First Show of 2019: China and the Trade War

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You’re listening to Back in the USSR, hello comrades and friends.  This is Siegfried, returning to the CFRU airwaves after another short leave of absence, so I hope ya’ll are ready for an action-packed hour with Guelph’s favorite hardline communist.  I think I’ll start with the obvious, where the hell was I this past year? Those of you who are familiar with me know that I’m an ESL teacher who has done a lot of work in China and that’s precisely where I was.  This time I was teaching classes at a teacher’s college in Ningbo, which is a little ways south of Shanghai on China’s east coast.  You might not have heard of it, but it’s a city of about eight million people, larger than anything we’ve got in Canada.  So coming back to Guelph took some getting used to, as it always does.  Coming back to Ontario at a time when education, healthcare and social spending are getting cut to the bone, while in China the expansion of all three of those things is a major national priority, was quite a shock to the system I have to say.  But I’m always happy to be back here at CFRU, even if Doug Ford is trying to put us on the chopping block now, along with just about every other progressive student-funded initiative out there.  And now there’s a real threat that the Conservatives are going to win the federal election in October and try to turn back the clock on a lot of things.  It’s not an easy time, but there can be no victories without struggle, remember that, brothers and sisters.

 

Just last month, basically right after I got back into town, I was proud to be a part of the resistance effort, led mainly by local communists and anarchists here in Guelph, that sent Maxime Bernier, the leader of the far-right Canadian Peoples Party, running for the hills with his tail between his legs after he tried to organize an event at the Guelph Youth Music Center.  We managed to shut his ass down; managed to get the GYMC to stop the event.  I mean the very idea that the Guelph Youth Music Center would even consider hosting an event put on by the leader of a bigoted, racist, anti-immigrant and, frankly, fascist party that has even echoed Trump’s rhetoric about building walls along the border to keep out black and brown people, is just disgusting.  The fact that they agreed to host it and would have let the event go ahead if not for our efforts to expose and condemn them, is truly horrific.  I mean I’ve done a lot of work with Guelph Spoken Word, we’ve often had our events at the GYMC in the past, and the idea that what we assumed to be a safe and progressive space would play host to fascists is very disturbing to say the least.

But I want to talk more about China.  China, as many of you will know, is currently the second largest economy in the world, although by certain measurements such as purchasing-power-parity, basically the measurement of how much you get for your money in any given country, it has already surpassed the United States.  Donald Trump has initiated a trade war against China, putting tariffs on hundreds of billions of dollars worth of Chinese goods, while trying to blame China for practically every one of America’s own economic difficulties in order to justify it, even though it’s led to China no longer buying American agricultural products which has proven economically devastating to Trump’s own electoral base.  And the general attitude toward China among the American political elite is almost universally hostile, with Bernie Sanders making similar comments as Trump attacking China for supposedly taking American jobs.  China is regularly demonized in the mainstream media, which has become almost as hostile to China as it has been to Russia.

Canada, for its part, has mostly gone along with Trump’s hostile policy toward China, most notably arresting and imprisoning Meng Wanzhou, the Chief Financial Officer of China’s leading technology and cellphone manufacturing company Huawei, pending extradition to the US on accusations of trading American technology to Iran…a country which China has normal economic relations with, but which Trump has targeted for regime change.  American sanctions on Iran are unilateral and therefore illegal under international law, therefore Meng Wanzhou and Huawei did nothing wrong by trading with Iran, making her detention, as the journalist Christopher Black has said, an illegal kidnapping.

And, of course, while the US is in the process of actively blockading and trying to literally starve the people of Iran and Venezuela into submission, it keeps screaming out about the current protests in Hong Kong and the human rights situation in what is a special autonomous region within China.  I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, it’s always seemed a little bit rich to me hearing the leaders of an Empire based on the genocidal destruction of indigenous peoples, the enslavement of Africans, and so many assaults and regime change wars waged against independent nations across the world, express concern about the human rights situation in this or that country – whether its China, Syria, Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, Cuba, Nicaragua or whatever.  It also seems a little bit rich to me that these demonstrators in Hong Kong, whom some Western media outlets have labelled as genuine revolutionaries, are so keen on waving American flags, singing the American national anthem, and calling on Trump to “save them”, “liberate Hong Kong” and “defend our constitution” (these are literally the slogans on the signs they hold).  You know, the same guy whose ICE goons have been locking up children in cages….yeah that guy.  These protestors want him to “save” them, like he's their knight in shining armor or something.

These protesters, who took to the streets to oppose an extradition law that was later withdrawn and which would have allowed convicted criminals to be sent to mainland China under certain circumstances, don’t impress me.  I’ll be frank.  They got what they initially wanted, the law was withdrawn, now they’re going further and are basically pushing for regime change on behalf of Western interests.  Just today, President Trump proposed a meeting with Chinese President Xi Xinping over the situation in Hong Kong and made it blatantly obvious that he views these protesters as bargaining chips in potential trade talks with China.  Not all demonstrations are progressive and I think some historical context is in order here.  I’d like to read from a fine article that the journalist Ian Goodrum wrote on August 14 for People’s World entitled “Hong Kong Protesters Have Their Flags Backward”.

Just last month I had the opportunity to interview Ian Goodrum himself on The Communist Current podcast with my friend and comrade Clara Sorrenti.  I really want to give a shoutout to the Communist Current, not just because I’m its co-host, but because I also think its crucial that radical analysis exists given the times that we live in.  You can find the Communist Current on Soundcloud and on pretty much any website where you download podcasts.  Check it out, we’ll be adding lots more content in the future.  This is an excerpt from our discussion with Ian Goodrum, who is a journalist with the newspaper Global Times, based in Beijing.

The Ballad of Crowfoot