Deepening economic problems as China’s National People’s Congress meets

Nick Beams

A key issue at the National People’s Congress (NPC), which gets underway today in Beijing, will be what plan Beijing has for boosting the flagging Chinese economy in conditions of deflationary pressures, the ongoing crisis in the property and real estate market and the ever-escalating economic warfare measures by the US.

A young couple walk near office buildings in Beijing's Central Business District on March 2, 2024. China's efforts to restore confidence and rev up the economy will top the agenda during this month’s meeting of the ceremonial national legislature. [AP Photo/Andy Wong]

Premier Li Qiang will deliver a “work report” at which he is expected to announce the government’s growth target for this year, most likely around 5 percent. But in a significant sign of the problems for the regime, he will not hold a press conference—the first time this has happened in 30 years—or at any of the NPC sessions over the rest of its five-year term.

No reason was given for the decision, apart from a statement at a regular press briefing by a Foreign Ministry spokeswoman that “worries” over “non-openness and non-transparency” were “unnecessary.” It is in line with a growing clampdown from the top on commentary about the state of the economy from academics and journalists.

Growth last year came in at 5.2 percent, slightly above expectations, but the lowest in more than three decades. Growth of 5 percent will he harder to achieve this year because the 2023 figure came off a lower base because of the effects of COVID in 2022. It may get even more difficult in coming years with the consulting firm Capital Economics predicting that China’s growth will fall to just 2 percent by 2030.

One of the main factors weighing on Chinese growth is the crisis in the real estate and property market, as shown by the bankruptcy of the property giant Evergrande, the mounting debt problems of Country Garden, and the debt defaults by at least 50 other developers.

Over the past decade and more, real estate and property development has been the key driver of growth, accounting for about 25 percent of gross domestic product.

There have been continuous calls from economic analysts and commentators for the government to stabilise the property market as the basis for a broader economic revival. A typical example was the comment by Tao Wang, chief China economist at UBS Investment Research, in the Financial Times last Friday.

“Both short-term macro policy support and medium-term structural policies are now needed to boost the economy and confidence. Stabilising the property market is key to restoring confidence and preventing more menacing spillover effects on the economy and financial system. Credit support to property developers will improve buyer confidence, as well as allaying defaults,” she wrote.

However, the government has been opposed to providing the kind of measures carried out in the past—massive infrastructure spending and the expansion of credit—because of fears this will only exacerbate debt problems.

In fact, the property crisis had its origins in the decisions of 2020 to introduce restrictions on credit, particularly to developers, known as the “three red lines” policies. This tightening took some time to work its way through—Evergrande was one of the first casualties—but it is now taking effect.

There are also concerns that credit expansion and a fiscal boost under conditions of higher interest rates world-wide, especially in the US, will put downward pressure on the renminbi and lead to capital flight from the country.

Recognising that the old growth model could not continue indefinitely, the government has sought to develop a new growth plan based on high-tech industries.

However, there are major doubts that the development of new industries such as electric vehicles, more efficient batteries, advances in the development of renewable energy and other high-tech industries will be sufficient to fill the gap left by the crisis in the property sector.

Moreover, high-tech development in China has run headlong into opposition from the US, which regards it as the central economic threat to its global dominance and is determined to block it.

This economic warfare began under the Trump administration and has been continued and deepened under Biden with the imposition of bans on the export of the most sophisticated computer chips to China and the threat that other suppliers will be hit by US sanctions if they do not cut off supplies as well.

The latest escalation in the high-tech war came last week with the announcement by Biden that he had ordered an investigation by the Commerce department into whether so-called “connected” vehicles, those which have capacities installed like a smart phone, posed a security risk.

Similar investigations by the Commerce department in the past have almost invariably led to the imposition of bans. From the tone of Biden’s at times hysterical remarks in announcing the decision, it appears certain this will be the case on this occasion.

China, Biden said, was “determined to dominate the future of the auto market” by using “unfair practices” and developing policies that “could flood our markets, with its vehicles, posing risks to our national security.” He described “connected” vehicles as “like smartphones on wheels.”

US commerce secretary Gina Raimondo chimed in, saying these vehicles could collect huge amounts of data.

“It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to figure out how a foreign adversary like China with access to this sort of information at scale could pose a serious risk for national security and the privacy of US citizens,” she said.

The invocation of “national security” is a smokescreen for the real fear of the US, that Chinese vehicles could be developed with capacities greater than those produced in the US and at a cheaper price. This was the concern over telecoms giant Huawei regarding smart phones, before the US moved to crush the Chinese company by denying it access to chips.

The protectionist and trade war drums are also beating in Europe with the European Union now considering whether Chinese-made electric vehicles are unfairly subsidised and should be subject to tariffs and other import restrictions.

In the lead-up to the NPC, the Politburo of the Chinese Communist Party issued a statement on Thursday that “proactive fiscal policy must be appropriately intensified.”

That does not indicate a return to the policies of the past but a deepening of the new orientation.

“We must vigorously promote the construction of a modern industrial system and accelerate the development of new productive forces,” the Politburo said.

The big questions are how these changes will be implemented and what will be the political consequences of the shift under conditions where the stability of the regime depends on its capacity to provide steady economic advancement.

A recent article on Bloomberg pointed to some of the political rumblings which are occurring. It reported criticisms of the government’s handling of the economy amidst a stock market plunge which has hit the better-off sections of the population that form an important social base for the regime.

Some of the posts, it reported, had even insinuated that a change in the top leadership—an implied criticism of President Xi Jinping—might help the stock market before they were taken down.

It also noted that civil servants and government workers, another base of support, were under pressure because of cuts in their bonuses due to the financial problems of local government authorities. They have experienced a decline in revenue from land sales, on which they have been highly dependent, due to the real estate crisis.

Remarks by Yuen Yuen Ang, a professor of Chinese political economy at Johns Hopkins University cited in the article, pointed to some of the problems confronting the government.

The danger for Xi, she said, was that the “fallout of the decline of the old growth model might be so great it prevents him from moving into the new growth model. The big question is, can you make that change fast enough?”

It is doubtful that the question will be answered in the reports delivered to this week’s NPC meeting because, while there have been calls for “high quality developments” amid acute awareness of major problems, no concrete decisions have been announced as to how to meet them.

Migrant worker exploitation escalates in New Zealand

John Braddock

The New Zealand Public Service Commission released a report on February 27 into the Accredited Employer Work Visa (AEWV) scheme, which was initiated last year following a series of scandals about the widespread exploitation of migrant workers.

New Zealand Immigration Minister Andrew Little speaks to a group of migrant workers stranded without jobs at a meeting in Auckland, August 2023. [Photo: Facebook/Labour MP Phil Twyford]

The AEWV scheme was introduced by the previous Labour government in July 2022, after COVID-19 border closures led to worker shortages. To reduce visa processing times, the number of checks required by immigration officers was reduced. The scheme has since faced a raft of criticisms for not protecting workers.

The inquiry was a damage control exercise. Labour’s then Immigration Minister Andrew Little set it up last August, claiming to have received an anonymous letter from an internal whistleblower alleging that some checks on employers were not being made.

In fact, the government’s hand was forced by media revelations of dozens of migrant workers crowded into squalid conditions in rental homes across Auckland. The workers, from India, China and Bangladesh, had paid thousands of dollars for employment agreements with local recruitment contractors, but after three months had received no work or pay. The men called police when their food ran out and they had to resort to begging.

Little limited the inquiry to checking that the “rules” for processing applications were “being done thoroughly”—i.e., not to investigate the scheme itself. The review, led by career bureaucrat Jenn Bestwick only looked at whether Immigration New Zealand (INZ) had “mitigated the risk” of migrant exploitation “appropriately.”

INZ officials told the inquiry that their bosses didn’t take seriously concerns about “modern day slavery,” migrants being forced to pay illegal premiums and employers applying with false information. Their reports were “swept under the carpet.” Bestwick found that while INZ’s decision to reduce the checks was “reasonable,” it did not adequately assess “the risk and impact” the speed-up to processing times would have on “visa abuse.”

The inquiry noted that as of August 14, 2023, INZ had approved 80,576 AEWV applications from immigrant workers with 27,892 accredited employers—who were allowed to get temporary work visas for as many staff as they wanted.

By February this year the Ministry for Business, Innovation and Employment (MBIE) had received 2,107 complaints against employers. Currently 174 employers are being investigated, 145 have had accreditation revoked, 53 have had accreditation suspended and 48 are under assessment to have their accreditation revoked. So far, just one immigration advisor is being prosecuted.

In response to the report, Deputy Public Service Commissioner Heather Baggott said INZ should have “done more” to minimise risk of abuse of the visa system. “While it was unscrupulous employers who exploited migrants coming into the country, Immigration New Zealand could have, and should have, done more to minimise the risk of that happening,” she declared. INZ and MBIE have now promised to improve their processes.

This will do nothing to improve the lot of tens of thousands of immigrant workers who are being brought into the country to work as virtual slave labour. Nor is it a matter of a minority of “unscrupulous” employers exploiting an otherwise healthy system.

Migrant exploitation is an entrenched feature of New Zealand capitalism. Economics commentator Bernard Hickey has described New Zealand as the “Dubai of the South Pacific” for allowing “fraudulent agents and fly-by-night firms to bring in desperate and poor workers with suggestions of high-paid jobs and residency, only to pull the rug out from under their feet and leaving them indebted and even more desperate.”

After the height of the pandemic, migrants were recruited with promises of good employment and improved living standards. The year to October 2023 saw the highest migration figures on record with 245,600 migrant arrivals and a net migration gain of 128,900. The long-term average for the period 2002–2019 was 120,500 migrant arrivals and 91,900 departures per year.

When migrants arrived, many were not paid the wages they had been promised, were forced to live in overcrowded and dangerous conditions, and in some cases had no job, despite paying for work. Some paid $30,000 in illegal premiums for non-existent jobs.

Migrant workers are among the most vulnerable sections of the working class. Five days before last Christmas, labour hire and recruitment firm ELE Holdings went into liquidation, leaving up to 500 migrant workers, 60 percent of its workforce, unemployed. Many were forced into precarious situations, with no income and unable to pay rent, sleeping in cars while living off noodles and donated food.

In mid-January the workers protested outside the Auckland and Christchurch offices of liquidator Deloitte and the Philippines Embassy in Wellington, demanding their overdue final payments. Because all AEWV visas tie workers to one particular employer, once they lose their jobs they are left in limbo and face the threat of deportation.

Another group is facing a similar situation with the collapse last month of labour hire firm Buildhub. In January, Buildhub posted on its website that INZ had decided not to pursue charges against it after a group of South American migrants made complaints about not getting the jobs they had signed up for. One worker, Alfredo, told Radio NZ that he was a civil engineer but was only given work as a carpenter.

A handful of egregious cases, doubtless the tip of the iceberg, have eventually come to court. Last month Tauranga kiwifruit contractor Jafar Kurisi admitted to exploiting four illegal migrant workers from Indonesia and Malaysia. One lived in a crowded garage with 19 others for four months with no heating or insulation. Some slept on the garage floor because there were not enough mattresses. Kurisi underpaid the men thousands of dollars in wages and charged them $100 rent a week and travel costs to get to and from work.

The new far-right National Party-led coalition government is currently preparing an expansion of another highly exploitative work program, the Recognised Seasonal Employer (RSE) scheme. Introduced by a Labour government in 2007, the RSE scheme brings Pacific Island workers in annually on temporary visas for the horticulture industry. The NZ Human Rights Commission reported in 2022 that the Pacific workers were systematically subjected to conditions akin to “modern slavery.”

Prime Minister Christopher Luxon has pledged to double the RSE intake from the current 19,500 per annum, while coalition partner ACT wants the cap on numbers lifted completely. Although Pacific Island governments initially welcomed the income, they now increasingly view both the New Zealand and Australian schemes as a neo-colonial drain. Over the last decade Sāmoa, Tonga and Vanuatu have lost nearly 20 percent of their productive male populations to the two regional powers.

Successive New Zealand governments have for many years used low-paid migrant workers, tightly controlled by oppressive rules and regulations, not only to fill “gaps” in the labour market as demanded by business, but as an integral part of the assault on jobs, wages and conditions of the entire working class.

The ruling class has zero concern for the rights of migrant workers. It pursued a racist “White New Zealand” policy for much of the past century, with the support of the trade unions. Parties including Labour, the right-wing NZ First and the trade union bureaucracy regularly demand new restrictions on migrants’ rights and seek to scapegoat migrants for low wages, unemployment and the housing crisis. The aim, in a country where approximately one in four people were born overseas, is to divide the working class and prevent any united struggle against the government and its austerity program.

US Supreme Court unanimously rules in favor of Trump, restoring him to Colorado primary ballot

Tom Carter

The US Supreme Court issued a unanimous decision in favor of former Republican President Donald Trump on Monday, reversing a decision by the Colorado state Supreme Court to remove him from the ballot for the Republican Party primary in Colorado, which takes place on March 5.

On December 19, Colorado’s highest court ruled that Trump was not constitutionally eligible to be placed on the ballot because he had engaged in “insurrection.” The court ordered him removed and any write-in votes not counted, but it stayed its own ruling pending an appeal to the US Supreme Court.

Donald Trump at a rally to contest the certification of the 2020 US presidential election results by the US Congress in Washington on 6 January 2021. [Photo: Jim Bourg]

While all nine justices on the US Supreme Court agreed to overturn the Colorado ban on Trump appearing on the ballot, the far-right majority went much further than the issues that were actually presented in the Colorado case, handing down a ruling that attempts to preemptively shield Trump as well as other insurrectionist Republicans from all future attempts to challenge their eligibility.

This majority decision was so extreme in its overreach that it prompted separate concurring opinions from one of Trump’s own appointees, Amy Coney Barrett, and the three-justice nominally liberal bloc of Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson.

Monday’s decision is also a milestone in the legitimization of the fascistic far right, which attempted to violently overthrow the Constitution on January 6, 2021 and install Trump as president in defiance of the 2020 presidential election. Instead of being jailed for his attempted coup, together with all of his co-conspirators, three years later Trump finds himself able to command the votes of all nine Supreme Court justices, who voted to guarantee the most favorable conditions for him to participate in the 2024 elections.

The Colorado case was filed in September on behalf of a group of voters who contended that Trump was ineligible to seek the office of president in light of Section 3 of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution, which prohibits government officers who “engaged in insurrection or rebellion” from subsequently taking office. This provision of the Fourteenth Amendment, enacted immediately after the Civil War, was designed to prevent a return to power, in the words of one congressman at the time, of those “yelling secessionists and hissing copperheads” who had led the slaveowners’ rebellion.

The fact that a constitutional measure enacted in the period of the Civil War is even under discussion on the Supreme Court in relation to a front-running presidential candidate, after a century and a half during which that provision was largely dormant, is in itself an indication that the crisis of the entire American political system has reached a temperature unprecedented since the 1860s.

The disqualification of Trump as an “insurrectionist” by the Colorado Supreme Court was followed in December by a parallel decision by Maine Secretary of State Shenna Bellows, a Democrat. More recently, a judge in Cook County, Illinois, made a similar determination for that state. All of these determinations are effectively overruled by the Supreme Court’s decision Monday.

The Supreme Court’s opinion attempts to downplay the significance of Trump’s coup attempt, merely writing that the Colorado voters who brought the case “contend” that Trump “disrupted the peaceful transfer of power by intentionally organizing and inciting the crowd” to disturb congressional proceedings in Washington.

In fact, Trump’s efforts at insurrection went far beyond unleashing a violent mob of far-right thugs, including neo-fascist Proud Boys, in an effort to disrupt a joint session of Congress on January 6, 2021. As has been established in public hearings of the House Select Committee on the January 6 Attack, Trump’s January 6 coup plot was a “sophisticated seven-part plan” that, in addition to the violent attack on the Capitol building, included fabricating allegations of election fraud, conspiring with Republicans in Congress to block the certification of electoral votes, pressuring officials in Republican-controlled states to alter election results in Trump’s favor, and sending fake “alternate” slates of electors to Congress. The aim of this plot was nothing less than keeping Trump, who lost the election by a substantial margin, in power in violation of the Constitution.

The Colorado Supreme Court concluded that Trump did, in fact, engage in “insurrection.” Meanwhile, outside of a number of individuals who physically participated in the violent storming of the Capitol building, the overwhelming majority of the senior participants in the conspiracy, including Trump himself, remain at-large, preparing their next attempt.

The Supreme Court unanimously determined that Trump’s ineligibility to participate in a federal election was not an issue that could be decided by Colorado. According to the Supreme Court, allowing the state of Colorado to make that determination would result in a chaotic “patchwork,” implying that Republican-controlled states like Texas and Florida would retaliate by removing Democratic candidates from their ballots.

The nominally “liberal” bloc of justices—Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson—accepted this argument and invoked it to justify ruling in favor of Trump. “Allowing Colorado to do so would, we agree, create a chaotic state-by-state patchwork,” they wrote, “at odds with our Nation’s federalism principles.”

This concurring opinion in favor of Trump is a stark indication of the profoundly decayed state of what remains of American “liberalism.” In effect, they state: “If we don’t rule in favor of the fascist, his lunatic accomplices will respond with escalatory provocations and create chaos. Therefore, we have no choice but to rule in favor of the fascist.”

The far-right majority, meanwhile, bent over backwards not only to shield Trump himself from future challenges to his participation in elections, but to shield all of Trump’s accomplices from similar challenges.

“Although only an individual State’s action is at issue here, the majority opines on which federal actors can enforce Section 3, and how they must do so,” wrote Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson in their opinion. “The majority announces that a disqualification for insurrection can occur only when Congress enacts a particular kind of legislation. ... In doing so, the majority shuts the door on other potential means of federal enforcement.”

The ruling Monday is also noteworthy for the speed with which the Supreme Court reached a decision, while the numerous other proceedings involving Trump are mired in endless procedural delays. At the oral arguments in January, the justices constituting the far-right majority functioned effectively as additional attorneys for Trump, engaging in what amounted to a friendly conversation with the attorney representing Trump about the most effective way to rule in his favor.

As of today, the far-right insurrectionist forces gathered around Trump have captured de facto control of the judicial branch of the federal government in the form of the Supreme Court, effectively represented by five or six of the nine justices, three of them having been appointed by Trump himself. This far right-dominated Supreme Court has been on a rampage against democratic rights and reforms, including its abolition of the right to abortion in the Dobbs case in the summer of 2022, which in turn paved the way for attacks on decades of judicial decisions across the board.

The decision Monday is tainted in particular by the participation of Justice Clarence Thomas. While Thomas has been exposed as accepting undisclosed bribes from wealthy far-right Republican patrons while on the Supreme Court, his own wife, Ginni Thomas, is personally implicated in the January 6 coup.

It is significant that the concurring opinion by Sotomayor, Kagan and Jackson references the Bush v. Gore decision from 2000, which handed the election to Bush. The opinion cited from a dissenting opinion by Stephen Breyer, who wrote, “What it does today, the Court should have left undone.” The implication of this not-so-subtle citation is that the Supreme Court is taking a step with similarly far-reaching historical implications.

Throughout American history, the Supreme Court largely functioned as a bulwark of reaction, upholding slavery in the Dred Scott case (1857), defending Jim Crow racial segregation in Plessy v. Ferguson (1896) and opposing the New Deal reforms of the 1930s. For a brief period associated with Earl Warren, who was chief justice from 1953 to 1969, the Supreme Court was associated with a number of belated and qualified reforms under conditions of the Cold War and ideological conflict with the Soviet Union.

However, since the Bush v. Gore decision stealing the 2000 election, the Supreme Court’s lurch to the right has reflected the evaporation of any significant constituency in the American ruling class for the defense of democratic norms and a growing constituency, now embodied in the figure of Trump, for an open break with those norms.

Throughout this process, as reflected in Monday’s decision, the remnants of what was once called American “liberalism,” having long ago abandoned any commitment to progress toward social equality, have exuded a mixture of complacency, complicity and cowardice, fearing an aggravation of class tensions far more than a principled showdown with the far right.

Trump responded to the unanimous ruling Monday with all caps and exclamation points on his social media platform, calling it a “BIG WIN FOR AMERICA!!!”

IMF, White House applaud Milei’s “shock therapy” as Argentina’s poverty rate nears 60 percent

Andrea Lobo

As the policies of class war under Argentine President Javier Milei plunge millions more into poverty and destitution, there are almost daily reports of spontaneous protests, cacerolazos (banging pots and pans) and mass assemblies at workplaces, schools and neighborhoods across the country. 

Argentina's newly sworn-in President Javier Milei speaks outside the Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Sunday, Dec. 10, 2023. [AP Photo/Gustavo Garello]

Following the 12-hour national strike on January 24 convoked by the General Confederation of Workers (CGT), which saw more than one million Argentines take to the streets across the country, the Peronist-led trade union bureaucracy has sought to limit strikes to a few hours and sectors at a time, while directing their appeals to the courts, governors and Congress. 

The CGT has convoked a 24-hour strike to greet the beginning of the school year in most of the country on Monday, March 4. This follows limited provincial strikes by teachers where classes have already begun. 

Airport workers paralyzed all air traffic across the country during a 24-hour strike on Wednesday, as the government intervened to block an agreement by employers it considered too generous. 

On Monday February 26, dockworkers carried out a one-shift strike nationally and were joined by a strike of healthcare workers that day. A one-day strike by rail and public transport workers on February 21 will be followed by another public transportation strike nationally on March 5, after two months during which the employers have refused to offer any wage increase. 

In effect, the union bureaucracy is helping enforce the deepest attacks on jobs and living standards in decades.  

According to official figures, prices increased 211.4 percent in 2023, while wages rose 152.7 percent. Following Milei’s brutal depreciation of the currency, prices spiked 20.6 percent in January (254 percent annually), while wages, pensions and social assistance remained largely frozen or saw minor increases. 

According to the Labor and Economy Tracker, as of the end of December, the real average wage dropped 40 percent below its level in November 2015, far below the poverty line. Then in January private formal wages fell 23 percent more.

The situation is catastrophic. The poverty rate estimated by the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) rose from 49.5 percent to 57.4 percent in January, adding more than 3.5 million new poor. Extreme poverty rose to 15 percent. 

Already for 2022, the UCA estimated that 44 percent of children suffer from “food insecurity” and 60 percent depend on nutritional support from the government. In the year since, until January 2024, food sales in retail stores have fallen 37 percent. This means that hunger has become rampant, with children rummaging through trash bins and begging becoming a frequent sight.

During a protest outside of the Ministry of Human Capital, Ivana Juncosa, a 20-year-old worker, told El País: “We are eight siblings and since Milei took over we only eat once a day. My father was a licensed electrician and he died during the pandemic. Now we all go out to work, even my youngest brother, who is 15 years old and works in a greengrocer’s shop.” 

The Milei administration has pressed its finger deeper into the wound. It blocked funds for soup kitchens, even though more workers arrive each day. Hundreds of thousands of welfare plans have been eliminated, as government spending on social assistance and pensions dropped by 30 percent in one month.

Driving prices even higher, subsidies for public transportation, gas and electricity were reduced 64 percent, amid new tariffs on imports.

The administration decreed unilaterally a minimum wage of 180,000 pesos monthly (US$200), compared to a basket of staple goods and services for a household that marks the official poverty rate of 597,000 (US$700). 

Mass layoffs among public sector workers and a deepening recession have become a battering ram to carry out this impoverishment. A halt to all new public works has already led to 100,000 cuts in construction jobs, while Milei has gloated over firing 50,000 government employees. He has also cut funds from provinces governed by opposition figures, even disobeying a court order to send money to Chubut province, provoking layoffs. 

As consumption plummets, factories like Toyota, as well as shoemakers Bicontinentar and Topper have announced hundreds of job cuts, while the largest metallurgical company in the country Acindar recently announced a suspension of production for 30 days. 

National university authorities have warned that they will have to shut down if the budget remains frozen since last year. 

In just over a month, these cuts resulted in the first government budget surplus since 2012, surpassing even the proposals from the International Monetary Fund (IMF), which sent a high-level delegation in late February to praise the “initial progress in restoring macro-economic stability.” 

On Thursday, US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen also applauded the “important steps” in fiscal and monetary policy. This followed a trip to Buenos Aires by Secretary of State Antony Blinken, who said he “could not be more pleased, on behalf of President Biden, with the meeting we just had” with Milei. They reportedly discussed the IMF loan and lithium concessions. 

At the same time, Yellen and the IMF delegation spoke about the need to support the “vulnerable,” and Jordan Schwartz, the executive vice president of the Inter-American Development Bank, commented: “The social crisis is the frontier that must be crossed successfully.”

However, the “shock therapy” they praise and helped engineer is strictly aimed at causing “pain” to cheapen labor and plunder the public treasury, natural resources and healthcare and pension funds. Milei himself warned of “painful sacrifices” in his inaugural speech.

Concerns in ruling circles and on Wall Street are not about suffering, but about preventing a social explosion as they turn the former richest country in Latin America into a sweatshop. Ultimately, the ruling elite’s entire plan to attract investments, which is central to the value of the currency and inflation, depends on avoiding an explosion of the powder keg it sits upon. 

After meeting Milei, the IMF delegation met with trade union and military leaders, and a diplomatic bulletin Confidencial claims that the military was asked to “intervene only in the event of a social or subversive uprising or outburst.” 

During his trip in early February, Brian A. Nichols, assistant secretary of state for Western Hemisphere Affairs, also met with CGT union leaders at the US embassy and highlighted “the important role of trade unions in the development of a sound economy and a democratic society.” 

Today, Argentina is being governed from offices in Washington D.C.

Moreover, Milei’s promotion in western media, his embrace by the Biden administration and his rockstar receptions at Davos, in Israel and Rome, and at Trump’s CPAC rally in Washington demonstrate that imperialist global finance has chosen Argentina as a key battleground and testing site to spearhead a dramatic escalation of the war against the working class internationally. 

The imperative of making workers pay for the emerging third world war rests on these social attacks.

In this context, the nationalist program advanced by the pseudo-left, which insists that workers must above all cling to a “unity” with the Peronist union bureaucracy as the latter plots with the government, the IMF and Washington, is a recipe for disaster. 

The pseudo-left Workers Party (PO) insists in a “unified plan of struggle of the piquetero movement [of informal and unemployed workers] with the unions,” which in both cases are led by the Peronists. Meanwhile, the Socialist Workers Party (PTS) focuses on intervening in the mass assemblies in workplaces, schools and communities sprouting up spontaneously across Buenos Aires to redirect them back behind Peronism. In a political summary of agreements of its national leadership, the PTS calls on its supporters to join these assemblies as a means to “gain enormous strength by multiplying the demands made to the unions and student centers led by Peronism, to call on their ranks to join these initiatives, and to impose measures of struggle on them…”

While claiming to be advancing “revolutionary parliamentarism,” the PO and PTS, which lead the Left and Workers Front-Unity (FIT-U) electoral coalition, both have presented as a major “victory” that Milei decided to pull his omnibus bill from Congress—a “victory” when millions more are going hungry and tens of thousands are being laid off. 

For Milei, this was a tactical maneuver followed by imposing some of the most draconian social cuts and attacks on democratic rights via decree. 

The complacent response by the pseudo-left expresses clearly the social character of its leadership. These organizations speak for accommodated layers of the middle class seeking deliberately to create illusions in the Peronist trade union bureaucracy, Congress, national reformism and bourgeois politics. 

In a particularly telling statement, the PTS publication La Izquierda Diario wrote that Milei’s trip to Israel, where he cheered on the genocide against the Palestinians in Gaza, was part of “a sacred world tour, full of gestures and mysticism, but devoid of earthly strategy.” 

Only the most bankrupt political perspective could lead to such a statement, which is entirely blind to international and historical questions. These forces have learned and can learn nothing from history.

Milei’s trip followed first and foremost an “earthly strategy,” i.e., one based on material calculations. As explained by the World Socialist Web Site: 

The Argentine ruling class is drenching its hands with the blood of Gazans as a means of renewing, on the most active basis, its historic counterrevolutionary relationship with the Israeli bourgeoisie. This relates particularly to the massacre of 30,000 leftist workers, youth and intellectuals during the 1976-1983 Argentine military dictatorship.

Milei himself has defended the legacy of the US-backed military dictatorship as a necessary “war,” whose main supplier of weapons was Israel. The pseudo-left is repeating the policies of their own predecessors in the 1970s and disarming workers politically ahead of another turn to fascist dictatorship by the ruling class.

US leads multilateral Cobra Gold military exercises in Thailand

Robert Campion

The US and Thailand have begun the 43rd annual Cobra Gold military exercises, the largest multinational drills in Southeast Asia involving nearly 10,000 troops in total. The latest iteration includes the largest contingent of US troops in a decade amid Washington’s ratcheting up of tensions with China.

US Marines take position on light armored vehicles during the ongoing Cobra Gold US-Thai joint military exercise in Chonburi province, eastern Thailand, Friday, March 1, 2024. [AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

The opening ceremony of Cobra Gold took place on February 27 in Rayong Province Thailand, southeast of Bangkok. Drills will run through to March 10 and will involve live fire exercises and a simulated command post exercise in Rayong and other provinces across Thailand, including Lopburi, Chanthaburi, and Sa Kaeo.

There are seven full participants in Cobra Gold this year including Thailand, the US, Singapore, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, and Malaysia. Speaking at the opening ceremony were US ambassador to Thailand Robert F. Godec, the commander of US I Corps Lieutenant General Xavier Brunson, and Thailand’s Chief of Defence Forces General Songwit Noonpakdee.

US involvement has increased to the largest size in a decade since Thailand’s 2014 military coup. Over 4,500 US troops are taking part in the war exercises, an increase from 3,800 last year and 1,300 in 2022, with the lower figures in part due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the coup, over 7,000 US personnel were involved in the drills.

Different aspects of Cobra Gold include the Field Training Exercises (FTX) and the Command Post Exercise (CPX). The former incorporates the army, navy, and air force and will include airborne operations, live-fire exercises, and amphibious landings. CPX will train participants in combat in various domains, including land, sea, air, space, and cyberspace.

These drills also involve the operation of the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS), light rockets capable of attacking targets at a range of 300km. HIMARS have been used to arm Ukraine in the US-NATO proxy war against Russia. Washington is also supplying HIMARS to Taiwan, where the US is attempting to provoke a war with China as it did with Russia in Ukraine.

The US representatives attempted to dress Cobra Gold up as a necessity for ensuring regional stability. In reality, the exercises do the exact opposite as US imperialism targets China. Godec, for example, wrote on Twitter/X on the opening of the war games, “Together, with our regional allies and partners, we work together to ensure a free and open Indo-Pacific.”

The reference to “a free and open Indo-Pacific” is a thinly veiled denunciation used to demonise Beijing for refusing to acquiesce to US hegemony in Asia. The slogan in reality means the military encirclement of China which threatens a naval blockade of vital shipping routes including through the Malacca Strait that would strangle Beijing economically.

Godec’s remarks make clear that whatever Washington’s diplomatic window dressing, the Cobra Gold exercises are aimed at preparing for war with China and incorporating its allies in the region into those plans. All of this is taking place on China’s doorstep.

Furthermore, Washington’s attacks on China reek of hypocrisy. For the US, “free and open,” as well as “rule of law,” mean the freedom for US imperialism to exploit the world for its own interests under conditions of its economic decline. This includes waging bloody and illegal wars of aggression in the Middle East over the past three decades, including now the Biden administration’s complete support for Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza.

In addition to the main participants, another 23 countries are taking part to a limited extent. They include other US allies such as Australia, New Zealand, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Sweden. China is also participating for the 11th consecutive year, though only in tabletop humanitarian assistance drills.

The limited role played by China is bound up with two conflicting aspects. On the one hand, the US would no doubt prefer to exclude China altogether. On the other, Thailand is engaged in a balancing act between Washington and Beijing, looking to maintain its longstanding diplomatic and economic relations with the latter, its largest trading partner. Two-way trade between the two Asian countries reached $US135 billion in 2023.

However, Washington is working towards the strategic goal of incorporating Thailand into its war planning. Thailand is an historic ally of the US and during the Vietnam War was used as a base to host some 50,000 US troops and stage bombing runs throughout Indochina.

Cobra Gold grew out of this relationship following US imperialism’s defeat in Vietnam. Established in 1982, the exercises were aimed at allowing Washington to continue to exert its influence in the region while threatening Vietnam and more recently China.

Other Washington-led military drills are taking place on a regular basis throughout the region. Occurring at the same time as Cobra Gold, the US and Japan began Exercise Iron Fist on February 25 between US Marines and the Japanese Ground Self-Defense Force and Maritime Self-Defense Force, the formal names for Japan’s army and navy respectively. The exercises, which conclude on March 17, are taking place around Japan’s islands of Kyushu and Okinawa in the East China Sea.

The US is also encouraging allies like the Philippines to heighten territorial disputes with China. On February 25, Manila accused the Chinese coast guard of blocking one of its government vessels from resupplying fuel to Filippino fishermen near the disputed Scarborough Shoal, the second such instance in two weeks. The shoal is a triangular feature of rocks and atolls 240 miles west of Luzon, the largest island in the Philippines.

These disputes in the South China Sea have been whipped up by Washington and exploited in order to place pressure on Beijing, falsely accusing China of “unilaterally” overturning the status quo. Beijing, conscious of US efforts, regards the South China Sea, including the Scarborough Shoal, as one of its “core interests” to be defended by force if necessary. Beijing, in other words, is unwilling to allow itself to be surrounded by US imperialism and its allies.

In April, the US and the Philippines will hold Balikatan 2024, another set of joint war games, which may take place in the Batanes Archipelago, just 150km from Taiwan. This highly provocative action is slated to be larger than last year’s event which drew 17,000 troops including 12,000 from the US.

In this context, the Cobra Gold exercises are part of Washington’s overall effort strengthen military alliances and strategic partnerships throughout the Indo-Pacific in preparation for war against China. Under conditions where the US is already at war with Russia in Ukraine and alongside Israel is fueling a wider conflict in the Middle East, war with China would quickly spiral into a catastrophic global conflict.

Rotary Peace Fellowships 2025/2026

Application Deadline: 15th May 2024

Offered annually? Yes

Eligible Countries: All countries are eligible

About Fellowship: Each year, Rotary selects up to 100 individuals worldwide to receive fully funded academic fellowships at one of its peace centers. These fellowships cover tuition and fees, room and board, round-trip transportation, and all internship and field-study expenses.

In just over a decade, the Rotary Peace Centers have trained more than 900 fellows for careers in peacebuilding. Many of them go on to serve as leaders in national governments, NGOs, the military, law enforcement, and international organizations like the United Nations and World Bank.

Two types of peace fellowships are available.

1. Master’s degree

Offers master’s degree fellowships at premier universities in fields related to peace and conflict prevention and resolution. Programs last 15 to 24 months and require a practical internship of two to three months during the academic break. Each year, up to 50 master’s degree fellowships are awarded at these institutions: Duke University and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, USA, International Christian University, Japan, University of Bradford, England, University of Queensland, Australia and Uppsala University, Sweden

2. Professional development certificate

For experienced professionals working in peace-related fields who want to enhance their professional skills, Rotary offers a three-month program in peace and conflict prevention and resolution at Chulalongkorn University in Thailand. This program incorporates two to three weeks of field study. We award up to 50 certificates each year.

Type: Masters, Fellowship

Eligibility: The Rotary Peace Fellowship is designed for professionals with work experience in international relations or peace and conflict prevention and resolution. Fellows are committed to community and international service and the pursuit of peace.

Applicants must also meet the following requirements:

• Proficiency in English; proficiency in a second language is strongly recommended
• Strong commitment to international understanding and peace as demonstrated through professional and academic achievements and personal or community service
• Excellent leadership skills
• Master’s degree applicants: minimum three years of related full-time work or volunteer experience, bachelor’s degree
• Certificate applicants: minimum five years of related full-time work or volunteer experience, strong academic background

Eligibility restrictions: Rotary Peace Fellowships may not be used for doctoral study. And the following people are not eligible for the master’s degree program:

• Active and honorary Rotary members
• Employees of a Rotary club or district, Rotary International, or other Rotary entity
• Spouses, lineal descendants (children or grandchildren by blood or legal adoption), spouses of lineal descendants, or ancestors (parents or grandparents by blood) of any living person in these categories
• Former Rotary members and their relatives as described above (within 36 months of their resignation)

Recipients of Rotary Ambassadorial Scholarships or professional development certificate fellowships must wait three years after completion of the scholarship or fellowship to apply for the master’s degree program.

Rotary Peace Fellows who have completed the master’s degree program must wait five years to apply for the certificate program.

Number of Fellowships: up to 100

Value of Rotary Peace Fellowship: The Rotary Peace Fellowship covers:

• -Tuition and fees
• -Room and board
• -Round-trip transportation
• -Internship/field study expenses.

Duration of Fellowship: 15 to 24 months

How to Apply: Candidates have until 15 May to submit applications to their district. Districts must submit endorsed applications to The Rotary Foundation by 1 July.

It is necessary to go through the Application Process on the Fellowship Webpage (see Link below) before applying.

Visit fellowship webpage for details

UK Sunak government moves to outlaw protests over Gaza, with Labour Party backing

Robert Stevens

Britain’s Conservative government has revealed plans to ban protests at sites including Parliament, the Whitehall seat of government, City and Town halls and MPs homes. The move is targeted immediately at protest against Israel’s genocidal assault on Gaza but has a much wider application.

On Wednesday, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak—referring to the mass demonstrations over Gaza and those against MPs backing the genocide—told senior police at a summit in Downing Street, “There is a growing consensus that mob rule is replacing democratic rule… We simply cannot allow this pattern of increasingly violent and intimidatory behaviour which is, as far as anyone can see, intended to shout down free debate and stop elected representatives doing their job.”

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, together Home Secretary James Cleverly and other government ministers, convenes a policing roundtable with senior police officers and other related officials in 10 Downing Street. [Photo by Simon Walker/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

Referring to a peaceful protest on February 21 outside Parliament when MPs were due to vote on a Scottish National Party ceasefire motion, a Home Office policy paper published following the police leaders’ summit stated, “In recent months, we have witnessed attempts to hijack legitimate protests and subvert the democratic process.” This culminated with “protestors [who] threatened to force Parliament to ‘lock its doors’.”

Such incidents were not “legitimate means of achieving change through force of peaceful argument. They are part of a pattern of increasingly intimidatory behaviour seemingly intended to shout down and coerce elected representatives and hijack the democratic process through force itself,” it said.

These lies are to justify proposals to restrict and ban protests, as part of an overall clampdown on fundamental democratic rights that have been in the works for years and have been brought forward in response to the biggest anti-war protests since those against the illegal invasion of Iraq in 2003.

The Times newspaper on February 23, under a headline “Pro-Palestinian protesters plotted to force parliament into lockdown,” first propagated the lie that protesters had tried to shut down parliament ahead of what turned out to be an aborted ceasefire vote. It wrote “The Times has obtained a video of a speech [Director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign Ben Jamal] gave in the build up to the protest in which he tells a crowd: ‘We want so many of you to come that they will have to lock the doors of parliament itself.’”

The speech was in fact given by Jamal on February 17, at the conclusion of a national rally in the capital attended by a quarter of a million people. Jamal actually told the crowd that on February 21, “we are planning the biggest lobby in parliamentary history. We want to see a queue stretching from Parliament all the way through Whitehall. We want so many of you to come that they will have to lock the doors of parliament itself.”

Far from a “lockdown” of Parliament what was being proposed was a lobby of MPs with people asked to line up in an orderly queue. Responding to an attack on the words he used by Guardian journalist Marina Hyde, who joined the right-wing pile-on, Jamal posted on X, “I wasn’t calling for people to come to a protest outside parliament but a lobby inside. Hence the reference was not to the doors having to be locked to keep protestors out but so many to lobby that there wouldn't be room for more. I also said, I want to see a queue stretching all the way down Whitehall. I'm not sure I'm aware of an insurrection that people queued to join.”

None of this matters to a ruling elite desperate to impose its draconian plans. Attending the Downing Street summit, according to the Home Office, were the “Prime Minister, Home Secretary, Policing Minister and Security Minister [Tom Tugendhat],” who discussed with “senior policing leaders… how police forces could be supported to protect the democratic process from intimidation, disruption or subversion.”

The Home Office policy paper, “Defending democracy policing protocol”, states, “In recent months, we have witnessed attempts to hijack legitimate protests and subvert the democratic process. Elected representatives have been threatened and had their family homes targeted. Council meetings have been repeatedly disrupted and, in some cases, abandoned. Constituency fundraisers of different political parties have been overrun. Last Wednesday, protestors threatened to force Parliament to ‘lock its doors’.”

£31 million “of additional funding” would be allocated “for the protection of the democratic process and elected representatives.”

The paper announced “The Home Office, National Police Chiefs Council (NPCC), Association of PCCs and College of Policing “have agreed the new Defending Democracy Policing Protocol…

Among the repressive measures it contains are:

“When notified of an upcoming event at least 48 hours beforehand, police forces will commit to engaging with the organisers to ensure an appropriate policing response can be put in place where needed alongside any measures provided by Parliament prior to dissolution or government during the pre-election period.”

“Protests at the home addresses of elected representatives, including MPs and councillors, should generally be considered to be intimidatory, and the police have adequate powers, including Section 42 of the Criminal Justice and Police Act 2001, to direct protestors away.”

A stipulation with staggering implications reads, “Protests at representatives’ parties’ offices, democratic venues (such as Parliament or Town Halls) or at political events (such as constituency fundraisers or meetings) should not be allowed to (i) prevent or inhibit the use of the venue, attendance at the event or access to and from it or (ii) cause alarm, harassment or distress to attendees through the use of threatening or abusive words or disorderly behaviour, in keeping with public order laws.”

A massive spying operation is to be mounted and police flooded into areas of the country specified as “flashpoints” under the plans. Each police force “will closely monitor intelligence and community tensions and engage regularly with elected members. In addition to existing police responses, through a new local communities fund, police forces will provide additional patrols in local communities in response to potential flashpoints, bolstering police visibility and public confidence.”

With the backing of the Crown Prosecution Service, new guidance will be given to “all police officers on the policing of democratic events, including surgeries, fundraisers and protests, including in Parliament Square, to ensure all officers know their powers and have clear guidance on when to use them. The College of Policing will work with forces across England and Wales to ensure that forces are aware of the steps that they can take to minimise the impact of these protests.”

The Mail reported that Sunak warned police leaders, who are required “to report back on how they have implemented these measures by April,” that the many authoritarian powers they already have must be enforced. “'We also need to demonstrate more broadly to the public that you will use the powers you already have, the laws that you have”, said the prime minister.

Foremost in demanding a crackdown on the protests, based on the lie that they are antisemitic is the Zionist Community Security Trust (CST). Sunak met with the CST Wednesday evening, which is akin to meeting with Israeli leader Benjamin Netanyahu. Politico reported that Sunak agreed to hand over “£18 million a year for the next four years to the CST”, up from the current £15 million. “Sunak told Jewish leaders there is no ‘context’ in which its acceptable to beam antisemitic tropes onto Big Ben’”.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak gives a speech as he attends the Community Security Trust (CST) Dinner. [Photo by Simon Dawson/No 10 Downing Street / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The assault on democratic rights was introduced in Parliament on Thursday by Security Minister Tugendhat to the handful of MPs who bothered to show up. He repeated the lies about demonstrators, which he described as “thugs” who “threatened to force Parliament to ‘lock its doors’”.

Labour Shadow Minister for Security Dan Jarvis pledged to work with the government, stating, “We cannot and will not allow a minority to pose security threats, or allow racial hatred to ever go unchallenged or to undermine our democracy.” Calling for the government to move faster he urged, “Recent protests, alongside threats to and intimidation of politicians, have also raised the issue of what is defined as hateful extremism. The Government have not yet brought forward a definition, but that would be helpful in countering threats and intimidation. Can the Minister say when the Government... will bring forward a definition, and outline when the Government will bring forward an updated counter-extremism strategy?