Introduction to the discussion about China in the Haifa activists’ community
Why should we discuss China in Haifa while we have so many problems, here in Palestine and all over the Middle East?
One obvious reason is that our “problems” – the ongoing Israeli Genocide in Gaza, and Israel’s continuing aggression on so many fronts, the culmination of almost 150 years of Zionist colonization and ethnic cleansing – are imposed on us by the imperialist world order. The bombs that are killing children in Gaza are made in the USA, as well as the planes that drop them, and the budgets that pays for them. The decisions where and when to drop those bloody bombs are taken in the White House. A small settler state could not terrorize the whole region without the full backing of the strongest imperialist powers.
For this reason alone, Palestinians have the strongest motivation to aspire for fundamental changes in the current world order, an order that leaves no place for their human dignity or national aspirations.
But we are also citizens of this world. It is natural that we care about the future of the planet we live on. Our humanity faces many challenges, but somehow the discussion of important issues seems to be dull or blurred lately.
A few years ago, everybody was alarmed about Climate Change. Now the leading forces of the current world order are reversing the policies that were supposed to limit (insufficiently) global greenhouse gas emissions. Just at the same time as natural disasters multiply, the voices that were used to raise alarm about a burning world are muted. Why?
And, if we somehow don’t burn the Earth after all, what about the future of humanity? Where are we all going? Are there still good and bad actors struggling about the future? Are the main fault lines dividing the world between Capitalism and Socialism, or are there new alignments? What did we learn from the last hundred years, where humanity passed through infinite upheavals?
Enter China’s Rise
From the declaration of “the end of history” by Fukuyama in 1992, the deceased succeeded to perform an impressive comeback. True to its nature, the capitalist regime continues to lead us in the seemingly endless cycle of boom and bust. But the capitalists would not bring their regime to its end by themselves (unless it is the end of the world). Each crisis causes destruction and suffering, but opens new opportunities for hope, building, and progress. The crisis can result in real systematic change only when and where there is an alternative.
There is a lot of controversy about the facts and their analysis. But, to the best of my understanding, the most obvious fact in todays’ geopolitics is the fast change of the international balance of power. The incumbent Western Powers, led by the US, are in decline. The Global South, with all its problems and setbacks, is on the rise. But, out of the Global South, there is one major force emerging, leading the change in the global balance of power: rising China.
For decades, Western scholars, politicians and media were busy inventing theories to prove that China will not be able to compete with the ruling powers. They claimed that it is only capable of stealing or imitating, but not of innovation. They claimed that the communist party rule stifles the private sector, which is the key to any economic development. They claimed that its politically guided banks prevent the optimized allocation of capital that is practiced by profit-driven banks.
Now, as China beats the competition in almost every field, they cry foul and rush to try to imitate some of its methods.
As Trump learned the hard way with his recent trade war, it is too late for the West to try to contain China. But it is not only that they cannot stop China’s development. In the period of single-polar hegemony, many (if not most) of the third world countries were subject to all kinds of economic sanctions. Now China is the main trading and technology partner and a major investor for most countries. This is a major reason why Western sanctions failed to subjugate Iran, among others. Sanctions on Russia cost Europe dearly, but the Russian economy, replacing Chinese for Western partners, proved resilient. The latest victims of major imperialist punishment, Brazil and India, continue business as usual.
China is Different
In the last major change of leading world powers, the US overtook the role from Britain, as a result of two “World Wars” that devastated Europe and much else. Such a change has many aspects: economic, military, cultural and in every other field of human activity. Maybe the main effect for most of Humanity was the transfer from old style colonialism, based on direct occupation, to Neo-Colonialism, based on economic dominance.
What would the ongoing dethroning of the US and “western” hegemony bring to the world?
First, we should all hope that this change will happen without any major wars. Unfortunately, under the current systems there are wars all the time, and they are unlikely to stop until the fundamentals of the world order are changed.
We can notice that China tries very hard to avoid military confrontation. It also avoids the “cold war mentality” that characterized the competition between the US and the Soviet Union, under which every local conflict became one more flashpoint in a global chess game. What China presents instead are the principles of “nonintervention” in the internal matters of others, and readiness for economic cooperation with everybody with no strings attached. It is very annoying in many cases, but it is China’s way to reduce conflict.
China is the first example in modern history of an aspiring global power that was not rising through imperialist expansion. It accumulated its vast capital by the hard work of its people, and not by robbing others.
China is also different in many other ways, between them:
- It is one of the oldest civilizations.
- It had a meritocratic system, for over a thousand years, that enabled sons of peasant families to progress to top positions in the state’s bureaucracy through standardized exams.
- Its ethos is not “nationalist” in the Western sense. Even its system of writing is design to connect people that speak different languages by a single written language.
- Its culture, based on Confucianism, is based on social stability and harmony and is basically secular.
- China suffered humiliation, robbery, and destruction by Western powers, most famously through Britian’s “Opium Wars” (1839 – 1860), but was never fully colonized.
On top of this came the extraordinary experiences of the last hundred years, of long civil war (1927 – 1949), Japanese occupation (1931 – 1945), victorious Socialist revolution (1949), the Great Leap Forward (1958 – 1962), the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976), and the following years of unprecedented economic expansion in Human history.
I hope I succeeded in convincing that the rise of China deserves our attention, and that proper understanding of it requires that we do not stick with our western fixations. I will try to suggest some constructive ideas in coming posts.
Free Haifa 