The Two Octobers of China and Canada    BY Christopher Black  October is a month for reflection of the summer passed, the winter to come, of hopes realised, of dreams dashed, of warm feelings of good cheer chilled by fear of disasters and war. The world is in a bad state.

But it is also a month of history, of different histories expressing different present realities. For instance, in Canada, where I live, it is the month of the October Crisis of 1970, when the country was torn by civil conflict, and martial law, imposed by Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, the father of the current prime minister.

Canadian conflict

The nation’s resources are exploited for the benefit of largely American investors

That conflict grew out of the history of the British conquest of the French forces in Quebec in 1763 and the long history of oppression of the French people under British domination since then, which, in the 1960s, developed into the powerful and dynamic independence movement in Quebec under parties such as the Parti Quebecois and leaders such as Rene Levesque and Jacques Parizeau. Their party won its first election in Quebec in 1970.  Today there is a second independence party in Quebec that takes part in federal elections, the Bloc Quebecois, though the two cooperate on a number of issues.

The series of events is long, but it is enough to understand that, parallel to the creation of political parties advocating the separation of Quebec from Canada to form a sovereign nation, the frustrations of the political process led others to create a small guerrilla group which they named the Front de Liberation du Quebec, or FLQ, in 1963, which carried out a few minor and largely ineffective attacks on government buildings, officials a railway, the Montreal Stock Exchange, and police stations, demanding the creation of an independent and socialist Quebec.

In 1970, on October 5th, the FLQ conducted an operation in Montreal, kidnapping a British diplomat, James Cross, as a hostage for their demands presented to the government of Quebec to release a number of their members who had been imprisoned, among other demands related to their political goals.  The federal and provincial governments rejected the demands and so the group kidnapped a Quebec government official, Pierre Laporte, threatening to kill him unless their demands, seven in all, including release of prisoners, and establishment of a free, socialist Quebec. The response of the provincial premier was to ask for help from the federal government and, on October 12, martial law was declared as federal troops were sent in to Montreal and other towns in Quebec. Hundreds of citizens were arrested by the army and police; many of them leftists, labour leaders and assorted radicals, most of them arrested without charge. By December the cells of the FLQ involved were located, and their members arrested, Cross released, Laporte found strangled.

The result politically was more support among the Quebec people for the Parti Quebecois and its objectives, but a rejection of violence to attain them.  Since then, the independence movement has had its ups and downs, ebbs and flows of support as the circumstances and tensions within the Canadian federal state fluctuate. The tensions are still there.

In contrast, the month of October in China is a month of celebration of the events that created the China of today, beginning with the Wuhang Uprising of October 10th 1911.

In contrast, the month of October in China is a month of celebration of the events that created the China of today, beginning with the Wuhang Uprising of October 10th 1911, in the province of Hubei; a revolt of army officers and soldiers of the New Army against the ruling Qing Dynasty, which resulted, a few months later, in the fall of the Dynasty and the creation of the first republic. Sun Yat Sen was made president of the Republic of China on January 1, 1912.

Out of this transformation and out of frustrations with the decisions of the leadership of the new government of the republic arose the large student demonstrations in 1919 protesting the government’s lack of effective opposition to the colonial policies expressed in the Versailles Treaty, while advocating strong nationalist views. The students were angry at the weakness of the government in the face of the Versailles Treaty that gave to Japan some Chinese territories the Japanese had seized from German occupiers in 1914, a national humiliation. The protest that erupted as a result became known as the May 4th Movement, and it was out of the groups involved that came many leaders of the future Communist Party of China.

But China was to face a long struggle to decide the final character of the republic with some elements wanting to bring back the monarchy or create a new one, some wanting a capitalist, others a socialist, republic. The struggles were protracted and included periods of chaos, civil warn, and banditry, the creation of the Communist Party in 1921, the massacre of its members in Shanghai by Chiang Kai-shek in 1927, the Long March, the invasion by Japan, and the civil war between the capitalist and communist forces which led to the decisive victory of the communist forces in China and the declaration, by Mao Tse Tung, in Beijing on October 1st, 1949, of the creation of the People’s Republic of China, the beginning of the flowering of China into a modern state in which prosperity is shared by and with all its peoples, who now share with the world the beauty and sophistication of their civilisation and their collective society.

Canada has failed to realise its potential.

Whereas Canada has never achieved a republic, but is ruled by a constitutional monarchy, derived from the British colonial epoch whose elites, loyal to the British Crown and British finance until 1945 are now loyal vassals and puppets of the American capital and the aggressive foreign policies of the United States.

 It is a country of vast territories and natural resources with a relatively small population all of whom should be rich but half of whom live near the poverty level or below it as the nations resources are exploited for the benefit of largely American investors, its primary industrial base gutted by free trade agreements with the United States and complete lack of vision among the leadership groups of how to develop the country in any rational way.

Many people are relatively well-off, yet doctors are now reporting that they are seeing cases of scurvy appearing in the population, never seen before, due to a lack of adequate nutrition among poorer segments of the society.

 In a recent legal case filed against the federal government by an indigenous group demanding that the Canadian government provide them with access to clean water, the Canadian government stated that it has no legal obligation to provide them with clean water. This is the government that essentially swindled them out of their rights to their lands and forced them to live on reserves and which claims to regret its century long policy of trying to destroy the indigenous cultures and achieve their total assimilation, that is annihilation as peoples and cultures. The government has even created a national holiday to celebrate “truth and reconciliation” between the Canadian state and the First Nations for the crimes committed against them, yet the harsh policies, continue. No one has been held to account. The inhumanity continues

Among the general population, most people get by, but it is becoming more and more difficult with a lack of jobs, and rising costs of almost everything. And what are the solutions offered by the government? There appear to be none. If the natural wealth of the nation was distributed and shared among all the people equally, all of them would be well-off. But this will never happen here. The potential of Canada will never be realised under the current economic and political regime, which all the major parties support. And while we still have a good national health care system, something Americans can only dream of, they are undermining that too to satisfy the largely US but also Canadian insurance companies who hope to profit from its privatisation.

Two different histories, Two different realities:

So, we see two different histories; on the one hand, that of a nation sunk into poverty and chaos a hundred years ago which has, under the communists, restored its prosperity with its independence, while, on the other, Canada, a nation gifted with immense resources and potential, sinking into mediocrity and decline.

Yet, the two nations are connected. Canadians are respected in China, or were until recently. Canadians, like Dr. Norman Bethune, gave their lives to help the revolutionary forces of the People’s Liberation Army in the 1930s. They were welcomed despite the fact that in 1923 the Chinese Exclusion Act was adopted by Canada, banning all Chinese entry into Canada. Prior to that, they had applied a head tax to Chinese families so that the Chinese men, who came to Canada to build the railways in the late 1800s and early 1900s, could not be joined by their families. The Exclusion Act kept them out completely. It was not rescinded until 1947.

It was the same Prime Minister Trudeau who applied martial law in 1970 who became one of the first western leaders to recognise China in the same year and then to visit China in 1973. The racist policies of the Canadian state seemed suddenly to have disappeared, replaced by friendship and cooperation.

But with the arrest of Meng Wanzhou in 2018, on American orders, all that changed as Canada once again surrendered its own interests in cooperation with China to American demands to insult China, to embargo its products, to once again sow the seeds of racism among Canadians.

Since then, the Canadian media has echoed the statements of its politicians and the intelligence service and their fake stories of Chinese “influence” in Canada, fake stories of human rights violations in China, interference in Hong Kong, claims of Chinese world aggression, their support for Taiwan independence. Sanctions have been applied by Canada against China. They are illegal under international law, but that does not matter. Diplomats have been expelled, trade disputes created out of thin air, the list of harassment is a long one. The point is to hurt China.

This past week, Canada slapped a 100 per cent tariff on Chines electric vehicles, batteries and other electronic components, even though Canada does not manufacture electric vehicles. The EU did the same, all at US direction. China has filed a claim with the World Trade Organisation and has restricted the import of certain agricultural products.

Canadian war ships, as insignificant as they are, have challenged China’s sovereignty in its territorial waters in the South China Sea, and the Taiwan Straight, sends spy planes close to its borders, sends spies into China to gather intelligence, alarms the Canadian people that China is an aggressive nation and paints the Chinese people as the old stereotypes of the racists painted them.

Yet, as Canada becomes more hostile in lock step with the United States, every ready to obey commands from Washington, China tries to bring back relations to the period of friendship ad cooperation.

China Seeks Cooperation-Canada supports US domination

In Ottawa on September 25th, the Chinese Embassy hosted a reception to celebrate China’s National Day, which I attended, and at which the Chinese Ambassador, Wang Di, gave a heartfelt speech reminding us all of that period of friendship between Canada and China and insisting that friendship can and must be restored, that there are no real conflicts of interest between the two nations, that everything can be achieved through dialogue and good intentions.  He was applauded even by the Canadian diplomats who attended, though the dozen or so Canadian military officers present, clapped less or stood there with their drinks in hand, just looking on. It was just a few days later, as though in reply to his call for friendship and cooperation, that Canada hit China with the new tariff on electric vehicles.

There we have it; two nations, two Octobers, two different histories, heading in different directions. One, China, free and independent, is proud of what its people have accomplished, sure of its place in the world, the other, Canada, a nation of great potential unrealised, is a captive of its own elites whose blindness to the world reality, infected by racism, makes them unable to escape the domination of the United States and American capital, who are unable to see Canada as an independent nation free to develop in it own way, and who regard Canada as little more than a semi-autonomous province of the United States.

 

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto. He is known for a number of high-profile war crimes cases and recently published his novel Beneath the Clouds. He writes essays on international law, politics and world events, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

 

https://journal-neo.su/2024/10/11/the-two-octobers-of-china-and-canada/

 

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Decoupling From China? The Consequences of a Stupid Idea    BY Ricardo Martins

 

There are ongoing discussions about the need for the West, especially the United States (US) and the European Union (EU) to de-risk and/or decouple from China. These discussions pervade all spheres, including journalistics, think tanks, academia and politics.

 

Holding China more than 30% of the world’s industrial output and a major destination of Western production or Western firms producing in China, how is this proposition plausible and credible in such intertwined economies without disrupting global supply chains and without bringing high inflation to Western nations?

In this article, I analyse why decoupling is not a good idea, its dire consequences, and the consequences for the West of being deprived of Chinese high-tech advancements. I emphasise that decoupling is a US agenda for the continuation of its dominance over the globe, and not a European one.

Why is Decoupling a Stupid Idea?

The Earth is big enough for China and the US to develop respectively and prosper togetherChinese Ambassador to the US, Xie Feng

According to the World Bank, China holds 31.6% of the total global manufacturing output. The US follows with 15.9%, and Japan is in third place with 6.5%. The leading EU country is Germany, with 4.8%, in fourth position, and the next European is Italy in 8th place, after Russia, with 1.8%. France comes in 10th place, after Mexico, with 1.6%. This data was published in 2024 and refers to the 2023 manufacturing output. Furthermore, according to Reuters, in September 2024, the German manufacturing sector contracted at the fastest pace ever in a year due to “orders drying up at an alarming rate”, and “it is hard to picture any kind of recovery happening soon.”

With globalization and the liberalization of trade of goods and services, the world has become interdependent. In the case of the US, its economy is increasingly dependent on China for imports (particularly manufacturing supplies and advanced materials), Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows, and even the contributions made by Chinese students in living fees and tuition expenses.

An American study has shown that decoupling with China risks all of these value streams, and would constitute losses of over $700 billion in sales and $50 billion in profits for American companies that export to the Chinese market. A similar situation will happen in Europe too.

Consequences of Decoupling

Decoupling from China, given its massive 31.6% share of global manufacturing output, would be extremely disastrous.  Here are a few reasons that come to my mind:

Global Supply Chains: China’s integration into global supply chains means it plays a critical role in the production of everything from high-tech electronics to textiles. Western economies rely heavily on components or finished products made in China. For certain products and raw materials, the dependency rate is over 90%, as is the case for certain pharmaceuticals, chemicals, photovoltaic cells, rare earth and others. China is the dominant producer of several rare earths which are crucial for the manufacturing of a wide range of high-tech products, including electronics, wind turbines, and electric vehicle batteries.

Decoupling would require either relocating manufacturing to other countries or reshoring industries back to Europe or the US would imply disrupting industries for years and would lead to major supply chain disruptions, causing shortages, higher production costs, and high inflation.

Relocation Challenges: Countries like India or Vietnam are often presented as alternatives, but none have the capacity or infrastructure that China has developed over decades. Manufacturing in these regions might help diversify risks but cannot replace China’s dominance in the near term. Additionally, many of these nations already have trade ties with China, complicating decoupling strategies.

Cost Implications: China offers lower labour costs, efficient infrastructure, and a vast workforce. Moving manufacturing to other countries with comparable capacity is difficult. The next biggest players—like India, South Korea, and Germany—have much smaller outputs (between 2.7% and 6.5%). They also may lack the same level of infrastructure or workforce to handle the massive volume of production that China does.

Market Access: With a population of 1.4 billion, over 500 million of whom are considered middle class, China boasts the largest internal consumer market in the world and is the leading market for luxury products. This market contributes significantly to the revenue of Western companies. Many Western firms, including major technology and luxury brands, depend on sales within China to stay profitable. Should decoupling result in economic or political tensions, access to this market could be jeopardised, potentially harming the revenues of these Western companies.

Retaliation: China will retaliate against the US and EU’s decoupling measures by imposing tariffs, restrictions, or boycotts on Western products, further reducing export opportunities for Western firms. Key industries, like automobiles, luxury goods, and agriculture, can face severe downturns.

Global Recession Risks: Given the size of China’s economy and its deep integration into the global economy, a sharp decoupling could lead to a slowdown in global trade and investment. If China’s growth slows due to decoupling, it will propagate across the global economy, possibly leading to a global recession, as China is a key driver of global demand.

Many emerging markets depend on exporting raw materials to China. A slowdown in Chinese manufacturing could weaken demand for these exports, slowing growth in those countries and leading to economic instability in regions that rely on Chinese-led infrastructure and trade.

Geopolitical Consequences: Decoupling certainly will lead to economic fragmentation, where China becomes more self-reliant and allies more closely with emerging markets and other nations willing to maintain ties. China is the number one trade partner with 128 countries, out of 190, including the EU. This will shift further the balance of power, creating separate economic blocs, such as the West and the rest, which could disrupt trade and economic cooperation globally.

Western is Losing the Technology Race to China

Trump has played the technology restrictions card to contain China. A few days ago, a Chinese told me that Trump is playfully known in China as “The maker”, the one who has made China technologically resilient and surpass the US. Presently, the country leads in 37 out of 44 technologies examined in the Critical Technology Trackers survey by an Australian think tank.

According to the same study, Western democracies are increasingly falling behind in the global technological race, including scientific innovation and attracting global talent—key elements essential for developing and mastering the world’s foremost technologies.

The Australian findings indicate that China has laid the groundwork to become the preeminent science and technology superpower by securing an impressive lead in high-impact research across most critical and emerging technology fields.

China’s leadership position is the result of intentional strategy and long-term policy planning, consistently emphasised by Xi Jinping and his predecessors.

My Conclusions on this Discussion

1. If decoupling is to be pursued, the US and Europe are prone to be behind in technology but also will not benefit from a fast-growing economy and the biggest consuming market in the world. It is an act of economic suicide, ideologically rooted in the imperialistic ambitions of the United States to maintain its global dominance.

2. As the US and EU distance themselves from China, they may lose economic leverage and influence in Asia, Africa and Latin America, where China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is extending its influence. While Western nations discuss strategies and possibilities on how to de-risk and/or how to decouple from China, the country is deepening its ties with emerging economies, thus reducing the geopolitical influence of the US and Europe in key regions of the world.

3. While efforts to de-risk and decouple from China may be seen as necessary for geopolitical and geoeconomic reasons, they come with considerable risks and challenges. The interconnectedness of the global economy means that any significant shift in trade relationships can have wide-reaching effects, not only for the US and EU but also for China and the rest of the world.

4. Balancing these efforts while maintaining economic stability will be a complex challenge for policymakers in the coming years. A more nuanced approach to managing the US and EU-China relationship, prioritising collaboration over confrontation, is a win-win solution.

5. The EU needs to develop its autonomous strategy for navigating the problematic US-China relationship and not cede to US pressure to be its followers, but actively seek its own path to balance its economic interests with its political and security concerns.

6. Finally, the statement of the Chinese Ambassador to the US, Xie Feng, should be the guiding premise: “The Earth is big enough for China and the US to develop respectively and prosper together.” For this, the US needs to learn to share power.

 

Ricardo Martins ‒PhD in Sociology with specialisation in EU policies and international relations. Guest researcher at Utrecht University, the Netherlands, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”

More on this topicOne Year of the Israeli Genocide in GazaAbbas HashemiteOn the political issues and problems related to the planned merger between Nippon Steel and US SteelVladimir TerehovWords Without Action: Why Arab States Are Unable to Stop IsraelSalman Rafi SheikhThe EU, a vassal of WashingtonMohamed Lamine KABAEscalation of the internal political crisis in the USVeniamin Popov

 

https://journal-neo.su/2024/10/10/decoupling-from-china-the-consequences-of-a-stupid-idea/

 

 

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The unresolved tension at the core of Australia’s strategic policy     By Peter Varghese

 

Australia wants to constrain China, but without tying itself to America’s own ambitions and all that might mean.

The central strategic axis of the Indo-Pacific region is – and for the foreseeable future, will remain – bipolar: a competition for primacy between the US and China.

And while Australia has chosen where it sits, most of the region is determined not to choose either. They do not buy the line that they have to choose, and they certainly do not buy the line that we are engaged in an epic struggle between democracy and autocracy.

There is currently an unresolved tension at the core of Australian strategic policy. On the one hand, our foreign policy embraces a multipolar future where no country dominates.

Our defence policy, on the other hand, quietly conflates US leadership and US primacy, and is increasingly fixed around doing what we can to ensure the retention of US strategic primacy. That includes, it would seem, aligning our force posture to fit into the overarching US strategic objective, which is to deny China primacy by doubling down on US primacy.

With AUKUS we are also beginning to see a move away from the defence of Australia within an alliance context, which has been the conceptual underpinning of our defence policy for five decades, and an unarticulated drift towards forward defence 2.0.

Forward defence 1.0 was what we had before the Vietnam War. It assumed that Australia could never defend itself and so was better off dealing with threats a long way from our shores and under the leadership of the United States.

Some now argue that the very idea of finding security in Asia is hopelessly naive and made redundant by the authoritarian character and, it is asserted, the expansionist ambitions of China.

But finding security in Asia was never premised on an expectation that all the countries in Asia would find common strategic ground, or that Asia could become a region devoid of competing strategic ambitions.

A new strategic equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific region is likely to take an organic form rather than two competing alliance systems.

Rather, finding security in Asia means finding the structures and strategic logic to create a stable and sustainable balance of power in the region. For Australia, that means finding the best means of constraining China’s ambition to recreate, at least in East Asia and the Western Pacific, the old Middle Kingdom where hierarchy was harmony, China sat at the top and other countries pre-emptively conceded the primacy of China’s interests.

Striking this balance will likely be the work of at least a generation. It will inevitably be a collective endeavour and, for the foreseeable future, it will be built around a US-China fault line.

The Quad is one expression of this emerging collective balance, although it has a long way to go as a serious strategic coalition, weighed down as it is with a broad and distracting public goods agenda.

A new strategic equilibrium in the Indo-Pacific region is likely to take an organic form rather than the two fixed and competing alliance systems that characterised the Cold War. And while the competition for primacy between the US and China will shape its contours, a stable balance does not require any one power to hold primacy. Indeed it may well work best if no single power holds primacy.

Australia, of course, has no problem with the retention of US primacy. After all we have been its beneficiary. But constructing a stable China-constraining balance does not turn on the retention of US primacy, although it certainly requires the US to be a keystone of that balance.

There is a difference between US leadership and US primacy. US leadership signals a powerful United States that remains engaged in the region and that is the lead balancer of China. Without the US there can be no effective balancing of China.

US primacy, however, goes beyond leadership and balance. Its starting point is that the US cannot tolerate a peer competitor and its ensuing logic is that the US will therefore do whatever it takes to prevent such a competitor emerging. US global primacy is now deeply embedded in the strategic culture and national identity of the US.

Some assert that the US has already lost its primacy, but that underestimates the breadth of US power, its capacity for renewal even amidst political dysfunction, and the structural challenges facing China.

Moreover, there is a large difference between recognising the benefits to date of US primacy and fixing Australian policy around the retention of US primacy. However desirable US primacy has been for Australia, it is not a vital Australian interest.

Or to put it another way, the loss of US primacy may be regrettable, but it does not pose an existential threat to Australia. To assume it does is to handcuff ourselves to whatever the US decides it must do to retain its primacy. Those strategies may make sense for the US, but they might not always be in Australia’s national interest.

Going to war with China would be the starkest example, although that is something all of us would want to avoid.

 

This is an edited version of remarks to Asialink’s Weary Dunlop dinner on October 8, 2024.

 

https://johnmenadue.com/the-unresolved-tension-at-the-core-of-australias-strategic-policy/

 

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