Ecuador Endangered

John Seed

The tropical Andes of Ecuador are at the top of the world list of biodiversity hotspots in terms of vertebrate species, endemic vertebrates, and endemic plants. Ecuador has more orchid and hummingbird species than Brazil, which is 32 times larger, and more diversity than the entire USA.

In the last year, the Ecuadorean government has quietly granted mining concessions to over 1.7 million hectares (4.25 million acres) of forest reserves and indigenous territories. These were awarded to transnational corporations in closed-door deals without public knowledge or consent.

This is in direct violation of Ecuadorean law and international treaties, and will decimate headwater ecosystems and biodiversity hotspots of global significance.However, Ecuadorean groups think there is little chance of stopping the concessions using the law unless there is a groundswell of opposition from Ecuadorean society and strong expressions of international concern.

The Vice President of Ecuador, who acted as Coordinating Director for the office of ‘Strategic Sectors’, which promoted and negotiated these concessions, was jailed for 6 years for corruption.However, this has not stopped the huge giveaway of pristine land to mining companies.

From the cloud forests in the Andes to the indigenous territories in the headwaters of the Amazon, the Ecuadorean government has covertly granted these mining concessions to multinational mining companies from China, Australia, Canada, and Chile, amongst others.

The first country in the world to get the rights of Nature or Pachamama written into its constitution is now ignoring that commitment.

They’ve been here before. In the 80’s and 90’s Chevron-Texaco dumped 18 billion gallons of crude oil there in the biggest rainforest petroleum spill in history. This poisoned the water of tens of thousands of people and has done irreparable damage to ecosystems.

Now 14% of the country has been concessioned to mining interests. This includes a million hectares of indigenous land, half of all the territories of the Shuar in the Amazon and three-quarters of the territory of the Awa in the Andes.

Please sign the petition and contribute to the crowdfund which will help Ecuadorean civil society’s campaign to have these concessions rescinded.

As founder and director of the Rainforest Information Centre (RIC), I’ve had a long history of involvement with Ecuador’s rainforests.

Back in the late ‘80’s our volunteers initiated numerous projects in the country and one of these, the creation of the Los Cedros Biological Reserve was helped with a substantial grant from the Australian Government aid agency, AusAID. Los Cedros lies within the Tropical Andes Hotspot, in the country’s northwest. Los Cedros consists of nearly 7000 hectares of premontane and lower montane wet tropical and cloud forest teeming with rare, endangered and endemic species and is a crucial southern buffer zone for the quarter-million hectare Cotocachi-Cayapas Ecological Reserve. Little wonder that scientists from around the world rallied to the defense of Los Cedros.

In 2016 a press release from a Canadian mining company alerted us to the fact that they had somehow acquired a mining concession over Los Cedros! We hired a couple of Ecuadorean researchers and it slowly dawned on us that Los Cedros was only one of 41 “Bosques Protectores” (protected forests) which had been secretly concessioned. For example, nearly all of the 311,500 hectare Bosque Protector “Kutuku-Shaimi”, where 5000 Shuar families live, has been concessioned. In November 2017, RIC published a report by Bitty Roy, Professor of Ecology from Oregon State University and her co-workers,  mapping the full extent of the horror that is being planned.

Although many of these concessions are for exploration, the mining industry anticipates an eightfold growth in investment to $8 billion by 2021 due to a “revised regulatory framework” much to the jubilation of the mining companies. Granting mineral concessions in reserves means that these reserves aren’t actually protected any longer as, if profitable deposits are found, the reserves will be mined and destroyed.

In Ecuador, civil society is mobilising and has asked their recently elected government to prohibit industrial mining “in water sources and water recharge areas, in the national system of protected areas, in special areas for conservation, in protected forests and fragile ecosystems”.

The indigenous peoples have been fighting against mining inside Ecuador for over a decade.  Governments have persecuted more than 200 indigenous activists using the countries anti-terrorism laws to hand out stiff prison sentences to indigenous people who openly speak out against the destruction of their territories.

Fortunately, the new government has signalled an openness to hear indigenous and civil society’s concerns, not expressed by the previous administration.

In December 2017, a large delegation of indigenous people marched on Quito and President Moreno promised no NEW oil and mining concessions, and on 31 January 2018, Ecuador’s Mining Minister resigned a few days after Indigenous and environmental groups demanded he step down during a demonstration. On 31 January, The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, CONAIE, announced their support for the platform shared by the rest of civil society involved in the anti-mining work. Then on 15 FebruaryCONAIE called on the government to “declare Ecuador free of industrial metal-mining”, a somewhat more radical demand than that of the rest of civil society.

But we will need a huge international outcry to rescind the existing concessions:many billions of dollars of mining company profits versus some of the most biologically diverse ecosystems on Earthand the hundreds of local communities and indigenous peoples who depend on them.

PLEASE SIGN THE PETITION TO SUPPORT THEIR DEMANDS.

From 2006, under the Correa-Glas administration, Ecuador contracted record levels of external debt forhighway and hydroelectric dam infrastructure to subsidize mining. Foreign investments were guaranteed by a corporate friendly international arbitration system, facilitated by the World Bank which had earlier set the stage for the current calamity by funding mineralogical surveys of national parks and other protected areas and advising the administration on dismantling of laws and regulations protecting the environment.

After 2008, when Ecuador defaulted on $3.2 billion worth of its national debt, it borrowed $15 billion from China, to be paid back in the form of oil and mineral exports. These deals have been fraught with corruption. Underselling, bribery and the laundering of money via offshore accounts are routine practice in the Ecuadorean business class, and the Chinese companies who now hold concessions over vast tracts of Ecuadorean land are no cleaner. Before leaving office Correa-Glas removed much of the regulation that had been holding the mining industry in check. And the corruption goes much deeper than mere  bribes.

The lure of mining is a deadly mirage. The impacts of large-scale open pit mining within rainforest watersheds include mass deforestation, erosion, the contamination of water sources by toxins such as lead and arsenic,  and desertification. A lush rainforest transforms into an arid wasteland incapable of sustaining either ecosystems or human beings.

Without a huge outcry both within Ecuador and around the world, the biological gems and pristine rivers and streams will be destroyed.

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Civil society needs an open conversation with the state. Ecuador has enormous potential to develop its economy based on renewable energy and its rich biodiversity can support a large ecotourism industry. In 2010 Costa Rica banned open-pit mining, and today has socioeconomic indicators better than Ecuador’s. Costa Rica also provides a ‘Payment for Ecosystem Services’ to landholders, and through this scheme has actually increased its rainforest area (from 20% to just over 50%).

Ecuador’s society and government must explore how an economy based on the sustainable use of pristine water sources, the country’s incomparable forests, and other natural resources is superior to an economy based on short term extraction leaving behind a despoiled and impoverished landscape. For example,  studies by Earth Economics in the Intag region of Ecuador (where some of the new mining concessions are located) show that ecosystem services and sustainable development would offer a better economic solution let alone ecological and social.

The Rainforest Information Centre is launching a CROWDFUND to support Ecuadorean NGO’s to mobilise and to mount a publicity and education campaign and to help advance a dialogue throughout Ecuador and beyond: ‘Extractivism, economic diversification and prospects for sustainable development in Ecuador’.

We have set the crowdfund target at A$15,000 and Paul Gilding, ex-CEO of Greenpeace International is getting the ball rolling with an offer to match all donations $ for $ so that every $ that you donate will be matched by Paul. Donations are tax-deductible in Australia and the US.

When you sign the PETITION you will reach not just to the President of Ecuador and his cabinet. The petition is also addressed to the other actors who have set the stage for this calamity, being:

• The World Bank who funded a project which collected geochemical data from 3.6 million hectares of Western Ecuador including seven national protected areas and dozens of forest reserves thus doing the groundwork for the mining industry.
• The international governments and NGO’s who funded the creation and upkeep of these Bosques Protectores and indigenous reserves and other protected sites and who now need to persuade Ecuador to prevent their good work from being undone.
• The governments of the countries whose mining companies are preparing this devastation.

Australian senator Lee Rhiannon (who was part of helping us create Los Cedros 30 years ago) wrote to the Canadian Environment Minister on our behalf and the Canadian Embassy has expressed concern about the bad name Cornerstone is giving the other Canadian mining projects. They have asked us for a meeting to discuss the reports of bad business practices by the company. Likewise, the Chinese government is beginning to develop some guidance which will come into effect in March 2018. We are lobbying the Australian government to put pressure on BHP, Solgold and other Australian companies preparing to mine protected forests and indigenous reserves in Ecuador.

Visit Ecuador Endangered for more links to the history and causes of Ecuador’s mining crisis. There you will find research, detailed reports and news updates. Contact information can be found for those wanting to be involved in the campaign, which is being run entirely by volunteers. To let the Ecuadorean Government, World Bank and mining companies know you want them to invest in a sustainable future for all, a petition can be found here.

Stop This Shaming Of Menstruation

Shobha Shukla

(CNS): The photograph accompanying this article, was clicked on Chinese New Year (16th February 2018) in Chiang Mai, Thailand. It is a signpost/ notice written in Thai, English and Chinese (in that order) in a temple, having a statue of Ganesha, situated in the heart of the city in front of Maya Mall. I reproduce the English version:

“1. Women during pregnancy and menstruation are not allowed to visit

1. Non vegetarian food and some fruits such as sapodilla plum, monkey apple, custard apple, langsad (langsart) and longkong are strictly not allowed
2. Please take off your shoes

Thank you for your prompt compliance with this notification.”

This disgustingly shocking and audacious signpost appears in a country where women value their bodily autonomy and rights fiercely, or so do I believe. This seems to be the work of some ignorant and conservative religious Hindu outfit that is up in arms against gender equality, but, of course it must be having the sanction of the concerned local authorities. I do not know if there have been protests against this disparaging and discriminatory directive.

Perhaps for Thai women the notice does not merit any attention, as they couldn’t care less, having already achieved a high level of independence. But in countries like India, sexual and reproductive health and rights, that are an integral part of gender justice, are still a far cry for most women. Bizarre cultural beliefs regarding menstruation are very much prevalent India and Nepal (and maybe in other countries of this region too).

Break taboos around menstruation

Menstruation in India has always been surrounded by myths and is still a taboo topic, that is discussed in hushed tones, if at all. In Indian culture, women are believed to be unclean and impure while menstruating, and are thus forbidden to enter temples or take part in religious activities. Menstruating women are also deemed unhygienic and hence not allowed to cook food or even touch certain food items like pickles etc. for fear of contaminating them. These practices are rampant in even the so-called educated households. In Nepal, the local Hindu culture dictates that women live in a cattle shed or a makeshift hut during menstruation- a practise known as Chhaupadi. It was banned by the Nepalese Supreme Court in 2005, but is still prevalent.

Yet, we all know that menstruation is a normal biological process and that menstruating girls and women are not unclean, rather they are normal and healthy. Also as long as general hygiene measures are followed, no scientific test has shown menstruation as the reason for spoilage of any food.

When women are treated differently because of a naturally occurring cyclic phenomenon, it creates shame, embarrassment and humiliation and adversely impacts their mental and physical health, as well as their right to equality in various spheres of life. A large number of girls are forced to drop out of school in rural India because of menstruation.

It is important to combat the myths and social taboos associated with menstruation to, not only improve the reproductive health of girls/women, but also allow them equal opportunities and not restrict them in their daily lives simply because they are menstruating. Feminist organisations across the region have been fighting against these and other discriminatory practices that are so rampant even today in some societies.

The afore mentioned notice goes one step further by barring pregnant women too from the temple premises, as if they too are unfit to enter the sanctum. Whew!

Subtly trying to perpetrate such decadent beliefs (all in the name of religion), and that too in a progressive country like Thailand, is a dangerous trend and must be nipped in the bud. Statements like these simply endorse stereotype practices that are an affront to the dignity of womanhood and stumbling blocks in the path of achieving gender justice. Women human rights defenders have to be vigilant evermore to prevent the spreading of such false propaganda.

Netanyahu’s Corruption: How Israeli Journalists Project Israel’s Crimes On To Palestinians

Ramzy Baroud

In an article published in Al-Monitor without a single verifiable citation, Israeli journalist, Shlomi Eldar, went to unprecedented lengths to divert attention from the corruption in his country.

He spoke of Palestinian journalists – all speaking on condition of anonymity – who ‘applauded’ and ‘admired’ Israeli media coverage of corruption scandals surrounding the country’s rightwing Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.

Eldar’s approach is underhanded and journalistically unsound.

The Israeli media, which has largely supported Netanyahu’s devastating wars on Gaza, continues to relentlessly defend the illegal occupation of Palestine and to serve as a shield for Israel’s stained reputation on the international stage. It is hardly praiseworthy, even if it arguably provides decent coverage for the Netanyahu investigations.

For an Israeli journalist to handpick a few Palestinians who, allegedly, praised the war crimes-apologist Israeli media is a remarkable event that surely cannot be satisfactorily addressed in anonymity.

But Eldar’s journalism aside, one would think that seeking Palestinian admiration for Israeli media should be the least urgent question to address at this time. Others are far more pressing. For example:

Is corruption among Israel’s political elite symptomatic of greater moral and other forms of corruption that have afflicted the entire society?

And, why is it that, while Netanyahu is being indicted for bribery, no Israeli official is ever indicted for war crimes against Palestinians?

In fact, well before Netanyahu’s corruption scandals included more serious charges – for instance, quid pro quo deals in which his advisors tried to manipulate media coverage in his favor and offering high political positions in exchange for favors – it included bribes pertaining to fancy cigars and expensive drinks.

What Israelis are trying to tell us is that, despite all of its problems, Israel is a good, transparent, law-abiding and democratic society.

This is precisely why Eldar wrote his article. The outcome was a familiar act of intellectual hubris that we have grown familiar with.

Eldar even cites a supposedly former Palestinian prisoner who told Al-Monitor that, while in prison, “we learned how the democratic election process works in Israel. The prisoners adopted the system in order to elect their leadership in a totally democratic fashion, while ensuring freedom of choice.”

Others cited their favorite Israeli journalist, some of whom have served and continue to serve as mouthpieces for official Israeli hasbara (propaganda).

Many of Israel’s friends in western governments and corporate media have also contributed to this opportunistic style of journalism; they come to the rescue when times are hard, to find ways to praise Israel and to chastise Palestinians and Arabs, even if the latter are not relevant to the discussion, whatsoever.

Who could ever forget US Senator John McCain’s criticism of his country’s torture of prisoners at the height of the so-called ‘war on terror’? His rationale was that such a war can be won without torture, because Israel ‘doesn’t torture’ and yet it is capable of combating ‘Palestinian terrorism’.

Thousands of Palestinians have been tortured, and hundreds were killed under duress in Israeli prisons, the last of whom was Yaseen Omar on the day when this article was written. Moreover, according to the Palestinians Prisoners’ Club, 60% of Palestinian children arrested by Israel are also tortured.

If Israeli media was truly honest in its depiction of Netanyahu’s corruption, it would have made a point of highlighting the extent to which corruption goes well beyond the prime minister, his wife and a few close confidantes, but this would pierce through the entire legal, political and business establishment rendering the system itself as rotten and corrupt.

Instead, the heart of the discussion is relocated somewhere else entirely. In Eldar’s article, for example, he quotes the anonymous Palestinian who speaks about how Palestinians prisoners “rejected the political systems of Arab states and opted for the one they had absorbed from the ‘Israeli enemy’.”

This Israeli obsession of diverting from the discussion is an old tactic. Whenever Israel is in the dock for whatever problem it has invited upon others or itself, it immediately fashions an Arab enemy to beat down, chastise and blame.

In the final analysis, somehow Israel maintains the upper hand and self-granted moral ascendency.

This is also why Israelis refer to their country as “the only democracy in the Middle East”. It is a defense mechanism to divert from the fact that apartheid, racially-structured political systems are inherently undemocratic. So, Israel resorts to belittling its neighbors to confirm its own self-worth.

When Israel facilitated and helped carry out the Sabra and Shatila Massacre in Lebanon in September 1982, it used the same logic to defend itself against media outrage.

The then Israeli Prime Minister, Menachem Begin, was quoted as saying “the goyim kill goyim, and they blame the Jews.” By ‘they’ he meant the media.

The bottom line is always this: Israel is blameless no matter the hideousness of the act; it is superior and more civilized, and, according to Eldar’s selective reporting, even Palestinians know it.

But where is the outrage by Eldar and his Israeli media champions as thousands of black men and women are being caged in by Israeli police, ready for deportation, for committing the mortal sin of daring to escape war in their countries and seeking refuge in Israel?

How about the millions of besieged and subjugated Palestinians living a bitter existence under an inhumane military occupation?

Should not the Israeli media be targeting the very legal and political structures in their country that makes it okay to imprison a whole nation in defiance of international and human rights law?

In some strange way, corruption is one of few things that is truly normal about Israel, for it is a shared quality with every single country in the world.

What is not normal, and should never be normalized, is that Israel is the only country in the world that continues to practice Apartheid, many years after it was disbanded in South Africa.

Israeli media would rather delay that discussion indefinitely, a cowardly act that is neither admirable nor praiseworthy.

South East Asia Getting Killed By Logging And Mining

Andre Vltchek

When an airplane is approaching Singapore Changi Airport, it makesthe final approach either from the direction of Peninsular Malaysia, or from theIndonesian island of Batam.

Either way, the scope for natural disaster under the wings is of monumental proportions.

All the primary forest ofthe Malaysian state bordering Singapore –Johor – is now gone and the tremendous sprawl of scarred land, mostly covered by palm oil plantations, is expanding far towards the horizon. The predictable plantation gridpattern is only interrupted by motorways, contained human settlements, and by few, mostly palm oil-related industrial structures.

On the Indonesian side, the Island of Batam resemblesa horror apocalyptic movie: there is always some thicksmoke rising towards the sky, and there are clearly visible, badly planned and terribly constructed towns and villages. Water around the island is of a dubious, frightening color. The environmental destruction is absolute. Batam was supposed to be theIndonesian answer to Singapore. Indonesia was dreaming about a modern mega city with a super airport and port, dotted with factories, research centers and shopping facilities. But the turbo-capitalist country hoped that all this would be created by the private sector. That was of course, unrealistic. What followed was an absolute disaster.

As it is now, Batam is nothing more than a series of ‘Potemkin Villages’, complete with several potholed four-lane roads that lead nowhere. As for the research: there is hardly any science even in Jakarta or Bandung, let alone here. After several attempts to ‘save face’ and to cover up this massive failure, the island has been allowed to ‘sink’ back to where it had already been for several decades:a huge whorehouse for predominantly Singaporean and Malaysian sextourists;a cheap shopping district selling mainly counterfeit goods, a place notorious for lacking even the most basic public services.

No heads were made to roll for this monumental and thoroughly stupid set of failures. The obedient business-owned media is hardly ever critical of the Indonesian regime and its business ‘elites’. But the impact of the ‘Batam experiment’ is enormous – there is no intact nature left on the entire island.

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What goes on in the Southern Part of Southeast Asia?

Is nature of absolutely no concern to the Malaysian and especially Indonesian governments, businessconglomerates and society?

The problem here is that everything above and below the ground has been, for years and decades, viewed as a source of potential profit. It isonly valued if it can be exploited, if there can be a price tag attached to it.No sentimentality, no thoughts about beauty! Here, greed has alreadyreached insane proportions.

Like in the West, big companies in several Southeast Asian countries are now running and selecting the governments. They are also controlling the mass media, infiltrating social networks. To criticize great logging and palm oil companies in Malaysia is lethal, literally suicidal, and almost no one dares to do it.In the past, some did, and died. The same can be said about ‘illegal’ gold mining, logging and other extraction ventures in Indonesia, where much of the unsavory mining and logging enterprises are in the hands of the police, military or of government officials (the interests of all three branches are also often intertwined).

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Places like Borneo and Sumatra are finished; almost all of their legendary wildlife habitatsare devastated. Hundreds of species are gone or almost extinct. The once mighty, primary forests are squeezed into a few national parks, and even those are often being used for commercial farming, and also for palm oil plantations.

It is not just an issue of ‘disappearing beauty’ and biodiversity. Borneo (known as Kalimantan in Indonesia) used to be on par with Amazonia, functioning as the lungs of the Earth. It is the third largest island on our planet (and the largest one in Asia), and it is fully and some would now say irreversibly plundered. In Indonesia, deadly chemicals used on the palm oil plantations are killing tens of thousands of people with cancer, although you’d have to work deep in the villages to figure out the truth, as no reliable statistics exist and the issue is highly ‘sensitive’, as is everything that is horrible and sinister in this part of the world. Many rivers, including Kapuas, contain ridiculously highlevels of mercury, the result of illegal but openly practiced gold mining.

To see some parts of Borneo from the air is like observing an enormous, nightmarish and rotting wreck of a ship: black scars, brown scars, and dark zigzagging open veins ofwhat used to be, a long time ago, tremendous and proud, as well as pristine, waterways.

What has been done to Indonesian-controlled Papua by Indonesian companies and by Western multi-national mining conglomerates is indescribable. Apart from committing genocide against the local population, the entire half of this tremendous island, which used to be inhabited by hundreds of local tribes, is now being ‘exposed’, forced open, and literally raped. Of course, as an anti-Communist warrior and obedient pro-business client state, Indonesia is almost never criticized by the West.The genocides it has been committing since 1965 are either sponsored or at least supported from Washington, London and Canberra.

Malaysian and Indonesian logging and mining companies do not stop at committing crimes at home – they go far, to other Asian countries, but also deep into Oceania, places like the Solomon Islands and Papua New Guinea (PNG), where I witnessed on several occasions the full destruction of both nature and human cultures; a nightmare which I described in detail in my book Oceania.

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I am relentlessly documenting what is happening toSoutheast Asia in the books that I am writing (alone and with local authors), as well as in my upcoming films. I’m in the middle of producing a filmabout the fate of Borneo island, a place which is becoming dearer and dearer to me, the more devastated it gets.

The more I witness andthe more I document, the more hopeless I often feel. It is because there seems to be almost no place which is capable of resistingthe onslaught.

I am writing this essay on board Malaysian Airlines flights. The first one took me from the city of Miri (a state of Sarawak in Borneo, Malaysia) to Kuala Lumpur, the second from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok.

After filming on several occasions in the totally violated Indonesian Kalimantan, I hoped to see something optimistic in Malaysian Sarawak; something that could be used as an inspiration for the future of the incomparably poorer and much more corrupt Indonesian part of the island. This time I drove all around the city of Miri, and then I crossed the border and drove further into Brunei. I flew inside tiny propeller planes over the jungle, or what is still left of it. I took a narrow motorized makeshift canoe.

Yes, I saw few beautiful national parks and traditional longhouses. And I was surprised to find out that the filthy rich but politically and religiously oppressive sultanate of Brunei Darussalam, with its brutal and extreme implementation of Sharia Law, unbridled consumerism and worshipped oil industry, is actually doing incomparably better job than Indonesia and even Malaysia, at least environmentally. It is at least protecting its nature, including the rainforest. Brunei’s untouched, pristine native forest begins just a few miles from the coast,from its oil wells and refineries.

But when I rented a narrow shabby longboat, deep in the interior of Sarawak, I encountered total misery and devastation. The road was great, most likely constructed precisely for moving quickly and efficiently, both timber and palm oil fruit. Several schools and medical facilities looked modern. But most of the locals do not live near the roads – they dwell, traditionally, along the rivers. And there, the situation is totally different: people residing in poor, primitive shacks, children and adults swimming in desperately polluted waterways, while stumps of trees ‘decorating’ stinking, muddy shores.

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Some would say that Southeast Asia is not alone. In many ways, the West already ‘rearranged’ its nature decades and centuries ago. In densely populated countries like Italy or Netherlands, very little of the original nature is lefttoday. In the United States, the original meadows and pristine grasslands gave way to commercial fields; to agricultural mass production.

What shocks in Southeast Asia is not the fact that people want to make a living out of their land. It is the brutality of the systematic destruction of majestic mountains and hills, of mighty rivers, lakes, shores as well as the irreversibility of the changes that come with cutting down almost all native rainforest, replacing it with chemically-boosted palm oil and rubber plantations.

Most of those who would be allowed to see those monstrous coal mines dotting Indonesian Borneo would be terrified. Endless sprawls of palm oil (and literally imprisoned villages, squeezed by it as in a straightjacket) could perhaps outrage even the most hardened pro-market fundamentalists, who would bother to visit from other parts of the world.

Or maybe not… The multi-national ‘mining horrors’ that are being described to me by my friends and colleagues,who are presently working in Peru, are somehow comparable. What I saw in the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) shows the same spite that many Western companies and governments have for the local people.

What I find truly ‘unique’ in Southeast Asia, is the totality of destruction. The number of animal and bird species that are already gone, or are disappearing or have been simply hunted down, or the number of hopelessly polluted rivers; the forests and jungles that are stolen from the native inhabitants.

The speed is yet another shocking factor. It is all happening extremely fast. No wonder that Green Peace put Indonesia on the list of the Guinness Book of Records as the fastest destroyer of the tropical forests on Earth.

What is left of the Indonesian forests is being either logged out or is systematically burning. Thick smog travels, periodically, from Sumatra to Singapore and peninsula Malaysia, creating a health hazard, shutting down schools and tormenting people suffering from asthma and other respiratory problems.

But Indonesia is big, the fourth most populous country on Earth. It does what it wants, and it appears that it cannot be stopped. Or more precisely, its rulers and business elites are doing what they want. And, as long as it fits into the agenda of their Western handlers (and it usually does), the country is enjoying almost total impunity.

Of course, those who are suffering the most are the local people themselves, as well as countless defenseless species, be they animals, birds, fish, trees, or plants.

Soon, nothing original will be left here. Billions of dollars will be made by those very few rich, and the poor majority will be stuck with the coolie’s jobs. The plundering of the environment is creating dependency syndrome and very little advancement for the society. The money flows, but not where it is supposed to flow.

Like in the Gulf, almost nothing or very little is being invested into science, technology, the arts and creative sectors

Ruined islands and peninsulas will keep producing ‘blood fruits’. Land owners, corrupt politicians, middlemen and traders will keep getting outrageously rich. But the great majority of people will have to get used to living with a polluted and totally unnatural environment. They’d be stuck, in fact most of them are already stuck, in some sort of depressing concentration camps surrounded by unnatural, hostile crops, and by the chemically-contaminated land.

All this will continue until who knows what terrifying and bitter end, unless, of course, the people of Southeast Asia will finally wake up, and instead of accepting this present turbo-capitalist model, begin to think and dream about the “Ecological Civilization” and other marvelous cutting-edge philosophies that are flowingout from China and other non-conformist parts of the world.

Peru’s president proposes minimum wage hike in bid to divert impeachment drive

Cesar Uco

Peru’s discredited President Pedro Pablo Kuczynski (PPK) has issued an unexpected call to reconvene the National Labor Council—Consejo Nacional del Trabajo (CNT)—to push for an 8 percent increase in Peru’s Remuneración Mínima Vital (RMV), or minimum wage. This desperate populist appeal comes as the chances of Kuczynski finishing his term appear to be dwindling, while his approval rating has fallen to 19 percent.

Beginning on February 20, the Technical Commission for Productivity and Minimum Wage of the CNT began an evaluation of country’s economic conditions and is to issue its findings on March 6.

It is estimated that an increase in the minimum wage will affect only 2.8 percent of the Economically Active Population (EAP). One newspaper columnist dismissed the paltry measure as the president “playing to the public,” as the threat of impeachment hangs over his head.

The average monthly wage of workers in the informal sector (the majority) is 976 soles ($300) a month, that is, 126 soles or 14.8 percent above the current minimum wage (RMV) of 850 soles per month ($262).

Workers in the formal sector, which is where an increase in the RMV would apply, make on average 2,415 soles per month ($743), 2.84 times more than the RMV.

Current struggles by workers in the formal sector are directed at securing far greater increases than the miserable amount proposed by PPK for those eking out a living on the minimum wage. Health care workers, for example, are demanding a 26 percent pay hike.

Nevertheless, raising the issue of wages has political consequences extending beyond the mere 2.8 percent of the workforce that would reap any benefit. The public debate around the president’s decision to touch on such a delicate matter as wages has led to a series of declarations that shed light on the enormous contradictions wracking the Peruvian economy, in general, and its labor force, in particular.

The extreme right has expressed concern that PPK’s call to raise the RMV is irresponsible.

Speaking for the wealthiest Peruvian capitalists, Roque Benavides, president of the National Confederation of Private Enterprises (Confied) and owner of Mina Buenaventura, which in the 1980s was one of the largest gold mines in the world, known for its contempt for labor rights and for contaminating the Cajamarca ecosystem, told the Peruvian media that the measure would create unemployment and stimulate growth of the informal sector.

The message from Peruvian capitalist class is clear: any bid to increase the minimum wage will seized upon as a pretext for firing workers and imposing productivity increases upon those who remain.

Peru’s minimum wage ranks eighth in the region, with Argentina, Uruguay and Chile being at the top, and Colombia’s minimum wage on a par with Peru’s.

PPK’s call for an 8 percent hike has sparked demands for a far larger increase, raising the minimum wage to between 1,500 ($462) to 1,700 soles ($523), which would match the minimum wage prevailing in Argentina and Uruguay.

Between 2008 and 2013, Peru’s GDP grew at 10.7 percent annually, while the RMV grew from 550 to 750 soles per month, an annual increase of just 6.4 percent. A section of the bourgeoisie became very rich, increasing the gap between a small number of wealthy people at the top and the growing ranks of Peruvians who struggle to make ends meet.

Left bourgeois politicians and trade union bureaucrats have supported the call for raising the RMV to between 1,500 and 1,700 soles.

Among these are Justiniano Apaza, congressman for Frente Amplio, César Bazán, president of Central Unitaria de Trabajadores del Perú (CUT) and Carmela Sifuentes, the vice-president of the Stalinist-controlled Confederación General de Trabajadores del Perú (CGTP). The role of these elements has always been to subordinate the workers’ movement to the bourgeois state and prevent the organization of any genuinely independent struggle of Peruvian workers against the capitalist system.

In late December, Kuczynski was able to avoid impeachment when he secured votes in exchange for pardoning former president Alberto Fujimori, who was serving a 25 year sentence for crimes against humanity stemming from death squad massacres of workers and students. PPK took advantage of an internal struggle within the fujimorista Frente Popular between the dictatorial former president’s two children: FP leader Keiko Fujimori and her younger brother Kenji, who since then has been expelled from the FP. Supporters of Kenji voted against impeachment.

However, there have since been new revelations presented to the ongoing congressional investigation into the president’s ties to dirty deals made between his companies and the Peruvian state. In the 1990s, PPK purchased 25 percent of a construction company Cosapi, using money from his Latin American Enterprise fund. As part of the deal, he secured two seats on the board of directors.

During his years as minister of economy, finance minister and primer minister, he resigned his positions on the company’s board, but continued owning a 25 percent share of Cosapi. It is against the law for public functionaries to own more than 5 percent of a company that does business with the state. It is estimated that Cosapi earned $100 million from its multiple government contracts.

In addition, PPK lied when he said he never met with his partner, Chilean multimillionaire Geraldo Sepulveda, who had taken over the responsibilities of managing PPK’s companies. It has come to light that the two met on at least three occasions while Kuczynski was serving as a government minister. Banco de Credito del Peru informed the Peruvian Lava Jato Commission, which is investigating bribes and corruption connected to government contracts with Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht, that PPK’s companies executed more than 140 transactions with the Peruvian government.

Facing a possible new vote for impeachment, the crisis of Kuczynski’s administration has been further exacerbated by the deteriorating economic conditions in Peru.

The country’s economy shrank in 2015 and 2016, and in 2017 GDP grew an anemic 2.5 percent. Industrial production, however, dropped by 3.5 percent in the last month of the year.

Meanwhile, the country confronts a growing fiscal deficit: state revenues from tax collections have declined from 17 percent of GDP in 2012 to 12 percent today.

The construction industry has diminished substantially over the last two years, partially affected by the paralysis of projects which involved Odebrecht bribes and payoffs. Multibillion dollar investments in mining and infrastructure have also slowed due to the Odebrecht scandal.

Kuczynski’s proposal for an insignificant 8 percent wage increase limited to 2.8 percent of the labor force will do nothing to reverse the decline in growth, the mounting fiscal deficit and the reality of a two tier wage system – one formal with better wages and higher productivity and a much larger and growing informal sector with lower wages and productivity. Nor will it ameliorate the crisis of class rule, which involves not merely the impeachment of PPK, but the discrediting of all of the bourgeois parties, which like him are deeply implicated in crimes and corruption.

Skoda workers in the Czech Republic prepare to strike

Ulrich Rippert 

At the end of last week the online magazine automobil-produktion.de reported on strike preparations at the three major Czech Skoda factories: Mlada Boleslav, Kvasiny and Vrchlabi. The main plant, Mlada Boleslav, is located near the capital Prague. Skoda belongs to the VW group, its factories in the Czech Republic are state-of-the-art and make an important contribution to the profits of the parent company.

According to the report, the union bargaining committee rejected a wage offer by management as a provocation and the Czech metalworkers’ union Kovo then threatened the carmaker with an “unlimited strike.”

The recent proposals from the employers’ side were like a “slap in the face,” said union representative Jaroslav Povsik after the fourth round of negotiations on Wednesday last week. Unless the corporate board made a much better offer, a major labour dispute was inevitable, he said.

At the beginning of the negotiations the union had demanded an 18 percent wage increase, and management then offered 14 percent, but with a 27-month term, which equates to less than 6 percent per annum. At the same time management demanded a very extensive flexibilization of the existing shift model with the aim of significantly increasing labour productivity.

The work pressure on employees is already very high. Last year, Skoda delivered a record number of vehicles, more than 1.2 million, an increase of 6.6 percent compared to the previous year. With a total of nearly 30,000 employees, Skoda manufactures the Octavia model in Mlada Boleslav.

Volkswagen is one of the largest employers and exporters in the Czech Republic. Within the VW Group, the plant is considered one of the most modern and productive. In addition to VW-Skoda, Toyota, Peugeot Citroën and Hyundai are also produced in the Czech Republic. The corporations not only value the central location in the middle of Europe and the good infrastructure, but also the low costs, especially the low wages. Because of its many car factories, the Czech Republic is often referred to as the “Detroit of the East.”

Last year, the metalworkers’ union threatened to strike, but agreed a rotten compromise at the last moment. Even now, the union is trying to avoid a strike. But resistance in the workplace is constantly increasing and the union fears losing control.

According to the European Trade Union Institute (ETUI), the wage gap between Western and Eastern Europe has increased significantly in recent years. On average, a Czech worker earns just one-third of what workers earn in Germany or Austria.

In addition, the inflation rate is increasing; last year, the official inflation rate tripled and is now at 2.4 percent.

The strike by drivers from the regional bus company in the Czech Republic last spring drew attention to the low wages that prevail in that country. Many drivers are forced to work at the minimum wage, which is just under 98 kroner (3.62 euros) for one hour of driving and 88 kroner (3.25 euros) for a waiting hour. Although allowances of about six kroner (22 euro cents) are added, this is a pittance given food prices, which are determined by German and French companies and do not differ from the Western price levels. Many workers must work 60, 70 or more hours a week and still cannot make ends meet.

The strike preparations at Skoda are part of a growing radicalization of workers in Eastern Europe, who are no longer prepared to accept the extreme conditions of exploitation that have been enforced over the past two decades by German corporations in close cooperation with the EU.

In Slovakia, more than 8,000 workers went on strike at the VW plant in Bratislava in the early summer of last year, and finally settled with a pay rise of over 14 percent. In August, the workforce at the VW Palmela plant in Portugal protested against the planned introduction of Saturday working with a 24-hour strike. According to the union, a large part of the approximately 3,500 workers participated in the first strike since the founding of the plant in 1991.

The same month, in Poland, VW employees in Poznań set up a factory group (Workers’ Initiative) of the Inicjatywa Pracownicza union in opposition to the Solidarność group. VW had fired three workers because they had exchanged messages on Facebook about the miserable working conditions and had announced the establishment of an alternative union group. According to Labornet, despite repression, the group in Poznań now has 300 members and an influx of younger workers and temporary workers, who make up around one-third of the country’s approximately 10,000 VW employees.

At the end of December 2017, around 1,000 Ford workers launched a spontaneous strike in Craiova, south-eastern Romania, after the Sindicatul Ford Automobile Craiova union signed a deal with the company that involved a massive deterioration in working conditions. The agreement signed by the union was intended to freeze the salaries of long-term workers and reduce the wages of newly hired workers to levels below the minimum wage.

At that time, the World Socialist Web Site Autoworker Newsletter was received with great interest by the strikers. It wrote, “The transnational corporations have an international strategy to wage war against the working class. The workers must therefore develop their own international strategy to wage the class struggle to defend their interests. Isolated from their brothers and sisters around the world, the workers at Craiova are pawns in the hands of the multinational corporations and their union allies. But Romanian workers confront the same issues as their international co-workers, and united they possess a tremendous social power: the company’s profits come from the exploitation of their labor.”

In view of the preparations for a strike at Skoda in the Czech Republic these words are highly relevant.

The UK lecturer’s dispute and the marketisation of higher education

Thomas Scripps

University and College Union (UCU) lecturers remain engaged in a major strike against planned cuts to their pensions. The significance of this struggle must not be underestimated.

Contrary to what the union says, this is not simply an avoidable dispute over the single issue of pensions. The attack on university lecturers is one element in a far advanced programme aimed at the destruction of higher education as it has been known for decades.

On April 1, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE), which distributes funds across the sector, will be abolished. Its duties will instead be divided up between the newly created Office for Students and United Kingdom Research and Innovation. Both are part of the Conservative Government’s Higher Education and Research Bill aimed at further opening of the higher education “market” to “alternative providers”—private institutions—and creating greater competition within the sector.

A significant expansion of for-profit providers has been accompanied by abolishing the cap on student numbers at any institution. Now, those higher education facilities marked under a new system as so-called “quality” providers will be permitted to raise tuition fees above the current £9,250 per annum.

The government has presented this as beneficial to students who, as consumers, will be able “shop” around for the best courses. What it really means is the complete privatisation of higher education, with only the wealthiest students able to get so-called “quality” degrees.

Those universities unable to raise sufficient funds—through either higher fees or other sources—will be allowed to go bust. Figures released in January show that many universities and higher education facilities in working class areas such as Sunderland, Wolverhampton and London Metropolitan (east London) could face closure.

This is the real background to the pension dispute. It is an integral part of the marketisation and fragmentation of higher education across England that will have disastrous consequences for students and academics alike.

In a policy document in August 2017, “Suitability and Sustainability: pensions in the higher education sector,” Universities UK (UUK)—in usual corporate doublespeak—declared:

“More than ever, institutions believe that achieving long-term stability of pension provision is critical and that cost and risk must be better controlled…”

“... It is evident that uniform pension solutions are no longer suitable for an increasingly divergent higher education sector. Institutions have different strategic priorities, with some wanting more flexibility in the reward package they are able to offer... ” [emphasis added].

The UCU is fully aware of the direction of travel. In 2011, the Universities Superannuation Scheme (USS) closed its final salary scheme to new members and replaced it with a “career average revalued earnings” scheme. The age at which it was possible to draw a pension was raised from 60 to the state retirement age and employees’ contributions were hiked up from 6.35 percent to 7.5 percent of salaries.

According to a research study carried out by finance academics at the Universities of Bath and Reading, new hires joining the average salary scheme lost 65 percent of their pension wealth, equivalent to a reduction of roughly 11 percent in their total compensation, or a 13 percent cut in their salaries compared to those on the final salary scheme.

For the universities, this equated to a massive reduction in their pension costs of 26 percent. The changes also saved the government a total of £2.86 billion in reduced tax reliefs like income tax and National Insurance Contributions. £1.86 billion of those savings were taken off the lecturers.

A significant, but deliberately uncommented upon, change was the introduction of “cap and share” –whereby universities collectively and individually abrogated their responsibility for meeting promised pensions. The new scheme split any future cost rises and risks between members and employers, 35 percent and 65 percent respectively. Before 2011, any university failing to fund its pension scheme would be bailed out by the others under the “balance of cost” scheme.

Despite the scale of the attack underway, the UCU called off strikes opposing these attacks and accepted the changes in 2012.

This paved the way for the next assault on pensions in 2015. The employers closed the final-salary pension scheme and transferred lecturers onto the career average scheme. Benefits previously accrued were to be protected, but frozen at the level as of March 2016 with an annual increase according to inflation. Lecturers’ contributions rose again, now to 8 percent. Again, UCU organised no resistance, despite strong opposition on the part of lecturers. A token, two-day strike over pay, pensions and conditions was held in 2016, at a time when teaching had stopped for most undergraduates.

The cuts have been carried out in the context of a massive casualisation of higher education work, with attendant losses in pay and job security. Higher education is the second most casualised sector after hospitality: 46 percent of universities (and 60 percent of colleges) use zero-hours contracts to deliver teaching, while 68 percent of research staff in higher education are on fixed-term contracts.

The UCU organises around 40 percent of workers in higher and further education and this strike involves less than half its total membership--those still covered by the Universities Superannuation Scheme. The union's membership declined from 120,000 in 2007 to 104,000 in the year to August 2016.

Now forced into action, the UCU is deliberately concealing the broader political and economic implications of the attack on pensions. It makes no reference to the marketisation and privatisation of education. This is not accidental. The UCU is making plain that it is not in the business of organising students and academics in a joint struggle for free, fully funded higher education as a right. By confining the issue solely to pensions—and those of only a fraction of university staff at that—it is demobilizing opposition and preparing sellout backroom negotiations .

In fact, far from challenging the marketisation agenda and its consequences, UCU are promoting the idea of the “student consumer.” They have endorsed the fact that nearly 115,000 students have now signed petitions calling for compensation for classes missed due to the strike. This campaign is being used by the government and university employers to carry out attacks on higher education. It further provides a cover for universities to arrange scabbing operations to minimise the “cost” to their student customers.

That is why it has been taken up by the Conservative Government’s Universities Minister, Sam Gyimah, who said that as students “are paying the salaries of the striking staff” they should be able to claim compensation. This could include lecturers having to provide the classes missed due to the strike at other times, or universities using the “money that they save from not paying striking staff into student support funds.”

Likewise, the National Union of Students (NUS) is limiting student support for the industrial action to token “sympathy” stunts, based on the argument that the pension cuts will “lead to a demotivated and unhappy workforce and consequent recruitment and retention problems as staff vote with their feet and move elsewhere.” Both the NUS and the UCU have complained that they are not represented on the board of the Office for Students, making clear their willingness to work with the government in imposing its agenda.

The defense of higher education pensions and working conditions can only be successful as part of a wider struggle in defense of education as a social right. Workers and students must break with these bankrupt organisations and organise their own rank-and-file committees across schools, colleges and universities on a platform of opposition to all forms of marketisation and privatisation as well as their consequences.

Xi Jinping’s power grab: Bonapartism with Chinese characteristics

Peter Symonds

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) regime has made a sharp break from the norms of the past three decades by moving to end the two-term limit for the post of president. As a result, Xi Jinping, who has consolidated his control over the military and state apparatus and purged key political rivals over the past five years, will be able remain in office indefinitely.

Xi’s emergence as China’s political strongman is not a function of his personal characteristics, but rather is a reflection above all of the extreme social tensions wracking the country. Confronting a deteriorating economy and the prospect of social upheaval, the Chinese bureaucracy is desperately seeking to consolidate its forces around the figure of Xi—a form of rule that Marxists have classically designated as Bonapartist.

Writing on the acute political crisis in Germany in 1932, Leon Trotsky explained the essential characteristics of Bonapartism: “As soon as the struggle of two social strata—the haves and the have-nots, the exploiters and the exploited—reaches its highest tension, the conditions are established for the domination of bureaucracy, police, soldiery. The government becomes ‘independent’ of society. Let us once more recall: if two forks are stuck symmetrically into a cork, the latter can stand even on the head of a pin. That is precisely the schema of Bonapartism.” [Germany: The Only Road]

After three decades of capitalist restoration, the CCP has transformed China into one of the most unequal countries in the world. At one pole of society, over 300 dollar billionaires—more than any country other than the United States—rake in enormous profits and live extravagant lifestyles. At the other, hundreds of millions of workers and peasants struggle to make ends meet, many still living in abject poverty.

In the past, the CCP regime relied on very high levels of growth to curb joblessness and ward off social unrest. But since the global financial crisis of 2008/09, the Chinese economy has continued to slow to levels well below 8 percent growth, which was long regarded as a crucial benchmark to maintain social stability. Moreover, the mechanisms that were used to boost growth—massive stimulus packages—have generated huge levels of debt that threaten to trigger a financial meltdown.

At the same time, China confronts extreme geo-political tensions and the rising threat of conflict, above all with the United States, which under Obama and Trump has aggressively sought to undermine China economically and diplomatically particularly in the Asia Pacific, all the while building up its military forces in Asia in preparation for war. Trump’s bellicose threats of war against North Korea and military confrontation in the South China Sea are aimed against China, which US imperialism regards as the chief obstacle to its global hegemony.

Confronted with dangers at home and abroad, the CCP apparatus has strengthened the hand of Xi hoping he will be able to counter Washington, and suppress any movement of the massive Chinese working class, now numbering 400 million. However, as Leon Trotsky explained, Bonapartism rests on an inherently unstable and temporary balance of class forces—the bourgeoisie can find no other way out of its crisis, while the working class is unable, at present, to find the road to power.

The announcement that the CCP will abandon its two-term restriction on the Chinese presidency has provoked shock, condemnation, concern and calls for action in the Western media. The US and its allies had expected, as the New York Times put it in its editorial, that the opening up of China in the late 1970s would lead to its integration into the post-World War II framework and that “economic progress would lead eventually to political liberalisation”.

In reality, the US was hoping that “political liberalisation” for an expanded Chinese middle class—not the working class—could be manipulated to fashion a regime more closely aligned with Washington. That prospect has now been dashed by the installation, for the indefinite future, of a Chinese leader who has proven unwilling to immediately buckle to US demands and has sought to counter Washington’s belligerence.

With staggering hypocrisy, the New York Times editorial declares that China is “challenging the liberal order based on the rule of law, human rights, open debate, free-market economics and a preference for elected leaders who leave office peacefully after a fixed period.” It warns: “Despite increasing concerns about China’s evolution, the West has yet to come to grips with this threat.”

The New York Times touts the virtues of Western democracies right at the point where fundamental democratic rights and legal norms are under attack in the US, Europe and around the world, corporate giants such as Facebook and Google censor the Internet on behalf of Washington, and police state measures are being directed against workers and youth.

It is not only in China and Russia that the ruling classes have concluded that a political strongman is the only means of protecting their interests. The same basic social and economic processes—above all, acute social tensions generated by the enormous and widening gulf between rich and poor—are driving the bourgeoisie in so-called liberal democracies to autocratic forms of rule.

In the United States, the fascistic President Trump presides over an administration dominated by generals and billionaires as he prepares for trade war, and war against China, and the build-up of the police - military apparatus against the working class. In Germany, an acute political crisis that left the country without a government for months has only been resolved through what is effectively a parliamentary dictatorship in the form of a grand coalition of establishment parties. In France, Macron, who was propelled into the presidency by the collapse of the traditional parties, is using draconian labour decrees to crush opposition by workers to privatisation and the destruction of jobs and conditions.

The deep frustration felt in ruling circles around the world with democratic processes and the failure of governments to overcome opposition to austerity was summed up by Australian retail billionaire Gerry Harvey following another inconclusive result in the 2016 federal election. “The only cure we’ve got is to have a dictator like in China or something like that. Our democracy at the moment is not working,” Harvey declared.

Workers and youth should take the sharpest warning from this accelerating trend toward Bonapartism and other autocratic forms of rule. Democratic rights can only be defended on the basis of the struggle by the working class to overthrow capitalism, which is producing the impulses towards dictatorship, and refashion society on socialist lines.

Musical Chairs in China’s Parliament

Srikanth Kondapalli


On 26 February, the Central Committee of the ruling Communist Party of China (CCP) proposed a series of constitutional amendments including changing the two-term norm for the president and vice-president posts. No specific term period was mentioned in the proposals – suggesting numerous terms or even for life - which are expected to be ratified by the country’s parliament, the National People’s Congress (NPC), shortly. 

Ever since the 19th party congress took place in October 2017, speculation was rife about the terms of the central leaders in China. This is because out of the seven most powerful politburo standing committee members, according to the party norm of compulsory retirement after attaining 68 years of age, 6 out of the 7 (that is, except Zhao Leji) will have to retire at the next party congress in 2021, including Xi Jinping. 

This is seen as a deliberate attempt by Xi Jinping and others to create uncertainty in the ruling party succession saga which since the late Deng Xiaoping has been tailor-made to succession events.  Thus Deng selected Jiang Zemin due to his role in the suppression of students, workers and peasants in Shanghai in the tumultuous events of 1989. Jiang ruled from 1989 to 2002. Likewise, Hu Jintao, Xi’s predecessor, ruled China from 2002-12 due to his role in Tibet following the Nobel Prize for the Dalai Lama. 

However, the current amendments are for the posts of president and vice-president – the top functionaries of the state and not the party – thus leaving scope for intense bargaining and politicking in the next four years in the party echelons. 

For, in China, supreme power rests with the general secretary of the Communist Party, but more precisely with the chairman of the Central Military Commission (CMC). Many presidents of China before - Xiannian or Yang Shangkun – were considered powerless or even rubber-stamps, and in the later years of his leadership,  Deng Xiaoping was in fact only the head of billiards association!  Many general secretaries of the party were also powerless - including Deng Xiaoping himself in the 1950s under Mao Zedong’s leadership, or Zhao Ziyang during the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989 under Deng. Deng even removed the party secretary Zhao for sympathising with the students in Tiananmen.

The most powerful position in China has been the Chairman of the CMC of the party, although a similar and parallel post exists under the state (People’s Republic of China). Mao was chairman of the CMC from 1935 till his death in 1976, followed for a brief period by Hua Guofeng from 1976 to 1978, when Deng took the reins till 1989. Jiang chaired the party CMC till 2004 (two years extra), while Hu gave up this position by 2012 to Xi. Xi today is the president of the state but most importantly the chair of the CMC of the party.

While Mao emphasised the party more (and at times the masses – the Red Guards), Deng began the process of guojiahua (strengthening state institutions) to counter lawlessness during the Gang of Four period of the 1970s. Deng also abolished life terms for the party functionaries, which the current amendment in the NPC intends to institutionalise for the state functionaries. 

Overall, the current amendments – although they pertain to state (PRC) functionaries such as the president and vice-president – in the run-up to the 20th party congress four years down the line could provide precedent for Xi to promote himself for a third (or potentially more terms) in the powerful party positions. This is the significance of the current amendments. With these measures, Xi is likely to further centralise powers.

Secondly, while Deng argued for accountability as the Gang of Four usurped state and party functions, Xi appears to be moving away from Deng, although the political disturbances like in the 1970s do not exist in China today. Of course, Xi’s anti-corruption drive in the party and the state has rattled the rank and file. Xi suggests this drive, which was a party directive at the 4th plenum of the 18th party congress in 2014, as essential in reinforcing the rule of law. 

Thirdly, the amendments to the state functionaries could impact China's long-term economic diversification and consolidation of the “medium high” economic growth rates as set by the 19th party congress. It could also restructure the economy for domestic consumption and hence sustainable development. The speculation about Liu He for the posts of vice-premier indicates this direction. 

Fourthly, while the current amendments have a more domestic political flavour, continuity of state (and later, party) terms for Xi and others are likely to lead to an uninterrupted implementation of the party agenda as set in October 2017. Xi laid down a long-term road map for 2050 to make China occupy the "centre stage" in global and regional issues and realise "socialist modernisation". More terms for Xi could put the party/state in this direction without hiccups. A more assertive Xi – as reflected in the militarisation of the South China Sea, forays into Senkaku Islands held by Japan, or on the border with India – could as well resolve these issues in favour of China.  The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was incorporated in the party constitution in October, and whose footprint expands to Europe, Asia and Africa, could also be consolidated further. 

All in all, the proposed amendments to the top state functionaries are likely to gather storm in China’s politics in the coming years, thus further consolidating Xi’s power. This is also likely to increase the chasm between political factions domestically, and amplify China’s frictions abroad.