by K.J. Noh, published on Popular Resistance, October 2, 2024
The rise of China is one of the greatest success stories in the history of human civilization.
Talk delivered for the event “Changes Not Seen in a Century: 75th Anniversary of Founding of PRC”.
Friends, Colleagues, Comrades,
It’s a great honor for me to join you in this extraordinary, historical moment of celebration and reflection on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.
As has been said, we are seeing changes unseen in a century. Changes both great and terrible.
We are currently seeing the unraveling of Empire–and its last desperate, violent, hideous death rattle.
We are seeing the unmasking of 500 years of western “civilization”, and the laying bare of its hypocrisy and unspeakable brutality.
We are seeing the true face of capitalist imperialism, not its made up public relations face, but its resting bastard face.
It’s not pretty.
One of the precipitating factors of the end of Empire–not the only one, but a very important one, because it allows countries to resist hegemony together–is the rise of China.
The rise of China is one of the greatest success stories in the history of human civilization.
So we could talk about China’s accomplishments all day. I’d like to highlight three.:
We all know in 1949 when China stood up, liberating half a billion people, 10-20% of China’s population was still addicted to opium.
In 4 years, the CPC eradicated opium addiction, liberating 90 million people from this colonial scourge.
It’s also one of the greatest public health accomplishments of the 20C. And I bet you’ve never heard of it.
By giving everyone the means of production–at the time, by distributing land–and by offering everybody education, community, meaning, hope, purpose–and by doing it at scale–because it has to be done at scale–the Party was successful.
You can’t do this in dribs and drabs. tinkering at the edges. You have to do it all at once for everyone.
The Power of People’s Solidarity
We all know this and understand this: we don’t liberate anyone, until everyone is liberated.
We liberate each other. It’s because we are fundamentally socially interconnected.
This is our species being.
You don’t help anyone, until we all help each other, because we all are implicated in each other’s futures.
We saw the same thing with extreme poverty alleviation.
Poverty was not seen as an individual failing–as it is, in the capitalist west. It was a whole of society responsibility requiring a whole of society response. It focused on everyone.
So, 850M were brought out of extreme poverty–which lets the world know that poverty is not an immutable, social, historical fact. It is a policy choice. You can raise everyone up, if we all work together.
That’s the way it works–and it works for everything: if we start from this approach, we can succeed, no matter how vast and immense the challenge is.
So China is proof positive of the power of people’s solidarity, the power of a people’s leadership, the power of scientific planning according to socialist principles to overcome unthinkable challenges.
This is how China accomplishes things, and it accomplishes them at scale–at a scale so vast that nothing under heaven–as they say–is left behind.
Now, there is another achievement that China is working on.
Yes, a socialist society, that’s the ultimate goal, but this is an important stepping stone on the way to it.
And it is a big one. It is the creation of an ecological civilization.
China is literally greening the planet, creating single-handedly the conditions and means to transition to a sustainable energy regime, to enable sustainable development, to turn back the tide of global warming. And it is doing it at a scale that is truly inconceivable–but necessary.
China knows how to accomplish things at scale.
It knows how to solve problems even when the problems are unthinkably immense.
And the leadership and the people do not flinch at the immensity of the challenge.
Ecological transition with Chinese characteristics:
China is concretely showing us the pathway out of Global Climate catastrophe.
And as I said before, none of us are safe, good or well until all of us are.
Until all of us are safe from the effects of the climate crisis, none of us are.
And China is leading the way. All the west has to do is work together with China: China has provided the tools and the map and it is showing the path out.
So, to reduce it to its simplest terms, going green means going red.
But–and there is a but: from the US standpoint, they don’t want that.
They do not want energy transition if it means the Chinese are going to be leading it.
They would rather be dead than red.
The US would rather burn up the planet than give China its place in the sun.
If China is on the side of renewable energy, then the US has to be firmly on the side of Global Warming: it’s more important to beat China than to beat Global Warming.
We can see that right now, in the massive sanctioning of Chinese sustainable technologies that could shift the balance.
If the planet heats up, we’re all dead, but if China cools the planet and saves the world, then we are no longer the coolest, and that’s worse than death. That’s how the leadership in the US thinks.
Preparing for war: not if but when
So we can’t talk about China’s successes, without talking about the US hostility towards China.
The US sees China as the enemy. It is determined to take down China and all its accomplishments.
Now, China has overcome–countless threats–but this one is an existential threat.
Let’s be very clear. The US is preparing for war–kinetic war–against China.
Washington is abuzz with talk of war with China.
It’s seen as necessary, inevitable, and incredibly, winnable.
Winnable means they are planning to use nukes.
We see with Palestine, and now Lebanon, that there are no limits to the depravity of what the Imperial ruling class will do to stay in power. Nothing is off the table. Nothing is too inhumane, too brutal, too illegal, too dangerous. Nothing shocks the conscience. In fact, nuclear war is definitely on the table, in the policy papers being distributed, in the military table-top exercises they conduct, in the field training and air exercises that are now being conducted with the greatest intensity since WWII. We are headed towards war, towards nuclear war.
To put it bluntly, the US ruling class would rather see the end of the world than the end of their power and privilege.
So we are at a turning point in history. a crisis: both opportunity and danger, hope and terror, unseen possibility and unthinkable tragedy.
This Imperial ruling class has actually been escalating to war against China–covertly since 2009 and now overtly.
It has calendared dates–2027.
It’s not if, but when.
Three Steps to War
Now there are three distinguishable steps on the way to war:
The first is Information war: inventing the enemy and then demonizing them: manufacturing consent, shutting down opposition, like you shut down the skies before bombing. We’re being fire-hosed and carpet bombed with lies about China.
The second is shaping the theater logistically for war, with arms, alliance, exercises, materiel/fuel, pre-positioned stocks, and troops.
The third is provocation. There is non-stop provocation by the US–in the Taiwan strait, the East China Sea, the South China Sea, on the Korean peninsula, everywhere.
This follows the increasing, expanding ambit and intensity of proxy war in Europe, in the genocidal terror in the middle east, and in the building war momentum in the Pacific. Kurt Campbell, Biden’s Asia Czar and the architect of the Pivot, has threatened to unleash “a magnificent symphony of death” across a “unified field [of war]”.
Martial Arts in the No-Think Zone
And we can all see and feel the shutting down of anti-war dissent, of opposing voices and alternative media.
That’s a key characteristic of the information war–silencing opposition, silencing voices of peace.
It’s like taking out anti-aircraft batteries, and imposing a no fly zone.
You shut down the skies, before you drop the bombs.
You shut down the opposition before you drop the narrative bombs.
You attack opposition to war, attack those who want good relations with China, or negotiations.
You attack divergent voices and platforms in order to create a no-think zone.
No critical thinking.
No thinking, no dialogue, no peace.
The US literally seeks full spectrum dominance in all domains of war, but especially in the space domain: outer space, cyber space, and information space, mental space;
It literally seeks to occupy your mind.
So resistance in this critical moment–at the most fundamental level–begins with first not letting your mental space be occupied, colonized, dominated.
It means resisting the narrative dominance of the dominant narrative; that China is threatening the world, that war is thinkable, that war is justified.
It means resisting the normalization of war, of genocide, of terror, of atrocity, of lies and propaganda.
We can all be vectors of this transmission of lies of propaganda, or we can impede its transmission.
So it’s incumbent on all of us to re-engage in the mental martial art of critical thinking: we strengthen our psychic immune system against this type of mental virus, this colonization of our mental spaces.
We re-orient, de-occupy ourselves, we kick out the colonizing narratives, and we recommit to “seeking truth from facts”.
What we need to do is tune up our critical thinking engines constantly, with the precision tools of wit, humor, parody, perspective, context–and facts.
The flipside of this is that we can also spread the facts and the truth, as many are doing together today.
Share the truth. The rise of China, and the liberation of the Global South is not a threat to the peoples of the world. It is a transformative moment of hope for human history.
But the stakes are immense. The future of the planet is at stake. As Brian Berletic said, “A war against China is a war against the world”. And we all have a part to play. We have already been inducted.
Where do we start? We start with our clear minds and our courageous hearts. Decolonize and de-propagandize your minds, and resist!
Together!
The future of China, the future of the Global South, the future of the world depends on it!
*Featured Image: by Chester Zhao