Indonesian economy contracts for first time in over two decades

Owen Howell

As a result of the global coronavirus pandemic, Indonesia’s economy has suffered its first contraction in more than two decades. The steep decline in economic activity this year has had an impact far greater than previously anticipated, with the threat of recession looming.

Indonesia, Southeast Asia’s largest economy, saw its gross domestic product (GDP) shrink by 5.3 percent year-on-year in the second quarter, according to data from Statistics Indonesia released last Wednesday. The country’s last contraction occurred in the first quarter of 1999, at the tail-end of the Asian financial crisis.

Over the course of the 2000s, economic growth recovered from that economic shock and accelerated to over 4 ̶ 6 percent, becoming the fastest growing economy in the region outside China. Since 2012, however, annual GDP growth has decreased to around 5 percent.

After President Joko Widodo assumed office in 2014, his administration took measures to ease regulations for foreign direct investment, in an effort to stimulate a slowing economy. Even before the pandemic struck, the government was confronting mounting problems, including a weakening currency, decreasing exports, and stagnating consumer spending.

The partial lockdown imposed in April dealt major blows to manufacturing and retail sales. The economy, having grown in the first quarter by almost 3 percent, was expected to shrink 4.6 percent in the April ̶ June quarter, according to a Reuters poll of analysts.

The broad scope of the pandemic impact was also unforeseen, with businesses delaying investments and households curbing spending. Exports were also hit by lower global demand and commodity prices. Indonesian shares responded negatively to Wednesday’s released data, with the benchmark stock index slipping nearly 0.3 percent.

The government has attempted to counteract the pandemic’s impact with a fiscal stimulus in which thus far has amounted to $US48 billion. However, experts are suggesting the GDP will likely contract again in the third quarter, albeit at a slower rate, putting the economy formally in recession. Anwita Basu of Fitch Solutions, in comments to the Australian Financial Review, predicted a 4.5 percent contraction.

Amid warnings that Indonesia’s recovery could be the slowest in Southeast Asia, the finance ministry projected that the economy could shrink by 0.4 percent for the full year. The World Bank has predicted a far worse outcome: output could contract by as much as 3.5 per cent in 2020, a disastrous result for an emerging economy.

The government this month unveiled a $US40 billion debt monetisation scheme. Bank of Indonesia, the nation’s central bank, pledged to buy $US28 billion of government bonds while relinquishing interest payments. The bank has cut its key interest rates four times this year by a total of 100 basis points, in a drastic bid to promote economic growth.

Despite these measures, economists are urging Widodo’s government to further ramp up state spending to prevent a recession. “The economic performance will depend heavily on whether the government can accelerate spending to jack up growth,” Bank Central Asia economist David Sumual told the Jakarta Post last week Wednesday.

At the outset of the global downturn in March, Widodo announced a regulation that would waive a cap on a maximum budget deficit for three years. This allowed Bank Indonesia extraordinary powers to funnel huge sums of money into the financial sector. Following this aggressive intervention came a protracted series of stimulus packages, directed almost exclusively at bailing out the corporations and amounting to 15.7 percent of the total budget.

The government’s relentless drive to resume production, even as the pandemic ravages the population, is an expression of its desperation to prevent a liquidity crisis and economic collapse. In fact, its response to the pandemic, from the beginning, has been motivated solely by a concern over its impact on corporate profits.

The belated implementation of limited lockdown measures in April brought production across a range of industries to a grinding halt. These were largely confined to capital city Jakarta, where the transnational corporations are largely based.

In early June, authorities began to ease restrictions and force workers to return to their jobs, hoping to stir production back to life. The attempted reopening, however, has aggravated the spread of the virus, now present in all 34 provinces. Reluctantly, the government has extended movement restrictions in virus hotspots until August 13.

With thousands of new cases discovered each day, the infection tally has grown to 118,753 nationwide. In an article in the Sydney Morning Herald last week, two of the country’s leading epidemiologists agreed that the actual number of cases could have already topped one million, or nearly 10 times the official figure. This would place Indonesia at fourth position in the world’s coronavirus rankings.

The official death toll of 5,521 deaths also grossly underrepresents the actual devastation of the virus. Last month, national coronavirus watchdog Kawal COVID-19 showed that there were at least another 7,360 deaths among suspected patients, who died before being tested.

Health care in Indonesia faces imminent collapse as hospitals fill up across the archipelago. With scarce resources in protective equipment, testing facilities, and even staff, the medical system has been criminally neglected, even while funds are endlessly rolled out to big business to prop up the failing stock markets.

Meanwhile, the government is pressing ahead with economic reopening. Late last month, the national coronavirus taskforce was replaced by a COVID-19 Mitigation and Economic Recovery Committee, consisting mostly of financial ministers, headed by billionaire media tycoon and State-Owned Enterprises Minister Erick Thohir. The decision was widely regarded by commentators as a further shift in priorities towards economic recovery despite the ongoing public health catastrophe.

The revival of the tourism industry, a critical source of GDP, is proceeding at a frantic pace. Initiatives include the reopening of Bali to international tourists next month, the redevelopment of villages around Lake Toba, and the building of port infrastructure in Padang, West Sumatra.

This is entirely in keeping with the pro-business character of Widodo’s government. Following last year’s election victory, he embarked upon policies including tax breaks for the wealthy and international investors, privatisation of water supplies, further undermining of environment regulations, and tighter limitations on the state’s anti-corruption body.

The economic crisis triggered by the pandemic will have an immense social impact, creating the conditions for social upheavals. Around 3.7 million workers have lost their jobs so far this year, according to the National Development Planning Agency, with the number expected to hit 10 million by the end of the year. Although millions of workers now face the prospect of poverty and hunger, social welfare packages have been slow and totally inadequate.

The Indonesian ruling class is keenly aware of the pandemic’s social consequences. Confronted with mass student protests and mounting unrest last October, Widodo selected a number of military figures and Suharto-era generals for his incoming national cabinet. In March, when widespread opposition to his pandemic response first emerged, Widodo said the government was prepared to impose martial law.

As US cruise industry delays operations until November, thousands of seafarers remain stranded

Tom Casey

On August 5, the Cruise Line Industry Association (CLIA) announced that it would continue its voluntary suspension of operations in US waters until October 31. This decision marks the third instance of an effective extension of the cruise industry’s US hiatus since CLIA initially announced the suspension in conjunction with the American Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) no-sail order on March 14.

Celebrity Solstice and Azamara Journey turned away from the Port Chalmers, NZ. (Credit: Alistair Paterson, Wikimedia Commons)

In mid-March, countries around the world began to restrict their borders to international maritime passenger travel. What was initially only a US shutdown quickly became a worldwide pause in the entire industry.

A Friday article in USAToday chronicling the most recent CLIA extension estimated that approximately 12,000 cruise workers remain marooned in US waters — a number down from the 70,000 reported in early May, which is a further reduction from the 93,000 reported by the US Coast Guard (USCG) in mid-April. Internationally, there were approximately 100,000 more crewmembers left stranded at the onset of the pandemic and there likely remain thousands worldwide.

The World Socialist Web Site has widely reported on the desperate conditions facing cruise workers from dozens of countries who remain stuck on vessels. In what the International Maritime Organization deemed to be a “humanitarian and safety crisis” for seafarers, there have been nearly a hundred onboard COVID-19 outbreaks, well over a dozen disease-related crewmember deaths, and several other employee deaths suspected to have been suicides.

A cruise worker stranded on a ship near the coast of Brazil spoke to the WSWS about the conditions that crew on her ship were facing. The employee, who wished to remain anonymous, has been at sea for five months with no clear plan for repatriation. “It’s absolutely absurd — nobody responsible is willing to put themselves in our shoes. We are tired, and our depression is going to kill us. We have lost our appetites, and we can’t sleep. Believe me when I say that it’s a really hard time for us.”

Friday’s USAToday report repeats the narrative common in tourism and business publications that governmental port and health agencies — not the cruise lines themselves — have been largely to blame for the failure to repatriate tens of thousands of crewmembers. The article quotes CLIA’s Executive Committee Global Chair Adam M Goldstein who states “there are a lot of countries [to which] you would normally take air transportation or [to which] you might find yourself going from home port to home country on ground transportation … Borders started to be closed, and (crew members) couldn’t access normal routes.”

While the article cites the government of Mauritius and the Philippines as examples of countries whose policies have restricted the repatriation of seafarers, it also cites Goldstein bemoaning the CDC’s restrictive guidelines for travel from within the US. “The industry had faced challenges early on trying to repatriate crew members in the U.S., too… Particularly due to the CDC's stiff requirements for crew's use of commercial air travel,” the report states.

As the WSWS has documented, the government of Mauritius, a small island country in the western Indian Ocean with a population of under 1.3 million, has used the crisis facing seafarers to leverage a boom for its travel economy. In June, Mauritian Foreign Minister Nando Bodha announced a plan by the government, in a voluntary partnership with Air Mauritius Holdings Ltd., its biggest, privately held tourism conglomerate, to repatriate its citizens abroad with an inflated price tag of $1,300 (US) per individual returned.

Even if it were true that the border policies of governments of small countries like Mauritius and the Philippines have been the main obstacle for multibillion dollar cruise corporations’ safe repatriation of their employees — which is itself a highly questionable assertion — the notion that these companies are hapless middlemen, caught between seafarers desperate to return home and restrictive governmental agencies, is belied by the fact that the CDC has acted completely at the beck and call of the cruise industry.

The CDC’s initial no-sail order was put into effect in the closest collaboration with CLIA, spelling out the agency’s complete subservience to the industry. The CDC’s initial March 14 order reads, “[o]n March 13… CLIA and their associated members announced that all member cruise lines would voluntarily suspend cruise ship operations from U.S. … for 30 days.” It continues, “[f]ollowing the example set by CLIA members, additional cruise lines have also voluntarily suspended operations from U.S. ports of call. Although CLIA members and the additional cruise lines implementing a voluntary suspension of operations represent a large majority of the cruise industry, not all cruise lines or ships have announced a voluntary suspension of operations or that they will follow the important example set by CLIA members. This Order is intended to cover and specifically apply to those cruise lines or ships that do not undertake a voluntary suspension of operations.”

In other words, the CDC’s orders only apply to the small minority of cruise vessels whose operators choose not to comply with the CLIA’s voluntary industry suspension.

A separate USAToday report states that cruise lines, which are members of CLIA, comprise 95 percent of the world’s cruise vessels. The association names 28 companies on the list of its global cruise lines. Of these member brands, 20 fall under the ownership of three cruising mega-corporations — Carnival Corp. & plc (CCL), Royal Caribbean Group (RCCL), and Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL).

According to data provided by CruiseMarketWatch.com, brands under the CCL umbrella claimed a total of approximately 40 percent of the $45.6 billion total 2018 annual revenue of the industry. RCCL and NCL-owned companies claimed approximately 20 percent and 13 percent of this revenue respectively.

CLIA’s Global Executive Committee is composed of top former and current cruise line CEOs as well as other high-ranking officers in companies in the hospitality, tourism and entertainment industry. The collective personal net worth of CLIA’s Global Executive Committee is well over $5.5 billion dollars.

On April 9, the CDC issued a notice extending its no-sail order for an additional 100 days, expanding the domain of its directives to “any cruise ship that was previously excluded from the March 14, 2020 Order by virtue of having voluntarily suspended operations.” It also specified that all passenger ships in US waters would be required to implement safety procedures to “prevent, mitigate, and respond to the spread of COVID-19 on board cruise ships.”

Despite the CDC’s seemingly imperative language, however, the April memo explains in no uncertain terms that its “order” did not fall under the category of the Administrative Procedure Act (APA), the legal framework that has historically provided government oversight to private enterprises in the US. The document listed a series of intended onboard preventative health procedures, which had previously been agreed upon between the CDC and CLIA as early as April 3.

By June 19, CLIA announced that it would extend its voluntary suspension of sailings until September 15. This was followed by the CDC’s July 16 extension of its no-sail order to September 30.

Stranded cruise ship workers should be under no illusion that in the life-and-death crisis they and their families face, their employers have been merely helpless victims of the policies of worldwide governments. From the billions in profits generated by the global cruising industry, as well as the access to ready cash that has been guaranteed them by all of the major banks and the US financial system, the resources exist to ensure the safe repatriation for all seafarers around the world. It is the national profit interests and property rights of the global capitalist class that stand as the major obstacles to the fundamental right of seafarers to be returned home safely.

US nurses’ poll shows appalling working conditions in the pandemic

Julian James

Results from a survey on workplace safety recently conducted by the National Nurses United (NNU) have shed light on the myriad dangers US nurses face on the frontlines of the COVID-19 pandemic. These appalling conditions are a result of chronic unpreparedness and the reckless actions of hospital administrators. The results were posted on the NNU website and include the following:

• Only 24 percent of nurses think their employer is providing a safe workplace.
• 87 percent of nurses who work at hospitals reported reusing at least one piece of single-use PPE. Reusing single-use PPE is a dangerous practice that can increase exposures to nurses, other staff and to patients.
• 4 percent of nurses who work at hospitals say their employer has implemented a decontamination program to “clean” single-use PPE, such as N95 respirators, between uses. Decontamination of single-use PPE has not been proven to be safe nor effective.
• Just 23 percent of nurses reported they have been tested for COVID-19. A lack of testing jeopardizes nurses’ health and safety and their ability to protect their patients and families.
• 36 percent of nurses who work at hospitals are afraid of catching COVID-19 and 43 percent are afraid of infecting a family member.
• 27 percent of nurses who work at hospitals reported that staffing has gotten much worse recently. Short staffing is unsafe for patients and nurses. The likelihood of patient death increases by 7 percent for every additional patient in the average nurse’s workload in the hospital.

These results, together with the testimony of thousands of workers, paint a picture of a health care system that is incapable of taking basic measures to protect its workers. In private Facebook groups, interviews and through polling, nurses across the country are testifying to the dire workplace conditions and scarcity of essential tools needed for fighting the pandemic, especially virus tests and personal protective equipment (PPE).

This shocking level of unpreparedness was evident in the early stages of the pandemic—when trucks full of bodies idled on the streets of New York and protesting nurses were forced to wear garbage bags instead of medical gowns—has continued into mid-August, five months after the Trump administration declared a national emergency.

Asked to comment on the recent poll results, two nurses who both work at small hospitals in Western Massachusetts related their own experiences, on the condition their names be changed to protect their identity. Their statements overwhelmingly confirm the NNU findings.

Speaking on PPE and testing, Maya, a nurse in her 30s with 15 years of experience, said:

“At the beginning of the pandemic, some staff had to wear trash bags as gowns and staple used masks together because they were falling apart. Now the hospital is “re-sterilizing” masks, not an approved thing at all.

“Before, you took off your mask as soon as you left the patient’s bedside, and if you needed to go back in you would put on another mask. Now suddenly it’s fine to reuse the same one for a whole week. People got sick from the ‘re-sterilized’ masks, didn’t feel well, had syncopal [fainting] episodes and were passing out. Massachusetts Nursing Association (MNA), our s*** union who claims to be all powerful, fought it so now it’s not ‘forced,’ but we’re still bullied into using them by management.

“As for testing, we attest to no symptoms every day, but there is no actual testing being done. And if we travel outside Massachusetts, we don’t fall under the same quarantine rules as others. They just want a hot body. They say as long as we’re symptom-free we are fine to work.”

Asked to expand on her opinion of the MNA, Maya said,

“They’ve been ineffective since I got there. The local people try but don’t get the backing of higher-ups in the union. So yeah, they’ve been horrible, and we pay over a grand a year in dues.

David, another nurse in his 30s working at a semi-rural hospital in Western Massachusetts, spoke about how conditions deteriorated at outset of the pandemic:

“We didn’t have access to rapid testing because it initially wasn’t available anywhere. The hospital wouldn’t transfer patients from the Emergency Department (ED) to other units until results came back, except for ICU cases and those needing to be moved to another facility. So, patients were backing up in the ED, which used to back up sometimes before the pandemic if there were no beds available, but this was happening on a totally new scale.

“We still don’t have rapid testing, although the turnaround time has recently improved a lot (6-8 hours now). So there has been an uptick in falls and other predictable bad outcomes because of the buildup of patients. And the hospital’s answer is always more paperwork, which we don’t have time to fill out because we are already scrambling to care for patients. This proliferation of paperwork was already endemic but continues to increase.”

David went on to speculate that requirements for ever greater documentation are likely an attempt by the hospital to reduce its liabilities for the increased dangers patients face in a short-staffed ED. In this case, workers who were unable to document their every step could be more easily scapegoated when something goes wrong, even if the failure were due to critical short-staffing.

The dangers of low nurse-to-patient ratios are well documented as mentioned on the survey results sheet released by the NNU, which stated: “The likelihood of patient death increases by 7 percent for every additional patient in the average nurse’s workload in the hospital.” Along with layoffs and wage freezes, maintaining woefully inadequate nurse-to-patient ratios is one of the main ways that hospitals, for-profit and “non-profit” alike, seek to boost their bottom line.

Perhaps most essential to hospital balance sheets are the so-called “elective procedures,” a category defined as any procedure that can be scheduled beforehand. In reality, these procedures are often critical, and cover a broad range of treatments, from hip-replacements to surgical removal of cancer cells. In normal times, these operations account for a huge share of the tens-of-billions of dollars in combined profits of hospitals in the US.

Revenues resulting from the treatment of COVID-19 patients pale in comparison. As a Reuters article from March pointed out, “Hospitals administrators say high-margin services, such as orthopedic and heart procedures, can account for up to 80 percent of revenue, while infectious disease and intensive respiratory treatments are less profitable.”

The connection between the COVID-19 pandemic, falling profits and deteriorating working conditions/job losses is something that health care workers on the front lines are acutely aware of. As Maya stated:

“Hospitals across the country are drowning in debt right now. They only make money from certain departments, and those were all shut down at the beginning of the pandemic. So now we get the cuts and the layoffs. My wages and retirement benefits are frozen for the foreseeable future, and despite all the wage and benefit freezing they did a $6 million rebranding. So, all they care about now is elective procedures and I guarantee there will be forced overtime once they get the okay to continue.”

Maya also provided a damning account of the reckless decision-making of hospital administrators, their hostility toward workers and how these factors are helping fuel the skyrocketing rates of depression, anxiety and nervous breakdowns being experienced by hospital staff throughout the US.

“When changes are made,” she said, “admin doesn’t tell staff and then acts confused as to why none of us are following the rules. At one point, we were pulled from our jobs and redeployed to critical care units after just one four-hour class and one day to shadow. No warning. Never asked if we were okay with it. It was just, ‘If you want your job, you’ll do what we say when we say it.’

“And they laughed in our faces when we asked about hazard pay. We are being treated like pawns and our lives very clearly matter to no one. They spout in the news ‘thank you to health care heroes’ but what thanks do we get? We are all at the max of our emotional and psychological wellbeing and most of us are also on psych meds and/or on leave because of this.”

This is the state of affairs under capitalism, a system in which the lives of health care workers, like other members of the working class, are only valued to the degree they can be made to produce profits for stockholders and executives.

Louisiana Supreme Court denies review of Fair Wayne Bryant’s life sentence for allegedly stealing a pair of hedge clippers

Helen Halyard

Fair Wayne Bryant, now 60 years old, has spent the last 23 years at Angola State Penitentiary in Louisiana on one count of attempted simple burglary. This penitentiary is one of the largest, and most notoriously brutal, state institutions in the US.

The Louisiana Supreme Court building in New Orleans (Nolanwebb/Wikipedia)

In 2018, Bryant’s attorney Peggy Sullivan appealed his sentence before the Second Circuit Court of Louisiana, stating that her client “contends that his life sentence is unconstitutionally harsh and excessive.”

The state appellate court, after a hearing held in November 2019, maintained that the sentence was in accordance with the habitual offender law and no longer subject to review. That decision was then appealed to the seven-member Louisiana Supreme Court.

On August 5, with one dissenting vote, the other 6 Supreme Court justices declined to review the appeal upholding the decision of the State Appellate court that Bryant remain in jail for the rest of his life.

Bryant’s crime was attempting to steal a pair of hedge clippers.

Although Louisiana’s State Supreme Court refused to hear the case, Bryant will have one more chance at possible parole. An earlier ruling by the lower appeals court in 2018 stated that Bryant had been illegally denied parole eligibility. Bryant filed an appeal on July 21 and the Louisiana Committee on Parole will decide whether or not to hold a hearing. Even then, the final decision would be made by the board.

Upon reading about this case, one is reminded of Victor Hugo’s classic novel Les Misérables, which tells the story of Jean Valjean, a French peasant sentenced to 19 years in jail for having stolen a loaf of bread. But as Bryant was sentenced not to 19 years but to life in prison, here America compares unfavorably even to Hugo’s depiction of France under the Bourbon Restoration, when the French monarchy was re-established after the defeat of Napoleon.

This grueling and horrific experience for one count of alleged petty theft demonstrates the true face of justice in capitalist America. One finds one set of rules for the poor and oppressed and another set of rules for those who control the wealth and run the political and state institutions, including the police and courts and their representatives in the Democratic and Republican parties.

Less than two weeks before Bryant lost his appeal, the grotesquely misnamed “SAFE TO WORK” Act was introduced into Congress, which provide companies with legal immunity if their workers become seriously ill or die from the coronavirus after becoming infected at work.

Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the United States. According to a recent report from the ACLU, 1 out of every 86 residents in the state is in prison. A disproportionate number of inmates are black or another minority. The state’s prisoners suffer brutal treatment. The Angola Three, Herman Wallace, Albert Woodfox and Robert Hillary King, each spent 40 years in solitary confinement at Angola, the longest ever such period in prison history.

In her dissenting statement, Chief Justice Bernette Johnson wrote: “The sentence imposed is excessive and disproportionate to the offense the defendant committed. Mr. Bryant was sentenced, as a habitual offender, to life in prison for unsuccessfully attempting to make off with somebody else’s hedge clippers.” Johnson noted. In her dissent, she went on to review the conditions that this prisoner and thousands of others face in a state suffering from one of the highest poverty rates in the country.

“Mr. Bryant’s sentence is sanctioned under the habitual offender law because of his four prior convictions. His first conviction was attempted armed robbery in 1979, for which he was sentenced to 10 years at hard labor. He has had no more violent convictions. He was subsequently convicted of possession of stolen things in 1987; attempted forgery of a check worth $150 in 1989; and simple burglary of an inhabited dwelling on 19 March 1992. Each of these crimes was an effort to steal something. Such petty theft is frequently driven by the ravages of poverty or addiction, and often both.”

The Bryant case is the product of decades of bipartisan “law-and-order” campaigns. It was Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden who authored and promoted the “tough on crime” legislation passed 25 years ago, which was signed into law by then President Bill Clinton. This law was the one of the key factors in the explosion of mass incarceration beginning in the period of the 1990s. The bill led to longer prison sentences, a growth of the number of prison cells and a more aggressive policy of policing. Approximately 1,000 people are killed each year by US police.

Laws enacted in the state of Louisiana followed those of the federal government, including the habitual offender statute, which condemned thousands of young people to life imprisonment for minor offenses at one of the harshest prison facilities in the US.

In addition, large numbers of the country’s prison population are innocent. To date over 375 people have been exonerated through the Innocence Project based on DNA evidence and legal appeals.

On April 29, 2016, political prisoner Gary Tyler was freed at the age of 57 years old after spending his entire adult life at Angola for a crime he never committed. He was framed up at the age of 16 for the shooting death of Timothy Weber, a 13-year-old white student. The killing occurred in a racially charged atmosphere whipped up by elements such as David Duke, then emerging as a leading figure in the Louisiana and national Ku Klux Klan.

The Workers League (forerunner of the Socialist Equality Party) played a major role in campaigning for Gary Tyler’s freedom and carried out a determined national and international struggle to mobilize the working class in his defense.

Peru reopens economy as thousands of miners contract COVID-19

Mauricio Saavedra

The Peruvian government has reintroduced curfews and extended a military-enforced state of emergency and quarantines to 14 of the country’s 25 regions until the end of August following a record number of coronavirus infections. The restrictions of movement, first decreed in March, have not been applied to the lucrative mining sector, which the pro-business government of President Martín Vizcarra agreed to gradually restart when it classified mining as an “essential industry” earlier in May.

Antamina, a large copper and zinc mine located in the Andes, recorded 210 cornavirus cases earlier in the year. (Credit: Energiminas)

With 478,024 coronavirus cases, Peru has the third most infections in Latin America, and with over 21,000 fatalities, it has the highest per capita death toll in the region. The Pan American Health Organization is investigating whether the country failed to count another 27,000 deaths caused by COVID-19, which would raise the death toll to almost 50,000. The Washington Post reported last week that thousands of death certificates listing COVID-19 as one of several causes of death were not included in the country’s official toll “because the victims did not undergo a coronavirus test before dying.”

Underlying this immense suffering and death are the decades of structural adjustment programs prized by finance capital. Initiated by authoritarian president Alberto Fujimori in 1990, the Peruvian masses have been at the receiving end of policies that have been geared to meet the requirements of financial and corporate interests—mass layoffs through privatizations of state-owned industries, the elimination of job security laws and wage indexation, the privatization of social security and pension systems and the elimination of subsidies for basic foodstuffs and consumables. The systematic gutting of health budgets over years has left a nation of 33 million with a total of 1,606 ICU beds in private and public hospitals, and 90 percent of those are in use.

While the consequences of these policies were partially masked due to rapid growth of foreign direct investment in the mining sector during the 2000s as Peru opened up its economy to super-exploitation, the coronavirus pandemic has laid bare their true social cost.

The vast majority of workers are in the informal sector. Millions live a precarious existence without job security, minimum wage protection or access to social security. Lima, the country’s capital of some 10 million, has concentrated the majority of coronavirus cases in its overcrowded and impoverished working-class districts.

In the more isolated regions, where the indigenous and peasant communities reside among immense mining operations run by transnational corporations, extreme social inequality means that there is a lack of access to proper medical facilities and assistance amid an exponential growth of coronavirus cases. Arequipa, the second-most-populated Peruvian city, with 1 million inhabitants, and the commercial and industrial hub of the southern Andes, had just seven cases in March. By the end of the first week of August, Arequipa, now under quarantine, recorded 18,190 infections and 869 deaths.

The WSWS reported that in the first 10 days of the outbreak in March the Andean regions where the large export mining operations are concentrated—including Huancavelica, Ayacucho, Apurímac, Puno, Moquegua and Tacna in the south and Cajamarca in the far north—had recorded not a single coronavirus case. Today, each of these regions has thousands of cases and many hundreds have died: Huancavelica 2,148 infections (41 deaths), Ayacucho 4,603 (81), Apurímac 1,206 (42), Puno 3,211 (98), Moquegua 4,244 (128), Tacna 3,918 (44), and Cajamarca 7,974 (239).

More than 3,000 of these coronavirus cases are among workers in the mining sector, although this figure is incomplete, as the last official recording of cases in the mining industry was from the beginning of July. The Ministry of Energy and Mines has sought to downplay this by stating that the reported infections represent only 2 percent of all workers who have currently returned to operations, but it has sparked fury among mineworkers and local populations:

• More than 300 workers at Pan American Silver’s La Arena mine in the region of La Libertad downed tools to protest the growing number of COVID-19 cases at the mine and a lack of testing. Workers fear they could transmit the disease to their families when they go on break, according to a statement from the FNTMMSP, the national mining and metallurgical workers union.
• The population of Tambo Valley initiated protests opposing the reactivation of Southern Copper’s Tia Maria copper project, in the southern region of Arequipa for fear of further infections and concerns over toxic waste contamination.
• Social organizations and peasant communities denounced an “excessive presence” of trucks transporting minerals for Las Bambas mining company, in the region of Apurimac that exposed workers and communities to COVID-19.

Earlier in the year, the government responded to the economic crisis triggered by the coronavirus pandemic by implementing “Reactiva Peru,” a program worth some 60 billion soles (US$16.9 billion)—an amount equal to 11 percent of GDP. Its main purpose was to prevent a collapse in private credit through establishing a loan guarantee fund for business. Paltry handouts from these large sums were promised to the poorest, as more than one third of the workforce lost their jobs due to the pandemic.

In a spiraling economic and political crisis, President Vizcarra was forced for the second time in less than a month to reshuffle his cabinet after a vote of no confidence by the opposition-controlled Congress last week. Vizcarra replaced pro-mining Prime Minister Pedro Cateriano with retired Gen. Walter Martos, who made clear that his priority will be a continuation of the agenda of reopening the economy under conditions in which Peru’s central bank forecasts a 12.5 percent drop in the gross domestic product this year.

“The economy has to be revived gradually. We have to be very careful, but I think that returning to a total quarantine, at this time, would be very complicated,” Martos told TV Peru.

The Peruvian government, like its counterparts in other Latin American countries heavily tied to extractive industry exports, has sought to keep the mines operational. In March, while the giant domestic and international businesses that exploit Peru were obliged to reduce their workforces, they did not stop functioning. By July, as Vizcarra sought to reopen the economy despite the spike in cases, the Energy and Mines Ministry reported that mining was 90 percent operational.

Mining is the dominant sector of the Peruvian economy. Hundreds of billions of dollars of direct investment have flowed into mining exploration and exploitation over the past 20 years, and another US$58 billion were to be directly invested for FYI 2020-2021 before the pandemic stalled exploration activities. The government has earmarked another 30 billion soles (US$8.4 billion) to reactivate the mining industry.

Peru is among the world’s major producers of mineral commodities, which account for more than 60 percent of the country’s exports and 10 percent of its GDP. Copper and gold are the most important mineral exports by value, but there are also enormous reserves of silver, zinc, lead and tin. The mining sector, directly and indirectly, employs an estimated 1.5 million workers.

China is the largest foreign investor in Peru’s mining projects, but US, Canadian, Australian and British imperialism assert immense influence through the consortiums that control multibillion-dollar mining operations and projects. The most significant global players, including Anglo-American, Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Glencore, Freeport-McMoRan, MMG, Newmont, Pan American Silver, Barrick, Gold Fields, Southern Copper, Doe Run Peru, Consorcio Minero Horizonte, and ZINSA, enjoy some of the world’s most lax corporate laws.

Peruvian laws and regulations do not discriminate between national and foreign companies. There are no restrictions on repatriation of earnings, international transfers of capital, or currency exchange practices. The remittance of dividends, interests and royalties has no restrictions. Under a revised fiscal system, mining companies now pay royalties based on their operating profits rather than on sales.

“The fiscal changes introduced were largely supported by mining companies and according to industry analysts they have not adversely affected investment decisions or the degree of Peru’s mining sector competitiveness compared to other countries,” reports a website dedicated to providing investment intelligence for the mining sector.

Such is the dependency that, in the middle of this health and social catastrophe, Vizcarra has sought to facilitate further exploitation of the nation’s untapped riches by modifying regulations for mining activities, dispensing with even a modicum of ecological protection and allowing the consortiums to ride roughshod over the needs of the populations.

Pro-business Gestión reported that an amendment to the Environmental Protection Regulations for Mining Exploration seeks to provide “predictability” in decision-making, reduce transaction costs for mining licensees and help increase investment in the sector. In other words, any exploration project will go ahead with little state interference.

Driving this insatiable and criminal reopening of the economy is the 20.4 percent plunge in copper production in the first half of 2020 compared to the same period in 2019. Gold production fell 34.7 percent and zinc 23.7 percent. Lost profits need to be recouped, no matter the consequences. This is especially pressing today as the price of gold has reached a historic high and copper surpassed US$6,000 a tonne in June, up about 30 percent since March as both China and Europe begin reopening.

Mining activity always poses environmental risks. However, it is possible to scientifically foresee dangers and determine the safest methods of extraction to prevent deadly impacts upon workers, communities and the environment. This does not enter the calculations of the transnational and domestic mining giants or the governments that serve their interests. Countless catastrophic disasters caused by BHP Billiton, Rio Tinto, Barrick, BP et al., due to the anarchy and irrationality of capitalist production for profit, are only a taste of what is to come in Peru and Latin America and the rest of world if the working class does not politically intervene with a socialist program to resolve the political, social and economic crises facing humanity.

King Juan Carlos flees Spain to avoid corruption probe

Alejandro López

Former King Juan Carlos I de Borbón, who reigned from November 1975 until his abdication in June 2014, has fled Spain to evade investigation on charges on kickbacks and fraud.

Last week, the Royal Family posted a letter by Juan Carlos I to his son, King Felipe VI, informing him of his “well-considered decision to leave Spain”, adding: “It is a decision I take, with deep feeling but great calm. I was king of Spain for 40 years, and during all those years I have always wanted the best for Spain and the Crown.”

Now Juan Carlos has fled to the United Arab Emirates (UAE), where he reportedly occupies an entire floor at Abu Dhabi's five-star Emirates Palace hotel, under the protection of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Zayed al-Nahyan.

Juan Carlos’ departure is a humiliation for the Spanish ruling class and comes amid mounting infighting in the European bourgeoisie. Backed by Washington and the European Union, he was promoted as a leader who led Spain from fascism to democracy after dictator Francisco Franco’s death in 1975—stopping a military coup in 1981 and serving as head of state for nearly 40 years. His decision to flee Spain like a thief, to avoid a corruption probe after Swiss and Spanish prosecutors opened an investigation of his Swiss bank accounts, exposes the entire regime.

The crisis erupted two years ago when a British conservative newspaper, the Telegraph, leaked recordings of Juan Carlos’ mistress, businesswoman Corinna zu Sayn-Wittgenstein-Sayn, speaking to retired Spanish police chief José Manuel Villarejo. Villarejo is currently in jail awaiting trial over “Operation Tandem,” an investigation into two decades of illegal phone taps and other invasions of privacy on behalf of wealthy clients, corporations and banks against politicians, businessmen, judges and journalists.

Sayn-Wittgenstein claims Juan Carlos received kick-backs from commercial contracts in the Gulf States for the construction of the €6.7 billion Haramain high-speed railway in Saudi Arabia and kept the cash in a bank account in Switzerland. She also claims the head of the Spanish intelligence threatened her life and those of her children if she spoke of her ties to Juan Carlos.

The Spanish judiciary intervened to shelve the investigation. Prosecutors claimed the activities mentioned in the conversation occurred before Juan Carlos’s abdication, when he was still immune from prosecution. Almost simultaneously, Swiss prosecutors opened an investigation into a multi-million-euro donation received by Sayn-Wittgenstein from a Swiss bank account. She told investigators that the money was a donation from the former Spanish monarch.

In June 2019, Juan Carlos announced his intention to retire from public life in a letter addressed to Felipe. This was the first attempt of the Royal House to distance itself from Juan Carlos.

In March this year, as COVID-19 raged throughout Spain and Europe after decades of cuts in public health care budgets, the Telegraph reported that Felipe VI was a beneficiary with Juan Carlos of a foundation which received €65 million from Abdullah bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia.

Soon after, the Royal Household issued a statement claiming that Felipe VI would renounce any inheritance from his father. The former king also reportedly lost his stipend from the State’s General Budget—another attempt by Felipe VI to publicly distance himself from Juan Carlos.

Two months ago, the public prosecutor’s office of the Spanish Supreme Court opened an investigation against Juan Carlos regarding Saudi kickbacks.

In last week’s letter, Juan Carlos makes no statement of guilt or of regret. He claims, laughably, to be fleeing Spain in order “to serve the Spanish people.” His lawyer stated that “he remains at the disposal of the Prosecutor’s Office.” Juan Carlos also reportedly refused the option of settling his back taxes, which would mean handing over 60 percent of his wealth to the state.

Spain’s Socialist Party (PSOE)-Podemos government, the Royal Household and the media have intervened to defend the former monarch and his “historical legacy”. A press release signed by Felipe VI stated: “The king wants to highlight the historical importance that his father’s reign represents, as a legacy, political work and institutional service to Spain and to democracy.”

El País, the leading pro-PSOE daily, stated in an editorial that “the former king’s disappointing and less than exemplary behavior during the last years of his reign must not make anybody forget his irreplaceable contribution to the progress and freedom of all Spaniards during nearly half a century.” It called for national unity: “It is thus irresponsible to fan the flames of this institutional crisis at a time when the country needs stability, and when everyone should come together to deal with a devastating economic crisis that’s already here, as well as with a health crisis that refuses to go away.”

Juan Carlos and Spain’s Transition from fascist to parliamentary rule

In fact, the inglorious flight of Juan Carlos exposes the rotten regime set up by the NATO imperialist powers in the 1978 Transition from the fascist Francoite regime to Spain’s current parliamentary regime.

Juan Carlos was born in Rome in 1938 to the exiled pretender to the Spanish throne amid the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939) launched by the fascist coup of General Francisco Franco. During this three-year war, in which Franco allied with Nazi Germany and fascist Italy, at least 200,000 people died. Another 700,000 to 1 million people passed through nearly 300 concentration camps during and after the war. Another half-million fled Spain as refugees.

Franco restored the monarchy in 1947, and Juan Carlos was groomed as his successor. In 1969, he swore loyalty to the fascist Movimiento Nacional (National Movement); he was crowned two days after Franco’s death in 1975. Amid mass strikes and revolutionary struggles in Spain and across Europe in the 1960s and 1970s, factions of the regime led by Juan Carlos worked with the Spanish Socialist Party (PSOE) and the Stalinist Communist Party of Spain (PCE) to pilot a transition to defend the capitalist state and block a struggle of the working class for power.

The PCE played the central role in preventing a revolutionary reckoning with fascism and devising a new constitutional monarchy. Under the monarchy, Spanish fascism’s crimes were to be forgiven and forgotten, and capitalist property preserved. In 1978, a constitution was adopted that protected the king from any prosecution.

To this day, the Podemos leadership hails the leader of the Communist Party from the 1950s to the 1980s, Santiago Carrillo, for his role during the Transition. Carrillo, a mentor of Podemos General Secretary Pablo Iglesias, became close friends with Juan Carlos and a regular at his palace. The king reportedly called him “Don Santiago.”

By 1981, however, the Transition regime was already on the verge of collapse amid rising discontent in the working class. The press and sections of the ruling elite began to discuss the need for a “National Salvation” government under the premiership of General Armada, Juan Carlos’ chief mentor. This meant a supposedly non-violent removal of the democratically-elected government by the military, backed by a broad-based coalition cabinet including the PSOE.

On the evening of February 23, hundreds of Civil Guards burst into Parliament, brandishing pistols and sub-machine guns, taking the government and all 350 deputies hostage. To this day, it remains a state secret how much Juan Carlos new about the coup plotters’ intentions. The coup plotters claimed they acted in the name of the monarch. A German diplomat subsequently stated that Juan Carlos had told him he was in broad agreement with the plotters’ aims.

The PSOE, the Communist Party and its trade union, CC.OO, reacted with calculated impotence, refusing to call strikes or mobilize workers against the coup. Faced with a fascist coup, they simply called on workers to remain calm, defining the assault to parliament as an isolated event.

The coup did not succeed, however, as the majority of the bourgeoisie feared that installing another military junta would have provoked a response from the working class that had lived under fascist rule for four decades. Despite the PCE and PSOE, workers had already started organising defence committees in Andalucía and Asturias; strikes broke out in Barcelona, Madrid and other major cities. On February 26, demonstrations of more than 3 million participants, the most massive in Spain’s history, swept across the country.

Although it formally failed, the coup helped cement the post-Franco Transition regime. The PSOE won elections in 1982 with the backing of the PCE and of the forces from the post-1968 middle class student movement. Together with the right-wing Popular Party, these forces formed an entrenched pro-capitalist political duopoly committed to austerity and war.

For four decades, the Spanish population was routinely bombarded with claims that the king opposed the coup, and that his televised address calling for law and order and the continuation of the elected government—six hours after the coup began—saved democracy from fascism.

Already at this time, Juan Carlos was busy using his position to receive kickbacks. These date back to at least 1973, during the first oil crisis, when Franco sent him to Saudi Arabia to bargain with the House of Saud to cut the prices of Spain’s oil imports.

During the 1980s, Juan Carlos was known as “the king of Socialists” in the 1980s and 1990s due to his close ties to PSOE Prime Minister Felipe González. The González government let Juan Carlos continue his lucrative kickbacks and corruption deals involving the weapons trade, real estate and the arts. He also received large commissions for promoting products and tourist destinations.

His largest kickbacks came from his trips to ex-colonial countries with executives from Santander, Telefónica, BBVA, Inditex, Ibderdrola, OHL, Repsol—the biggest corporations in Spain’s Ibex-35 stock market. In these trips to promote “Spanish brands,” they struck deals worth billions of euros, looting these countries in the process. These looting operations handsomely benefited the king personally.

Podemos defends the Spanish monarchy

The crisis of the monarchy intensified particularly amid the mounting social inequality and social anger caused by deep EU austerity measures that followed the 2008 economic crash. In 2014, Juan Carlos abdicated after years of scandals, including his hunting trips worth thousands of dollars in African countries as workers in Spain and across Europe saw their jobs and meager wages slashed, or the Nóos corruption case involving his daughter, Princess Cristina.

Today, Podemos is intervening to defend the 1978 consensus and the Monarchy. Last December, Iglesias claimed that Monarchy “is not in crisis, and I speak as a republican.” He also hailed Felipe VI’s daughter, Leonor, “who aspires to be head of state, speaking in perfect Catalan.”

Now, desperately trying to cover its tracks amid rising social anger, Podemos leaders are claiming that they were not aware that the government supported the former monarch’s decision to flee, even though Iglesias is deputy Prime Minister. Their complaint is that this is an embarrassment for Spain. In words of Iglesias, the “flight” was “an unworthy attitude of a former head of state,” which Iglesias fears will leave the monarchy “in a very compromised position.”

Podemos is now flirting with calls for a referendum on the republic or a monarchy, even though the party’s parliamentary spokesperson, Jaume Asens, declared this “practically impossible” due to the opposition of the government partner of Podemos, the PSOE.

The main aim of such debates is to boost their tattering left credentials as the PSOE-Podemos government is increasingly associated with austerity, pro-militarist policies, regime change in Latin America and attacks on democratic rights.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, Podemos has championed back-to-work, back-to-school and deconfinement policies. Its most recent action has been to hail the recent EU bailout funneling €750 billion to the banks and corporations. The package imposes austerity across Europe, while laying down the axes on which the European imperialist powers will pursue militarist and economic policies targeting China and the United States.

Juan Carlos’ decision to flee corruption charges in Spain only underscores the profound corruption of the entire social and political order defended by Podemos and Deputy Prime Minister Pablo Iglesias.

Philippines not to join wargames in the South China Sea

Joseph Santolan

On August 3, Philippine Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana announced that President Rodrigo Duterte had issued a standing order that “we should not involve ourselves in exercises in the South China Sea, except in our national waters, 12 miles of our shores.” Lorenzana added that this order was given in an attempt to “keep a lid on tensions” in the region.

The announcement that the Philippines would not be joining the US war games in the disputed waters comes amid a dramatic escalation of Washington’s preparations for war with China. In an attempt to contain the explosive social crisis engendered by the US government’s criminal mishandling of the COVID-19 epidemic, Washington has brought the world to the brink of a war between two nuclear-armed powers.

The US is attempting, through military and economic measures, to prepare a regime change in Beijing. Over the past month, Washington has carried out a series of provocations, accusing China of spying, closing the Houston consulate, banning Chinese social media apps, and sending a cabinet official to Taipei.

On July 23, US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo announced that the United States was not pursuing a policy of “containment,” indicating that the United States was pursuing a course of direct conflict with China in pursuit of regime change.

Pompeo’s statement came on the heels of his announcement on July 13 that the United States rejected all Chinese maritime claims beyond the country’s 12-nautical mile territorial limit. He denounced China’s claims in the South China Sea as “unlawful.”

Pompeo based his statement on the 2016 Arbitration ruling of the International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea (ITLOS), which rejected aspects of Beijing’s territorial claim. The case in The Hague was introduced by the Philippines under then President Benigno Aquino III, but the arguments were drawn up in Washington and were argued by US attorneys.

As the ruling was handed down in mid-July 2016, Duterte was just taking office. Looking to pursue improved economic ties with Beijing to fund his proposed infrastructural investment, he downplayed the significance of the ruling, refusing to take aggressive action against China’s claims in the South China Sea.

Washington was left with a carefully crafted legal pretext against China but without a client-state through which to pursue it.

On July 22, as Washington dismissed China’s claim as “unlawful,” the Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Teodoro Locsin referred to the South China Sea as “an avenue of cooperation” by China and the Philippines and declared that the two countries should not stumble over a territorial dispute over small marine “features,” which he characterized as a “pebble” on that avenue.

The Chinese ambassador to Manila, Huang Xiliang, issued a statement embracing Locsin’s formulation and Locsin responded by tweet, “Agree to disagree on the Arbitral Award. Civilized.”

Without explicitly naming the United States, Huang spoke of the challenges to relations between Manila and Beijing. “Glutted with cold-war mentality, some superpower is instigating the containment and oppression of China in every possible way, trying to sow discord among regional countries, and even forcing them to choose sides,” he stated.

The position taken by Manila over the past four years, completely undermines Washington’s posturing as the defender of legal norms and the “freedom of navigation” in the South China Sea.

The South China Sea is one of the most heavily trafficked bodies of water in the world. The only threat to freedom of navigation in these waters is the imminent danger of war, which is a direct result of the reckless aggressiveness of Washington.

For years, Washington has presented its military maneuvers in the South China Sea, each of which has brought the world closer to a possible catastrophic war, as being in defense of “freedom” and of the rights of the smaller countries in the region.

Now, as Manila, the official legal claimant in the ITLOS case, seeks to “agree to disagree” with China, Washington announces that it does not matter what any of the involved actors want, the United States rejects China’s claim and will enforce “freedom” at gunpoint.

Over the past weeks, Washington has staged military exercises involving two aircraft carriers in the disputed South China Sea. The military preparations for war are far advanced. In July, the United States deployed 67 large reconnaissance planes to the South China Sea. Several of the US planes flew provocative reconnaissance missions along the Chinese coast.

At the same time, the Trump administration has pursued increased diplomatic ties with Taiwan, further challenging the One China policy established by Nixon and Kissinger as the bedrock for US-China relations. On Sunday, US Health Secretary Alex Azar became the first US cabinet level official to visit Taipei.

The ruling class opposition to Duterte in the Philippines has sought over the course of several years to channel the growing levels of social unrest behind Washington’s war drive against China. They have repeatedly claimed that Duterte is a pawn of Beijing.

They have sharply escalated this rhetoric as COVID-19 ravages the country, a result of the government’s authoritarian and incompetent handling of the epidemic. Following Washington's lead, they have blamed China for the outbreak and attacked the fascistic Duterte from the right, denouncing him for being unwilling to prosecute a war with China.

Adopting a page from his playbook, they have employed misogynistic language, producing a number of social media posts that claimed his unwillingness to attack China proved that he did not “have any balls.”

Former Senator Antonio Trillanes declared that Duterte’s directive not to engage in joint exercises in the South China Sea “is a clear manifestation of Philippine support of China’s foreign policy in the West Philippine Sea.” The West Philippine Sea is the nationalist designation of the Philippine claimed portion of the disputed South China Sea.

Trillanes continued, “the message of the Duterte government to China is unambiguous subservience.” Significantly, Trillanes was the leader of multiple military coup attempts in 2003 and 2007.

The Philippines is Washington’s former colony. The United States has used the country and its pliant leaders to whatever geopolitical ends it desired for over a century. Hundreds of thousands of US troops were based in the country, at Clark Air Base and Subic Naval Base. Washington bombed Indonesia and Vietnam from planes that were took off from the Philippines. The country figures prominently in Washington’s war plans with China. The Pentagon wants its bases back.

During his State of the Nation Address in July, Duterte stated, “I read somewhere… that the Americans intend to come back to Subic.” He announced that he would not allow a return of US military bases to the country, declaring, “If you put bases here, this will ensure if war breaks out… the extinction of the Filipino race.”

Top US health official makes provocative trip to Taiwan

Peter Symonds

US Secretary of Health Alex Azar landed in Taiwan on Sunday for a three-day visit, becoming the highest-ranking American official to visit the island since the US ended its diplomatic relations with Taipei in 1979 and established formal ties with Beijing instead.

The purpose of Azar’s visit is far more than just to affirm US collaboration with Taiwan over health issues or to acknowledge the relative success, to date, of its containment of the COVID-19 pandemic. Rather, it is another provocative step aimed at strengthening US-Taiwanese relations and potentially overturning the “One China” policy that has been central to US relations with China.

In establishing diplomatic ties with China in 1979, the US acknowledged the Chinese Communist Party regime in Beijing as the legitimate government of all China, including Taiwan. Under the Taiwan Relations Act of the same year, the US declared that it would oppose any forcible attempt by China to integrate Taiwan, and authorised continuing arms sales to Taipei.

From the outset of his presidency, Trump openly called the “One China” policy into question, pointedly taking a phone call from Taiwanese President Tsai Ing-wen on assuming office in 2017. Tsai is a member of the Democratic People’s Party that advocates a more independent stance for Taiwan, despite Beijing’s warnings to take over by force if Taipei ever declares formal independence from China.

Under Trump, the US has boosted relations with Taiwan and stepped up arms sales, ignoring Chinese protests. In 2018, the US president signed the Taiwan Travel Act, authorising high-level official visits, both civilian and military, between the two sides. While Azar is not the only cabinet-level US official to visit Taiwan since 1979, he is certainly the highest-ranking.

Prior to meeting with Tsai on Monday, Azar told the media that Taiwan was “a vital partner, a democratic success story, and a force for good in the world.” He lauded Taiwan as “an open and democratic society, executing a highly successful and transparent COVID-19 response,” then declared that it should be “recognised as a global health leader with an excellent track record of contributing to international health.”

Azar’s comments come in the wake of a keynote speech by US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo last month in which he overturned decades of US foreign policy towards China and declared in the language of Cold War propaganda that the “free world” must win out over the tyranny of “Chinese Communism.” The very terms bear no resemblance to reality—capitalism, not communism, prevails in China, and democratic rights are under severe attack throughout the misnamed “free world,” especially in the US.

To describe Taiwan as a “democratic success story” is to ignore both its past and present. For decades, the island was ruled by the brutal US-backed military dictatorship formed after the nationalist Kuomintang (KMT) was driven from the mainland following the 1949 Chinese revolution. Confronted with widespread opposition, particularly from workers in the 1980s, the regime made a tactical decision to hold elections to provide a degree of legitimacy. The police-state apparatus established by the KMT, however, remains largely intact.

Azar’s call for Taiwan to be recognised internationally as “a global health leader” is part of the Trump administration’s efforts to back Taiwan’s entry into various international bodies. China, which regards Taiwan as a renegade province, has blocked such moves as a de facto recognition of Taiwanese independence.

A bitter dispute erupted between Taiwan and the World Health Organisation (WHO) in April as part of the US-backed campaign to accord Taipei observer status at the body’s meetings. WHO chief Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus declared that he had been the subject of racist comments by Taiwanese officials, allegations that Taipei denied. China blocked Taiwan’s presence at the World Health Assembly in May, and its campaign for observer status effectively stalled after the US withdrew from the WHO, alleging without any evidence that it was under Chinese influence.

Azar’s visit to Taiwan is part of the Trump administration’s accelerating confrontation with China. In particular, the US is keen to contrast Taiwan’s relatively successful response to COVID-19 thus far to that of China, which Trump has repeatedly blamed for the global pandemic on the basis of unsubstantiated claims and outright lies. This has been an attempt to deflect attention from his own government’s criminal negligence in allowing the virus to spread.

For its part, the Tsai administration in Taiwan is looking for greater US support and recognition. Tsai made no reference, let alone criticism, in her comments during Azar’s visit of the disastrous US health policies that have resulted in 5 million cases of coronavirus and more than 161,000 deaths as of last weekend. Instead, she highlighted Taiwanese assistance to the US by supplying face masks, and noted that Trump and his officials had pointedly appeared in the White House with “Made in Taiwan” masks.

In the negotiations that led up to formal diplomatic relations between the US and China in 1979, Taiwan proved to be most contentious issue, and it remains so today. Not surprisingly, China has responded to Azar’s visit. Foreign ministry spokesperson Wang Wenbin warned last week that Beijing would “take strong countermeasures in response to the US behaviour.”

China’s sensitivity on the issue of Taiwan stems not just from concerns that its sovereignty is being violated, but also because of the strategic position of the island as the US military build-up throughout the Indo-Pacific continues apace. Not only is the primary island of Taiwan just 130 kilometres from the Chinese mainland at the narrowest part of the Taiwan Strait, but a number of heavily-fortified Taiwanese islets are just kilometres off the Chinese coast.

The Trump administration is deliberately and recklessly stoking one of the most potentially explosive flashpoints in Asia as it ratchets up the pressure on Beijing across the board—diplomatically, economically and militarily. Any move by the US to expand military ties with Taiwan, including visits by warships, joint military exercises or a visit by a top level US military figure, rather than the civilian Azar, would dangerously raise tensions across the Taiwan Strait as well as between the US and China.