Australian law rushed through to veto agreements with China

Mike Head

Backed by the Labor Party, the Liberal-National Coalition government passed a bill through parliament on Tuesday to give itself sweeping powers to prohibit any agreement or cancel any existing agreement signed by a state, territory or local government, or a public university, with China.

This unprecedented legislation was rushed through in what media commentators called “breakneck speed”—less than four months after Prime Minister Scott Morrison first announced it. This marks another escalation in the Australian ruling elite’s alignment behind the US confrontation with Beijing, despite China being Australian capitalism’s largest export market.

The passage of the bill came just six months after US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo publicly threatened to “simply disconnect” Australia from Washington’s telecommunications, military and intelligence networks if any Australian government made an agreement with China deemed to endanger US “national security.”

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison toasts President Donald Trump at the White House in September, 2019 [Credit: AP Photo/Alex Brandon]

In all the coverage of the legislation, no media outlet has recalled Pompeo’s warning, because that would make the connection too explicit in the eyes of the Australian population, where anti-war sentiment is strong. Yet Pompeo was blunt in his May 21 interview on the Murdoch media’s Sky News channel.

Pompeo was asked about a vague memorandum agreed by the Victorian state Labor government in 2018 to negotiate a “co-operation road map” for infrastructure projects under the umbrella of China’s global Belt and Road Initiative. He declared: “Every citizen of Australia should know that every one of those Belt and Road projects needs to be looked at incredibly closely.”

Pompeo reiterated: “We will not take any risks to our telecommunications infrastructure, any risk to the national security elements of what we need to do with our Five Eyes partners.” This was a reference to the top-level US-led global surveillance network that includes the UK, Canada, New Zealand and Australia.

Pompeo’s bullying was a pointed reminder that the Australian ruling class remains heavily dependent on the US for military and intelligence protection, as well as for foreign investment. That is the real source of “foreign interference” in Australia.

Like the 2018 “foreign interference” laws, the Trump administration regards the Foreign Relations (State and Territory Arrangements) Act as a vital test of Canberra’s commitment to the US-led conflict with China and as a model for similar measures internationally. Any incoming Biden administration would only further ramp up the drive, begun under Obama, to reassert US hegemony over the Asia-Pacific against China’s rising economic influence.

China is not named in the new Act, yet the focus is obvious. Throughout the political establishment and the corporate media the first target has been identified: The Victorian Belt and Road “memorandum of understanding” (MoU).

This MoU is not the only target, however. Government members of parliament have accused universities of developing dubious links with Chinese universities, institutions and companies, including the opening of Confucius Institutes.

A 99-year lease of the civilian port in the strategic northern city of Darwin, granted to a Chinese company by the Northern Territory government in 2013, is also in the firing line. In 2015, US President Barack Obama personally reproached then Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull for not consulting with Washington about the lease.

Under the new legislation, sister-city relationships, tourism and trade cooperation, as well as science and education deals, will all be subject to onerous registration and review procedures, but not those by corporations or private universities.

While protecting business deals, this process will create a witch hunting, anti-China atmosphere. At the same time, all arrangements with US institutions, such as the University of Sydney’s US Studies Centre, will escape scrutiny.

The new law will formally give the foreign minister, currently Marise Payne, an arbitrary discretion to veto a “negotiation or arrangement” that is “likely to adversely affect Australia’s foreign relations” or “likely to be inconsistent with Australia’s foreign policy.” No reasons have to be given for such bans and they will be shielded from review by the courts.

Payne has wasted no time implementing the bill, with the Australian reporting yesterday that she “will move within weeks to assess if major state government and university deals with overseas powers including China should be cancelled.”

The newspaper said the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) would begin to assess foreign agreements well before the three-month and six-month deadlines that state governments and universities respectively have to register their deals with DFAT.

During Tuesday’s perfunctory Senate debate, the Labor Party’s shadow foreign affairs minister Penny Wong complained that the government was rushing the bill and blocking all Labor’s amendments, which she said were seeking to improve it. She nervously urged the government to use its new powers “wisely, “calmly” and “strategically.”

Whatever anxiety exists about the fallout from the intensifying belligerence toward China, there was never any doubt that Labor would back the bill. Opposition leader Anthony Albanese declared his party was “very supportive of” the legislation as soon as Morrison announced it in August. Labor is no less bound to the US military alliance than the Coalition and played a key role in launching the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” against China.

The bill’s passage was accompanied by a further rash of government and media allegations against China. Backed by Labor and the media, Morrison denounced China and demanded an official apology after a mid-ranking Chinese official made a social media post condemning Australia’s war crimes in Afghanistan.

Without providing any evidence, Trade Minister Simon Birmingham then accused Beijing of undermining the “letter and spirit” of the China-Australia free-trade agreement and its obligations under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules because of recent Chinese restrictions on some Australian exports, usually on health or anti-dumping grounds.

Birmingham escalated the conflict by saying the government had raised China’s treatment of Australian barley, wine, meat, lobsters, logs, coal and cotton at a November 25 WTO meeting, and was now “considering all dispute settlement options.”

In recent weeks, Chinese authorities have apparently stalled Australian imports worth an estimated $6 billion a year. Most recently, timber imports have been banned because of detected “live forest pests” and two lamb and sheep meat exporters had their licenses to export to China suspended after they reported COVID-19 outbreaks.

Ironically, there is speculation that in some instances, Australian exporters are suffering as a by-product of the trade war launched by the US against China. In January, as a result, China committed to increase its purchases of US agricultural goods by more than $14 billion to almost $50 billion in 2020.

Australian-based businesses this year have still exported more goods to China than in any year except 2019, led by iron ore and LNG. Official figures released by China on Monday revealed Australia’s exports to China in the first 11 months of the year were $142 billion ($US105.3 billion), down 4 percent on the corresponding period last year.

Anxious to protect these revenues, some corporate leaders have voiced concerns about the deteriorating relations with China. Australia China Business Council national president David Olsson told the Australian Financial Review that the government should appoint a special envoy to visit China to try to repair the relationship.

Nonetheless, efforts to maintain profitable relations with China are increasingly under fire from Washington. Irrespective of whether Trump or Biden is president, the next US administration will take to a new threatening level the Obama administration’s military and strategic “pivot to Asia” to prevent China from undermining the regional and global hegemony established by the US in World War II, and heightening the danger of a disastrous war.

Germany’s Christian Democrats close ranks with the far-right Alternative for Germany

Peter Schwarz

Nine months before the next federal election, the Christian Democratic Union (CDU) is cozying up to the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). This is the issue at the heart of the government crisis in the eastern German state of Saxony-Anhalt.

Merkel at the Chancellor's Office on Monday evening (AP photo/Markus Schreiber, pool).

The crisis is not limited to a few right-wing troublemakers in a relatively insignificant CDU state association, which represents only three percent of delegates at CDU federal conferences. Rather, the leadership of the federal party has indicated its readiness as well to openly cooperate with the AfD.

Neither the current CDU party chairperson Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, nor Secretary General Paul Ziemiak have criticised the CDU parliamentary faction in Saxony-Anhalt, which insists on its right to ally itself with the AfD against the state coalition government of which the CDU is a part. Friedrich Merz, one of the three candidates for the post of CDU party chairman and chancellor candidate, has gone so far as to publicly back the state CDU.

The SPD and the Greens also share direct responsibility for the rehabilitation of the AfD, which is hated by broad sections of the population and has been weakened by internal conflicts in recent months. After the 2016 state elections, the SPD and Greens formed a so-called Kenya coalition with the CDU (based on the party colours of all 3 parties) and presented it as a “bulwark against the right,” i.e. against the AfD, which emerged from the state election in second place with 24.3 percent of the vote.

Now it is clear that far from being a “bulwark against the right” the Kenya coalition is just the opposite; it is in fact a bulwark for the right. The coalition has shielded the AfD from criticism from the left and de facto implemented its political program: arming the police, deporting refugees and decimating social gains in a state that is top of the list in Germany in terms of poverty and unemployment. Now those in the CDU who sympathise with the AfD, and who never made a secret of their standpoint, feel strong enough to take the offensive.

The crisis in Saxony-Anhalt was ignited by a minor issue, the increase of the monthly broadcasting fee by 86 cents to 18.36 euros. The increase is part of the federal media treaty, which requires that all German states agree to the increase in order for it to come into force at the beginning of January.

The CDU faction in the Magdeburg state parliament insisted on rejecting the increase, which other federal states—including those governed by the CDU—had already agreed to. The Saxony-Anhalt CDU justified its rejection of the increase by citing a clause in the coalition agreement that advocated the “stability of contributions.” But this was an obvious pretext, since similar formulations can be found in the coalition agreements of other states, which approved the media treaty on the grounds that this was the first fee increase since 2009 and therefore merely an adjustment for inflation.

The Magdeburg CDU faction was well aware it could only prevent the increase with the support of the AfD, which also rejects the increase, while the SPD and the Greens support it. The increase in the broadcasting fee was therefore clearly a pretext to justify cooperation with the AfD.

The premier of Saxony-Anhalt Reiner Haseloff (CDU) tried to maintain the coalition with various manoeuvres and delaying tactics. Finally, last Friday, Holger Stahlknecht, the state Interior Minister and CDU chairman, made a stand against Haseloff. In an interview with the Magdeburger Volksstimme, Stahlknecht declared that the party’s rejection of the fee was “not negotiable”: “The CDU will not give up its position. The CDU state executive agreed this unanimously on Monday evening. The party stands by the faction without any ifs and buts. We are lining up together.”

In the interview, Stahlknecht also made clear that he was not concerned about the financial burden of the broadcasting fee, which is levied on every household and is especially hard for low-income earners. Instead, he attacked the orientation of the public media, which he accused of “moralising on behalf of an intellectual minority” and of too much political correctness. As Interior Minister during the refugee crisis, he had seen citizens expressing concern “whether integration would succeed,” and “who were then brandmarked as right-wing.” In fact, this is the type of language associated with the AfD.

Asked by the Magdeburger Volkstimme what would happen if the coalition collapsed next week, Stahlknecht insisted: “Once again, we are sticking to our position. The ball is now in the court of the SPD and Greens.” Should they leave the government, Stahlknecht said, “this would result in a CDU minority government.” Such a minority government would rely on the AfD not only regarding the broadcasting fee, but also on other issues. The AfD immediately declared its willingness to cooperate.

Prime Minister Haseloff reacted to the interview by dismissing Stahlknecht, who has been head of the Interior Ministry since 2011. Stahlknecht then announced his resignation as state party chairman on Tuesday.

For some considerable time, there was no reaction from the CDU headquarters in Berlin. Eventually both CDU party chairwoman Kramp-Karrenbauer and secretary general Ziemiak reacted by placing responsibility on the SPD and the Greens, which now had to “be aware of their political responsibility in the state.” The candidate for party chair, Merz openly expressed his solidarity with Stahlknecht, declaring that the planned increase in contributions could be viewed critically, and that it was “completely unimportant what the AfD thought about the matter.”

Stahlknecht’s resignation did not resolve the crisis. Both the parliamentary group and the state party continue to reject the fee increase and Stahlknecht enjoys considerable sympathy within the party. His interview remains on the social media channel of the state CDU, and on Facebook he was hailed by hundreds of supporters as a “straightforward” and “steadfast” “politician with backbone.”

Unable to change the position of his own party, Prime Minister Haseloff finally decided to cancel the vote on the fee increase in the state parliament, meaning that the federal media treaty, which requires unanimity of all the states, will not come into force in January. While the CDU and the AfD have not formally joined forces to vote it down, the AfD got what it wanted.

The orientation of the Saxony-Anhalt CDU towards the AfD is not new. Members of the party’s parliamentary faction have repeatedly spoken out publicly in favour of cooperation with the right-wing extremist party, which in Saxony-Anhalt is led by representatives of the neo-Nazi “Wing.”

In the summer of 2019, deputy CDU faction leaders Ulrich Thomas and Lars-Jörn Zimmer wrote a “memorandum” calling for a coalition with the AfD. Voters for the CDU and AfD pursued similar goals, the memo argued and then lamented in the typical manner of the AfD “uncontrolled migration” and an “increase in brutal criminality.” It then continued: “It must be possible again to reconcile the social with the national”—an unmistakable allusion to National Socialism, as Hitler’s party was officially called.

At the beginning of this year, the CDU nominated Robert Möritz, a well-known neo-Nazi, who has never concealed his views and who was also on the board of the CDU district association of Anhalt-Bitterfeld, as candidate in a local election. When his far-right past came to light, he was defended not only by Sven Schulze, secretary general of the state CDU, but also by Interior Minister Stahlknecht.

Stahlknecht has repeatedly attracted attention with his right-wing inclinations. One year ago, he wanted to appoint the chairman of the police union Rainer Wendt as state secretary. Wendt is a key figure for the extreme right. As Minister of the Interior, Stahlknecht was also responsible for the fact that the synagogue in Halle was completely unprotected when the neo-fascist terrorist Stephan Balliet attempted to storm the building on the holiday of Yom Kippur 2019. Only a strong wooden door prevented a massacre. Stahlknecht later complained to police officers that they could not be deployed elsewhere because of the need to protect Jewish facilities—a comment which Jewish organisations protested vehemently.

This has not prevented the SPD from working closely with the CDU and Stahlknecht for nine and a half years—and the Greens for four and a half—while claiming in public that their coalition represented a “bulwark against the right.” The Left Party would no doubt also have joined the coalition if asked.

The events in Magdeburg show that the election of FDP politician Thomas Kemmerich as Thuringian premier with the votes of the AfD, CDU and the neo-liberal Free Democratic Party in February this year was no accident. When Kemmerich was finally forced to resign following a storm of public outrage and Bodo Ramelow from the Left Party returned to the post of premier, he too reached out his hand to the AfD by using his vote to enable the party to fill the position of vice-president of the state parliament.

The rise of the AfD, which has met with massive popular opposition, is largely due to the support it has received from other parties. The continuation of the federal grand coalition after the 2017 election served above all to elevate the AfD to the country’s main opposition party. Since then, although its fascist character is becoming increasingly obvious, the AfD has been feted by the other established parties and entrusted with the leadership of important committees. At the same time, the ultra-right terrorist networks which operate in and around the AfD and reach deep inside the country’s security forces, can rely on support from the judiciary and secret services.

The right-wing extremists are needed to enforce policies of social reaction, rearmament and militarism to suppress growing working class resistance. When it comes to refugee policy and rearmament at home and abroad, the German government has long since adopted the AfD’s program. Thousands have died from COVID-19 due to the federal and state governments’ refusal to impose a lockdown. The profits of the big corporations are regarded by them to be more important than the lives and health of the population. This policy can ultimately only be implemented by force.

Anti-Chinese campaign casts doubt over vaccinations as second COVID-19 wave batters Brazil

Miguel Andrade

Brazil is seeing a rapid surge in COVID-19 infections and deaths following the complete abandonment by federal and local governments of any restraint on economic activity. Even with summer approaching, the back-to-work drive has brought the average daily death toll to 600, a two-month high. Daily new infections stand at 40,000, and six Brazilian states are close to a health care system collapse, with more than 80 percent of COVID-19-dedicated ICUs occupied, and hospital beds filled with patients being treated for diseases that had been neglected and aggravated during eight months of the pandemic.

Bolsonaro's March 18 press conference with his ministers. (Credit: Planalto)

At the same time, plans for mass vaccinations over the next year are being systematically undermined by the conflict that is gripping the Brazilian ruling class and drawing lines between the government of fascistic President Jair Bolsonaro and the Congressional opposition led by the Workers Party (PT) over Brazil’s attitude towards the US-led imperialist offensive against China.

Since his presidential campaign in 2018, Bolsonaro has sought to exploit the impact of Chinese industrial imports and investments in Brazil to make a nationalist appeal epitomized by the slogan “China is not buying from Brazil, it is buying Brazil.” This chauvinist campaign has served as a cover for his plans to shift Brazilian foreign policy towards a total alignment with Washington.

At the beginning of 2020, with barely a year in office, Bolsonaro solidarized himself with the reactionary anti-Chinese campaign of US President Donald Trump, who blamed the Chinese government for the pandemic and promoted fraudulent claims originating in far-right circles that the pandemic was part of a deliberate Chinese plan to undermine the US.

Bolsonaro is now working to impede the use by federal and local authorities of the Chinese-developed CoronaVac vaccine which has just ended phase-three clinical trials conducted in Brazil by one of the country’s leading vaccine research facilities, the São Paulo-based Butantan Institute. The Butantan Institute is part of the São Paulo state Health Department and is one of the two main infectious diseases centers in the country, together with the federal Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz), based in Rio de Janeiro. The institute produces 75 percent of the vaccines used by the Health Ministry in annual vaccination campaigns.

As Brazil emerged as an epicenter of the worldwide COVID-19 pandemic, Butantan partnered with the Beijing-based Sinovac Life Science biotechnology company to conduct clinical trials in Brazil and secure the rights and an initial capacity to produce 100 million doses of the CoronaVac vaccine a year.

Phase-two trials of the vaccine in Brazil have produced promising results, with 97 percent of participants developing antibodies. Emergency use of the vaccine for health care and other essential workers has already been carried out in China, with hundreds of thousands vaccinated. Chile, Turkey and Indonesia are also conducting trials of the vaccine.

The CoronaVac vaccine has also already proved to be safe, although those results are hardly surprising, given the traditional approach taken by Sinovac. CoronaVac uses a physically degraded—or “inactivated”—form of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, the same approach used worldwide for influenza vaccines and, most famously, for the landmark Salk vaccine for polio.

This approach contrasts with the recent messenger RNA vaccines developed by Moderna and Pfizer, and is also usually less effective, demanding a wider coverage of the population to guarantee a halt in the spread of the virus. Typical influenza vaccines using the same technique are usually around 60 percent effective. At the same time, however, this type of vaccine has the advantage of requiring only normal refrigeration, as opposed to the expensive super cooling demanded by the new messenger RNA vaccines.

CoronaVac has nonetheless been vilified by Bolsonaro, solely because of its Chinese origin, with the president casting a shadow over the whole scientific community in China, as well as those involved in the Brazilian trials.

On October 21, after his Health Minister, Gen. Eduardo Pazuello, told the 27 Brazilian governors that the ministry would prepare the National Health System to use the CoronaVac vaccine, Bolsonaro told the media that his government “would buy no Chinese vaccine.” In his characteristically ignorant fashion, he stated that he didn’t “believe a Chinese vaccine inspires trust, due to its origin.” He added that “China is already discredited within the population because, as many said, the virus came from there.” On the same day, he wrote on Facebook in capital letters that Brazilians “wouldn’t be anybody’s guinea pigs,” and that the lack of “scientific evidence” would be an obstacle to investing in the vaccine.

Reservations about “scientific evidence” are ludicrous coming from Bolsonaro, who has defended every quack cure for the COVID-19 pandemic put forward by the most backward forces—most prominently hydroxychloroquine—while denying the need for basic preventive measures such as the use of masks and social distancing. The attitude toward the CoronaVac vaccine also contrasts with federal funding for the vaccine being developed by the British-Swedish pharmaceutical giant AstraZeneca together with Oxford University scientists, which was tested in Brazil and is to be produced by Rio de Janeiro’s Fiocruz at a rate of 160 million doses a year, initially.

Complete clinical data on the AstraZeneca vaccine was published just yesterday in the authoritative Lancet medical journal. It is the first time any of the authorities and companies responsible for the development of the most advanced vaccines internationally—including Pfizer, Moderna, Sinovac and the Gamaleya Institute in Russia, producing the Sputnik V—have done so. AstraZeneca’s effort has been questioned, however, over apparent mishandling of the tests, most significantly its obtaining higher efficacy with a smaller dose, and the lack of elderly patients in its trials.

Amid its anti-Chinese campaign, Bolsonaro reacted with joy on November 10 over the death of one of the participants in the CoronaVac trials four days earlier, which led the federal drug and health agency, Anvisa, to suddenly order a halt to the Butantan trials.

It was immediately revealed that the death was a suicide. The Butantan Institute went public claiming it had informed Anvisa four days earlier that the death had nothing to do with the vaccine. Responding with a claim that it had problems with its computers and had not seen Butantan’s report, Anvisa allowed the tests to be resumed. While the real reason for Anvisa’s halting the trials is still unclear, and its explanation is still viewed with skepticism in Brazil, it gave Bolsonaro another opportunity to rail against the “Chinese vaccine” and go on social media to declare, without any substantiation: “death, disability, anomaly. That is the vaccine [São Paulo Governor João] Doria wants all of São Paulo’s population to take. The president has always said vaccination shouldn’t be mandatory. One more win for Jair.”

This declaration, and Anvisa’s unexplained move to halt the trials, has raised concerns that Bolsonaro will interfere in the agency’s evaluation of CoronaVac. On Monday, São Paulo’s Governor Doria announced that his administration intends to start vaccinations with CoronaVac on January 25 of health care workers, the elderly and the indigenous population—a total of 9 million out of the state’s 44 million inhabitants.

On Tuesday, the Health Minister announced at a hastily convened meeting with Brazil’s governors that the government would buy Pfizer vaccines and had already secured 300 million doses guaranteed from various sources for 2021, without presenting any coherent vaccination timetable.

A state-based vaccination campaign is unprecedented in Brazil, and many Bolsonaro-allied governors left the meeting accusing Doria, Bolsonaro’s former key political ally and now national political rival, of opportunism for attempting to bypass the Health Ministry and negotiate with governors and even mayors in promoting CoronaVac. Flávio Dino, the Communist party governor of the state of Maranhão, has already petitioned the Supreme Court to allow the importing of vaccines without Anvisa’s approval, based on emergency legislation passed by Congress in March allowing the emergency use in Brazil of drugs approved by any of Anvisa’s counterparts in China, the European Union, the United Kingdom or the United States.

Far from solving the crisis, if successful, Dino’s petition will only aggravate the desperate search for a vaccine in Brazil, with governors already warning of the chaotic potential of a state-based vaccination campaign provoking a run on states where vaccinations are taking place.

Health experts are also warning that the country is not prepared to vaccinate the whole population in the next year due to the lack of protective equipment for the 110,000 workers manning the 38,000 vaccination stations of the National Health System, and even of syringes, not to mention super-cooled freezers, along with potential additional shortages caused by massive vaccinations next year.

Thai protest leaders charged under draconian lèse majesté law

Robert Campion

Charges were brought against 15 pro-democracy activists on Tuesday for challenging the Thai monarchy in recent mass protests. The conflict between the largely student-based demonstrations, which have involved tens of thousands in Bangkok, and the military junta has reached an impasse in recent weeks and there are signs that the government is preparing a crackdown.

Ex-general Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha gave the go-ahead to police last month to resume enforcement of the draconian lèse-majesté law, which has not been used for over two years. Section 112 of the Thai Criminal Code deems it an offence to defame or threaten the King—currently Maha Vajiralongkorn—or his close family and carries prison terms of up to 15 years.

Students raise three-fingers, symbol of resistance salute, during an August rally in Bangkok, Thailand [Credit: AP Photo/Sakchai Lalit]

“It will be necessary for the government and the concerned security agencies to enhance our measures by enforcing all the pertaining laws against protesters who violate the law or infringe on the rights and freedoms of other citizens.” Prayut declared.

Four protest leaders reported to a police station of their own accord in Northaburi, north of Bangkok, where around 100 supporters gathered, chanted “cancel 112” and protested the summons to reporters.

Parit “Penguin” Chiwarak, a student activist, stated that, “if the institution shows signs that they will listen to the people, it will show to the public that they are open-minded. But if the institution responds by using article 112 to silence the people, it will show the public and the international community that the institution is afraid of truth.”

Indicating that the protest movement was showing no signs of slowing, Panusaya “Rung” Sithijirawattanakul told the press: “I have to say this will not affect our movement. We will continue our activities in order to achieve the three demands we make.”

Alongside them were Panupong “Mike Rayong” Jadnok, also charged with lèse-majesté, and Shinawat Chankrajang who was only charged with violating the emergency decree. The government’s state of emergency has been used to break up student demonstrations supposedly in the interest of public health and combating COVID-19.

All four protest leaders were permitted to leave after being charged. Another eleven participants in the pro-democracy movement were charged for defaming the monarchy in different locations.

These included Jatupat Boonpattarasaksa and Somyot Pruksakasemsuk. Both have already spent time in prison in the past for breaking the lèse-majesté law. Jatupat spent 2.5 years for the crime of sharing a BBC article about Thailand’s king on Facebook. Somyot, who is editor in chief of a magazine, served 7 years beginning in 2011 for articles deemed insulting to monarchy.

In a Facebook post Monday, 55-year-old Somyot stated that the lèse-majesté law should not be used as a weapon against the new generation.

Arnon Nampa, one of the defendants and a human rights lawyer, stated in a Facebook post: “We’re heading toward more conflict. The Thai establishment has used lèse-majesté law as its weapons.”

The resumption of section 112, which has been used 90 times since the 2014 coup, indicates the sensitivity of the Thai ruling class to any challenge to the monarchy, the linchpin of the bourgeois state apparatus. Since 1932 and the ending of absolute monarchy, twelve coups have ensued in Thailand each time with the blessing of the king to cement a new dictatorship.

The latest military-backed government has systematically undermined rights to assembly and free speech, limited access to information critical of the government, and operates with unlimited powers granted to the cabinet.

Thailand’s student protests have been ongoing for months, fuelled by levels of extreme inequality exacerbated by the government’s response to the pandemic. The three main demands—the resignation of Prime Minister Prayut, constitutional reforms and greater constitutional oversight on the monarchy—have not in any way been met.

Prayuth, who ousted the democratically-elected government of Prime Minister Yingluck Shinawatra in a military coup six years ago, has adamantly refused to step down and has defeated all constitutional reform using the appointive senate.

The conflict in Thailand is being watched closely by its long-term treaty ally, the US. Last week, a draft resolution was put forward by the Democratic Party to the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, expressing full support to the anti-government protests.

The draft resolution, urging the Thai government “to protect and uphold democracy,” was promoted by nine US senators including Thai American war veteran Tammy Duckworth, who is slated as a possible defense secretary under a Biden administration.

US Senator Bob Menendez, a ranking member of the committee, led a group of seven senate colleagues in endorsing the bill last Thursday.

“Thailand’s reformers are not seeking a revolution,” Menendez stated approvingly. “They are simply yearning for democratic changes to their country’s political system, for freedom of speech and assembly, and for Thailand to be a part of the community of democratic nations.”

The moves by the Democratic Party are not guided by concerns for democracy, but are driven by the interests of US imperialism. A Biden administration would intensify the US economic and strategic confrontation with China throughout the Indo-Pacific that began under the Obama administration’s “pivot to Asia” and escalated by Trump.

Like other governments in the region, the Prayuth regime has attempted to balance between longstanding strategic and military ties with Washington and its economic relations with China. The Thai military itself has been increasingly dependent on arms and training from China, including the purchase of large items such as submarines.

The rather cautious bill promoted by Democrat senators indicates that a Biden administration could use the issue of “human rights” in Thailand to pressure its government to realign its foreign policy more closely to Washington.

The anti-government protests are ongoing. According to a Twitter post by the United Front of Thammasat and Demonstration, a protest will take place today in Bangkok in opposition to the lèse-majesté law.

Canadian authorities covering up workplace COVID-19 outbreaks to justify keeping economy and schools open

Janet Browning

Canada’s Finance Minister Chrystia Freeland claimed in her fiscal update speech last week that the ruling class has learned how to “keep most of our economy … operating safely, even while the virus is still circulating in our communities.”

This is a lie. COVID-19 is running rampant in workplaces and schools. The ruling elite and their political hirelings are concealing this fact because they are adamant that nothing be allowed to get in the way of raking in profits amid a raging pandemic.

A member of the Canadian Armed Forces working at a Quebec nursing home. (Canadian Dept. of Defence)

The reckless back-to-work campaign spearheaded by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Liberal government and provincial governments of all political stripes, and supported by the corporatist trade unions, has led to a surge in workplace COVID-19 infections and deaths, especially among low income, highly-exploited industrial and logistics workers.

Those working in manual labour jobs without the option of working from home are catching COVID-19 while at work at alarming rates. In Quebec, workplaces now account for 40 percent of all infections, and these figures, which come from the government’s Institut national de santé publique, do not include infections at schools, hospitals and long-term care facilities.

In mid-October, the provincial government agency in charge of occupational health and safety ordered a COVID-19 “inspection blitz,” but the public health institute’s data show that this has utterly failed to arrest the growth in workplace infections. For 11 consecutive weeks, ending only last week when there was a small decline, the number of workplace outbreaks rose to a new high.

Ontario’s Peel Region, which neighbours Metro Toronto and includes the largely working-class cities of Mississauga, Brampton and Caledon, is one of Canada’s largest warehouse and distribution hubs. Businesses in the region employ many immigrants and members of multigenerational households. Peel Region has the highest cumulative rate of COVID-19 cases in Ontario, at a staggering 1,200 cases per 100,000 people. As of December 1, there had been 116 total workplace outbreaks, more than the number that have occurred in long-term care homes and schools combined.

Peel Region’s Medical Officer of Health, Dr. Lawrence Loh, acknowledged that the surge in workplace infections is linked to the fact that many workers are so poorly paid they have no choice but to go to work, even when they display COVID-19 symptoms. “In protecting workers, we know that the absence of worker protections and paid sick leave does result in outbreaks because, people will show up because they’re choosing between their livelihood and their lives,” he remarked.

According to data analysis of the first week of November by the Toronto-based non-profit ICES, the northeast corner of Brampton had a 19 percent COVID-19 test positivity rate, a rate double that in the United States. Peel as a whole is recording a 9.8 percent test positivity rate, the highest in the Greater Toronto Area, while northwestern Toronto, Scarborough, and the southern York Region are also reporting sky-high rates.

Underscoring that the surge in on-the-job infections is the direct product of the provincial government’s criminal drive to reopen the economy at all costs, more than 25 percent of all cases linked to workplace outbreaks in Peel have been reported in the past two months. Manufacturing and industrial facilities account for 34 percent of workplace outbreaks, while retail and food processing make up 14 percent and 10 percent, respectively.

The workplace outbreaks have led to rapid household and community spread. In September, the region experienced its largest workplace outbreak, when 61 workers tested positive at a business in Mississauga. Despite the major threat posed to the community, public health officials refused to identify the employer or explain how the virus spread. The outbreak led to at least 49 additional infections among family members and close contacts.

Information released by Peel Public Health points to the utter contempt shown towards workers by employers and governments, many of whom have done little to nothing to implement even the most basic workplace protections and safeguards. The agency noted that a lack of physical distancing in lunch rooms and other common areas, improper mask use, carpooling with other employees and the failure to conduct on-site screening to prevent symptomatic workers from entering a facility are the leading causes of infection in workplaces.

Even Brampton Mayor Patrick Brown, a former leader of the Ontario Progressive Conservatives, felt compelled to comment on the disgraceful treatment of workers. “If there’s even a single case in a school or in a long-term care facility, they tell the public,” Brown said. “But in Mississauga we had a factory with more than 60 cases and we still didn’t release the name because of Public Health Ontario guidelines.”

Brown added, “We’re seeing transmission in industrial settings and essential workplaces, and there were a number of outbreaks in food processing and transportation and logistics. … While many people are sitting in the comfort of their homes and going to grocery stores, it’s an Amazon worker, a trucker in Brampton, or someone in a food processing plant that made sure they had their food.”

Brown has remained a lone voice in the wilderness within the political establishment. Federal and provincial agencies, as his comments highlight, are intentionally downplaying and outright suppressing news of workplace outbreaks, leaving the public in the dark about where the virus is spreading.

An Ontario Health Coalition report on outbreaks in non-health care workplaces released on October 20 documented a 68 percent increase in workplace outbreaks across the province during the previous three weeks. “This increase is disconcerting as we have yet to see any kind of coherent plan or regulations from the Ford Government and the few directives and regulations released have been arbitrary, lacking in detailed instructions for workplace safety procedures and implemented in an ad hoc manner,” wrote the authors. “Workplace outbreaks are poorly reported and are not broken down by industry in a way that is transparent. Since the approach to managing the pandemic is to keep everything possible open, rather than shutting down, it is more vital than ever that the public understands where and how COVID-19 is spreading. Currently this is not happening. Shielding business names with outbreaks is not serving the public interest.”

Workers infected on the job who have sought redress by filing compensation claims with the Workplace Safety and Insurance Board (WSIB) are routinely seeing their claims denied. A Canadian Press report in mid-November noted that Ontario’s WSIB has tossed out over 1,400 workers’ claims related to COVID-19, including hundreds from health care workers and other frontline occupations.

Similarly, the Ontario Ministry of Labour has issued only 37 COVID-19-related stop work orders, which are used when there is an immediate risk of worker injury. The reluctance to issue such orders is undoubtedly because it requires the business to halt operations until the risk is addressed.

The criminal indifference of the capitalist politicians and their state institutions for the lives of workers and their families is shared by the union bureaucrats. The unions bear responsibility for the dangerous conditions in workplaces across Canada, because they have collaborated with the Trudeau Liberals and provincial governments to reopen the economy and schools. As early as April, union bureaucrats held closed-door meetings with government officials and business lobby groups, following which they described getting everyone back to work quickly as “a challenge that we must meet.”

Whenever worker opposition to this homicidal course breaks out, the unions intervene to suppress it and divert demands for prioritizing worker safety into the straitjacket of the provincial labour relations system—the same system that is dismissing workers’ compensation claims and refusing to hold employers accountable for putting workers’ lives at risk. Two of the most egregious examples of this were the unions’ bitter hostility to job action by Alberta meat packing workers at Cargill’s High River plant following a massive outbreak that ultimately killed four people, and by teachers across Canada opposed to the reckless reopening of schools.

To stop the ruling elite’s criminal policy of mass infections and death, workers must take the defence of workplace safety and their very lives into their own hands. What is necessary is the shutdown of schools and all nonessential production with full compensation for all workers affected until the pandemic is brought under control, and the investment of hundreds of billions of dollars in health care and social services to ensure everyone receives the care and support they require. The resources exist for such a program, but they must be expropriated from the financial oligarchy, which has enriched itself massively over recent months at the expense of the working class. To conduct this struggle, workers must establish rank-and-file safety committees independent of the corporatist unions in every workplace, and take up a political fight against the capitalist profit system with the aim of placing human needs ahead of private profit.

In bipartisan vote: US House approves record $741 billion military spending bill

Patrick Martin

The overwhelming bipartisan vote by the House of Representatives Tuesday evening to approve the largest military budget in American history demonstrates the reality of capitalist politics. Democrats and Republicans are supposedly at each other’s throats over an array of social and political issues, but they are entirely in agreement on funding the world’s largest and most lethal military machine.

The House vote was by a massive margin, 335–78. Democrats supported passage by 195–37. Republicans supported passage by 140–40. Every leader of the House Democrats backed passage: Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, Majority Whip James Clyburn. They were joined by the top Republicans: Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, Minority Whip Steve Scalise and the ranking Republican on the House Armed Services Committee, the co-sponsor of the massive bill, Mac Thornberry of Texas.

The Pentagon in Washington. (AP Photo/Charles Dharapak, File)

The margin was far more than the two-thirds required to override a threatened Trump veto, although it is not clear that Trump will actually follow up on his tweets demanding two changes in the bill, neither relevant to its basic purposes. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has already said the Senate will pass the NDAA in the next few days. The margin is likely to be even more decisive than in the House.

While rubber-stamping the largest-ever Pentagon budget, the House and Senate remain locked in a protracted stalemate which has blocked the payment of a single dollar of federal supplemental unemployment insurance since the benefit expired last July 31.

The $741 billion for the Pentagon is approximately six times as much as the $121 billion in unemployment benefits paid out to 60 million workers since the coronavirus pandemic struck.

The goal of the NDAA, according to its preamble, is to achieve “irreversible momentum in the implementation of the National Defense Strategy” spelled out by the Pentagon in 2018, which identified “strategic competition” with Russia and China, not terrorism, as the “preeminent challenge” of US military policy. This includes, according to the various subdivisions of the massive bill, achieving “Superiority in the Air”, “Superiority on the Seas,” “Superiority on the Land,” and, in keeping with the demands of Trump, “Superiority in Space.”

It is not hard to imagine what the rest of the world is to think of this all-out US drive for military power “uber alles”: China, Russia and imperialist powers like Germany, Britain, France and Japan are all engaged in military build-ups to match that in America, bringing ever closer the danger of an uncontrolled military clash between great powers, most of them nuclear armed.

Well short of such an apocalypse, the arms race involves an unforgivable squandering of economic resources needed to meet social concerns such as education, health care, alleviating poverty and retirement security.

One of the largest single components of the Pentagon budget is Overseas Contingency Operations (OCO), funded to the tune of $69 billion. This is the spending for ongoing military operations where US forces are deployed: primarily Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria, as well as the Persian Gulf, where vast naval and air assets are arrayed against Iran. The OCO also covers active drone missile warfare operations across Central Asia, the Middle East and North Africa.

The bill puts billions into preparations to confront Russia and China, including fully funding the European Deterrence Initiative, the NATO build-up on Russia’s western borders, and the Pacific Deterrence Initiative, providing $2.2 billion for similar activity by US naval and air forces directed against China. The label “deterrence” is entirely deceptive: the Pentagon is not seeking to ward off Russian and Chinese aggression, but to prepare for US aggression against one or both countries, regarded as the main obstacles to maintaining US world domination. Another $250 million goes for the Ukraine Security Assistance Initiative, while $500 million (and likely much more) is earmarked for Israel.

Some other major provisions of the bill include:

Requiring the Air Force to maintain 386 operational squadrons comprising at least 3,850 combat aircraft. This includes $9.1 billion to buy an additional 93 F-35 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, 14 more than the Trump administration requested.

Adding $108 million to the procurement of MQ-9 drones equipped to fire missiles.

Purchasing another seven C-130J transport aircraft, used to rapidly deploy troops, tanks and artillery to new war zones.

Procurement of additional major warships for the US Navy, including one additional Virginia-class nuclear-powered submarine, cost roughly $3 billion, and additional smaller submarines, amphibious ships and P-8 anti-submarine aircraft.

Funding to support redesign and improvement of land-based combat systems like artillery, tanks and armored vehicles for the “future of warfare against near-peer competitors” (war with Russia, China or another major power).

Equipping the Army with an additional 116 helicopters, including 60 UH-60 Blackhawks, 50 AH-64E Apaches, and six of the giant MH-47G Chinooks.

Continued funding for a systematic, across-the-board modernization of US nuclear weaponry, begun under Obama and continued under Trump, including submarine-fired missiles, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles and heavy bombers capable of intercontinental flight.

The legislation incorporates a number of provisions to block military moves announced by Trump in recent months, delaying reduction of US troops stationed in Germany and South Korea, for example, until the next administration. Trump did not threaten a veto over these items, demonstrating that his threats of withdrawal were only for electoral purposes, or to extract more money from the countries being “protected” by US forces.

The veto threat came over one provision included in the bill, and one provision that the drafters left out despite Trump’s incessant demands to the contrary.

The provision Trump objects to establishes a procedure through which all US military bases named after Confederate commanders will be renamed in the course of the next three years. These include Ft. Bragg, North Carolina, and Ft. Hood, Texas, two of the largest centers of the US military, as well as Ft. Benning, Georgia, and Camp A. P. Hill in Virginia.

The provision Trump has demanded as an addition to the NDAA would repeal Section 230 of the Communications Act of 1995, which frees social media companies of liability for anything posted by their users. Because of this provision, Trump has been unable to sue Facebook and Twitter when they have placed warning messages on his tweets and postings of brazen falsehoods or incitements to violence. Both Senate and House leaders rejected Trump’s demand as extraneous to the Pentagon budget and likely to derail the legislation if included.

What is most remarkable, however, and almost unreported in the media, is the lockstep agreement between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party on this legislation. Under conditions where Trump is defying the outcome of the November election and seeking to overturn its results through unconstitutional actions, the Democrats nonetheless vote to provide the “commander in chief” with virtually a blank check.

Democratic and Republican leaders on the committees overseeing Pentagon policies and military budgets gave unanimous support to the NDAA, boasting that the military budget has passed Congress by huge majorities for 59 straight years, and the Fiscal 2021 budget will be number 60.

When it comes to the most critical institution of the capitalist state, there is not even a two-party system in America, there is only one party: the party of the military-intelligence apparatus, which is required both to assert US imperialist interests around the world and to defend the financial aristocracy against the looming threat of social disorder and class conflict at home.

Coronavirus death toll at record high in Germany: Merkel puts profits ahead of lives

Johannes Stern

Germany is increasingly an epicentre of the international COVID-19 pandemic. Yesterday, the Robert Koch Institute reported 590 deaths within 24 hours, a new record. According to Worldometer, as many as 622 people died from coronavirus in Germany, more than in Great Britain (616), Russia (562) and France (491). With 18,319 new infections, this figure was also several thousand higher than in France, Italy, the UK or Spain—the countries with the highest overall infection and death rates within the European Union.

In relation to the total population, there are now almost as many coronavirus deaths every day in Germany as in the US. Especially during the autumn, the death figures have exploded. Since October 23, the total number of coronavirus deaths in Germany has doubled from 10,000 to 20,000. Put differently, half the victims have died in the last six weeks, 6,280 of them in November alone. This month, the situation is even more catastrophic, with 3,300 dead so far. If the death toll remains at the same rate, more than 14,000 additional people will die by December 31.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel delivers her government statement in the Bundestag (AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)

In view of this development and the growing concern and anger among the population, Chancellor Angela Merkel (CDU) felt compelled to address the dramatic situation in her government statement in the Bundestag yesterday. “The number of cases is far too high, and it is quite alarming to see how the number of people requiring intensive medical treatment and the number of people dying from the virus is growing,” she said.

However, Merkel did not propose the immediate measures necessary to prevent the deaths of tens of thousands. On the contrary, her exhibited concern and repeated appeals to “be careful” are intended to conceal the fact that her government and the ruling class as a whole are fully responsible for the disaster. The record deaths and infection rates are the direct result of the “profit before lives” policy, which is to be continued despite the high death toll and case numbers.

In her speech, Merkel speculated that the winter holidays might be extended by a few days, but she ruled out a comprehensive closure of schools and non-essential businesses. “The lesson we learned from the spring was that we will do everything in our power to keep day-care centres and schools open,” she said. She added cynically, “However, airing is also part of the job in the winter months. This is simply because we have special conditions.”

The chancellor openly spelled out the priorities of the ruling class. These are not the health and life of the working population, but the economic and geostrategic interests of German capitalism. “This pandemic is something that will certainly reorganise the balance of power in the world, first of all economically, but perhaps also socio-politically,” she lectured, “which means we must see how we are embedded in the global context.”

Merkel noted that the German economy will shrink by 4 to 6 percent this year, similar to the US economy. She said that although the German economy is ahead of “many European countries” such as Italy, France and the UK, “all of which are recording an economic slump of around minus 10 percent for this year,” it is behind countries such as China, “which will emerge from these years with a plus of 1.9 percent.” Germany, she said, must “do everything possible to ensure that the path of recovery that we embarked on in the third quarter after a massive slump in the second quarter can be continued.”

The message is clear. Germany must use the crisis to increase its economic and political influence in competition with the other powers. “German companies should be able to keep up with international competition,” stressed Merkel. We must also “make every effort to ensure that we maintain German strength not only in the economic sphere. It is not only about economic data, but also about worldwide competition between systems, which we are feeling, about different political and social systems.”

Significantly, the new budget for 2021, due to be adopted on Friday, foresees a further massive increase in military expenditure to an official €46.93 billion. Of this amount, €7.72 billion is for military procurement alone: €350 million is earmarked for the procurement of the A 400 M transport aircraft, €442 million for the “Puma” infantry fighting vehicle, €998 million for the procurement of new Eurofighter jets and €379 million for the construction of 180 multi-purpose combat ships.

While billions are being spent on war armament, the gigantic sums pumped mainly into large companies and banks as part of the so-called coronavirus rescue packages are to be squeezed out of the working class again. “We must also always remember what public debt means. It means, of course, the burden on future budgets, it means the need to pay it back, and it means restrictions on future spending and on future generations.”

The World Socialist Web Site has described the pandemic from the beginning as a trigger event accelerating the already far-advanced economic, social and political crisis of the world capitalist system. All over the world, the ruling class has further intensified its policy of social austerity and internal and external armament, which it has already steadily intensified after the financial crisis of 2008/2009. Now, the entire ruling class is literally walking over dead bodies to assert its reactionary interests.

The right-wing agenda of the grand coalition is the consensus in the Bundestag. Significantly, at several points in Merkel’s speech, not only representatives of the coalition parties (CDU/CSU and SPD) applauded, but also members of the FDP, the Greens and the Left Party. As usual, representatives of the AfD catcalled in between, but de facto the grand coalition is putting the policies of the fascists into practice: this applies to the massive armament of the Bundeswehr and the strengthening of “Fortress Europe” against refugees and migrants, as well as the deadly “back to work.”

The strategy of “herd immunity”—i.e., the mass infection of the population—has been the policy of the federal government from the beginning. At a press conference on March 11, Merkel had already stated that the German government assumed that 60 to 70 percent of the population would be infected with COVID-19.

The WSWS commented at the time: “What such statements reveal is not incompetence, but political criminality. Seventy-five years after the downfall of the Nazi Third Reich, a fascistic attitude towards the working class prevails in the financial aristocracy, mirroring that of Ancient Rome to its galley slaves: work until you die.” And we predicted: “No doubt, significant sections of the ruling class consider the coronavirus to be a gift from God. The deaths of millions of the old and sick w ould allow new cuts to social spending, flushing billions more into their pockets.”

China and the Geopolitical Impact of COVID-19

Vijay Shankar

China’s dazzling growth story has been rudely disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and the consequent chaos it has brought down on global economic systems. Ironically, in the past, its growth trajectory was able to brush aside the fallout of the Tiananmen Square massacre despite the apparent humanitarian repugnance it caused worldwide.

Even the global financial crisis of 2008 failed to have any major impact on China due to its closed financial system, the massive economic stimulus it provided to encourage internal consumption and external investments, and its single-minded approach to promote accretion of technologies—setting aside dysfunctional ideologies and international conventions.

Beijing is faced with a complex economic dilemma that will neither abate nor yield to any financial stimulus as it did in 2008 due to its colossal size and intricate linkages with larger global systems. Besides, China’s lack of transparency in the origin and circumstances of the pandemic’s spread has caused a decline in global demand for Chinese exports. It has set into motion an antagonistic and sometimes mixed trend towards its businesses and loan-for-lease territory-grabbing strategies.

As this article argues, “one of the biggest long-term risks to China's economy could come in the form of economic decoupling.” Throughout 2020, tensions between China and India, Japan, Australia and the US have escalated over a number of issues. These include Ladakh, Senkaku Islands, Hong Kong, Taiwan, the prolonged trade war, and increased technological rivalry. Disruption of ties between such large economies has had a downward pressure on growth. In fact, China's economic growth began to decline in 2010. Its GDP dropped from 9.5 per cent in 2011 to 7.3 per cent in 2014; the rate is expected to continue declining to 1.85 per cent in 2020. It is however expected to rise hereafter.

In the meantime, China initiated military measures to persist with claims within the ‘nine-dash line’ in the South China Sea (SCS), precipitated a territorial embroilment with India, pressed on with a grandiose global infrastructure plan called the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), drastically reorganised and modernised its military, and enforced ideological purity in schools and the media—all parts of its vision of a rejuvenated China.

In the circumstances, the future may hold two possibilities:

a) Beijing has advanced the view that its economy is emerging as “more resilient and competitive” than any other by building a “new system of open economy with higher standards.” This however is contrary to the facts on the ground. Australia is a case-in-point, where its banning of China’s 5G network has provoked a tit-for-tat response as China systematically bans the import of Australian products in addition to embarking on a media campaign to malign Australia’s involvement in the Afghan war.

In various forums, Xi has made it abundantly clear that the world needs China more than China the world. As this article argues, a new-found confidence in the meaning of globalisation with a Chinese bent is apparent. Beijing is working to create an order where subjection to Chinese produce counters any maverick tendencies as it rewrites a new set of rules for the international economic system. Will the world ‘kow-tow’ to this new order?  

b) The second possibility relates to the nature of the post-pandemic world and its impact on China’s designs. Will we see more fragmented regionalism and less globalisation, or a global response to Xi’s disruptive nationalism? For a global response or at least a strong and meaningful push-back, short-term commercial interests will have to be set aside.

Awkwardly, we have noted Australia, despite being punished by having its exports worth US$ 6 billion unfairly blocked by China, has gone out of its way to sign up for the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP). This may well appear an appropriate response within neorealist thought: to attempt to bring China into the status quoist group. And yet, was that not the intent for the last three decades, when the assumption of the dominance of military security lost ground to greater interest in the economic and environmentalist agendas? The most uncomplicated way for a new hegemon to face-down opposition is to be up against disjointed competition.

Are we witness to not just the arrival of a new regional hegemon but also a changing order of the international system? Indian External Affairs Minister Dr S Jaishankar writes in his book, The India Way: Strategies for an Uncertain World “…for two decades, China has been winning without fighting, while the US was fighting without winning.” Or has the pandemic put another twist to this tale?