Guerrilla History - Sanctions Against China & Their Political Economy w/ Zhun Xu

Episode Date: January 20, 2023

This episode of Guerrilla History is a continuation of our Sanctions As War miniseries.  In this fantastic episode, we have a discussion with Professor Zhun Xu on the political economy of US sanctions on China, both from a historical perspective as well as analyzing current developments.  We're sure that this will be of great interest to many of you and your comrades.  Help us get the word out by sending it along! Zhun Xu is Associate Professor of Economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. He is on the editorial boards of Science and Society and the Journal of Labor and Society. His recent book is From Commune to Capitalism: How China’s Peasants Lost Collective Farming and Gained Urban Poverty. Help support the show by signing up to our patreon, where you also will get bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/guerrillahistory 

You don't remember Den Van Booh? No! The same thing happened in Algeria, in Africa. They didn't have anything but a rank. The French had all these highly mechanized instruments of warfare. But they put some guerrilla action on. Hello and welcome to guerrilla history. the podcast that acts as a reconnaissance report of global proletarian history and aims to use

the lessons of history to analyze the present. I'm your host, Henry Huckmacki, joined as usual by my co-hosts, Professor Adnan Hussein, historian and director of the School of Religion at Queen's University in Ontario, Canada. Hello, Adnan. How are you doing today? I'm doing great, Henry. It's great to be with you. Yeah, nice to see you too. It's actually, it feels like it's been a little while since I've seen you. But I'm glad that we're here today. Also joined by our other usual co-host, Brett O'Shea, host of Revolutionary Left Radio and co-host of the Red Menace podcast. Hello, Brett. I also feel like it's been a while since I've seen you, but I'm very happy to be here with you today. Absolutely. Yeah, I'm doing great and really looking

forward to this conversation. I absolutely love talking and learning about China. Absolutely. This should be a fantastic conversation. We are being joined today by our guest, Jun Shu, who is an associate professor of economics at John Jay College at the City University of New York. I'll just mention his most recent book, which sounds really interesting to me, I haven't read it yet, is from commune to capitalism, how China's peasants lost collective farming and gained urban poverty. Hello, Professor. It's nice to have you on the show. Thank you, Henry. Thank you, Brett and Atlan. It's a great honor for me to join the show. Absolutely. So, listeners, this is going to be an extension of our ongoing

sanctions as war series. This episode, we're planning on releasing it just in time for Chinese New Year. And as Brett alluded to, this episode is going to be focused on China. So the chapter of sanctions is war that we are looking at today is titled the political economy of U.S. sanctions against China. And it's co-authored by June and a co-author, Feng Fei Lin, who unfortunately was not able to make it today. But that would have been great. She's a sociologist and anthropologist. at Xinjiang University in China. So that would have been fantastic to have her, but we're very happy to have Jun here.

So let's get this conversation underway. We're going to be talking about sanctions and China. I think that perhaps a good starting point might be discussing the pre-revolutionary period, just to kind of ground us in terms of what were the material conditions, what was the mode of production like within China, and what was China's relations to the before the revolution's culmination in 1949 because the chapter really picks up in 1949, but having that basis of understanding in terms of what were the material conditions and the relations like before that might help us understand how things

progress from there. All right. Thank you, Henry. For the Marxist historians, the traditional view was that before 1840, China, the ancient Chinese Qing dynasty, was pretty much a feudal society. That was the main mode of production. After 1840, that's basically when Britain forced the Qing dynasty to sign the 19th treaty, open up trade, legalize all kinds of imports of British,

products, and obviously all the penalties with the RPM wars. From that point onwards, historians would call it the, it entered the face of semi-fewal, semi-colonial period. That basically means within the territory of China that it co-existed a number of different mode of productions. Part of that was still highly futile in the sense that it was still landlords, peasants sometimes serfs. But on the other hand, you have the open-up trading courts cities where the foreign business quickly, I think, dominated. And they became a very influential force in Chinese politics and economy.

And with that, you start to see, like, in the cities, you have new businesses going on. And with the new businesses, obviously, you have imports and exports. You have a specific social class that dealt with the foreign interests. And later, they were called the comber doors that they specialize. in mediating the foreign interests and the local bureaucrats, the local landlords. And they themselves became a very important social class too. And so among the ruling classes in China after 1840 and before 1949, you basically have the very big landlords in the countryside.

you have the bureaucrats that associated with the landlords and you have the big merchants in other words, they were the Cumberdoors that they were the brokers of the foreign interest and you have the foreign companies for even foreign missionaries, foreign military forces directly.

So they co-existed. They obviously work with each other most of the time. And you have, if you look at the, you know, other social classes, you have the traditional village, you know, farmers. But some of them were landless, so kind of the rural proletariat. Some of them barely maintain the basic subsistence, but had little landless. Some of them were kind of moving down into a more managerial, modern capitalist farmers, or we call it rich peasants or rich farmers.

So in the countryside, you have all those people. In the cities, you study to have modern proletaric class. And scholars also argue that the modern working class in China emerged even before the the modern Chinese capitalist class themselves, because they were hired by their foreign companies, and that was before the births of the local Chinese capitalist class. And you have a small group of elites. They were kind of, they had a competing interest with the foreign companies.

They were different from the traditional very super conservative landlord class. They were trying to learn from the West. They're trying to modernize, in other words, to build some kind of a national project that we call it the national bourgeoisie. But that's a fairly small group, which is also economically, politically weak compared to all the other main ruling classes. So that's how I would describe it. Obviously, if you look at the, at more detailed level, there are all sorts of non, you know, even pre, let's say, all kinds of pre-modern social relationship. In the southwest of China, you still have slavery going on. And in like in places like Tibet, that's more like a theocracy, you know, the Dalai Nama or whatever.

bunch of other people controlling everything in that region, only just formally subject to the rule of the central government. And in other places, you have the nomads that maintaining pretty much a communal type of life. Even after 1949, part of those were connected, well, some of them were considered to be still in the so-called primitive if communist stage and they were directly converted into communes later afterwards. So that's how I would describe Mosul production at that time. That was a really great sweep of a lot of decades for sure. And that kind of moves us into the, I would say, the revolutionary period of China with the rise

of Mao, the civil war and all the consequences of that. Of course, at this point, we're thick into the cold. war. So can you kind of talk about how the U.S. and its position on China shifted importantly after the successful revolution, but then also, as you mentioned in your essay, the Korean War and how U.S. relationships to China changed over those two major events? Right. Yeah, sure. Let me just first mention that before the revolution, since the 19th century, shortly after the Arpian War, the United States started to play an important role

in the Chinese society. Obviously, at the time, the main focus of the United States was still on the Americas, with the Monroe Doctrine and others, but he wanted to have equal or the same treatment, same preferential status that other foreign powers have obtained in China.

So that was the main focus, you know, with whatever other countries that got, I also want a share. And so it was not a very active, I'd say, it was not a very active aggressor against China in that way. It was a follower, like, you know. And part of that was shown by it has, United States has invested in a Chinese, for example, intellectuals, I guess more than any other

country. One of the best Chinese universities, even today, is Chin Hua University, which is a fairly science and technology-based university. And it was built with a U.S. funds, well, to be, you know, to be clear, the money was part of the war penalty that China paid to the U.S. following the boxer's rebellion. And the United States decided to give at least a portion of those funds back to China in order to build this modern university, Qinghua University. It was from the very beginning, it was a prep school. for students in China to go to U.S. to get either college or graduate training. And many of them actually became major scientists, engineers, later on in China.

And they helped the Chinese Revolution immensely. So it did have that very interesting and, I would say, beneficial connection to China, to the Chinese Revolution, etc. But obviously, the United States was also a major patron, a sponsor of the very reactionary Republican government in China, the nationalist government. It supplied weapons, supplied all these trainings, supplied the finance, and it helped the government to fight the communists in the 1930s and 40s. And eventually, you know, that nationalist government failed, were defeated. They fled to Taiwan, and the U.S. obviously had a little deliberation, I think, about how to deal with the relationship with the People's Republic. But eventually, with the Korean War, with China's participation in the Korean War, I think that solidified the decision from the U.S. to have a blockade against China.

that was considered to be the frontier of the spread of communism, of revolution. If we believe in the domino theory that, you know, they would spend a lot of resource in stock, that domino from falling. And the Taiwan, Korea, Japan, they were all frontiers against the spread of the Chinese revolution. So I think that set up the base for the, China-U.S. relationship following the 1949 revolution. Yeah, very interesting. I wanted to ask you a little bit more about the transformations that happen in the 1950s and the position that China was under. So I think what the first

point is, is that around the time of China's intervention in the Korean War, as you discuss in the article, the U.S. imposed full and complete sanctions on China. And this had a number of consequences then on China's development, as well as its geopolitical relationship. So I was wondering if you could perhaps talk a little bit about that era of the Sino-Soviet kind of alliance that was an outcome of this. And how and why that breaks down and ultimately what the situation in the 1960s was geopolitically that created the opening for U.S. to reverse its position of full and complete sanctions on China. Yeah, thanks, Adeline.

The decision from the Chinese side to choose to build alliance with the Soviet Union that was, I think it happened at the same time when the United States decided to have, you know, impose a complete blockade against China. And it was partly, obviously, for political reasons that the Chinese government had a very close relationship with the Communist Party in the Soviet Union. it was a major supporter of the Chinese communists, so they have that. But the decision to completely, let's say, ally with the Soviet Union was, I think was based on the fact that the U.S. was very hostile towards the new China led by the Communist Party. And with the war on the Korean peninsula going on, there were severe debates, I think, serious debates among the party members, the leadership, about whether they should intervene in the Korean war at all, because the country was newly born, they were short of money, no one really wanted to fight a war, extra war, but there's the war.

going on on the peninsula, which was so close to China itself, and it was just part of this hot war at the beginning of the Cold War. But eventually, I think Mao, I think Mao's opinion prevailed. He argued that it was, if we couldn't save the Korean Revolution, that the Chinese revolution would also be in a very dangerous status. So that basically determined that the future path is that you're going to fight the United States, basically, it was a United Nations, but it was basically United States, and you have to rely on Soviet Union for other things, which I think the Soviet Union helped China, you know, really tremendously.

In the early 1950s, China studied the first five-year plan. And it was basically a Soviet-sponsored plan. And there is, we call it the 156 plan because the Soviet Union sent the best engineers, best scientists, you know, all those precious resources to China could build 100, 56 big projects. That was basically the first five-year plan.

And in the world history, you really have this kind of very altruistic support from one country to another country. I mean, this only happened among the socialist countries at the time. And I think the Soviet Union's support to China was fundamental for China's further, you know, industrial success. So it was definitely a very good relationship between the two countries. And things starting to change, I think, first because of the sacred speech on the 20th Congress of the Soviet Communist Party by Helenshoff, who basically blamed all the problems on Stalin himself, and that was, you know, all the things that they did, destroyed all these achievements, basically.

And the Chinese leadership obviously objected to that opinion from the very beginning. Mao said, you know, starting, we have 30% mistake or errors or whatever. But 70% he was still a good Marxist, made a huge contribution to the World Revolution. And so they have the splits. And later on, the Soviet, the Sino-Soviet splits expanded to more deep levels, ideological, political levels. Soviet Union leadership was more keen, let's say, peaceful coexistence with the United States. were capitalism, and they were moving away from the more revolutionary side of the history, but they're moving into a more, let's say, more careerist, developmentalist kind of a policy,

and that the Chinese government disagreed completely with that approach. So they had this fundamentally ideological conflict, and you have the Sino-Sovia split later, and the Soviet Union then withdrew the experts or the scientists, engineers from China, really suddenly a lot of projects were put into jeopardy because of that. I have many teachers who had teachers from Soviet Union. They taught, like, I study economics, and my teacher's teacher was Soviet Union professors. So they taught them Marxist economics, among other things. And then that's how they built the modern Marxist or modern economics program in the Chinese universities. There's different, separate from, let's say, the U.S., previous U.S.-sponsored, Qinghua University, where you have all this, you know, mainstream stuff.

So I think that really the relationship deteriorates after the early 1960s. And from that point, I think the Chinese leadership was obviously in a very tough spot. On the one hand, they face the U.S. blockade, the Western containment. On the other hand, the previous way of working with the Soviet Union also was in really in a very different situation now. And I think the Chinese leadership naturally wanted to explore other relationships outside the U.S., But, you know, with other countries. For example, with France, France had for a long time a kind of independent view from the other side, you know, from the U.S. group. Or from Canada, with Australia, I mean, those were the countries that first built, I would say, good relationship with the people of republic.

So by the 1960, middle of 1960, China already started trading a lot with the Western countries, with Japan, with Australia, with Canada. And so the Chinese leadership definitely had the winning that they wanted to engage with the United States in some way. And it seems that the United States leadership at the time, you know, they were in the Vietnam War, they couldn't, you know, it was troubling in every aspect. They also wanted to make some breakthrough. And they saw there is this split between Soviet Union and China. It was logical for them to exploit that little split and to build an alliance against the Soviet Union. I think that was from both sides they wanted to

have some engagement obviously maybe from the US side the point is that once we engage with the people who are in China eventually we're going to turn them into some kind of capitalist

society moving them away from communism etc. But from the Chinese sides, they will consider that the U.S. is in such a weak spot. They have to talk to us. They have to trade with us. They have to do something. And that's part of the world revolution going up. And so those sides perceive this, I would say, rather differently. But eventually, it seems mutually beneficial for them to have some exchanges, some engagements, some trade. And which was what happened in the early 1970s.

So picking pretty much up right there, there was then two distinct phases that had very profound impacts, both in terms of U.S.-China relations as well as domestic policy within China. So as you had been leading up to, we had the famous Nixon slash Kissinger and Mao meetings. And then about a decade and a, what, decade, just under a decade after that, we had the Deng Xiaoping era reforms start to come in. So these are two different phases, but in both of them, there's both domestic implications as well as implications with regard to relations with the United States as well as implications in terms of the political economy of China and how that will be set up with regard to being. able to weather sanctions that will be coming down the pike again relatively shortly thereafter. So perhaps you can take us through those two phases and discuss the domestic implications, the foreign policy implications of these two phases, as well as talk about how did that meeting

between Mao and Nixon and then the Xiaoping era reforms, how did that change the production in China in a way that it would impact how sanctions affect China in the future? Oh, yes. Before China's explicit engagement with the United States, China already builds, I would say, its relationship with a huge number of third world countries. And it was based on that support, China was able to restore its membership in the United Nations in 1971.

That was definitely a, I think that changed, you know, a lot of these calculations. It replaced, for example, Taiwan's position in United Nations. So China was at that point was ideologically, was still fairly revolutionary. It argues that, you know, anti-colonialism, anti-impe colonialism is still the theme of the era. This is what we're going to do in United Nations, etc. And the U.S. is on the other side, the opposite end of this spectrum. You know, it was buried inside in the Vietnam War with the civil rights movement, with all those domestic issues.

That being said, I think within China, within the Chinese leadership, there were two factions, well, one or two, but there are two main factions. The one faction led by Mao, they considered that the engagement with the United States would have to be limited. you will have engagement but at the same time U.S. is the largest imperialist force in the world you're not going to be a good buddy with the United States but you will have engagement, you will have talks and you've looked at the

transcript between Lixon, Kessinger and Mao when they talk Kisinger and Lixon they wanted to talk about global politics. Basically, you know, how do you think about Soviet Union and stuff? And Mao said, oh, let's, you know, we forgot about that. Let's talk about philosophy. And that is that kind of attitude. You're like, you know, I'm not into your game, building an anti-Soviet alliance. But Mao agreed on the engagement. I think they realized that the sanction, the blockade,

did have, you know, have a high toll on China's economic social development. You need to, as a backward economy, you have to get advanced technology somewhere. You can buy it, steal it some way, right? That's what happened in history. And Soviet Union was very generous at the beginning to provide those, like a startup funds, startup technology for China, which it was super useful. But that stopped. And even Soviet Union itself had difficulties in catching up with the Western technology

in science. Sovereign produced rich technology in science and has so many great scientists. But only in certain industries, certain sectors, Soviet Union was able to really, like, you know, exceed the level of the Western science or catching up. In some other sectors, Soviet Union was also still in the process of climbing ladders. And China was even more so, you know, it didn't, you couldn't just produce everything by yourself. You have to get something from outside. And that was, I think, why In 1973, 1974, immediately after the normalization of Cino-U.S. relationship, China, Under Mao, compiled this big order. They wanted to buy advanced equipment from the West. They're using a huge amount of, I mean, comparatively, huge amount of foreign reserve that China had, 4.3 billion U.S. dollars at the time.

They tried to buy a complete set of advanced equipment. Basically, the entire factory got back to China, which eventually they did because the normalization of the single U.S. relationship relaxed some of the containment, some of the sanctions that China was previously had to endure. So that was definitely very useful. But there was another faction. among the Chinese leadership that they were, you know, using the post-Mao leadership, Deng Xiaoping's words, look at history, he said, look in history.

All the countries had had good relationship with the United States. They got rich. That all the countries that didn't have a good relationship with the United States, they had huge trouble. And obviously, for those more, I'd say, A political, more, you know, naturally they were pro engagement with the U.S., but not just getting necessary equipment from the U.S. They want to be more closer, much more closer to the U.S.

They want to be a partner. Instead of just being this troublemaker for the capitalist countries. and I think this was not a small number of leaders and there was a fairly strong faction within the Communist Party that they had this opinion and Mao called them the capitalist voters because they had a natural intention to restore capitalism in China because they saw that is the way out instead of being stuck in the sanctions in the blockade

you know, if we just built, let's say, a U.S. type society, we wouldn't have to suffer all this. We would get all those kind of things. We would grow, we would develop just like a typical, like Japan. When they're looking at Japan, there's a close labor that was growing so well. If they could do it, why don't we do it? And they were the U.S. ally, U.S. partner. So the consequence, the comparison, they have done this many times. And so that's a different faction.

This faction, the more pro-capitalist faction and the more radical faction and the more radical faction and the Mao, at this point, they agreed on this engagement with the U.S. That's the kind of the common opinion among them. But what happened afterwards was to be debated or actually, you know, we would be settled via internal political struggles, and which eventually the more pro-capital faction won via, you know, by military, by political forces, by all this kind of things. And they set China to, on a different course, engage more closely with the U.S., and there was under Deng Xiaoping, that U.S. and China build formal diplomatic relationship. And it was, so they were more desperate than Mao in that way.

They were trying to build a good relationship with the United States as soon as possible. And there's a little, you know, I remember when I was reading some of the old issues of New York Times, when the U.S. and China started normalizing this relationship, there's a bunch of U.S. delegates sent to China. Some of them went to a big commercial event in Guangdong, Canton. That's a major commercial market event for the global trading partners. They would go to that city and they'd look at what products China had.

And China would also look at what products we have and have exchanges afterwards. So they visited and they met some high-level economic officials in China. And they were surprised, according to the times, that those Chinese officials, this was during the Cultural Revolution, by the way, those officials asked them questions about the horses in the Kennedy School in Harvard at Harvard. Like, we want to learn that. So that was during the cultural revolution. And you can tell that how much willingness, how much desire that the pro-capitalist

elites in China at the time they had towards the U.S. Obviously, the impression was that once we build good relations with the U.S., we're going to be buddies and we don't have to worry about sanctions, the blockades, etc., etc. which was partly realized in the early 1980s, the United States, you know, had, you started selling weapons to China. They helped train the Chinese officials. So they started the honeymoon between the U.S. and China from that point. Yeah, and that's a lot of history as well. But of course, when it comes to the United States, especially with countries that are not European,

this idea that you could be a buddy or even eventually an equal and be seen as an equal by the United States is, I think, a fundamentally flawed premise because the U.S. ultimately is going to want you to be totally subservient to its interests. And the moment you step out of line of that, the moment your self-interest comes into clash with the U.S. empires, you're tossed to the wind, as it were. Now, there were a period of time where the relations were good. And as you said, from the U.S.'s perspective, they were thinking that by, you know, bringing China into the global economy. They would also be able to slowly but surely bring them towards liberalism away from the Communist Party. You know, they had their own fantasies about how this is going to play out. But that gets us up into the modern era because I think stuff started shifting with regards to America's perception and the way it talked about China. Specifically, probably it started in the Obama administration, but it reached a sort of zenith in the Trump administration. And this was even true before COVID, but COVID gave Trump an extra layer of racism, calling it the Chinese flu, which his base loved, that stoked more antagonism towards China and the Chinese people, hate crimes against Asian people in general, jumped in the United States. But he ran even before that. His campaign was very hostile to China. And in a lot of ways, Biden has continued that hostility, much more Trumpian than pre-Trump in.

Biden's posture towards China. And of course, there is lots of Orientalism. There's lots of racism. You say in this essay, the U.S. always needs an other. And in the context of a global capitalist crisis, China becomes the, as you said, as well, quote unquote, perfect scapego. So can we talk about kind of what happened exactly during the Trump administration? And I'm particularly interested in China's response. How does China deal with this increasingly? increasing hostility and really angry rhetoric coming from the U.S. as it is made super explicit during the Trump administration. Yeah, sure.

Thanks, Brett. So I think the good years between the U.S. and China run from the early 1980s to early 2010s towards the end of Obama years. well, you know, I experienced this firsthand because I came to the United States for graduate school in 2007 and I can, I mean, invisibly, you can see more and more Chinese students, Chinese scholars come into the U.S., the Chinese Ministry of Education set up this fund to support Chinese students to, you know, obviously go to any country, but many of them choose to United States to come here as a visiting scholar for one year or something. And in the early days, to obtain a U.S. visa can be difficult.

But starting from the, you know, obviously 2000s, getting a visa to the U.S. seems fairly easy. And you can even get a 10-year visa, which was unheard of. in previous decades. So it definitely reached a very high level of this cooperation in many ways. Obviously, underground, you see these tensions growing at the same time. As China was growing faster, much faster than the U.S. for a relatively long time. And the threat of China, then obviously you always need some threat, some external threat. And China increasingly fit the profile of this growing giant or a competitor or rival or something.

And that easily sell to the U.S. audience. And this was especially the case after the last great financial economic crisis in the late 2000s, I think that the U.S. capitalism never quite recovered from that crisis. It was always in that state that this post-crisis mentality, then you sell that, okay, we get into so much problem, so much trouble, and there's someone that's been taking out advantage of us, and that is China. And this, then, you know, this is such a, I would say this really a smart political strategy because it can never go wrong with this.

Obviously, you find an enemy that is great. And the enemy happens to be China, which also has a Communist Party in the government, which also has this long history of yellow peril, this anti-Chinese, this hate deeply buried in the culture

in this country. It just fit everything perfectly. So I think increasingly you started to see in the news, in the New York Times, in all those mainstream media that increasingly see more hostile, more negative description of China, everything. China, A, B, C, D you can list them, and everything is wrong, everything is bad. So I started to see that change, definitely after the 2010, 2012, you know, with Obama's people to Asia, and then with the new administration with Trump and Trump, started to gain popularity. Obviously, he gained popularity for all sorts of reasons.

But the anti-China narrative was a big part of this because it was, it makes sense to many people that, that was, why we're doing worse than before. It was because someone was instilling from us, our technology, our whatever. And that easily translates into the hatred towards Chinese or anyone who looked like Chinese in the United States. That's the anti-Asian, but more precisely, anti-Chinese hate. They just couldn't quite differentiate Chinese from, you know,

Japanese or Korean. And I think that both parties thought this to be a very handy way of, you know, gain support. And that it just very quickly became a bipartisan thing. So it doesn't matter. It's Democrats, Republicans. It's the same kind of thing. It's the safest bet for their program that we want to contain China. And as Brad mentioned, the United States wanted full spectrum dominance.

It doesn't have equal partners or buddies, right? You have to be someone lower. And to be fair, the Chinese leadership doesn't have, I mean, in a lot of ways, I mean, they imply that they're willing to uphold, they're willing to support the current global economy, economic order, which means they went into play third or second violin with the U.S. in the center. But it's something, you know, but for the U.S. even the idea that you are getting close, remotely close, it's dangerous. And in this crisis moment, when the U.S. economy,

when the U.S. society is obviously running into great difficulties nowadays, they would save any opportunity to find a target, and that is China. Yeah, that's very important background. I think we could definitely expand upon your reference to the history of panic about the yellow peril. And of course, this goes back to, you know, U.S. imperialism and colonialism in the Pacific and the importing of, you know, East Asian labor. into the United States, historic Chinatown in San Francisco as a result of U.S. importation, right, of cheap kind of laborers who could be exploited and kept, you know, working under

very severe circumstances to expand in the western part of the United States and build that infrastructure of the railways and so on. So it goes back to late 19th, you know, century, if not earlier. But I'm thinking also, even just in terms of following up, with Brett's point about this transition and how it happens, is thinking about even already in the early geostrategic thinking of some figures in more of the right wing after the Cold War, Huntington, somebody like Samuel Huntington exerted a real influence. And what's interesting is how mainstreamed. I mean, he is already, of course, a very influential and mainstream thinker. But originally this really had more purchase on the right, you know, in terms of these cultural differences,

civilizational differences in the clash of civilization's thesis. But I remember the conclusion of that essay really talked about how the future would look like a kind of major conflict or rivalry in competition with A, the Islamic world, and B, China. And it even meditated very briefly that, you know, could be quite serious if there might be some interplay between those two civilizations vis-a-vis the United States. And so we got, you know, kind of already some anxieties about now that the Cold War wasn't going to structure these relations, that the positive relationship that had been developing with China since the early 1970s would necessarily turn into competition. and conflict, and we see that increasingly becoming a concern when it moves to permanent normal trade relations and you have the deindustrializing in the 1980s. I mean, very often this was sort of framed as Japanese kind of automobiles and so on, but of course, anybody who was, you know, observing this economically could see that trade and production was also

being offshoreed increasingly, especially in the 90s to China. And so that raised those kinds of contradictions that were politically, as you were pointing out. So useful when post-2008 with the financial collapse, capitalism could not achieve its goals. And it just reminded me, sorry I'm going on so long with this, but there's so many interesting points you raised there. It reminded me also a little bit of the reaction to the Beijing summer 11th. Olympics, you know, in 2000, I believe it was 2008, and it was right after the collapse is really, you know, having all kinds of devastating effects. The next summer, China is announcing itself on the world stage as a host of, you know, worldwide global games and very successful. And there was so much anxiety and criticism that it seemed like was affecting Western kind of commentators that.

of the shock of recognition that, oh, China is a great power now. It is, you know, inexorably rising and all of the growth that's been happening is leading to, you know, a productive, powerful society. And that's when the pivot to Asia, you know, it's sort of, you could sell the pivot to Asia almost more easily as a result of the collapse of U.S. economic institutions, while, China seemed to be weathering it, you know, fairly well and also being able to, you know, have influence on the world stage. And so that kind of raises, you know, the question for me, you know, talking about some of these new sanctions, the more recent ones under Trump. And how much these are related to kind of new alignments taking place in the global

economy and global geopolitics because of one of the reasons for sanctioning particular companies that you discuss in this essay in this article are Chinese trade with Iran, circumventing U.S. sanctions by actually trading with Iran. And so this connects with the whole series that we've been doing on sanctions as war, is that some of the justification for sanctions on China is that U.S. has already imposed very cruel and awful sanctions upon many countries. And China, often China and a couple of other countries, Russia, are among the only alternatives that countries who are being isolated by the U.S. sometimes have. And so that is creating a kind of network of countries that stand outside of the U.S. system are isolated from it.

as a kind of counterforce that reminds me when you were talking about the 1950s, Sino-Soviet, U.S. turn of hostility. It's very similar to the panic about China in the Bandung Conference, for example, that China is becoming kind of maybe the leader of this alternate block of Afro-Asian countries. And that, in a way, through China's development projects and having companies that work to circumvent some of the worst of the U.S. sanctions in countries that have been targeted, that it is creating something like a different bloc. How do you analyze that and the contradictions of that with, as you've pointed out in the essay, the fact that China and the U.S.

have been completely symbiotic, you know, in this neoliberal kind of era of trade and of capitalism's period. So how do you kind of deal with that contradiction and what do you think about how these sanctions are maybe reshaping that relationship with the U.S. geopolitically and economically? Yeah. Thank you, Edmund. Those are great questions.

As you said, I mean, it's symbiotic, the two countries. I mean, now it's more fashionable to talk about decoupleasing. between the U.S. or between the West and China for all those reasons. But in practice, how would that work? I wonder. I mean, it seems that if in the past three, four decades, the very neoliberal global economy has been built upon the basic collaboration between the U.S. and the Chinese capitalist firms.

Once you cut the ties, I cannot, I mean, that sounds more like a shock therapy, you know, to me. And when you have shock therapy, you have crisis that just like in Soviet Union. So I think fundamentally from this long-term interest of capitalism, it would be better for U.S. and China to work out a way. to keep the status quo as long as they could. But capitalism creates its own contradictions. It just couldn't continue the status quo as they might wish. And the U.S. couldn't tolerate that. Couldn't tolerate that China has been rising all those years.

I wouldn't say China is a real rival to the United States, technology science no but China does produce a lot of things that the United States doesn't produce anymore or doesn't specialize in so that challenges the full spectrum dominance that the US at least a big portion of the US elites wanted to have and that so if they in other words they have to deviate from what was best for the long-term interest, when they want to disrupt the relationship with China. And the Chinese elites, I think,

when they started to perceive these threats, initially threats and eventually sanctions, I think they were in total shock. That's my understanding. Because they consider the relationship mutually beneficial. Obviously, you know, working classes, both countries suffer under this arrangement. But for the elites, they made so much profits out of this.

But suddenly, the U.S. elites previously, they couldn't tell less about what's technology transfer, Iran, then suddenly they said, oh, no, no, no, these are big issues. You know, we have to put sanctions on you. And the Chinese side is like, oh, I thought we were buddies. I thought we were, well, in the Chinese leadership boards, husbands and wives, you know, it's like we are the same family, but no. And that was a total shock. They couldn't, they didn't quite know how to deal with this because this was for the past 30, 40 years, they took this for granted that this harmonious, mutual work, you know,

collaborative relations between U.S. China would continue. One of the very first thing, when I was in middle school, we have this course called politics. We studied politics. And a big part of that was we would basically learn from what the Chinese leadership has to say about global politics. One of the thing is that globalization is ongoing and there's very unlikely to have major conflicts in the world. That's the thing we would remember. from those courses in the 1990s. So that was reflected

I think that the mainstream view among the Chinese elites that this will go on. So there was a total surprise. And until this day, I think the Chinese leadership didn't quite figure out what's the best way to tackle

the U.S. threats or sanctions. One of the early things that Trump mentioned was that China had the idea that it would replace U.S. products very quickly. They had made in China 2025 this document, this plan, where China made all those ambitious proposals that, by 2025, we're going to build this and this and that. We're going to make this and that. That was a very, obviously, threatening message to many U.S. It is. And they said, no, you can't have this.

And then the Chinese government basically deleted that document. They never talk about it anymore. I think that's a gesture that they're willing to say, okay, we don't do it. If you don't like it, we can do it. Obviously, there is a different between rhetoric and reality. But I think they were trying to cooperate to conform to the U.S. demands. to a reasonable degree. But the U.S. didn't even tolerate that.

I mean, they put on their maximum pressure, you know, it keep going on, this whole thing. So I think the Chinese leadership is currently in a difficult position again. I mean, they wanted to uphold the status quo. The vice premier of China recently, I think, few days ago, he went to the Davos conference, and he made the remarks that we want to, you know, support globalization. We reject Cold War mentality and all that. And he also said, we don't want, it's not possible that China go back to a plan economy. I mean, all those

kind of things, which was trying to reassure the Western countries that China is still going on as a market economy, we're just as, let's say, as capitalists as you are. Don't worry and we don't want to challenge anything. This is one side of this. The other side of the story, as you mentioned, was that there was definitely a potential for alternative block, some kind of alternative economic system. It's just like what the Soviet Union was able to build among, you know, the Common Com, those countries, the Soviet trading bloc. And there is a potential for, let's say, China, Russia, a bunch, many, a large number of developing countries, they can engage in the alternative trading relationship, so then

bypass the U.S. sanctions, bypass all the European limitations, et cetera, for a more fairer, equal trading, you know, relationship. That is definitely possible, I would say. And that's something that also could be very threatened to all the entire Western elites. Because that would totally, I would say, damage the Western power, hagemony that they had over the past hundreds of years. But my personal view is that the Chinese leadership doesn't seem to have this idea, this ambition at this point. As I said, we want to support globalization, which means we want to work with the United States rather than something else.

Yeah, and of course, I mean, in a perfect world in a vacuum, it would make a lot more sense for both the U.S. and China to make. maybe have a slightly friendly rivalry, but to more or less cooperate, especially on huge issues like climate change. But that's not how capitalism works and that's not how the U.S. Empire works. And as you say, these tensions are rooted fundamentally in a deeper crisis of capitalism. So rhetoric and trying to appeal to people's rational side isn't necessarily going to work here. And what you're seeing a lot with China and perhaps the ruling class in China is taking note of this eventually is like, you're damned if you do and you're damned if you don't. COVID is a perfect example of this. You have zero COVID. In America,

we lost a million Americans, if not more to this. That's more than the civil war. That's more than both World War II losses for America. China is doing this plan to try to contain COVID. And then, of course, the West is lambasting them the whole time, even as the West is filling their mass graves. Then there's protests in China. And this authoritarian regime responds to the protest sorts are opening up and now look at china so irresponsible they're opening up they're letting COVID spread like you can't win you will never be able to win this game um and the uh you mentioned it a little bit in your article as well the the weger genocide myth like this word genocide is used all the time here and it was very strong a few years ago as every headline was about genocide

genocide genocide genocide and this of course was a wonderful tool that the west used to further demonize China. So I was a kind of a two-prong question is, what do you make of the Uyghur genocide rhetoric and how it's mobilized against China? And then I'm really interested picking up where you just left off on that last answer, Xi Jinping in particular, what his vision is for the next decade or two or where you think Xi Jinping in particular sees or wants to see China go in the coming years. Oh, thanks. Thanks for the question, Brett. Yes, for any of us who read the Western media regularly, that you couldn't miss the allegation that China is doing genocide,

ethnic genocide in Xinjiang against the Wu-woo ethnic population. I think the people who argue for this type of stories, I think they really, I mean, if they're sincerely arguing for this, they really underestimate the difficulty of genocide, as we know it. Genocide is a social project. It's not something you can do in secret. Give you an example. Because, Brett, you just mentioned protest.

The earliest protest against zero COVID was in Xinjiang. In the capital city of Xinjiang, Urumuchi, it was a place where, you know, there was a fire in the building and multiple people died, and people got very angry. And they got on streets protesting against zero COVID. And everyone in the country knew it. We saw the video. I mean, I saw multiple videos from TikTok, for example. I mean, everyone can show the video and put on TikTok. What I'm saying is that this is a death, a tragic death of multiple people, and everyone in the country knew, and we got really concerned.

And you're talking about a genocide, the whole population, that's millions of people. And none of us, you know, in China, outside China, have heard anything about it. I mean, I think that's, it's just impossible. There's no, you know, governmental effort in, let's say, promoting a hatred towards the we war population. On the contrary, the idea was always athletic harmony or collaboration, mutual respect. So for someone living in China, or once lived in China,

when you talk to them about this ethnic genocide, they would find it unbelievable because it just doesn't resonate with any kind of experience we might have. So I think that when the Western authorities, they so eagerly so uncritically embrace the idea of Chinese genocide in Xinjiang, it's a very different I mean that claim is so big it's so hard to support that claim they would have to change it somehow in the future unless you know they it's going to be become just going to become a joke they couldn't say well that you can obviously have

weaker versions of this like in chingjiang you have forced labor you have you know other things or they say a soft version of this is that cultural genocide, which is very vague. You don't even know what that means. So I think that the strict sense genocide, it couldn't happen in the past few years without all of us knowing. And other things like forced labor, someone who studies labor in China and other places,

force labor is not uncommon at all. I mean, capitalism produces forced labor all the time. And I would say whatever amount of evidence they produce about forced labor in Xinjiang are very misleading. Because the government have their anti-poverty programs, they would basically, you know, get people to work. Like, this is a job we created. You need to go to. that job. And this would be interpreted as force labor in the typical Western analysis. But that it doesn't make any sense to, you know, any actual person living in China.

Because like, okay, government find a job for you, create a job for you, and that's, you know, I'll go. That gave me income. Otherwise, how can we survive, right? So I think we'll talk about brutality of all the things. I think capitalism is itself, introduction of capitalism, introduction of capital, introduction of capital is already fairly brutal. With that, I mean, you don't have to add all those kind of, oh, yeah, the police is so bad, or they treat us as something. And with all this spicy, you know, more maybe attention-grabbing stories that they produced,

it just don't need that. And I know, I mean, the working class in China has been struggling for years. That's not something new. We know that. And they've been making progress, but they're still struggling. Of course, really quick, I just want to pop into it to say that this rhetoric, and these campaigns of demonization aren't merely rhetorical. They also come, as you say in your essay, with a slate of sanctions, correct?

As the justification, you're mistreating, you're doing human rights violations, ergo these sanctions are now justified, right? Yes, they would stop other companies from buying cotton or tomatoes from Xinjiang, which really damages the likelihood of many small producers. You know, it's, it's, I mean, as with all other cases, the sanctions would only hurt the ordinary people. And in this case, I mean, you know, there's no, I mean, it only, whatever, let's say, human rights violation there is in Xinjiang or in any other place in China, the sanctions only make it worse, not better. So I think that's my attitude, so was the U.S. sanctions. And about the idea of the Chinese leadership, particularly Xi Jinping,

I think he, I mean, again, only based on the writing of the species he had made, I think he has some ideas. about an improved, let's say, a global economy. In that improved global economy, U.S. and China would, again, work together. At the same time, China with all the Western countries, should also build a better relationship with the third world. they should facilitate growth in the third world.

And China, obviously, is against sanctions in any form. So it's a slightly, well, not maybe not slightly, but it's a little different vision from what the U.S. elites want, I think. U.S. elite wants, you know, every other country have to be subject to United States. I don't think Chinese leadership had that dream. You know, it's like, oh, China is going to be the kind of the king of the world. I don't think that was a sentiment that they have ever expressed. When they talk about the Chinese, sometimes because of rejuvenation of the Chinese civilization,

it was more like historically, for example, China was occupy about 30% 20%, of the global GDP. And rejuvenation basically means that China will go back to that level, which is China is fairly close. And it doesn't mean China would have, let's say, full spectrum dominance over other countries. It couldn't be, you know, 25%, 30% is not going to be enough for China to have that. And China had the tradition, still kept the tradition of long interference. So it doesn't really intervene much in full.

country's domestic politics, it definitely has its own opinions, but it's very cautious in doing anything, which, you know, in many cases, people can criticize that, like, you're not really concerned about other countries as a human rights, but on the other hand, it does prevent the case that the Chinese more interventionist attitudes or more, you know, more, let's say, re-establishment of more like a colonial relationship. And I think that easily prevents that kind of thing. And so it's, I would say, the vision of the Chinese leadership,

not just Xi Jinping, but I would say the collective leadership in China was different from a like U.S. imperial or domination or this hegemon type of vision. But it does want to keep globalization. It doesn't want to keep the current, you know, this model going on. And it does want a relatively, let's say, less abusive international relations. I think that's what it wants. But I could be wrong.

So I know we're getting closer to the end of it. the conversation. I have one or two questions left, but Adnan has to leave right now. Adnan, good luck to your students on their oral exam. Can you tell the listeners where they can find you on Twitter and pitch your other podcast before we round out this conversation with Chun? Yes, and which I've really been enjoying. So I'm apologetic and also sad that I have to leave for other commitments. It's been wonderful to speak with you, Jeune. I hope we'll stay in touch. And I actually think that there's so much more we need to learn about China and Chinese economic and social policies that I think, you know, hopefully we'll have an opportunity

to speak with you again. But for listeners, you can follow me on Twitter at Adnan A. Hussein, H-U-S-A-I-N. You can take my online course that's still going on called the Crusading Society. Just find out on Twitter how to register. And check out my other podcast, The M-A-J-L-I-S. We have some interesting episodes coming up ahead of the anniversary of the Quebec City Mosque Massacre that is on January 29. So before and around that time, we'll be having some programs related to that. So you should, by the time this episode is published, you know, have access to those.

Thanks, everyone. And thank you, June. Thank you, Edmund. Looking forward to hearing that episode Adnan. And it's, again, sorry that you couldn't make it to the end of the conversation. Now, Jun, we talked about the justification for sanctions on China vis-a-vis the relationship. between China and Iran. And then with Brett's question, you touched on the justification for sanctions on China

vis-a-vis the, you know, different narratives around Xinjiang. And these are two of the three justifications for sanctions on China within the modern era. So I want to touch on the last one and then also talk about the impacts of these sanctions. So the three justifications for sanctions on China in the modern era that you and your co-author pointed out are relations to the Chinese military. which is what my question will relate to, relations with other sanctioned countries like Iran and also Xinjiang. So turning towards the Chinese military, I'd like you to discuss about how, you know,

kind of nebulous this term is. And for the listeners, just think about all of the institutions in the United States, for example. I know many of our listeners are not U.S. based, but we have a good amount that are. perhaps a majority. Think about how many institutions in the United States, including educational institutions, have affiliations with the United States Department of Defense or, you know, military. Even my university, my undergrad university, which was a poor, like, very working class,

it was considered like the poor person's university in the area. We had links to the Department of Defense at my university. We weren't like a shining Ivy League college. It didn't matter what college you went to in the U.S. You have these linkages from your institution to the U.S. military. But outside of the fringes of the far left, that seems to not be questioned. But when it comes to China, any suspicion that there might be relations to the military of China is justification for sanctioning that given institution or that given company. So that's one part of my question is, can you discuss this arm of justification against China?

But then also, since we've then talked about the three kind of legs of the chair that are being used to justify the sanctions regime on China in the modern era, can you talk about the impacts of the sanctions not only on China, but also on the United States, for example, or other Western countries? This is something that we're seeing that many people have not considered up until the situation in Russia, Ukraine, right, that's going to. on right now is that when we think about sanctions, and this was historically the case with very small, not particularly integrated into the global capitalist economy or world system, countries, when they have sanctions put on them, the impacts are disproportionately felt by the poor people within that country, the working class within that country that is being sanctioned. And that's about it. The bourgeois of those countries don't feel the impacts particularly harshly, and there's not really any knockback effects on the country that's

instituting sanctions. But when we have a country that is so enmeshed in the capitalist world system, and I'm using the example of Russia because, one, it's on the forefronts of people's minds, and two, I have a personal connection to it, we see that the sanctions packages, the sanctions regime that's put on Russia, not only is impacting the people in Russia, and again, disproportionately the poor in Russia. But actually, the impacts are. just as hard felt in places like European countries. This is something that we haven't really seen before with sanctions regimes is these impacts on the countries that are implementing the sanctions in addition to the country that's having sanctions put on them. Now, China, of course,

is even more integrated in the world system than Russia is. So when we see these sanctions that are being placed on China, and one would imagine that if the sanctions were ramped up on China, the impact on that world system would be substantially greater. I think that it's fairly obvious to say that, you know, the more sanctions that are placed on China, the bigger the impact that there would be on everyone because of how a meshed China is in the world system. So those are kind of the two questions. I know they're both rather large, but the justification of Chinese military and then

the impacts in China and outside of China of these sanctions regime that is in place. Right. Yeah. Thank you, Henry. About the relationship to military, I mean, that was obviously one of the easy justifications that the U.S. gave in imposing sanctions on certain U.S. or sorry, Chinese institutions. It was not always clear how they established such relationships. I mean, some of those Chinese universities, obviously, they were When they were built, they were military technology institutes. So, you know, it's not a secret at all that they have, for example, they were doing research for, let's say, for airplanes. They were doing research for submarines. I mean, yes, obviously, that there are research institutes that are doing that. But I'm on the list.

You also have some of the universities that, don't have a relationship, I mean, don't have a clear relationship to military. For example, the Reming University, which is a People's University of China. This is a, if you check the, you know, the departments, I, only, I mean, mostly have social sciences and humanities. That's where I used to work. It would, I would be very surprised to learn that they, you know, they actually work for the military. I mean, not that work. for military in China means anything particularly bad. Like in the U.S., among the left, like, oh, you work for a DOD, that's bad.

In China, this was more like irrelevant because we don't have DOD funding. I mean, like, we don't have the Chinese DOD funding. I mean, I actually never heard of anyone getting any funds from the Chinese DOD. I mean, it seems that maybe they have funds reserved for their own people. But it's not common at all for researchers that's, oh, I got a grant from the DoD, no. Most of us, I would say 99.9% of Chinese researchers, if they get any funding at all, it's from one place, the Chinese Ministry of Education, that's basically in charge of all the entire natural science engineering, whatever, that stem research. that they get your funding from the education department.

For social sciences, humanities, there is a separate funding you can apply. That is from a particular section of the Communist Party. They set up the social science humanities funds that every Chinese professor applied to every year. So that's how it operates. I mean, you know, the ministry may have their own. funding or, but that's, I mean, it's very different from the US that it's not something common. I've never seen anyone who actually got money from the Chinese DoD again. So when you get those sanctions based on the reasons, are people like, what? Really?

And then, you know, eventually you have immediate impact that, like major software is that the Chinese students use, they lost access to those, like MATLAB. Those are like basic, you know, a working machine for those engineering or science students to write programs or make graphs. And they suddenly, well, okay, because we study in this particular university, we couldn't use MATLAB anymore. So that's something that I find it, you know, totally, I mean, really unreasonable.

And given that, again, we know that the U.S. supported the Chinese military, sell weapons to the Chinese military not so long ago. It just, it's very, I mean, I don't know, could it be ironic that suddenly it becomes such a concern for the U.S. government like, oh, no, those institutions are related to the Chinese military. You sold weapons to the Chinese military, but you didn't have any concern for that. Anyway, so I think the military connection is probably, you know, it's easy to make that claim, but it's also the weakest among the three because it's not easy to establish that, okay, you know, all these institutions are related to military in some way. you should put sanctions on them.

I mean, the Chinese military didn't invade any country, you know, at this in the last 30, 40 years. So it's not clear where that comes on. Anyway, so that's my thinking about that claim. The second part of this is about the consequences, the impact. I mean, we don't know in social social. scientists, when we study the consequences of something, it's hard to really distinguish one effect from all the other things, because there are so many things happening at the same time. After the sanctions, China also went through the COVID, all this zero COVID policies

and with all that. All of them would have an impact on people's income, on people on the sales of certain commodities. So it's not very clear to me at this moment that precisely how much impact those sanctions have had on the Chinese working people. I'm sure they have, but it's hard for me to have a precise number. But if we're looking at the impacts more broadly, I've seen reports, for example, when they, if they also, you know,

foreign companies stop buying products like tomato or cotton from Xinjiang, they sell to other places. There are other places that don't mind that much. And frankly speaking, this is, again, this is why a lot of people in the U.S. arguing that we should have partial sanctions on China. Because, yes, the cotton was produced in Xinjiang. They sell to another manufacturer in a different province and they process it and making something to something else. And they can still sell to the U.S. right?

And it's hard to trace. You can't do the complete tracing for a foreign country. And so that's why many people argue that we should have just complete ban Chinese products because they all might have some relationship with Xinjiang with military, with something, right? I mean, logically speaking, that's where you would. go. But again, people living in the U.S. in Europe know how much inflation there is going on. And everything you put on the Chinese sanction would add to that inflation, for sure, because you're increasing the costs. Even if, let's say, the manufacturer can go around this sanction, that they would have to hire extra people to process that to hide from

the US, let's say, all those sanctions, and that would increase costs. This is the best scenario. In the worst scenario, you know, that there's certain products, it just couldn't reach the United States, then the US people have to pay a much higher price than before, which they are already paid. They already paying a much higher price, partly because of the sanctions on Russian products. and if you really implement sanctions on China or even expended sanctions the I don't know, the U.S. population

and the entire Western economy have to have to suffer a much, much worse. As Henry mentioned, Russia was had limited engagement with the global capitalist economy. with raw materials mostly, but China was engaged in virtually every aspect of global capitalism. And so such sanctions, this decisions would definitely have at least push up the cost significantly for virtually every products you purchase from the ground store

or some other places. And that is definitely the case. But how much of that would actually, let's say, how devastating would that be to the Chinese economy? That is actually something I'm not entirely sure, because the Chinese economy is fairly large. And nowadays, only a small portion of the Chinese GDP is relying on net exports. So even if you just damage that, maybe, oh, you can lose the U.S. market, okay, then there's still a huge market in North America, in Africa, in Southeast Asia, you can go to. Unless U.S. can, you know, build allies all around the world and put a complete sanction on the Chinese products, I don't think this would have that, you know, much an impact on the Chinese. Chinese economy. I mean, Chinese economy has its own problems, which is deep enough. It

has itself has to struggle. But the U.S. sanctions, I think, mostly was a gesture, was a political threat, was a show to the Chinese elites. Obviously, it was a show to the domestic audience as well. Like, oh, yeah, we put on this. But it's also a show to the Chinese elites, especially those had a close relationship with the exports, the modern comparators. They would suffer greatly. And they would have an impact. They would have pressure on the Chinese politics. And the Chinese elites would say, well, okay, the U.S. can put this show.

And maybe we should do something different. Then once they're thinking in that way, I think the section would be useful, would be minimal to the U.S. elites. It's a way to deter you from doing something that, you know, something that they don't want. to do. And, but maybe in the next three, four or five years, we're going to see more concrete impact of the U.S. sanctions on China from the, you know, especially on the Chinese working people. But we'll keep the conversation going. I will have more to report later. Terrific. I know we're approaching the end of the conversation here. I would like to end the conversation,

by quoting the last sentence of the chapter and then asking you to give just a very brief reflection on it because I think that this is also something that I want to leave for the listeners to think about after they listen to this conversation. You know, you've heard, what, close to an hour and a half of this conversation at this point, which was really deep, really enriching. Of course, I highly recommend everybody pick up this text and read through this chapter as well as the entire edited, collected work of sanctions as war. But this quote here, which is the last sentence of your chapter, is very thought-provoking. And, you know, if you have any brief reflections on it as we close out, feel free to add them.

You say, the sanctions against China are destroying the neoliberal global economy, which will only make capitalism even more unstable everywhere. I find that to be a very thought-provoking quote. And if you have anything that you would like to say on that as we close out, go ahead. Oh, thank you. Thanks, Henry, for quoting that sentence. That's what my overall understanding of this situation is. I mean, capitalism itself is full of contradictions, and it's creating new contradictions every day. You know, even rationally speaking, we know from a long-term interest point of view, the U.S. should not put sanctions on China. if they still care about saving the global capitalist economy. But capitalism has run to this, I would say, late stage

that it couldn't quite control itself. And the sovereign governments that the U.S. government, the states, decided to take a more hostile stance against China. That is detrimental to its own long-term interest. And if this continues, it just means bad news for the global capitalist economy. It damages the Chinese economy, for sure. It damages the U.S. economy. And everyone else in this global liberal order.

And when that destabilized the global capitalist society, I think we're going to very likely to see a more up here. evils, more unrest, more revolutionary period following now. Great note to end on. Again, listeners, our guest was Professor Jun Shu, who is an associate professor of economics at John Jay College, City University of New York. Jun, it was great to have you on the show. I really enjoyed the conversation, and I really enjoyed the chapter as well.

Again, I'm recommending that the listeners check out the chapter after they listen to this conversation. Is there anything that you would like to direct the listeners to, or is there anywhere that they can follow your work as it comes out? Thanks, Kerry. I really enjoy the conversation and also conversation with Brett and Edmund. I learned a lot from our conversation as well. I mean, I work, I mean, sanctions are something I only recently he started to study. My own main research is about agrarian change or capitalist labor relations, Catholic transitions.

So, you know, if anyone is interested, they would read my last book from communal capitalism, which is describing the transition from the rural Maoist commune to the modern more pro-capital institutions. but you know any questions feel free to email me yeah excellent and again the name of that book listeners if you want to check it out is from commune to capitalism how china's peasants lost collective farming and gained urban poverty brett how can the listeners find you and your other excellent podcasts yeah well first off thank you so much june for this conversation i really did learn a lot

i love this essay i'm very interested in china and i have another show called rev left radio i would really love to have you on. So I'm saving your email and perhaps in a month or two I can reach out to you and have you on that show to talk about more of what you study, including your book, because I'm very, very interested and curious. But as for me, you can find everything I do at revolutionary left radio.com. That's all three podcasts and everything relevant to them. Excellent. Highly recommend that people do that. Brett, since this episode will actually be coming out two days after we record it, what is the latest thing that you have out from each of the chose for the listeners to check out.

I just released an episode on Rev. Left about reductionism and capitalist breakdown theory within the Marxist tradition, kind of, you know, adding some nuance and complexity to certain ideas that many different Marxists, you know, have or might have. I have an episode coming out on Soviet Georgia that I'm super excited about. I'm going deep into the history of that country, that republic, and what's happened to it since the fall of the USSR and the collapse of socialism in the east, which is very fascinating. And then over at at Red Menace, we're going to begin our deep dive into Engels as text on the family, private property, and the state. And that'll probably be a two to three episode series that we're going to do, just really getting into the

details of that text. So look out for that if you're interested. Yeah, I'm about three quarters of the way through the first episode that you mentioned, the one with the comrade from Prolacult. And I have a feeling I know who your guest is going to be for the Soviet. Georgia episode. I won't say it, but after I end the recording, I'll see if the person who I'm friends with is the person who you have on for that episode. As for me, listeners, I guess I should mention before you look for me, we also just launched a spinoff show, which is going to be hosted by a collective of hosts, the individuals that took part in our panel discussion on why political knowledge and historical knowledge are important for activism and organizing,

that panel, the individuals of that panel are going to be a hosting collective for this new show called Gorilla Radio, which is in the process of being uploaded onto all of the podcasting platforms right now. It's already available on many of the podcast apps. We're just waiting on a few of them like Apple Pods, but Gorilla Radio, again, spelled G-U-E-R-R-R-I-L-A radio. So kind of combining the name of this show with the name of Brett's

flagship show, let's say. As for me, you can find me on Twitter at Huck-1995, H-U-C-K-1-995. You can follow guerrilla history on Twitter, which also is where we're going to be putting out the updates for guerrilla radio at Gorilla-R-U-E-R-I-L-A-U-Skore-P. And, of course, you can help support the show, help us keep our lights on and help us continue to expand what we're doing. We have a lot of

really good ideas on what we could do if we had more resources by going to patreon.com forward slash guerrilla history. Again, G-U-E-R-R-I-L-A history. And on that note, listeners, and until next time, solidarity and happy Chinese New Year. You know, I'm going to be able to be. Thank you.