Pepe Escobar — From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising

 With its focus on Central Asia and Eastern Europe, the Belt and Road Initiative can be seen as fulfilling a strategy of challenging the West that can be traced back to Mao….

In the midst of this frenzy of connectivity, it’s easy to overlook a significant historical point: that it was all anticipated by Mao Zedong.

Scholar Chen Gang has stressed how most BRI-participating nations are not as developed, economically, as China. And they are “not just limited to the Eurasian continent, but will eventually cover all the ‘middle zone’ and ‘third world’ put forward by Mao in his ‘Three Worlds Theory.’”

Flashback to 1974. That’s when Mao described the world as being divided between superpowers (the US and USSR); intermediate powers (Japan, Europe, Canada); and exploited nations in Africa, Latin America and Asia, which Mao praised as constituting the forces against First World hegemony. Mao placed China in the third world – as Deng Xiaoping told the UN.

What’s fascinating is how Chen Gang interprets BRI not only as a sequel to China’s historical ties with the Third World, but also as opening a “new era of China’s Third World strategy.” He correctly states that US and EU elites worry that BRI will bring about “the erosion of their global influence and overseas interests.”

Chen Gang’s analysis touches on what, by now, is obvious: “The international game around BRI has just begun.” And it goes almost without saying that Beijing’s BRI-driven foreign policy strategy, by turbo-charging China’s cooperation with the ‘Global South,’ is leaving the US, at best, marginalized.

Of course, the Atlanticists are not going to just sit by and watch this happen to them.

It's game on.

Asia Times
From the Caucasus to the Balkans, China’s Silk Roads are rising
Pepe Escobar

The Saker — NY Times: 1949 – When China lost that ‘elusive’ quality needed for Anglobalization

Snarky backgrounder. Humorous read of some sorry history, centered around former US Secretary of State Dean Acheson.

The Vineyard of the Saker
NY Times: 1949 – When China lost that ‘elusive’ quality needed for Anglobalization
The Saker

Andrew Batson — Deng Xiaoping was an outstanding Chinese nationalist

Important for understanding China under the leadership of Mao, Deng and now Xi.

Andrew Batson's Blog 

Deng Xiaoping was an outstanding Chinese nationalist
Andrew

David K. Schneider — China's Legalist Revival

Backgrounder. Many good comments, too.

The National Interest
China's Legalist Revival

David K. Schneider | associate professor of Chinese at University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a Wikistrat senior analyst

See also

How China Sees World Order
Richard Fontaine, Mira Rapp-Hooper

A rant, but it makes a point. The US had industrial and population superiority over Nazi Germany and Japan, but it doesn't relative to China. China has about a billion more people than the US and it is the "world's factory." In addition, China strategy emphasizes swarming.

One Big Reason America Isn't Ready for World War Three

Peter Navarro | Professor of Economics and Public Policy at the Paul Merage School of Business, University of California, Irvine

Is America Willing to Wage War Against China to Save the Status-Quo?

Hugh White | Professor in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University

Misunderstanding Xi and China, and Putin and Russia

Good article. Those looking at China with Western neoliberal eyes misunderstand both China and Xi, and as a result the US likely to miss opportunities developing there that others will pick up instead.

Economy Watch
Is America at Risk of Not Participating in a Changing China?
Dan Steinbock

Russian expert Paul Robinson corrects recently published misunderstandings and mischaracterizations of Putin and Russia, base on the writings of Ivan Ilyin, whom Putin as acknowledged as an influence.

Incidentally, Putin recommended Vladimir Solovyov and Nikolai Berdyaev, and Ivan Ilyin to other leaders, and not only Ilyin or even Ilyin in particular. This mix reveals the distortion involved in selecting isolated quote from Ilyin alone and representing them as Putin's views.

In the comments Paul Grenier, the foremost Western expert on Ilyin, agrees with Robinson.

Irrussianality

More on Putin's Philosopher

Paul Robinson | Professor, Graduate School of Public and International Affairs at the University of Ottawa

Caleb Maupin — Who’s Afraid of Xi Jinping? And Why?

Why are the primary voices of US capitalist opinion in such an uproar? Why do they so greatly fear that the leader of the People’s Republic of China may revive anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist sentiments that once defined Chinese politics? 

The implications of such a reality, if it is indeed true, are huge. China is the center of world industrial production. It has a rapidly growing and globally connected economy, with worldwide relationships that are beyond calculation. If China is indeed having a revival of Marxist-Leninist ideology and Mao Zedong Thought, this is no laughing matter for all who take world events seriously. If China is once again going down the revolutionary road, the centers of finance, the Pentagon, and the very global role of the United States are all now facing a bigger threat than ever. 

Just as the halls of power echoed with “Who lost China?” in 1949, the recent declarations of the capitalist press indicate that they are undoubtedly now echoing with “Who lost China, again?” and “Why didn’t we see this coming?”…

New Eastern Outlook
Who’s Afraid of Xi Jinping? And Why?

Caleb Maupin

James Petras — China's Second ‘Cultural Revolution’

From the first to the second cultural revolution — another story of liberalization and corruption.

James Petras Website

China's Second ‘Cultural Revolution’

James Petras | Professor (Emeritus) of Sociology at Binghamton University in Binghamton, New York and adjunct professor at Saint Mary's University, Halifax, Nova Scotia

Sara Hsu — China, Piketty, and Patrimonial Capitalism

Thomas Piketty’s new book on inequality, Capital in the Twenty-First Century, has stirred renewed and widespread interest in growing global inequality. Although the title of Piketty’s book is provocatively similar to Marx’s magnum opus, Das Kapital, Piketty openly rejects Marx’s work because it fails to incorporate empirical evidence (he also reveals in an interview that he hasn’t read it all). By contrast, using copious empirical data based on surveys and tax records, Piketty points out that capitalism fundamentally leads to inequality, since the profit rate grows faster than income and output. Piketty’s work revives the debate over the “social state” versus pure capitalism and, as we discuss in this article, can be used to highlight the enormous change of course in China’s political economy and the predicament of growing inequality in the country today....

China chose its own form of (dare-we-call-it) capitalism, a socialist market economy, which incorporated both government intervention and market movements. This form of state capitalism has ultimately rejected the target of economic equality, which was an important component of Maoist ideology (however muddled the latter became over time). In a perverse display of economic modernization, “the people” – that is, the lower classes and particularly the peasantry – have been entirely stripped of economic and social power, while those with capital have gained power in multiple avenues: economic, social and political. The economic “feudalism,” which Mao strenuously opposed, has regrettably taken root.

In China, the socialist market economy has, as in other nations, developed into a “patrimonial capitalism” (Piketty’s term for unequal capitalism in the West), in which wealth is handed down from one generation to the next. Although millions of Chinese were pulled out of poverty by growing wages attributable to sheer economic growth, a searing inequality has now arisen. This can be attributed to the uneven growth of returns to capital versus output (i.e., profit versus wages) that Piketty underscores in his book. The horror of rampant poverty, in which individuals were forced to “eat bitterness” in the name of egalitarianism has, in China, given way to the devil of pervasive capitalism, in which the poor remain underfed while the wealthy fatten themselves in luxury. It appears that, after all of this time, neither Mao nor Deng had the whole answer when it came to economic dogma. So what is the solution to China’s problems associated with equality versus growth?

Piketty, without intending a policy prescription specific to China, provides a middle way between these two extremes [of Mao and Deng] that is eminently applicable to China today.

 Unfortunately, she is out of paradigm, although technically China is not a currency sovereign in that it pegs its currency to the dollar, albeit it increasing amounts of float as the economy becomes less export dependent.

An increase in taxes on the wealthy would increase government funds used to finance social programs.

Enforcing tax laws and curtailing the use of loopholes in wealth holdings would provide the state with more funds, which it should use to expand social services as it grows. 

The Dipolmat
China, Piketty, and Patrimonial Capitalism
Sara Hsu | Assistant Professor of Economics at the State University of New York at New Paltz, specializing in Chinese economic development, informal finance, and shadow banking

Lara Farrar — Among China’s students, some hope for a return to Mao-era policies

Students at Fudan University in Shanghai ride past a statue of Mao Zedong located on campus. Chinese academics say more young people are embracing Maoism as a backlash against deepening social inequality

On the campus of Beijing Normal University, professors say they’ve noticed a trend that worries them: students embracing radical leftism. They advocate a return to the socialist state that Communist Party founder Mao Zedong favored and that Chinese leaders for the last generation have tried to put behind them.

The students wear pins with pictures of Mao and carry bags with the former Communist leader’s famous quotations, such as “serve the people.”...

“The new leftists and the neo-liberals, they hate each other,” said Lu Xinyu, a left-leaning professor in Fudan University’s journalism school. “There are a lot of lies told by neo-liberals. A very significant characteristic of them is to always see America as a kind of utopia and that China should meet that standard, but America is facing a serious crisis.”

McClatchy
Among China’s students, some hope for a return to Mao-era policies
Lara Farrar | McClatchy Foreign Staff