Rev Left Radio - China, U.S. Imperialism, and the New Cold War

Episode Date: May 5, 2021

Danny Haiphong joins the show to discuss China, the increase of anti-asian hate crimes, the history of American imperialism in Asia, how the media manufactures consent against China, and who's interests the new anti-China aggression really serves.  Support Danny's work here: https://www.patreon.com/dannyhaiphong Check out the last Rev Left episode Danny was on: https://revolutionaryleftradio.libsyn.com/american-exceptionalism-and-innocence-deconstructing-ideology-and-myths Check out Danny's work at the Black Agenda Report here: https://www.blackagendareport.com/author/Danny%20Haiphong Follow Danny on Twitter @SpiritOfHo  Outro Music: "E Minor" by Other Lives ----- Support Rev Left Radio: https://www.patreon.com/RevLeftRadio or make a one time donation: PayPal.me/revleft LEARN MORE ABOUT REV LEFT RADIO: www.revolutionaryleftradio.com

Hello everybody and welcome back to Revolutionary Left Radio. On today's episode, we have back on the show, Danny Haiphon from American Exceptionalism and American Innocence. He co-authored that book and also came on as a guest to talk about that book and we titled it the same name. Having back on this time to talk about China, the new Cold War, all of the ideology and propaganda that's going into it. it infects the left just as much as the center and the right and just has a we have a really widespread important conversation on a topic that is barely it rarely covered in the in-depth and serious-minded way that it deserves so danny's coming on today to do just that really fascinating conversation um and as always if you like what we do here at rev left radio you can sign up on

our patreon and in exchange for a couple dollars a month you get access to bonus content So without further ado, let's get into this wonderful conversation with my friend Danny Haiphong on China in the New Cold War. I am a contributing editor to the Black Agenda Report. I also co-host the Left Lens on YouTube with Margaret Kimberly. And I'm also an opinions contributor at CGTN. And I run my own blog at patreon.com slash Danny High Fawn. Very nice. Welcome back to the show.

The last time you were on, it was for your book that you co-authored, titled American Exceptionalism and American Innocence. Very well-received episode. people still email me about how much they enjoyed that one. So it's always nice to have you back. And today we're tackling a very topical and timely issue, which is the new Cold War that's being ramped up against China, the propaganda, the ideology, how they're pushing it, etc.

So we're very lucky to have you on to discuss this. And I guess first and foremost, the way to probably start this, and I know most people listening will probably already have a feel for why this topic's important. But, you know, for socialist and anti-imperialist as a way to open up this combo, especially here in North America, why is it important for us to care and to know about what's happening with China and its tensions with the U.S. and the West at large? Well, that's such a good question. And there's so much really to cover, even in just this one aspect of it. Why is it so important for us to pay attention to China? And why is it so

important for us to pay attention to this new cold war. Well, let's just start with China. China is the top, will be the top economy in the world. According to a lot of economists in purchasing power parity, it has already surpassed the United States. But in GDP terms, still has a little bit of ways to go. But it's not a matter of if, it's a matter of when China will be the number one economy globally. And this is, I think, quite historic. given the fact that China is a socialist country, meaning that it has a planned economy under the direction of the Communist Party of China, which not only follows a socialist ideology, but also socialist principles. And we can see that with its campaign of poverty alleviation,

its emphasis on public ownership of the commanding heights of the economy, including, and really importantly, finance. And, a real emphasis on the development for people and not just for private profit, whether it's in the massive investments that China has made in renewable energy, where I think more than 50% of all renewable energy production and consumption resides, and high-speed rail, where China is the world leader in high-speed rail several times over. China also remains an underdeveloped country. So there is this contradiction where its per capita GDP is still just one-fifth, of the United States and if we really look at this conflict which is often looked at as a conflict

between equivalence there really is no such equivalency the aggression toward China is unilateral it's it's led by the United States and its allies while there is this innuendo that for example China is stealing intellectual property and being aggressive in its own seas those are constant talking points but they don't change the fact that China remains surrounding by 400 U.S. military bases, and that the United States and its allies really do see the containment and downfall of China, but primarily the United States sees the downfall of China as the principal objective of its military policy. So I think for all of those reasons, it's really important to pay attention to China, and there's so many, I think there's so

many intricacies and connections that can be made just within this that brief summary yeah absolutely and i think we'll get into more of the geopolitical and economic threat that it poses to uh u.s hegemony in throughout this conversation but i do like to lay this out because you know we have a white audience some people all over the left some of whom would you know not necessarily agree completely with the idea that that china is socialist but my point is even when it comes comes to these discussions, it actually doesn't really matter whether you personally believe China is socialist or not to take a principled anti-imperialist stand and to deconstruct the propaganda ramping up to a new Cold War. Did you want to say anything about that to maybe

parts of the audience that might not be convinced of that claim, why this issue is still utterly important for them to care about? Sure. I mean, we can just look at the form that this new Cold War has taken, which is led by the United States and how dangerous it really is. The United States has really ramped up in all aspects of its political, economic, and military strategy, a plan to, at the end of the day, overthrow China. So if people want to disagree with, or people on the left want to disagree about China's socialist character, I say that's up to them to decide, but they should really study the question further and try to do a real analysis of that question. But we have to really look at how U.S. imperialism is the principal aggressor and how China is. is, and I've been trying to do this in my last several pieces,

how China is so interconnected globally to the overall struggle against imperialism, right? So we can look at all sorts of examples, the arrest of Huawei's CFO Meng Huang Jo, for example. The principal accusation against her is that Huawei was violating sanctions against Iran. when Hong Kong so-called pro-democracy protesters were visiting and lobbying in the halls of Congress in 2019 in the legislation that was passed the Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act, the DPRK and Iran were placed in that legislation in the context of if Hong Kong as a city in China but being positioned here by the United States

as some sort of independent, you know, independent entity were to violate sanctions against Iran in the DPRK, then the United States, in the president in particular, had the right to review this and to sanction Hong Kong. So China is really under attack, and it's not just also that China is under attack because I think it's important as a principle for anti-imperialists to defend any country,

China, anywhere else, Syria, et cetera, from U.S. and the aggression of its allies. But it's also what happens when U.S. fearmongering, U.S.-led yellow peril, U.S.-led racism is directed at China. China becomes the scapegoat. It has a direct consequence to what happens in the United States. This is, I mean, this has a long history, and I know we're going to get into the anti-Asian racism aspect. But really, when you have so much, 50 to 70 percent of all military assets that the United States possesses, of that, I think it's going to be $753 billion dollars of a defense budget in the upcoming NDAA, that is directed. more than half of it in policies, direct military policies, to contain China.

And the consequences of such a military escalation could lead to what a lot of nuclear scientists are saying, this kind of precipice of a potential nuclear war in the future. And I know that there are people on the left and there are socialists and communists who say, oh, never. China is too important to the economy. China is too important, too interconnected, it's also too adversarial, and it's too powerful at the moment. There are a lot of people who think this.

But at the same time, I think that just shows the bias and the prejudice toward imperialism which needs to be challenged in the sense that the U.S. can never be trusted in the international arena or any arena, for that matter, when it comes to these. questions and of course there's an internal struggle among the bourgeoisie about which direction to go in but right at this moment the militarist element of the bourgeoisie is winning because they are able to the military industrial complex really shape policy in this way and there's so many connections to that that we can get into but the point is is that this is really the arena that people in the united states leftists activists communists people in the west

in general, where they need to be. They need to be demanding peace because only through peace, which China is also calling for, can we really get out of the crisis of humanity that humanity is facing all across the board, politically, economically, this depression that we're living through, this pandemic, only through peace between these two countries can any real solution to the pressing problems facing humanity be devised and implemented on a scale that can really address them and eradicate them. Yeah.

Incredibly well said. And yeah, I think it's very important also, and we'll get into this in a bit as well, about the manufacturing of consent for this. And all the corporate mainstream media right, left and left, quote unquote, and center, are pushing these narratives. So the people in your life, you know, that watch CNN or watch Fox News, they're being hit with this anti-China rhetoric and propaganda constantly. And so it's that much more important that we push back on it in our spheres of influence,

however big or small that they might be. And then for those that are particularly interested in pursuing this question and the debates surrounding China and its socialist characteristics, we have had on Adjit Singh, I think the episode, was called in defense of China, where he offered a robust defense of China as a socialist state. A friend of the show has a podcast that's more from a Maoist perspective called On Mass. Has an episode called The China Question, where he gives the Maoist robust criticism of that idea. It's a fascinating, interesting debate to get into, and I know many people on the left are interested in it.

So I encourage people to pursue that. And as Danny said, think critically for yourself through these questions. But moving on, I want to talk about, and I think you mentioned it a little bit in the opening, this sort of wave of anti-Asian hate crimes and how this is all connected. And over the last year, we've seen lots of these hate crimes and violent, brutal, stomach-churning attacks on innocent Asian citizens. And it got so bad that Congress had to actually pass a bill trying or attempting to address it. Can you talk about where this anti-Asian racism comes from? And maybe if you have any, share your thoughts on the bill itself?

So, really, the roots are an imperialism, and this isn't being talked about. It's not a part of the mainstream discourse. A lot of the opposition, the rightful opposition, there's a lot of rightful discussed with this, discussed with this very frequent assault that people of Asian descent, East Asian descent, from the Asia Pacific, what they're experiencing in the United States, but not just the U.S., Canada. Australia, all across the West, really, this has ramped up. And the roots are really in imperialism, but we're not hearing about this. Of course, what was easiest to blame was the pandemic, right? Because during the Trump administration, during the rapid spread of COVID-19 in the United States, the entire corporate media, for that matter, but Trump is being singularly blamed, was

directing all of the animus and all of the context for the pandemic towards China. So China was to blame. It was China's fault. China didn't do what it was supposed to do. Even Joe Biden to this day says that there was a cover up, right? And that there needed to be experts that the U.S. had to deploy experts. And every time he says that, I just think that they want to like helicopter in these kind of military units into China to watch them. or something that that's the kind of feeling i get from it but that's what's been the mainstream narrative around this it's that covid-19 along with the scapegoating of people of asian east asian descent during the pandemic as being the cause of the spread has led to all this

violence but it erases i mean that completely negates this immense history that the united States in particular has, and you can focus on the United States in this way, in relation to how racism toward people of Asian descent, the specific kind, because we know racism is baked into the system. We know, I know, I'm sure your viewers have listened to so many of your episodes where you talk about this with your guests, the roots of this society are in racism and white supremacy, genocide of indigenous people, enslavement of Africans, and, you know, And there was another part of this too, and that was that the U.S., as it was expanding westward, as it was colonizing and really building these massive super profits from slavery, it was also working with European colonizers in the early to mid-1920, I mean, early to mid-19th century during the opium wars to carve up China.

And that's the context for the massive migration that came afterward. For nearly a century, U.S. gunboats as part of this so-called bund or what was called the international settlement where European and U.S. financial institutions parked themselves in Shanghai and excluded Chinese people. People in China could not enter there unless they were slaves or servants to those institutions. And that brought forth this century of humiliation that China talks about, right? this massive displacement, massive impoverishment of the population, which led to this mass migration, to the United States, where Chinese laborers worked railroads and worked the railroads and built key infrastructure in the United States only then to become subject to a vile form of yellow peril, which Europe, Germany, what is now the UK, the British

Empire, was also championing. And that's where this all starts. It starts in this massive wave of migration, the super exploitation of Chinese laborers to build these key infrastructure projects like the railroads in the western part of the United States. And Chinese laborers were then scapegoated by government officials and even, and this I think has a lot to do with why the left in particular in the United States has so much animus towards people. people of East Asian descent, it really starts at the fact that labor, the old craft unions, the knights of labor, the Samuel Gompers, they were all in for eight, for the exclusion of Chinese laborers. They were calling and demanding that these laws were put into place, and they pitted white

workers against Chinese workers, and that was a violent process. and really set the stage for other, for the events that would come afterward and amid this kind of racist exclusion. The United States was able, through this process of colonization, then to become an imperialist power, an international machine of warfare. And this included, you know, the overthrow of Hawaii and the invasion of the Philippines. And those were literal genocides, which required this kind of yellow peril racism to justify. Indigenous peoples of both nations were decimated and placed under direct occupation of the United States. And then we can go on and on and on in the U.S.'s imperialist history as it became the largest capitalist economy, as it became the imperial overlord of the system,

the internment of Japanese residents where real concentration camps were built to, you know, displace and disrupt Japanese life in the United States with using this same vile, yellow peril racism to justify it. The firebombing of Japan in World War II, the dropping of two nuclear bombs,

the invasion of Korea, Vietnam, all of this required the U.S. military apparatus in particular, but really the entire society to be inoculated and to be able to hold on to this kind of racism as a way to explain away war crimes. And so none of that is part of the discussion, nor is the fact that over the last year and a half, the U.S., through its corporate media, in Washington, DC has placed an intense focus during the pandemic, as I mentioned earlier, on China. But it's not just the pandemic and blaming China for the pandemic, which is ridiculous on its face and completely debunked so many times over.

It's also this extreme skepticism, this extreme vitriol painting China as literally an imperialist force that is out to undermine U.S. interests. And in all aspects, and I know we'll talk about all aspects of this new Cold War, the promotion of this kind of propaganda has created a massive dip in public opinion toward China. And now we know racism isn't sophisticated. And all of these, and a lot of the racists who have come out of the woodwork say, oh, we're not against Chinese people or Asians. In but in general, we're against the Chinese government. That is the same thing as saying,

oh, yeah, we're not racist toward black people. We're just, we just don't like crime. You know, we just don't like criminals, right? It's this kind of coded language that covers up for the fact that racism is not sophisticated in its logic. It's sophisticated in its application. And what has happened is that this constant propaganda blitz by the U.S. ruling class around China

has led to a lot of people in the United States, especially, but across the Western world, Australia being one of the big cases, where a lot of people believe that China is the primary problem in world affairs and in their own affairs. They believe China is stealing their jobs, stealing their intellectual property, stealing their, you know, stealing their wealth,

making them sick, right? All of these yellow peril tropes have come together to create what I think is a massive, I wouldn't call it an increase, but a massive escalation in violence towards people of East Asian descent. And then when we get to the hate crime bill, you know, this new hate crime bill, which the entire, except for Joshua Hawley, of course, one of the biggest China Hawks in, the Republican Party, the new All-Star, who's kind of positioning himself to be Trump 2.0, everyone else supported the bill. And, of course, whenever bipartisanship happens in the United States, we should be very suspicious.

And the reason why there was so much bipartisanship is because it completely prioritizes policing. The hate crime legislation, you know, really beefs up the way that police departments and security and law enforcement looks at hate crimes. But ever since the advent of hate crime legislation, we've seen how counterproductive it can be because of its focus on incarceration, its focus on giving police more resources to do their job. And in the context of the United States,

that means occupying black communities and brown communities, killing unarmed often, but regardless of being armed or not, black and brown people at enormous rates and just enforcing the repression involved in this capitalist system. And so when I think about this hate crime legislation, I think about how dangerous it can be when the focus is on policing, since policing ensures that oppressed people are the targets of this. And not those at the top where this problem of racism really begins. And I think that in 2018, when the police themselves were made a protected class subject to hate crime legislation in the Protect and Serve Act of 2018,

I think that is all we really need to know about how hate crime legislation is not the answer. Actually, it's not even a part of the answer because we know that the source of the problem is not being addressed at all, whether it's in the roots of the imperial society or whether it's just on the basis of who actually is responsible for this violence.

It's the institutions of this society. And they're only being strengthened in the guise of addressing this problem. Yeah. Perfectly said and a wonderful little summary through the history of colonization and imperialism and the systematic from day one, dehumanization and mass slaughtering of Asians all over the world. I mean, there's Vietnam, there's Cambodia, there's Korea, there's, you know, Indonesia, the entire continent of Asia, Japan, the fire bombings, nuclear bombs, right? Not one but two on innocent civilian populations, the concentration camps. And then figureheads of the U.S. Empire like Biden will get up and say that we are not a racist

country. And, you know, this is this anti-Asian sentiment and violence is an aberration and something that is antithetical to American values. It would be funny if it wasn't so blood-curdlingly evil. And just yesterday in Biden's little state of the union type address that he did. He says stuff like, you know, we're in competition with China to win the 21st century. I mean, that is a sociopathic perspective to have on the world. And that's actually one of the only times where there was applause from both sides of the chamber was when Biden, you know, said out loud that he's going to maintain a substantial U.S. military presence in the Indo-Pacific to counter China. And, you know, America can rule every ocean, every land.

mass, every continent as much as it wants. But China trying to have some sort of control over just its local corner of the globe, the South China Sea, for example, becomes another thing to present as some nefarious attempt by the Chinese communists to take over the world. So all of these accusations are false on their own, but they're particularly laughable when they're coming from the U.S. Empire. And the dehumanization, it's part and parcel with American imperialism. It's part and parcel with the manufacturing of consent for any conflict. You have to dehumanize your enemies, and that's what's happening in the anti-Asian hate crimes that we're seeing, as you alluded to, is a result of that systematic and centuries-long

dehumanization process. So do you have anything to add on that before we move on? Well, I'll just say that it's, I think, back even hearkening back to our point, because I think it's worth reiterating about why leftist, socialist, communist, should care about this regardless of their disagreements, whether they're legitimate or not regarding China, is exactly that history you outlined and that I attempted to outline. This quest for hegemony in the Asia Pacific is an inherently violent process, and it continues to be so.

I mean, Guam, for example, Hawaii, these are U.S. colonies. I mean, and this is something that I think really needs to. to be understood in from the basis of what it means to engage in the struggle for peace and self-determination and how new cold wars cold wars they're always violent the cold war led to tens of millions of people dying a lot of them in vietnam laos cambodia as you mentioned korea and so that is where imperialism is always heading and that violence i mean it continues to this day. And so all of the policies we see from U.S. policy in Syria, all over the African content, all the violence you see in these kind of policies,

China is really in the mirror, in the rearview mirror of what the United States is really plotting and hoping to achieve. Yeah, absolutely. And the context for all of this is what we've mentioned several times, and it'll probably be a part of the title of this episode, which is this new Cold War or the Cold War 2.0. You pointed out, I think, right there, that just because something is a Cold War doesn't mean that it's nonviolent. In fact, the Cold War against the Soviet Union took the form of numerous, countless, brutal proxy conflict. So while the U.S. and the Soviet Union never, you know, were directly at war, they were ravaging the glow of the U.S. was, you know, largely destroying entire countries in the pursuit of trying to keep in check

the Soviet Union. So, you know, don't confuse Cold War with nonviolence. It's never the But, you know, thinking about it as a new Cold War, what form has this new Cold War taken so far? And why are America and its allies manufacturing consent for aggression against China recently? We've touched on it a little bit, but the geopolitical and economic angles I'm really interested in exploring. Right. And there are many aspects, there are many forms, but they're all interconnected. And the primary objective of the United States, States and its allies, principally the United States, because many of its allies are

acting as junior partners, right? Because whether you're talking about Japan or they're talking about India or we're talking about Australia, none of these countries have the ability to ascend, right? At the current, I mean, we're seeing what's happening, the tragedy in India around COVID-19, just a reflection of its own internal woes, Australia as well, kind of selling itself to the military industrial complex in the United States and really shooting itself in its own foot in regards to China, trying to decouple almost economically from China when China makes up the majority of its trade volume. So it's really a U.S.-led project, and Joe Biden articulates it pretty clearly when he says that he wants to build alliances that have the

capacity to contain China and prevent, as he said, in that same speech to Congress, to prevent some sort of autocratic Chinese century, right? He was talking like the neocons of the, you know, the project for a new American century, saying, no, we're going to keep this, the project of a new American century. We're not going to let the Chinese overtake us. Not on my watch, he also said, I think earlier in his administration. So there are so many forms to this. And the overall objective is to arrest China's ability to become this top economy in the world,

to become the biggest producer, the biggest economic power, to prevent it from becoming a superpower in its own right. And I mean, it's a flurry. It's dizzying in some ways because one of the different, most difficult things to do is to build connections among so many of the policy areas where this new Cold War has fallen and is characterized by. So we can look at the tech war. I'm actually reading through an immensely long article by this big tech and military industrial complex backed think tank called the Innovation Technology and Innovation Foundation, which

is, which published this long report about how Chinese policies are damaging high speed rail globally. And in it, I think it makes this essential point that, I think it's really important, it's really important to remember and constantly remind ourselves of, as we're hearing this anti-China propaganda blitz, is that the capitalist themselves, the magnates of capital in big tech in the military contract in the field of military contracts military production in all spheres finance they are looking directly at China's state-owned capacity it's state-owned economy it's state-owned enterprises in particular in this article the author cites how China is the leader in high-speed rail,

but it's not innovative because it's not European and it's not American companies that are getting top bids in China. They're not the ones. They can go into joint ventures, but they can't control the industry. They can't take advantage of the Chinese market in the way that they want to.

And I think that's really at the crux. That's really at the root of the problem that the United States sees. The United States saw China for so many decades during the reform and opening up period as an inconvenient ally. Every administration would say, yes, we're happy to do business with China,

but we hope that the exposure that the Chinese are getting to the free market economy will lead to the development of quote-unquote democracy, right? This democracy versus authoritarian And that hasn't happened. What China did and what is really at the root of this new Cold War is that China used and utilized and collaborated with countries all over the world from the U.S. to Japan to Germany to Canada with their corporations absorbed the technological know-how and demanded that if U.S. investors, Canadian investors, investors, Japanese investors, wanted to work in China and take advantage of this massive labor market that China had the right to gain access to the technological developments,

the R&D, all of it, so it could build it itself. And that was known since the beginning. China didn't go into this, like let's say in Ecuador under Lenin Moreno, goes into international finance and development. It didn't say the country's open for foreign investment. and you can do whatever you want, right? No regulations, no taxes. No, that didn't happen in China. China said we, the CPC said, no, we need to develop our own infrastructure, our own capacity. We have problems of development and we need to do this because it's what's best for the country, for the people, etc. And that is, I think, the primary reason that the United States and its allies are so, bent on disrupting this process

because now China is on its way to becoming the biggest economy in the world and now it has ambitions not to be like the United States not to be like the West not to be like an imperialist power

I think that would simplify things a lot I think the U.S. would find a lot of common cause if China had similar ambitions to the United States but whether it's in the Belt and initiative, which is actually just an internationalized way of working with the world that China was constructing internally, this idea that you can publicly finance infrastructure

and do it and both gain great wealth from it, but also build good relations, also build much-needed infrastructure, and bring everybody up, this concept of South-South cooperation. But, you know, back to the primary problem, the forms that this take, this kind of antipathy towards this process takes, is number one, I think, is this tech war, or at least 1A, or I think they're all principally important, but this technology war, where the United States has placed sanctions on Huawei, has tried to starve it of international access to semiconductors and other kinds of technology. Huawei, the biggest tech corporation in China, leads the world in patents and is on its way to 6G by 2030. All of these monumental achievements, the United States sees that corporation, but also just China's tech development in general as a huge threat. I mentioned the arrest of the CFO, Meng Huang Jo, who's still in house arrest in Canada. And then there's this color revolutions, the proxy wars, the human rights, humanitarian interventionism with regard to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. That's led to things like sanctions on Communist Party officials and an intense ideological war where the United States is able to frame China as this monstrosity, this country.

that is built on a lot of the very same things that the United States is actually built on, right? Racist antipathy, ethnic strife, and a penchant for expansion. It's this wild national version of psychological projection. Exactly, exactly, exactly, exactly. And actually employing people like Adrian Zenz, for example, a far-right Christian fundamentalist who is, you know, the academic, I don't even want to call him an academic. He's, he's really the quote unquote intellectual equivalent of Mike Pompeo, right? These evangelical right wing Christian fundamentalists who see China as basically everything,

basically their worst nightmare, everything that keeps them up at night, right? It's socialist, it's non-white, it's full of, you know, it's 1.4 billion Chinese. And it doesn't ascribe to, you know, hardline Christianity doesn't even allow it in the country, right? So, and then there's the, I think, what we've talked about before, right, this buildup in the South China Sea, this militarization of the Asia Pacific, the constant transfer of things like anti-aircraft missile carriers, these plans to build an anti-China missile network in its neighboring islands. The Taiwan issue, which has been, you know, decades upon decades in the making, that's a huge point of this new Cold War, constantly sending military weaponry to the separatist-aligned government in Taiwan. And lastly, the diplomatic.

It's diplomatic in character, too. We saw that in Anchorage, Alaska, when the United States and Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, try to lecture China on human rights and democracy. And I guess last but not at least, the real lastly, is the pandemic. I think that the pandemic exposed so many fundamental contradictions of U.S. imperialism and capitalism plunged the system into an immediate depression and expose how the United States does not have any kind of infresh,

structure to address what really is just a fundamental problem for humanity that is going to continue to be a problem, right? We're not, even if COVID-19 goes away tomorrow, the same issues that cause things like pandemics to arise or climate change, for example, are with us. And the United States has no capacity, zero, none under its current arrangement to address them in any fundamental way that can even protect the system from its. itself, forget the human needs of people. So that, I think, really makes up this new Cold War web, I guess we could call it, right? The source being real, I think it's very real, right?

Real fear of becoming number two to a country that ascribes to socialism, whether people believe it or not, it does ascribe to this. China does ascribe to this socialist ideal. And China also is forwarding a vision out of its ascendancy that is fundamentally antagonistic to have the United States and its allies want the world, wants the world to be governed. So, you know, whether it's in the Belt and Road Initiative, or this budding Russia-China alliance or whether it's just the ways in which China conducts finance

and development and investment in Latin America, Africa, how it conducts itself diplomatically, it won't listen to U.S. sanctions, all of that is just if China is allowed to become, right, if it's allowed to ascend past the point of the United States and really be where the entire world, excluding Europe looks to for its answers economically, then that means that the entire world order that imperialism is hinged on becomes unalterably disrupted and potentially

at its conclusion, at its end. Well, I don't even think. That's been stated in different terms so many times by prominent U.S. officials you know corporate media pundits you know the

think tank industry all of it they've they've all kind of heeded the warning the Rand corporation they're all they're all sounding the alarm right now about China yeah yeah very well said and I think to summarize which which you said beautifully at the core of the dispute is this

economic and geopolitical threat to American hegemony and the idea that the world will no longer remain a unipolar world with America in charge. And it's not even that China's threatening to make it a unipolar world with China in charge. It's going to make it a multipolar world. And that is unacceptable to the United States imperial apparatus. But instead of coming out and being able to say that, you have to dress it up a little bit to your own population, right? So how do they dress it up? Well, they dress it up in these hyper ideological, very lazy but evocative terms like human rights violations. Like our national interests are being threatened, although they never tell you, how precisely is China making me and my family less safe? Well, they're not, but if they can just say national interest, it's enough to spook enough people.

And then, and we're going to talk about this in a little bit, they're now even getting so hyperbolic as to not to move beyond mere human rights violations, which is, again, hilarious coming from the United States, but now calling it genocide. So all of these terms is how they sort of dress up this fundamentally, you know, American hegemonic desire to stay completely in charge of the entire world, dress it up in terms that can appeal to, you know, even liberals and maybe even some progressives, which gets us really perfectly into this next question, which is centered around just that. And we know that why centrist, corporate Democrats and right-wing reactionaries may hate and fear China. But anti-China sentiment is also alive and well on the so-called left. So in your

opinion, why are so many left-leaning progressives and even socialists so hostile to China? And whose interest ultimately does their rabid anti-China rhetoric serve? Very good questions. Well, to begin, the U.S. has always had a problem in regards to race relations. white supremacy, and that problem has not been thoroughly addressed by those who call themselves the left and socialists. In fact, they're not immune to it, and they haven't been throughout history. We can just look at how the earliest history of the labor movement in the United States, as I said before, really hitched its wagon to anti-China, anti-Chinese immigration. You know, people like Dennis Kearney, this Irish immigrant labor journalist who called themselves

a socialist was a part of the working for help form, the working men's party on the West Coast in California, one of the emerging labor organizations in the late 19th century at the top of that organization's agenda the slogan went the Chinese must go right and then that this includes people like Jack London and David Swinton these labor activists journalists muckrakers they they were completely embedded and ensconced in anti-Chinese sentiment and believed that the condition of labor was was only to be improved by the scapegoating and the deportation and the exclusion of Chinese laborers. But, of course, it goes much deeper than this because we're seeing today that even though there are many who don't even understand those roots,

there are many who still kind of go along with this new Cold War against China, believe that China is this equivalent or even a superior foe to the United States. And I think here we can't forget the historic role of imperialism in scapegoating and building support for the wars of the quote-unquote fatherlands, the historic mistake of the Second International during World War I, where socialist parties across the West and France, England, etc., they completely supported World War I, which was a war for colonial possessions. and saw the war as lucrative to living standards that the West, because it had built this massive industrial base from colonialism, that these wars are, in fact, beneficial to some degree. And so racism provides a mere ideological fuel for them, a real justification and a real superiority complex at the root of racism.

And Vladimir Lenin, Ho Chi Minh, so many others warned us about this, warned us about the historic mistake of aligning with your own government, if you live in an imperialist country, aligning with your government's imperialist ventures abroad. So those warnings have not been heated, and the left is being told that there is a real threat, quote unquote, to their interests. beyond, as I said before, what the U.S. presents in. So many are falling into line. And I think we also have to take into account the enormous strength of what I find to be and what I feel is the most dangerous ideological strand of imperialism at the moment, U.S. imperialism in particular, and that's humanitarian interventionism, because it melds and mixes left principles with the most right-wing principles.

of this system, endless warfare. It melons human rights and the desire to bring quote unquote democracy, but not even democracy, a genuinely better life, that there's always this foe, right? We heard it in Libya and Syria, Iraq,

everywhere in the United States that places its footprint. There's always this narrative of, well, the Sandinistas are a lot worse. Well, the Chinese Communist Party, the Communist Party of China, Look what they're doing to its own people.

Look what Bashar al-Assad and the Ba'ath party is doing to its own people. Look what Gaddafi was doing to his own people, right? It goes on and on and on in each and every scenario to convince a lot of people on the left to really pick up the mantle in a way that they know how. Because I think there's been a lot of, as we talked about in our discussion about American exceptionalism, American Innocence, there's a lot of forgetting because, I mean, we have to be honest, the situation of the left of the socialist movements of the world, of the world communist movement in the United States is at a low point right now.

And so those who are coming into it, as I said, are picking up the mantle in a way that they know how, one that actually doesn't take much struggle at all. It doesn't take any struggle at all, right? There really is no work involved in picking up the fight of the imperialists of doing a quick Google search and looking at all the Reuters articles and looking at the numerous, you know, studies, you know, not called them just claims, but the numerous so-called studies of people like Adrian Zenz, it's easy because it's everywhere, right? The harder work is to find out what exactly is going on underneath the surface of it all. And many are not doing that. And this, I think, is a continuation of a larger problem. I mean, one thing that I've been observing and why I wrote even about Russia and China's alliance last week

is because I'm noticing a lot of people in this broad spectrum of the so-called progressive left and socialists left. People all the way from communists to just people who hate the Democrats, they were very quick to pick up on the fact that Russia was being targeted, right? Russia gate and this idea that it's ridiculous for U.S. intelligence agencies to make these claims of Russian interference when Russia is, of course, a much weaker government, a much weaker economy, and the U.S. is proven to be very aggressive toward Russia and to be a military industrial complex and a militarist regime itself. So that logic hasn't been a plightly. to China, though. It hasn't at all. I mean, I think the dip in public opinion towards China just proves that the propaganda is working here. Unlike, although there was no real challenge that could stop, you know, the U.S. buildup on Russia's border with NATO and, you know, the proxy conflicts and wars in Syria, Ukraine. While there was no movement strong enough to oppose those things and stop them, the propaganda wars.

didn't work. Once those policies were put into place, people weren't, well, the liberal class was in the Democratic Party was, but most people on the left were not wondering whether Russia was under their bed. China, however, has, I feel, crossed this kind of Rubicon where people will continue because also China identifies as socialist, because It's a country full of non-white people. It's 1.4 billion Chinese and it's 56 ethnic minority groups. That poses a different question. It almost, it harkens back, because we call it a new Cold War,

it harkens back to the Soviet period in the 20th century's Cold War, where the antipathy is really toward a country on the left. The antipathy is really toward a country that says it's socialist, is following its own kind of socialist path, and many find it convenient to latch on to these imperialist narratives because they have this notion that there's this central debate about socialism that they know more about. And so I think it's kind of this perfect storm. I think of the contradictions of what left exists in the United States and the Western world. world, what is left of the left, what is left of the socialist and communist movement. And then

the fact that the propaganda war is winning. And we have to take that into account because first of all, the world doesn't look at the situation the same way. I mean, China and Russia are deep allies. Much of the global south are deep allies with both of those countries. And it's just not I feel like because priorities have been so diverted and shifted here in the United States among the proclaimed left that the point is being missed, right? The point is being missed. We're not we're not focusing on the root of the problem. We're not looking at this dialectically and we're not looking at it with the materialist approach. So, yeah, I guess, I guess that's where I feel like, that's where I feel like the aggression

that leftists have towards China stems from. And I think we know who it serves. It really does serve the ruling class. I mean, it serves this network that's being developed, we have all the way from the evangelical network and Axios and Adrian Zenz and these kind of folks, these think tanks like ASPI, of course, it serves them. It serves their funders, the military industrial complex, Raytheon, Lockhe Martin, Orth and Grumman.

They have just, it's just so lucrative for them because every tack on to the U.S. so-called defense budget is usually in relation to China at this point over the past several years. It's 20 more billion dollars here to build an anti-China missile network and another 10 billion there to do other kinds of activities. So yeah, and I think it just goes across the board in that way where, you know, finance capital is looking deeply at China's state-owned financial institutions and hoping that those, because, you know, become opened up and the more aggressive things become towards China and the tighter the noose on China becomes I think the whole ruling class sees a potential for even if China can't

be overthrown right away it can be weakened to the point of maybe garnering concessions. To me it's a fantasy it's not based in objective reality I don't think every time the the U.S. becomes more aggressive towards China, just as it became more aggressive towards Russia during the Trump and Obama period. We saw the kind of convergence, right, the strengthening of the U.S., I mean, of the China-Russia relationship and a real focus on by China and by Russia on building partnerships and allies with global South countries as an alternative, right, which then brings this. question of dollar hegemony into the mix and where the future of the entire world financial

system and imperialist system really lies, how the contradiction of the more aggressive the U.S. becomes toward China, the more likely it is that the world builds an alternative to the United States. And then that gets me into, and this is what I think my message to anti-China, leftist, socialist, communists should be is that the longer that scenario goes on, the less confident we should be in the U.S.'s restraint. I guess that's my principle message. The longer that China and Russia are able to develop a multipolar world, as you said, a world

where the global south is really the focus, right? Where the wealth in Africa and Latin America and Central Asia, where that wealth is being bargained for and being negotiated by countries that see themselves as equals, that see themselves as having a kind of common history, that spells real doom to the U.S. and Western hegemony. And I think that's where the restraint factor, if we aren't convinced that the United States cannot be restrained from its impede.

imperilist pretensions, then I think just understanding that development should send or should at least get us thinking harder about it or send the message that, yes, we do not want the new Cold War to become a hot war, but there's some objective developments that I cannot imagine the United States allowing. Yeah. Very well said, and I really like that point you made about dialectics and materialist analysis. you know, the materialist aspect is really zooming out and looking at the base class and imperial interest beyond the rhetoric, beyond the propaganda, looking at whose interests are really at play

and how are they pursuing them. And then the dialectical aspect is to understand China in the totality of connections it has with the rest of the world, with the global south, its opposition to Western imperial hegemony, etc., and forming an analysis of the situation. situation that learns from the totality of the web within which the China situation is located and not trying to isolate China as if it is separate from those global conditions and, you know, assessing it on those vacuous and in a vacuum terms. So I think that's really important. And then just how easy the pitch is on the left and the right in the U.S., in part because of the anti-communism that is beaten into every American. head, it is very easy to red bait on this topic. And the right does not, you know, miss that opportunity. Everything the right says about China, they'll fit in the word communist, right? The Chinese Communist Party, the Communist this, the communist that. And so for their anti-communist base, the fascist base, that obviously plays very well. And it was very interesting, if not a little

nauseating to see during the whole Russiagate nonsense how liberals so easy, and this is not a surprise to anybody on the real left, but how liberals so easily adopted this anti-communist dance and we're making memes of Trump with the hammer and sickle and, you know, like the Kremlin in the background and all of this nonsense. So the way anti-communism is marshaled on each side, and, you know, with the liberal Russi-A-Gate aspect, Russi-Gate really was the liberals' version of the big lie. that it sought to explain the election of Trump in a way that distracted from the Democrats utter failure and played into this idea that this is not who we are, right? So you blame a foreign adversary with all that historical Cold War anti-Soviet rhetoric already in American

minds. You make it into this Russia thing. Well, it wasn't that America's a deeply racist, reactionary, white supremacist society that would elect an absolute buffoon reality TV star. It has to be. And it's not that the Democrats are so disgustingly terrible at their fucking job that they lose to such a buffoon, right? It has to be foreign interventionism, and so they played in that direction. And then the big lie is just the Republican versions of, you know, of trying to explain how Trump lost the second election. So it's particularly funny when liberals try to act morally superior when they were the ones buying into Russiagate every step of the way. So, yeah, just interesting to note the anti-communism and how that can so easily be marshalled in these sorts. circumstances. But let's go ahead and move on to the next. Oh, one more point really quickly.

The moderate rebels have a really great episode, deconstructing Adrian Zenz, multiple episodes, I think. And it's important because a lot of these sources, if you follow them back, will end with somebody like Adrian Zenz. So to pick apart those sources and to do the fine journalistic effort of going through and showing, you know, the sort of domino effect of where these sources trace back to is really important. work and so shout out to them for doing that. But let's go ahead and move into the sort of issue at the center of a lot of this, at least over the last year or two, which has been the issue of the Uyghurs. And good information on this topic is genuinely hard to find. So I don't blame people

for not having all the information. I do blame them for being arrogant in lieu of having all the information, which you see a lot. But lately the accusation of genocide has gained a lot of steam the Western press. And this is a huge fucking claim. A core part of genocide is mass murder. So to throw this term around loosely is really disgusting and downgrades actual instances of genocide, which of course the U.S. itself has committed numerous times. But what is the reality of this situation as far as you can tell? And why has this issue been pushed so hard by the media and the political establishment as of late particularly well it's a huge question and it's no it's a good and it's a it's a really good question it's a huge one i mean it is and it will be because we've

seen tony blinkin we've seen joe biden this is really where there is a bipartisan consensus in the propaganda war on china where all sides can come together and target China for what are other means, right? The United States has no interest in human rights in Xinjiang. It has no interest in the Uyghurs other than to exploit their influence over the exile community, which I'll get into a little bit. But the issue, it's funny. I, you know, I went to China in 2019 at the end of the year and left there right before I feel like it was right before the pandemic that well I call it the pandemic now but right before the coronavirus was deemed you know human to human transmission and an epidemic pandemic pandemic you know before all of that

I left there and my our last destination before heading back to Beijing was a room chief and it's just so interesting the reality there compared to what you hear in the corporate media because Arumshi has been the site of a lot of these very violent attacks. The Arumchi riot to 2019, I believe there were other attacks in 2014, I mean in 2019, 2009, and then 2014 again. Very violent attacks, knifeings and explosions of public infrastructure. But when I went there, you know, it's just so funny, people just don't have a language for this kind of, this kind of description. The way that the United States describes it, and they were describing it a lot differently, even in 2016. There were reports about how terrorism was really wreaking havoc in the region, and there was no mention of this kind of targeted approach toward Muslims in Xinjiang, the Uyghurs in particular.

But since 2016, since the end, since China implemented an anti-terrorist law in the region, that's when the United States began to ramp up its propaganda campaign leading into an accusation made a couple of years ago of genocide. There was a concentration camps before that. And yeah, information is difficult to find. And I think one of the reasons, one point I really want to make, that isn't going to be popular with many people in the United States and probably not even on the left. But one of the reasons, I think, is because of anti-communism. And it's because sources of information from China have been delegitimized in the eyes of nearly the entire population in the United States and the West, including the left.

And that's been pushed along by the U.S. Department of State and the ways in which, which international media like CGTN and RT have been labeled state-affiliated media and suppressed in social media channels that we use so frequently. So with the Chinese perspective, not in play and not even seen as relevant, right? It's a real jingo-wistic, as you said, arrogant, a real imperialist outlook, right, on this situation. Then all we've had is this flood of these sources, which the Gray Zone and Martin Rebels and, as you said, have debunked so thoroughly in terms of where their roots lie in these think tanks and sources like Adrian Zenz, which are all directed by Department of state conduits by

intelligence agencies private contractors like stratfer for example you know and one of the biggest sources of this misinformation in Xinjiang is the ASPI the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

which receives all of its funding from Lockheed Martin, Raytheon, Northam Grumman from the major military contractors which ironically invest heavy amounts of U.S. dollars in prison labor. So the reality of the situation is, has been called complex. And I guess we can call it complex because it's going to, it's hard for people in, I think, our position in the world, in the Western Hemisphere, in the, in an imperialist

country to understand in the sense that, you know, China's Xinjiang, region, the western most part of China is, you know, it borders these very hot points of the so-called war on terror, which kind of began during the Cold War in Afghanistan, the U.S. funding the Mujahideen. Xinjiang shares a border with the Mujahideen. That history has played a role in Xinjiang's reality over the course of many decades. And so literal, actual, I guess we call them terrorist attacks, but these violent incidents where these fundamentalists, we can call them jihadists, we can call them al-Qaeda affiliates, whatever we want to call the ETIM, now known as the Turkish Islamic Party, whatever we want to call them, they committed many acts of violence

in the Xinjiang region. And so thousands of attacks occurred between 1990. to 2016. And after the anti-terrorist law was put into place in China, in 2017, I believe it was, that's when we started hearing about how bad things were there. But when I was there, I mean, the reality, it seemed very bright in Arunqi in particular. But Xinjiang in general, you could see we took a train into the region. You could see that there was a lot of attention to development. We talked to people and people genuine.

believe their lives were getting better and that even if they had criticisms of some government policies, that they ultimately consider themselves part of the country and we didn't hear anyone really say differently. And so that gets into the fact that the United States has used the Uyghur exile community, which has a long history prior to the Chinese Revolution. It is a long history in the U.S.'s support for the KMT, for example, warlords, the U.Ger exile community, which a lot of which lives in Turkey, and now many of which are being kind of recruited into the United States because the United States has invested a lot in these foundations, these kind of conduits for the propaganda war, the Uighur Human Rights Project, the World Uyghur Congress, which is the umbrella organization. These organizations are far-right institutions which seek to separate Xinjiang from China proper. They believe that China is East Turkestan, and the overall goal is to make an independent

statelet out of Xinjiang, which is completely contrary to no one that we spoke to in Xinjiang or in a room she in particular wanted that and what's so interesting is that yeah all of these sources are funded by the same national endowment for democracy the US State Department you know we can go on and on and on that's that's where the sources of information are and so the reality of situation is that China had to deal with a problem and it did and if we look at how China dealt with the problem it was done so in a way that regardless if we could find, I haven't found

if we could find excesses or and whatnot there, I mean, there were real people, there were people who died, who were killed and these people were apprehended and they were punished to the extent of the law.

But overall, how the problem was addressed in a mass way was through education and employment and development. And that was the overall strategy for how to eradicate the source of this kind of far-right, for lack of a better term, jihadist fundamentalism, which has been such a huge problem for the overall region. And it's worked.

And I think that's why the propaganda war has become so intense. And that's why the accusations get more and more egregious, right? This idea of genocide, that would mean that China is in mass eliminating the Uyghur population, yet the Uyghur population over the last several years has increased by 25%. The Uyghur population is growing, and for so many years, up until recently, I believe, up until the last couple of years, the Uyghur population and all ethnic minorities in Xinjiang were exempt from the one-child policy. Now I think all ethnic groups, Han or otherwise, now there's a two-child policy and everyone follows it, right? Right. So that's the, that in and of itself disproves the claim of genocide. It's, it's, it's completely impossible for, for those two things to exist at the same time.

And so the reality situation, we could call it complex, but really, I think at the end of the day, it's China's jurisdiction, right? China has addressed a border dispute, a problem relating to its own borders, a problem relating to its own borders, a problem relating to its own, domestic politics and none of what it has done policy-wise could be compared to what the United States has done in this larger war on terror context, whether it's Guantanamo Bay or whether it's the unilateral invasions of, you know, more than a few countries, Afghanistan, Iraq, et cetera, or whether it's in the massive surveillance regime that targeted Muslims in the United States. None of that has been done to a scale or degree in China.

And so the reality situation, I guess it's much more tame. It's not the hellscape. It's not this kind of horror story that we are told that it is. And it's important for us to realize this. But this issue has become, and I want to definitely say this, this issue has become toxic, right? It's almost impossible to talk about this issue without. being called a genocide denier or to be completely discredited as someone who is apologizing for China, right, for its so-called human rights violations. And I think that's very troubling.

And I think it really speaks to how anti-communism is turned into this dystopic, right? The old totalitarian fantasy, right, that China, because it's so inhumane, we can believe anything that's told about it, right? We saw that during the pandemic when, I mean, I came back from China and then the pandemic, you know, the coronavirus before it was called the pandemic at that time. It was starting to spread. And people would ask me, hey, did you see people eating bats in China? You know, like this very racist totalitarian fantasy. that people have have become enacted

in real life on this issue and it completely negates what the real points of all of this the reality of the situation is that there's no genocide there really is no crimes I mean when we look at where the world is

on this issue Muslim majority countries global south countries all agree with China's approach it's not an easy thing to address right these violent attacks in your country coming from a border region you know that's not an easy problem to address but whether it's uh cuba to all of the muslim majority of countries they they have voiced their their support for china's policy all the western countries europe the u the united states israel they have come down against china and that picture that

map, if people can picture a map in their head of what that looks like, I think just shows what this is really all about. It's not about human rights. The reality of the situation is that this is about separatism. It's about trying to balkanize China. A fantasy, another fantasy of the anti-communists. They want to see Xinjiang split from China. There are a lot of valuable resources in Xinjiang. But it's really about the root. It's really about how Xinjiang is the gateway to Kazakhstan. It's the gateway to Central Asia. It's the gateway to Europe, really, for China, as well as Russia. So if the United States can be successful in cutting Xinjiang off from the rest of China, then in the minds of these military strategists, of these right-wing fundamentalists,

their ideas that if that can happen, then China, the project itself will fall apart, right? It'll kind of, I think that there is this underlying dream of a Soviet collapse, and that will be, they're looking, right, whether it's Hong Kong, but Xinjiang is the big one. They're looking for that. And the accusations against China become more egregious because that strategy is a failed one. Xinjiang is more integrated with China than it ever has been, and the Belt and Road initiative is signed on by 120 countries, and Xinjiang is already a big part of it. So in a lot of ways, the battle has been lost, but the war continues to wage on. Right. Yeah, so a couple points following up on what you said there.

One, the whole balkanization, the separatist movement, that whole thrust, it has precedence already. I mean, the conflict with Taiwan, right, which Taiwan is where the nationalist forces win after the communists defeated them in the civil war after they teamed up to defeat the Japanese imperialists, Taiwan became the place that the nationalist forces went to. So it's right wing, it's anti-communist, all that, etc. And then there's Hong Kong, which was a British colony for what a century, a hundred years. These are little versions of this attempt by the West to get a foothold in that region, a very strong foothold. And if you could balk in China and then turned that new state into a 100% American Western ally, like an Israel in Asia, right? That would obviously benefit the apparatus of American Imperial hegemony and Western hegemony, and it would be a huge monumental blow to China's ability to rise in the way that they currently are. So that's just worth thinking about understanding where those interests are and how

they're at play. And then the other thing and the big thing I want to take away, given that good information is difficult to find. And given the fact that nobody, you know, wants to get this issue wrong, if you really care about human beings and you don't want, and you care about the truth, you don't want to get this issue wrong. So I understand reticence and hesitation and, and all of that. And it should just lead to humility. It should lead to curiosity, to true investigation, and not this knee-jerk nonsense where having a conversation like this gets you deemed a genocide denier. And if you are going to advance a claim,

like a genocide is happening, this is basic logic 101. The burden of proof is on you to show us that a genocide is happening. And if your sources is the BBC or the victims of communism or some military contractor think tank or a source gets traced back to a weirdo like Zens or the U.S. State Department, then you're not seriously taking the responsibility that is the burden of proof and advancing this claim in a genuinely honest way. If you're showing me a vice video that's five minutes long to prove that there's a genocide happening, I'm sorry that just doesn't cut mustard because what you're offering as proof

does not rise to the seriousness of the claim that you're advancing. And so if you don't know all the pieces of this puzzle, that should generate within you a humility and a curiosity and maybe not talking super loudly and arrogantly about a topic that you don't fully understand. And so at the very least, I would like people to take that away from this conversation and from this issue because it is a crucial piece of this overall attempt we've been talking about throughout this entire conversation to advance American imperial interest. And that has to be taken into account when you're having these discussions.

Yes. Oh, my gosh. Yes. And then just to add one little point that I think is a pretty big one, is that whenever I think of the United States in the West accusing China of genocide, I think of that meme of Spider-Man looking at himself, pointing at himself, looking at himself. Because I mean, you mentioned it earlier, the United States, I mean, this is some of the most heinous kind of projection that we've seen politically, I think, you know, in the history of humanity in the sense that over the course of the century is the United States and its Western allies. I mean, they are the principal architects of what genocide really looks like and means and continue to commit it to this day, right? And I think that that end of itself should lead to the curiosity that you spoke of, should lead to that suspicion, that skepticism. All of the skepticism has been on China, but I think people have to ask themselves, why isn't there more skepticism, if not a completely different kind of skepticism, leveled on the United States in the sense that the burden of proof is on the accuser, and if the accuser has committed the actual crime, not just a claim, but the actual crime of genocide dozens upon dozens of times, I think we have to.

to really reevaluate what that claim of genocide towards China. Or at least the earnestness of the source that's advancing such a claim at the very least. So yeah, very interesting.

More to learn, of course. And at the end here, we'll pop out some recommendations for people who want to follow up and try to learn more about this. One more question before the concluding questions. And that's just like from China's perspective. You know, like from their point of view,

how do they sort of understand or orient themselves to this growing conflict as far as you can tell and what's their sort of strategy going forward for dealing with all of this propaganda, all of this aggression coming out of the West? Yes. Well, the strategy, I think the response on the Chinese side from China, from the Communist Party, the central government has been multifaceted because, ironically as to what pertains to our last issue, The last question, China is a very open country. I mean, I don't think that there is another country in the world, another society in the world that has more connections to humanity than China.

I mean, China has deep relations, literally with all the global south and deep relations with the global north. I mean, it truly is a global society. I mean, it's really the epicenter of this globalization. thing that economists have been talking about for so many years with the caveat of having a socialist base, having a government that is directed by a communist party with central planning and a planned economy at the center.

So the Chinese strategy, the Chinese response, China's response has been first to emphasize cooperation, right? to emphasize that China is not really interested in any kind of cold war with the United States, that China believes in globalization has benefited immensely from globalization by being able to cooperate with other countries, build economic relations with all countries, regardless of political orientation, and advance its economic forces of particular production, and also its cultural production, its entire society has advanced in a lot of ways because of it.

So that's been number one, I think, is China has since the beginning, since even hearkening back to the pivot to Asia under Obama, the orientation was, okay, this is your opinion, we find it incorrect, but we still want to cooperate and work together around key issues. the United States has become more aggressive, though, China has also made a decision that while it emphasizes cooperation, it's not going to be bullied. So there's been a huge emphasis. We saw this during the Anchorage debacle when Tony Blinken and, you know, Jake Sullivan, the National Security Advisor lectured Chinese diplomats about the secret sauce of America. After that debacle, we saw China immediately meet with Russian diplomats with the foreign ministry and talk really deeply about things like color revolutions and dollar hegemony.

And so there really is also an emphasis on responding to the United States and its allies in a way that's not just Venice China, but Ben, also the world, right? So figuring out how to work with countries, work with allies who are interested in the same things, who are interested in this multipolar world, who are interested in raising the standard of living of the global south, which remains completely impoverished from imperialism, and figuring out how to how to defend each other, right? That's the color revolution bit. but it's also across other areas like sanctions, unilateral sanctions. So I feel like those have been the two key aspects of how China has responded to the new Cold War. And, you know, I think China has avoided from its own perspective any kind of ideological war. It's not trying to, the CPC is not trying to export its ideology. It's not trying to, you know, pass out the constitution of the Communist Party of China to every government that will work with it, right? It's not trying to emphasize its superiority in any way and to work with other countries to have a similar kind of governing system.

What it's doing is I think it's the main sort of emphasis and drive behind China's really. response is to continue on its own development path, which is to become this modern socialist country by 2050, continue to achieve all of the objectives on its five-year plans, and move forward, and then treat the global situation as a reflection of its domestic situation. So Chinese affairs is for China, other countries, their affairs are for them. You know, China is not going to interfere and does so very, I mean, this is very serious. It's not something that's just abstract. It's not just words, right?

China works with governments all over the world, regardless of its political orientation. And a lot of people on the left who I think are a little misguided, but they see that as almost a betrayal of socialism. But I think given the global situation, given the delicacy of the global situation, and given the rabid character of U.S. imperialism, looking for all opportunities to punish China legitimately. China is doing everything it can to pursue its own agenda, which I argue, and I think the Chinese perspective also would argue is more peaceful, is more cooperative, is more in line with the needs and the interests of humanity, whether it's

in its emphasis on a clean environment, on infrastructure development, South-South cooperation, all of these kind of principles, poverty alleviation, that I think is the main impetus for China's response is to continue on with that agenda and to respond in-kind to the United States and its allies when necessary. China has been very firm on these issues relating to Hong Kong and Xinjiang. There really is no, even though some people may think China is tame in this regard, there hasn't been any wavering. China is very firm on opposing these egregious claims on China's own internal affairs.

And when it comes to global matters, China is pretty firm and continuing to do what it feels as best what it's what it's what the Communist Party of China feels as best what the central government feels as best which is to try to figure out how to

lessen the risk of this pandemic try to figure out how to ease global tensions so wars don't break out trying to figure how to get around sanctions because sanctions just kill people and starve economies

and and then to you know, figure out this massive problem of climate change, which contrary to what many people say about China, China never criticizes itself, China never, you know, the CPC, all these anti-communist memes of China, you can't criticize anything that the government does. It just doesn't, it just doesn't show any basis in reality when, you know, China has only invested an enormous amount of money and resources in trying to clean up its own environmental situation. And in, in, by extension, the world's, you know, precarious environmental situation. So in any event, I think that's really the Chinese perspective is cooperation, forwarding an

agenda that it does have, all nations have agendas, but doing so in a way that follows a different set of principles, I think, than what I think we're used to in the United States and the West, where it's hegemony now and unilateralism only, the approach has been far different. It's been to try to maintain and build upon this interconnected world in a way that will, hopefully, I think, in the minds of what I see and what I study, is a solution, hopefully find solutions to these problems

that continue to afflict them. us as a whole, as a world. And I think that's really the main, um, the main strategy on China's side. Yeah. Incredibly interesting. So if you could leave us and our listeners with a main lesson or a point to take away from this discussion, uh, what do you hope that that, that it is? That's the hardest question of all, but it's been, I mean, it's been such a far-reaching conversation. I mean, because this topic is so, I mean, it's, it's, it is a, it is a. daily conversation that people are having. Unfortunately, it's being led and driven by and dominated by the forces of reaction, the imperialist, the ruling class. And I think what I want people to

take away from this conversation and the main lesson is that China is not our enemy, right? I've been trying to do as much organizing, I guess, as possible in a pandemic situation with No Cold War, which is this international campaign to try to build bridges. You can find no cold war.org. You can find all of our work, Black Alliance for Peace as well. I think the main lesson is to first work for peace. to not just question the sources, but really come away from a conversation like this wanting to fight for a real kind of peace, not peace as some people, whenever we hear that word we hear, you know, people think about hippies and just ending the Vietnam War or something, no, but a real piece, a piece that also includes justice and also includes, you know, these questions of politics. power. And so when we, I think when we talk about these issues, we always have to be going back to those questions. And so we should come out, we should come out of this with a deepened curiosity

and a real desire to look upon China, not as this yellow peril monstrosity that is seeking to undermine the very concept of good itself, the very concept of humanity itself, but as a country full of people, a country with its own government, its own path of economic and political development, that is potentially an ally, right? It's 25% of the world, which regardless of people agree that its government is an ally, there's no other way to approach the situation if we want a better world, if we want to wrestle free of imperialism. We're going to have to learn how to conduct ourselves in the international arena

as we build up our own struggles here at home, as we engage in class struggle, as we engage in anti-racist struggle and class struggle, they all go together. But as we engage in these struggles for liberation and socialism and justice here, We're going to have to learn how to conduct ourselves in regards to the international arena. And there's no better question right now than China and this new Cold War on China because it does hit on every single aspect of U.S. foreign policy of imperialism as a whole. And it gives us a large terrain, a really wide terrain, to flex those kind of muscles,

to be able to learn how to do this again. Because the left, as we spoke about earlier, has lost its capacity. for many different reasons, if it had it to a large extent throughout the U.S.'s history, never really had it to a large extent. There have been amazing cases and inspirational moments, but to a large extent, in the U.S., the class struggle has neglected this very important question of self-determination and peace and what that means in this moment in the 21st century when the United States is on this precipitous decline in the imperialist system is really in its kind of twilight moment of stagnation

stuck stuck in its own mud really in its own contradictions and really crying out for this kind of movement and this kind of political development so i hope out of this conversation that we can move forward to that yeah well said you know and and the dying beast of u.s. hegemony the fact that it is in this protracted process of dying only makes it more dangerous, more likely to lash out. You know, you cornered a sick animal and it's going to, it's going to lash out. And I think we're sort of seeing that. We're going to continue to see that, unfortunately. But with the pandemic, with climate change, with so much of what we discussed, I think nature itself, civilization itself is putting more pressure on our species to rise to the challenge of becoming a global

civilization. Global problems require global cooperation to come up with global solutions. And rabid capitalist nationalism, imperialist hegemony, the U.S. military apparatus, the fascism and colonialism that its legacies are tied to, these are all things that work in the exact opposite direction. And so we have to keep that in mind as well as what we mean when we say peace for the entirety of the 21st century and for posterity. Because the fights that were fighting today are going to shape the world that the people in the future live in. So, Danny, thank you so much for coming on having this, again, wide-ranging, very complex conversation.

It's always an honor and a pleasure to have you on. Before I let you go, what recommendations would you offer for listeners who might want to learn more about this issue? And importantly, where can they find you and your work online? Sure. So in terms of debunking these sources, you mentioned Ajit Singh. you mentioned moderate rebels in the gray zone. I think that's really one of the best sources on the question of what is at the root.

You know, who are telling us all of who's really at the root of this propaganda war? And they've done some really good work. I have an article in there on Democracy Now because Democracy Now has been a champion of the new Cold War on China. So, you know, definitely check them out. But in terms of, you know, I really want to encourage, because there is a very, you know, you can find them on Twitter. There are people out there who are doing some hard work in debunking this propaganda. But it's really important to get the Chinese side of this issue. And that means delving into this state-owned media, right?

So I really do encourage people to read that. And I'm not telling people to read it because they should believe everything it says. But if you don't have that perspective, you can't really understand this issue. You can't understand China and you can't understand the new Cold War because we're only getting one side. And after that, definitely follow no Cold War and definitely follow Black Lions for Peace. both are trying to do work on this issue of this military escalation and this overall new Cold War on China. So I feel like with all of that, there's a lot to work with where they can find me.

I'm often talking about this, so people should definitely find me, and I try to share as many resources as possible as I find them. You know, you can find me on Twitter at Spirit of HO, Spirit of Ho. And, you know, you can find me on Facebook, my name, Danny Haifong. You can find me each week on Black Agenda Report. I write a weekly column with them. And at times, I'm contributing opinion pieces to CGTN, China Global Television Network. and other than that, you know, you can follow my other work and things that I'm doing at

patreon.com slash Danny Haifong if you can support. That's really the gist of where to find me. Beautiful. I will link to as much of that in the show notes as I can so people can find you easier. And Danny, it is always a pleasure. Let's do it again sometime, my friend. Sure thing. Thank you so much.

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