I know you are joking but honestly come on, do Chinese people need a foreigner who knows nothing about China to teach them about their own history?
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It is still very far from being a real movement. This was an internet sensation after all. The collective outburst of long repressed dissatisfaction that one could always feel its latent presence, but could not actually see it being manifested in the real world.
As I have pointed out in another comment, it is the youth making their demands: they want to have a slice of the cake, and a seat at the table. With the implicit threat that if this continues, maybe something like a Cultural Revolution is not impossible. But at the end of the day, it’s dissatisfaction of the current economic climate and losing out their upward social mobility, so this is their form of “protest”.
The government will have to respond, one way or another.
The genie is already out when they started to teach Marxism-Leninism in schools and the nation portrayed itself as a socialist country.
When the economy was trending upward in the last two decades, people don’t mind too much about which political ideology and economic system.
Now that the kids are increasingly realizing that they do not, in fact, live in the socialism as portrayed everywhere in the media, and that this is in fact, not the Marxism they were taught in school, suddenly they begin to question everything.
Even though the so-called Marxism-Leninism class is somewhat of a joke these days, and it’s more of a patriotism class, the ideas have been implanted into their minds. With the youth taking up the tangping (lying down) movement, they now have more time to read and study Mao and Marx and Lenin! Funny the things you do while being unemployed.
Having said that, I doubt there will be a re-run of the CR. It would take a lot more coalescence of the dissatisfaction to get there, and the government still has a lot of authority to crack down on the dissent. Furthermore, I don’t think the rest of the people would want something like that.
But the youth have already made their demands: they want to have a slice of the cake, and a seat at the table too. And that’s up to the government to decide on how to meet their demands.
This cannot possibly be astroturfed lol. The numbers we’re talking about are absolutely wild, and so far beyond that the Western intelligence could feasibly pull off. And don’t forget all of these platforms are under the watch of the Chinese government and censors. You don’t get to be the #1 trending video on the largest video streaming platform without the government knowing about it. So far, Hu Xijin (the guy who always toe the establishment line) from Global Times has said that the guy over-interpreted things, don’t take it too seriously etc.
In fact, I don’t even think the government expected such overwhelming response in favor of the Cultural Revolution. Otherwise they would have “disappeared” the videos much faster than they would have allowed them to stay up. There were tens of thousands of views even at 2am after midnight (on bilibili, you can see how many audience there are in the video). There were thousands and thousands of comments from the youth writing in the comment section of the videos about how difficult and bleak their lives are (sadly the videos have since been taken down). It is as organic as you can get. Then the next morning the plug was pulled.
West is turning fascist, China is turning Maoist lol.
Bonus material: Class mobility in China
It is crucial to understand why education is held with such utmost importance in East Asian culture.
In 103 BC, the Han Emperor Wu (aka the Martial Emperor of Han) made a decision that would change world history forever. The nomadic Xiongnu tribes in the north have always been a nuisance for the Central Plains governments. The periodic raids into the border towns have mostly been opportunistic raids, with the nomadic tribes taking advantage of their cavalry mobility. It wasn’t that the Central Plains armies were not capable of defeating the Xiongnu tribes, but it had always been a question of costs. Usually, you settle with some bribes, they go away for some years before coming back for more. It was the cost effective solution that held the balance for a long period.
Imagine Trump wanting to mobilize the entire US military to expel the Canadians into Russia Far East. It is not that the US is not capable of doing so, but the costs would be exceedingly high, all three of the political, economic and social costs.
But that’s the Han Emperor Wu wanted to achieve. He would launch the greatest Northern Expedition ever seen at the time, and with capable generals like Wei Qing and Huo Qubing, absolutely steamrolled the Xiongnu nomadic cavalry.
The third and final Northern Expedition would double the territory of the Han Dynasty, reaching as far as modern day Xinjiang! The Xiongnu nomads were forced migrate west and eventually their descendants became the Huns, who would wreak havoc in Europe centuries later.
But… at what cost? lol, you ask.
The cost is that to sustain the huge logistics necessary for the Han military for their long expeditions, the peasants were coerced to increase their output under excessively demanding conditions. The people would be squeezed to their death, fighting a war that most of them had never even heard of.
This was when the feudal lords (豪族, haozu) began to take center stage. Amidst hardship, coercion, forced conscription and levy from the government, the peasants took refuge under the protection of the feudal lords, who often held their own private army, land, farms, and production bases. The peasants voluntarily turned to slavery, because at least you are not left to fend for yourself against banditry, and the evil government officials who want to squeeze every grain out of you to embellish their results, or worse, dragging you to join the army.
The rise of the feudal lords would eventually evolve into the infamous Guanlong group by the 5th-7th century AD, an oligarchy holding very important positions in the imperial court and in regional provinces.
To fight back against the overarching influence of the oligarchs, the Imperial Court Examination began to take shape starting in the 5th century AD during the Northern Wei dynasty to seek talented and qualified officials from the lower classes (寒门), as a means of counter-balancing force against the oligarchs (门阀). The examination would become a fully mature institution by the 8th century under Wu Zetian during the Tang dynasty, the first and only female emperor in Chinese history.
The significance of the Imperial Court Examination would influence Chinese culture for the next 1500 years. This became the only chance that a person from the lower class can ascend to the higher class. A mechanism for upward class mobility.
As the saying goes, 一人得道，鸡犬升天 (one person gets promoted, even his chickens and dogs get to ascend to the heaven), meaning that if you won the examination prize and become a government official, it would be a ticket for your entire extended family, including those of your teachers, to ascend to a higher class. A much much higher class, with a lot more material benefits to reap.
As such, for many poor families, usually one kid (the eldest son) was tasked to study, while his brothers and sisters worked in the farm. This coincided with the invention of woodblock printing, and later paper, that drastically reduced the cost of accessing books for the lower classes. If the son became a local official, then their fate would be completely changed.
Even in the modern days, examination offers a one-way ticket for class mobility. It is no different for Japan and South Korea, having been influenced by Chinese culture. Getting a job at Samsung will literally change your life in South Korea, you simply have to compete with the rest of the nation to get there.
In China, that’s what gaokao is about, for getting into higher education. That’s why the kids study so hard. To be a civil servant, you also have to take the civil servant exam (考公), which is equally as competitive. Once you are part of the 60 million civil servants in China, you are “in the system” (在体制内), you have guaranteed employment, good salary, social benefits and welfare that are inaccessible to the rest of the working class.
Funnily enough, back in the 2000s and 2010s, becoming a civil servant was actually not very encouraged. It was seen as a boring career choice with not much upward trajectory. If you’re a civil servant, you could be tasked to some random town and that’s easily the next 20 years of your life. And because your supervisor isn’t that much older, you’re probably not going to get promoted any time soon. You won’t have much choice, but you will at least have guaranteed employment and benefits.
Back then, it wasn’t an attractive choice. However, since Covid, with the economic downturn, the number of people taking the civil servant examination has exploded. The total number of people taking the examination was 2.8 million people this year (!!), with an intake ratio of 74:1 (1.65%). That’s totally wild. People would rather have a stable employment and boring career than to risk it in the private sector. This tells you just how much the times have changed. Totally unthinkable even back in 2018-2019.
And because the civil service force is not going to expand much (mostly replacing the retiring employees), with the local governments experiencing increasing financial strains as their debt bubble becomes unsustainable, and with AI starting to replace all the desk jobs, the situation is only going to get worse. The people’s concerns are not unreasonable.
That’s the picture the youth is seeing in China today. What is the point of studying if the door for class mobility is being shut?
Final thoughts
If the first two parts of the videos were critiques of the wealthy elites that have infested the highest level of the CPC, which, believe it or not, are still tolerated by the party itself (there has to be an outlet for the people to channel their anger into), then the third part was what made it all the more controversial.
The author of the video series ended part 3 with: “Big brother (referring to Mao), your ideas were too forward for your time, which made you almost a god-like figure to us, this is what we [mere mortals] could never compare with… and only after years of experiencing the brutality of life, fighting for our last breaths, that we are only beginning to understand your insistence back in the days [for a Cultural Revolution].”
The ban hammer finally came. But it already reached a record of 37+ million collective views within a few days.
Whatever it is, it can never be taken back. The Gen Z kids have made their voices known. Perhaps the energy behind the so-called Gen Z protests happening around the world was real after all.
The government will have to respond. On the one hand, the government relies on the bourgeoisie to deliver the GDP numbers (very important numbers!), on the other, they have to take care of an increasingly dissenting youth who see a bleak future for themselves, which is made more dissonant by the fact that China is actually growing into a superpower.
I believe there will be more strict crackdown on revolutionary ideals to prevent a re-run of the Cultural Revolution. All of the leadership today, the liberal reformers, were victims of the Cultural Revolution. They are deathly afraid of it.
Finally, if you want to watch the film for yourself (which I recommend!), try to find the extended version. The absolutely breathtaking rendition of the Steppe Women Militia dance sequence was missing in the standard version, which you can watch here , starting at 1:40 mark!
You can also watch the original version here taken in 1976 (remastered).
China vibe report: something absolutely wild took place on the Chinese internet this past week and I’ll be the first to report it. The kids are NOT ok!
TL;DR: Chinese Gen Z kids went full ultra Gang of Four yearning for a revival of the Cultural Revolution on bilibili (Chinese Youtube), what the hell is going on?
This came absolutely out of nowhere and took everyone by surprise. It’s truly one of the most insane things I’ve ever seen in the many years I’ve spent on the Chinese side of the internet.
It started with one of those Movie Explained channels offering analysis and interpretation of films. Run of the mill stuff. About a month ago, one of those channels began to upload a deconstruction of the 2017 film 芳华 (Youth), a coming of age/loss of innocence movie set in the backdrop of the Cultural Revolution about the lives and drama of the military art troupe kids, based on Yan Geling’s novel of the same name, which has been suspected to be her own semi-autobiography.
The film itself wasn’t overtly political or anything. It wasn’t without controversy before the theatrical release due to the Cultural Revolution backdrop, but after extensive cutting and reediting, the film was eventually released and went on the become one of the highest grossing films of the year.
However, the Movie Explained guy (no doubt on the more extreme/ultra left) offered a re-interpretation of the film, painting the Cultural Revolution as being hijacked by the elites from the very beginning, and after the reform and opening up era, the Gang of Four was vilified by the liberal reformers who rewrote history. Wild conspiracy take but what’s even wilder was the response to the videos (which have been released in three parts, with the final part that came out on November 29th being the most controversial, which essentially reinterpreted the film’s male protagonist as Wang Hongwen).
To give you an idea of what an absolute phenomenon this is, the three videos have a combined 37+ million views before the censorship hammer fell. Averaging about 12 million views per video, this is an insane number for bilibili, and was trending #1 at the time the videos were “disappeared” by the censors. As a comparison, the most sensational anti-Japan videos garnered about 2-3 million views at most - this is easily 4-5 times the volume of that.
Imagine Youtube’s #1 trending video. That’s how huge it was. This was never seen before for a politically themed video, let alone one on the Cultural Revolution.
And because bilibili has what is called the “bullet comments”, where user comments stream across the screen while a video is being played, and with hundreds of thousands of comments here’s what the screen looked like:
人民万岁 = Long Live the People. Slogan of the Cultural Revolution.
Clearly the kids are more into Cultural Revolution than anti-Japanese propaganda. What the hell is going on?
Let’s start with the film’s story to give some contexts:
The story is the typical rich kids bullying poor kids story. The male protagonist was a model socialist youth, who embodied the ideal of a revolutionary, always offering help to anyone without expecting anything in return, but because of his lower class, was always taken advantage of and held in disdained by the other elite/rich kids who were in the art troupe for “performative” reasons.
The female protagonist was a girl whose father was in the reeducation camp, and naively believed that by joining the communist youth cadre, she would be treated as equals. Instead, because of her lower class, she ended up getting bullied throughout by the elite/rich kids.
This scene from the film has been memed all over the chat groups right now and embodied the class divide that had infected the Cultural Revolution even from its very onset:
The elite kids (官二代, or 2nd generation elites) and rich kids (富二代) were able to enjoy special privileges in the “revolution” while looking down at the other kids from the lower classes. Such distinct class divide amongst the communist youth cadres, in a way, showed that the Cultural Revolution was doomed from the start.
The ending was particularly bleak:
The male protagonist was ostracized and in the reform era, was tasked to enlist in the invasion of Vietnam, lost his arm and lived miserably in the post-reform society. The female protagonist was driven mad.
The elite and rich kids were able to take advantage of the reform era through their status and became the first to reap the benefits of the post-Mao era, and they all married rich.
The ending in the novel was even more bleak. The film version actually made some adjustments to make it seem more bittersweet.
Strangely enough, when the film was aired in 2017, nobody really thought too much about it. It was mostly seen as a nostalgic film for the 50s/60s elderly who reminisced about their youth during the Cultural Revolution. The Gen Z kids were still too young/at school to appreciate its subtexts.
Remember that 2017-2019 was the peak of China’s economy. It was a time when everyone was very much positive about the future. Nobody even thought about such concerns as unemployment. As long as you’re willing to work hard, there will be jobs for you.
8 years later, the situation has completely changed. Upon re-watch, many young people, especially kids who saw it for the first time, felt the incomprehensible horror in the film itself.
Of course, visual language is everything, take a look:
At the start of the film, the red mural had a Mao painting with a hammer and sickle, which was very much emblematic of the revolutionary era.
By the time the protagonist returned in the reform era, the mural had been replaced with a red Coca-Cola advertisement, signifying the end of an era.
So how did we get here?
First of all, I do think that the re-interpretation videos had indeed over-interpreted the film itself, even though the visual languages are well representative of the latent contradictions of the time.
Second, I don’t think the Gen Z kids are really yearning for a real Cultural Revolution, widely held as the most destructive era of the PRC history.
Whether this was irony pilled Gen Z black humor, or whether they truly yearn for a rerun of the CR, it doesn’t matter. The explosive outbursts of their emotion had to be real. This was something that you could only feel when interacting with the youth, their hidden anger buried underneath, but nothing really actually manifested in real life.
Their collective outbursts in the form of bilibili comments revealed their true reaction to the film - the loss of their Youth, a funeral of their Future.
And it makes sense. As I have said before, post-Covid China is a very different world than the 2010s. Chinese kids are seeing their futures evaporating in front of them. These are the kids who studied hard for years, just to be told that there are no jobs for them, the houses are way beyond what they could possibly afford, and that a bright future that had been promised not even 10 years ago is disappearing before them.
It’s like being told that the train is already full, and you are being left behind at the train station. The train that just departed was class mobility - a door that has now shut for most Chinese youth.
They are experiencing a strong dissonance that while the country is becoming stronger, as China is becoming a world superpower, yet the fruits of the hard work do not belong to them. The future of a nation where they are not a part of.
Their anger is to be expected, and a yearning for a Cultural Revolution that at least promises shake up the entrenchment of the social classes. The chaos and destruction would hurt the rich elites the most, dragging them down to the level of the average working people who are struggling for the next paycheck.
For context, understand that the accumulation of capital that took several hundred years in Western capitalist countries, occurred in China in just 50 years. Everything has been evolving so fast, and so does the wealth inequality.
In 2007, nobody would have anticipated what China would look like today. That’s what it feels like to grow up in China. In Western countries, the wealth distribution is divided in generations, where the boomers/Gen X reaped the industrialization benefits while the Gen Y and especially Gen Zs are already accustomed to a relatively bleak future since they were born.
However, in China, this was not the experience. If you’re a Gen Z kid born in the late 1990s (in China they’re called post-90s and post-00s), you would have grown up just after the recession, with your parents having a relatively well paid job in the 2000s (compared to the 90s). Things were starting to look better. By the 2010s, in your middle and high schools, your parents likely bought a new house. An upgrade. The economy was looking better by the day. You’re promised that as long as you study hard, you’ll be able to find a good job and raise your own family one day.
Then Covid hit just when you’re about to graduate college, and the economy never returned. Years of hard work down the drain. All this rollercoaster happened in less than 30 years of your life.
That’s not a lot. Russia, a far smaller economy, forgave $23 billion of Africa’s debt in August 2022 alone, which is more than the entirety of African debt relieved by China since 2000.
I have been saying since 2022 that China should use its $800 billion US treasuries to pay off Africa’s $800 billion external debt and flood them with yuan to kill the dollar.
I have since learned that it’s not going to happen because of what I posted here last time:
Wang Jian (王建) from China Society of Macroeconomic Research, who proposed the Great External Circulation strategy back in 1987 that was officially adopted by the central government, talked about this in an interview in the early 2000s:
中国是享受到美元霸权的好处最大的国家……美国巨大的贸易逆差，是对中国产品的巨大需求， 拉动了我们经济的增长……我们现在要担心的是，美元贬值引起国际金融大动荡，美元失去国际的货币的霸主地位，没有能力继续用经常项下的逆差来拉动亚洲，特别是对于中国的经济增长的影响，这才是最可怕的事。”
China is the greatest beneficiary of the dollar hegemony… the huge trade deficit of the US also represented a huge demand for Chinese products, and spurred our economic growth… What we have to worry about now, is the global financial instability caused by the depreciation of the US dollar. If the dollar loses its global currency hegemonic status, it will no longer have the capacity to sustain its deficit to drive Asia’s growth, and this will especially affect China’s economic growth. This would be the most terrible thing to happen.
In September 2020, months after China proposed the Dual Circulation Strategy (export balanced by domestic consumption), Wang Jian reasserted the importance of dollar hegemony in an interview:
中国是最依靠美元体系的国家，因为人民币没有国际化，而欧元、日元、韩元等都是国际化货币。过去，中国一直享受着美元霸权的好处，人民币不是国际化货币，但是中国的生意可以做到世界最大，因为中国用美元结算。如果美元体系崩溃，即美元作为储备货币和结算货币的比例发生断崖式下降，比如从60%下降到30%，受到伤害最大的一定是中国。 所以在 “十四五”期间，一旦美元出问题，会对中国产生非常大的影响。
China is the country that relies the most on the dollar system, because the RMB is not internationalized, whereas the Euro, the Japanese yen, the Korean won, are all internationalized currencies. In the past, China has continuously enjoyed the benefit of the dollar hegemony - the RMB is not an internationalized currency, yet Chinese businesses can expand to become the world’s largest, because transactions in China are settled in US dollars. If the dollar system collapses, then the proportion of the US dollar as a reserve currency and settlement currency will fall steeply. For instance, if it drops from 60% to 30%, the country that is hurt the most must be China. Hence, if the dollar system encounters trouble during the 14th FYP period (2021-2025), it will cause great impact to China’s production.
Source is from Jia Genliang’s Modern Monetary Theory in China (2023)
Once you understand this, you will understand that China cannot and will not give up the dollar system, especially its hegemonic status. The status quo greatly benefited the Chinese economy and there is no reason to give up even when the US itself is threatening to end the arrangement, because China still has plenty of cards to play (e.g. rare earth export). The US will find itself unable to decouple from China.
This is also why when the US confiscation of Russia’s $300 billion foreign reserve at the start of the Russia-Ukraine war, and the Fed rate hike that caused dollar liquidity crisis in many Global South countries and spurred strong interest in many to leave the dollar regime, China has been the one that was and still is the most reluctant to abandon the US dollar. If China doesn’t want to, then nobody else can do anything about it. The Biden administration correctly gambled that China would not threaten the dollar hegemony during the rate hike in 2022.
Nah, the cost can be socialized. It simply means people have to work longer hours, wage stagnation etc. Like Japan.
I have to remind everyone to stop getting so obsessed with the collapse narrative lol. Japan has been experiencing zero growth for 35 years, yet their society has not collapsed. It simply means stagnation at that level.
You know what they say about Japan? In the 1980s, Japan felt like living in the 2000s. In 2020s, Japan still felt like living in the 2000s.
I remind you that when Deng Xiaoping visited Japan in 1978 and boarded their Shinkansen high speed rail, China was still a very poor country and decades behind in development!
This youtube clip showed Deng Xiaoping traveling in a Shinkansen carriage in 1978. When asked what he felt about the high speed rails, he replied “it felt very fast, like someone is rushing you to run” lol.
This shows you how advanced the Japanese economy already was in the 1970s, and the disparity already showed if you watch American media portrayal of Japan in the 1980s.
The problem isn’t so much agricultural mega conglomerates you see in Western capitalist countries.
China’s rural problem comes from the reprioritization of urban development since the reform and opening up area, and it has to do with land finances.
Due to the reckless property building frenzy in the 2010s, the Tier 1/2 cities sucked the population out of Tier 3/4 cities, and in turn, the Tier 3/4 cities had to suck the population from provincial towns and rural villages.
As a result, the rural regions suffered the most during this infrastructure building phase. This is NOT to say that there hasn’t been development in the rural regions. In fact, you can see quite nice infrastructure in the villages due to the massive infrastructure building, but there is no economy. The youth have already left and there are very few job opportunities in the rural areas. Especially with the local governments struggling with their finances now that the land revenue is plunging, they have even less means to give attention to the rural areas.
There is a meme on the Chinese internet that says the high speed rails have connected all the small parts of China, but it also provided a one-way ticket for the youth to leave for the big cities forever. While you might think better connectivity would have helped rural development, in reality, the high speed rails have practically benefited the big cities at the expense of the rural areas.
Although in recent months there is a reverse trend as the economy is taking a downturn, with the tangping/lying down movement gaining traction, but that’s an entire effort post in itself.
The consensus from most commentators I’ve read is that “nothing out of ordinary”, meaning it’s following the same trajectory from the 14th FYP, which as I’ve mentioned above, the Dual Circulation Strategy.
The latest policy paper in late November vows a 3 trillion yuan stimulus on consumption goods, which is a lot, but we’ll have to see if this fixes the problem, because the problem isn’t on the supply side, it’s on the demand side.
People curb their spending not because there aren’t cheap goods for them to buy, they are saving because they are feeling uncertain about the economic climate, especially under the continuous plunging property prices (which is still going!) that is evaporating the wealth of the middle class (the main consumption class) that went on the bandwagon of house purchasing frenzy of the 2010s.
Meanwhile, we have 600 million people (40% of the total population), mostly in the rural area, that are barely making 1000 yuan ($150) in income every month. These people cannot effectively contributing to domestic consumption because of their low income.
It gets even more complicated with the 280 million migrant workers (农民工) who work in the cities but have rural hukou, which means that they are mostly shut out from key public services like healthcare, pension and education that urban citizens enjoy. This is the true underclass that are actually breaking their backs making your iPhones, building infrastructure across China etc. and are often invisible to the eyes of the urban citizens. Hence you have this phenomenon known as “left behind children” (留守儿童) where the parents who work in the cities cannot afford to keep their children staying with them, so have to send the kids back to the rural areas to be raised by their grandparents/relatives. You can imagine the social problems that can be caused by long-term separation with one’s parents.
The problem is obvious - the elephant in the room that the leadership keeps pretend to not seeing - wealth inequality.
The solution is also obvious, although the CPC (especially Xi himself) is very very allergic to providing social welfare because they think it “encourages laziness” and points to Latin American countries as examples.
For me, the solution is very simple, especially since China is a socialist country:
- Provide jobs guarantee to eliminate the concern of unemployment
- Provide social safety net to ensure that those most in need can receive proper financial assistance (e.g. medical treatments) without having to worry about low income
- Wealth redistribution. Wealth redistribution. Wealth redistribution.
Either of these three can rapidly and significantly boost domestic consumption, but there are obstacles:
The first two require the government to run a budget deficit, which is another thing that the government is allergic to because they have listened to the IMF to learn how to balance their budget. As a result, they have to accumulate foreign currencies (such as the $1 trillion trade surplus here through exports) before they can spend domestically, in order to bring down the deficit spending.
The third… hahaha… that’ll be a huge fight with the elite class that has benefited greatly from their collaboration with the bourgeoisie. Good luck!
The exact opposite needs to happen lol!
This simply means a $1 trillion in surplus of a number in your bank account while not receiving any real goods in return. Chinese labor doing all the hard work of selling goods that can be enjoyed but do not reap the benefit of imported goods from other places. This is what surplus value extraction means.
It is a reflection of just how difficult it has been for the Chinese economy to transition into a domestic consumption economy. The Dual Circulation Strategy proposed in April 2020 to balance export with domestic consumption has pretty much failed, and ended in record trade surplus and with deflation caused by a slump in domestic consumption.
Ironically, this makes China even more dependent on its export industries, hence the need to dump cheap goods on the rest of the world in order to keep the workers employed and factories running. If those countries cannot compete with Chinese goods, their domestic industries will suffer and open up the avenue for US financial capital takeover. Think IMF bailouts!
And Trump is also ironically correct. China should give Trump exactly what he wants so China can enjoy the fruits of labor of the American workers. Let the Americans become the world factory workers for once lol.
The US couldn’t even beat the PRC in the Korean War, I strongly doubt they think they can win a war in the 21st century.
Good for pumping trillions more into the military industrial complex though.
China is a genuinely safe place to live in!
Unfortunately I’ve also seen a lot of nationalist propaganda who justify this with “that’s why you shouldn’t let immigrants to get into your country. look at how Europe has fallen blah blah.” People losing their shit over the K visa debacle really left a bad taste in my mouth.
You’re right in that the framing is just an excuse. The root cause is that the US has shaped the geopolitical and economic conditions through various pressures to coerce these countries into their current predicaments.
European industries cannot possibly compete with Chinese industries. The cheap Russian energy allowed Europe to stay competitive post-2009 GFC while paying their workers relatively well compared to the rest of the world. This advantage is now lost.
Additionally, wages aren’t regulated/enforced in China and the price wars among Chinese capitalists have been putting downward pressure on the worker’s wages. It has gotten so bad that the government is forced to step in with their “anti-involution” policy to stop the industries from killing themselves. If Europe wants to compete on Chinese wages, good luck, it’d be a political suicide for any country that even attempts that.
And as I’ve said before, since these countries have bought into the neoliberal free trade ideology, where they all want to run trade surpluses, which can never happen, one of them is going to lose. And if both refuse to budge, it’ll have to be a war.
As such, Europe has no choice but to sanction and impose tariffs on China. The “China is evil” narrative is simply the excuse used to justify why the European economy is uncompetitive, in order to better sell the propaganda to its populace on why they have to militarize.
This wasn’t so much of a problem in the previous decades because the US had voluntarily run a trade deficit strategy to absorb the global surplus goods. Now that Trump wants to cut back its trade deficit, and if no country is willing to run its own trade deficit to take up the oversupply of goods from global exporters, it can only result in mercantilism as it did in the 19th and early 20th century.
It is the same for Japan where their car manufacturers have been suffering from Chinese competition, and once again, neoliberal free trade ideology will only further intensify the mercantilistic warfare, where the country with the cheapest and most efficient export production ends up killing its competitors.
The real beneficiary of free trade is obviously the US, who can use its financial power to “bail out” the economies of those countries under pressure, and coerce them into submitting to the US interests and reshape the global supply chain through weaponizing China’s industrial prowess.
An analogy here is a landlord deliberately create situations that drive down the land value in a neighborhood (e.g. increased crime) or an industrial zone (increased business cost) they are interested in, and then come in and buy out the land for cheap for re-development. The financial hegemon is the landlord, the industrial and commodity supplier nations are the factory owners and producers.
And for the 100th time, the only way out is China tapping into its huge domestic market to absorb the global export capacity, which it has found very difficult to do in practice.
Tony Blair’s New Labour campaign which made heavy use of media narrative and advertisements was copied from the Clinton’s presidential campaign.
It marked a new era of political campaigning where politicians package their image through slick PR advertisements with carefully selected words and messaging to subliminally influence the audience.
It should not surprise you to see that progressive stances like LGBT acceptance also occurred the fastest in a country like the US, but at the same time it is also tenuous, and it can easily go the other way just as fast. The civilizational DNA, as we can call it, is still young and malleable.
It is true that the US is founded on white supremacy and colonialism but if you compare it to the lengthy history of an ancient civilization like China, there are still plenty of opportunities for change before the culture becomes entrenched, at which point it becomes an uphill battle. I feel like it’s actually harder for European culture to change for this reason.
electoralism @hexbear.net Zohran Mamdani Wins New York With a Youthquake
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History @hexbear.net Average working hours dropped drastically after 1917, due to fear that the Russian Revolution would inspire similar revolutions in other countries
Hmm… if we look at the Lost Decade Japan, the trajectory was similar. The Japanese government saved the older employees at the expense of youth employment, and the end result was that Japan had to endure zero growth for 30 years until very recently, when enough of the elderly have died to allow the wealth to trickle downward again. So it’s always possible to keep the stagnation going for decades. I don’t believe that a sufficiently developed society can easily “collapse” just like that.
I think it will be interesting to see how seriously the youth take up the revolutionary ideas? Is it just cosplay? A ritual to vent their anger into the internet? Or is there more substance behind it. I do agree that the Chinese kids are more class conscious than most other countries.
However, I honestly doubt it can grow into a tangible movement because unlike Western capitalist countries, there is no history of trade unions in China. The people don’t even know how to organize protest movements, don’t know how to strategize to make demands from their own government. Everything would have to start from scratch.
This is actually a big advantage for the Western left wing movements who have faced off capitalists for more than a century and have an actual history of trade union movements that succeeded in making real gains and progress in the late 19th and early 20th century.