China and Russia strengthen strategic ties

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev’s visit to China on September 25-27 is a further sign that Moscow and Beijing are consolidating their ties in order to counter the US and its main ally in North East Asia, Japan.

Medvedev and Chinese President Hu Jintao issued a joint statement that called for “comprehensively deepening strategic cooperation,” amid mounting threats and challenges in the Asian Pacific region. The statement emphasised mutual support for each other’s core interests—Russian support for Beijing’s sovereignty over Taiwan, Tibet and Xinjiang, and Chinese support for Moscow’s “efforts to promote peace and stability throughout the Caucasian region and the Commonwealth of Independent States”.

While not naming the US, the statement was clearly directed against Washington. In 2008, Russia waged a war with the US-backed Georgian regime to support the independence of two Georgian provinces. In Asia, US-China tensions have sharpened during the past year as the Obama administration has intervened aggressively in the region over a range of issues—from selling arms to Taiwan to backing South East Asian nations in their territorial disputes with China in the South China Sea.

Just as significant was a second joint statement marking the 65^th anniversary of the end of World War II. The two countries condemned attempts “to glorify Nazis, militarists and their accomplices, and to tarnish the image of liberators”. The statement was aimed not only at Western criticisms of the Soviet occupation of Eastern Europe, but also right-wing nationalist politicians in Japan who whitewash the crimes of the wartime militarist regime.

“The fascists and militarists schemed to conquer and enslave us two nations, other countries and the whole [Eurasian] continent. China and Russia will never forget the feat of those who checked the two forces,” the statement declared. It went to proclaim that the “glorious history” of Soviet-Chinese wartime cooperation against Japan “has laid a sound foundation for today’s strategic partnership of coordination between China and Russia”.

The statement was directed against Japan in particular. It came during a bitter diplomatic row between China and Japan over the disputed Diaoyu islets (known as Senkaku in Japan) in the East China Sea, triggered by Japan’s detention of a Chinese trawler captain.

Medvedev began his trip by visiting the northeastern Chinese city of Dalian, where he paid his respects to Soviet soldiers who died fighting to expel the Japanese army from Manchuria in August 1945. Significantly, he also paid tribute to Russian soldiers killed in the 1904-05 war between Tsarist Russia and Imperial Japan—a conflict between two imperialist powers.

Following Medvedev’s visit, China’s official Xinhua news agency accused Washington of “protecting large numbers of militarist war criminals in Asia”, especially in Japan, after the end of World War II. The comment also accused the US of betraying the post-war agreements among the Allies, which included China. Xinhua highlighted the fact that under the 1945 Potsdam agreement, Japan had to return all territories annexed during and prior to the war. However in 1971, the US unilaterally handed the Diaoyu Islands back to Japan, despite China’s objections.

In Japan, the joint statements by Russia and China have been interpreted as a common front against Japan. Russia and Japan also have a longstanding territorial disagreement over four of the Kuril Islands closest to the northern Japanese island of Hokkaido. The Yomiuri Shimbun warned last week that China and Russia were “presenting a united front in their claims over Japanese territories”.

Medvedev originally planned to visit the Kuril Islands on his way home—the first Russian leader ever to do so. Tokyo responded by summoning the Russia ambassador and warning that a visit to the Kurils would “seriously hinder” Russo-Japanese relations. Moscow responded by declaring that “no approval” was needed for the Russian president or any citizen to visit the islands. While the trip was postponed due to “bad weather,” Medvedev announced that he would visit the islands in the near future.

In July, Russia conducted “Vostok 2010”—its largest military exercise in the Far East since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. The naval manoeuvres took place around the Kuril Islands, provoking protests from Japan. The exercise, together with ambitious plans to expand the Russian Pacific fleet over the next decade, indicate that Moscow is determined to reestablish a strong presence in the Pacific.

Moscow and Beijing are already cooperating in countering US influence in Central Asia through the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) formed in 2001 with four Central Asia republics—Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Last month, the SCO held a major 16-day joint military exercise, “Peace Mission 2010,” in Kazakhstan. While the official scenario was “counter-terrorism,” the scale of the exercise, which included around 5,000 troops, tanks and war planes, suggested a joint drill in conventional warfare.

The Russian-Chinese “strategic partnership” is also based on expanding economic ties. Medvedev’s visit marked the completion of an oil pipeline from East Siberia to the Chinese city of Daqing that will deliver 15 million tonnes of oil to China annually for 20 years. The pipeline is part of a $US25 billion “loans for oil” agreement that China signed last year with Russia’s state-owned energy giants.

By securing oil via land, China lessens its reliance on sea routes to the Middle East and Africa that are currently under the control of the US navy. Russia is also seeking to reduce its dependence on the European energy market by building pipelines to supply not only China, but also Japan and other Asian countries.

Russian Deputy Prime Minister Igor Sechin accompanied Medvedev to Tianjin for a groundbreaking ceremony to initiate a $5 billion oil refinery to be jointly developed by Russia and China. Sechin told his Chinese hosts that Russia was “ready to meet China’s full demand in gas” as well. Disputes over prices have stalled a 2006 agreement to deliver 60 billion cubic metres of gas annually to China from 2011. The latest talks agreed that gas supplies would start in 2015 for the ensuing 30 years.

Medvedev called on China to invest in Russia on a large-scale to modernise his country’s decaying industrial base. During Medvedev’s trip, a joint venture was planned between China’s FAW Group and the Russian GAZ Group to manufacture heavy trucks in the Urals. China now makes half of the world’s trucks and is starting to export vehicles. In the past decade, trade between Russia and China increased 12-fold, allowing China to overtake Germany as Russia’s largest trading partner.

The closer strategic and economic ties between China and Russia are a reaction to the Obama administration’s efforts over the past year to forge closer ties with Japan and other Asian countries to undermine Chinese influence in the region. All these steps heighten tensions in Asia and the potential risk of conflict. (WSWS)

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India-China relations strained

Tensions between India and China stepped up a notch last month after reports that thousands of Chinese troops were in the Gilgit-Baltistan area of Pakistan-controlled Kashmir near the border with China.

The controversy was sparked by an inflammatory article by Selig Harrison in the New York Times on August 26 declaring that Islamabad was “handing over de facto control” of the strategic region to China by allowing the entry of between 7,000 and 11,000 Chinese soldiers. His article was based on “foreign intelligence sources, Pakistani journalists and Pakistani human rights workers”.

Harrison was compelled to acknowledge that many of the “troops” were in fact involved in construction work on road and rail links between China and Pakistan. That did not prevent him from speculating—without a shred of evidence—that 22 tunnels under construction could be used for “missile storage sites”.

The article had the hallmarks of a story planted by US intelligence to undermine relations between Pakistan and China. Commenting on the land routes from China via Gilgit-Baltistan to Chinese-built ports in southern Pakistan, Harrison declared: “Coupled with its support for the Taliban, Islamabad’s collusion in facilitating Chinese access to the [Persian] Gulf makes clear that Pakistan is not a US ‘ally’.”

In fact, Pakistan broke ties with the Taliban in 2001 and, under US pressure, is waging a vicious war in its border areas to suppress Islamist insurgents fighting the US occupation in neighbouring Afghanistan. As for transit through Gilgit-Baltistan, Harrison is speaking for sections of the US military and foreign policy establishment that oppose Pakistani “collusion” in China’s plans for overland trading and energy routes to the Arabian Sea.

Both Pakistan and China flatly denied the story. China Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu told the press: “The story that China has deployed some military in the northern part of Pakistan is totally groundless and out of ulterior purposes.”

As reported in the Dawn on September 1, Pakistani Foreign Office spokesman Abdul Basit said: “The Chinese were working on landslide, flood-hit areas and on the destroyed Korakoram Highway with the permission of Pakistani Government ... The statements are based on incomplete information.”

The Indian government and media nevertheless continued to pursue the issue. Gilgit-Baltistan is part of Kashmir, which is claimed by both Pakistan and India. The region has been divided into Indian-controlled Jammu and Kashmir, and Pakistani-controlled Azad Kashmir since the two countries fought a war for its control immediately after independence and the partition of the Indian subcontinent in 1947.

India has repeatedly opposed any Chinese involvement in what it regards as its territory. New Delhi objected to Chinese assistance for the construction of the Bunji dam and hydro-power generation project. India also condemned Pakistan’s decision last year to grant self-government to the region, renaming what was previously the Northern Area as Gilgit-Baltistan.

In response to the New York Times article, Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh briefed various Indian newspapers on the dangers of China’s alleged military presence in Gilgit-Baltistan. As reported in the Times of India on September 7, Singh declared: “China would like to have a foothold in South Asia and we have to reflect on this reality.” He went on to warn of a “new assertiveness among the Chinese”. Singh said China could use India’s “soft underbelly” of Kashmir “to keep India in low-level equilibrium”.

On September 13, India’s defence minister A.K. Antony told a military conference that “we cannot afford to drop our guard” in relation to China. “We want to develop friendly relations with China ... However, we cannot lose sight of the fact that China has been improving its military and physical infrastructure. In fact, there has been an increasing assertiveness on the part of China,” he said.

While the Indian and Chinese governments have subsequently downplayed the Gilgit-Baltistan issue, it continues to reverberate in the Indian and Pakistani press. Last Sunday, a comment in the Dawn denounced Harrison’s article in the New York Times, declaring that he had “picked up the Indian script on Gilgit-Baltistan”. In a comment on Wednesday, former Indian foreign and defence minister Jaswant Singh warned of the large number of Chinese troops in Gilgit-Baltistan, warning: “It is now a China hungry for land, water, and raw materials that is flexing its muscles, encroaching on Himalayan redoubts and directly challenging India.”

The continuing controversy is a further sign of friction between the two rising economic powers, which fought a border war in 1962. China also claims about 90,000 square kilometres in what is now the north eastern Indian state of Arunachal Pradesh; while India asserts its right to 33,000 square kilometres of the Aksai Chin region of China near north western Jammu and Kashmir. In 1962, Chinese forces advanced rapidly into the disputed areas, declared a ceasefire and then voluntarily withdrew in 1963.

The unresolved border claims continue to strain relations. In April 2009, Beijing attempted to block a $US2.9 billion Asian Development Bank loan to India that included a flood control project in Arunachal Pradesh. India finally obtained the loan in June, apparently with the backing of the US and Japan, but over the protests of China. Also in June 2009, India announced the deployment of 60,000 additional troops, along with tanks and warplanes, to Assam, near Arunachal Pradesh, triggering an angry reaction in the Chinese media.

The border areas are sensitive for both India and China. Arunachal Pradesh is adjacent to Tibet where China has faced repeated protests against Chinese rule. Beijing objects to New Delhi’s hosting of a virtual Tibetan government in exile headed by the Dalai Lama in northern India. The disputed areas of Kashmir and of Aksai Chin are next to the Chinese province of Xinjiang where Beijing confronts a Muslim separatist movement. As for India, China’s collaboration with Pakistan in Pakistan-controlled Kashmir helps undermine New Delhi’s claims to the area.

In late August, China refused a visa to General B. S. Jaswal, who heads the Indian army’s Northern Command, on the basis that he was from Jammu and Kashmir, the territory disputed by Pakistan. Jaswal was to be part of a high-level Indian military delegation to China. New Delhi responded by refusing entry to two Chinese officers who were scheduled to attend an Indian defence course. A Chinese colonel was denied permission to deliver a speech at an Indian army-run institute.

The key destabilising factor in an already tense situation is the United States, which over the past decade has developed a close strategic relationship with India, aimed at countering growing Chinese influence in Asia. Over the past year, the Obama administration has intensified pressure on China over a range of issues in North East Asia and South East Asia, which will have encouraged India to take a more assertive stance.

An important aspect of US-Indian relations was the signing of a nuclear deal in 2008 opening the door for India to buy fuel and technology to expand its civilian nuclear power program even though it is not a signatory to the Nuclear Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT) and has nuclear weapons. The US, however, has objected to China’s plans to build nuclear reactors for Pakistan, which also has a nuclear arsenal and has not signed the NPT.

Relations in South Asia are further complicated by Washington’s heavy dependence on the Pakistani military to wage a war against Islamist insurgents in areas bordering Afghanistan. US support for the Pakistani government has raised concerns in India about the strength of its own strategic relationship with Washington. At the same time, New Delhi would quietly welcome any US efforts to undercut China’s longstanding relationship with Pakistan—particularly in the sensitive border areas in disputed Kashmir.

By alleging “de facto Chinese control” of Gilgit-Baltistan, the New York Timesarticle inflamed a contentious issue and threatened to bring the US into a dispute that involves three nuclear armed powers—India, Pakistan and China.

The author also recommends:

China-India border talks highlight rising tensions

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“The Breakdown of Capitalism and the Fight for Socialism in the US”

The Socialist Equality Party (US) today announces the publication of a printed version of its program, “The Breakdown of Capitalism and the Fight for Socialism in the United States,” adopted at its First National Congress in August. The 56-page booklet includes graphs and photographs documenting the crisis of capitalism, growing inequality, and the emerging struggles of the working class. The WSWS urges all readers to purchase your copy today.

The program of the SEP is a fighting program for the working class. It presents a series of basic rights that must be guaranteed to all—including the right to a job, to a livable income, to education, housing and health care—and explains how these rights can be won: through the independent political organization of the working class in the fight for socialism.

 

Everywhere the working class is under attack. After handing out trillions to the banks, the ruling class—led by the Obama administration—is demanding austerity. The entire political establishment is moving to the right. Regardless of the outcome of the November midterm elections, the government is planning devastating attacks on social programs, mirroring similar measures adopted internationally.

 

As the social crisis deepens, the Obama administration is also expanding its wars abroad and launching unprecedented attacks on democratic rights—including in the recent FBI raids of antiwar activists and political opponents of US policy.

 

The working class in the United States is beginning to fight back. The determined resistance of workers in Indianapolis—and the formation of a rank-and-file committee to oppose the demands of the corporations and the UAW—is an initial sign. Opposition will grow, expanding throughout the country and linking up with struggles throughout the world.

 

The question is: What political program can lead the working class to victory? Such a program will not come form the Democratic or Republican Parties, both equally determined to defend the interests of the financial aristocracy. It will not come from the trade unions, which for several decades have collaborated in the corporate-driven attack on workers. It will not come from the various middle class organizations, tied with a million threads—political and financial—to the Democratic Party and the trade union apparatus.

 

The program of the Socialist Equality Party is imbued with immense confidence in the revolutionary role of the American working class. It is a declaration of war against the capitalist system, against the domination of the giant banks and corporations, against a new aristocracy that is expanding its own wealth on the backs of the impoverishment of the vast majority.

 

This program will get a mass following. It will be distributed at factories, offices, workplaces and schools throughout the country. It will form the political basis for a new upsurge of the American working class, as part of the struggle of the international working class against the capitalist system.

 

We urge all readers of the WSWS and supporters of the SEP to purchase a copy of the program today. Multiple copies can be purchased at a discount to distribute to your coworkers. Contact us with comments and questions. Study the program and make the decision to join the Socialist Equality Party. (WSWS)

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Conflicts intensify within Egyptian ruling elite

Conflicts and divisions are intensifying within the Egyptian ruling elite just a few weeks before the parliamentary elections due in October, and one year before presidential elections. Hosni Mubarak, the acting Egyptian president, is considered to be seriously ill and has so far failed to clarify any procedure for his successor. He never appointed a vice-president and said a few years ago that he would serve Egypt up to his dying breath.

There has already been discussion for some time as to whether the 82-year-old dictator would stand again in 2011 as the presidential candidate of the governing National Democratic Party (NDP). The media has also speculated over a potential successor, with one name—Gamal Mubarak, the son of Hosni Mubarak—recurring time and time again.

A campaign began a few weeks ago aimed at boosting the chances of Gamal as a possible successor. Posters of Gamal appeared in neighbourhoods of Cairo and signatures on behalf of his candidacy are being collected via the Internet.

Gamal is the deputy general secretary of the NDP, but the party denies that it organized or supports the campaign for the president’s son. One prominent NDP member, Aley el-Din Hilal, declared that the campaign was simply a result of “voluntary social activity” and “individual initiatives”.

This is very unlikely. Gamal is a former investment banker and a representative of the neo-liberal economic wing of the NDP. He is as hated by the Egyptian population as his father, who has governed the country since 1981 on the basis of emergency laws. It is much more likely that sections, or at least sympathizers, of the “new guard” in the NDP, initiated the campaign. This consists of a comparatively more youthful layer of the business elite, which got rich quick on the basis of privatizations and economic liberalization and is intent on pursuing this same course.

Following a series of economic “reforms”, the narrow business elite around Mubarak and the industrial magnates Ahmed Ezz, Mohamed Mansour and Ahmed el Maghrabi were able to amass huge fortunes. The same reforms have led to the increasing impoverishment of the Egyptian population.

In 1991, i.e., prior to the implementation of the structural adjustment programs demanded by International Monetary Fund, around 20 percent of the population lived on less than $2 a day. Today this figure has risen to 44 percent. In the past 10 years, during which the growth rate of the Egyptian economy soared as a result of liberalization policies and the authoritarian regime was courted by ruling elites all over the world, absolute poverty rose from 16.7 percent to nearly 20 percent.

Tensions within Egyptian society have again intensified since the outbreak of the financial and economic crisis in 2008. The growth of the Egyptian economy decreased in 2009 and the recent period has been marked by a series of protests and strikes against the government. These have been brutally suppressed. In July, police savagely beat a blogger critical of the government, Khaled Saeed from Alexandria, to death on a public street. His death led to a wave of protests. In addition, there have been many strikes and protests in the spring and summer of this year against cuts to subsidies and low wages against a background of rising prices.

In this tense situation layers of the ruling elite in Egypt are concerned about the prospect of power remaining in the hands of Mubarak’s own family after the dictator’s death. This would dispel the last veil of deception surrounding the propaganda of Egypt’s slow path to democracy and could lead to a new outbreak of popular protest. There are also those inside the NDP who advocate a more cautious approach to the further liberalisation of the economy and privatizations in order to keep protests under control—in opposition to the course favoured by Gamal Mubarak.

This wing within the NDP, known as the “old guard”, was able to set its mark on the NDP congress held in 2009. In the years before the new guard around Gamal Mubarak and Prime Minister Ahmed Nazif were largely able to dictate terms in the party and cabinet. The old guard is led amongst others by one of the deputy general secretaries of the NDP, Zakaria Azmi, who has repeatedly criticized representatives of the new guard in parliament.

The current campaign for Gamal Mubarak means that the faction struggle inside the NDP is now being fought out in public. Just a few days after the first posters of Gamal appeared in Cairo, a second campaign commenced for Gen. Omar Suleiman. As minister and head of the Egyptian secret service since 1993 he has long been regarded as a potential successor to Mubarak. Suleiman is a close confederate of Mubarak and played a leading role in the implementation of the country’s pro-Western and pro-Israeli foreign policy. In what is obviously a sideswipe at the campaign for Gamal Mubarak, posters featuring Suleiman’s face declare that he is the “real alternative”.

It is not clear who exactly is behind the campaign for Suleiman, but one of his supporters published a statement declaring that general Suleiman was someone respected by both the ruling party and the opposition. He was the only one who could prevent the plans to install Mubarak’s son as the new president, it argued.

So far Hosni Mubarak and other prominent members of the NDP have declined from officially siding with either Gamal or Suleiman. In any event, the posters featuring Suleiman were removed after just a few hours and Egyptian newspapers were banned from reporting on the posters. According to a report from BBC news, thousands of copies of the independent daily papers Al Masry Al Youm and Al Dustoor were destroyed. The BBC Middle East expert, Madgi Abdelhadi, reported that this measure was aimed at suppressing information about the campaign for Suleiman, which in turn reveals the extent of the differences within the various wings of the political elite. The struggle for power, however, is already in full swing and demonstrates the instability predominating in the country as a whole.

The campaign for Gen. Suleiman could also be an indication of the preferences of the military, whose leadership has so far refrained from lining up with either the old or new guard. There are numerous personal links between leading military figures and the old guard within the NDP, many of whom began their own careers in the army. The military leadership is fearful that its own grip on power and influence could suffer should the new guard prevail within the NDP.

Sections of the opposition had already gone on the offensive some months ago. In February, Mohamed El Baradei, the former head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, founded a new independent political platform named the “National Alliance for Change”. El Baradei announced his desire to stand as a possible independent presidential candidate should reforms be introduced which guaranteed a fair election.

El Baradei speaks for a layer of the elite that is of the opinion that growing public anger with Mubarak’s pro-Western course and increasing social inequality can only be headed off in future by a movement operating independently of the NDP. In interviews he has repeatedly warned the Western elite of the dangerous character of their policies, which he said threaten to drive the Arab masses into the hands of extremists such as Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and the leader of the Lebanese Hezbollah, Hassan Nasrallah.

El Baradei has intensified his campaign recently, meeting with the leader of the parliamentary block of the Muslim Brotherhood, Mohamed Saad el-Katatny, and prominent alleged “leftist” activists such as Emad Atiyya. At one such meeting with “leftist” supporters he stressed that he could not achieve the necessary political change on his own. This was a task to be taken up by all Egyptians. Two weeks ago he featured in a video on his Facebook page in which he called upon all Egyptians to join his newly created political platform.

The Mubarak regime has reacted to El Baradei’s campaign with increasing nervousness. The Arab network for human rights reported that the publishers of a book that supported El Baradei were arrested and their computers confiscated by police a week ago. Supporters of El Baradei have already suffered mistreatment at the hands of the police. A government newspaper stated recently that accusations would be made against El Baradei that he was an atheist and his daughter was not married to a Muslim. El Baradei termed the reports a slanderous campaign unleashed by a regime intent on combating “change”.

In response, El Baradei called for a boycott of the parliamentary elections due in November. Any participation in the election was directed against the “national will” to transform Egypt into a democracy, he said. At the same time he stressed that the next months and years would be critical regarding a change of power in the country and declared that the ruling NDP had failed.

“When I look at the temple they built, I see a decaying temple, nearly collapsing. It will fall sooner rather than later,” he added. “I will never enter this temple. What we call for is to bring down this temple in a peaceful civilised manner.” He noted that the patience of Egyptians was running out. El Baradei then told reporters, “If the whole population boycotts the elections totally, it will be in my view the end of the regime.”

According to media reports the opposition is split over the demand for an election boycott. The banned Muslim Brotherhood backs El Baradei, but has announced its intention to take part in the elections.

The immediate role of Hosni Mubarak remains unclear. NDP minister Mufid Shehab announced that the candidates for the presidential election would only be announced in the summer of 2011. One thing is already certain, however—none of the ruling factions or the opposition represent the social and political interests of the Egyptian toiling masses. (WSWS)

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Food riots erupt in Mozambique

Rioting continued in Maputo, Mozambique’s capital city, for a third day on Friday in response to increased bread prices and the general rise in the cost of living. At least 10 people are dead, including a six-year-old girl and a 12-year-old boy, and more than 400 wounded as police have opened fired on angry demonstrators. Hundreds of people have been arrested.

Protests have also occurred in Matola, a neighboring city to Maputo, and in Beira and Chimoio, urban centers in the central part of the southeast African country.

The riots and strikes, organized primarily by cellphone text messaging, are the popular response to sharp increases in water and electricity rates, and in particular to the government’s announcement that bread prices would climb by 25 percent on September 6.

Mozambique, a former Portuguese colony, is one of the most impoverished nations in the world, ranked 175th out of 179 countries on the UN Human Development Index. Seventy percent of the population of 23 million survives beneath the poverty line and an estimated 54 percent are unemployed; the statutory minimum wage is US$37 a month. Annual per capita income for the population as a whole is only $807.

Some 16 percent of the Mozambican people are infected with HIV, and more than 1 million of the country’s children do not attend school. According to the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, 44 percent of children “suffer from stunted growth and nearly 20 percent of those under 5 are underweight” (Associated Press).

Demonstrations began in Maputo Wednesday after several days of rumors of impending protests. According to news reports, thousands of people lined the streets of Bagamoyo, an impoverished neighborhood north of the capital city’s downtown.

Police declared the action illegal, on the grounds that no group had applied for a permit, and attempted to break up the protest. The primarily youthful crowd responded by burning tires, barricading streets and throwing stones at police. Shops, gas stations and buses were also damaged. Several wagonloads of corn near a railway station were seized by protesters.

The major highway connecting South Africa to the port of Maputo was reportedly blocked in several places, by tree trunks, utility poles, rocks, tires and other debris.

The police acted with brutality, opening fire on the crowds. The claim by spokesman Pedro Cossa that police used no live ammunition, but only rubber bullets, was belied by the death toll and the wounded who poured into Maputo hospitals. (A different police official asserted that units fired their weapons only “after they ran out of rubber bullets”!)

A report from AFP commented, “Doctors at Maputo Central hospital said victims of the protests streamed into the wards throughout the evening, most with gunshot wounds. ‘We have treated over 100 people since the violence started yesterday, many patients had gunshot wounds,’ said Antonio Assis da Costa. ‘The last patients came in around 1:00 a.m., most of them were young boys,’ added the doctor.”

On Thursday, the protests continued. A street vendor told AFP, “Yesterday I received an SMS [text message] saying the strike must continue for three more days.” The country’s public television meanwhile “showed images of running battles between police and residents of shantytowns outside Maputo.”

The army was also apparently called out in force. Police spokesman Cossa claimed Thursday that “the army was called on to carry out the clean-up in the streets and not to restore order. Since last night it has helped Maputo City Municipal Council to clean the city.” Other observers, however, maintained that the army was patrolling the streets of the capital.

Protesters, many of them youthful, have called on President Armando Guebuza, of the ruling Frelimo party, to resign. Frelimo, which has ruled Mozambique since independence from Portugal in 1975, is a corrupt, bourgeois outfit, which especially since the mid-1980s has opened the country up to foreign investors. The latter are especially interested in “Mozambique’s untapped oil and gas reserves, and titanium mining is a growing source of revenue,” according to the BBC.

Guebuza, also according to the BBC, is a former member of Frelimo’s armed wing during the independence struggle against Portugal and now “a millionaire businessman…who made his fortune in the energy, transport and port industries.”

The regime, insulated from the poverty and fury of broad layers of the population, reacted with predictable bluster and demagogy to the riots and strikes. Government spokesman Alberto Nkutumula told a press conference September 2 that, “The [bread] price increase is irreversible. Prices will only fall if all of us work hard.”

Guebuza, in a nationally televised address, said he understood the anger of the people over rising prices, but was upset about the violence of the protests. “It is sad that people used the right to demonstrate peacefully to turn it into violent protests…. The government is aware of the poverty of the people. Combating poverty is part of the government’s five year plan.”

Frelimo was returned to power, and Guebuza to a second term as president, in general elections held in October 2009, with approximately 75 percent of the vote. However, only 44 percent of the electorate cast ballots, and there were numerous claims of voting fraud.

The Mozambique News Agency (AIM), pushing the government line, slandered the protesters, claiming that television interviews with rioters showed that some “were clearly drunk.” The government news agency went on, “The rioters interviewed made no specific demands, but merely complained about the high cost of living. Implicit in this, perhaps, is a call for the government to subsidise basic foodstuffs.

“However, the government—which is already subsidizing fuel—has ruled out any further blanket subsidies. Several of the recent price rises are beyond the government’s control—the strength of the South African currency, the rand, has dictated a rise in prices denominated in the Mozambican currency, the metical, for all goods imported from South Africa.”

The government blamed the bread price increase on “the relative shortage of wheat on the world market,” produced in part by the drought and fires in Russia, which has led the Russian government to impose a ban on wheat exports.

Moreover, argued the news agency, with remarkable arrogance and indifference, the poverty of the Mozambican population, only about 14 percent of whom have access to electricity, makes the increases in the cost of electricity “a most unconvincing excuse for a riot.”

Behind the upheavals in Mozambique lie the ongoing global economic crisis and recent, painful increases in food prices, which threaten millions worldwide with hunger or even starvation.

As the government news agency reports, in 2009, “Mozambique exports fell by 19 percent compared to 2008, due to falling international demand and lower prices. In the face of these setbacks, Mozambique has seen increases in the price of fuel, energy, water and bread.”

A report issued by the UN Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) and the World Food Programme argued that due to a skewed rainfall pattern favoring Mozambique’s north and leaving its south dry, “250,000 people from low-income households in the semi-arid and arid areas of Tete, Gaza, Inhambane and Sofala provinces will require some 40,000 tons of emergency food assistance to meet their basic dietary requirements from August until the next harvest in March 2011.”

João Mosca, a Maputo-based economist, told the IRIN news service that in 2009, Frelimo “suppressed price rises to woo voters. Manipulating the economy during the electoral period has now led to generalized price increases, Mosca said, but [the] ‘government has to be conciliatory, otherwise the riots might continue.’”

Global food prices are rising, raising the specter of 2008’s widespread rioting. The FAO noted September 1 that the world food price index had risen by 5 percent from July to August, reaching its highest level in two years.

The agency also forecast the 2010 wheat crop would decline by 5 percent over last year, reflecting a cut in Russia’s harvest.

The Associated Press commented Friday that the street protests in Mozambique were only the most recent sign of popular unrest. “Countries from Asia, to the Middle East to Europe are feeling the strain.” In Egypt, “recent protests over rising food prices left at least one person dead.” Prices of many food items in flood-ravaged Pakistan have risen by 15 percent or more following the destruction of 20 percent of the country’s crop and agricultural infrastructure.

“In China,” writes AP, “officials are threatening to punish price gougers, while in Serbia, a 30-percent hike in the price of cooking oil reported for next week has led to warnings of demonstrations by trade unions.” (WSWS)

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Japan’s new political crisis

The current contest for the post of Japanese prime minister is another sign of deep-seated political instability fuelled by the country’s economic stagnation and worsening social crisis as well as growing global rivalries and antagonisms, particularly between China and the United States.

If Ichiro Ozawa wins the top job in the ruling Democratic Party of Japan (DPJ) on September 14, he will become the country’s third prime minister in just over a year. The Democrats ousted the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in national elections in August 2009, ending its virtually unbroken half-century grip on power.

Ozawa is challenging Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who took over after Yukio Hatoyama stepped down in June. The immediate issue that sparked Hatoyama’s resignation—his unpopular decision to cave in to US demands to maintain a controversial US Marine Corps Airbase on the island of Okinawa—has again opened up. Kan stands by the agreement with the US, while Ozawa this week has called for new negotiations with Washington.

Behind the protracted dispute over the US base lies a more fundamental dilemma for Japan’s ruling elite: how to balance its growing economic dependence on China, its top export market, against its longstanding strategic reliance on the US as military ally and protector.

During last year’s election, the Democrats sought to capitalise on popular hostility to the LDP’s support for US militarism and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan by promising a more independent foreign policy. Ozawa returned to the issue this week, obliquely underscoring Nan’s kowtowing to Washington, by declaring: “The [US] alliance isn’t a relationship of subordination, but it’s an equality partnership.” Ozawa has already indicated his support for closer ties with China, by leading a huge delegation of politicians and businessmen to Beijing last December.

In their televised debate on Thursday, Kan and Ozawa signalled opposed approaches to Japan’s economic woes. In line with the turn in ruling circles globally, Kan continued to insist on measures to rein in the country’s huge public debt, approaching nearly 200 percent of Gross Domestic Product (GDP). His proposed doubling of the country’s sales tax was a major factor in the DPJ’s disastrous result in July’s upper house elections. Ozawa called for the fulfillment of the DPJ’s 2009 election promises and renewed stimulus spending as the economy again slowed in the second quarter.

There were also differences over the value of the yen against the US dollar—it is near a 15-year high, impacting on exporters and threatening to further undermine growth. While Kan has promised “bold action” on the currency, Ozawa declared during the television debate: “We must stop the rapid rise of the yen by all means.” Ozawa’s threat to intervene directly in the money markets to bring down the yen’s value could bring Tokyo into conflict with Washington, which is banking on a cheap dollar to help American exports.

Ozawa’s challenge has provoked opposition in the international financial press. A scathing Financial Times editorial on August 29 was headlined “The wrong man for Japan” and bluntly declared that Ozawa would be “a disaster”. The newspaper cited his latest anti-American comments, his involvement in election funding scandals, his unpopularity in the polls, and his connection to LDP-style politics. It warned of the dangers of further political instability in Japan.

What the Financial Times regards as disastrous is Ozawa’s turn away from the austerity agenda now being pushed by international finance capital in every country. The huge stimulus packages and bailouts that governments used to prop up capitalism in the midst of the 2008-09 global financial crisis resulted in debts that must be clawed back at the expense of working people. In Japan, the massive public debt goes back even further to the collapse of share and property speculation in the early 1990s that inaugurated two decades of economic stagnation. A return by Japan to stimulus spending would only encourage other countries to follow suit.

However, the government is confronting the same political predicament as its counterparts around the world—any attempt to impose the needed austerity measures threatens to provoke an outpouring of opposition. The press in Japan and internationally have highlighted the fact that Kan is outpolling Ozawa by four to one. But such polls are virtually meaningless in conditions where the overwhelming sentiment is hostility to all parties and the political establishment as a whole. The Democrats swept into office last year on an anti-LDP tide, but in the space of nine months the Hatoyama government’s standing collapsed from 70 percent to less than 20 percent.

The volatility in Japan is another expression of political and economic processes that are producing crises in one country after another. While the form might be different, the hung parliament in Australia, the collapse of support for the Democrats in the US and the emergence of an unstable Tory-Liberal government in Britain reflect widespread suspicion, alienation and outright hostility to the established political parties that are responsible for militarism and war, attacks on democratic rights and a deepening social gulf between rich and poor.

As in other countries, the political landscape in Japan is changing irrevocably. The country’s post-war politics was dominated by the ruling conservative LDP and opposition, reformist Socialist Party of Japan (SPD)—all within the framework of a Japan that was economically and strategically dependent on the United States. The end of the Cold War and the collapse of Japan’s speculative bubbles in the early 1990s produced upheavals as the ruling elites sought to refashion their policies and political instruments to meet the challenges of globalised production and sharpening great power rivalries.

The Liberal Democrats suffered a series of splits in 1993 that included the defection of factions led by Hatoyama and Ozawa and led to a short-lived non-LDP coalition government in 1993-94. The SPD imploded after forming a grand coalition in 1994 with the LDP, its arch-rival for decades. The Democrats emerged as an unstable mélange of ex-Liberal Democrat factions, right-wing Social Democrats and former “independents”. Having come to power, all the internal contradictions are now on display. Commentators are already speculating that the DPJ could split after September 14, which could lead to the government’s fall.

This situation presents a crisis for both the corporate elites and the working class in Japan. From the political wreckage of the parties on which it has relied since World War II, the ruling class must fashion a political mechanism for prosecuting its strategic interests and imposing its economic agenda.

For all their disgust and opposition to the political establishment, workers and youth lack a political party and program to defend their class interests. That is what needs to be built—a section of the International Committee of the Fourth International, the world Trotskyist movement, to fight for the perspective of socialist internationalism. (WSWS)

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CHINA AND THE "END OF THE END OF HISTORY"

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August 20, 2010

CHINA AND THE "END OF THE END OF HISTORY"

WILL CHINESE WORKERS CHALLENGE GLOBAL CAPITALISM? PT.3 MINQI LI INTERVIEW

looking for, it's probably not yet published)WILL CHINESE WORKERS CHALLENGE GLOBAL CAPITALISM?

Bio-Data; MINQI LI

Minqi Li is an Assistant Professor at the University of Utah specializing in Political Economy, World Systems and the Chinese Economy. He was a political prisoner in China from 1990 to 1992. He is the author of "After Neoliberalism: Empire, Social Democracy, or Socialism?

Transcript

PAUL JAY, SENIOR EDITOR, TRNN: Welcome to The Real News Network. I'm Paul Jay in Washington. Many economists and political analysts think the current recovery, as it's being called, is a rather temporary phenomenon. Many people expect the recession to kick back in, and perhaps within a couple of years get rather serious. What does that mean in terms of the future of the world economy and world politics? Well, Minqi Li, who's a professor teaching at the University of Utah, has written an article called "The End of the 'End of History': The Structural Crisis of Capitalism and the Fate of Humanity." Here's a little excerpt from the article. "The global capitalist economy is now in its deepest crisis since the Great Depression. Even the world's ruling elites no longer have any doubt that a significant historical turning point has arrived. The neoliberal phase of capitalist development is coming to an end. This will prove to be the end of the so-called 'End of History' and the era of global counter-revolution it signifies. The immediate and important question is: what will be next? Where is the world heading as the crisis unravels and evolves?" And now joining us from the University of Utah is Minqi Li. Thanks for joining us, Minqi.

PROF. MINQI LI, UNIVERSITY OF UTAH: Thank you, Paul.

JAY: So answer your question: what comes next?

LI: Well, I guess it's not exaggerating to say that global capitalism right now is in a structural crisis. And, of course, in some previous historical periods, we know that capitalism has similar structural crises and that later managed to survive. So the question is whether we are going to see a similar restructuring of global capitalism, and so that capitalism would be back to some kind of normal expansion in the coming decades. But my own understanding is that this is not likely, because on the one hand, capitalism, unlike in previous historical periods, has exhausted its historical space for social reform. So, for example, after World War II, capitalism was able to restructure itself, undertaking some social reform, introducing welfare state, and then return to social and economic recovery. But now, basically, in all the Western countries [inaudible] we see that it's not possible to combine a redistribution to the favor of the working people with the requirement of capitalist accumulation. On the other hand, in the past, capitalism has been able to rely upon the exploitation of cheap labor force in the non-Western world, especially in places like Asia. But in the future I expect that the Asian working classes are going to have more organization, they will demand more economic and political rights, and that will reduce capitalist profit rate and undermine global capitalism. But probably the most important limit is that after centuries of accumulation, capitalism has exhausted the environmental space, so that the global ecological system now is literally on the verge of collapse.

JAY: So by that you're talking a climate change crisis.

LI: That is just one among many aspects of global environmental crisis.

JAY: What other aspects do you think are so serious that are threatening to the system itself?

LI: Well, you have the water shortage, water pollution that is pervasive. The United Nations predict that by 2025 maybe 70 percent of the population in the world will live in areas of water stress. And we have soil erosion, and we have desertification, we have deforestation, ocean acidification. So all of these aspects are threatening the global ecological system.

JAY: So there's two places or two—from two places change to this scenario could come, one from within the elites themselves. You get to see some sign of trying to restructure, and you hear voices in the American elite, European elite, who are saying, for example, the American empire is going to diminish; it needs to be done rationally, not in a bloody way. From an economic point of view you hear some voices (although they're certainly not in control) calling for far greater financial regulation so the finance sector doesn't run amok as it has. Or something's going to come from the other side of the barricades, and not from the elites, but from workers and ordinary people. But one doesn't see in too many places any real sign of that, really, now.

LI: I agree. Yeah. I agree with you.

JAY: What are you seeing? Because you could have 100 years of decay.

LI: Well, I would rather not see it. I mean, I agree with you as far as the elites are concerned, and we know that basically advanced capitalist country right now is talking about reducing fiscal deficits and trying to abandon the historical commitment to workers' health care and pensions. And on the other hand, with respect to climate change, the US Democrats just gave up hope to pass the climate change law. So, as far as the elites are concerned, I agree with you. About workers, recently we have seen that workers resistant in Western Europe, although there has been no immediate major effect. But in the medium term or long run, I say in five to ten years, I think hope could happen in the non-Western world, in places like Latin America, in places like in China—especially in China. I think the Chinese working class have now reached a turning point in the coming one or two decades, and we are going to see more organization from the Chinese workers. That's going to challenge the Chinese capitalist system. And if the Chinese capitalist system is challenged, because of the central role of the Chinese economy in the global capitalist system, and also with respect to energy and climate change, and so if the Chinese capitalist system is challenged, that could dramatically change the global balance of power.

JAY: That's very interesting. So talk a little bit more about that. And in one of our earlier interviews you said in China this is coming mostly from the urban workers. I mean, how many people are we talking about? And what stage is that movement at?

LI: Well, historically, let's say over the past two or three decades, one of the major problem with the Chinese workers movement is that it's divided between the urban workers that had its origin in the socialist tradition, and the migrant workers who have origin in the countryside and recently moved to the cities. The hope is that in the future the urban workers and the migrant workers will develop the growing solidarity, growing unity. And so, as the migrant workers learn to get organized, demand more rights, and they will realize that it's not possible to realize their rights within the current form of capitalism, within the current Chinese political regime, so they—hopefully in five or ten years they would move beyond just asking for higher wage and also make demand for political rights. So at that stage their demand is going to converge with the demands of the urban workers, which have been asking for more political rights, asking for a return to socialist legacy. And if we have unity between the urban workers and the migrant workers, that's going to make the Chinese working class a powerful political force.

JAY: Is there any reflection of this within the Chinese Communist Party? Are there forces within the party that support this kind of movement?

LI: I would not say "support", but there has been some interesting developments within the party. In the past, over the past two or three decades, the overall direction of the party is to move increasingly towards a neoliberal capitalist direction. But over the past two years there have been some interesting signs. Some party leaders, like the secretary of the major city of Chongqing, Bo Xilai, is making some speculation or making some gesture in the leftist direction by promoting Maoist era songs, by promoting anti-mafia campaign in the local area, although so far his effort has not been cooperated by other parts of the elites.

JAY: Okay. Say that again. Anti what?

LI: Anti-mafia.

JAY: Mafia, anticorruption, anti-crime.

LI: Right. Right.

JAY: Okay. Good. So what he's been doing is going after the organized crime. And has he been going after crime and corruption within the party, within the state apparatus itself?

LI: Well, he, of course, has to use the police. But interesting thing is that the organized crime in that city has grown stronger under the previous secretary, who is now still the provincial secretary of the Guangdong province, the very important export-oriented industry province near Hong Kong. And so that, you can see the split within the elites.

JAY: So what do you think? What do you think over the next five to ten years? What are you going to be looking for to see how this is developing?

LI: Well, one thing we want to look at is how the Chinese economy is going to evolve. And we know that the Chinese economy has relied upon investment and exports. We need to transition towards a more consumption-led economy. We need to see whether that's going to happen. But potentially more importantly, and we are going to see how the energy crisis and the climate-change crisis is going to evolve in the coming decades, and whether that's going to move toward some kind of global ecological catastrophes.

JAY: Well, what are the possibilities of a Chinese-styled New Deal to kind of put off this threat to the Chinese capitalist system?

LI: That I would not—although I cannot rule it out 100 percent, I don't think it's very likely, and for a number of reasons. One is that to have a consumption-led economy, you need to have higher wages. But then, if you want to have higher wages, then capitalists are going to have lower profits, so capitalists are going to resist it.

JAY: But in the United States you had a somewhat similar situation in the 1930s, and they did make the New Deal.

LI: That was true. But then, by the 1960s, because the workers have got too high wages, capitalists have got lower profits. That's why you have got neoliberalism. And then another major factor is that because the wealth of the Chinese capitalist class mostly came from the theft of state and the collective assets from the socialist era, so the whole Chinese ruling class is very corrupt. And because of this corruption, the central government has a smaller ability to impose discipline on the capitalist class. So the Roosevelt New Deal used to be able to impose some discipline on the American capitalists, even though some capitalists would call Roosevelt a socialist, right? But nevertheless you could have a New Deal. But today it's not clear if the Chinese government, despite its talk, whether it's able to force any significant group among the capitalists to make concessions.

JAY: Thanks very much for joining us, Minqi.

LI: Thank you very much.

JAY: Thank you for joining us on The Real News Network.

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