By Pepe Escobar with permission and cross posted with The Strategic Culture Foundation
Less than a week before the game-changing U.S. presidential election, the real heart of the geopolitical and geoeconomic action is virtually invisible to the outside world.
We’re talking about the fifth plenum of the 19th Chinese Communist Party (CPC) Central Committee, which started this past Monday in Beijing.
The plenum congregates the 200 members – and another 100 alternate members – of the civilization-state’s top decision-making body: the equivalent, in Western liberal democracy terms, of the Chinese Congress.
The outline of what will be the 14th Chinese Five-Year-Plan (2021-2025) will be announced with a communiqué at the end of the plenum this Thursday. Policy details will be streaming in the next few weeks. And everything will be formally approved by the National People’s Congress (NPC) in March 2021.
For all practical purposes, this should be regarded as what China’s leadership is really thinking.
Meet “China’s system”
President Xi has been quite busy, delivering an extensive work report; a draft of the five-year plan; and a full outline of China’s top targets all the way to 2035.
Xi has been forcefully stressing a “dual circulation” strategy for China; to increase the focus on the domestic economy while balancing it with foreign trade and investment.
Actually a better definition, translated from Mandarin, is “double development dynamics”. In Xi’s own words, the aim is to “facilitate better connectivity between domestic and foreign markets for more resilient and sustainable growth”.
One spectacular achievement we already know about is that Xi’s goal for China to reach the status of a “moderately prosperous society” has been met in 2020, even under Covid-19. Extreme poverty has been eliminated.
The next step is to deal long-term with the absolutely critical issues of crisis of global trade; less demand for Chinese products; and varying degrees of volatility caused by the unstoppable rise of China.
The key priority for Beijing is the domestic economy – in tandem with reaching key tech targets to enhance China’s high-quality development. That implies building high-end, integrated supply chains. And then there’s the tortuous road of implementing necessary institutional reforms.
Crucially, China’s Ministry of Industry and Information Technology is “guiding” companies to invest in core technology; that means semiconductors, 5G applications, the Internet of Things (IoT), integrated circuits, biomedicine.
So everything is, once again, all about the Chip War – which is at the heart of AI, 5G, supercomputing, quantum computing, material science, biotechnology, new energy vehicles and space science.
China’s leadership is very much aware that the real high stakes revolve around the next generation of chip technology.
Enter the concept of China’s system: or how to fight the “U.S.-initiated cold war in high technology”.
“China’s system” has been developed by IT expert Ni Guangnan. It aims to “replace U.S. technologies in core areas including the key IT infrastructure, in which the U.S.-led IOE system, an acronym for an IT network based on major three supplies – IBM, Intel and Oracle – have the monopoly. With self-developed servers, database and storage, the system could be based on chipsets with lower performance with no need for 14-nanometer (nm) or 7-nanometer chip fabrication – prime targets of the U.S.-led crackdown.”
Various calculations in China roughly agree that by the end of this year the economy is set to be 72% the size of the U.S.’s. The State Council forecasts that the Chinese economy will overtake the EU in 2027 and the U.S. by 2032.
But if measured by PPP (purchasing power parity), as both the IMF and The Economist have already admitted, China is already the world’s largest economy.
The fifth plenum once again reiterates all the goals inbuilt in Made in China 2025. But there’s more: an emphasis on the “2035 vision” – when China should be positioned as a global tech leader.
The “2035 Vision” concerns the halfway point between where we are now and the ultimate target in 2049. By 2035 China should be a fully modernized, socialist nation and a superpower especially in science and technology and Defense.
Xi had already stressed it way back in 2017: China will “basically” realize “socialist modernization” by 2035. To get there, the Politburo is seeking an extremely ambitious synthesis of “scale, speed, quality, efficiency and safety”.
Beyond Westphalia
Considering that the Trump administration has been engaged on a relentless offensive since May 2018, it was only since last July that the CCP leadership has been consistently preparing China for what it considers a lengthy and fierce struggle with the U.S.
That has elicited quite a few comparisons with what the Little Helmsman Deng Xiaoping referred about Mao Zedong in 1938. Mao at the time said that China should “be on the defensive first before gathering enough strength to fight to a strategic stand-off and eventually win the ‘protracted war’” against the Japanese invasion.
Now we have a weiqi strategy all over again. Beijing will only launch what amounts to a concerted counterpunch across the chessboard when it’s able to close the tech gap and establish its own domestic and global supply chains completely independent from the U.S.
Beijing will need a major soft power P.R. operation to show the world how its drive in science and technology is aimed as a global good, with all humanity benefiting, irrespective of nations. The Chinese Covid-19 vaccine should be setting the example.
In a recent podcast discussing one of my latest columns on Lanxin Xiang’s book The Quest for Legitimacy in Chinese Politics, Brazilian China expert Elias Jabbour came up with a stunning formulation.
Jabbour echoed top Chinese scholars when he stressed China won’t behave as an aggressive Westphalian state: “The subversion of Westphalia by China came from the fact it incorporated the Russian Revolution to 1949. China is laying out for the future an order that may subvert Westphalia.”
So what we have here is that the foremost concept of Xi’s China – whose best English translation reads as “community with a shared future for humanity” – is actually the subversion of Westphalia. A subversion from within.
Jabbour reminds us that when Mao said that only socialism may save China, he meant save it from the treaty of Westphalia, which facilitated the dismemberment of China during the “century of humiliation.”
So in the end a strategic marriage between Marx and Confucius in Xi’s China is more than feasible, transcending geopolitics as we know it, which was born as a national ideology in France, Germany and Britain.
It’s as if Xi was trying, as Jabbour noted, to “go back to original Marxism as a leftist Hegelianism”, geared towards internationalism, and mixing it with the Confucius view of tianxa, “all under heaven”. That’s the master idea behind “community with a shared future for humanity.”
One can always dream that another world is indeed possible: think of a cultural renaissance of the overwhelming majority of the Global South, with a fruitful cross-fertilization of China and Asian economies, the evolving decolonization struggle of Latin America, and the weight of the African diaspora.
But first, the next Chinese five-year plan has got to roll.
Chinese goals will be met when their currency is the world currency.
Remember the Rothschild line, “I don’t care what king or president rules…control the money and you control the society!”
You got it. And China’s socialist power controls China’s money. So there you go and bye by Rothschilds. China just did a Hegelian Dialectic on you on a global scale. The former slave becomes the master.
Please provide detailed documentation or reasoning that refutes globalist control over Chinese currency, and firmly establishes Chinese sovereignty over their currency.
Thanks
Jamshyd; It is really quite simple and straitforward. China is an outstanding success for the simple reason it has a principled and successfully experienced communist party in democratic control of the entire civilization. This is why the Chinese people are so happy and positive in their outlook. This in itself is an expression of Chinese civilization’s skill at maintaining spiritual balance. A skill for which it is widely recognized. As Pepe says the Chinese way entails a successful confluence of two great philosophers, Confucius and Marx. One of the socialist fundamentals is that the organs of peoples power must control the commanding heights of national power. It is easy for any halfway alert communist to understand that to let anyone other than themselves (as representative of the masses) control the money supply is equivalent to committing political suicide.
I really have no idea where people get the idea that “globalists” control Red China’s money. I see zero evidence of it. I suspect the idea comes from people who are fearfully aware of globalist control of the money supply in the capitalist empire, and who just fearfully imagine that it must also apply to China. I think the question should really be; “Can you provide any detailed and convincing evidence that the globalists control communist China’s money supply.” The Chinese are not stupid. They know how to be subtle and they understand ethics. If there is evidence of their money supply being controlled by Rothschilds et al then they would be most interested to see it. As would I. I for one have seen no evidence of it. It is just a fear bug combined with lack of imagination and knowledge of communist fundamentals in people’s minds as far as I can see.
As soon as Russia finds the political space to take back control of its central bank from the imperialists who wrote its constitution then it too will be condemned by the empire for reverting to socialism.
Does China print its own DEBT free money ?
“I really have no idea where people get the idea that “globalists” control Red China’s money. I see zero evidence of it.”
When global Zionism imposed sanctions on Iran, China not only complied, but pretended to be Iran’s friend, came here and undermined Iranian industry, in direct collaboration with the US, which I have elaborated many times here.
If China is not part of global Zionism, all these years that Iran has been barred from international banking transactions, why has China not connected its banking sector to Iran, facilitating transactions between the two countries?
If China is not part of global Zionism, why have they not been under the same kind of sanctions as Iran?
There is evidence, mate. You just don’t see it.
China has massive investments in Israel and vice versa. The Chinese government owns a controlling stake in Tnuva, the largest food processor and dairy in Israel:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/chinese-state-company-buys-controlling-stake-in-tnuva/
https://en.globes.co.il/en/article-china-set-to-approve-israeli-dairy-imports-1001257937
That’s just one example out of many. Chinese enterprises even go about covertly acquiring Israeli tech companies without explaining why they are doing so in secrecy, for example with StartCom: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StartCom
What RAND has to say about Israeli investment in China (2020): https://www.rand.org/content/dam/rand/pubs/research_reports/RR3100/RR3176/RAND_RR3176.pdf
I mean, I could go on and on with more examples. China and Israel are too closely intertwined, and without the backing of global Zionism, there is no way China could ever have become the world’s second largest economy, which many analysts are now saying has actually surpassed the U.S. to become the largest.
It is all a circus of lies and contradictions.
may i direct you to the rothschilds bankers who financed mao. israel epstein is one memorable name. there are no holdouts to the money creators.
Except god controls the money in the beginning and the end, the middle is like a rental fee where you spend like drunken sailors and pollute like a modern day human.
So who would ever want to be king of money?
Did Rothschild said so? Is it a valid quote?
This is an Imperial age invention but back dated to Rothschild. That is like a mythology for Imperialism. See more historical discussion in this link:
https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/7887/did-rothschild-say-this-famous-quote-if-yes-what-did-he-mean-by-it
——————-
Off topic.
Please take any further discussion on this subject to the MFC.
The Moderator.
Good article! steady as she goes! You know when change is afoot western journalism is becoming more desperate in their narrative!
China has already taken global leadership of the research on Covid19. With only 0.5 % of Covid deaths they contributed 31 of the 50 most cited articles on the Covid 19 virus.
https://mobile.twitter.com/raoult_didier/status/1319209120046698496
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/1178633720962935
China 31, USA 8, UK, Germany 3, Italy 2..all other countries:1
(Interestingly Russia wasn’t on the list…?)
Actually it is Russia that has taken the global leadership in covid-19 vaccines even american researchers are impressed with the special russian vaccine.
Agreed dave.
There is no doubt that Russia is a 100% fully paid up member of the Global Plandemic. The only thing that is a little strange is that there does not seem to have been a Russian beside the Chinese CDC Director member (George Gao) at event 201
https://www.centerforhealthsecurity.org/news/center-news/2019/2019-10-15-event201.html
Why would any healthy human want or need any one of the many hardly tested and highly experimental Covid-19 vaccines that are now in the pipeline? No vaccine for me and that includes both the Russian and Chinese versions, as well as the plethora of vaccine money spinners, that have funding and other connections with Bill Gates.
Interesting. A question: how many citations remain, if one discards citations from the land of the authors?
There wasn’t a citation of article by country. It was global.
-All 50 articles were written in English.
-Over half the articles (26) were published in: The Lancet, the New England Journal of Medicine, and the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA).
Not even close on the timeline there Pepe, even tho it’s from their leader’s 5-year plans!
You of all analysts should be seeing that this public pronouncement is in no way the “long plan” —the REAL plan will be shrouded & cloaked in multiple feints & deceptions, & will turn out to be far far SHORTER.
Try 2021. Things will come full circle then, as in 360 degrees.
Or 360 years, which it will be. A gigantic cycle comes ’round, literally, & it has given china this gigantic tailwind, pushing them forward at breakneck speed.
So what happened right there in China in 1661, hmm?
Suppose you just tell us, instead of cryptically hinting around and such. Since you know just what’s going on, and the timeline of it. Hmmm?
The more desperate one is for a solution, the sooner ones timetable is, is what I have found.
It looks like plenty happened in China in 1661.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1661_in_China
Which of the many events is “innuendo’d”???
Katherine
2021 -1661 = 360 years
2021 and 1661 both are the same Chinese New years (white metal ox)
A Chinese astrological cycle will come to full completion in 2021…? ?
Sorry, but no great scientific/technological leap has come out of a ‘plan’. The reason that all these advances have come out of the West for 500 years, is that the West invented something a lot more important, personal liberty. It’s certainly not perfect, but it is good enough for those few (and they are very few) geniuses capable of real advances … to do their thing.
I can think of a few examples of plans that did work:
– The Manhattan project was a big plan and it (unfortunately) worked. would have been better if it didn’t, but it did.
– Launching the first satellite (Sputnik) likely came out of a big plan and was unlikely the result of a single genius.
– Similarly, sending a man to the Moon was also a big plan (a useless goal, though, but an amazing achievement).
– The list goes on …
Progress in science and technology comes from both aspects, some works of geniuses (and the Chinese have plenty of them, just by the size of the country) and big enterprises with huge investments.
Look at how many scientist participated in the gravitational wave detection as a recent example. That was a big plan of several decades.
“– Similarly, sending a man to the Moon was also a big plan (a useless goal, though, but an amazing achievement).”
That was not an achievement. THAT was the BIGGEST HOAX of all time. Do your research.
Liberty has its limits, and the United States has reached those limits. The Chinese Communist dictatorship has created the largest middle class in the world, 700,000,000. It has eliminated extreme poverty, no homeless people living under bridges or doorways as in the United States.
One mans advance is another mans loss of control.
Few if any have given any importance to this rather obvious reasoning:
-if the Chinese presence in world trade and investment is growing like mushrooms in the orchard
-if this same presence or omnipresence has got an extra boost from the so far ridiculous reaction of us, westerners, to the Virus…
-if the already existing PRC decision to modernize their armed forces has similarly received another rocketing boost from the stupid US moves…
-if the fu*&c*kin establishment and Dems have themselves since 2017 provided a demoralization of US institutions… and as a result AN EROSION of their imperial SOFT POWER…
Then, we who is exactly doomed and why.
dear steve: all technoligical space findings, The Sixtina chappel fantastic paintings, the initial leaps of rocket science in Nazi island Peenemunde , the chinese initial Mao led growth of China from famine to a standing nation, of USSR from a peasant country to putting the first space flight in ONLY 40 years… none came from any capitalistic freedom. They derived from state boosting and state funding and state planning.
“They derived from state boosting and state funding and state planning.”
Like the internet itself.
The Age of Exploration was also the result of a plan.
Katherine
That’s a not a thought-out comment. Plans happen when there is a perceived opportunity for a breakthrough, and money is thrown at the “problem” until breakthroughs do occur. The history of nearly every technology shows that process at work. Railroads, automobiles, wireless, radar, medicine, computers, airplanes, etc, etc, etc. It’s when you try to see more than ten years ahead, that some of the breakthrough industries are not yet visible, but generally the more profitable the concept, the closer it is to the crucial breakthroughs.
Throwing money at a problem is a purely 20th century creation. What a narrow capitalist world view.
You will.never succed at solving problems effectively is one is constrained by narrow political views. Looking for capitalist solutions for capitalism problems will solve nothing sadly.
And none of you even mentionned accidents and pure luck in our advances.
YES…
”So in the end a strategic marriage between Marx and Confucius in Xi’s China is more than feasible”.
I wil say that marriage is already ‘consummated’.
and I do hope it will be for the good for all humanity.
Technology and Wealth are the twin pillars of geopolitical leadership.
China’s position is dependent on its wealth derived from trade.
The US position is dependent on technology.
China requires BRI to continue its wealth-producing trade.
The US requires continuous innovation and inventions in various technologies. However, in recent decades, Chinese students and researchers in US R&D labs have made enormous contributions to US success. This trend is now going in reverse with the official policy of the US to keep Chinese out of the US labs, universities and corporations doing the research and development.
Thus, China will soon be more competitive on the basis of technology with the US.
And China will need less wealth because it’s basis of geopolitical power and leadership will be more reliant on technology.
Everything points to China equaling and surpassing the US eventually. The time frame is probably 2035.
The greatest advantage the Chinese have has been given them by the US chasing out of the country the most brilliant Chinese young minds who were advancing the US but now are “security risks” in the new Cold War.
The attacks on Huawei, TiKTok, and many other technology corporations of China, the persecution of Meng Wanzhou of Huawei, and the US media demonization of everything Chinese are galvanizing the 1.3 billion Chinese as if their nation is under siege. The US will pay the price in a decade and a half.
The Chinese are cooking with ingredients the US has sent back to the Mainland. And what is left for the US to cook with can’t be made into a meal. Not enough STEM students, not enough diligence, not enough toughness.
US has uncompetitive students. They are consumers not producers.
There are two areas of technology where power will rise or fall: AI and robotics. There are no secrets in either sector. What matters is who can do more iterations, more prototypes, more innovation faster. The Chinese hold the edge in all these attributes. Applications in medicine, military and transport will produce products and services that will change everything we now know and use in these sectors of the economy, social life and national security.
The race is on.
All points well taken.
I would add that the determinant factor will soon appear to be the difference in societal cohesion building capabilities between China and the West.
– over the last few hundred years the West gradually went from individualism, to hyper-individualism which concluded into societal atomization and the impossibility for Western societies to undertake anything in a successful fashion : no rebuilding of the industrial base, no serious competition in tech, no big war…
– over the last decades the life of the Chinese citizens has so much improved that they find themselves trusting in their 95% the actions of their government. Simultaneously the speed of changes is so rapid here that to make sense of what is going on the Chinese are going back to their roots to rediscover their traditions. So what happens in China is an incredible strengthening of societal cohesion that helps their society to achieve success in what it undertakes.
Saw that cohesion in the lockdown of Wuhan. A display of cultural unity and social organization that was a huge family-like organism. People actually went to Wuhan and sequestered themselves inside the perimeter to help the people stuck in their homes. They drove medical personnel, they shopped for people who couldn’t go out, they functioned for 76 as if all were relatives with one another. 42,000 medical people went into Wuhan to help.
This is more than volunteerism. And it had little to do with Socialist or Communist ideology. It is a powerful Chinese attribute.
Its a noble cause that keeps one awake at night in their twilight years.
Remarkably sinister control for an alleged disease for which the detection test (rt-pcr) is meaningless and even when the meaningless stats are fully applied lead to an Infection Fatality Rate of 0.14%
/moveable-feast-cafe-2020-10-24/#comment-865239
laodan, Excellent summary.
Should the atom dominate the molecule?
Should the molecule dominate the cell?
Should the cell dominate the human?
This is essentially Washington’s wager: That the human will dominate the transhuman form, society. It is ahistorical and unscientific, doomed to fail.
You are comparing apples and oranges, the U.S. is a debt based economy where as Chinas is a manufacturing one. They are way ahead in many important areas and as the debt leach sucks more blood from its host, the host shall weaken until the battle is lost. Cooking the books to keep the #’s straight is no way to win the moral war.
That’s the biggest issue that will lead westerners to social failure, I live in lackey country of the west and it is not hard to find out that the financial yoke artificially foist on people under the western ideal would be incapable of successfully thrive with their ideas because of that yoke!
“the real heart of the geopolitical and geoeconomic action is virtually invisible to the outside world.”
Why so?
Partly by the certainty of others as illustrated by:
“China’s position is dependent on its wealth derived from trade.”
and
“The US position is dependent on technology.” predicated upon lack of perception of : What are the United States of America and how are they facilitated ?”
plus failure to perceive significant aspects of Mr. Escobar’s article including:
“So in the end a strategic marriage between Marx and Confucius in Xi’s China is more than feasible, transcending geopolitics as we know it”
although probably by being a journalist with less experience than some others in other disciplines, Mr. Escobar has diplomatically chosen not to reference Tsun Tsu and some significant others on this ocassion, thereby affording and illustrating some areas/advantages of co-operation.
Aren’t a lot of those chips made in China.So why not use those.And if not why does China not buy some of those chips and copy them. If they didn’t want to do that why not give them to North Korea and let them copy them.It’s not like they need care.The West already has them with sanctions so they have little reason to worry.Once they make them then China could buy them from there.
It’s not a matter of simply copying some chips. It’s a matter of mastering a process to fabricate 14 nm and sub-14 nm chips. Not an easy thing…
Manufacturing chips is not about copying other chips. It is nanotechnology at the most rigorous parameters.
Very difficult without the right machines. The machines are basically controlled and restricted to a few producing countries–South Korea, Japan and Taiwan. China can do bridges, ports, container ships, etc. Chips is a whole different world.
Thank you – that’s helpful. I never understood what the challenge was for China to produce its own chips.
I expect China to apply the same strategy to cutting-edge IC’s as the US applied to solar cells. Around 2000, all the technology for silicon-based solar cells was sewn up by 600-800 patents owned by Japanese and German companies. So the US government set out to find brand-new solar energy technologies that would easily out-compete relatively expensive silicon. It has taken 10 to 20 years, but the investment is starting to pay off, with perkovskites that are more efficient and far cheaper. For IC’s, silicon has nearly reached its limits and the future will be in a great many other technologies: quantum dots, quantum wells, graphene, quantum computing, optical computing, etc. Those areas are not sewn up by AMSL or Intel because it’s beyond silicon monolithics. The hard part is to figure out which ones are most worth pursuing. I’m not saying that a USD 5 billion facility for 7nm features would not come in handy, but it’s not crucial. And Escobar made a valid point, that having the latest fastest processors is not crucial. Price matters, as does the firmware and, of course, the software.
Add to the mix that ASML is a Dutch company. They control the subsidies that make many of the best EUV machines that make the chips.
China undoubtedly needs the chips of the United States, only that, raw materials can be obtained from underdeveloped economies such as South America or Africa. China has a monopoly on rare metals from which advanced technologies are made. Cutting off the supply would delay western production for 10 years until sources from Australia or another country develop. China has many weapons to counter the United States and the Chinese take it easy.
The 19th Central Committee Plenum of the CPC is certainly an important moment. But it is only one moment within the larger context of China’s strategy of national rejuvenation. And without a sense of this larger context the significance of what happens in the moment can be difficult to grasp. Hereafter follow some excerpts, taken from the introduction to “The first blow to Late-Modernity”, that I hope will place Pepe’s article into the context of such a larger perspective. Please bear with me.I wrote these words this last March-April.
“””””””””
To sell more stories and images, to a jaded public, the Western media competed among themselves to see who could paint the most apocalyptic picture of China’s January 2020 approach in dealing with the outbreak of Covid19. Some Western leaders could not even hide their ‘Schadenfreude’, at the spectacle of China’s fall, opining publicly that this could be a unique chance for Western countries to gain an economic advantage.
In light of this propaganda blitz nobody should be surprised that when the virus blew back, on Europe and then the US, the resulting media noise unleashed a profound panic among the public. The Corona-virus has now literally captured Western minds and the big picture, about life and the world, has completely vanished from their consciousness. It’s as if the world had suddenly stopped and remained only fear of the unknown.
When reality sets in, later on, it will act as a powerful punch in the stomach of the individuals and they will be left to gasp for air. Western citizens will indeed discover that life has changed for them and not in any positive way. Inflation will rapidly swell the price of daily necessities while deflation will lower the prices of their assets and their savings. It is the worst possible of any outcomes for Western populations and this will weigh heavily on the realignment of the cards on the desk of the ship of international relations.
What is taking place in the realm of Geo-politics is indeed absolutely stupendous :
1. A Western propaganda campaign demonizes China
2. a super efficient Chinese model of governance.
Notwithstanding the intrinsic difficulty, of combating a disease that people did not know at the time (an unknown unknown), China’s system of governance handled the epidemic extremely successfully and in the words of the representatives of the WHO it has set a new standard for the world in the way nations should handle viruses. In
contrast Western countries’ handling appeared completely feckless. The spectacle of Western ineptitude was blow-back for their initial demonization of China.
3. a worldwide spectacle of 2 systems of governance competing to eradicate a virus from their shores.
After the barrage of propaganda they had to endure there was just no way for the citizens of the world to escape the comparison. As a result an unquestionable qualitative difference imposed itself in the eyes of the world : the Eastern model appeared to care first and foremost for the well-being of its citizens while the Western liberal model appeared to care exclusively about the profits of its big capital holders. This was the worst possible scenario for Western liberalism.
Western populations have still not digested the enormity of what has taken place. But Western big capital, their servants the state bureaucrats, and their intellectuals seem not to have missed the extraordinary nature of this particular moment in history and they are furious which translates into their declarations.
4. Two models of relations with ‘the other’
No pounding of false accusations will ever succeed to hide the fact that China’s relations with other nations, small and large, are made of another material than that of the traditional Western hegemony. China has been classified by European historians as having been an empire and that as an empire it would behave as all Western imperial powers have over the last centuries. But that classification was an error stemming from an Eurocentric provincialism in the interpretation of the nature of societies.
The fact of the matter is that China’s history can’t be modeled through the lens of Europe’s historical experience. China’s civilizational axioms, its historical worldview, and its daily culture are forging a radically different material than the Western axioms of civilization and its Christian worldview. The difference in its contextual material procured to the Chinese a radically different outlook, on life and reality, that translates in relations to the other (nations and individuals) that Europeans, in Europe and in its geographic extensions, simply never cared to comprehend.
There was no commonality between Columbus’ voyages and Zheng He’ voyages. The first was on a mission of looting gold, silver, and precious stones while the other was on a mission of making friends by distributing gifts.
China’s historical cultural context is simply incompatible with Western hegemony. But such an idea is incomprehensible for Western observers who firmly think that there is only one way for China to behave which is the way the west has always behaved. No surprise then that the West is anxious at the prospect of China becoming the largest economy on earth.
Note that the Chinese are aware of this perception dilemma …
5. China as center of gravity of the economy-world → Globalization 3 :
In the months ahead, after the Corona-virus is put to sleep, the world will come back to life and the Chinese factories will be ready to supply consumer goods and there will be no other choice to satisfy the desperate demand of the consumers of the world than to import those goods from China.
My description of the present episode in World history does not fit in the picture of an end to globalization as it is parroted without interruption by Western analysts. It is my contention that Covid19, and the ensuing Western fracas, will appear in future history books as having been a Chinese opportunity to render its economy independent of the goods and services of its major Western competitors.
Covid19 will be seen as the US moment of reckoning. The country will be forced to adapt its economic infrastructure to avoid the economic dominance of a more autonomous China. China’s internal market size, plus its access to East-Asian nations and the countries forming the core of the new silk roads, will indeed dwarf the size of its competitors and its “economies of scale” will be unbeatable. This is the new normal that awaits the world within the coming years.
Re-acquiring the necessary productions capabilities, to ensure their future autonomy from China, will be an extremely costly enterprise for Western societies. And this will have to be realized while their fight against the Corona-Virus is landing them in the Greatest of all depressions. Their debts will have soared to astronomical levels. Their levels of social inequality are already resulting in tensions that could explode at any moment which big capital holders hope to contain by transforming Western systems of governance into totalitarian mental prisons.
What will big capital holders think about once the picture I just described suddenly illuminates their minds ?
Me think that most of them will run because Western consumer bases will appear too constrained to justify the size of investments that would be necessary for rebuilding a local industrial base. They’ll flee to China or to East-Asia or to the core countries of the New Silk Roads, where they’ll have access to the biggest consumer market on earth. Nothing will distract the attention of big capital holders from the Chinese opportunity of the 21th century.
The satisfaction of local Western needs will thus have to be realized by the nationalists, among big capital holders, who will invest in the local production of goods and services. But the capital base of nationalist capital holders is limited and certainly not sufficient to rebuild a national production base. China will furthermore retain such a considerable competitive advantage that the investments of Western patriotic capital holders will at best only succeed to develop small local production niches.
So at least in the near to medium term China’s productions will remain an essential part of Western life. But its role in global supply chains will continue to shift accentuating what has already been happening for a decade which is that Chinese factories are busy transferring a large number of low-value-added manufacturing jobs to their South-East neighboring countries while they keep the higher-value-added productions at home. This is how hi-tech innovation hubs are emerging all around China powered by the capital accumulated along the first phase of low-value-added productions.
The flying geese paradigm first developed by Kaname Akamatsu is well alive in China and in ASEAN.
Within the next few years this restructuring of the supply-chains and the shift of the center of gravity of the economy-world will eventually be framed in a new light due to the fact that all nations are in need to share the burden of the worldwide side-effects of Modernity that have been accumulating over the decades and now start to pose a serious threat to our species.
Nations will thus soon be forced to work together in order to find and apply solutions to those existential problems and along the way they will inevitably discover so many more reasons to trade goods and services while exchanging culture and knowledge.
In other words globalization is not destined to go away any time soon. It will adapt to the new realities of our times and will eventually be complemented by the localization of the production of goods deemed necessary to satisfy the basic need of the populations : food, housing, furnishing, schooling, and so on.
The failure of Western nation-states and the pauperization of Western populations will most probably be answered by localized living and a mode of survival based on local autonomy. Goods that necessitate large scale productions and high-tech productions will most probably continue to be manufactured in a few industrial corridors distributed principally in East-Asia and the countries along the new Silk Roads. With a near monopoly on sales of high-tech goods their R&D services are bound to dwarf what can be achieved at the local level with a very limited capital input in the West.
6. Life is threatened by the side-effects of Modernity
The urgency to tackle the side-effects of Modernity, – pandemics – climate change – pollution of land, water, and air – peak energy and resources – mass extinction of species – and so on, will soon affirm itself as our new normal. So the future of the world community of nations will necessarily reside in sharing a common destiny by building an ecological future as well as sharing a holistic worldview to illuminate the minds of the citizens of the world to the systemic nature of that ecological future.
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Impressed. Have downloaded your book.
Absolutely brilliant explanation. The only economic factor not mentioned is ‘war’ or such narcissism of the ‘west’ that will consider ‘death’ better than ‘surrender’. This of course has been the echo chamber of bullies since time immemorial and when pushed it tends to disappear.
There are those elite who think a game of bluff is in order and will make some minor ‘atomic’ moves until their own existence is at risk. Bullies, cowards are manifold in the world of teenagers and the political heroes of the US and UK. I am an artist watching capitalism and neoliberalism coffins being lowered into their graves. They did little to enhance my view of the world in the same manner as faschism and communism.
There is a glimmer of light on the horizon and it is oriental where today the concept of art, music, fashion is NOT that beauty can be ugly, songs can be without verse, fashion can be rags, good can be evil and common sense can be nonsence, it is the understanding that family, children and life need not be ugly and ambition need not be at the expense of others.
“So the future of the world community of nations will necessarily reside in sharing a common destiny by building an ecological future as well as sharing a holistic worldview to illuminate the minds of the citizens of the world to the systemic nature of that ecological future.”
Key questions being the “how to’s” in lateral processes of transcendence, some of which are presently being designed, evaluated, implemented, monitored, and modulated despite the efforts of opponents, including some how to’s which you fail to mention, perhaps as a consequence of framing, including but not limited to “paradigm” ergo “closed systems” with the purpose of trying to achieve “open systems” – where-in geese may suffer broken necks through impact with boundaries, given that means condition ends.
I am highly dubious that this author, obviously a product of Western culture and civilization, would actually like living in a world where the West has been eclipsed by a China-centric world order. This sounds like the all too common case of the self-deprecating Westerner who thinks the grass is always greener in the East, or anywhere but in his homelands.
Pepe is Brazilian. That pretty much kills the notion that he is a Westerner. He is also a very well-traveled cosmopolitan man, highly literate and conversant with learned people in all parts of the world. He travels the backroads on many continents.
I don’t sense Pepe would settle for any Chinese-centric life style. He’s far too eclectic in knowledge, experience and tastes for a single seat at the feast of life he generally partakes.
As a matter of fact, the grass is greener in Asia, more so in China, and Russia will make sure China can continue doing so, with a win-win formula for both.
If they could, or would?, ever make all those electronic gadgets last the test of time, I might start buying some of those for the cause.
The Chinese should take into account that the Khazarians are planning to take control of their system, first through banking of course, by using the back door technology that is being implanted in the Chinese infrastructure.
“Beijing will need a major soft power P.R. operation to show the world how its drive in science and technology is aimed as a global good, with all humanity benefiting, irrespective of nations. The Chinese Covid-19 vaccine should be setting the example.”
wait a second,
all my comments regarding Chinese PR were labeled as sinophobic and deleted.
now they are admitting it themselves. what gives?
Many are arguing that China should embrace the Western propaganda model and manufacture an *illusion* of Chinese supremacy abroad. This is a foolish endeavour; the West has too much advantage in the arena of nonsense.
Instead, China should continue to manufacture Chinese supremacy itself. It takes more time, but the real thing always trumps the fake thing. They are well on their way.
COVID shattered the neoliberal economic ideal in contrast with the relatively socialist Chinese system.
The inevitably messy US election will shatter the neoliberal political ideal of so-called democracy, just as the enormously efficient CCP is rolling out the next 5-year plan. Does the Western democracy even have a Tomorrow Plan?
No amount of propaganda can repair these devastating ideological defeats.
Here is what China itself is smelling of what is cooking:
https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-11-02/Why-China-s-five-year-plans-work–V5Gn4iu5vW/index.html
The author is a research fellow of a Beijing based think tank, so be forewarned that the article is loaded with praises for China et al, naturally. Nevertheless, it is a legitimate perspective from a minion of an entity who is justifiably savoring its own success of the past 40 years. It also embellishes the prognosis Pepe Escobar is presenting here:).
The title: “Can You Smell What the Chinese Are Cooking?”
A bunch of Chinese top political leaders are taking courses in the convergence of quantum physics and information sciences. They believe it will be the key part of the 4th industrial revolution.
Imagine Trump taking the course and raise his hand: “I know more about quantum physics than anyone else.” LOL
China (and many other nations) want to create an Orwellian society with the Internet of Things technology; smart cities, smart cars, smart hotels, smart shops, smart everything. Sorry, but that is not what we should want, we should not want to have our privacy invaded, our lifes micromanaged, to live in a virtual coccoon.
In Thailand you cannot enter a seven eleven supermarket if you don have your mask on which is being determined by an AI computer and a camera, only when you have a mask on will the door open. Let me guess, Chinese technology? That is just creepy.
US Democrats want to leech on China’s success, they want China to join the US as a globalist partner in crime.
I say no thank you to China. Only positive thing about China is they do not meddle in internal affairs of other nations or make imperialist wars, they just want to sell their stuff and be respected by the world.
And China just want you to buy their stuff and respect their sovereignty, nothing more nothing less. Seems you and China are quite compatible.
The internet was created by DARPA, not to withstand nuclear war, but to control society in an Orwellian way. Here is an interesting german documentary from 2003 about the Orwellian Internet:
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=GY6fb59XFbQ
“Only positive thing about China is they do not meddle in internal affairs of other nations or make imperialist wars, they just want to sell their stuff and be respected by the world.”
Don’t be so quick to trot to that song. They are full of mischief in Myanmar, India, Turkey to name a few. They have quietly stepped up meddling in Africa too. They are laying large foundations in South America to do the same.
“Scholars of international relations have identified the Peace of Westphalia as the origin of principles crucial to modern international relations, including the inviolability of borders and non-interference in the domestic affairs of sovereign states. This… became known as Westphalian sovereignty.” Based on this definition, I do not see how the treaty of Westphalia connects to the ‘dismemberment’ of China or why it would be a set or principles China would want to subvert. To state the obvious, China will continue striving to remain a nation state that has secured its sovereignty. In foreign policy, in simple terms, China will continue to secure a unison of appreciation from Co-Asian neighbors inclusive of Russia. Basically, I do not see today any adversarial, “non-Westphalian” state or some stubborn technical or scientific challenge that can prevent China and the CCP from attaining national security goals. Things do take a more difficult turn however if one is expecting a model or a vision from China on what an ideal world is in the 21st century. I hope China does not have it in them to undertake such a project. Rather they should adopt their main boundary and border as the ASIAN continent and engage in Europe, Africa and the Muslim World on a “second continent” basis.
Thanks. Glad I am not the only one that can’t follow what Westphalia has to do with China’s current and future plans, except in a traditional basically positive sense. Not sure where My own comment on this theme went. maybe it will show up.
Katherine
Welcome, good to hear. I’ll look for that comment.
“So what we have here is that the foremost concept of Xi’s China – whose best English translation reads as “community with a shared future for humanity” – is actually the subversion of Westphalia. A subversion from within.
Jabbour reminds us that when Mao said that only socialism may save China, he meant save it from the treaty of Westphalia, which facilitated the dismemberment of China during the “century of humiliation.””
I don’t really understand this.
Does the Treaty of Westphalia and the consequent definition of sovereignty –was it ever intended to stop nations from colonial enterprises?
Doesn’t China also subscribe to the notion of sovereignty that was first (I suppose) articulated by the Treaty of Westphalia? Why does China have to subvert the concept of sovereignty in order to pursue its own interests, also extraterritorially?
Westphalia didn’t stop colonial powers, esp. Britain, from dismembering China. So why would the same set of idea stop China from doing what it wants?
Katherine
Pepe gets right to the modern Chinese heart in this article.
Two money quotes.
These are the key ideas of Chinese nationalism summed up in a nutshell.
First, stand up, China.
Second, once you have stood up, help all others stand up up.
Ever listen to the Chinese national anthem – notice how critical the notion of “standing up” is.
Will China succeed? The answer may be the pressing question of our times … with political, social, philosophical, ethical, scientific, technological ramifications for ages to come.
My Russian friends may not totally agree with me, but looking at the arc of history of modern history, I am a firm believer that until China liberates itself from colonialism, the world will not be…
The rise of Japan and S. Korea is not civilizational. They are appendages of the West. Russia is civilizational … but its many “modern” aspects – ideas about democracy, freedom, socialism, etc. – are part of the West.
China will be different. Russia will benefit from China’s rise to the sense that it will have a comrade in arms to proof that Russia needs not be part of the West. It can be itself … and succeed….
Misguided boast I think. When it comes down to true power, ie right of existence, China is the junior partner to Russia. Unless China become a full partner in Russian security, there is no way for it to rise.
There is no way China can expect to exceed US without the China-US nuclear gap comes into play and get exploited. The only equivalent force in this world is Russia and there is simply no way a third country can catch up to the warhead count and past nuclear testing.
Be humble. It’s one of the worthy confucian traits.
I did not mean the comment to be a “boast” … but an aspiration as well as realistic assessment …
As for military observations, I do not disagree … except Soviet Union was never a military protector of the global south. North Korea, Vietnam …? Two places where the empire got directly involved and were repelled. I wouldn’t call Soviet Union the military protector there.
About nuclear deterrent, we will see. This is the strategy the Chinese took, to go for asymmetric deterrence not strategic nuclear parity.
I do not disagree with your overall tone though. For the longest time, including up to today, the one with the spine to stand up to the West, be it military or ideology, has been the Soviets / Russians. Period. No one else has come close.
Chinese has been too soft, too accommodating, and even today far too weak.
But my point is if China stays weak, until China gets strong, the world will stay the way it has been for last few hundred years.
Russian bravery has been heroic but not sufficient to turn the tide. It will have to be the Chinese.
If that’s a pipe dream, so be it. I don’t see any credible path forward given the arc of history that we have seen…
But Russia is a part of the west. Non? Just different.
I think all of this “Chinese century” talk is a pipe dream. We are too arrogant and wasn’t humble enough to all of our neighbors. America simply will never allow China to rise. They are going to use nukes against their greatest threat. The nuclear missile force is severely imbalanced. There is no way US isn’t going to exploit this.
Morally China isn’t at fault. But when was geopolitics ever decided on the basis of morals, especially when US is a player?
The world’s biggest tragedy is when Soviet Union collapsed. The global south lost its best protector. Functionally speaking, its nuclear force provided an umbrella protection for the global south. As long as Soviet Union existed, US can’t use nuclear weapons to attack a third country, or risk losing all credibility. Russians are probably the least racist people alive and it’s so unfortunate that they suffered for creating the most idealistic and humanistic society in history.
You talk about nukes but what about cyber? No one has any clue how deep China might be in US networks, and vice versa. What good are nukes if the enemy can disable your entire information network or access critical operational intelligence w.r.t. an aggressive strategy?
The advantage is almost certainly greatly in China’s favor. While the US was blinded by the libertarian expansion and potential of the internet, China was implementing a Great Firewall and hacking US national labs in the early noughts.
I doubt China penetrated US networks much deeper than the other way around. It just wouldn’t make sense. America had much longer to build up.
This talk of Chinese advantage is greatly exaggerated by all media. Some to promote the perception of China threat. Their economy is big, but they don’t have any strategic advantage. No alliance. No military base.