Pandemic outbreaks grow in China but Beijing maintains zero-COVID policy

Jerry Zhang

Beginning in mid-October, following the resurgence of the global pandemic, there have been more widespread outbreaks in China. Most provinces have been affected, and the situation is still not fully contained.

As of November 5, outbreaks had spread to more than 20 provinces. In addition, due to seasonal factors, particularly the onset of colder weather, pandemic prevention and control has become more difficult and complicated, among the country’s nearly 1.5 billion people.

According to the National Health Commission, as of midnight on November 8, there were 393 imported confirmed cases and 1,222 local cases, including 27 severe ones. On that day, 62 new confirmed cases and 74 new asymptomatic infections were added.

The current wave of infections was caused by a number of unrelated overseas sources. As of November 10, there were 88 medium and high-risk areas. The seven high-risk areas were in Heilongjiang Province (three regions), Hebei Province (two regions), Beijing (one region) and Inner Mongolia (one region). The 81 medium-risk regions were in 14 provincial-level administrative regions, including Beijing, Liaoning and Sichuan.

Reports indicate multiple transmission chains, with most of the cross-regional infections related to domestic travel. Potentially at-risk personnel have greater mobility across regions, increasing the risk of further spread of the pandemic.

At the same time, transmission chains have emerged in multiple port cities, some related to elderly tour groups. The proportion of elderly patients suffering severe illnesses is relatively high.

There have been cases of infection of medical workers and other front-line workers in many places, including nurses, doctors, medical students and workers in centralised quarantine facilities. According to information released on November 3, in Xining City, Qinghai Province, the six new confirmed cases from November 1 to 2 were all medical workers. Ningxia, Guizhou and other provinces have also reported infections of workers in quarantine facilities.

In addition, elementary and middle school students have become victims. Zhengzhou City, Henan Province, reported 12 confirmed cases on November 7, of which nine were primary and middle school students, and seven were from the same primary school. The previously reported confirmed cases in Xinji City, Hebei Province also included many primary and middle school students.

At present, the number of new cases in a single day in Heilongjiang Province is gradually decreasing. Hubei, Hunan, Shaanxi and other provinces have not seen any new cases for 12 consecutive days. Community transmission in Inner Mongolia, Beijing, Shandong and other regions has been basically controlled. There are still fluctuating epidemics in Gansu, Qinghai, Yunnan and other places, but the risk of external spread is said to be relatively low.

On November 6, National Health Commission spokesperson Mi Feng told a press conference that since mid-October, the number of new confirmed cases worldwide had rebounded for four consecutive weeks, and China’s actions to prevent infections from overseas had continued to increase.

“It is necessary to adhere to the general strategy of preventing the importation of overseas cases, and the rebound of the domestic pandemic, strict port management and monitoring, and improvement of personal protection of risk groups,” he said.

Generally speaking, the government is adhering to its strict lockdown, mass detection program and pandemic prevention and control strategy, and has become more proficient in implementing it. The government has punished or warned local bureaucrats over “laxity in prevention and control of the pandemic,” but the large-scale pandemic prevention mobilisation has kept the outbreak under control in most areas, at least at this stage.

Wang Huaqing, an expert from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, has suggested that for people who completed vaccination more than six months ago, the third dose of vaccination should be provided as soon as possible.

Previously, Wu Liangyou, deputy director of the CDC of the National Health Commission, also said vaccination was still the most critical factor. In the next stage, increasing the rate of triple-dose injections nationwide would be a central policy.

At present, triple-dose injections are mainly provided to people at high risk of infection and personnel in key positions. According to reports, more than 20 provinces have carried out this work.

Despite the Western media launching a new round of campaigns to promote the alleged problems of China’s pandemic prevention policy, and to demand the country’s “opening up,” major Chinese scientists are supporting the government’s policy.

On November 1, Zhong Nanshan, a well-respected medical scientist and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, gave an interview rejecting the view that the “zero-COVID policy is too costly.” He said China’s continuous “zero-infection, zero spread” policy seemed to require a lot of investment, but compared with the killing policies of some countries, the actual cost was lower.

Epidemiologist Jiang Qingwu also said the zero-COVID policy was to use affordable low costs to ensure the health of the people and low mortality.

An important reason for Beijing’s adherence to zero-COVID is the general support of scientists and the public. Although the Stalinist bureaucracy is very bureaucratic when implementing policies, and this has generated complaints on social media, the regime is also under working-class pressure to retain the policy to protect public health.

Recent comments on Weibo provided some insight into this sentiment. One noted: “Some time ago, both Europe and the United States had to open up. The Western media all devalued and questioned China’s zero-COVID policy. This time the epidemic in Europe has become the epicenter, and experts predict that this will be 50 percent of the epidemic. Ten thousand people have died, and there are voices in the West that agree with China’s policies, and they are beginning to recognise that this is the lowest cost measure.”

Another said: “Given the population density of China, if zero-COVID is not carried out, it will become like the original situation in Wuhan. At that time, it was just a city in Wuhan. If all of China became like that, not only would it not be able to guarantee the economy and production, but also a large number of lives would have to be sacrificed.”

Another commented: “The public has reached a consensus on zero-COVID, and no one will be dissatisfied with this epidemic prevention goal. However, when implementing policies in different regions, the situation is complicated. But since epidemic prevention and control is for the people, we hope to give full play to the power of the masses. Then people should be allowed to express their opinions.”

The Stalinist regime in Beijing is no defender of working-class interests, but it is fully aware of rising economic and class tensions, and that abandoning the zero-COVID policy would face large-scale opposition, as was revealed when the pandemic initially got out of control in Wuhan in early 2020.

However, the Chinese Communist Party bureaucracy is incapable of advancing an international perspective to halt the spread of the pandemic on a global scale. Ending the pandemic requires a conscious international mobilisation by the working class, to demand the elimination of COVID-19, unifying across national borders against the homicidal capitalist ruling elites.

Profits über alles: German ruling class ends “national pandemic situation” despite record infections

Johannes Stern

With its criminal profits before lives pandemic policy, the ruling class in Germany has created a surge in cases that exceeds the catastrophe of last winter when tens of thousands died. In the last three days, a new record for incidences per 100,000 inhabitants has been reported daily: 201 on Monday, 214 on Tuesday and 232 on Wednesday. The number of daily new infections also reached a new all-time high of 39,676 on Wednesday. On Thursday, it even rose to 50,196.

The death toll is also rising massively, rapidly approaching the shocking mark of 100,000 coronavirus victims. On Wednesday, the Robert Koch Institute (RKI) reported 236 new deaths and on Thursday again 235. This brings the total number of people who have died from COVID-19 to 97,198, according to the RKI. The actual number is likely to be far higher, as in other countries, and it could double in the coming months.

Speaking on the latest episode of broadcaster NDR’s podcast Coronavirus Update, the chief virologist at Berlin’s Charité hospital, Christian Drosten, warned Tuesday of another wave of mass deaths. If tougher measures are not taken now, he conservatively expects up to 100,000 more deaths coming to Germany. His projection is informed by the experience in the United Kingdom with a similarly high vaccination rate, but significantly more infections and deaths in recent months.

The situation in hospitals has already reached the limit. On Tuesday, 1,364 hospitalizations related to COVID-19 were reported, according to the RKI. A total of 2,687 COVID-19 cases were undergoing intensive care. In particularly affected states and districts, there are already virtually no vacant intensive care beds. According to the Divi Intensive Care Registry, intensive care units in 21 Bavarian municipalities are fully occupied. The situation is similarly dramatic in parts of Saxony and Thuringia.

In schools, the situation nationwide is catastrophic. Since the respective state governments, with the support of the GEW education union, have reopened schools with virtually no safety and security measures, masses of students and teachers are being infected with the deadly virus. According to current figures from the Standing Conference of the Ministers of Education and Cultural Affairs of the Länder (federal states, KMK), there have been around 23,000 confirmed cases of coronavirus among schoolchildren and 1,800 among teachers in recent weeks. Last week alone, around 54,000 students were in quarantine along with more than 1,000 teachers.

In large parts of Europe, the situation is similarly dire. Nevertheless, the German ruling class is sticking to its plan to allow the declaration of a “national epidemic situation” to expire on November 25, eliminating the legal basis for uniform nationwide protective measures. Since March 2020, the Bundestag (federal parliament) had regularly extended the “epidemic situation.” That is now to be ended.

On Thursday, acting Finance Minister and Chancellor designate Olaf Scholz (Social Democratic Party, SPD) will present a new draft law by the coalition of the SPD-Green Party-Liberal Democrats (FDP) to replace the previous provisions. According to media reports, it includes plans for a 3G rule (vaccinated, previously infected, or tested negative) in the workplace, in addition to the possible reintroduction of free rapid tests. Even if these minimal measures were implemented, they would not interrupt the explosive spread of infections.

Due to the low vaccination rate of 67 percent, about 27 million people, including all children under 12, are completely unprotected against the virus. Compounding the problem is the growing risk of breakthrough infections among the vaccinated. According to the RKI’s latest weekly report on Nov. 4, 145,185 probable vaccine breakthroughs have been recorded since February. Only 2.2 million people have received a third booster vaccination.

The main goal of the coalition’s bill is to prevent the measures that would be necessary to contain the pandemic, eliminate COVID-19 and save lives. “Very drastic measures—like a lockdown, like blanket school closures, like closing restaurants, like shutting down tourism—are no longer proportionate in our view,” explained Dirk Wiese, one of the SPD’s deputy parliamentary group leaders.

Wiese thus summed up not only the position of the “traffic light” coalition, but that of the entire ruling class. The push to end the “pandemic situation” originally came from the incumbent conservative health minister in the grand coalition, Jens Spahn. The plan is supported by the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) as well as by the Left Party, which, wherever it governs with the SPD and Greens—as currently in Berlin, Bremen and Thuringia—actively promotes the policy of deliberate mass infection.

“In our view, a new lockdown must be prevented quite urgently,” said Dietmar Bartsch, parliamentary group leader of the Left Party in the Bundestag, at a press conference on Wednesday. He said he could only hope “that with the new government, there will be different actions. Some of the measures that are enshrined in the law are also to be welcomed on our part, especially when it comes to the rights of workers.”

Who is Bartsch taking for fools? The “traffic light” coalition represents the interests of workers just as little as the Left Party itself. This is particularly clear when it comes to pandemic policy. With their decision to officially end the “national pandemic situation,” the SPD, FDP and Greens are signaling to the ruling class that they will push through the interests of finance capital even more ruthlessly than the outgoing grand coalition did before.

The “traffic light” coalition makes no secret of the interests that determine their policies. The battle cry of the ruling class is: Profits über alles!

In their exploratory discussions on forming a coalition, the SPD, FDP and Greens have already committed themselves to sticking to the debt ceiling and setting themselves the goal of increasing the “competitiveness of Germany as a business location.” The “traffic light” coalition is thus setting itself the task of extracting from the working class the enormous sums that were funneled to the large corporations and banks through the coronavirus bailout packages last year.

There are also geostrategic and economic goals at stake. They want to “ensure that Europe emerges from the pandemic economically stronger on the basis of sound and sustainable public finances,” as the “traffic light” coalition partners write. This includes “future German missions abroad,” as well as “increased cooperation between the national European armies.”

This agenda in the interests of finance capital and the world power aspirations of German imperialism leaves no room for the scientifically necessary measures to contain or even eliminate the virus. This would mean comprehensive lockdowns—first and foremost for schools, universities and non-essential businesses—in conjunction with vaccinations, mass testing and the isolation of all infected persons and their contacts.

The surging cost of living and the class struggle

Gabriel Black

The price of goods and services used by US households increased 6.2 percent over the past year, according to data released Wednesday by the Department of Labor. This is the highest increase since 1990. In October alone, the cost of key goods rose by nearly 1 percent.

Amid concerns of the spread of COVID-19, a shopper wears a mask as she looks over meat products at a grocery store in Dallas, April 29, 2020. (AP Photo/LM Otero, File)

But official inflation statistics only begin to tell the story:

• Groceries have increased 5.4 percent year over year. In particular, the cost of bacon is up 20 percent, beef roasts, 25 percent, and the index, generally, for poultry, fish, eggs and meat 11.9 percent.
• Fast food prices have increased 7.1 percent compared to last year. Full-service restaurant prices have increased 5.9 percent.
• The cost of filling up on gas at the pump has risen by 49.6 percent over the last 12 months. According to the AAA, the nationwide average was $3.42 per gallon Tuesday, up from $2.11 last year.
• Energy prices as a whole have risen by 30 percent. The US Energy Information Agency predicts that households will spend 43 percent more on heating oil and 30 percent more on natural gas this winter.
• The cost of vehicles has increased significantly. Used cars are up 26.4 percent, new vehicles are up 9.8 percent, and rental cars are up 39.1 percent.
• Other important increases include appliances (6.6 percent), hotel and motel rooms (25.5), furniture (12), moving and freight costs (7.9), postage (7.2), garbage and trash collection (5.3), tobacco (8.5), computers (8.4), sporting goods (8.7), cameras and camera equipment (5.5), as well as dry cleaning (6.9).

While average hourly earnings are up 5.1 percent compared to last year, inflation is higher. When placed against it, wages are down 1.1 percent—a pay cut for the typical worker.

What is more, increases in consumer costs are disproportionately borne by poorer sections of the population. A dollar more per gallon of gas weighs far more heavily on a worker making $19, the 2019 median wage, than it does on the rich.

Workers cannot afford these increases. A March poll from Jungle Scout consumer report found that 56 percent of Americans were living paycheck to paycheck. This week, the Federal Reserve announced that US household debt rose to a historic high of $15.24 trillion. This was driven by credit card debt, auto loans and student loans.

Commenting on these developments, CNN wrote, “Now that the stimulus sugar rush has worn off, consumers are going back to their old ways of spending with their credit cards.” Although framed in the callous and indifferent language typical of the US media, this statement points to a basic reality: the modicum of financial assistance that allowed workers to survive amid the pandemic has been ended, and working-class families are forced to pay their surging bills by borrowing.

The present surge of inflation arises from the intersection of the crisis triggered by the pandemic with the decades of policies promoting the growth of social inequality.

For decades, the US government and political establishment sought to overcome the crisis of American capitalism through the impoverishment of the working class, coupled with the provision of unlimited cash for the financial elite.

In 1979, the Carter administration appointed Paul Volcker to the chairmanship of the Federal Reserve. Volcker moved to raise interest rates to historic levels in order to break the resistance of the working class.

With the election of Reagan in 1980 this assault was intensified. Gaining assurances from the AFL-CIO that the unions would not interfere, Reagan crushed a strike of air traffic controllers in August 1981. The betrayal by the AFL-CIO initiated a wave of defeats for workers, as the trade union bureaucracy morphed into low-wage labor contractors, functioning to police the working class for the benefit of their increasingly wealthy and corrupt executives.

But the underlying economic crisis of American capitalism driving these policies only deepened. The Federal Reserve encouraged speculation and debt to keep asset bubbles going. In crisis after crisis, beginning in 1987, the government intervened to buy toxic assets, lower interest rates, and funnel money into financial markets. The wealth of the upper classes ballooned, tethered to rising stock prices.

This policy came to a head in 2008. Toxic subprime mortgage assets in the US imploded, engulfing the entire world economy. In response, the Federal Reserve, and other central banks, took unprecedented measures to prop up capitalist markets. Bush and Obama funneled trillions of dollars into financial markets, bailed out Wall Street directly, refused to prosecute those responsible, and restructured American manufacturing by gutting pay and benefits in the auto industry.

By 2020, the trillions of dollars of cash injected into financial markets in response to 2008 had led to record highs in the stock market.

While the pandemic temporarily disrupted these gains, the response of the ruling class has been to orchestrate another massive bailout of the rich. The Federal Reserve initiated an emergency program of asset purchasing. Some $4.5 trillion of digitally printed money has been used to prop up financial markets. Asset purchases continue to the tune of $120 billion every month. In addition to this, the CARES act, which cost $2.3 trillion, was largely a bailout of major corporations and businesses, many of which received billions of dollars in direct aid.

This free money has fueled a massive inflation in the value of all financial assets and the wealth of the rich.

The financial oligarchy that dictates social and political life in the United States is determined that the entire burden of the crisis triggered by the pandemic should be borne by the working class. This overriding concern led to the coverup of the dangers posed by COVID-19 in early 2020, then the systematic abandonment of public health measures beginning in late March, followed immediately afterward by the slashing of emergency jobless aid, with the aim of forcing workers to accept any job, no matter how unsafe or low-wage, that they can get.

But despite the ruling class’s efforts to force workers into disease-ridden factories and warehouses, the pandemic, coupled with the international tensions it intensified, has had a major impact on global supply chains. Many workers with health conditions, or whose family members are immunocompromised, have chosen not to return to poverty-wage jobs amid a raging pandemic.

The ruling class is concerned that the growing demands of workers for higher wages, expressed in both strikes and the so-called “great refusal,” that is low-wage workers leaving their jobs, has led to significant labor shortages in key sectors.

The surging cost of living has propelled the largest strike wave in decades, including major struggles at Volvo, Deere, Dana and elsewhere.

In each of these struggles, the workers confront not only their employers, but the trade unions, which have worked to systematically isolate, sabotage and shut down every strike. If these organizations of scabs had their way, the class struggle in 2021 would proceed the way it had in decades past: with plummeting wages, mass layoffs and soaring corporate profits.

But at factories, hospitals and schools across the country, new rank-and-file committees are forming which represent the genuine interests of workers. To succeed, these organizations must, through coordinated action, break through the isolation imposed on them by the trade unions. This means forming bonds and links with workers in other sectors, other states and, critically, other countries.

Faced with the growth of the class struggle, sections of the political establishment are considering solving the “labor problem” by force, with Biden saying last month that he is considering deploying the National Guard to “get the ports up and running.”

Since the start of the pandemic, the US ruling class has sought to ensure that the entire cost of the crisis, whether in death or economic suffering, must be borne by the working class, even as the world’s billionaires pile up immeasurable fortunes.

But enough is enough. It is not America’s exploited and impoverished workers—who have been told for decades that they must accept layoffs and pay cuts for the good of American industry—but America’s financial oligarchy that must bear the cost of a health, social and economic crisis created by American capitalism.

Living with the virus: UK government confirms aim of endemic COVID-19

Thomas Scripps

“Ultimately our plan, we will, I hope be the first major economy to transition from pandemic to endemic and have an annual vaccination programme.”

With these words, former vaccines minister and current education secretary Nadhim Zahawi summarised the criminal COVID policy of the UK government. The British ruling class is racing the world to normalise the unnecessary death and debilitation of tens of thousands of people a year in service to its own economic interests.

The drumbeat from the government and its associates is that public health restrictions, above all lockdowns, are a thing of the past. Last asked about the subject ahead of the COP26 climate summit, Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Chancellor Rishi Sunak insisted there was “no evidence whatever to think that any kind of lockdown is on the cards.”

NHS Providers Chris Hopson told Times Radio Sunday, “I think all of us in the NHS [National Health Service] recognise that we are moving from a situation of a pandemic towards an endemic where we need to live with COVID.”

He insisted supposedly on behalf of an exhausted workforce whose daily efforts he plays no part in, “the bit I’m really keen for people to understand is that everybody in the NHS absolutely recognises that it’s our job to cope as best we can with COVID pressures, without resorting to the very draconian lockdowns that we’ve had to go through before.'

On Monday, government scientific advisor Dr Mike Tildesley told Sky News, “I would hope that, with a very successful vaccination campaign, the idea of a winter lockdown is a long way away.”

The government’s refusal to implement measures to cut the circulation of the virus comes as tens of thousands (over 70,000 on the estimate of King’s College London’s ZOE COVID study) are infected every day, and over 7,000 hospitalised and 1,000 killed by the disease every week.

The policy of willfully endangering lives was given consummate expression by Johnson on Monday, as he paraded through Hexham General Hospital in Northumberland, England without a mask.

Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson during a visit to Hexham General Hospital in Northumberland, England, Monday, November 8, 2021. (Peter Summers/Pool Photo via AP)

Thousands responded with outrage on social media. Rachel Clarke, a palliative care doctor who has published books on end-of-life care, working as a junior doctor and the effect of the first COVID-19 wave on the National Health Service, received over 17,000 likes and nearly 5,000 retweets for a tweet reading, “There are so many people dying of Covid in my trust right now. It makes the sight of Boris Johnson—casually strolling without a mask through Hexham General Hospital today—absolutely sickening.”

There is no question that Johnson’s provocative appearance was discussed at the highest levels of the Conservative Party, especially given his infamous hospital visit in March 2020 where, he later boasted, he “shook hands with everybody” and where he may have caught the Covid virus that almost claimed his own life. A deliberate decision was made to repeat this spectacle to give the signal to big business that no popular opposition or scientific evidence will move the government from its homicidal policy.

The working class must heed this warning. Johnson’s last hospital performance was followed by a devastating wave of infections and death, topped by a second surge last winter after the prime minister declared, “Let the bodies pile high in their thousands.”

Vaccination has since significantly reduced the ratio of hospitalisations to infections, but the dangers remain extremely severe.

Since the last lockdown began to be lifted with the opening of schools on March 8, over 17,400 people have been killed by COVID-19, according to official government figures. Over 13,200 of those deaths came after “Freedom Day” on July 19, at a rate of roughly 118 people per day or over 43,000 a year.

Included in these figures are dozens of children. The government sent all pupils aged 12-15 back to school without vaccinations this September. The vaccination rate for this age group in England is still only 25 percent. As he wished fondly for an endemic virus, Zahawi suggested the UK would not vaccinate under-11s, saying “the evidence says we don’t need to move away from where we are” with the current vaccination policy.

On Monday, newspapers reported that a nine-day-old baby died on October 13 after being born by emergency caesarean section 14 weeks prematurely when her 22-year-old mother become ill with COVID. The child also tested positive for the disease.

The number of people suffering symptoms of Long COVID has increased from 970,000 people on August 1 to 1.2 million people on October 2, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

Government ministers and a supportive media have seized on a two-and-a-half week fall in recorded infections to sweep this grisly record under the carpet and promise calmer waters ahead.

This decline should be looked at with scepticism. The number of tests conducted per day fell significantly from mid-September as the test positivity rate rose from 3 to over 5 percent.

Data from the ZOE COVID study suggests a fall, from much higher numbers than the official totals, but the ONS Coronavirus Survey has cases plateauing to October 30. Both show falling rates among children obscuring increases in adult age groups and both place the reproduction ( R ) rate for the virus in the UK very close to 1, as does Imperial College London’s REACT survey.

Official daily case numbers are still well over 30,000. This leaves the UK poised at an extremely high level of infection (roughly one in 50 people) with winter coming and vaccine immunity waning in older sections of society.

Dr Susan Hopkins, chief medical adviser at the UK Health Security Agency, warned Sunday, “We’re still seeing deaths in mainly the unvaccinated population, but increasingly, because of immune waning effects, there are deaths in the vaccinated group as well.”

Last Thursday, the government’s vaccine surveillance report found that more than 3,000 double-jabbed people aged over 70 were hospitalised by COVID-19 in October, and 2,032 were killed. So far, 30 percent of over-80s and 40 percent of over-50s in England have yet to receive a third, “booster” vaccination.

Pressure from COVID is already having a disastrous effect on a broken NHS. .

In the same breath as he proclaimed his determination to avoid a lockdown, Hopson admitted that hospital trust executives had “never been so worried… we’re seeing bed occupancy levels, it’s sort of 94, 95, 96 percent at this point, before we’re into peak winter. We’ve not seen that before. That’s unprecedented.”

Hopson pointed to the “accident and emergency pathway”. According to an investigation by the Independent newspaper, patients are waiting close to twice as long for an ambulance as they were at the peak of the pandemic. Deaths as a result of ambulance safety incidents are already up 13 percent on 2019.

Government advisor Professor Peter Openshaw warned Monday on Times Radio, “I just don’t think people realise the serious situation that there is out there in the National Health Service hospitals, with so many people on ventilators and over 9,000 people actually in the hospital currently with COVID-19. COVID isn’t done. It’s not over.”

Europe is at the epicentre of a global resurgence of the virus, with the World Health Organisation warning of another half a million deaths on the continent within the next three months. The UK is part of this still raging pandemic and its consequences, including the development of new variants.

Already, the untrammeled spread of the virus in Britain has given rise to the “Delta Plus”, or AY.4.2, variant, thought to be some 10 percent more transmissible than the original Delta. From roughly 6 percent of UK cases in September, the variant had grown to 11.3 percent by the end of October.

Declaring the virus endemic is an acceptance of countless more deaths and years of serious illness to come. This is not inevitable, but the conscious choice of the government, supported by the Labour Party and the trade unions, acting on behalf of the corporations and the super-rich. An opposed policy of elimination can only be implemented through a struggle against these forces by the international working class.

Warsaw and Brussels intensify attacks on refugees at Polish-Belarusian border

Martin Kreikenbaum

The Polish government, with the support of the European Union and NATO, is waging a veritable war against refugees. After several hundred refugees near the Polish border town of Kuznica tried to break through the frontier and enter Polish territory, 2,000 additional Polish soldiers were sent to the border and the crossing was sealed off. Moreover, the Polish Territorial Defense Force was put on alert and NATO was called for consultation.

According to the Polish research service Okopress and the Belarusian Twitter channel Nexta, the refugees, mostly from Iraq, Syria and Afghanistan, in desperation and to send a signal, set out together on foot from the Belarusian capital Minsk to the border with Poland. They have been met by a massive display of force from Poland and the EU.

Polish soldiers and refugees at the Polish-Belarusian border

For weeks, the borders to Poland and Lithuania have been closed to refugees, and those who are apprehended while crossing are forcibly shipped back to Belarus by border guards in illegal pushback operations. Thus, refugees attempted to use the official border crossing at Kuznica-Bruzgi. However, just shy of the border, they were allegedly run off the road by Belarusian border guards and driven into the woods.

As videos of the refugee caravan, which includes many women and children, spread on Twitter and Telegram, the government’s crisis team met in Warsaw: President Andrzej Duda, Prime Minister Mateusz Morawiecki and Poland’s de facto head of government and deputy prime minister Jaroslaw Kaczynski, as well as the ministers of interior and defense and intelligence chiefs.

Defense Minister Mariusz Blaszak declared martially that his ministry, together with the Interior Ministry, which is responsible for police and border protection, was “ready to defend the Polish border.” The border fortifications near the small town of Kuznica were secured by hundreds of military police, border guards and soldiers. The refugees, who were apparently chanting “Germany, Germany” and trying to create gaps in the barbed wire border with simple cutters and tree trunks, were forced away from the border with tear gas and pepper spray.

As if reporting from a war zone, a spokesman for the Polish Border Guard said, “We withstood the first wave and are waiting to see what happens in a while when night falls. We are well prepared.” In the meantime, the refugees, whose numbers were said to have risen to about 1,000 by evening, have set up a tent camp on the Belarusian side of the border and lit campfires.

The Polish government will prevent refugees from entering Poland at all costs. That is why the troop deployment at the border has now risen to 12,000 soldiers to hunt down refugees in addition to thousands of border guards and military police. The government’s crisis management team has announced that it will put the Territorial Defense Force on alert. The 29,000-strong force is a sort of volunteer army and reports directly to the defense minister. It was formed in 2016 for the purpose of suppressing rebellion, among other things, and recruits heavily from nationalist and far-right circles.

The mobilization of additional troop units is evidently directed not only against the refugees, but also against the regime of Alexander Lukashenko in Belarus. The rhetoric of Warsaw and the EU toward the Belarusian government and its closest ally, Moscow, is becoming increasingly hostile.

Poland’s intelligence coordinator Stanislaw Zaryn on Twitter announced another hostile act against Poland, claiming, “According to the latest information, this huge group of migrants is under the control of armed Belarusian units that decide where it can and cannot go.” He further claimed, “More and more frequently, Belarusians bring groups of migrants to the Polish border, up to 250 people, to escort them en masse to the Polish side. They control and organize these groups and also help cut through the border fortifications.”

Zaryn could not provide any proof for his claims.

Piotr Wawrzyk, secretary of state at Poland’s Foreign Ministry, told state radio, “Belarus wants to provoke an incident of shooting and killing.” Meanwhile, Poland’s Morawiecki accused Lukashenko of deliberately creating the refugee crisis together with Russian President Vladimir Putin. He said, “We are dealing with a mass organized, well-directed action by Minsk and Moscow.”

The German government sounded the same horn. A Foreign Office spokesman announced that there were “indications that the Minsk regime is repeatedly sending people to the border, in some cases by force, despite the adverse conditions and wintry temperatures.” The German government is therefore working on a joint EU response “to this perfidious and inhumane behavior of Mr. Lukashenko.”

EU Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said Monday evening that Belarus must stop the “cynical instrumentalization of migrants” and called on “member states to approve the extended sanctions regime against the Belarusian authorities responsible for this hybrid attack.”

NATO, which has been consulted by the Polish government, openly threatened Belarus with acts of war. According to information obtained by Die Welt, a representative of the military alliance said in Brussels on Monday that NATO views “the recent escalation on the border between Poland and Belarus” with concern. He warned Belarus against “instrumentalizing people against the military alliance” and threatened that NATO “stands ready to support allies and provide security.”

All the lies and threats cannot hide the fact that Warsaw and Brussels—accompanied by a deafening smear campaign in the media—are implementing the program of the far right at Europe’s external borders. They are willing to repel refugees by any means available, including force of arms if necessary.

Since the Polish government declared a state of emergency on the border with Belarus, thousands of refugees have remained unprovided for in the forests and swamps. Journalists and aid organizations are strictly forbidden from entering a three-kilometer-wide strip along the border. With temperatures hovering around freezing, the refugees, many of whom have no blankets, tents or even shoes, are trapped in no-man’s land, defenseless against the cold. At least 10 refugees have died in the border region in recent weeks.

Every day, the massive police and army force intercepts more than 700 refugees who have managed to cross the border and herds them back into Belarus in violation of international law. On October 26, a Polish law legalizing these illegal and internationally prohibited pushbacks came into force. Since then, any border guard commander may immediately deport refugees who have entered Poland without permission and prohibit their re-entry for up to three years.

Although this means the de facto abolition of the right of asylum in Poland, and despite the regulation massively violating EU law, the Polish actions enjoy the support of Brussels. The EU is even urging Poland to accept more European help in warding off refugees. For example, units of the EU border agency Frontex are to be dispatched to Poland as soon as requested by the government in Warsaw.

Germany is playing a particularly aggressive role in enforcing the fascistic “Fortress Europe” policy. On Tuesday morning, German Interior Minister Horst Seehofer (Christian Democratic Union) explicitly backed the illegal pushbacks and the construction of a massive border wall. In an interview with the Bild newspaper, he said that the Polish government has “reacted correctly so far.” “I say as well that we need structural security at the borders. That’s where we need to publicly support the Poles!”

The brutal, inhumane and thoroughly illegal action against defenseless refugees is a warning. It shows the methods the ruling class will resort to in their efforts to suppress the growing opposition to social inequality and the pervasive policies in the pandemic that have already claimed more than 1.4 million lives in Europe alone. Workers across the continent must defend the refugees. This is not only a humanitarian necessity, but a fundamental part of the struggle against dictatorship, fascism and war.

Australian government funds Pacific telco purchase to head off Chinese influence

Martin Scott

Australia’s largest telecommunications company, Telstra, is set to acquire Digicel Pacific, the largest mobile phone carrier in the Asia-Pacific region, in a government-backed plan to advance the country’s anti-China foreign policy agenda.

Telstra CEO Andrew Penn (Screenshot, Youtube/UNSW Business School)

The high level of cooperation between the Australian and US governments on this intervention makes clear that the central objective of the deal is to stem the growth of China as a rival to the US and its allies in the Asia-Pacific.

Under the arrangement, the federal government will stump up more than 80 percent of the $US1.6 billion purchase price in the form of a cheap loan to the fully-privatised Telstra, while assuming the financial risk. The government will also take care of costs associated with foreign exchange and repatriation of profits, by using customer revenue in overseas currency to pay for existing aid programs and paying Telstra in Australian dollars.

Telstra CEO Andrew Penn made clear in a statement just how favourable the deal was to the company: “We put in $US270m and for that we get 100 percent of the equity and we then get a dividend, which we expect to be $US45m, and our dividend is preferred above everything else.”

When Telstra confirmed in July 2021 that it was making a bid to acquire Digicel Pacific, Prime Minister Scott Morrison refused to discuss the government’s backing of the deal.

Morrison said: “It is a matter between him and his shareholders. They have commercial objectives, which they pursue, and I wouldn’t expect them to be doing anything that wasn’t in their commercial interests.”

Telstra Chairman John Mullen has made clear that such a deal would not have gone ahead if it was not bankrolled by the Australian taxpayer.

Mullen said in July: “It would have come across the desk like so many other things. But would it have been something that would have gone further in discussion with if it wasn’t for the government interest? Probably not.”

In fact, according to the Australian Financial Review (AFR), the Morrison government has been “in ongoing dialogue with US officials,” since 2020. This involved concerns Digicel “could be used to spy on neighbouring countries and visiting Australian government ministers, control media communications to disseminate political propaganda for China-friendly Pacific political leaders, and as a patronage vehicle to corrupt the region’s political elite.”

Talks have reportedly continued under the Biden administration, with some in ruling circles considering the Digicel intervention a test for the US-led Build Back Better World plan, launched at the G7 summit in June to combat China’s huge One Belt, One Road infrastructure initiative.

Biden’s plan represents a continuation of the trade war instigated by Donald Trump, who, in 2018, imposed steep tariffs on goods imported from China. While this was ostensibly about addressing a trade imbalance between the two countries, the main concern in Washington was China’s growth as an economic rival, driven by its rapid industrial and technological development.

The Digicel operation follows previous moves to block Chinese telecommunications investment in the Asia-Pacific and around the world over unsubstantiated claims that such networks would be used for espionage.

In 2018, after the Solomon Islands awarded Huawei a contract to build an undersea cable network, the Australian government stepped in, demanding the Solomons instead sign on to an Australian fibre link. Huawei’s plans for an undersea network in Papua New Guinea were quashed by a joint intervention of the US, Japan and Australia the same year.

Also in 2018, Australia, following talks with its “Five Eyes” intelligence alliance partners—the US, UK, Canada and New Zealand—banned Huawei and another Chinese company, ZTE, from supplying 5G network equipment. According to US restrictions, companies must obtain a licence to sell any product with a US-made microchip to Huawei.

The talks also resulted in the arrest in Canada of Huawei Deputy Chairperson Meng Wanzhou, who was held in home detention for more than 1,000 days and faced extradition to the US on trumped-up claims that she had violated US sanctions against Iran.

The Digicel Pacific deal will be funded by Export Finance Australia (EFA), previously known as the Export Finance and Insurance Corporation, part of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT). The Liberal-National government passed new legislation on October 19 to facilitate this financial arrangement, with the full support of the opposition Labor party.

Trade and Investment Minister Dan Tehan said in June that the new laws would give the EFA “broader powers to finance transactions that serve Australia’s national interests and priorities.”

Speaking in support of the bill, Labor MP Madeline King lamented the lack of progress of the government’s “Pacific Step-Up,” a program to bolster the position of Australian imperialism in the region.

King said: “Despite the talk about a Pacific step-up and engagement in our region under Prime Minister Scott Morrison, Australia is more dependent than ever on China for our exports and export related jobs, and, in fact, we depend on the Chinese market more than any other country in the world.”

In other words, King is attacking the Morrison government from the right for not moving quickly or aggressively enough to wind back ties with Australia’s largest trading partner and fall into line with the US-led anti-China offensive.

While the “Pacific Step-Up,” first announced in 2016, has been promoted by the federal government as an aid and development package, even a cursory examination of its contents makes the real intentions clear.

Projects funded by the program, including undersea communications cables, power stations, and airport upgrades, have clearly been selected for their strategic significance and to block Chinese investment and influence.

Digicel Pacific, with 1,700 employees and 2.5 million subscribers across the Asia-Pacific, derives most of its revenue from Papua New Guinea. Digicel Pacific’s parent company, Digicel, is based in Bermuda and provides phone services across the Caribbean.

In recent years, as mobile phone use shifted from voice calls to internet data, the company faced declining revenues and mounting debt. This process was accelerated by the COVID-19 pandemic, with Digicel particularly exposed because its major markets in the Asia-Pacific and Caribbean regions are heavily dependent on tourism.

Digicel filed for bankruptcy in May 2020 in both Bermuda and the United States as part of an operation to refinance $US7.4 billion in debt.

Around this time, rumours began circulating that China Mobile was interested in acquiring Digicel Pacific. The AFR, citing an anonymous source, claimed on May 14, 2020: “China Mobile had been conducting due diligence on Digicel’s Pacific business since the start of this year.”

Both Digicel and China Mobile denied a Chinese acquisition was on the cards, but the mere possibility was enough to spark discussion in Canberra and Washington on the geostrategic implications.

Digicel owner, Irish billionaire Denis O’Brien, approached Bondi Partners, founded by former Australian Treasurer and Ambassador to the US, Joe Hockey, for political guidance on the deal. The Australian government subsequently approached Telstra for advice on how to counter the rumoured Chinese offer.

By all accounts, Telstra was not interested in acquiring the company in a “free-market” transaction. However, Canberra’s determination to block any Chinese development in the region was enough to warrant not just footing the bill, but drafting new legislation to maximise potential profits and sweeten the deal for Telstra.

The federal government, in taking the unusual step of bankrolling the acquisition of one corporation by another, has demonstrated its close alignment with the US offensive to undermine China economically.

The Digicel Pacific deal has nothing to do with protecting mobile phone users in the Asia-Pacific region from Chinese espionage. Instead, the Australian government has stepped in to prevent Chinese investment, and therefore influence, in key strategic locations as part of wider preparations for a US-led conflict with China.

New Zealand recalibrates Pacific strategy countering China

John Braddock

In a major speech on the Pacific at the NZ Institute of International Affairs on November 3, New Zealand Foreign Minister Nanaia Mahuta announced a “transition” from the Labour-Green government’s Pacific Reset policy to a focus on building “resilience” across the region.

New Zealand foreign minister Nanaia Mahuta (Screenshot: Youtube, NZ Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade)

The Pacific Reset was first announced in 2018 by Winston Peters, leader of the right-wing NZ First Party and foreign minister in the Labour-led coalition government. The strategy was aimed at boosting New Zealand’s presence in the Pacific through stepped-up diplomatic, aid and military measures to counter China’s presence.

New Zealand and Australia treat the Pacific as their sphere of influence and are increasingly alarmed at any Chinese investment and diplomatic influence. Along with Australia’s Pacific Step-up policy, Canberra and Wellington have both significantly increased their diplomatic, and above all military, presence as Washington’s aggressive confrontation with China has intensified.

Mahuta declared the government’s aim is not to replace, but to “build on” the Pacific Reset while shifting towards “resilience.” The shift, she claimed, reflects the biggest issue facing the Pacific in climate change, along with recovering from the impact of COVID-19, which has killed thousands in countries such as Fiji and Papua New Guinea.

Asked how the new approach would differ from the “reset,” Mahuta said it would be more about building “in-country capacity” among Pacific nations. The diplomatic language deliberately obscures deepening apprehension that the COVID pandemic is producing a devastating crisis within the economic and social fabric in the Pacific Islands.

The regional powers are not concerned with the health and well-being of the largely impoverished peoples, but with further disruption to their geo-strategic dominance as international rivalries intensify. Several Pacific countries, whose vital tourism industries have been all but destroyed, are turning to Chinese-led funding agencies to prop up their budgets after exhausting traditional financing options.

Mahuta, who has previously spoken out against China’s loans in the Pacific, raised the issue of indebtedness in response to a media question. “Much of the aid that we put into the Pacific is by way of grant, and I think it’s a stark difference between how we see ourselves supporting aspirations of the Pacific and how China does,” she declared.

Unproven allegations about “debt trap diplomacy” have been advanced by Washington amid its anti-China diplomatic offensive. At a Pacific leaders’ conference in Hawaii in June, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken angrily declared that China was breaching “international standards” and using “economic coercion” in its provision of aid and concessionary loans.

Reading from the same playbook, Mahuta told her International Affairs audience that “without a concerted effort around building the medium to long term resilience of Pacific economies, not only are they vulnerable to climate change, but they’re vulnerable to increasing debt levels that will set their people back in some quite catastrophic ways potentially.”

In 2019, 67 percent of Chinese aid was given in the form of loans, mainly for infrastructure projects, up from 41 percent the year before. However, Beijing slashed its overall aid budget from $US246m in 2018 by 31 percent, to $US169m in 2019.

Australia and New Zealand meanwhile both boosted their financial aid. The Lowy Institute reported last month that while Canberra’s total foreign aid has shrunk, the Morrison government was “retooling” its budget towards the Pacific. Australia accounted for 42 percent of all aid to the region between 2009 and 2019, but money directed towards health has been cut in favour of infrastructure projects as competition with China ramps up. Overall aid to the Pacific declined by 15 percent in 2019, with health spending accounting for just 11 percent of the $US2.44bn.

The Pacific risks a “lost decade” following the pandemic, according to the Lowy Institute, with the islands’ sharpest economic contraction in four decades. The level of aid remains totally inadequate. An estimated additional $US3.5bn will be needed for the region to recover from the pandemic. Donors, however, “appear in short supply,” it stated.

Australia and New Zealand occupy a position of neo-colonial domination over much of the Pacific. The financial and aid contributions they make are inevitably tied to protecting their own interests. The strings attached are increasingly resented by local Pacific leaders.

This is particularly the case with Canberra’s obstruction over climate change. According to a new Greenpeace report, “Australia: Pacific Bully and International Outcast,” the Australian government engages in “bullying tactics” by using aid money as a bargaining chip to “buy silence” over the existential crisis facing Pacific island states from rising sea levels. Australian National University academic Terence Wood has found that Australia’s three biggest “climate” projects dating from 2018 were all to do with “governance” and had no obvious link to climate adaptation.

The intensifying conflicts over aid and state finances are set against the escalating US-led drive to war against Beijing. Mahuta’s speech followed the announcement of the AUKUS agreement which heralds a major shift in the strategic alignments of the imperialist powers, with significant implications for the Pacific.

Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern publicly welcomed the AUKUS deal, under which the US, UK and Australia will vastly increase military cooperation as they expand their military build-up throughout the region. It includes an agreement to equip Australia with nuclear-powered submarines.

China’s deputy chief of mission in New Zealand, Wang Genhua, issued a sharp warning about AUKUS at an event hosted last week by think-tank Diplosphere, saying that it would be “almost necessary” for Australia’s submarines to have nuclear weapons. Stating that the US and UK “cannot be trusted,” Wang declared there will be “more nuclear arms race across the Pacific region, more nuclear tests, and nuclear pollution will take place in the region.”

Ardern previously claimed that New Zealand could not have joined AUKUS, even if invited, because of the country’s long-standing anti-nuclear policy. However, New Zealand remains involved in provocative military exercises. In October the naval frigate Te Kaha and an Air Force Orion joined the Bersama Gold 21 war games, alongside the UK Carrier Strike Group and allied forces in the South China Sea.

As pressure mounts internationally for New Zealand to line up explicitly with the Biden administration’s drive to war, Ardern is, publicly at least, continuing the fraught balancing act to protect the country’s crucial trading relationship with Beijing.

In an interview with US television network NBC over the weekend, Ardern welcomed Washington’s bigger “engagement” in the Indo-Pacific region, while claiming that her government simultaneously has “mature” ties with China that allow for “disagreement.” Speaking by telephone to President Xi Jinping on Friday, prior to this week’s APEC conference, Ardern emphasised that New Zealand has an “independent and values-based” foreign policy.

In fact, as a minor imperialist power, New Zealand has always relied on the backing of a dominant power in order to pursue its interests, particularly in the Pacific. In a November 4 article highlighting the dangerous flashpoint of Taiwan, the Stuff website argued that it is in Wellington’s interests to side with Taiwan, and the US, against Beijing in the growing conflict.

Echoing statements from Washington, the article by Lucy Craymer declared that “analysts say an invasion [of Taiwan by China] is conceivable,” threatening “the security of our region.” Craymer falsely stated that the “US military presence in the region has waned, allowing the balance of power to start to shift.” In fact, the US has moved substantial military resources into the region in the past decade, is carrying out provocative military exercises, and has sent Special Forces troops to train in Taiwan. The Stuff article approvingly described New Zealand’s participation in war games in the South China Sea as a “show of force” to “stand up to” China.