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Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Showing posts with label China. Show all posts
Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★Written by
Adam Hunerven 

This article provides a comprehensive analysis of the systematic repression of Uyghurs in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of Northwest China. 

Drawing on extensive ethnographic fieldwork conducted between 2014 and 2017, the author documents how China’s “People’s War on Terror,” declared in May 2014, has transformed the Uyghur homeland into an open-air prison. 

The article traces the historical roots of Han Chinese settler colonialism in the region, examining how socialist-era multiculturalism gave way to capitalist development and eventually to a comprehensive system of racialized policing and mass detention.

The author argues that the crisis facing Uyghurs cannot be understood simply as “ethnic conflict” or “counter-terrorism” but rather as a process of social elimination that combines capitalist dispossession with terror rhetoric. By 2017, an estimated one million Uyghurs had been detained in “transformation through education” centres, where they face forced political indoctrination, linguistic assimilation, and systematic efforts to destroy their religious and cultural identity. Through first-hand testimony from Uyghur interlocutors, the article reveals the profound psychological trauma—what Uyghurs themselves describe as “spirit breaking”—inflicted upon an entire people. [MJ]

Continue @ ESSF.

Terror Capitalism 🪶The Uyghur Experience Under Chinese Settler Colonialism

Tommy McKearney ☭ The current dispute between the US and China relating to the supply of microchips has more profound implications than a one-off spat over trade.

31-October-2025

 It points to a fundamental change in the global economic system, as the realisation is dawning on Washington and Brussels that the People’s Republic is inexorably gaining the upper hand. After centuries of world dominance, the era of European and US supremacy is coming to an end.


In a desperate attempt to stave off the inevitable and reinforce the rule of capitalism, Donald Trump is thrashing around, seeking measures to halt the advance of history. Among a plethora of often erratic measures, he is now trying to stall the flow of hi-tech equipment from the US and EU to China by focusing on microchips. From smartphones to computers, from weapon systems to satellites, from the stock market to industrial control systems, practically everything works today thanks to a tiny yet powerful resource: microchips. Hence the effort to deny China access.

Not for the first time is the United States leading a drive in an effort to prevent the technological advance of other countries. In 1949, they launched the ‘Coordinating Committee for Multilateral Export Controls’ in order to prevent the USSR from gaining access to Western technology. How successful this strategy was may be gauged from the fact that over the following decade the Soviet Union launched the world’s first satellite into space and, two years later, sent the first man into orbit around the earth.

In the modern era, though, the current US president has decided to continue with a policy first introduced by his predecessor, Joe Biden, and that is to target Nvidia’s exports to China. Under the management of Jensen Huang, the California-based company manufactures state-of-the-art microchips, including those used in the production of advanced artificial intelligence (AI) applications. For a period of time, the hi-tech industry in China bought large quantities of microchips from Nvidia.

In light of this, Trump decided to double down on Biden’s restrictions and in April of this year imposed a complete ban on the export of the valuable H20 chip. However, a number of factors intervened that forced the Donald to retreat.[1] Deprived of access to the Chinese market, Nvidia lost a huge slice of its regular income, resulting in the company being forced to cut back greatly on research and development. At a time of rapid advances in this field, it would probably have meant the company losing its lead in this crucial area.

A fact reinforced by the shock delivered to the smug US “tech-bros” and their volatile asset in the White House by the creation of the Chinese AI app, DeepSeek. By developing and granting open access to this high-powered app, China demonstrated that its citizens had the technical ability to match (and possibly outperform) anything Silicon Valley could do. More recently still, after being barred from markets in the US and much of Europe, the Huawei company has succeeded in manufacturing advanced microchips on a par with those produced by Nvidia.

And if that wasn’t enough, China has fired a shot across its competitors’ bows by restricting the export of rare earth materials. China controls an estimated 90% of the world’s rare earth refining and processing capacity [2] and holds nearly half of the global total rare earth reserves—materials necessary for the production of a wide variety of hi-tech devices, from lightbulbs to guided missiles. For example, the American F-35 fighter jet depends on rare earth magnets for its sensors, engines and wing flaps.

Faced with being out-manoeuvred, Trump did what any unprincipled capitalist (is there any other type?) would do and did a deal. In August, Nvidia and another, albeit smaller, US company, AMD, were permitted to sell mid-range microchips to China, but only after paying the US Treasury 15% of their revenue from these exports.

Conceding ground in this crucially important sector is indicative of the overall change in the global economic system referred to at the beginning of this article.

According to a report in the Financial Times last month, “China accounts for two-thirds of global EV (electric vehicle) sales, compared with just 9% in the US. China also has about 70% of the world’s battery share, as well as dominance across the processing of nickel, cobalt and graphite and production of cathodes and anodes.” [3] All are crucial to battery performance, longevity and energy density in advanced engineering. Complementing its manufacturing capacity, the People’s Republic assists climate improvement, as it leads the world in renewable energy deployment, producing 60% of global wind turbines and 80% of global solar panels.

Central to the emergence of the new order being led from Beijing is the country’s employment of socialist-driven central planning. Currently in the process of developing the country’s 15th Five-Year Plan, the emphasis will continue to be on the pursuit of greater self-reliance and strength in science and technology. Standard Chartered’s conservative estimate is for China’s economic growth at 4.3% over the next five years. Goldman Sachs estimates the US rate for the same period to be approximately 2.1%.

No surprise, therefore, why the White House and its allies are desperately trying to stall the rise of China, with its practice and example offering solid evidence of a viable alternative to monopoly capitalism. Because when the chips are down, history is on the side of progressive humanity, as exemplified by ‘Communist China’.

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney

European And US Supremacy Is Coming To An End

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★ ‘Like a video game’: Israel enforcing Gaza evacuations with grenade-firing drones.

The Israeli army is weaponizing Chinese-made drones to police expulsion orders across Gaza, with soldiers saying they deliberately target civilians so others will ‘learn’ not to return, an investigation reveals.

The Israeli military has weaponized a fleet of Chinese-manufactured commercial drones to attack Palestinians in parts of Gaza that it seeks to depopulate, an investigation by +972 Magazine and Local Call can reveal. According to interviews with seven soldiers and officers who served in the Strip, these drones are operated manually by troops on the ground, and are frequently used to bomb Palestinian civilians — including children — in an effort to force them to leave their homes or prevent them from returning to evacuated areas.

Soldiers most commonly use EVO drones, produced by the Chinese company Autel, which are primarily intended for photography and cost around NIS 10,000 (approximately $3,000) on Amazon. However, with a military-issued attachment known internally as an “iron ball,” a hand grenade can be affixed to the drone and dropped with the push of a button to detonate on the ground. Today, the majority of Israeli military companies in Gaza use these drones.

Continue @ ESSF.

Chinese Drones Are Israel’s Preferred Weapon For Executing Civilians In Gaza

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontières ★ Written by Kavita Krishnan.

The ’anti-west’ left ignores China’s complicity in Israeli occupation and genocide.

The issue isn’t if China can do more for Palestine

The question is will China stop actively enabling Israel’s genocide and occupation.

China is the top exporter to Israel - at 17% way ahead of the US at 11%. What does it export? Chinese state-owned giant corporations build and run infrastructure - highways, power plants, ports - all over Israel and in occupation settlements in the West Bank. These include projects with strategic military importance like the Haifa Port. In India, we target Adani for its stake in Haifa but not China.

Worst of all, Chinese AI tech companies guide drones to evict Gazans, and provide surveillance, facial recognition and data collection in the West Bank - Israel buys this because it’s impressed by China’s success in using such tech in Xinjiang against Uyghurs.

Why doesn’t BDS focus on China as a target?

If China wanted it could, by ending its own complicity, bring Israel to a grinding halt in one stroke to force an end to the genocide. But it won’t.

Continue @ ESSF.

Why Does The Left Ignore Chinese Support For Israeli Colonialism?

People And Nature ☭ A vigil was held in Manchester’s Chinatown on Friday, to remember the victims of the fire in a block of flats in the Xinjiang province of China, Bob Myers writes.


A friend of ours, who is active in the Hong Kong solidarity movement, had let us know about the vigil. I went there with a friend.

About 30 young Chinese gathered – all overseas students I would say, not Manchester resident Chinese.

It was very moving, as the demonstrators were clearly very worried about protesting in public and wary of us – the only non Chinese there – and of each other. (Manchester has a big Chinese embassy and lots of security agents.)

Clearly most of the people didn’t know each other and didn’t talk to each other. (There are tens of thousands of Chinese students in Manchester). But one guy put down the posters you can see in the photos.

So it was more than just a memorial vigil. There was a list of four demands:

1 Allow public mourning

2 End brutal lockdown

3. Release arrested people

4. Defend people’s constitutional rights.

Another poster says: “Give me liberty or give me death.”

No-one said anything, people just stood there looking at the candles. Many passing Chinese people stopped to take photos.

My friend talked with one young woman, and she said: “We don’t know how to organise a protest. You know how to do it but we don’t.”

After we left we spotted the posters in the final picture, with the poem, stuck on a wall. Urumqi Road is where the fire took place. 5 December 2022.

Some links about China

➤The Chuang blog

➤ China Labour Bulletin

➤Xi Jinping’s coal stokes the climate fire – from People & Nature, January 2021


Close up of the poem


⏩ People & Nature is now on mastodon, as well as twitter, whatsapp and telegram. Please follow!

A Vigil For China Fire Victims

Tommy McKearney ☭ The despicable treatment of Clare Daly and Mick Wallace by the Irish Times in its Easter Saturday edition is more than simply evidence of the wretched state of the Irish mainstream media: it is also a reflection of concerns gripping the 26-County establishment.


The sanctimonious piece by Naomi O’Leary was titled, without any obvious irony, “Stars of state media” by a newspaper based in a state that ruthlessly enforced its Section 31 legislation for decades.

The article in question was printed over a two-page centre spread claiming that the two are “popular figures in media controlled by authoritarian regimes.” The message the reader was expected to take from this was that the pair are tools, knowingly or otherwise, of governments deemed undemocratic by both the Irish Times and Western powers.


Had this article appeared in one of the tabloids pandering to a sensation-seeking readership it would be possible to dismiss it as just another nasty piece of journalism to be binned with the rest of the rubbish. However, this was no run-of-the-mill scribbling hoping to beat the editorial deadline: by the writer’s own admission, the article had entailed ten months of research—considerable time devoted, therefore, to establishing the entirely unremarkable fact that Daly and Wallace are frequently interviewed favourably by Russian, Chinese and Arab broadcasting networks.

Such is the degree of anti-Russian hostility being generated at present that merely reporting that politicians are being interviewed by Moscow media is deemed sufficient to undermine their credibility. Yet this in itself does not explain why this research began months before Russia invaded Ukraine, nor does it explain why China and the Arabic-speaking world are also in the mix.

Whether conscious or not, the underlying rationale for this article lies in the changing dynamic in the global order and in this case the response by the Irish establishment to what is happening. Having spent decades ingratiating and submitting itself to and within the Western capitalist model, Ireland’s ruling caste has no appetite for having its privileged position disrupted or challenged.

Nevertheless, to paraphrase a former British prime minister, the winds of change are blowing, whether they like it or not. The axis of global economic power is shifting, away from the United States and western Europe towards China, Russia, and their allies in the Middle East. For decades the United States has been the leading global economy. Now, however, the latest statistics from the World Bank in Washington show that China’s GDP is—depending on which of two calculations is used—either the largest or second-largest in the world.¹

Worth keeping in mind when reading these reports is that GDP calculations are more than a little subjective, as they measure services as well as manufactured goods. This is more than a matter of semantics. Services, including the financial sector, are often transitory and always vulnerable to erosion, and make up a much greater portion of the American economy than that of China. Consequently, the long-term prospect is that, all else being equal, Beijing will displace Washington as capital of the world’s wealthiest and most industrially productive great power. And all that under the direction of a vibrant Communist Party.

Compounding the capitalist world’s anxiety about losing out economically is China’s foreign policy, exemplified by its “belt and road” project. Described as constructing a 21st-century Silk Road, China is investing abroad in infrastructure that is proving as beneficial to host countries as it is to the benefactor. Implemented for the most part in less-well-off regions, this initiative has, not surprisingly, won support among countries weary of and damaged by the heavy-handed, violent and rapacious exploitation of US-led capitalism.²

Consequently, it is no exaggeration to say that the free-market economic system as defined by the United States, Britain and the EU has not faced such a fundamental challenge to its hegemony since the immediate post-war era, a time when Soviet-style communism was gaining support among working people everywhere. The difference now is that the new kids on the block, namely China, Russia, and their Middle Eastern allies, are not exhausted and depleted by a savage war necessitating decades of basic internal reconstruction rather than high-tech export-led development.

What will not be different, though, is the response from capital to the challenge. As in the past, imperialism will employ the twin strategy of fifth-columnists and open military engagements, coupled with aggressive McCarthy-style propaganda. It is this latter tactic that we are now experiencing, and not just with this latest attempt to vilify Daly and Wallace.

Ireland’s mainstream media are owned or controlled by the ruling establishment and invariably serve the interests of their patrons. As mentioned above, there is nothing new in this assertion. The tendentiously censored coverage of the Northern conflict was a perfect example of this in practice, a situation where the modus operandi was to control and indeed create the narrative in order to control the response. So, rather than identifying the conflict as the result of a failed and repressive state, the Provisionals were deemed the sole culprits, thereby facilitating a selfish “do-nothing” response from Dublin governments.

In the latest manifestation of this narrative-controlling strategy, we can expect more of the same type of treatment inflicted on the two Irish politicians. The stakes are high for the ruling class, and the outlook is uncertain. In common with most free-market economies, Ireland, north and south, is experiencing the damaging impact of inflation, a situation that will last for many months and possibly several years and, as always, inflicting most harm on working-class communities.

Under such circumstances and conditions there is the real possibility that the spectre of a Connolly-inspired solution reinforced by developments in the East will become attractive among a majority of our citizens. In fact as we go to press there are those organising a festival in Dublin to celebrate the life and work of the said James Connolly. Not only that, the organisers have invited Daly and Wallace to speak.

What can one say? Well, it’s simple: a plague on the mainstream media’s McCarthyism, and on to the Workers’ Republic!

1. Caleb Silver, “The top 25 economies in the world,” Investopedia, 3 February 2022 (https://bit.ly/3ELtqLm).

2. See, for example, Ian Neubauer, “In Solomon Islands, Australia’s largesse faces China challenge,” Al Jazeera, 4 April 2022 (tinyurl.com/2hsef22v).

Tommy McKearney is a left wing and trade union activist. 
Follow on Twitter @Tommymckearney 

The Wretched State Of The Irish Media

Matt Treacy ✒ While the western media – including even the red tops which are going large on boiling lava today – has temporarily replaced Covid scares with Climate Change, the Chinese official press is surely taking the pee out of us.

While our own Climate Change Commissar Eamon Ryan is calling on the world to follow the example being set by little old Ireland, the Chinese Communist Party, which presides over the biggest single one state source of CO2 emissions, is promising that it will get around to this someday. When its exemptions end, if they adhere to that.

As Gillian Welch might put it, they “wanna do right, but not right now.” They will, however, according to today’s People’s Daily reach peak pollution by 2030, and thereafter proceed to “achieve carbon neutrality before 2060.” Now, according to our own Cassandras that would surely be too late?

Loveable old Comrade Xi Jinping was too busy washing his hair or opening a new labour camp or something to be able to turn up to save the planet and all yesterday, but he did text them. It contained the fortune cookie advice that “Visions will only come true when we act upon them.” If Woke Hollywood is ever going to do a remake of It’s a Wonderful Life, the Jimmy Stewart character part is sorted.

The Party has also let everyone know that is unselfishly prepared to share its experience and expertise in not meeting the goals expected of the “imperialist running dogs” of Walsh Island and Ferbane whose peat racket was threatening imminent global catastrophe, with the rest of the planet.

One of the ways it is doing this is by taking an increasing role in the economies of Africa. Much of the trillions of dollars being invested through the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative is targeted at sub–Saharan Africa which is regularly cited as the greatest and most vulnerable victim of climate change. Indeed, it is the example most often used to tug at the heart strings of western consumers.

And with good reason, when one considers that much of western phone technology, for example, depends on raw material inputs like cobalt. It is these raw materials that are the apple of the Chinese industrial Behemoth’s fossil fuel guzzling eye – to the extent that some observers are highly sceptical about how Chinese involvement in Africa is going to help in attaining that continent’s modest energy targets.

Jennifer Turner of the Woodrow Wilson Center has said:

What China is selling is the China development model, which was energy-intense, so no holds barred … China’s not taking their war on pollution on the road even though that could be an opportunity.

China has also increased coal production, and announced as much in the midst of all this week’s brow-beating.

One of the reasons for this is that some observers see the increase in Chinese coal exports to their economic partners as a means to mitigate the impact of a slowdown in the Chinese domestic economy.

China increases coal production as climate warming talks begin bangkokpost.com

There are differing assessments of the health of the Chinese economy, but the announcement in recent days that Beijing is advising households to stock up on essential items over the Winter is pretty alarming. Some of China’s nervous neighbours, including India, are connecting this to growing fears that the recent aggression towards Taiwan might proceed further.

China urges people to stock up on essentials ahead of winter,
prompts worries online | Deccan Herald

It may also be a pre-emptive move ahead of an intensified lockdown over rising Covid cases, preparation for a severe spell of cold weather, or even just as part of a correction to steeply increased food prices.

Who knows. Winston Churchill’s reference to the Soviet Union as a “mystery wrapped in an enigma” goes nowhere near to capturing the paucity of real knowledge of Chinese realities and plans. Which most in the west pay no heed to anyway, unless it is comprised of sycophantic infantilisms that take no account of the utter cynicism of the regime they effect to condescend to.

Matt Treacy has published a number of books including histories of 
the Republican Movement and of the Communist Party of Ireland. 

China Sends Best Wishes To Climate Meet-Up

Steven Are ✒ discusses the rise of China and the somewhat tense relationship it has with Australia.

“There lies a sleeping giant. Let him sleep! For when he wakes, he will shake the world.” - 
Napoleon Bonaparte.

Has got me digging a little into what drives the Australian economy, and in particular what role it plays in setting policy regards to China.

It’s no secret that Australia like’s to punch above its weight. For a nation of around 26 million perched just about as far away as you can get from Europe or the US, she exerts enough clout to get the attention of the Western world. There are a few reasons for this.

For the past 20 years, Australia has been the main supplier to China of raw materials so essential to Beijing’s push to modernise their society. The “Big Mining” owners have never been backwards about greasing the wheels of the political party in Government, to ensure this state of affairs continues at a minimal tax bracket, and despite the litany of questionable Human Rights actions China has undertaken against it’s own citizens from Tiananmen to the Uyghurs.

She also exported until recently large quantities of wine, barley and beef. In a fit of pique, Beijing has decided to place large duties on them in an attempt at punishment for Australia’s questioning over the origins of the pandemic. They studiously avoided banning raw iron ore though, because Australia has perhaps the world’s biggest reserve of good quality, secure and reasonably priced supply of this commodity that is require for the massive steel production China needs.

The wine, barley and beef suppliers also diverted into other markets such as India and South America, so the effect was minimal much to China’s fury. Not only did the ban not work, Australian produce is of such quality the demand did not drop within China. This led to shell companies being formed in Hong Kong with a mysterious rebranding of wine, barley and beef products suddenly available for Chinese import at inflated prices! No points for guessing their point of origin!

The other essential export that China is hatefully dependent on Australia for is coal. Again, Australia has vast reserves of very good quality coal best suited for energy production. Beijing tried to halt all imports just recently, but had to bitterly back down and allow Australian coal in when the lights started to go out across China. Beijing is desperately scrambling to find alternative sources, such as in Africa, but geopolitical instability in these regions coupled with the inferior product make it a less appealing proposition. This tends to exacerbate China’s fury also. Talk of ‘net zero’ emissions in relation to the climate is nothing but just that, talk. Modernization of China will not be held back by notions of planetary concern, and the sheer output of carbon that would be created during the construction of the “One Belt and Road” initiative will make a mockery of Western attempts at constraint.

Due to this, it pays to keep in mind that the CCP has been described by various Intelligence sources as a collection of gangs. One only needs a brief use of the Google machine to come across many instances were former party faithful, or media darlings and business cronies have either disappeared from the face of the earth, and have all mentions of them removed from the heavily policed internal internet of China.

A few of these individuals make it back into the public eye, singing very clearly from Xi Jinping’s song sheet, and extoling the virtues of his “ Xi Thought” on everything from foreign policy to the manliness required of China’s male youth.

Other individuals appear to suffering from an apparent window defect crisis in China, a crisis that appears to facilitate unfortunates to fall through them to their deaths…

But China’s indignation toward Australia is compounded by the encouragement of Canberra of investment within the real estate sector, Big Agriculture and Educational tourism (this, the UK & Ireland should pay particular attention to).

Housing affordability has remained a pipe dream for many young Australians due to the suddenly wealthy Chinese buying property in the relatively safe market within Australia, which pushed house prices ever North. The wealthy middle class of the Red Empire apparently do not share the same faith in Xi’s dream as he would like, and in particular to the CCP’s handling of the financial system. The Long March of Mao still haunts them, and the memory of starvation has pushed the purchase of vast farming tracts some the size of small European nations.

Beijing has leased the busy Port of Darwin on our North Coast to facilitate shipping from Chinese controlled mines and these farms. A move that has angered many within Australia as its strategic position may be questioned if the frosty war turns noisy. To combat this Australia has agreed to host many thousands of US Marines in Darwin for training exercises, a move not lost on Beijing.

Universities within the island have a good reputation, and it was no surprise to see many Chinese students being sent over here to study by wealthy parents, especially when the financial incentives for the Unis themselves became significant. Anecdotal stories of Universities becoming degree mills abound, with questions asked how they manage to achieve degrees within Australia with barely passable English language skills. With the huge influx of Chinese students came upward pressure on affordable housing.

The same will happen elsewhere so, be warned.

Bundled all together you can see why the Australian public have got fed up with China swinging it’s weight around. Daily cyber-attacks, our spy agency ASIO concerned by spying by Chinese agents and corrupting politicians thrown into the mix make animosity a given.

When the dust settled after the outbreak of Covid-19 Australia found much to it’s chagrin that Beijing had been buying all the PPE stocks they could from Australia Before Beijing admitted there was an issue with community transmission. This left our own Healthcare system short of vital stocks. The message became clear. Australia was not viewed as a partner in Asia but as a client state.

A line in the sand was drawn and Canberra had to act. Most of the Western world’s spook agencies were well aware that the outbreak very likely started from the lab in Wuhan but due to political ideology in the US this was shouted down in the US at least until Trump was ejected, by using the old tactic of screaming “Racism” to stifle questioning of narratives.

As Australia looked North she saw China create new military outposts in vital shipping supply lanes in the South China Sea. As this threatened trade with the rest of the world the Defence Department made a convincing case that the current order for diesel electric submarines was a waste of money. An alliance between the US, UK and Australia to develop nuclear powered subs was worked out in secret. France was not amused at the loss of a contract worth 90 billion dollars but can hardly complain. They won a contract to supply the diesel subs but gave nothing but delays and cost blowouts, so much so that Australia exercised the gate clause in the contract whereby she could exit the legal obligation due to France not meeting the targets. Funny how Paris never mentions this!

Beijing saw this new pact (AUKUS) quite rightly for what it is, a warning that military expansion and trade bullying will not go unpunished. For all Australia’s faults, from lobbying the IPCC behind closed doors on behalf of their Big Mining corporations to the ruling party not really believing in Climate Change anyway (the current PM brought a lump of coal into parliament and said not to be afraid of it), the ethos of a “Fair Go” is sacred to it’s people.

China would do well to remember this, and threatening behaviour is no way for a nation to conduct it’s business in modern times.

⏩Steven Are is a Belfast quiller living in Australia.

Rise Of The Red Emperor

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