Liaoning-like wintery state; it’s not hard to imagine the misfortune of the Texan people. And because of the storm, people also lost water and power, truly a case of “frost layered on snow” (one disaster after another). To date, Texas has already had tens of people die from this snow storm.

In the last few days, the Chinese and U.S. media have had a lot of coverage of the snow storm, but the analyses are very similar. This article is my attempt to approach it from a different angle.

1. A small government is not necessarily a good government

Tim Boyd, mayor of Colorado City, Texas, recently went viral in the U.S. due to one of his social media posts, in which he wrote: 

“No one owes you or your family anything; nor is it the local governments responsibility to support you during trying times like this! Sink or swim, it’s your choice! The City and County, along with power providers or any other service owes you NOTHING! I’m sick and tired of people looking for a damn hand out!” If you were sitting at home in the cold because you have no power and are sitting there waiting for someone to come rescue you because your lazy is direct result of your raising! Only the strong will survive and the week will perish. Folks, God Has given us the tools to support ourselves in times like this. This is sadly a product of a socialist government where they feed people to believe that the FEW work and others will become dependent for handouts.” 

Boyd’s words enraged many people, and he was forced to resign. But did he say anything incorrect? He was merely speaking more bluntly than other government officials.  Under the U.S. system, most politicians would not say this out loud, but they all think and act this way.  Texas has been described as the U.S.’ “smallest government,” or in other words, you can think of them as the “most American,” so it shouldn’t be surprising that their politicians think this way.

Boyd’s words enraged many people, and he was forced to resign. But did he say anything incorrect? Texas has been described as the U.S.’ “smallest government,” or in other words, you can think of them as the “most American,” so it shouldn’t be surprising that their politicians think this way.

The above words make it difficult to not think of China. Mayor Boyd’s criticism doesn’t make us feel any shame about having a socialist government at all. In fact, it creates a sense of pride. When there are difficulties there is an accountable government. No matter what it seems better than freezing in freedom!

In the not-too-distant past, we were repeatedly taught in domestic universities with the "night watchman" minarchist government philosophy that "the smallest government is the best government.” Few professors objected to the idea that "small government, big society" should be the ideal. But seeing the naked "small government" confession above, I wonder if domestic scholars and professors would also agree with it?  Or do they disagree, but are afraid of expressing ideas contrary to the collective value orientation of their peers?

Many scholars and professors have lost their confidence in their own system in the face of hegemonic U.S. discourse, and they have also lost their ability to think independently. This situation has metastasized for decades in China's ivory towers. 

Is a small government necessarily a good government? Is a big government necessarily a bad government? These two questions have no real meaning—a government being good or bad simply does not have a direct relationship with its size.

The formation of various countries‘ political systems has its objective historical and social factors. A country becoming a hegemonic power does not mean that its political system is superior. The Xiongnu, the Khitans, and the Mongol Empire were all once past hegemons, but surely their tribal alliance system does not represent an “advanced” political system.

China has five thousand years of civilization, and a modern national governance system was formed two thousand years earlier than Europe and the United States. Now if you cut your feet to fit your shoes or “learn to walk in Handan,” you will only end up incapacitating yourself. [1]

Fortunately, not all scholars are this muddled in their thinking. Many years ago, Wang Shaoguang put forth his ideas about a “way of politics,” and Zhang Weiwei has repeatedly emphasized an analytical framework of "good government vs. bad government.” It is very good that more and more young people are beginning to think about problems from this perspective. As for how small a government is suitable for the United States, let us leave that to the Americans to debate.

2. The “incompleteness” of federalism

Facing a major snow disaster, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said that it was the responsibility of the state government and not the responsibility of the city government.

Maybe Mayor Turner is right to delineate the powers of governments at all levels, but is it reasonable for the city government to do nothing in the face of such a large natural disaster? Think about what would happen in China if a city encountered a natural disaster and the mayor said that it was the responsibility of the governor. What would happen? Dismissal on the spot! And that would be considered a relatively light punishment—it’s very likely that that kind of dereliction of duty would be met with jail time.

The United States is a federalist country. Each state is independent of the federation, counties are independent of states, and cities and towns are independent of counties. This is often interpreted as the superiority of the American system, but in fact, it has many drawbacks.

China is a unitary country, and local officials’ responsibility is not limited. The United States is a federalist country. Each state is independent of the federation, counties are independent of states, and cities and towns are independent of counties. The upper-level government does not have Chinese-style leadership over the lower-level government. This is often interpreted as the superiority of the American system, but in fact, it has many drawbacks.

Fudan University’s Professor Fan Yongpeng pointed out in his piece “Unity, Federalism and the "Feudalist" Factor in the American System” that the national structure of federalism is "unfinished." I think this statement is very accurate. 

If the internal organization of a country is mature enough and the coordination of various internal parts is good, then it will inevitably move toward a "completed" unified state structure. But the federal system rejects this mature and highly coordinated system. In other words, it is a historical choice that prevents a country from achieving sufficient maturity and high coordination.

But it is by no means the end of history. With the development of science and technology and as exchanges between people grow more frequent and in-depth, people will increasingly tend towards a unified market environment, a unified legal system, and unified rules of procedure, eventually eliminating the federal system.

Texas suffered a snow disaster—if this happened in China, it would be a case of "difficulties on one side, support from all sides," but this would be very difficult to achieve in the United States. Aside from some charity work, it is difficult to get material support from other states.

This is not to say that Americans are not as moral as Chinese people, but that under the federal system, each state not only has to consider its own interests, but also its own set of legal systems and mechanisms for debate and decision-making. It is difficult for the federal system to efficiently allocate resources. If politicians in other states want to help, they would still need to take voters into account. Even if a politician bravely put forward a proposal for assistance, it would likely be difficult to pass through their state legislatures.

I have long felt that federalism as a form of national structure is very similar to the feudal system of the Western Zhou Dynasty in China. Setting aside the epochal differences between agricultural and industrial society, modernity and antiquity, as well as the differences between the monarchy and the republic, there is a great similarity between the two in terms of organizational structure.

The Zhou was the co-master of the world with its underlying states; the Zhou rituals formulated the guidelines for work and life in all of the states under the Zhou. The U.S. federation has a similar status, forming a co-governance relationship with the states as laid out in the U.S. Constitution.

The various states of the Zhou and the states of the United States have a great degree of independence. The Zhou Emperor and the United States federal government both have little ability to manage affairs below the state level.

When the emperor and the federation are strong, states have relatively high loyalty to the emperor and the federation, and their centripetal force is relatively strong. Once the power of the Zhou royals declined and federal hegemony began to waver, states began to move in their own direction. Not so long ago, some people in Texas were calling for independence. Some people on the Internet joked that if Texas became independent, a simple blizzard would destroy the country. 

The Zhou's feudal system was eventually replaced by the Qin Dynasty's system of prefectures and counties. Afterwards, future dynasties all followed the Qin political system, and China entered the modern political era two thousand years ahead of the West. In the future, after American hegemony declines, whether there will be a rebirth from the ashes and movement towards unity, or toward a greater dissolution and separation, it is still hard to say.

Here we must also criticize Yan Fu's view that "knowing that a partitioned Europe is prosperous, it follows that a unified China is weak."

What is strange is that there are many people who still superstitiously believe in the Western "mini-political tradition" (Wang Gengwu), and believe that the federal system of the United States has tremendous advantages over the unitary system of China.

Near the end of the Qing Dynasty, China had been beaten so badly that it was scared. Everything foreign was considered good, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that the intellectuals of that generation had such views. What is strange is that there are many people who still superstitiously believe in the Western "mini-political tradition" (Wang Gengwu), and believe that the federal system of the United States has tremendous advantages over the unitary system of China.

Their main argument is that the West is strong, and many modern developed countries practice federalism. This kind of specious argument is simply untenable, and ignores that many Western countries also use a unitary system.  So is their argument that Western developed countries developed because of the federal system?

The strength of the Western powers and developed countries is mainly due to their early industrialization when other countries were still agricultural or in even more backward social forms.  Industrial society was able to easily achieve dominance over agricultural societies and this has continued since the modern day.  This is a victory for advanced productivity, not a credit to the federal system as a superstructure.

(Due to space limitations, this article will focus on the above two issues. The following issues are only briefly analyzed, and will be discussed in a separate article in the future.) 

3. Prevarication—a key manifestation of corrupt politics 

Speaking of corruption, what immediately comes to mind is "embezzlement." Corruption and embezzlement is something that almost everyone regards as an enemy in China. Objectively speaking, the direct corruption that people generally recognize, is much less common in the United States. This is something China should learn from. But corruption is not only embezzlement, but also prevarication, as well as inaction despite possession of public power.

A few days before the arrival of the blizzard, the weather forecast provided an early warning, but all levels of Texas’ government did not take any preventative measures. As mentioned above, Houston Mayor Turner kicked the ball to Texas Governor Greg Abbott. Abbott issued a statement condemning the Electric Reliability Council of Texas for being unreliable and demanding an investigation. At the same time, Republicans blamed Biden’s promotion of green energy as the culprit, while Democrats criticized Abbott for only caring about votes.

All parties savaged each other fiercely, but there was not much action in terms of relief work. This kind of corruption is sometimes more harmful than embezzling a little money. Embezzlement is the "occupation" of other people's property, but prevarication is treating the lives of people as child’s play. Political power cannot be left empty in the hands of politicians, it must be used to serve the people. 　　

4. “Special privileges” are just as severe in the U.S.

During the snowstorm, Ted Cruz, one of the two senators from Texas, was escorted by the police to the airport and took his family by plane to Cancun, Mexico for vacation.

Highland Park is a wealthy suburb of Dallas. Former U.S. President George W. Bush settled here after his retirement. While the snow disaster caused millions of people to be without electricity for long periods, there was no power outage here.

In downtown Houston, Dallas, Austin and other cities, empty office buildings were brightly lit, and the city government offices were also not short of electricity. These are the explicit privileges formed by power and capital.

In downtown Houston, Dallas, Austin and other cities, empty office buildings were brightly lit, and the city government offices were also not short of electricity. These are the explicit privileges formed by power and capital, but various implicit privileges are also everywhere in the United States, which will be discussed further in a future article.

5. The privatization of key services may not necessarily bring about higher efficiency and better services

The Texas Power Grid is operated by the private Electric Reliability Council of Texas. In order to save costs and increase profits, this company did not do any winterization protection on power grid equipment. After the snow disaster, the private company said that it would institute rolling blackouts, which would only last for hours. However, it would end up lasting for days. At the same time, Texas electricity prices soared by more than 200 times. In contrast, during the snow disaster in southern China in 2008, the electricity prices in the affected provinces did not rise by a single cent.

Some people in China once advocated that the power sector should learn from the United States’ example and privatize. It now appears that the relevant departments were very wise to ignore this pressure and maintain the public nature of the power sector.

Some people in China once advocated that the power sector should learn from the United States’ example and privatize. It now appears that the relevant departments were very wise to ignore this pressure and maintain the public nature of the power sector.

In a city where I lived in China, under the wave of privatization, the water management of the whole city was handed over to private enterprises. As a result, not only has the water quality significantly declined, but the water tariff has also risen significantly after one or two years of price stability.

6. U.S. infrastructure is truly outdated

The Thursday before the blizzard, Texas started getting freezing rain and the roads became slippery. 133 cars collided in a major pileup on the highway to Dallas, 6 people were killed and 65 people were injured. The local authorities dispatched 80 police cars, 26 fire trucks and 13 ambulances to control the situation. 　　

This incident updated many people's understanding of the United States. I was in the United States for more than three years and I was still shocked to see such news. A friend once told me that Americans are very aware of traffic rules and that serious traffic accidents rarely occur in the United States. But this time, it was really "serious.”

We express regrets for the dead and wounded, and we have to talk about the obsolescence and disrepair of U.S. highways. I've never seen the road conditions in Texas, so I can’t comment specifically, but we walked by the highway in Michigan every day and I was very shocked to see the bumpy and potholed state of it when I first came. I couldn't believe that this was a developed highway in the United States. The road conditions in our country’s villages are much better than this.

The backwardness of infrastructure in the United States is not just reflected in the highways. Once you arrive at the NYC airport, you will feel that you have taken the wrong plane and don't know which underdeveloped country you’ve arrived at.

In the U.S., trains are very expensive, and the comfort level will remind people of China’s past green seat cars (an older, spartan model). I took the train from Detroit to Chicago two years ago, and it felt like going back 20 years ago in time.

The United States planned to build high-speed rail much earlier than China. It is said that the project was started in the 1980s, but none have been built to date.

7. The situation of the elderly in the U.S. tears at the heartstrings

In the heavy snow a few days ago, a 78-year-old Texas old man fell in his yard. There was no one to assist him, and he froze to death in the severe cold.

Was there no one else living with him? I guess there was no one. There are many cases of elderly people living alone in the United States. There are some elderly people in their 80s who live alone, go to the supermarket alone, cook by themselves, and wash clothes by themselves, which is very sad to see.

It is well known that in the U.S., children leave their parents to live alone as soon as they reach adulthood. They occasionally visit their parents after, just like we visit our relatives in China. It is rare that the elderly live with their children. So when Americans get old, they either go to nursing homes or the old couple live by themselves. If their significant other is gone, they can only live by themselves. In the event of a fall in the heavy snow, tragedy will strike.

Chinese people have talked about "raising children to protect against old age" since ancient times. This idea, which has been passed down for thousands of years, came under criticism from experts in recent years. There is nothing wrong with scholars and experts calling for the establishment of a complete modern social security system, but the warmth and happiness that comes from taking care of relatives should not be discounted or discredited. Social pensions should be a fallback, but it does not represent modern justice.

[1] This is a reference to a story of a man who thought people from Handan had a lovely gait, so he tried to imitate their walking style for years and ended up forgetting how to walk himself.

Recent discourse within the U.S. and Singaporean liberal-left has championed “Chinese privilege” as an analytic of power within Singapore and Asia at large. By invoking a Chinese equivalence to whiteness, analyses of “Chinese privilege” not only disavow the material history of racial capitalism in Asia, but appropriate Black and Indigenous critiques of white supremacy to bolster a long history of Singaporean anticommunism in service of U.S. military and ideological supremacy over Asia.

“Postcoloniality is the condition of what we might ungenerously call a comprador intelligentsia: of a relatively small, Western-style, Western-trained, group of writers and thinkers who mediate the trade in cultural commodities of world capitalism at the periphery.”

—Kwame Anthony Appiah

“Neocolonialism, like colonialism, is an attempt to export the social conflicts of the capitalist countries.”

—Kwame Nkrumah

Since 2015, Singapore has seen the rise of a new discourse arguing the existence of Chinese racial supremacy. Influenced by U.S. cultural theories of race, critics of so-called “Chinese privilege” sought to formulate a theoretical framework for thinking about inequality in Singapore. Yet short of interrogating the material specificities of Singapore, these critics—composed not insignificantly of Western-educated cultural elites—found inspiration from transposing U.S. frameworks of racial antagonism directly onto Singapore. “I performed a simple experiment,” admitted the self-professed founding theorist of “Chinese privilege”: “I took a paragraph [from bell hooks’ ‘Beloved Community’] and I substituted the words ‘Chinese’ for ‘white.’” So “Chinese privilege” was born.

In Singapore, the terminology of “Chinese privilege” spread like wildfire within the networks of the cultural elite, circulating abundantly in the capital of “woke” discourse, Yale-NUS College (a liberal arts school jointly established by Yale and the Singaporean government). Soon it became more than just an analysis of “privilege”: suggestions of “Chinese racism,” “Chinese supremacy,” and “Chinese settler colonialism” all began to float in the air, plastered together by their plagiarism from North American Black and Indigenous critique. 

When pressed, however, the loosely cobbled Singaporean copies began to fall apart: given the geographic, cultural, and political variation amongst Chinese people, who are implicated in the broad idea of the “Chinese”? What does “Chinese privilege” in Singapore mean, against the existence of more than 200,000 mainland Chinese migrant workers who, along with their predominantly Bangladeshi peers, toil daily in Singapore, with no minimum wage, to build the city’s high-rises, wash its public toilets, and serve in its hawker centers? Finally, given the material histories of race under Euro-American colonization, in which white supremacy actualized itself through racial enslavement, indentured servitude, and Indigenous genocide, how can white privilege be commensurable to anything else—in the world?

Given the material histories of race under Euro-American colonization, in which white supremacy actualized itself through racial enslavement, indentured servitude, and Indigenous genocide, how can white privilege be commensurable to anything else—in the world?

As Cedric Robinson wrote, modern capitalism is an extension of European feudalism, built from the very beginning on primitive accumulation established through racial slavery and colonization. Any project that seeks to understand racial capitalism in Asia cannot disentangle capitalism from its definition as a globalized system of value built on and by white supremacy. In Singapore, which for centuries existed both as part of the Indian Ocean world and the Malay archipelago, modern capitalism was ushered in by the British East India Company. From 1819 onward, Singapore became one node in the vast operation of the British Empire, connected by subjugated labor and trade to India, China, Hong Kong, and Britain’s many other colonies in the West Indies and Eastern and Southern Africa.

The history of race in Singapore, then, is a history of racial capitalism. The British colonial government played a key role in facilitating early discourses of race and racial difference in Singapore, producing the racial classificatory system that in Singapore today is known as CMIO (Chinese, Malay, Indian, Other). Interestingly, the British never elevated the Chinese as a superior class—rather, its initial interests were in cultivating a Malay indigenous elite through whom they could rule by proxy. During the century and a half of colonial rule, the Chinese were most useful for the British as primarily as a cheap labor force extending British empire’s labor imperialism (“coolies”), and secondarily, as a middleman merchant class that facilitated the empire’s trade imperialism (opium, rubber, tea). Though Singapore has been both a British and Japanese colony, it has never been a Chinese one—on the contrary, under British rule, the Chinese population in Singapore was alternately disciplined and neglected, and under Japanese rule, subject to ethnic genocide. In this light, there is no historical ground supporting claims of “Chinese supremacy” in Singapore. To argue for it is to mount a deceit that contradicts the very histories of race and capitalism as they were forged during Singapore’s colonial era.

The history of race in Singapore, then, is itself a history of racial capitalism.

Since its independence in 1965, Singapore has been ruled by the People’s Action Party (PAP), led for 38 years by former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, under whose tenure Singaporean “Chineseness” was transformed into an essentialist cultural project in concert with what Lee championed as “Confucian capitalism.” Refigured as a depoliticized, homogenous, and agreeable alternative to the geopolitical and racial Chineseness represented by “Red China,” the Singaporean Chineseness installed by Lee posited itself as a proxy to Weberian Protestant capitalism. Functioning in contrast against the racial and political threat of “90 million Chinese communists in China,” Lee’s carefully-pruned Confucian Chineseness marked Singapore, a Chinese-majority island, as a capable partner to U.S. empire—and Lee himself as a trusted native informant to generations of U.S. imperial architects. 

In his prolific public statements, Lee was unabashed about what he believed to be the essentialist characteristics of each “racial” group, and the disciplinary mechanisms supposedly required to harness them into a stable “multiracial meritocracy” that would make Singapore an ideal site of investment for Euro-American capital. In other words, officialized discourses of race in Singapore take on a primarily economic function, shaded by the backdrop of neocolonial U.S.-Singapore relations. In this light, to speak of race in Singapore is to speak of a highly localized phenomenon held in taut relation with historical British rule and contemporary U.S. domination—including the ongoing Cold War of anticommunist containment in Asia.

To speak of race in Singapore is to speak of a highly localized phenomena held in taut relation with historical British rule and contemporary U.S. domination—including the ongoing Cold War of anticommunist containment in Asia.

Yet recently, discourses of “Chinese privilege” have escalated, alighting on a new strategy of manufacturing imperialist antipathy against China and justifying continued U.S. military domination in Asia. Moving beyond Singapore, Singaporean critics of “Chinese privilege” argue that Asia at large is threatened by the looming specter of a “rising China.” Proposing that Chineseness is a universalizing racial category, these critics conclude that “Chinese privilege” and “Chinese supremacy” in Singapore may be extrapolated to Asia-at-large, in which the PRC plots a supposedly imperialist takeover. Of particular vexation to these critics is what they call the “Chinese tankie,” a slur which refers, through a mish-mash of McCarthyite euphemism and garbled identity politic jargon, to anti-imperialist internationalists who oppose U.S. military supremacy in Asia and the ongoing informational war against China. 

If the vague, anti-China fear mongering of “Chinese supremacy” discourse feels familiar, it’s because it sounds strikingly similar to talking points of the U.S.-led Cold War on China, and increasingly, the discourse of the Singaporean state. While Singapore has historically framed its foreign policy as a balancing act between the U.S. and PRC, since 2018, a series of secretive arrests authorized by Singapore’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, working in tandem with the U.S. Pentagon, have signaled the island nation’s shift toward a more diplomatically offensive position against China. 

In a speech given to the public in 2019, former Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs Bilahari Kausikan urged Singaporeans to stand guard against what he called China’s “sophisticated and flexible instrument[s] of influence,” which threaten Singapore’s “foundation of multiracial meritocracy.” Of note, Kausikan pressed, was China’s civilizational threat against Singapore: “China’s identity as a civilizational state,” he said, “finds expression in the work of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office… In plain language, overseas Chinese should identify their interests with China’s interests and work to advance China’s interests. And this represents a deliberate blurring of the distinction made between the hua ren (ethnic Chinese) and the hua qiao (overseas citizen of the PRC).” 

By suggesting the always already latent possibility of “ethnic Chinese” being turned into spies for the PRC, Kausikan not only taps into a long history of conjoined anti-Chinese, anti-PRC, and anticommunist villainization in Southeast Asia, but also rehashes the “China creep” discourse of the U.S. and its “Five Eyes” alliance. Case in point, Kausikan’s declarations of “Chinese espionage” startlingly echo the propaganda of such warmongering luminaries as the weapons industry-funded Australia Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). Lauding Kausikan’s speech, the conservative U.S. policy think tank Jamestown Foundation (on whose board sits Trumpian architect Robert Spalding) noted: “Singapore has long been a target of CCP united front attention, and the city authorities have a history of combatting CCP propaganda that dates back to the 1950s and 70s, when PRC leaders sought to export communist revolution to Southeast Asia.”

Kausikan’s declarations of “Chinese espionage” startlingly echo the propaganda of such warmongering luminaries as the weapons industry-funded Australia Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) and Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS).

This would certainly be an impressive feat, were it true. While evidence of actual “CCP infiltration” is all but nonexistent, what is abundantly clear is that the United States has spent extraordinary effort covertly manufacturing anticommunist, anti-Chinese propaganda across Asia throughout the last seventy years. Drawing from a dense archive of declassified CIA reports, Operating Coordinating Board (OCB) communiques, and U.S. Information Agency (USIA) documents, historian Wen-qing Ngoei concludes,

[T]he key principle of U.S. Cold War policy toward [Asia] was to harness the interconnectedness of Southeast Asia’s Chinese so that Beijing could not. From mid-1954, U.S. planners began seeking ways to ‘encourage the overseas Chinese’ to ‘organize and activate anticommunist groups and activities within their own communities.’ Beyond this, Washington aspired to ‘cultivate’ overseas Chinese ‘sympathy and support’ for the GMD [Kuomintang]-dominated Taiwan as a ‘symbol of Chinese political resistance,’ to forge one more ‘link’ within the United States’ broader ‘defense against Communist expansion in Asia.’ (9)

Within Singapore itself, accusations of “Chinese communist influence” have served as an expedient lie leveraged by both the British colonial government and the British-backed Lee Kuan Yew, Singapore’s first Prime Minister, to effectively rid the country of leftist organizing. In what became known as the 1963 Operation Coldstore, Lee convinced the British colonial government to invoke the secretive Internal Security Act (ISA) to detain some 113 left-leaning politicians of the opposition party, Barisan Socialis. This effective annihilation of Singapore’s popular leftist movement in turn gave Lee, the British heir apparent, a virtually unopposed path to political power in Singapore’s first general election in 1965.¹ In 1987, Lee’s government once again leveraged charges of a “Marxist conspiracy” to detain 22 leftist organizers, holding them for up to three years under alleged torture. Reflecting on the arc of anticommunist fervor that has defined post-independence Singapore, historian T.N. Harper writes that since independence, “the PAP government worked resolutely to depoliticize national struggle, to shed it of its old internationalist connections, and to tear Singapore from its alternative pasts” (48).

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Given both the history of U.S. covert operations in Southeast Asia and Singapore’s own virulently anticommunist post-independence history, it should be no surprise that the low-hanging fruit of a “Chinese communist conspiracy” and its pseudo-leftist “Chinese privilege” corollary appear so enticing to both Singapore’s cultural elite and its ruling party. Moreover, their naked antipathy toward China is undergirded by Singapore’s deep economic and geopolitical ties to the United States. It would not be an exaggeration to say that, like South Korea and Japan, the U.S.’s client states in East Asia, Singapore’s economic “miracle” has been largely predicated on industrialization via U.S. militarization during the Cold War. After a visit to the United States in 1967, Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew wrote to Lyndon B. Johnson, expressing his “unequivocal” support of the Vietnam War. Lee argued, as historian Daniel Chua recounts, that

The United States, by holding the line in Vietnam, was buying time for the rest of Southeast Asia to develop stable economies and governments. The American military involvement in Vietnam[, Lee believed,] helped in maintaining political stability of the non-communist regimes in Southeast Asia and also provided them with the years that were necessary to build their economies. (5)

More than providing Southeast Asian nations like Singapore “with the years that were necessary to build their economies,” the U.S. invasion of Vietnam directly contributed to the economic growth of its neo-colonies in Asia, including Singapore. Just as the U.S. war in Vietnam was critical to “South Korea’s compressed development under military dictator Park Chung-hee,” as Christine Hong has written, so too was it instrumental in developing Singapore’s post-independence economy. This developmental trajectory allowed the U.S. to continue where the British had left off: in 1967, the same year the British formally withdrew its bases from Singapore, “a full 15 percent of Singapore’s national income derived from U.S. military procurements for Vietnam.” Prior to the U.S. entrance into Singapore, British bases on the island had contributed $200 million per year to the Singaporean economy, amounting to 20 percent of Singapore’s then-national income. As the U.S. replaced the British as the guest power in Singapore and escalated its invasion of Vietnam, U.S. private investment in Singapore increased at exponential rates, growing at a rate of $100 million a year by 1971.

In 1990, following the Philippine Senate’s closure of the U.S. and military bases in Clark and Subic Bay, Singapore stepped up to the bat as the U.S. military’s newest and most steadfast dependency south of Seoul. Through a series of “memorandums of understanding” (MOUs), Singapore not only opened its Paya Lebar air base and the port of Sembawang to U.S. forces, but in 1998, built a state of the art naval base in Changi for express shared usage with the U.S. Navy. As a 2016 Brookings Institute white paper acknowledges, Changi Naval Base “is currently the only naval facility in Southeast Asia purpose-built to accommodate an aircraft carrier and was constructed (entirely at Singapore’s cost), despite Singapore having no aircraft carrier of its own.” 

In 2020, as the U.S. entertained regime change ambitions in Bolivia, tightened sanctions against Venezuela, Iran, and the DPRK, and waged a hybrid war against China, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong wrote, in a feature article for Foreign Affairs, “Asian countries see the United States as a resident power that has vital interest in the region…. What made Asia’s stability and prosperity possible was the United States.” In other words, Singapore’s supposedly “exceptional” economic achievements, when held under the magnifying glass of historical analysis, reveal a profound entrenchment in the U.S. orbit, as a client state whose imperialist geopolitical, political, and economic orientations were meticulously cultivated during the Cold War. Insofar as Singapore holds the title of being one of the most prosperous nations in the world, its national “privilege” has been built off its role as launch pad for U.S. aggression on Vietnam, Korea, China, and most recently, Afghanistan.

In the face of what can only be understood as blatant, aggressive, and ongoing U.S. imperialization of both Singapore and the Southeast Asian region, both the Singaporean state and its comprador class prefer to harp on a supposed “Chinese communist conspiracy” instead of facing the hegemon literally crouching in their own backyard. Of course, scapegoating China has its perks as well: for the Singaporean state, fervent anticommunism and blithe disdain of China has won it the right to become a vassal state of the U.S. empire; for the Singaporean comprador class, armed with degrees from the imperial core and a taste for “speaking for Global South Asians,” the work of obfuscating U.S. imperialism offers a surefire way to propel oneself to political authority as a model minority in the Global North.

In the face of what can only be understood as blatant, aggressive, and ongoing U.S. imperialization of both Singapore and the Southeast Asian region, both the Singaporean state and its comprador class prefer to harp on a supposed “Chinese communist conspiracy” instead of facing the hegemon crouching in their own backyard.

By delocalizing and decontextualizing a U.S.-based identitarian politics of race, discourses of “Chinese privilege” assiduously delink race from its material conditions, and ethnic formation in Singapore from the complex geopolitical and colonial history of the region. In short, “Chinese privilege” performs a crude racial reductionism that, in its easy recourse to analogy, propels what literary historian Jodi Melamed calls a “race-liberal order” that “fatally limit[s] the possibility of overcoming racism to the mechanisms of U.S.-led global [imperialist] capitalism, even as they have enabled new kinds of normalizing and rationalizing violences.” The comprador class stands most to gain from the discourse of “Chinese privilege,” which, as sociologists Daniel P.S. Goh and Terrence Chong remind us, allows them to partake in a “pleasurable act of Foucauldian confession...to reinforce their feelings of goodness and purity” while cementing their position as intellectual and moral gatekeepers in Singapore’s neocolonial production of knowledge.

Without regard to the historic, geographic, and political dissonances implied within the term “Chinese,” theories of Chinese privilege disavow both the material conditions of British colonialism and contemporary U.S. imperialism which have shaped Singapore’s present, while insisting that Singapore, and postcolonial Asia at-large, appear a historical vacuum through which appears a new regime of racial domination by the ambiguously perilous, yet ever-present “Chinese.” 

In this political moment—as the military encirclement of China sees its domestic parallel in anti-Asian violence in the West—uncritical deployments of “Chinese privilege” are dangerous precisely because they fit snugly into a propagandized Cold War redux which paints China as duplicitous, conniving, and invasive.

The race reductionism of “Chinese privilege” is dangerous not only for essentializing, de-historicizing, and dematerializing the workings of race in Asia. In this political moment—as the military encirclement of China sees its domestic parallel in anti-Asian violence in the West—uncritical deployments of “Chinese privilege” are dangerous precisely because they fit snugly into a propagandized Cold War redux which paints China as duplicitous, conniving, and invasive. Contributing to U.S. efforts of informational warfare, the depoliticized and ahistorical fallacy of “Chinese supremacy”—sold, largely, to North American and Singaporean audiences—appropriates the specificity of white supremacy while bolstering the long history of neocolonial Singaporean anticommunism. Ultimately, it seeks to naturalize U.S. hegemony as a benevolent force in the face of impending Chinese “invasion,” manufacturing consent for the further militarization of Asia while obscuring the structuring force of U.S. imperialism in Singapore, Asia, and beyond to the detriment of true anti-imperial struggle.

1. Political prisoners, including Said Zahari, Lim Chin Siong, Lim Chin Joo, Poh Soo Kai, and Tan Jing Quee, have written about their time in captivity, noting both Lee’s strategic collaboration with the British colonial government and his role in engineering anticommunist persecution throughout the 1950s and 60s. In particular, they unanimously agree, Lee was frightened by the popular support of Lim Chin Siong, leader of the Barisan Socialis, who was projected to win the first election prior to his arrest by Lee in Operation Coldstore. In a posthumously-published excerpt from his memoir, Lim Chin Siong was explicit about Lee’s political motives:

Lee Kuan Yew soon became worried about the left-wing within the party because it enjoyed tremendous grassroots support. He was fearful of being replaced or overtaken. In his calculations, the most ideal constitutional arrangement was to let the British continue to provide a safety net for him and to give him time to build up his own base. He would play the role of a moderate while the British could wield the big stick. On this score, Lee Kuan Yew and the British were hand-in-glove in that ‘the British must keep the final say in order to block the communists out.’ (316)

Can financial technology be corralled in service of China’s people-centered development? With Jack Ma’s Ant Group as a case study, Chinese blogger Li Xuran offers a compelling analysis of the role of capital in modern China. The halting of Ant’s bombshell IPO in November 2020, Li argues, must be seen in the context of the socialist state’s role in restraining the “wild beast” of capital for the sake of socialist development and the public good.

Editors’ note: Ant Group’s much-anticipated debut on the Shanghai and Hong Kong stock exchanges was expected to be the largest IPO of all time. But just days before the planned November 5, 2020 opening, Chinese regulators, led by the People’s Bank of China, halted the IPO and summoned Ant founder Jack Ma and other Ant executives to discuss what they called “major issues” with the tech giant’s pending listing.  

The clash between state regulators and Ant Group—the parent company of China’s largest mobile payment system, Alipay, and a lending service for more than 80 million small businesses—was portrayed in Western media as a “crackdown” evincing the centralized power of the Communist Party under Xi Jinping. These misrepresentations even led to conspiracy theories that Ma had been “disappeared.” But far from a “totalitarian” crackdown on private industry, the freezing of Ant Group’s monster IPO must be understood in the context of China’s socialist market economy, in which traditional banking and financial services operate under state control for the public interest. In contrast to China’s 14th Five Year Plan—which prioritizes sustainable development, rural revitalization, and real economic growth—the growing power of private lenders such as Ant Group poses systemic risks for the sorts of speculation, consumer debt, and financial bubbles responsible for cyclical financial crises in the capitalist nations. As Ant Group continues to work with regulatory authorities towards a future IPO, the question remains: can fintech be corralled in service of China’s people-centered development?         

In this context, Li Xuran offers a compelling analysis of the role of capital in modern China. Channeling Marx, Li argues that the control of capital is crucial to the project of socialist development, but that left unrestrained, the “wild beast” of capital will show that its class interests outstrip its national allegiance. Rejecting the billionaire cult of personality which at times surrounds Ma, Li reminds us that the successes of Ma and his ilk are not a reflection of their own abilities, but of the opportunities created by the struggle of the Communist Party and the common Chinese people. Whether Ant Group or otherwise, to control the beast of capital requires the concerted effort of the Party, the state, and the people.   

This article was originally published in Chinese in Utopia (乌有之乡). Follow the author’s public page on WeChat (ID: xuranshuo).

I. 

The tides are changing.

I have seen several social media posts, mainstream media publications, and vloggers starting to ferociously criticize Jack Ma, as if criticizing him would solve all their problems. I’ve given it some thought, and, risking possible backlash amongst my readers, decided to discuss this issue at length. Because in my opinion, Jack Ma isn’t the problem.

Before you roast me, let me rephrase myself: Jack Ma isn’t the root of the problem. Why? Let’s look at some recent events: the Ant Group IPO halt, Danke (蛋壳) Apartment breakdown [1], the showdown over community group-buying...

Broadly speaking, beneath these diverse incidents lies a single force. A great teacher and his generation warned of and suppressed it, but it has sprouted once more since the 1980s. After 40 years, it has taken root in multiple facets of our lives, including thought, society, reality and power. Bit by bit, it has shown its immense and power and frightening quality:

Capital.   

Not even Marx’s Capital can fully discuss the complexity of capital. So here, I will summarize it into three points, per my understanding:

First: capital and development are inseparable.

Capital accelerates and catalyzes economic development. At a certain stage of social development (from capitalism to the primary stage of socialism), a rapid economic boom necessitates it.

I once read that a modernizing country seeking economic development and industrialization had only three paths: Urban-rural “price scissors,” i.e. setting low prices on rural commodities to support industrial development; plunder, the path taken by Western capitalist countries; and using foreign capital, exemplified by the four “Asian Tigers” which developed by heavily attracting massive foreign investment.

So, we can’t discuss too deeply the primitive accumulation of capital. Like all great fortunes, developmental history needs glorification. Only the rise of modern China has been achieved without plunder, and instead was built up on a barren ground once plundered by invaders.

The first part of New China’s path took place shortly after its founding. It consisted of controlling the price of agricultural products, limiting the movement of rural households, and country-wide restraint on food and consumption. Instead, the Chinese people channeled their energy into construction and accumulated a solid, thorough industrial foundation, summed up as “tightening the belt, to pool our resources to complete major missions.” On the other hand, after reform and opening up, China attracted massive amounts of foreign capital and released state and partially private capital, invigorating the economy.

We must understand that though we consider capital frightening, we need to acknowledge its great power in pushing economic development.

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I bring this up because we must understand that though we consider capital frightening, we need to acknowledge its great power in pushing economic development. We cannot negate China’s last 40 years using its first 30, nor can we negate its first 30 years using the last 40. This is historical materialism.

Second: expansion is capital’s basic instinct.

Capital is like genetic code, whose sole purpose is to populate, duplicate, and grow. In the natural world, a creature without a predator will surely overpopulate, like the Asian carp in the United States. Capital without competition and regulation will lead to large-scale monopoly in all areas.  

Liu Cixin, in his sci-fi novel The Wages of Humanity, imagines the ultimate stage of capitalism in which a “final producer” monopolizes all the planet’s resources, including land, air and water. People pay taxes just to breathe. This speculation is based on the recognition of reality.

Isn’t the reoccurring financial recession in capitalist society, at its core, the result of capital expanding to the extreme, while suppressing labor cost to extreme, leading to production capacity far exceeding social need?

In the area of production, since the cycle is relatively long, the re-occurrence of crisis is long. But nowadays, the reason why we feel capitalism will fall into “crisis” once every few years, is because in the current era, the extreme expansion of capital is financial capital, which accelerates the progression of capital rapidly expanding until explosion. Because when capital enters industry, it realizes that it has to go through input, production, sale, re-input and other elements in the cycle, and that is way too slow to gain added value. So, we have financial capital using many dazzling leverages, tools, and products to reach the goal of producing money with money.

A friend in the financial business tells me that once being in the world of finance and having some results, you won’t want to do anything else because other industries make money far too slowly.

To some degree, finance is like drugs. Normally people derive pleasure from action, rewarded by their brains through the release of certain chemicals. But what’s horrifying about drugs is they bypass this reward system and directly stimulate the brain via chemicals to produce pleasure. That’s why people addicted to drugs are so hopeless; everything else becomes meaningless.

Financial capital is just as horrifying. From the early days of winning the stock market, to the recent subprime crisis and P2P lending platforms crisis, it will not stop.

Third, capital’s class attribute is larger than national attribute.

To be honest, I was going to skip this part — for some people, it’s a bit of a soft spot.

When dealing with capitalists, I say spare me the talk of “heart for the country and the world.”

In this world, patriotic capitalists exist, but they are hardly a class that has the self-awareness to limit their capital to national borders. While there are individuals who betray their class, there is no class that betrays its interests and profits. In the eyes of capital, the world is flat. Where there are people, there is profit, it will find its way there by any means necessary.

Much like the East India Company all those years ago; people who know their history will understand: from the standpoint of government alone, the Western powers wouldn’t have necessarily started the Opium War. European capital’s vicious interests and ambitions of expansion necessitated the war. Unlike Japan, Britain didn’t have a direct geopolitical conflict with us. 

Since the 1990s, a handful of Western financial crocodiles have been making waves around the world, plundering fortune using financial tools, the result is no less severe than a hot war invasion. Many countries have suffered and have yet to recover.

Capital, once uncontrolled, can exercise enormous influence in a state’s political scene. In some small to mid-sized countries, the government has little authority and easily collapses due to the power play among many forces, including capital.

This is the reason why Sun Yat-sen called for “control of capital” over a hundred years ago.

In modern society, there is no “capital” in a purely commercial sense. All capital is closely tied up with politics, especially big capital and big tycoons. If any mature politician still believes nonsense such as “capital is only a tool,” “capital doesn’t talk politics,” and “when in business, only talk business,” they’re basically out of the game.

II.

I have said a lot already. My core intention is to tell everyone: Jack Ma is fine, Danke Apartment too. Even community group-buy, a recent popular phenomenon, are nothing but embodiments of capital. They themselves are not the problem. The true problem arises if we overlook the issues driving these forces.

Capital is like a wild beast: if we are able to tame it and use it for our needs, it will help with the development of productivity. Uncontrolled and unrestrained, it will bite us and cause great harm.

Capital is like a wild beast: if we are able to tame it and use it for our needs, it will help with the development of productivity. Uncontrolled and unrestrained, it will bite us and cause great harm. On this point, Ma isn’t the last tycoon, Danke isn’t the last bankruptcy, community group-buy won’t be the last battleground.

Because capital is an essential element of production, but it is not production itself. I give you 50 cents, you will try and produce things that are worth 50 cents. It indeed can stimulate creative potential and economic liveliness.

But the problem lies in, who monitors or guarantees that things worth 50 cents get made?

Capital enters the market, increasing its value constantly through finance, stocks and other shiny packages. Every process in the middle would create fortune. But in the end, the product has to get made, or society’s economic system would collapse.

Us producers jokingly call ourselves “da gong ren” (bricklayers, laborers), because people in other positions are not really involved with production, they might be in charge of spreadsheets, sales, marketing, advertising, even holding meetings.

They then wait for manufacturing and production, jobs that, at least theoretically, someone else should be doing.

But this hypothetical “person” can be exhausted, left unable to work.

Then comes insufficient production, advance consumption, then overcapacity, deflation. Next comes the decline and collapse of the whole economic system that was constructed with it.

Remember the famous passage that Marx quotes?

“With adequate profit, capital is very bold. A certain 10 percent will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certainly will produce eagerness; 50 percent—positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent—and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.”

The periodic crises of capitalist society has led economists to a consensus: uncontrolled capital will definitely lead to mad self-destruction.

The breakdown of Danke Apartment is due to this: they used low rent prices to lure tenants, put their money into financing and repackaged them as financial product (even offering loans to those who couldn’t afford to pay rent), then put this financial product back into financial market, getting more funds, to take more houses…

Using tools of capital, they expanded rapidly in just two years. Theoretically, as long as there are “laborers” who rent houses, pay rents, this game of capital can continue, the market will continue to be “vigorous and energetic”.

But what we didn’t expect is the pandemic. The economy suffered, many people couldn’t afford their rent, breaking the tightrope. In the end, those who suffer the most are always tenants, unable to afford homes.

So, in the face of capital, we must not be blinded by its sugary coat. Like community group-buying, vegetables and fruits that sell for a couple of yuan seem cheap. With a clearer outlook, we see that this is only a means through which capital enters a market where interests are diverse and scattered. Price wars, merely tools to suffocate small businesses, create monopoly and centralize interests.

After the Danke Apartment breakdown, I asked a friend who lost over ten thousand yuan and was then evicted: why did you choose Danke? He said, in his neighborhood, Danke has squeezed other agencies and he had no choice. 

I was speechless.

III.

Apart from the risk of freely expanding, capital has another noteworthy hidden effect: capital warps people’s minds.

In the forty years following reform and opening up, our society’s thinking has changed tremendously. While we are more prosperous in a material sense, we also lost many things in terms of philosophy and values.

Consumerism has taken center-stage. A frivolous, anxious and interest-driven mentality has spread. On social platforms such as Douyin (Tiktok for the Chinese market) and Kuaishou, we see many youngsters showing off designer bags, cosmetics, luxury clothing, even expensive cars and houses. 

It pains me to imagine how many youth will be influenced by then and become the next ones with bourgeois dreams. Many have been brainwashed by the short-sighted consumerism and interest-driven “way of success”. To fill our desires, we slowly embraced loan services and over-consumption.

Every now and then in the news we see young adults, unable to repay their loans, break the law. What’s more frightening is that this phenomenon and mentality influence the younger generation. “Studying is such a chore, people become more famous and wealthy as influencers rather than admission into Tsinghua or Peking University. Being a celebrity, making money, having plastic surgeries, finding a sugar daddy is the true path to success.”

Facing this phenomenon, a netizen asks: “Should 17-year-olds be partying or preparing for the gaokao [the national college entrance exam]?” If you come from a wealthy family and happen to have the freedom of choosing your life, the former option would be beyond reproach. But how many people have the resources to actually indulge in this dream?

In a street interview, when asked “who is your favorite celebrity,” an old man said: “I don’t like celebrities. They contribute nothing to the country, only harm to the next generation. If you ask kids nowadays what they want to be when they grow up, they all say stars, singers, no one say scientists, teachers, or joining the army.…Stars don’t make a country great—scientists, engineers, working people do.”

IV.

One more thing.

In contemporary China, what’s most frightening about capital is that after growing wildly for an extended period, it has almost become “too big to fail.” This is also why many spokespersons of capital have the gall to say some outrageous things.

Jack Ma, in his speech at the Bund in Shanghai in October, made remarks that he would probably take back now: financing in China “doesn’t have systemic risks” because there is “no system.”

Jack Ma saying that there is no systemic risk in China’s finance only proves that he represents that risk.

This reminds of a meme: “In every team there is a rookie. If you don’t spot the rookie, you are the rookie.” The most dreaded thing in a financial system is systemic risk. Jack Ma saying that there is no systemic risk in China’s finance only proves that he represents that risk.

The following day, the chief of National Economic Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference pointed out in a financial summit: no matter whether we call it financial technology or technological finance, one mustn’t forget the attribute of finance, mustn’t disobey the basic rule of financial running, or one will be punished by the market.

If you still can’t comprehend what’s frightening about Ma’s speech, here I will quote what was stressed in a lecture of the Central Committee’s Political Bureau: Preventing systemic financial risk is the fundamental task of our financial work.

After Ma’s speech, I have seen many bloggers saying he’s “over the clouds.” I think they are blinded by appearance. For Ma, a person who’s shouting about retiring all the time, to have the nerve to speak like that, “over the clouds” is in fact an understatement. I’ll refrain from talking about him further, everyone can contemplate themselves.

V.

I feel fortunate to live in a socialist country.

Most people here grew up with a Marxist-Leninist education. Many lack a clear understanding or have even forgotten our coursework. However, when we grow up, get “beaten up” by society, and encounter all sorts of social problems, we seek answers. We will remember what the textbooks have taught us and will think: our textbooks were so thorough! What a shame we didn’t understand them back then.

What other countries in the world teach students to see capital through “surplus value?” What other countries explain the world with “materialism,” or ask questions beginning with “if capital has 50 percent profit...”?

Because the majority has such fundamental education, a blog like ours, founded at the end of 2019, can earn the support that it has earned. Just like in the discussion of “Xinyu Project,” a student said: “Capitalism will always be capitalism. Luckily, we’re born in China, the country that belongs to the Chinese people. Many times through these events, we can see that China led by Communist Party of China is worth our trust.” This isn’t blind worship. Rather it’s an empirical truth. If China isn’t trustworthy, how did China accomplish in forty years what capitalist countries accomplished in several hundred years?

And just because of this, in China capital will have a very hard time expanding unrestrained. When even youths and ordinary common people understand, do you think the state would not? Not only did the state notice, they responded swiftly. From the Ant Group IPO halt, to the statement of strengthening anti-monopoly and preventing capital’s free expansion, issuing The Guidance of Anti-Monopoly in the Area of Platform Economy, to strengthening the regulation of Internet finance, to the recent statement that capital needs to flow more to the real economy... These decisions are consistent with the Party’s ideology. Designed at the top level, come in prepared, hit the target, think over strategy, and deal with the root of the problem. In areas such as thought, theory, communications, and publication of policy documents, different departments work together, to form a united force.

In Western capitalist countries, anti-monopoly investigations are exceedingly difficult efforts. Big corporations, big capital hire political spokespersons and lobbyists to persuade Congress and drive policy making. But in China, a single conference, a single social commentary can change the current. Here, giants walk on ice.

In Western capitalist countries, anti-monopoly investigations are exceedingly difficult efforts. Big corporations, big capital hire political spokespersons and lobbyists to persuade Congress and drive policy making. There are also legal elites searching for loopholes, rationalizing decisions that would be considered irrational and unethical to any clear-minded person -- all to seek excuses for capitalists to snatch profit. Even if a company or a person gets sentenced for monopoly, the long process of investigation would have likely already caused a great enough risk.

But in China, a single conference, a single social commentary can change the current. Here, giants walk on ice. This is the strength of the system, and the strength of people’s hearts. In our social system, capital can never seize our country. Why have people been praising and applauding the documents of anti-corruption and re-enforcing regulation? Is this not “representing the fundamental interest of the common people?”

VI.

Last of all, I want to talk about the Fifth Plenary Session of the 19th CPC Central Committee—the most important event in the second half of the year. This meeting, in my opinion, largely revolves around one question: what is the point of development?

Let’s review the essence of socialism: liberate and develop productivity; eliminate exploitation and polarization; and reach common prosperity.

In this respect, no matter Jack Ma or any other tycoon, they’re all “front runners in wealth accumulation” that exist in a specific historical phase. Such people with capability and speciality can establish companies and bring about good management, and gain wealth for their own while helping accelerate the wealth accumulation of the whole society. But one mustn't forget where one comes from, and where one must go. If our ass sits in the wrong camp, we will find ourselves in greater danger the greater our strength. 

A TV drama set in the Qin Dynasty has recently gone popular.

I’d like to share with you a piece of commentary on the Qin state from Han Fei Zi [2]. It’s right on point and has much educational significance to this day. He says: “General Rang of Qin attacked Qi in the east overcrossing Han and Wei. After five years, Qin hasn’t gained an inch of land but General Rang gained the fief of Taoyi. General Ying attacked Han, eight years later he gained the fief of Runan. Since then, many statesmen of Qin have been like Ying and Rang. If a war was won, they were made nobility, expanding their territories and establishing private fiefs.”

It means the achievement of one person of high rank is attributed to the many from below [3]. Mobilizing the forces of all of Qin to attack other states merely contributes to the interests of individual bigwig politicians. 

Our own business elite shouldn’t regard the opportunities created from our country’s development as their own. If without a stable political and societal environment, if without tolerant, supporting policies, if without the wide coverage of basic education, if without the steadfast hard work of billions of common people, how did they end up having everything they have today?

We often say: don’t mistake the abilities of a platform for your own. Our own business elite shouldn’t regard the opportunities created from our country’s development as their own. If without a stable political and societal environment, if without tolerant, supporting policies, if without the wide coverage of basic education, if without the steadfast hard work of billions of common people, how did they end up having everything they have today? One must know where one’s ass “sits,” and one must know where one’s feet “stand.”

In the Fifth Plenary Session, great emphasis was placed on interpreting the concept of “common prosperity.” More importantly, in the explanatory draft of the 14th Five-Year Plan illustrated by President Xi, seven important issues that needed explanation were mentioned, each of great importance. One of them was “On the Advancement of Common Prosperity of All People”:

“Common prosperity is the essential demand of socialism, it is the common expectation of the people. We push the economy and society to develop, all in the goal of achieving common prosperity of the people.” 

What’s worth noting is that such expression is a first in the documents of the Party’s plenary sessions. We must think it through: is the goal of development merely creating a “richest person”? Or creating hundreds of rich persons through IPOs? Neither. To 1.4 billion common Chinese people, such actors are an occasional wave in a tumbling river. The wave may astonish and attract attention and adoration, but it’s nothing if without the tumbling water everlastingly running through. Still water runs deep. Those who are quiet, working hard day and night, are the majority of China—it is them for whom we toil, work, and fight.

[1] Danke (蛋壳) is a Chinese startup that serves as a middleman between landlords and tenants. The company rents units from landlords on a long-term basis, then sublets these units to tenants, many of whom are students or young professionals, on a short-term, flexible basis. In late 2020, the company allegedly ran out of cash and couldn’t pay apartment owners, leading some owners to evict tenants and sparking government intervention to settle disputes and issue greater regulatory oversight amidst claims of Danke’s bankruptcy.   

[2] Han Fei Zi (韓非子) is a foundational political text dating to China’s Warring States period (战国时代), attributed to the Legalist philosopher Han Fei (韩非, lived ~280 BCE to 233 BCE), who is also known as Han Fei Zi.

[3] The original text is “一将功成万骨枯,” a famous quote from a late Tang era poem by Cao Song (曹松, lived 828 to 903). The literal translation would be “a general succeeds while ten thousand bones rot.” 

In this meticulously researched exposé, KJ Noh traces the genealogy of U.S. geopolitical strategy in Asia and the Pacific, giving us an inside view of both the realpolitik of U.S. imperial expansion and the architects behind it. Concluding with an analysis of 21st century U.S. total informational warfare, Noh argues that the path to a kinetic war against China has been decades in the making. Once triggered, it could rapidly turn nuclear.

(Republished from Popular Resistance with the author’s permission)

It was a gripping, stunning testimony. Before Congress, a 15 year old volunteer nurse, Nayirah, struggled to compose her trembling voice, barely holding back tears, as she testified that marauding soldiers had thrown babies out of incubators in a hospital, leaving them to die on the floor.

Later, Amnesty International confirmed authoritatively that 312 babies had been killed this way. [1] All the news agencies ran with the story, and the country and Congress were in a total uproar.

There was only one problem: it was completely, utterly, totally fraudulent. It was engineered, perjured, coached testimony concocted by PR experts, designed to manufacture consent for a U.S. war on Iraq.

At the time, it was also crystal clear that the claims were absurd—Kuwait had a population of less than 1.5 million at the time, and given its birth rate, would have had a few hundred premature babies a year. It’s inconceivable that over 300 of them could have been clustered in a single hospital on a single day.

Nevertheless, this was the story that was sold to the U.S. people. Representative John Porter stated, “We have never heard…[such] a record of inhumanity and brutality and sadism…I don’t know how the people of the civilized countries of this world can fail to do everything within their power to remove this scourge from the face of the earth.”

Not long afterward, the U.S. went to war with Iraq.  It would wage war again, 12 years later, doubling down with even more monstrous lies about weapons of mass destruction.

Today, we are facing a similar situation: the U.S. is escalating rapidly towards a shooting war with China, and similar absurd, astonishing, and monstrous lies are being spread. In fact, the U.S. is already engaged in “multi-domain” “hybrid warfare” with China. This is warfare just below the threshold of direct military engagement. On the ground this involves:

• Economic Warfare: trade sanctions and tariff war, as well as technological warfare: attempted seizure of Chinese companies (TikTok); attacks on China’s international 5G contracts; sanctions on the primary & secondary supply chains of key sectors of Chinese industry (e.g. Huawei’s semiconductor supply chain); attacks on Ant Financial's IPO.

• Legal Warfare, or “lawfare,” including over 380 anti-China bills in Congress, and 14 individual and state lawsuits against China for over $30 trillion in “Covid damages”; the long arm “legal” kidnapping of Huawei’s executive

• Diplomatic Warfare, including consulate shutdowns, harassment of diplomats, breaching of diplomatic pouches and compounds, and calls for regime change.

• Military Brinksmanship and posturing in the South China Sea, the East China Sea, the Taiwan straits; complete encirclement of China with strategic weapons, surveillance, and 400 offensive bases (“The Pacific Pivot”), the use of air bases in Taiwan for military surveillance, and plans to station intermediate range nuclear missiles all along China’s periphery. [2]

• Civil Subversion: color revolution, urban terror, destabilization and delegitimation operations in Hong Kong (and other places where China has interests), including millions of dollars of funneled for organization & training, and encrypted communications infrastructure built to coordinate anti-government activities.

• Academic Warfare: through the FBI’s China Initiative, every 10 hours a case is opened against a Chinese student or researcher in the U.S. (currently 2700 cases) and all Chinese students are considered potential “non-traditional” “collectors" and “spies” involved in a “thousand grains of sand” collection strategy.

• Information Warfare: last but not least, we are seeing total Information warfare.
  The stories about so-called “massive human rights abuses,” “Chinese concentration camps,” “Chinese-made-and-released Covid,” “China has harmed us economically,” “China has stolen its way to the top,” “China is oppressing independent Hong Kong,” are part of this information warfare.

This mass propaganda incites people to hate China irrationally and unconditionally, to manufacture consent for war. The U.S. military calls this information warfare, “the firehose of falsehoods” and we are all being drenched with these lies. This is necessary to justify war against an enemy and to curtail any rational discussion or questioning.

Some of the questions that the public are kept from asking are:

• Are these allegations supported by any facts?

• Has China threatened us? Is the U.S. at risk from China?

• Is this war justifiable by any means? Is it legal?

• Do the citizens of the U.S. want to go to war? Could the U.S. even fight, let alone win a war with China?

A careful, reasoned approach to these questions, would lead one to say, No.

Before we try to play whack-a-mole with the blatant war propaganda, a more useful and clarifying approach is to ask, why is the U.S. telling these lies to go to war?

For this, we have to look at history.

Why The U.S. Is At War: Culture shock and the challenge to supremacy

The earliest European travelers were astonished to discover in China a country, in many ways, far more advanced than the West: a rich, diverse, multi-cultural civilization with sophisticated systems of governance, and vibrant cities built with complex systems of planning and management. Above all, they marveled at a harmonious multi-religious, multi-ethnic society, free of sectarian strife, and an inclusive merit-based [3] system of political power that selected the most competent people to govern and rule, regardless of creed, color, background, or religion. [4] This contrasted the Western system of hereditary aristocratic rule within a society torn apart regularly with religious strife. These ideas of diversity, tolerance, inclusion, and earned—not inherited–privilege, would strongly influence the leaders of the Enlightenment, so much so that Western philosophers such as Voltaire and Leibnitz believed that the Chinese had “perfected moral science,” and that Chinese statecraft was the model for the West to emulate if it wanted to develop into an enlightened civilization.

These discoveries struck a hard blow at Christian and Western supremacy. Western colonization was built on a foundational belief that the West was more advanced, more evolved—closer to God—than the “barbarous” countries it was invading, subjugating, exploiting, and destroying. It needed at least the pretense of being more “advanced” to justify its colonial “civilizing mission.” Reactionary thinkers like Herder—who had never visited China—lashed back rapidly by propagating a theory of the depravity of Chinese: that China was an “immoral land with no honor,” an “embalmed mummy” characterized by stagnation, in contrast with Western “dynamism.”

In addition, the Chinese system of meritocratic government was deeply troubling to a West built on stratified class privilege. A civilization without hereditary aristocrats was unfathomable and terrifying to the Western ruling class. Montesquieu, (borrowing from Giovanni Botero) thus concocted the trope that China’s more egalitarian system had to be “despotic”—despotic for him because it threatened the “liberties” (aristocratic privileges) of his class. Hegel chiseled this canard into the Western consciousness with an armchair theory of “Oriental Despotism,” whereby the Chinese had failed to evolve due to inherent, characterological flaws in its people and its political culture. Marx chimed in with the “Asiatic mode of production,” and Weber and Wittfogel also reinforced it. These allegations of “despotism”—despite being total distortions of Chinese governance–have infused all Western discourses about China since.

A civilization without hereditary aristocrats was unfathomable and terrifying to the Western ruling class. Montesquieu, (borrowing from Giovanni Botero) thus concocted the trope that China’s more egalitarian system had to be “despotic”—despotic for him because it threatened the “liberties” (aristocratic privileges) of his class. These allegations of “despotism”—despite being total distortions of Chinese governance–have infused all Western discourses about China since.

Enter the Bandits

At the same time, “embalmed” Chinese “inferiority” notwithstanding, the West craved the exquisite consumer goods of China—tea, silk, porcelain—and this created huge trade imbalances. The Western response to balance the books was narco-trafficking: smuggling in industrial amounts of opium—at its peak, up to 9 million pounds a year. When China objected and opposed this on sovereign and moral grounds and confiscated the drugs, war was declared. Reparations were forced, concessions extracted, and the country plundered, looted, and destroyed. In one show of force to the Chinese, the Summer Palace of the Emperor was sacked by Lord Elgin, which Victor Hugo described thus:

There was, in a corner of the world, a wonder of the world…. All that can be begotten of the imagination…was there…. Build a dream, a dazzling cavern of human fantasy with the face of a temple and palace…. This edifice, as enormous as a city, had been built by the centuries…. This wonder has disappeared.

One day two bandits entered the Summer Palace. One plundered, the other burned.

All the treasures of all our cathedrals put together could not equal this formidable and splendid museum of the Orient. It contained not only masterpieces of art, but masses of jewelry…. One of the two victors filled his pockets...the other…filled his coffers. And back they came to Europe, arm in arm, laughing away. Such is the story of the two bandits [England & France].

This violence, banditry, and racism, justified by the belief in the subhuman nature of the Chinese, became normalized practice against the Chinese over two centuries, and great American fortunes—Perkins, Astor, Forbes, Cabot, Delano (Roosevelt)—and Ivy league institutions at Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia were built on this extraction and narco-trafficking. Hewing to the belief that the Chinese were less than human, enterprising Euro-American drug barons pushed opium that addicted 10% of the population, essentially “roofie-ing” an entire nation and stealing its wealth. Just as U.S. Southern wealth had been built on the decimation of black bodies through the slave trade, U.S. East Coast wealth was built on the destruction of Chinese bodies through the drug trade, in what historian John K. Fairbank described as “the most long-continued and systematic international crime of modern times.”

Dehumanization, humiliation, assault, theft, rape, colonization, appropriation–these became the standard Western approach towards China and the Chinese; the Chinese people were “filthy yellow hordes,” an inferior, subhuman race, lacking agency, fit only to be colonized, exploited, enslaved, lynched, erased, and wherever possible, extinguished through race war. It would get worse.

Cold and Hot war: A Chinaman’s Chance

Inside U.S. territory itself, the mythology of “yellow peril”—originally a German colonial war trope—became pervasive. Newspaper editor Horace Greeley, argued that the Chinese were “uncivilized, unclean, and filthy beyond all conception, without any of the higher domestic or social relations; lustful and sensual in their dispositions; every female is a prostitute of the basest order.” Greeley, a progressive (who employed a young Marx as a reporter), was simply mouthing the platitudes of his day; much worse than rhetoric was the routine violence.  Prefiguring similar present-day fears that Chinese were stealing jobs, wealth, or threatening America, thousands of Chinese were massacred, lynched, set on fire, expelled from their communities in the late 19th Century: in 1871, the LA Chinatown massacre, in 1880, the Denver Yellow Peril pogrom, in 1885 Wyoming Rock Springs massacre, the Issaquah Valley attack, the Arson of Seattle’s Chinatown, the Tacoma riot, in 1886 the Seattle Riot of 1886, the Oregon Hell’s Canyon massacre. “A Chinaman’s chance” became a common term: to be Chinese was to be subject to sudden death at any time at the whim of white people.

In response, the Chinese hid themselves inside ghettos where they could, fled pogroms, arson, and mass lynchings, and kept their heads down, “eating bitter” and trying to stay alive. Where they managed to settle down without being killed, they were subjected to cultural erasure, economic blockade, social isolation, a ban on owning property and businesses, and a proscription on marrying and having children, in short, planned elimination.

A minor respite during WWII, when the U.S. allied itself with the Chinese KMT (Kuomintang) against the Japanese gave a small glimmer of reprieve, as local leaders tried to establish breathing space, and the Japanese took on the role of the “bad Asians.” This lasted until the Chinese communists liberated themselves in 1949, and wrested back their own country. “China has stood up,” Mao declared, igniting jubilation throughout the third world and sending shockwaves of horror through the colonial west. This arrant act of self-liberation and self-determination—along with the U.S.’s astonishment that the monstrous KMT fascists they had courted and funded had been trounced–unleashed a hysterical new wave of Sinophobia during the McCarthy era. High-ranking Congressional committees demanded “Who lost China?”—as if it had been theirs—and purged the State Department of the moderate “China-hands,” who had been sympathetic or informed about China and its political institutions. A paroxysm of anti-China and anti-Asian hatred would shiver and fester throughout the cold war, burning, stoking and consuming itself through two hot wars (the Korean war and the Vietnam war), counterinsurgencies (Malaya), politicide (Indonesia), and smoldering on through the Nixon era, and crackling back alive to the flushed, red hot heat of the current moment.

In a country built on settler-colonial racism, this violent, racist, anti-China hatred—one of the most enduring legacies and traditions of the West—is the noxious Petri dish in which this propaganda for war is being cultured and vectored.

To this day, these stereotypes—ideological templates–are readily applied, for example, as regards Covid-19. In the Sinophobic Western press, Covid-19 is allegedly caused by dirty Chinese eating habits, dishonest cover-up, depraved indifference to life, despotic suppression of information, and dangerous intent towards the West. In a word, the Chinese are dirty, dishonest, depraved, despotic, and dangerous. Every day, these racist slanders are plastered and repeated, ad nauseam and ad infinitum, in Western outlets like The Guardian, The Washington Post, or The New York Times, and then catapulted into orbit by Twitter and Facebook.  White supremacy and its attendant anti-Asian fear and hatred are some of the oldest, most enduring, most deep-rooted hatreds in the Western mind. Underneath the shallow topsoil of civility and liberal tolerance, it festers and simmers in angry, molten layers of the subconscious, quick to flare up in white-hot violence at any perceived slight or challenge to white superiority, and rapidly weaponized as political expediency requires.

Realpolitik: Opening And Closure

Miraculously, during the 70’s, a battered and bruised U.S., humbled from defeats in the Vietnam war, and seeking a realpolitik to untangle the quagmire, decided to open relations with China to counterbalance the Soviet Union. Despite over a century of hatred, and the containment of the Russians for being an “Asiatic Race,” the U.S. normalized relations with Chinese, and thus began a short, temporary, realist honeymoon, a brief respite from this race-baiting and race hatred.

This idyll was not to last. After the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989, two things became readily apparent: 1) there was no further political need to engage with China, since the primary reason (the threat of the Soviet Union) had gone away, and 2) it was clear for anyone understanding history and geography that China could become a challenger to the United States itself, due to its size, capacity, and dynamism.

Thus the long, unabated, and persistent thread of anti-China hatred—red-scare-yellow-peril-thinking, reinvigorated again with the persistent white fragility about new challenges to supremacy—came back with a vengeance. Despite continued engagement with China from the Nixon to the Clinton era, Sinophobia remained a silent, underground political force with a tremendous gravitational pull. Two groups were important in giving these forces concrete shape and form.

The Empire Strikes Back: Yoda And His Jedis

Andrew Marshall, who died last year in March, was often referred to as “Yoda.”  He was the Pentagon’s Oracle, directing its secretive internal think tank, the Office of Net Assessment, for 42 years, and was top advisor to 12 Secretaries of Defense. Originally part of an elite group of econometric thinkers at RAND (Herman “Strangelove” Kahn, James Schlesinger, Daniel Ellsberg, Albert Wohlstetter), they worked on game theoretic & stochastic modeling of complex phenomena, and on how to strategize the unthinkable and the insane: how to win at nuclear Armageddon.

Throughout his long tenure at the inner sanctum, Marshall had two key obsessions: U.S. military supremacy, first against the Soviet Union, then after the fall of the USSR, against China. Post-1991, he became singularly obsessed with preventing China’s rise to power. Using a deft mixture of threat inflation (through recondite “net” assessments & heterodox “team B” reviews), classified white papers, cryptic pronouncements to the power elite, and the incessant cultivation of a cult of loyalists, Marshall kept the Pentagon’s gravy train running on time, while instilling in his followers a paranoid, “long durée” mindset of endless and moving threat inflation.

Throughout his long tenure at the inner sanctum, Marshall had two key obsessions: U.S. Military supremacy, first against the Soviet Union, then after the fall of the USSR, against China. Post-1991, he became singularly obsessed with preventing China’s rise to power.

Marshall’s proteges, Wolfowitz, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Cohen, Krepinevich, Pillsbury, Herman Kahn, Richard Perle, Richard Armitage, Michael O’Hanlon, and countless other neocon heavyweights were graduates of “St. Andrew’s Prep School” or the “Church of St. Andrew,” and mentored into Marshall’s world view and strategies. These ideologues had suckled at the woozy philosophical teat of Leo Strauss (imagining they were imbibing Plato, Hegel, or Kojeve) and graduated from Ivy institutions funded from Chinese opium smuggling. Marshall fed them solid food, C-rations, and the bloody red meat that cut and sharpened their fangs for ideological and political battle.

In 1992, a fully teethed group of Marshall’s neocon protegés penned the Defense Guidance Planning (DPG) document that came to be known as the “Wolfowitz Doctrine.”  A preposterous, overweening document, embarrassing upon leakage for its hubris, irrationality, and illegality, it was immediately disavowed but not discarded. A few years later, it was redacted and upgraded into the PNAC (“The Project for a New American Century”)’s Mein Kampf-like document, “Rebuilding Americas Defenses.” This was, in essence, an unhinged plan for total world domination (“unipolar global dominance”) in all domains of war (“full spectrum dominance”), unfettered by international law or any sense of proportion, rationality, or morality. Borrowing from the DPG its call for the unencumbered use of aggressive, pre-emptive war, including the use of nuclear and biological warfare, it postulated a “Pearl Harbor-like” incident to operationalize. Not long after, this doctrine became realized under Rumsfeld and Cheney, bringing us the chaos, murder, tragedy of Iraq and Afghanistan and the endless catastrophic wars of the post-Bush years.

Contemporaneously, with the Soviet Union dissolved, and the U.S. pressing NATO right up against the flank of Russia, the U.S. also began to cross-hatch the contours of a containment strategy against an emerging China, the next potential challenger to U.S. global domination.

Marshall and his Jedis began explicit, long term countermoves. Even as the Middle East continued to spiral into chaos, yet more wide-ranging and ambitious plans were hatched against the Middle Kingdom. A strategy to withdraw from the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF) was initially floated (and later, with the blessing of the CFR, circulated, and eventually implemented). Aggressive forward bases were planned in the early 2000’s, then built in East Asia along the first island chain, placing deadly and destabilizing strategic weaponry right up against China’s throat and belly. New alliances and strategies were drawn up, and old alliances reinforced and rekindled, and a dangerously empire-nostalgic Japan was enabled in erasing history and remilitarizing to the hilt as the spear tip against China. Eventually, as all these pieces fell into place, Hillary Clinton would stage the coming out party: the declaration in 2011, of the “Pacific Pivot/Pivot to Asia” in Foreign Policy Magazine. Clinton’s debutante declaration was a dog-whistle marvel of cant and obfuscation. A plan to move 60% of U.S. firepower to encircle and contain China through bases, weaponry, and alliances, while engaging in multi-domain hybrid warfare, was sold as a “historical rebalancing.” With the blessing of Obama’s cabinet, Marshall’s China threat was finally getting policy primetime.

During this time, another of Marshall’s  busy, brainy proteges, military officer Andrew Krepinevich, started to work out the nuts and bolts of actual war with China. At the CSBA (Center for Strategic Budgetary Assessment), Krepinevich, under Marshall’s guidance and funding, wrote out the details of the war doctrine against China, “AirSea Battle”—a China-directed counterpart to the Soviet-era “AirLand Battle”—involving decapitating and blinding strikes deep into Chinese territory, and instantiating Marshall’s “revolution in military affairs” for U.S. supremacy in the Western Pacific theater of war. RAND and the CFR chimed in, rendering into granular and global detail the strategies and order of battle.

Another of Andrew’s powerful proteges was Michael Pillsbury. A serious operator, Pillsbury had assisted in the creation of the regime change “governmental” NGO known as the NED, the weaponization of the Mujahideen in Afghanistan, the implementation of politicide in Latin America (known as the Reagan Doctrine), but most importantly, he was credited with initiating the idea of the “China card” in 1973. Under the good offices of Marshall, Pillsbury published a book called “The Hundred Year Marathon,” scripting a fact-free document of paranoid threat inflation, racist scare-mongering, and orientalist slander that is now standard China doctrine. In an alphabetic royal flush of Sinophobes (Lighthizer-Mnuchin-Navarro-O’Brien-Pillsbury-Pompeo-Pence-Ross), Pillsbury was the most important “China authority” of Everything Under the Heavens in the Trump Kingdom of Sinophobia.

Recommended: What Does Critique Do? On the Critical Predation of China

China Syndrome: Blue team, Red Peril

As the original U.S. reason for allying with Beijing—to counterbalance Moscow—became moot, another group of China-bashers, far-right ideologues with sharp axes to grind from the Cold War also began to crawl out of the cracks. Calling themselves the “blue team” or “panda sluggers,” they derided the U.S. “panda-hugging” business class who wanted continued engagement with China, seeing China only as a mortal and irreconcilable communist threat. During the Clinton administration, they formed a loose coalition, coming together with funding under PNAC, using the Washington Times and Weekly Standard as their platforms. Although the “Blue Team” had no official members, published no formal policy statements, and had no offices—initially meeting in a garage, then at the Tabard Inn on N Street—they included key Congress members and staff, think tankers, journalists, and lobbyists.

Among them, former CIA analyst William C. Triplet and congressional staffer Edward Timperlake went on to write a lurid series of conspiracy books alleging quid-pro-quo between Clinton and China (Year of the Rat; Red Dragon Rising). This was a bizarro world where Taiwanese lobbyists with Chinese Mafia connections were acting as agents for the PRC government and manipulating the White House. They also alleged Chinese theft of military secrets, slave labor, the proliferation of WMD to Iran and other “rogue” states, and insinuated that Clinton’s “constructive engagement” was knowingly undermining the U.S. for the benefit of the Chinese. These allegations put into ink a conspiratorial mythology about a dangerous, corrupt, and belligerent China, echoes that fed into an existing subterranean current of paranoid lies about China.

These “blue team” members, cross-pollinating with Marshall’s proteges, were a rogues gallery of high-powered political operators: Michael Ledeen, Frank Gaffney,  Robert Kagan, Bill Kristol, Michael Pillsbury, Bill Gertz, Gary Bauer, Peter Navarro, Elliot Abrams, Richard Scaiffe, John Bolton were among those listed as “members.” Dana Rohrabacher, Tom DeLay, Nancy Pelosi, Robert Byrd were also considered to be fellow travelers.

These people built powerful commissions and institutions focused on attacking China, including the Congressional Executive Commission on China (CECC), the US-China Security Review Commission. The Taiwan Security Enhancement Act was also written during this time. In particular, the CECC appointed itself watchdog of Chinese trade, technology, labor and human rights, saturating Congress with an unending “blue team” litany of Chinese “abuses.”

The most virulent and extreme of all these China hawks was Frank Gaffney, who recycled the alarmist Cold War group, “Committee on the Present Danger,” into the current “Committee on the Present Danger: China,” contending that “there is no hope of coexistence with China.” Gaffney’s ideology and guiding principles coincide with official positions on China and key U.S. foreign policy; moreover, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s speech and actions on China reflect his close affiliation and affinity with Gaffney.

What the Pivot is: the Geostrategy of China-bashing

Much of the “blue team’s” ideology and theorizing followed pre-existing currents of ideological posturing and hate-speech but have incorporated sharper geopolitical and geo-economic dimensions.

Western history can be seen as having several inflection points: one was 1492, the advent of the “Columbian Era.” The Columbian era is the era of sea-faring, sea-power-based Western colonial and imperial empires. The demise of the Columbian era was foreshadowed by an Oxford geographer in 1904 who put forth what is now known as the “Heartland Theory.” In a nutshell, it is a land-based theory of power that predicts the end of sea-based powers: “Who rules East Europe (Eurasia) commands the Heartland; who rules the Heartland commands the World-Island; who rules the World-Island commands the world.” It also concluded that “Were the Chinese [to] conquer its territory [of the Russian Empire], they might constitute the yellow peril to the world’s freedom.” This maxim and the anxiety it provoked was red-lined in Brezinski’s “Grand Chess game”: “No Eurasian challenger should emerge that can dominate Eurasia and thus also challenge U.S. global pre-eminence.”

In 1992, Marshall’s protégé, Paul Wolfowitz formulated the above strands into a formal doctrine, in the above mentioned DPG  (Defense Planning guidance) document:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival…that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union…to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region to generate global power…. The U.S. must…protect a new order that [convinces] potential competitors that they need not aspire to a greater role or pursue a more aggressive posture to protect their legitimate interests. In non-defense areas, we must…discourage them from challenging our leadership or seeking to overturn the established political and economic order. We must maintain the mechanism for deterring potential competitors from even aspiring to a larger regional or global role.

This can be better understood by looking at a map:

This is a map of the world, drawn from a topologist’s eye. It shows relationships, not distances or area.  From this map you can note the following things:

• China has more borders than any other country in the world.  This also gives it the possibility of connecting with more countries than any other.

• Blue lines/corridors are oceans: The top two thirds is the “world island” or “pivot state”–it contains most of the world’s population, resources, and wealth, and it can be connected as a single entity through overland routes or short ocean hops.

• The bottom is the Americas. It is topologically isolated from the world island. As sea lane control becomes less important, it will also lose prominence and relative power if the world island unifies. It’s clear that unifying power will probably arise in China, whose overland paths using high-speed rail, roads, pipelines, and ports can be easily built and connected, in a “new silk road.”

• The U.S. needs to fracture the world island to maintain its global power. If you color in the places where China is encircled, or where the US is waging war/fracturing societies/creating chaos, this is exactly where the fault lines of the global conflict are, and reveal what U.S. strategy is.

Here is a second map:

The U.S. has actually surrounded China with 400 military bases, bristling with strategic and tactical weaponry. It also has war-gamed out China’s key vulnerability: the chokepoint of the South China Sea. War in the South China Sea would disrupt $5.3 Trillion of China’s external trade and 77% of China’s oil imports. In this scenario, the U.S. does not have to win a shooting war with China in the South China Sea. The war just has to happen, and the disruption to trade could crash China’s economy.

The U.S. has actually surrounded China with 400 military bases, bristling with strategic and tactical weaponry. It also has war-gamed out China’s key vulnerability: the chokepoint of the South China Sea. War in the South China Sea would disrupt $5.3 Trillion of China’s external trade and 77% of China’s oil imports. [5] In this scenario, the U.S. does not have to win a shooting war with China in the South China Sea. The war just has to happen, and the disruption to trade could crash China’s economy. The map shows the shipping lanes that would be disrupted. China’s first response to the U.S. pivot and encirclement, especially in the South China Sea—its key choke point—was to build defensive military facilities along some of the islands, to deter U..S incursion and to raise the cost of interference. Its other, much more ambitious response was the Belt & Road Initiative (BRI), which constitutes a long overland escape from the encirclement, similar to its “long march” during its encirclement by the fascist KMT. The BRI travels through Southeast Asia, then overland through Central Asia, to the Mediterranean, and then Europe and Africa. In particular:

• CMEC (China-Myanmar Economic Corridor) travels through Rakhine State and exits to the Indian Ocean at Kyaukphyu port (bypassing the Strait of Malacca).

• CPEC (China-Pakistan Economic Corridor) to Gwadar port transits directly to the Arabian Sea and the Persian Gulf.

• Xinjiang is the key overland route for BRI to exit China to Central Asia, with Iran also a key node.

• Djibouti at the horn of Africa is the entry node to Africa (the Sahel, and the South)

As it does this, BRI becomes the physical realization of Mackinder’s “heartland” in Eurasia—the “pivot state” connecting the “world island” into a single economic bloc and raising China to the status of the key regional power, accomplishing exactly what Brezinski and Wolfowitz sought to prevent.

Mindful of this development, and aware of the rapidly ticking biological clock on U.S. power, the U.S. is currently rapidly escalating hostilities in the South China Sea (SCS), most recently with war games, U2 incursions, belligerent passages of aircraft carriers, guided missile destroyers, submarines. China’s response has been to launch “carrier killer” missiles into the region.

Until recently, the U.S. claimed that it was not an interested party to the SCS, just that it was concerned about “Freedom of Navigation.” Now it is openly taking about blockade and strangulation of China  and outright piracy against Chinese ships through media proxies.

It has also recently conducted drone war exercises for assaulting islands in the South China Sea, with down-to-the-smallest detail precision and preparation.

The U.S. is also going directly after the BRI. It is sanctioning the Chinese companies alleged to have done construction in the SCS (all the claimants have done construction, including building airfields; China is not unique). These companies are also involved in construction of the BRI; for example, China Communications Construction Company (CCCC) alone is reportedly involved in 923 projects in 157 countries. U.S. sanctions are  an explicit attempt to dismantle the BRI. Likewise, the “Five Eyes” have made moves to block  other “road” of the BRI, its accompanying  “digital silk road” (communications-5G-blockchain infrastructure). This is yet another of the reasons why Huawei has been targeted for destruction.

The U.S. is also in the process of stationing intermediate range missiles all across the South China Sea, and around the first island chain surrounding China, as well as attempting to press gang South Korea into hosting them. This is yet another layer of dangerous escalation, and it will prove to be very, very destabilizing.

Twilight of Capitalism

The final dimension to the U.S.-China competition is economic: this is the uncanny fact that China’s “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics” works and outclasses Western neoliberal capitalism by leaps and bounds. In terms of developing an economy, raising living standards, creating public wealth, serving and meeting its people’s needs, and dealing with crises, China beats the capitalist West hands down.

Even as they claimed that such a state-led economy could never compete against the superior free-market economy of the U.S., the Trump administration has insistently demanded that China dismantle their planned economy in trade negotiations, because of its superior advantages over capitalism.

This was not supposed to be: Clintonite “Panda Huggers” had always justified, hubristically, that their engagement with China would result in China’s liberalization and total transformation—the inevitable, inexorable result of engaging with a superior Western political ideology and economic system. They also insisted that if China continued as it had with its planned economy and ”autocratic“ ways in a modern era, it would simply fail: it would end up like the Soviet Union or North Korea—it had no choice but to become more Western, more neoliberal, more capitalist.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the market.

China built a system that has brought more than 850 million people out of poverty in a few short decades, ended domestic extreme poverty in 2020, and has already surpassed the U.S. in PPP economy size and healthy life expectancy.

China’s thriving, effective Central government—with a 93.1% approval rate—breaks all Western conceptions of development, governance, legitimacy, and of course, superiority.

With 80% of its top leadership scientists or engineers, China also outranks the U.S. in patents filed, top scientific papers published, and is a world leader in fields such as AI, robotics, quantum computing, 5G, highspeed rail, advanced industrial production, next generation IT, materials science, and sustainable energy development, low-carbon eco-cities, and reforestation. It has also pledged to go carbon neutral by 2060, essentially giving the world an outside chance to still beat global warming—despite being a historical carbon creditor. With its scientific leadership, whole-of-society public health strategies, and its valuing of every human life, it has also shown that it can organize to defeat a mass pandemic in weeks—and by overriding capitalist markets whenever and wherever it sees fit.

Meanwhile the U.S. still struggles with the largest number of cases and deaths from Covid-19—a death rate 200 times that of China’s—and is incapable of preventing Covid-19 among its own top leadership. To boot, first in 2008, and then in 2020, the U.S. neoliberal capitalist economy was shown up to be a jacked-up deck of cards, rescued only by massive Chinese debt-purchasing and endless printing of fiat money.

In contrast, China has demonstrated that it has developed an alternative, non-Western, non-capitalist model of development—without war, invasion, colonization, slavery, regime change, primitive accumulation—that the world can emulate and follow.

Once you realize that, you understand why the U.S. ruling classes are so desperate to erase China and its example: China offers a threatening alternative model of development that is non-capitalist, non-Western, and non-colonial. As such, it undermines the West’s neocolonial domination of the Third World and its debt-trap-based forced underdevelopment, subservience, and expropriation. It also offers a model of state-led ecological development. All this signals new possibilities of hope and transformation for the world. The ruling classes in the West will go to war to prevent this.

China offers a threatening alternative model of development that is non-capitalist, non-Western, and non-colonial. As such, it undermines the West’s neocolonial domination of the Third World and its debt-trap-based forced underdevelopment, subservience, and expropriation.

Where Does This All End?

Despite China’s assurances that it does not want war, hot or cold, that it seeks win-win cooperation and co-existence with all countries, and that it disdains hegemony, the U.S. continually escalates, provokes, and threatens China, all the while dismantling off-ramps channels of communication and global institutions for cooperation and de-escalation.

The conclusion to draw is hard, but obvious: if things continue as they have, this can only lead to direct military confrontation and kinetic war.

Doubling down on racism, sexism, capitalism, and militarism, the Democratic regime not only silences demands for viable reform and abolition by the Sandernistas, BLM, and Me Too, but also ignores the non-interventionist, peace-demanding wishes of the majority of voters, dismissing their demands for a better system and less violent foreign policy.

Biden’s doctrine toward China will be a continuation of the noxious arc of history and planning begun by Marshall in the late 1970s. The think tank advising Biden on foreign policy, CNAS, a near-rhyming clone to PNAC, has grandfathered in most of existing anti-China doctrine, and has mapped out in obsessive detail, the next steps of a highly destructive and dangerous strategy of confrontation with China. The key difference is that Biden’s regime  will “unite” countries more skillfully against China, pivot away from Trump’s neomercantilism towards a more “globalist” approach, and likely implement some revised version of the TPP, the 12 nation economic bloc against China.

Here are some key points to understand:

• Escalation to war is bipartisan: there is no lesser evil here. The racist, capitalist, imperial ruling classes cannot and will not tolerate a rising or equal China in a multi-polar world. They would rather see the end of the world than an end to capitalism or white supremacy.

• One subset of this group believes that they can actually win a war against China, or at the very least force its subjugation to the U.S. This submission will not happen, given the actual balance of forces and Chinese determination to resist.

• The U.S. wants global supremacy but if the ruling class can’t have ordered supremacy, they are not averse to global disintegration and chaos. Proteges of Hayek and Leo Strauss, they thrive on “revolutionary disorder.” One fallback model of U.S. supremacy is to plunge the rest of the world back into the dark ages through hybrid warfare—while the U.S. controls the key systems of communication, information, surveillance, finance, rent extraction, along with the corridors of maritime transport.

• There is a third group of elite hawks who are millenarian Christians. Although a minority, they hold powerful positions. These believe in the salvation and rapture of the faithful as existing “contradictions” are heightened into Armageddon. These are religious zealots with no brakes or constraints on their appetite for war.

• War, if it happens, could rapidly turn nuclear. The U.S. no longer has “overmatch” in conventional weapons, and no longer subscribes to deterrence. Instead, its declaratory policy allows nuclear weapons to be used against “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.” [6] Since the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. has explicitly prepared for nuclear war with China, and threatens “intolerable damage” in response to “non-nuclear or nuclear aggression.” [7] The Chinese have disavowed nuclear first strike—their nuclear capacity is currently minimal and purely defensive—but in case of war the US military could easily resort to the use of low-yield nuclear weapons[iii] or even decapitating nuclear first strikes [8] to overcome its conventional weaknesses.  China’s deterrence would then have to shift to “hair trigger,” “launch on warning.” This means that war could rapidly escalate to large scale nuclear strikes, which many scientists predict would result in nuclear winter, dooming most forms of organic life on the planet.

• Modern “democracies” require constant media manipulation and propaganda, to manufacture consent for war. As a result, we are living in time of total deceit, as Orwell put it:  “Every war when it comes, or before it comes, is represented not as a war but as an act of self-defense against a homicidal maniac…. Political language…is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” William Casey, CIA director summarized this succinctly: “We’ll know when our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.” [9]

War, if it happens, could rapidly turn nuclear. Since the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review, the U.S. has explicitly prepared for nuclear war with China, and threatens “intolerable damage” in response to “non-nuclear or nuclear aggression.”

What Then, Is To Be Done?

Our work is cut out for us: “In war, the first casualty is truth.”  Our task is to prevent the first casualty, challenge the lies; the second, to organize and work for peace.   

As we approach elections, the possibility of an October surprise increases. Remember:

• Information war precedes, justifies, and enables kinetic war, therefore you must think critically and defensively; do not take anything attacking China at face value.

• Evaluate everything for a) source b) logic, sense, rationality c) bracket & evaluate emotional triggers or trigger words d) look at counter-evidence/arguments

• Make your own judgments, draw your own conclusions: seek truth from facts

Don’t be fooled by the engineering of “truthiness”:

Stories and lies seem credible when they are 1) repeated incessantly 2) resemble pre-existing stories (especially ones that are projected from our own disowned flaws), 3) have some tiny grain of plausibility mixed in 4) seem coherent or manufacture coherence through multiple sources, and 5) tug at your heartstrings.

This means that we have to:

• Watch out for memes and repetition: watch out for stories that seem self-replicating, self-distributing, repetitive, and create an echo chamber—qualities that  make them seem real and convincing even when they are lies. Even debunked stories serve as compost for more lies. Remember also that U.S. social media is handmaiden to the war machine—the worst is Twitter [10]—it promotes war propaganda and routinely purges counter-narratives.

• Distinguish the coherence and validation of a story that has multiple sources of verification from planted-and-echo-chambered-stories (for example, anything about China connected to WUC (World Uyghur Congress)-Adrian Zenz–ASPI-Nathan Ruser-nexus; the Lausan-Jacobin-Nation-DemocracyNow-tendency; or The Guardian-NYTimes-Washington Post-CFR-cabal or other combinations thereof). Outlets like these are not channels of independent verification; they are often a set of single sourced memes skillfully distributed out and repeated through different channels, part of the fire hose [11] strategy of war propaganda.

• Watch out for emotional trigger words: “genocide,” “slavery,” “concentration camp,” “trafficking,” “sterilization,” “theft/IP theft,” “espionage,” “cyber warfare,” attributed without any proof. These are trigger words designed to bypass critical evaluation, appealing to your emotions: fear, pity, and outrage.

• Watch out for projection and gaslighting: the U.S. has a long history of slave and prison slave labor [12], of Third World debt-traps, of mistreating/torturing/killing Muslims, of genociding Indigenous peoples, of mass incarceration, of police brutality, of cultural genocide, mass sterilization, medical testing without consent [13]. If you see these words or allegations alleged against China, especially in a context where it makes no sense, evaluate [14] whether it seems real because there is actual proof, or because it is a convenient projection of the U.S./West’s own disowned violence, criminality, and brutality.

• Speak up and simply call out the propaganda for what it is: lies to enable war and war-profiteering. But don’t get trapped in the weeds of debunking—they will spread a 1000 new lies before you’ve refuted a single one: “Don’t expect to counter the firehose of falsehood with the squirt gun of truth”—cut it off at the root.

• Do not allow yourself to be silenced. Be prepared to be criticized as a “human rights denier.” Not having truth on their side, this is what the worst human rights abusers will always resort to: shut the f*ck up [or else].  Don’t be intimated, and don’t let them silence you. Make your voice heard!

• Last but not least, organize! Despair is not an option!  The following are good places to start:

https://peacepivot.org/

https://www.codepink.org/china

https://www.nocoldwar.org/

https://www.popularresistance.org/tag/china/

This article was written with gratitude for the memory and inspiration of Kevin Zeese, a tireless fighter for truth, peace, and justice. Many thanks also to John Pilger for his kind feedback and encouragement.

Endnotes:

[1] Amnesty International Iraq/Occupied Kuwait Human Rights Violations, MDE 14/16/90: p56 https://www.amnesty.org/download/Documents/MDE140161990ENGLISH.PDF

[2] For a possible missile placement map, see Barrie, Elleman, Nouwens: The End of the Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces Treaty: Implications for Asia, P31 Map 2.2 https://www.iiss.org/-/media/files/publications/rsa-2020/rsa20-chapter-2—the-end-of-the-intermediate-range-nuclear-forces-treaty-implications-for-asia.pdf

[3] For example, the German Jesuit Missionary, Adam Schall was appointed to high bureaucratic office in the court of the Ching Dynasty

[4] Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste (1741), Brookes, Richard (ed.), The General History of China, 3rd ed., Vols. I, II, III, & IV, London: J. Watts.

& Du Halde, Jean-Baptiste (1735), Description Geographique, Historique, Chronologique, Politique, et Physique de l’Empire de la Chine et de la Tartarie Chinoise [A Geographical, Historical, Chronological, Political, and Physical Description of the Empire of China and of Chinese Tartary], Vol. I, II, III, & IV, Paris: P.-G. le Mercier.

[5] Department of Defense China Military Power Report, p133  https://media.defense.gov/2020/Sep/01/2002488689/-1/-1/1/2020-DOD-CHINA-MILITARY-POWER-REPORT-FINAL.PDF

[6] 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review, p21.  https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF

[7] 2018 US Nuclear Posture Review, p32.  https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF

[8]2018 US Nuclear Posture Review, pp54-55  https://media.defense.gov/2018/Feb/02/2001872886/-1/-1/1/2018-NUCLEAR-POSTURE-REVIEW-FINAL-REPORT.PDF

Also, Chinese PLA assessment: http://www.81.cn/jfjbmap/content/2019-06/20/content_236472.htm

[9] Ray McGovern, Russia Gate’s Last Gasp, Consortium News https://consortiumnews.com/2020/06/29/ray-mcgovern-russiagates-last-gasp/

[10] As news of horrific assaults by HK rioters on journalists spread through the mediasphere on June 12th, within hours, Twitter shut down 170,000 accounts on the ground that they were “promoting narratives favorable to the CPC”: https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/information-operations-june-2020.html. According to the Guardian, “The major themes of the tweets were that that Hong Kong protesters were violent, and the US was interfering with the protests; accusations about Guo; the Taiwan election; and praise of China’s response to the Covid-19 pandemic”—which turned out to be true. Twitter coordinates with ASPI, a key source of anti-China propaganda.

[11] RAND offers a good analysis of this technique here, although it fails to mention that this is what is being used against China by the West: https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/perspectives/PE100/PE198/RAND_PE198.pdf

[12] For example, ASPI makes unfounded allegations of Chinese slave labor while being funded by US corporations that are confirmed to use US prison slave labor

[13] For example, the NY Times concocted an article on “non-consensual” Chinese vaccine testing, which doesn’t hold up to any scrutiny.  Among other things, it confounds the risk profiles of Western m-RNA & ADV-vectored vaccines that have never been approved for human use, with the time-tested inactivated vaccines that the Chinese are using.

[14] Some good resources are available at Qiao Collective:

https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/education/xinjiang

https://www.qiaocollective.com/en/articles/sinophobia-inc

The Grayzone: https://thegrayzone.com/tag/uighurs/

Popular Resistance: https://popularresistance.org/xinjiang-and-uyghurs-what-youre-not-being-told/

World Affairs Blog:  https://worldaffairs.blog/2020/09/20/uyghur-xinjiang-explained-in-four-minutes/

Roderick Day:  https://threader.app/thread/1287411708374454273

The flags of U.S. client states, anti-communist regimes, and pre-revolution puppet states dotted the sea of MAGA hats and Confederate flags at the Capitol Hill mobs. Making sense of why requires understanding the convergence between imperialism abroad and fascism at home. 

On January 6th, 2021, in a premeditated plan of action to “stop the steal” of the November presidential election about to be certified by Congress, thousands of Trump supporters stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C. Met with a conciliatory Capitol Police force who literally “opened the gates” with a wink and a nod, the mob swarmed the seat of U.S. power, occupying the House and Senate chambers and taking selfies in the abandoned offices of Nancy Pelosi and other Democratic opponents. 

The “insurrection” was a naked declaration of white supremacist extremism: from Auschwitz sweatshirts to absurdist Viking costumes, the aesthetics of racial fascism dominated the landscape. Yet, in addition to explicit symbols of white supremacy, the landscape was littered with curious symbols of international solidarity: flags representing the former South Vietnam, India, Japan, pre-revolution Cuba, and Hong Kong and Tibetan independence, among others, were all spotted in various footage of the chaos. 

This multicultural dimension of an overtly white supremacist demonstration is not a contradiction: rather, it reflects the convergence between imperialism abroad and fascism at home. Liberal commentators expressed self-righteous dismay at the vandalizing of “our” “iconic symbol of democracy,” worrying about what the events would do to the U.S.’ hallowed image as the shining “city on the hill.” Republican detractors were perhaps more explicit in their deployment of a racist American exceptionalism: Marco Rubio likened the events to that of a “third world country,” while former U.S. President George W. Bush compared the chaos to a “banana republic.”

The smattering of international flags from U.S. client states, overthrown monarchies, and anti-communist bastions conveys a bitter truth: the Capitol “insurrection” marks not the importation of some decontextualized trope of Third World instability, but the return of the very tactics the U.S. empire has used to enforce its will across the globe.

But the smattering of international flags from U.S. client states, overthrown monarchies, and anti-communist bastions conveys a different truth: the Capitol “insurrection” marks not the importation of some decontextualized trope of Third World instability, but the return of the very tactics the U.S. empire has used to obstruct elections, seed color revolutions, and depose left-leaning political leaders across the world during the so-called era of “Pax Americana.” In Malcolm X’s famous conception, the storming of the Capitol is not an unfathomable assault on U.S. democracy, merely the “leader of the free world’s” imperialist chickens coming home to roost.   

Eurocentric World History As Fascist Apologia 

Liberal commentators have framed Trump and his supporters’ “assault on democracy” as antithetical to U.S. democratic norms, likening their violence to a creeping authoritarianism from which the real authoritarians—China, Russia, Iran, or Venezuela—ostensibly seek to profit. But the liberal framing of fascism as antithetical to U.S. democracy sidesteps the rich body of radical thought which identifies imperialism and colonialism as the through lines between liberal democracy and fascism.     

Writing in 1950, Martinique anti-colonialist Aimé Césaire eviscerated the self-righteous Western repudiation of Nazism, arguing that the Allied powers—the leaders of modern imperialism—had in fact “tolerated that Nazism before it was inflicted on them...because, until then, it had been applied only to non-European peoples.” As agents of colonialism, imperialism, and slavery, the so-called bastions of democracy in the post-WWII era had in fact “cultivated” the very Nazism they posed as irreconcilable with their own political economic systems. Indicting capitalist exploitation as the guiding logic of fascism, Césaire declared: “At the end of capitalism...there is Hitler.”    

Césaire wrote in a political moment in which the Allied powers, under the leadership of the ascendant U.S. empire, scurried to conflate the horrors of Nazism and fascism with the international communist movement. Consolidating a hegemonic capitalist-imperialist system with the U.S. at its helm required painting communism—epitomized by the Soviet Union—as a form of “totalitarianism” nearly identical in form to Nazism. Such a move enabled the U.S. to pose growing movements for decolonization and socialist revolution in Korea, Cuba, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, and beyond as forms of creeping totalitarianism, justifying the U.S.’s endless stream of Cold War invasions, occupations, mass killings, and embargoes as a righteous defense of “freedom.” 

President Harry Truman, who oversaw the closing of World War II and its transition into the Cold War, consistently conflated the fights against Nazism and communism. Contrasting Western inaction to Hitler’s rise with the “courage and decisiveness” with which the U.S. “moved against the Communist threat,” Truman praised U.S. intervention in Korea, declaring: “Where free men had failed the test before, this time we met the test.”  

In reality, Truman’s lofty rhetoric concealed the U.S.’s ready deployment of fascist forces to cement its imperial authority. Under the pretenses of global democratic leadership, the U.S. actively recruited and rehabilitated German and Japanese fascists who proved useful for the U.S. empire. For instance, Japanese war criminals who conducted biological experiments on Chinese prisoners and facilitated the “comfort women” system of sexual slavery over China, Korea, and the Philippines evaded trial by the Soviet Union in exchange for sharing research secrets with the U.S. Meanwhile, the political infrastructure of Japanese colonialism in “postcolonial” South Korea and the Philippines was often retained and redeployed under U.S. leadership, offering a near-seamless transition between Japanese colonial fascism and U.S. “democratic stewardship” in East and Southeast Asia. And under Operation Paperclip, thousands of high-ranking Nazi scientists were airlifted from Germany to the United States to work for the U.S. military in the campaign for U.S. scientific supremacy over the Soviet Union in the Cold War space race. 

The historical collaboration and convergence between German and Japanese fascism and U.S. imperialism continues to be suppressed through counterfactual renderings of World War II and Cold War history. For instance, in 2019 the European Parliament adopted a resolution “on the importance of European remembrance for the future of Europe,” promoting the historical memory of “crimes committed by communist, Nazi and other dictatorships” as the basis of “the unity of Europe.” Left out of this “historical” rendering, of course, are some inconvenient truths: that for every U.S. soldier killed fighting the Germans, 80 Soviet soldiers died doing the same; or that at the time of Japan’s surrender, more than half of the Japanese military’s 3.5 million deployed soldiers were occupied fighting Chinese communist and nationalist troops.

Western imperial history has rendered communism the ideological successor of fascism rather than the primary actor responsible for its defeat. But as the Trump era exposes the blurred line between bourgeois democracy and fascism, these anti-communist myths are finally collapsing under their own weight. 

Western imperial history has rendered communism the ideological successor of fascism rather than the primary actor responsible for its defeat. But as the Trump era exposes the blurred line between bourgeois democracy and fascism, these anti-communist myths are finally collapsing under their own weight. 

International Fascism Comes Home

In footage livestreamed just before Trump supporters took the U.S. Capitol building, Jake Angeli—the “Q Anon shaman” who donned a horned fur hat and would soon strut behind the Congressional dias—offered a dubious call for internationalist action:  

“To the people of Venezuela: know you can take your country back too. We are setting the example...you can put an end to communism and globalism. You, too can take back your nation from this evil. You can win your country back!”

The irony should not be lost: the same Trump extremists who have been condemned by the great majority of both Democrats and “rule of law” Republicans express solidarity with the bipartisan project of U.S. regime change against Venezuela’s democratically-elected president Nicolas Maduro. Though President-elect Biden has labeled Capitol Hill rioters as “[bordering] on sedition,” he nonetheless shares their conviction that socialist figures such as Maduro are, in his own words, “thugs and dictators.” That the interests of far-right insurrectionists and the status quo power elite coalesce around support for anti-communist regime change speaks to imperialism’s thorough monopoly on the spectrum of political possibility in the U.S. landscape. 

Liberal media has clung to a comical obtuseness about the internationalist identifications of the Trump rioters, refusing to read the appearance of South Vietnamese, Hong Kong independence, and Batistan Cuban flags as a convergence of U.S. imperialism abroad and white supremacy at home. Quartz, for instance, mused that “it’s unclear why many of these flags appeared.”  

But it is no surprise that the flags of U.S. client states, anti-communist regimes, and pre-revolution puppet states accompanied the sea of MAGA hats and Confederate flags at the Trump riots. Writing from San Quentin prison before his murder in 1971, Black revolutionary and political prisoner George Jackson described U.S. fascism as a logical outgrowth of U.S. imperialism and anti-communism. In Blood in My Eye, Jackson opined:

“We have been consistently misled by fascism’s nationalistic trappings. We have failed to understand its basically international character...One of the most definite characteristics of fascism is its international quality.” 

If fascism, as Jackson argued, "is international capitalism's response to the challenge of international scientific socialism," then anti-communism is the glue that binds the broad fascist coalition behind the pro-Trump mobs. Take, for instance, the small crowd in Miami’s Little Havana that gathered on January 6th. Waving flags of the Republic of Cuba, which until the 1959 revolution functioned as a de facto colony of the U.S. under legislation such as the Platt Amendment, protesters condemned what they considered a “stolen” election. Across the country in San Jose, California, which is home to a large population of the Vietnamese diaspora, organizers of the “Vietnamese Movement for Trump” similarly waved signs saying “America will never be a socialist country,” with many a testimony about their “escape” from communists at the close of the Vietnam War. In uncritically embracing the language of American freedom (“We’re lucky we’re here”), these actors willfully obscure the use of “democracy” at home to facilitate fascist U.S. occupation and intervention the world over.          

The Trump coalition has long brought together a “diverse” assemblage of immigrants and “exiles” who hear in Trump’s MAGA slogan echoes of their own restorationist agenda to reinstate the U.S.-backed puppet governments of their various countries of origin.

Indeed, the Trump coalition has long brought together a “diverse” assemblage of immigrants and “exiles” who hear in Trump’s MAGA slogan echoes of their own restorationist agenda to reinstate the U.S.-backed puppet governments of their various countries of origin. From “Iranians for Trump” who wave the flag of the Pahlavi dynasty—a monarchy widely understood to be a puppet of British and U.S. neocolonialism—to Hong Kong interventionists’ calls for Trump to “make Hong Kong great again,” these right-wing actors wield the language of “diversity” and “authenticity” to add a veneer of progressivism to their programs of imperialist clientelism.    

Recommended: Remembering A People’s War Against Imperialism and Fascism

Sinophobia and fascist anti-communism

Likewise, it is no surprise that the flags of India, Japan, and Australia—which together with the U.S. comprise the “Quad” anti-China security alliance—also appeared at the Capitol Hill mobs. If anti-communism binds this diverse group of Trump sympathizers, anti-Chinese sentiment appears to be a driving engine powering the dangerous coalition. 

That Tokyo’s “stop the steal” rally brought together both explicit homages to Imperial Japan (and the colonial occupations and Nazi alliance it oversaw) and a popular slur conflating Nazism with the rule of the Communist Party of China only speaks to the depraved logic and willful ahistoricism inherent to both fascism and anti-communism.

Perhaps the most explicit symbol of the convergence of fascism and Sinophobia was found not on Capitol Hill, but in Tokyo, Japan. Hours before the “stop the steal” convening took Capitol Hill by storm, Japanese sympathizers held a parallel march through downtown Tokyo. There, a myriad of pro-Trump, Imperial Japanese, and anti-China regalia decorated the crowds, with U.S. and Japanese flags alongside the “rising sun” flag of imperial Japan and “anti-Chinazi” flags popularized by the right-wing Hong Kong protests. That Tokyo’s “stop the steal” rally brought together both explicit homages to Imperial Japan (and the colonial occupations and Nazi alliance it oversaw) and a popular slur conflating Nazism with the rule of the Communist Party of China only speaks to the depraved logic and willful ahistoricism inherent to both fascism and anti-communism.  

Similarly, the presence of flags representing Tibetan, Hong Kong, and “East Turkestan” independence movements at Trump rallies across the country is yet another symptom of the convergence between imperialism abroad and fascism at home (ironically, protesters waved the Hong Kong flag designed by the Communist Party of China in preparation of Hong Kong’s return to China). Just as Hong Kong protesters waved signs calling on President Trump to “make Hong Kong great again,” Trump rioters on Capitol Hill waved the Hong Kong flag, forming a visual shorthand reflecting a transnational alliance of right-wing agitators, colonial nostalgists, and white supremacists.     

Confronting a “multicultural” empire

Understanding the international quality of fascism and anti-communism is crucial to confronting the lies that the U.S. tells about itself, including its role as a proud “watchman on the walls of world freedom." A closer look, however, reveals the “walls of world freedom” to be merely the window dressing of a multicultural empire. 

On January 7, Indian American Republican activist Vincent Xavier tweeted photos of a diverse crowd at the Capitol Hill protests. The caption read: “American patriots - Vietnamese, Indian, Korean & Iranian origins, & from so many other nations & races, who believe massive voter fraud has happened joined rally yesterday in solidarity with Trump.” The far-right, like the U.S. empire more generally, has succeeded in instrumentalizing right-wing diaspora populations to provide a multicultural facade to what remains fundamentally a project of racial capitalism.  

That a select cross-section of native informants and compradors are willing to prostrate their countries of origin to the U.S. machine in exchange for political power will never change the reactionary nature of American exceptionalism and its Trumpian iterations. If we are to move from the facile belief that “it” cannot happen “here,” we must first grasp the international dimension of fascism and its primary manifestations in U.S. imperialism, settler colonialism, and racial slavery. Behind the gross conflation of fascism and communism is a more unsettling truth: if liberalism breeds fascism, anti-communism ignites it.  

The Western left has largely fallen in line behind interventionist platitudes of “standing with the Chinese people, not the Chinese government.” But their cover of “principled critique” elides the fact that criticism does not exist in a vacuum. In this case, it is greasing the wheels for Western imperialist intervention under the auspices of a “new” Cold War. 

Amidst the feverish critiques of China made by a growing cadre of “China scholars,” “media watchers,” and “think tank freelancers” across the Western world (the “free world,” they might tell you), a virulent distaste toward China for supposedly ethical reasons has become the norm. We’ve woken up to find ourselves in a Twilight Zone where the precondition for engaging with Sinophobia is the performance of a different kind of Sinophobic antipathy—one that disavows the possibility of Chinese political legitimacy while it virtue signals the Western critic’s own commitment to “justice.” 

We’ve woken up to find ourselves in a Twilight Zone where the precondition for engaging with Sinophobia is the performance of a different kind of Sinophobic antipathy—one that disavows the possibility of Chinese political legitimacy while it virtue signals the Western critic’s own commitment to “justice.” 

Western critiques of China, however, lay bare its stakes even as it feverishly disavows the very position from which it emerges. As principled Marxists, we must always ask after the historical context and political functions in which our words and actions take meaning. Why, we must ask, is it so enticing to name China as the “new” face of imperialism, even as the United States retains undisputed global military supremacy, with more than 800 military bases abroad and an international sanctions regime enabled by the dollar standard? Why do we continue to insist on the morally-bankrupt argument of “inter-imperialism” and shared sins when the very people whom we benefit by doing so are, in order of significance, the U.S. military, the Euro-American military industrial complex, and international right-wing white supremacist organizations?

***

I. What/who/how are we critiquing?

A series of frighteningly simple assumptions undergird China-watchers’ performance of ethical commitment. Many a think piece has begun with the proclamation that the new era of multipolarity will be defined not by U.S. imperialism, but by Chinese hegemonic ascendence. Such arguments, as they are furthered by Western leftists, adhere to a simple definition of imperialism, usually cropped from Lenin. Their reduced theoretical analysis goes like this: imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism, borne by “the persistent tendency of mature capitalist state systems to generate violent conflict,” as Amiya Kuma has put it. Since China is capitalist, same as the rest of the world, it must also be veering toward imperialism, especially since it seems to be opening a number of trade partnerships with other Global South nations. 

Unlike the late capitalist dons of Europe and the U.S., however, this Chinese “capitalism” is framed as more aggressive and predatorial; China’s relations with other Global South nations can’t be anything but exploitative, since exploitation has been the dominant theme in post-1945 relations between Euro-American empires and the rest. China must be chomping at the bit to rise to similar dominance: her boundless appetite for labor and raw materials from the developing world bespeaks her endless greed, alerting us to the stakes of her menacing rise. (Naturally, this discourse is also pulsating with sexualized pathology and racialized excesses.) Since it is the job of any Marxist to oppose the capitalist foe, “we” must stand against China’s bad-faith practices, and, armed with questionable sources and plenty of U.S. State Department-sponsored media material, “we” must correct China’s malignant development.

One must wonder, really, what the profound ignorance of such Western leftist alarmism really means. Is their eager denouncement of China—red-faced and panting, like a poor child racing to rejoin the “party line”—not altogether a rather bleak disavowal of the international socialist project itself? Consider a widely-cited 2016 article by Ashley Smith from the International Socialist Review, which notes: 

The neoliberal boom from the early 1980s through 2008 is the principle cause of this new imperial rivalry [between the U.S. and China].... States like China have become new centers of capital accumulation. Inevitably these have become increasingly assertive in the world system bringing them into conflict with its hegemonic power, the United States, which has suffered a relative decline in the wake of economic, imperial, and political crises.

The crisis of the “inter-imperial rivalry,” we are told, is one borne by global capitalist integration. This integration, which officially absorbed China starting in the “early 1980s,” has now become so absolute that newly “capitalist” states, “like China,” have become empowered to challenge the old masters for the throne. In other words, Chinese capitalism is the endowing condition of its contemporary opposition to U.S. imperialism.

This assertion is not merely astounding, but comedic. It suggests that, actually, newly acquired capitalist confidence drove developing nations to turn against their Western imperializers. Not because those imperializers committed warfare or covertly installed genocidal dictators, or propped up postwar systems of comprador capitalism across half the world, as this writer might be persuaded to think—but because “capital accumulation” empowered developing nations’ “inevitable” desire for world domination. Hear, hear, the lesser Other can only mimic the hegemonic power, and now they’re threatening to overtake us.

By framing China’s perceived “aggression” as “inevitable,” Smith conveniently elides the possibility of asking a set of much more historically grounded questions—for example, why did China begin allowing Western companies partial domestic access, after thirty years of brutal U.S.-imposed sanctions? How did Chinese socialism move to moderate and redirect the flow of Western capital, post-1979? The stark absence of those questions across a whole swath of vigilant “China-watching” commentaries write their own story of contradiction. [Qiao has offered a historical assessment of China’s agenda of national development through the controlled injection of foreign capital here and here.]   

Case in point, Smith finds himself needing to contend with the enduring contrast between Chinese socialism and Euro-American capitalism even as he denounces the Chinese government as a “band of thieves.” A few pages later, he admits: “China retained state ownership over key sections of its economy (such as energy), compelled foreign investors to partner with Chinese corporations, and developed its own private capitalist class.” 

Given the fact that there has never been a successful socialist revolution in the Western world, it seems awfully suspicious that so many Western leftists jump to legislate what is and is not socialism.

Is China capitalist or socialist? Imperialist or anti-imperialist? We know, very well, what it means to be capitalist. Yet it remains uncertain whether Western leftists actually know what it means to be socialist, or to truly oppose the imperial structure that grounds the fabric of their reality. Given the fact that there has never been a successful socialist revolution in the Western world, it seems awfully suspicious that so many Western leftists jump to legislate what is and is not socialism. Unlike capitalism, a theory that retroactively explains a brutal practice, theories of socialism are founded on—and accountable to—practices of revolution. Unlike theories of capitalism, whose seemingly-benign language obscures the brutalities at work, actually existing socialism—in China, Cuba, the DPRK, and Venezuela, to name a few—are dynamic practices that account for strategic survival in the face of imperialist, capitalist, and racist genocidal hostility from the capitalist Western bloc. Not just surviving but thriving, the accomplishments of Chinese socialism speak for themselves.

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II. What does critique do?

Western critique against China serves three main purposes. 

First, it reifies the myth of the yellow peril, impinging on the centuries-old trope of the Oriental menace. You’ve seen him/her/it, a nagging iteration of the xenophobic terror deeply seeded in the white-Western consciousness. From Fu Manchu to the popular caricature of Chinese people as rats, the specter of a rising China has long haunted the Western cultural complex, awakening within itself a sense of civilizational inferiority. 

This fear mongering around China, the Oriental menace and despotic yellow peril du jour, is possible because imperial ideology is able to continually reframe China in contrast to docile, “democratic” U.S. neocolonies in East and Southeast Asia. Model neocolonies, meet the big, bad wolf.

Today, the yellow peril continues to be remade as Chinese despite the broader geopolitical indeterminacy of “yellowness” as racial marker. It’s a difficult task to litigate the ethnic specificity of the yellow peril against the broadening color line. But imperialists, reaching into their domestic toolkit of racist triaging, have found an expedient solution by highlighting Asian neocolonies as model “democracies” against the wretched authoritarianism of “Red China.” This fear mongering around China, the Oriental menace and despotic yellow peril du jour, is possible because imperial ideology is able to continually reframe China in contrast to docile, “democratic” U.S. neocolonies in East and Southeast Asia. Model neocolonies, meet the big, bad wolf. 

Together, those neocolonies—including but not limited to Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Thailand, Singapore, and the Philippines—form an archipelago of U.S. influence in the region. These model minority Asian nations also constitute the U.S. empire of bases. Under treaties established by the Philippine-American War (the Philippines), World War II (Japan), the Korean War (South Korea, Taiwan), and the Vietnam War (Singapore), they have ceded parts of their territories for U.S. military use, and offer technological, biopolitical, and monetary support of U.S. military domination in the Asia-Pacific. Consequently, across the U.S. military bases of East and Southeast Asia, nuclear warheads and an active contingent of soldiers (the largest of all the military’s foreign outposts) encircle the belly of mainland Asia, threatening China, the DPRK, and Russia with what the Pentagon euphemistically refers to as an “asymmetric advantage.” In this light, the truth emerges, that under the rhetorical distraction of the Chinese yellow peril lies a stringent U.S. imperialist agenda of securitization and expansion—one that costs U.S. taxpayers trillions of dollars a year and has run a permanent war in Asia and the Pacific since 1950.

In contrast to the explosive anxiety around “rising China,” we might consider how and why the U.S. has embraced, even instrumentalized, the rise of South Korean soft power with much ado about nothing, except a continental obsession with eyeliner and facemasks. Geopolitical analysis offers us another explanation for this comical distribution of imperial resentment. As a U.S. protectorate that relies on the U.S. militarily and economically, South Korea poses not a threat but a facade of indigenous “postcoloniality” for the structure of U.S. imperialism. So long as the U.S. remains in a permanent war against the DPRK, so long as the U.S. eats away at the belly of Asia through its “hosts” in the Pacific, South Korea, one of its oldest regional neocolonies, is nothing but a feather in the cap of the multicultural U.S. empire. 

Contrastingly, China, which recognizes the imperialization of most of its Eastern and Southeastern neighbors, is one of the last holdouts against the U.S. military empire in the Asia-Pacific. For many, it’s terrifying that China has warily bucked the advances of Western imperialism (a discordant symphony that usually follows the four movement-form of sanctions, economic penetration, political involvement and violent regime change). Terrifying, that is, if you’re a cog in the imperial machine and believe the line that everyone who is not with “us” is against us, and everyone against us must die. This classic Cold War paranoia has produced more than a few U.S.-backed genocides-cum-puppet regimes (in Indonesia, Chile, El Salvador, Iraq, Afghanistan, Japan, and Korea, to name just a few), leading some scholars to name it as the impulse driving the U.S.’s target of the world.

Western critique against China sucks momentum from principled opposition to U.S. expansion of its empire of bases in the Asia-Pacific under the auspices of a renewed anti-China containment doctrine.

Secondly, Western critique against China sucks momentum from principled opposition to U.S. expansion of its empire of bases in the Asia-Pacific under the auspices of a renewed anti-China containment doctrine. As the site of the U.S.’s longest-reigning military commitment, the Asia-Pacific has been the playground of U.S. commanders, war criminals, and rapists since the start of the Philippine American War in 1902, in which the U.S. succeeded in brutally suppressing a Filipino revolution. Since 1902, the U.S. has steadily built up an empire of military bases that gives it coverage over 60% of the world, and 70% of the world’s seas. 

In the same vein as the current vitriol against China, we might remember how, when Japan was on the economic rise during the 1980s and 90s, there was an ascendent U.S. anxiety and corresponding trade war against Japanese firms—including the jailing of Toshiba CEO and the siphoning of Toshiba’s intellectual property. But that antagonism, resolved by a U.S. trade war that essentially destroyed Japan’s burgeoning semiconductor industry, had at least the decency to be explicitly leveraged at the island nation’s economic growth. Today, U.S. wariness of Japan has been rerouted through a crude sexual fascination resulting in a familiar cultural duet of fetishism and fear. 

One crucial fact, however, remains impossible to overlook: despite its nascent anxieties, the economic development of Japan, a crucial American neocolony in the Asia-Pacific, was and is deeply strategic to the interests of U.S. empire. On this topic, the Filipino scholar Walden Bellow writes: Since World War II, “the U.S. dominates [the Asia Pacific] militarily, Japan has mastered it economically.” Elsewhere, Bruce Cumings notes that Japanese fascism never ended, but was merely handed over to the U.S. after the Japanese defeat in 1945. While the U.S. moved in to cash its gains from the Potsdam Conference by establishing the largest military empire the world has ever known, Japan received the consolation prize of playing second fiddle in the redevelopment of the Asia-Pacific. “Perversely framed as modernizing opportunities, the Korean War was essential to postwar Japan’s economic recovery,” Christine Hong writes, just as “the Vietnam War [was] likewise critical to South Korea’s compressed development under military dictator Park Chung-hee.” 

As of the 1990s, the Pacific Command (the U.S.’ military command in Asia, and its largest yet) was interested in deterring India, China, and Indonesia, while keeping in check the power of its comprador, Japan. Today, the renamed Indo-Pacific Command has as its top interest the containment of a rising China and the expansion of its military power through Central Asia to the Middle East. All of this explains the sustained American embrace of Japan and South Korea against its fervent ideological campaign against China. Why wouldn’t the imperial machine actively seek the destruction of the last thing standing between it and domination over all of Asia? The question remains, however: why should you, me, we do the empire’s work?

That political actors as diverse as Mike Pompeo and Jacobin coalesce behind indistinguishable rhetoric on China is not a contradiction. Behind his seemingly “neutral” position, the Western critic is deeply invested in the ability to comfortably assert both his and his country’s ethical superiority to a despotic, communist China.

This leads us to the third and final point: critique functions to reify the very subject position of the Western critic, who maintains the purity and superiority of occupying a “principled” position despite the unequal impact of their words in an imperial discursive landscape. Indeed, the Western critic is a subject position in which the ostensible political differences between ultraleftist Trotskyists, white supremacists, and war hawks converge in tired tropes such as “support for the Chinese people, not their government.” That political actors as diverse as Mike Pompeo and Jacobin coalesce behind indistinguishable rhetoric on China is not a contradiction. Behind their seemingly “neutral” position, the Western critic is deeply invested in the ability to comfortably assert both his and his country’s ethical superiority to a despotic, communist China. This “white man’s burden,” liable to be taken on by any and all in the imperial core, insists on a liberalizing imperial agenda. Fuck despotic China, goes their critique, fuck its brainwashed citizens, whom we both hate and desire to save. As they insist on the overthrow of the Chinese government, the Western critic, whether in State Department bombast or pseudo-leftist jargon, positions themself in defense of continued U.S. imperial triumph.

This thinly veiled liberal impulse is threaded with cynicism. In it, the Enlightenment subject (the Western speaking-subject) appears as an inextricable outgrowth of imperialism. His own speaking power—indeed, his very political position—is strengthened by comparison against the bedeviled hoof of “communist authoritarianism.” Because Western liberalism exists only in relation to “Oriental despotism” these “principled critiques,” even when they come from those who are ostensibly critical of Western liberal capitalism as well, function to naturalize and reify the liberal West versus despotic East formation which continues to inform Cold War imperialism.

***
III. What does critique foreclose?

The reality of the U.S. hybrid war—ideological, economic, and increasingly, a possible military war—against China is buttressed by a powerful discursive arsenal that seeks to reroute all critiques against China to justify heightened aggression. Already, we’ve seen it in the works, at home and abroad: recent sanctions against Chinese companies as well as politically motivated arrests and violent attacks on Chinese people, including Chinese and other Asian Americans, cite “authoritarian China” as their justification. In the throes of this imperial discursive system that seeks to reroute any and all critique against China into fodder for the U.S. war machine, the stakes of critique are higher than ever.

What does it mean to engage critically with China, outside of this imperial dynamic? Indeed, is it even possible? One of the great tragedies of this totalizing discursive encroachment is a certain impossibility of speech. Nobody, but especially no Chinese people, can discuss Chinese affairs without being impinged upon by the malicious agendas and impervious agents of the imperialist west. That there are avenues of many critical engagements with China—in praise and in criticism—are facts well known to Chinese people themselves. China is, after all, a People’s Republic: the CPC’s immense popular support is in no part due to citizens’ staunch investment in their country, and in the discourse of their country’s affairs. However, the eager cooptation of all speech, especially Chinese speech by U.S. covert forces, forecloses the viability of true, good-faith engagement anywhere. Every utterance is staked on the knife’s edge, when a voyeuristic agent of the U.S. is listening to your conversations and eagerly trying to turn it into ammo for ideological war. When you have no way of engaging with your own, no possibility of internal discourse with your compatriots, one must ask: Is there such a thing as freedom of speech under imperial predation? 

Further, when foreign critiques are leveraged, Chinese governmental responses are diminished and altogether erased from imperialist media. Internal mechanisms of accountability are altogether disappeared from view. This raises the question: What does critique do, if it doesn’t grease the wheels for intervention and war?

As anti-imperialists living in the imperial core, we insist that our primary responsibility is to disrupt the U.S. war machine, not to debate the social or economic character of countries that are in its crosshairs.

Our assessment of the function of criticisms of China is therefore founded not on a facile belief that contemporary China is a utopian society without flaw, but rather on the recognition that critique does not exist in a discursive or political vacuum. Having no authentic ties to Chinese political discourse of movements, and no influence over the trajectory of Chinese politics except by imperialist force, the primary function of armchair observations from Western critics is inevitably to strengthen imperialist narratives about China and to stroke the ego of the critic. That Western debates over the arbitration of China’s political economy as “socialist” or “capitalist” rise and fall in tandem with Western aggression on Chinese sovereignty is not a coincidence but a reflection of the fact that the primary utility of such debates is not to build real internationalist solidarity but rather the derail any momentum towards a real left challenge to the machinations of Western empire. As anti-imperialists living in the imperial core, we insist that our primary responsibility is to disrupt the U.S. war machine, not to debate the social or economic character of countries that are in its crosshairs.

***
“Free” speech in a landlocked empire

Who has the right to critique? When China Foreign Ministry Spokesperson Zhao Lijian reposted a satirical graphic critiquing the recent revelations of Australian war crimes in Afghanistan, Western media outlets framed Zhao’s post as “evidence” of a supposed Chinese misinformation campaign. Instead of focusing on the context of the war crimes—in which twenty-five soldiers brutally and sadistically murdered some thirty-six Afghani civilians—outlets such as NPR, CNN, ABC, BBC, the New York Times, and the Globe and Mail chose instead to spectacularize Zhao’s social media post. As FAIR’s Joshua Cho points out, “The important information was not that Australia had committed war crimes in Afghanistan, but that a Chinese government official had been spreading offensive images containing false information.” 

It’s tempting for Western leftists to assume a mastery of world-historical knowledge. But this hubris, endemic to imperial cultures, serves none but the victor, inculcating him in an arrogant delusion that he knows what’s best and may act on others’ behalf. “Ideology in action,” as the postcolonial critic Gayatri Spivak reminds us, “is what a group takes to be natural and self-evident, that of which the group, as a group must deny any historical sedimentation. It is both the condition and the effect of the constitution of the subject (of ideology) as freely willing and consciously choosing in a world that is seen as background.” 

If Western leftists are to be truly principled, truly accountable to the world-historical situation, “we” must disentangle ourselves from the imperialist ideologies that dominate the discursive landscape the West takes for granted. 

Read more articles like this:

This article has been republished from the author’s website with permission.

“We are here at the starting point of the Long March to remember the time when the Red Army began its journey. We are now embarking on a New Long March, and we must start all over again.” – Xi Jinping, May 2019.

The propaganda surrounding COVID-19 and China’s response is only the latest escalation in a long term geopolitical strategy by U.S. imperialism to destroy it. Few people on the left or the socialist movement in the imperial core have been paying attention to the historic breakup of the U.S.-China relationship. Since Deng Xiaoping, the U.S.-China relationship has been contingent on what I call “The Bargain” between U.S. capital and the rising Chinese socialist state.

The United States ruling class now understands that it got the losing end of The Bargain. With China’s growing vertical production and technological capacity, its desire to develop neighboring countries and upend the post-WWII order led by Washington through the BRI, that deal is unwinding quickly. Market reforms of the Chinese system did not do what they did in the Soviet Union – on the contrary, the leadership of the Communist Party of China has strengthened as the state adeptly captured the technological, organizational and productive capacities of U.S. capital.

As a result, a steady process of political and economic “decoupling” has been underway and accelerated by the Trump regime. We are now in the era of hybrid warfare between the U.S. and China.

This article will outline the historical progression of this new era.

Contents:

1. U.S. Imperialism’s Strategy in Eurasia – The Brzezinski Plan
2. “The Bargain” Between U.S. Capital and China
3. The Single Largest Threat to U.S. Empire – The Belt and Road Initiative
4. The Breakdown of the Bargain – Hybrid Warfare on China
The Single Largest Threat to U.S. Empire – The Belt and Road Initiative

Part 1. U.S. Imperialism’s Strategy in Eurasia – The Brzezinski Plan

Zbigniew Brzezinski died on May 26th, 2017 almost exactly three years ago. Very few on the left understand this person or his significance as a U.S. empire planner. Brzezinski was National Security Advisor under Carter, a role he took in 1977 after serving as his chief foreign policy adviser. As a Council on Foreign Relations member, a Bilderberg participant and chief founder of the Trilateral Commission, Brzezinski was as deeply embedded in the imperial core’s planning bodies as anyone else in history.

Brzezinski is best known for his support of the Mujahideen against the Soviet Union, “Operation Cyclone”. This operation – which had a cascading effect throughout the region and established firm links between the CIA and Bin Laden – reveals the extent to which Brzezinski saw it necessary to stop the USSR and intervene in Central/South Asia. But why is this region so important to U.S. empire?

In his 1997 book “The Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski bluntly laid out the importance of the Eurasian landmass and America’s control over it. From the book description:

“The task facing the United States, he argues, is to become the sole political arbiter in Eurasian lands and to prevent the emergence of any rival power threatening our material and diplomatic interests. The Eurasian landmass, home to the greatest part of the globe’s population, natural resources, and economic activity is the “grand chessboard” on which America’s supremacy will be ratified and challenged in the years to come.”

What does this strategy look like in practice? Preventing the rise of a rival power in Eurasia means employing all manner of covert and overt subversion and attack. As we have seen in U.S. interventions in Iran, repeat attacks on Iraq, invasion of Afghanistan and a devastating contra war in Syria, the U.S. is keen to pick off weak links in the chain of countries stretching through Central and South Asia.

It is this region from Kazakhstan in the North, to Palestine in the West, and through India and Western China that forms a triangle shaped wedge splitting Russia’s Southern and China’s Western geopolitical expansion. This vast area is where U.S. empire has for decades waged war against countries that don’t fall in line, while solidifying comprador alliances in places like Israel, India, Saudi Arabia and the Gulf monarchies. While a direct conflict with Russia or China is unlikely given the nuclear implications, controlling this polygon politically, militarily and economically will greatly diminish either state’s options.

Figure: U.S. empire’s “triangle of control”, a geopolitical target area it seeks to control to prevent Russia’s southern and China’s western geopolitical advances as well as the emergence of any local power (think: Iran)

Further, the U.S. has sought to dominate the world’s oceans as a means of controlling Eurasia. This follows from American naval theorist Alfred Mahan’s assertion that control of the sea would yield control of the world’s resources and ability to dominate any adversary. This theory rested on the notion that a naval power needed to be able to destroy the enemy’s fleet and blockade enemy ports. His thinking influenced Theodore Roosevelt and successive application of his theory resulted in the U.S. becoming the world’s leading naval power. The U.S. currently has eleven aircraft carriers in service, far more than any other country (China has two) and its network of bases and allies in the Pacific give it launching pads throughout Eurasia.

From China’s present position, it faces nearly complete encirclement. With a U.S. occupation force stationed in Korea, a compliant regime in Japan hosting three air bases, Guam and other client state bases, the U.S. has a dominating military position in the Pacific. This closes China’s Eastern flank. To the West, it faces India which has close U.S. ties, an occupation force in Afghanistan and all the client states and interventions throughout that Triangle of Control referenced above. This closes their Western flank.

What has changed under the leadership of Xi Jinping is China’s desire to break through this encirclement by U.S. empire.China is today faced with the prospect of a “New Long March” against U.S. imperialism.

What has changed in recent years and particularly under the leadership of Xi Jinping, is China’s desire to break through this encirclement by U.S. empire. Much like how the early Communist Party of China escaped encirclement by the KMT via the Long March, China is today faced with the prospect of a “New Long March” against U.S. imperialism. Xi Jinping himself used that phrase in May of 2019 to describe China’s way forward in the Trump trade war. Reference to the Long March is very deliberate, and Xi Jinping through his speech commemorating the 80th anniversary of the Long March eloquently laid out the importance of the Long March to the modern Chinese nation. If he is willing to compare the present situation to such a heroic act of sacrifice and determination, we should take that seriously. But first we have to understand how we got here.

2. “The Bargain” Between U.S. Capital and China

At the time of his official role in the U.S. empire, Brzezinski’s main concern over “rival powers” in Eurasia was obviously the Soviet Union. China in 1979 was still a very poor country, had just exited the Cultural Revolution which had a crippling effect on its development, and was just beginning its market reforms.

1971-1979 was a pivotal period for U.S.-China relations (Brzezinski became NSA in 1977). 1979 was the year of the “Second Communique” which established normalized diplomatic relations between the PRC and the U.S. while ending the latter’s recognition of Taiwan as the seat of China. It followed the Shanghai Communique of 1972 in which the U.S. and China agreed (on paper) to respect each other’s sovereignty and territorial integrity. In 1971, Nixon lifted the 21-year trade embargo on China that was in place since China backed the DPRK in the Korean War. Nixon famously visited China in 1972, the first U.S. president do so since the revolution. These moves were controversial among different factions of the U.S. ruling class at the time, but U.S. empire leadership (primarily through Kissinger) saw the opportunity to drive a wedge between China and the USSR and took it. Any effort that the U.S. could take to weaken the links between the USSR, China, the DPRK and North Vietnam would be taken. Winston Lord’s (National Security Council member at the time) account of this strategy is telling:

“Kissinger’s rationale, and Nixon’s, included the following. First, an opening to China would give us more flexibility on the world scene generally. We wouldn’t just be dealing with Moscow. We could deal with Eastern Europe, of course, and we could deal with China, because the former Communist Bloc was no longer a bloc. Kissinger wanted more flexibility, generally. Secondly, by opening relations with China we would catch Russia’s attention and get more leverage on them through playing this obvious, China card.

The idea would be to improve relations with Moscow, hoping to stir a little bit of its paranoia by dealing with China, never getting so engaged with China that we would turn Russia into a hostile enemy but enough to get the attention of the Russians. This effort, in fact, worked dramatically after Kissinger’s secret trip to China.

Thirdly, Kissinger and Nixon wanted to get help in resolving the Vietnam War. By dealing with Russia and with China we hoped to put pressure on Hanoi to negotiate seriously. At a maximum, we tried to get Russia and China to slow down the provision of aid to North Vietnam somewhat. More realistically and at a minimum, we sought to persuade Russia and China to encourage Hanoi to make a deal with the United States and give Hanoi a sense of isolation because their two, big patrons were dealing with us. Indeed, by their willingness to engage in summit meetings with us, with Nixon going to China in February, 1972, and to Moscow in May, 1972, the Russians and Chinese were beginning to place a higher priority on their bilateral relations with us than on their dealings with their friends in Hanoi…”1

It is important to understand that China’s willingness to normalize ties with the U.S. at this time was, in part, an outcome of the Sino-Soviet split, in which China viewed the USSR as a revisionist power and threat to China on its borders. While relations with the USSR began to warm through the 80’s, each side viewed the other with suspicion. Both sides certainly continued to feel the effects of the 1969 border conflict which nearly ended in war between nuclear powers (Interesting side note: this conflict also extended to China’s western border in Xinjiang). From the U.S. perspective, the Sino-Soviet split was a gift that severed the two most powerful communist countries from united anti-imperialist action. Upon exiting the Cultural Revolution, China was left extremely isolated and weak both politically and economically. Struggle with the U.S. while dealing with a potentially hostile USSR was not an attractive course of action. At the same time, China’s economy was struggling relative to other capitalist Asian powers. Radical changes in strategy were needed, hence the “bargain.”

Recommended: The End of Engagement—on hybrid war and the subjugation of Chinese sovereignty to U.S. interests.

While China did see gains in GPD per capita since 1960, by the mid-1970’s signs of a crisis were emerging. Output became volatile and stagnant and by 1978 GDP per capita had fallen to its 1973 level. And this was a fall in GDP that was already far below its nearby capitalist competitors.

Figure 2: China’s GDP per capita during the lead-up to economic reform. Notice the instability between 74-78.

This is not a mere footnote. Central to understanding China’s geostrategic moves of the last 50 years is understanding the importance placed on development of the “productive forces.” Allow me here to take a brief detour into the theory (if the concept of productive forces is familiar to you, feel free to skip ahead).

A key concept in Marx and Engels’ theory of historical materialism and political economy, the productive forces are essentially how a society combines human labor with the means of labor (tools, machinery, infrastructure etc.). The level of productive forces, which can be roughly viewed as the productivity of a society, will increase up to a point where they come into conflict with that society’s mode of production. In the pre-capitalist feudal mode of production, the productive forces were at a low level given the scattered and individualistic nature of production mostly for consumption’s sake—commodity production as such only existed in embryo. In capitalism, productive forces are unleashed by concentrating human labor and means of labor into social enterprises (the modern capitalist company is in fact often hundreds or thousands of individuals cooperating, who under a different mode of production might never associate) and applying scientific methods of production. Contradiction emerges in the fact that the very social and cooperative nature of the capitalist enterprise is controlled by private capitalists who extract surplus-value from the workers and take their work product to sell in the market. The product of collective labor is seized by private capitalists for their own profit. Additional contradiction emerges as the anarchy of competition between capitalists incentives the further advancement of each capitalist’s productive forces, which in turn creates economic crises of various forms. Economic crises push capitalism towards monopoly— fewer capitalists command larger and larger enterprises, cartels and whole industries. As these crises become deeper and more frequent, they expose the unnecessary role of the capitalists themselves and the truly social and cooperative nature of the productive forces. The capitalists have at this advanced stage of monopoly capitalism rendered themselves superfluous and indeed a barrier to the advancement of the productive forces. The situation is now ripe for the state, commanded by the workers, to seize the means of production and become the masters of production.

Engels espoused this theory of the development of productive forces and the role of capitalism in his landmark work Socialism: Utopian and Scientific:

The fact that the socialized organization of production within the factory has developed so far that it has become incompatible with the anarchy of production in society, which exists side by side with and dominates it, is brought home to the capitalist themselves by the violent concentration of capital that occurs during crises, through the ruin of many large, and a still greater number of small, capitalists. The whole mechanism of the capitalist mode of production breaks down under the pressure of the productive forces, its own creations. It is no longer able to turn all this mass of means of production into capital. They lie fallow, and for that very reason the industrial reserve army must also lie fallow. Means of production, means of subsistence, available laborers, all the elements of production and of general wealth, are present in abundance.

But “abundance becomes the source of distress and want” (Fourier), because it is the very thing that prevents the transformation of the means of production and subsistence into capital. For in capitalistic society, the means of production can only function when they have undergone a preliminary transformation into capital, into the means of exploiting human labor-power. The necessity of this transformation into capital of the means of production and subsistence stands like a ghost between these and the workers. It alone prevents the coming together of the material and personal levers of production; it alone forbids the means of production to function, the workers to work and live.

On the one hand, therefore, the capitalistic mode of production stands convicted of its own incapacity to further direct these productive forces. On the other, these productive forces themselves, with increasing energy, press forward to the removal of the existing contradiction, to the abolition of their quality as capital, to the practical recognition of their character as social production forces.2

Marx, in the Poverty of Philosophy, was explicit about the central role of productive forces in the structure of a given mode of production:

Social relations are closely bound up with productive forces. In acquiring new productive forces men change their mode of production; and in changing their mode of production, in changing the way of earning their living, they change all their social relations. The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.3

However, as history has proven, this process is not so straightforward. Capitalism has proven adept at fending off potential revolutions and the era of imperialism has provided further ways for capital to stave off crises and keep parts of the world in a backwards state with a low level of productive forces. This is the situation in which China found itself at the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. As Mao made it abundantly clear in his seminal work On New Democracy, the revolution in China was firstly aimed at ending China’s long history as a semi-feudal and semi-colonial nation with the defeat of imperialism as the core objective. In fact, Mao laid out the principles of New Democracy as being the alliance of all revolutionary classes, including the national bourgeoisie, against feudal and colonial oppression. Mao further explained the unity of “the people” in his 1949 On The People’s Democratic Dictatorship:

Who are the people? At the present stage in China, they are the working class, the peasantry, the urban petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. These classes, led by the working class and the Communist Party, unite to form their own state and elect their own government; they enforce their dictatorship over the running dogs of imperialism — the landlord class and bureaucrat-bourgeoisie, as well as the representatives of those classes, the Kuomintang reactionaries and their accomplices…4

This is reflected in the flag of the PRC itself, with its four smaller stars representing the four revolutionary classes and the big star representing the leadership of the Communist Party of China. All four stars point towards the CPC, signifying its leading role. This is the nature of China’s People’s Democratic Dictatorship. It may come as a surprise to many Western communists that Mao, like Deng Xiaoping, fully understood how backwards China’s economy was at the founding of the PRC and the necessity of uniting with the national bourgeoisie while retaining the leadership of the CPC:

The national bourgeoisie at the present stage is of great importance. Imperialism, a most ferocious enemy, is still standing alongside us. China’s modern industry still forms a very small proportion of the national economy. No reliable statistics are available, but it is estimated, on the basis of certain data, that before the War of Resistance Against Japan the value of output of modern industry constituted only about 10 per cent of the total value of output of the national economy. To counter imperialist oppression and to raise her backward economy to a higher level, China must utilize all the factors of urban and rural capitalism that are beneficial and not harmful to the national economy and the people’s livelihood; and we must unite with the national bourgeoisie in common struggle. Our present policy is to regulate capitalism, not to destroy it. But the national bourgeoisie cannot be the leader of the revolution, nor should it have the chief role in state power. The reason it cannot be the leader of the revolution and should not have the chief role in state power is that the social and economic position of the national bourgeoisie determines its weakness; it lacks foresight and sufficient courage and many of its members are afraid of the masses.

Without getting too bogged down in the details of Deng Xiaoping Theory (a subject vast enough that it deserves its own article), it is important to understand that CPC leadership has consistently viewed the development of productive forces as the central objective of socialist construction (albeit with delayed implementation thanks to the Cultural Revolution). Deng Xiaoping simply expanded and made concrete this idea by implementing market-based reforms that unleashed the latent productive forces of the country, while retaining the leading role of the state and state enterprises led by the CPC. For Deng and CPC leadership, the goal is to allow the development of the productive forces through a limited, highly regulated capitalism while retaining state ownership of the “commanding heights” of the economy. Perhaps surprisingly, this idea does not originate with Deng Xiaoping but with Mao Zedong in his 1940 On New Democracy:

If such a republic is to be established in China, it must be new-democratic not only in its politics but also in its economy. It will own the big banks and the big industrial and commercial enterprises.

Enterprises, such as banks, railways and airlines, whether Chinese-owned or foreign-owned, which are either monopolistic in character or too big for private management, shall be operated and administered by the state, so that private capital cannot dominate the livelihood of the people: this is the main principle of the regulation of capital(…) In the new-democratic republic under the leadership of the proletariat, the state enterprises will be of a socialist character and will constitute the leading force in the whole national economy, but the republic will neither confiscate capitalist private property in general nor forbid the development of such capitalist production as does not “dominate the livelihood of the people”, for China’s economy is still very backward.

Socialism is not defined by the mode of distribution (a market-based or planned system), but in the leading role of the state led by workers and placing social needs above and beyond the law of value. So long as the latter is retained, the advantages of a semi-open economy and the development of productive forces via private capitalism can be leveraged to strengthen the whole material base of the country. It is important to remember that not only is China attempting to build the necessary material base for socialism, but to make it strong enough to withstanding the competing pressures of existing capitalist rivals. In his 1963 speech Be Realistic and Look to the Future5, Deng made this clear:

What is our objective to be accomplished? We want our country to be among the advanced countries in the world through our forty years of hard work. That is, we want it to become one of the few major industrial powers in the world, but not to surpass all the other countries. We are not sure whether we shall be able to surpass all the other countries, because our economic foundation is different from that of other countries and they are also advancing. Of course, it may not necessarily take forty years for China to become one of the major powers in the world.

The method by which China, a vast country with a huge population starting from an extremely low economic base, takes to this end is not going to apply to other countries with differing levels of production. Instead, a scientific approach based on “实事求是 (Seeking truth from facts)” is required- this is the essence of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics. It is Marxism as applied to the conditions of China. We can see the essence of this pragmatic approach throughout the history the Chinese revolution, especially in the treatment of the national bourgeoisie. Deng highlighted the historical importance of resisting both Left and Right opportunism during the revolution in this manner in his 1965 Build a Mature and Combat-Effective Party6:

The attitude to be adopted towards the national bourgeoisie is another highly important question in the stage of national democratic revolution. Failure to handle it properly could lead to the error of either “Left” or Right opportunism. As a vacillating class, the national bourgeoisie has a thousand and one links with imperialism and feudalism. On this question our Party made both “Left” and Right opportunistic mistakes. The former lingered longer than the latter and inflicted greater damage on us. In the early stage of the Great Revolution our Party handled the question appropriately by working together with the bourgeois revolutionaries represented by Dr. Sun Yat-sen and initiating Kuomintang-Communist co-operation to advance the revolution, and we also co-operated with Chiang Kai-shek. It would have been a mistake if, in the course of this co-operation, we had only maintained relations with the bourgeoisie. When we entered into alliance with the bourgeoisie to lead the democratic revolution, one question of supreme importance was to develop the progressive forces, the forces of workers and peasants, under this alliance. In the later stage of the Great Revolution our Party was misled by Chen Duxiu’s Right opportunistic error, when we were afraid of engaging in a political struggle with the bourgeoisie, afraid of irritating it, and not daring to arouse the masses into action. Consequently, the Great Revolution ended in defeat as soon as Chiang Kai-shek betrayed it. Then the “Left” opportunistic mistakes occurred in our Party three times which were characterized by the practice of overthrowing everything. At that time we were chiefly attacking the bourgeoisie, its intellectuals and the parties of the petty bourgeoisie, which resulted in our self-isolation. Many people in the cities, including the intellectuals and youth, were alienated from us for a long time. It was hard to launch workers’ movements; strikes were held aimlessly and, moreover, the demands were so outrageous that the movements ended in failure. Our strength in the cities kept dwindling until at last it was nearly gone. Correct policies were adopted, however, in the rural areas which were under the leadership of Comrade Mao Zedong. In those days the Red Army protected industry and commerce. Some industrial and commercial capitalists were practising feudalistic exploitation, which was all eradicated. We did not do anything with regard to their shops or factories and we did not confiscate anything from them; instead we provided protection for their property. Benefiting a great deal from policies such as these, we were able to break the economic blockade imposed by the Kuomintang against our base areas. Later, when the leaders of the “Left” opportunist line came to the Central Soviet Area, they opposed Comrade Mao Zedong’s correct policies and attacked national industry and commerce. As a result, under Chiang Kai-shek’s blockade, even salt was unavailable in the base areas. Even when Chen Duxiu’s Right opportunism was prevalent, “Left” mistakes were made in urban work. For example, the government in Wuhan at that time was led by left-wingers of the Kuomintang who were co-operating with our Party in opposition to Chiang Kai-shek. There we organized strikes and set economic demands which were more than the bourgeoisie could bear. Consequently, the market slumped, to the detriment of the economic base of the revolutionary regime. In dealing with the national bourgeoisie, our Party has made both “Left” and Right mistakes. It is essential to adopt correct policies. Without doubt, the national bourgeoisie tends to vacillate, but we should, nevertheless, make use of its positive side, uniting with it as well as struggling against it. We cannot lay down rigid rules as to the circumstances under which mainly to unite with it and circumstances under which mainly to struggle against it. This is a question that requires flexibility and solution based on concrete analysis of the national bourgeoisie in one’s own country.

In giving these two examples, I have been trying to illustrate that in order to formulate correct programmes and policies, it is necessary to obtain a thorough understanding of the actual conditions in one’s own country. This is no easy job, especially when it comes to trying to understand the peasants.

I quote this passage at length to underscore the pragmatic brilliance of the CPC in recognizing the necessity of protecting capitalist industry in order to break the economic blockade of the KMT. One can imagine how this experience weighs heavily on the strategic thinking of the CPC today given its encirclement by U.S. imperialism. Now we can understand more fully the methods of the CPC and its willingness to embark on creating what we now call the Socialist Market Economy. A cornerstone of Deng Xiaoping Theory is the concept of the Primary Stage of Socialism. This theory states that China has entered the “primary stage” of socialism lasting roughly from 1956 until the middle 21st century in which China must overcome the backwards level of productive forces and achieve socialist modernization. This humble and realistic assessment of China’s position in the world and its weakness compared to advanced capitalist countries is an essential point needed to understand the CPC’s view of socialist development against the capitalist world. The course through which China has proceeded along this socialist modernization is complex, but important to understand to appreciate the current situation.

In 1977, China finally implemented under Deng Xiaoping the “Four Modernizations”, a theory of development first espoused by Zhou Enlai in the 1960s. This theory seeks to place primary national importance on the development of industry, agriculture, defense and science & technology. The beginning of the reform period saw major changes to agriculture, moving from a commune-based system to one of “household responsibility” or “contract” system. This change was brought about to deal with agricultural shortages, and was originally conceived of by commune members in Anhui Province. Essentially, the highly centralized agricultural system was struggling to deal with shortages and inefficiencies. The move towards more localized, unit-based agricultural production yielded significant gains in agricultural output and may have averted a serious food crisis.

The success of this reform opened the way to further market-based reform of the Chinese economy, which rolled out progressively and through many trial phases. What followed is what I am calling “The Bargain” between the PRC and foreign capital. Throughout the 1980’s and 1990’s and extending into the 2000s, the PRC opened what are known as Special Economic Zones and allowed for investment by foreign capital in the economy. This had obvious appeal to foreign capital – a large and relatively cheap labor force that could be used to produce export-oriented commodities at lower prices than competitors. This was made possible by advancements in containerization, transport and modern production methods, allowing commodities to shipped globally in record time.

However, this was not simply a concession to foreign capital. It is extremely important to remember that key demands and restrictions were placed on companies investing in China. Among these included:

• Requiring foreign investors to form Joint Ventures with Chinese firms (essentially, a partnership between a foreign firm and a Chinese one, either state or private), thus facilitating the transfer of technology and methods to Chinese entities.

• Outright restrictions on key sectors deemed “commanding heights” of the economy – including defense, infrastructure, finance, construction, telecommunication, etc. These are the industries typically dominated by State Owned Enterprises (SOEs).

• All companies are still required to adhere to PRC laws and regulations. Although some foreign firms received preferential treatment, none operated without state oversight.

This situation afforded many advantages to the construction of the socialist market economy. First, it granted China access to the most current and advanced technology and production methods of the time. This is something that would be mostly impossible under a closed economy. Second, it provided an immediate source of non-state employment, significantly easing the burden on SASAC (the central body responsible for overseeing the country’s state enterprises) to ensure employment. Third, it enabled a direct economic and diplomatic link to capitalist competitors thereby reducing the likelihood of direct conflict. Fourth, it opened huge inflows of foreign currency reserves further strengthening the country’s international financial position. And finally, the restrictions placed on foreign capital (most of which are still in place today) combined with the dominant position of CPC power in monopolized industries via the SOE system, ensured that the capitalist class in China would be defanged, monitored (keep your enemies close) and unable to assert control over the political system. The state, with control over construction, land, finance, infrastructure, education and all of the major levers of the economy is able to direct and control the development of capital in China as it pleases – this is in stark contrast to capitalist countries where capital directs the state and the people. In China, the people direct the state and the economy, not the other way around. This is aided by China’s robust internal democratic systems and extensive community-level grassroots organizations. What resulted from this bargain, as controlled by the state, is the “economic miracle” that I’m sure you are aware of- unprecedented growth in economic output and huge gains in the living standards of people with a massive reduction in poverty. While there are no doubt problems and negative consequences of such efforts, including unequal development and pollution, present leadership is focused on resolving these contradictions.

Figure: China’s explosive GDP per capita growth since the reform era, a virtually unprecedented economic feat.

Here is a brief glimpse of some of the achievements of this socialist market economy:

• Life expectancy has soared from 43.7 years in 1960 to 76.7 in 20187

• Extreme poverty has been virtually eliminated since 1990, with the $1.90/day headcount falling from 66.2% in 1990 to 0.5% in 20168 and the $3.20/day headcount falling from 47% to 1%.9 Other measures of poverty are on a steep decline.

• Adult literacy has risen from 65% in 1982 to 96% in 2018.10

• Average yearly wages have grown dramatically in the last 25 years, going from 5,348 Yuan in 1995 to 74,318 Yuan in 2017 for workers in urban state, collective and other non-private enterprises.11 For private urban employment, average wages have more than doubled between 2009 and 2017.12 Average wages in the non-private sector are about 47% higher than the private sector, indicating that the state system is to a large degree pulling the wage floor up.

• China is now, by far, the world’s leader in renewable energy with over 788,000 MW of total installed capacity in 2019. The closest competitor, the U.S., has about 1/3rd of that capacity.13 Electricity production from renewables (excl hydro) has increased 9,054% from 3.1bn kWh in 2000 to 283.8bn kWh in 2015.14 The energy sector in China is dominated by SOEs.

• China has become a world leader in science and technology. By one measure, patent applications by residents in China have exploded from about 4,000 in 1985 to 1.3 million in 2018. By comparison, Japan saw just 253,630 in 2018.15 China’s Sunway TaihuLight super computer was the world’s fastest between 2016 and 2018.16 China is expected to outpace the U.S. in STEM, training nearly five times as many people between 2015 and 2030.17

• Gains in science and technology have translated into major military and defense achievements. In 2014, China became one of the first countries to successfully test a hypersonic glide vehicle, the DF-ZF.18 This is a crucial advancement that, combined with other advanced missile technology, could severely limit U.S. naval options in China’s territory.

• China is now the world leader in transportation infrastructure. As of 2018, China had 17,000 miles of high speed rail or 60% of the world’s total.19

• Chinese SOEs are world leaders in their industries. These include the world’s largest, or near-largest: Telecom, energy company, bank, infrastructure company, railway, metals company, shipping company, mobile telecom and automobile company. The four largest banks in the world are Chinese SOEs.20

China’s state sector accounts for about 50% of output when accounting for sub-national SOEs, FDI round-tripping by SOEs and subsidiaries that are substantially controlled by the state.21 A conservative estimate of the state economy puts it at roughly twice the size of Russia’s entire economy (only counting central SOEs). In addition, Xi Jinping has in recent years overseen the largest and most dramatic expansion of CPC power into the private economy in the history of the country. Remember that Mao specifically called for certain enterprises, even if foreign-owned, to be “operated and administered by the state.” While the CPC has exercised a sophisticated multi-level strategy of preventing capital from forming class consciousness or exerting political control (leveraging state-sanctioned and controlled business associations22, inclusive measures, anti-corruption campaigns, etc)23, it has also pursued a direct strategy of establishing CPC committees within private companies. This effort went through several phases, and accelerated rapidly under Xi Jinping. In 2012, an opinion was released by the Central Committee that greatly expanded the call for CPC party building in private companies.24 In 2017, the number of CPC committees in private companies reached 70%, and that number is expected to have grown since.25 Not only are these committees widespread, they are beginning to take an active role in strategic decisions made by companies beyond simply surveilling them. This has sparked a flurry of concerned reporting from Western media and is likely contributing greatly to the US’ current strategic attitude towards China.

I have written before on the nature of China’s socialist system (HERE and HERE). Others, such as Marxist economist Michael Roberts have written at length on the China model (HERE, HERE, HERE and HERE). Roberts makes a strong case that China’s model does not fit a traditional capitalist model and points to its response during the great financial crisis. I strongly recommend reading these materials, although I have some disagreements with Roberts about the nature of China’s democratic systems, which I think are far more robust and expansive then he allows (an understandable oversight as most in the non-Chinese left have never seriously studied the Party-State political system). What is important to understand is that this bargain with capitalism, rather than upending the socialist system has actually strengthened it. Today, Chinese SOEs are among the largest and most powerful enterprises in the world. The state has unprecedented control over the economy through the financial system, its SOEs and more directly through Communist Party committees in nominally “private” enterprise. Despite the rhetoric around “opening up” which is often mischaracterized and exaggerated in the West as “liberalization”, control over the economy has tightened under the present leadership of Xi Jinping. This has sparked books like Nicholas Lardy’s 2018 The State Strikes Back: The End of Economic Reform in China? which speculates on the possible end of the market reform era.

Market reforms and a semi-open economy in China were supposed to not only afford huge benefits to U.S. capitalism but also destroy the ideological base and power of the CPC. Instead, the opposite has happened.

For the capitalist powers, and especially U.S. imperialism, the failure of market reforms to undo the CPC and socialist construction is a major issue (infamously memorialized by Gordon Chang’s 2001 book The Coming Collapse of China). Market reforms and a semi-open economy in China were supposed to not only afford huge benefits to U.S. capitalism but also destroy the ideological base and power of the CPC. Instead, the opposite has happened. The CPC is one of the most popular ruling political parties in the world and enjoys broad-based support. CPC leadership including Xi Jinping have vigorously affirmed the importance of Mao Zedong Thought and Deng Xiaoping Theory, while expanding Marxist education across China. Meanwhile, China has proven almost impervious to global capitalist crisis, thanks to its unique economic structure and the continued control of the commanding heights and financial system by the CPC. This is in stark contrast to the U.S. While still a dominant economic power relative to its size, the U.S. was sunk into a massive crisis in 2008 thanks to a secular decline in profitability and the hyper-financialized capitalism that has run the country since the 1980s.

In recent years, it has become clear to U.S. empire planners that China’s collapse is not coming anytime soon, and that they have gotten the losing end of the bargain. In fact, China is moving to expand and export the lessons of its development model to other countries – this is the era of the Belt and Road Initiative under Xi Jinping.

3. The Single Largest Threat to U.S. Empire – The Belt and Road Initiative

With the consolidation of the domestic economy and establishment of linkages to the outside world, the PRC now has the task of looking outward and establishing an international base of support. Most importantly, China wants to break the encirclement of U.S. empire that I mentioned above. Only through the breakdown of U.S. hegemony and imperialism can China continue to move forward on its path of socialist construction. The Belt and Road Initiative, first announced by Xi Jinping in 2013, is the leading edge of this effort to establish trade and political linkages throughout Eurasia with Beijing at the center.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is the most significant geoeconomic effort in history, a multi-decade $4-$8 trillion plan impacting 70% of humanity with the goal to develop productive forces throughout Eurasia and steadily erode U.S. power in the hemisphere. The significance of this effort cannot be overstated, as Henry Kissinger warned:

“China’s Belt and Road Initiative, in seeking to connect China to Central Asia and eventually to Europe will have the practical significance of shifting the world’s center of gravity from the Atlantic to the Pacific”26

The more that countries are able to stand on their own two feet economically and have access to their neighbors and China as a trading partner, the less power the U.S. has to impose its political will on countries through economic coercion.

The BRI will link Asia and ultimately Europe through ports, bridges, railways, green energy and trade. It will help historically overexploited countries fill development gaps and reduce or eliminate their reliance on the U.S. and the dollar. Perhaps most importantly, it will significantly reduce the effectiveness of one of U.S. imperialism’s favorite tools – economic sanctions. The more that countries are able to stand on their own two feet economically and have access to their neighbors and China as a trading partner, the less power the U.S. has to impose its political will on countries through economic coercion.

There are many elements to this plan, but essentially it involves both individual infrastructure and investment projects in other countries and the establishment of non-U.S. international institutions. Ironically, the historically negative legacy of U.S.-dominated institutions like the World Bank and IMF combined with U.S. aggression against countries that don’t conform to U.S. hegemony has encouraged even unlikely countries to participate in Chinese projects.

One very significant example of this is the Asia Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB), an alternative to the World Bank and IMF that is centered on Beijing. Russia was one of the first countries to join as a full member in 2015, during a period in which U.S.-Russia relations were at a very low level and about to sink further following the 2016 election. The AIIB even includes27 many EU countries, Canada and otherwise staunch U.S. allies like India, Saudi Arabia and Australia. China is the largest voting bloc in the bank, followed by India, Russia, Germany, South Korea and Australia. The map of AIIB members is essentially a map of Eurasia, plus many other non-regional members (Green and dark blue are full members):

Figure: AIIB Membership Map from Wikipedia28

China has in recent years moved aggressively to sign deals with countries like Pakistan and Iran on BRI projects and investment. Deals with Iran have been happening for years, totaling tens of billions of dollars in support29 – massive amounts considering the immense economic pressure Iran is under from U.S. sanctions.

The extent to which China and Iran are being linked is visible in the various infrastructure projects taking place. These include:

• The New Silk Road freight train route which opened in 2016, linking Tehran to Urumqi in Western China’s Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region. The freight route also connects Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan. Transportation time for goods was reduced from 45-50 days by sea to 14-15 days. This rail line cuts directly through the “triangle of control” over Central and Western Asia where U.S. imperialism is heavily active.

• 926 km railroad from Tehran to the eastern city of Mashhad. This electrified railway will be built by a Chinese SOE, China National Machinery Import and Export Corporation. It will cut the transportation time between cities in half and increase capacity.

• 415 km high speed rail line between Tehran and Isfahan via Qom, being built by SOE China Railway Engineering Corp.

• 263 km railway between Kermanshah and Khosravi, being built by SOE China Railway Construction Corp.

• Railway system connecting Tehran, Hamedan and Sanandaj being built by SOE China National Machinery Industry Corp.

Importantly, the New Silk Road freight train is not going to stop in Tehran. Plans are to have this rail system extend all the way into Europe. For the other projects, Iranians will gain greater economic connectivity between regions. All of this is happening while Iran is facing severe sanctions from the U.S.

Another key element of the BRI in Central Asia has been the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor or CPEC. CPEC is a cornerstone project of the BRI, with the most important element being the development of Gwadar Port in Balochistan Province. This port, made operational in 2016, is a critical element in bringing goods to and from the BRI network, potentially transforming Gwadar into a major regional economic hub. It also diversifies shipping routes from China, which is a key element in upending a potential U.S. blockade. While beyond the scope of this article, the peeling away of Pakistan from the U.S. is a major geopolitical victory for China. Remember that Operation Cyclone – the U.S.-led operation of aiding the Mujahideen against the USSR – was largely funneled through Pakistan’s intelligence agency the ISI.

Perhaps equally disturbing to U.S. empire is the willingness of otherwise close allies to participate in BRI projects. In March of 2019, Italy signed a variety deals with China as part of the BRI. Western media, especially in the U.S, immediately pounced on the news with CNBC declaring it will “only exacerbate tensions between Italy and its neighbors.”30 Reaction was overwhelmingly negative in U.S. media and political spheres in the U.S. and EU.

The U.S. has attempted to discredit the BRI, with commentators arguing that it is placing countries into a “debt trap”. Debt trap claims are not supported by the evidence we have, and is disputed even by bourgeois scholars. China’s debt cancellations have been well documented, including frequent cancellations to Africa and a large cancellation to Cuba. China frequently renegotiates credit with terms favorable to the borrower.

4. The Breakdown of the Bargain – Hybrid Warfare on China

American anxiety over China’s rise as regional and world power, particularly as an avowed communist power, takes us right back to Brzezinski. Not only is China a rival power in Eurasia (which “must be prevented”), it is a rapidly rising power with a system that seems impervious to economic crisis or political subversion. It is a system that is now expanding its reach through one of the most ambitious geopolitical projects in human history. How does the U.S. empire respond to this?

It’s difficult to pinpoint the exact start of the current war on China. While Obama’s infamous “Pivot to Asia” program in 2012 began to move chess pieces towards China, the U.S. and the PRC have never been allies or even friendly (I’m omitting for the sake of this article the long history of Western colonial oppression of China prior to the founding of the PRC). Even after the Three Communiques, the U.S. continued to sell billions of dollars worth of arms to Taiwan. This is a mainstay strategy of U.S. empire across all administrations, often referred to as the “Cross-Strait Balance of Power” which seeks to balance Taiwan against China.31 The U.S. maintained a 21-year embargo on China after the revolution, a tactic still used against Cuba to this day.32 We now know that the CIA was actively involved in the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests via Operation Yellowbird33 and sources placed among protesters.34 Containing China has long been a key strategy of U.S. empire, including militarily. This strategy was laid out succinctly in a 1965 draft memo from Defense Secretary McNamara to President Johnson:

There are three fronts to a long-run effort to contain China (realizing that the USSR “contains” China on the north and northwest): (a) the Japan-Korea front; (b) the India–Pakistan front; and (c) the Southeast Asia front. Decisions to make great investments today in men, money and national honor in South Vietnam makes sense only in conjunction with continuing efforts of equivalent effectiveness in the rest of South east Asia and on the other two principal fronts. The trends in Asia are running in both directions—for as well as against our interests; there is no reason to be unduly pessimistic about our ability over the next decade or two to fashion alliances and combinations (involving especially Japan and India) which will keep China from achieving her objectives until her zeal wanes. The job, however—even if we can shift some responsibilities to some Asian countries—will continue to require American attention, money, and, from time to time unfortunately, lives.

Any decision to continue the program of bombing North Vietnam and any decision to deploy Phase II forces—involving as they do substantial loss of American lives, risks of further escalation, and greater investment of U.S. prestige—must be predicated on these premises as to our long-run interests in Asia.

This memo also lays bare the fact that U.S. military occupation in Japan and Korea and close ties to India and Pakistan have the same objective in mind. What is remarkable is how consistent this policy has been from the U.S. empire, despite its inability to topple the DPRK and its failure in Vietnam. Adding to the U.S. empire’s anxiety, China has been very successful in recent years at peeling away Pakistan from U.S. hegemony (as noted above). If McNamara believed in 1965 that China’s “zeal” would wane in 10-20 years, he would be seriously disturbed by the gains China has made since.

U.S. strategy against China today can be categorized as having three central pillars, forming the basis of the hybrid war:

• Containment: The U.S. is actively building alliances (India, Japan, Australia, SK) while intervening militarily and politically in neighboring countries (the “triangle of control) in order to pressure China’s geopolitical flanks.

• Balkanization: Through overt and likely covert subversion, the U.S. has sought to support separatist movements in China, particularly in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Tibet. Xinjiang is of crucial importance to U.S. strategy given its central role in the Belt and Road Initiative.

• Economic Sabotage: Through restricting Chinese investment in the U.S., the targeting of specific firms and of course the trade war, efforts are underway to arrest the meteoric rise of China’s economy which is on track to eclipse the U.S. on numerous fronts.

Below I will highlight some of the major flashpoints in this hybrid war. Although these situations vary across place and time, one constant has been the trend towards a nearly unanimous anti-China sentiment across Western media. Becoming an anti-China reporter (sometimes referred to as “China watchers”) is now a major career path in U.S. journalism. There are reporters today whose entire careers have been built on presenting China in the worst possible light, frequently parroting CIA and State Department talking points as “reporting”. These “reporters” all share highly overlapping social circles, and some of the most virulent are members key U.S. foreign policy think tanks like the CFR. I have written about the peculiar Operation Mockingbird35-like careers of Melissa Chan36 and Bethany Allen-Ebrahimian.37

• 2007 – Present: Quadrilateral Security Dialogue or “Quad” Alliance

In 2007, Japan formed an alliance between itself, Australia, India and the United States with the implied aim of containing China’s geopolitical influence. While the different parties of the alliance have denied that the target is China, Chinese officials immediately recognized the significance of the meeting and complained to each.38 In tandem with the initiation of the Quad, 2007 saw the expansion of the Malabar military exercises to include Japan, Australia and Singapore (it was originally a bilateral U.S.-India exercise dating back to 1992). The exercise was also held, for the first time, off the coast of Okinawa instead of the Indian Ocean – a not so subtle provocation towards China.39

Since the formation of the Quad, activity has varied year-to-year. Notable, Australia had backed out of the alliance in 2008 under Kevin Rudd. However, Australia would later return to the fold and in November of 2017 all parties met again. Between 2017 and 2019, activity increased dramatically with the Quad meeting five times.40

• 2010-2012: CIA Network in China Exposed and Dismantled

The NYT reported that between 2010 and 2012, China “systematically dismantled CIA spying operations in the country” by killing or jailing at least a dozen sources. According to the report, the CIA “considers spying in China one of its top priorities.” The operation is said to have crippled CIA operations in the country for “years afterward.”41 This can be viewed as one of the major intelligence war developments between China and the U.S., and dovetails with the discovery of a massive CIA hacking operation in China.

• 2008-2019 (present?): Widespread CIA Hacking Operation Against Chinese Industries and Government

In March of 2020—lost amidst the media frenzy surrounding COVID-19—a well-known Chinese security firm Qihoo 360 announced that they uncovered a massive CIA hacking operation against China since at least 2008. In part thanks to the leak of the Vault 7 hacking tools, the security firm was able to identify CIA attacks against aviation, petroleum, and internet companies as well as scientific research institutions and government agencies.42 The security firm speculated on some potential objectives of this attack:

We speculate that in the past eleven years of infiltration attacks, CIA may have already grasped the most classified business information of China, even of many other countries in the world. It does not even rule out the possibility that now CIA is able to track down the real-time global flight status, passenger information, trade freight and other related information. If the guess is true, what unexpected things will CIA do if it has such confidential and important information? Get important figures‘ travel itinerary, and then pose political threats, or military suppression?

• 2018 – Bloomberg’s “Big Hack” Article

In one of the most bizarre and blatant Operation Mockingbird style media operations I can think of, Bloomberg ran a totally baseless article in 2018 accusing China of implanting spy chips in the hardware of servers used by many major U.S. firms. The article was refuted by virtually everyone asked about it and it was never followed-up on, retracted or, to my knowledge, updated.43 One of the co-authors, Jordan Robertson has not tweeted since the article was published and it remains his “pinned tweet” as of 4/17/2020. It’s unclear what exactly happened with this story and it is one of the biggest mysteries in modern media and especially tech journalism. My speculation it was somehow a botched, planted hit-piece on China from the CIA or the information used to write the article was leaked by individuals without proper clearance. Either way, the fact that a major media outlet like Bloomberg was willing to publish a patently false article about China with massive implications if true is testament to the state of anti-China media operations.

• 2014 – Present: U.S. Involvement in Hong Kong Protests

Since the 2014 “Occupy Central” protests and their return in the extremely violet outbursts of 2019, U.S. involvement in Hong Kong separatism has been documented by Chinese media and others. In a 2014 People’s Daily article, China accused Louisa Greve, then-VP of the National Endowment for Democracy or NED (infamous CIA front org), of meeting with protest leaders.44 Greve, unsurprisingly, is today a director of the “Uyghur Human Rights Project” – another NED-funded organization based in DC that is promoting Xinjiang separatism. Radio Free Asia and Voice of America (U.S. government propaganda outlets) openly bragged about their on-the-ground reporting on the HK protests and methods of evading censorship.45

During the 2019 outburst of protests in Hong Kong, CCTV published a photograph of U.S. diplomat Julie Eadeh meeting with protest leaders Joshua Wong and Nathan Law.46 U.S. interference in Hong Kong reached its peak with the 2019 passage of the so-called “Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act” which was first introduced in 2014. The act requires the U.S. to impose sanctions on officials engaged in alleged human rights abuses in HK and, among other things, reviewing favorable trade relations between the U.S. and HK.47

• 2018 – Present: U.S. Subversion in Xinjiang

U.S.-based “Human Rights” organizations, the NED, U.S. politicians and U.S. media began a massive psychological operation targeting Xinjiang province in 2018. This operation began with claims from the World Uyghur Congress (a NED-sponsored org) that China was putting Muslims in “concentration camps.” These claims have since been thoroughly debunked, as the facilities in question were created as vocational centers and alternatives to outright imprisonment as part of China’s novel de-radicalization efforts in Xinjiang. A comprehensive document has been compiled debunking various claims made about Xinjiang HERE.

What U.S. media of course never mentions is that Xinjiang was the target of numerous terrorist attacks from the Al-Qaeda affiliated “Turkistan Islamic Party” in the 90’s, and that terror attacks continued through 201748 until China was forced to respond with a comprehensive de-radicalization campaign. There have been no known attacks since 2017.

It’s worth noting that the World Uyghur Congress, which received NED’s “2019 Democracy Award” had one of its predecessor organizations, World Uyghur Youth Congress, designated as a terrorist organization by China in 2003.49 In other words, the U.S. government is actively sponsoring an organization which China believes is affiliated with terrorists. As mentioned above, Xinjiang is a crucial target area for U.S. imperialism given its importance to the BRI and the link it provides China to the rest of Central, South and Western Asia (remember the train that runs directly from Urumqi in Xinjiang to Tehran?).

• 2009 – Present: South China Sea and U.S. Navy Incursions

While the dispute around the South China Sea has been an international issue for a very long time, the U.S. has repeatedly inserted itself into the debate against China. The U.S. has obvious interest in seeing that China is not able to enforce its sovereignty claims in the South China Sea, given that U.S. Navy vessels from the West Coast and Pacific bases pass through the South China Sea to get to the Indian Ocean and Persian Gulf.50 The aggressive posture of the U.S. in East Asia has led to numerous close calls.51,52,53

• 2018 – Present: Technology War Against Huawei and ZTE

As part of the U.S. strategy to arrest China’s economic growth, it is targeting some of its highest value industries including the high tech sector. In August of 2018, the annual NDAA was signed including provisions banning the federal government from purchasing equipment from Huawei and ZTE. It also placed restrictions on Dahua Technology, Hytera and Hikvision.54 The reason given was for dubious “security” concerns. The intent of this action was clear: to drive a wedge between China’s most successful high tech companies and the rest of the world. Huawei is one of the largest smart phone companies in the world and a top Chinese company in several metrics. The situation escalated dramatically in 2018 when Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou was arrested in Canada at the behest of the U.S. She is charged with allegedly violating sanctions on Iran, among other charges.55

• 2018 – Present: The U.S. Trade War on China

Perhaps the most telling sign of the breakdown of the bargain between U.S. capital and China is the trade war initiated by Trump in 2018. For the first time since China’s economic reforms, the U.S. government has moved to explicitly act on its complaints of China’s “unfair” systems. The important thing to know about the trade war is that what the U.S. is really complaining about is China’s socialist system. Almost all of the complaints the U.S. has put forward against China are mechanisms that China has used to strengthen its state sector: IP transfer, preferential treatment for SOEs, etc. This trade war is ultimately designed to pressure China into gutting their socialist system.

While a “phase one” deal has been reached between the U.S. and China, the actual implementation of that deal and further negotiations are uncertain. The second phase is supposed to deal with “structural issues” (read: the U.S. wants China to privatize and undo its socialist system) but so far we have not seen any movement in that direction. The COVID-19 crisis may put the brakes on the trade war and its negotiations for the foreseeable future.

The Democratic Party has done virtually nothing to oppose Trump’s trade war, and has instead merely asserted that the U.S. should be taking a “coalition” approach to “hold China accountable” for its “unfair trade practices.” Joe Biden explicitly said this about the phase one deal: “[It] won’t actually resolve the real issues at the heart of the dispute, including industrial subsidies, support for state-owned enterprises, cybertheft, and other predatory practices in trade and technology.”56 There is a cross-party consensus on waging economic war against China.

Conclusions and Looking Ahead

I hope this article provided a useful overview of the background and current situation facing China in the world today. What is clear to me is that the U.S. is feeling increasingly threatened by China’s rise and has concluded that the only way to slow it down is to employ the old Cold War tactics used against countries like the USSR, Cuba and the DPRK. The bargain between U.S. capital and China appears to be coming to a definitive end, and I see no indication that this situation will be resolved anytime soon. For the non-Chinese socialist movement, I hope this information provides a better understanding of the world we live in and China’s role. I hope that more socialists – even if they do not agree with the assessment that China is socialist – will come to view China’s rise as a decisive break with U.S. hegemony, something we have not seen since the USSR. China is the future, and the sooner we all educate ourselves on it the better we will be able to interact with China and its millions of communists. The non-Chinese left has a lot to learn from the experience of the PRC, both in its revolution and its post-revolution governance. I hope I have contributed to that understanding.

This article will be reviewed and re-visited as time goes on new developments unfold.

I would like to thank the many people who have helped me better understand China, socialism and geopolitics generally. There’s too many to list and I would feel bad leaving anyone out, but if you have ever shared materials with me or offered insight on China I’m forever in your debt. Finally of course I can only say thank you to all of the Chinese people and their comrades who have given the rest of the world hope for a better future.

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