Incoming Ukrainian president moves to dissolves parliament

Jason Melanovski 

During his inaugural speech Monday, the newly elected Ukrainian president, comedian Volodmyr Zelensky, called for the dissolution of the parliament, the Verkhovna Rada. He announced plans for new elections for July 21, which were originally scheduled for October. Zelensky also proposed major changes to electoral laws.

The new president’s effort to sack the Ukrainian parliament is an authoritarian move aimed at settling political scores with opponents within Ukraine’s oligarchy. Snap elections would allow him to quickly consolidate power and take advantage of his overwhelming defeat of former President Petro Poroshenko.

Zelensky’s newly created Servant of the People Party, which currently has no members in the widely unpopular Verkhovna Rada, is leading parliamentary opinion polls with support of around 40 percent.

It is unclear whether Zelensky has the constitutional authority to dissolve parliament. He is supported by leading political forces in the country, with some politicians allied with former presidents Petro Poroshenko and Yulia Tymoshenko declaring they backed the move. Ukraine’s far right groups, Svoboda and the Azov-Battalion affiliated National Corps—which receive financing from Zelensky-allied billionaire oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky—assembled and lit flares in front of the Parliament building to demand that the body accede to the new president.

However, on Wednesday, Chairman of the Verkhovna Rada, far-right politician Andriy Parubiy, declared Zelensky’s move illegal and said he would lead a challenge to it in the constitutional court. Prime Minister Volodymyr Groysman, whose resignation Zelensky has demanded, also opposes the dissolution of the Verkhovna Rada. He announced plans to form his own party to take part in the upcoming parliamentary elections.

Since defeating the widely-despised Poroshenko by 73 percent to 24 percent of the vote last month, it has become clear Zelensky’s victory is a changing of the guard among the super wealthy oligarchy that has ruled Ukraine since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991.

During his inaugural address, the new president—who is closely tied to oligarch Ihor Kolomoisky—ousted the Poroshenko-allied defense minister, head of the state security service and inspector general. Zelensky did not demand the resignation of Arsen Avakov, the head of Ukraine’s Interior Ministry, who is supported by Kolomoisky and has links to groups affiliated with Ukraine’s far-right Azov Battalion.

Earlier in May, Kolomoisky called for Avakov’s continued presence in a Zelensky administration stating, “I believe this has been the most successful and professional government minister over the past five years. And the least scandalous one, practically not scandalous at all.”

During Avakov’s time in office Ukraine has experienced a wave of far-right attacks on minorities and journalists, such as the burning of a Roma encampment in Kiev and the acid attack murder of journalist Kateryna Handziuk in Kherson. Perpetrators have rarely been brought to justice by the country’s police, which Avakov heads, and suspects are often released without serious investigation.

With Zelensky’s election, oligarchs who had fallen out with Poroshenko and fled the country, have been given the green light to return to Ukraine and cash in on the change in leadership in Kiev.

Kolomoisky is an example. After initially supporting Poroshenko, known as the “chocolate king” for his control over the sweets industry, he became locked in a dispute with the Ukrainian government over the embezzlement of $5 billion from the country’s PrivatBank. Kolomoisky fled to Israel, but maintained control over Ukraine’s 1+1 television station, which prominently featured Zelensky’s comedies. A court case just prior to Zelensky’s election went in Kolomoisky’s favor, and he has recently returned to the country to retake control of his vast business empire.

Gas oligarch and parliament member Oleksandr Onyshchenko, who traded corruption accusations with Poroshenko in 2016 and later fled the country, also backed Zelensky and has announced plans to return to Ukraine.

Former Georgian President and CIA-stooge Mikheil Saakashvili has asked Zelensky to return his Ukrainian citizenship, which was revoked by Poroshenko after he served as a government official in Odessa and then fell out of the regime’s favor.

Reports have surfaced suggesting Zelensky may name former Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko to the premiership. Tymoshenko, who earned the nickname “gas princess” after getting rich in the energy industry in the early 2000s, has called for a “scorched earth” policy against Ukraine’s predominately Russian-speaking eastern regions. She is an ardent supporter of the country’s ascension to NATO.

Interior Minister Arsen Avakov has also been rumored to be a possible candidate for prime minister.

Despite Zelensky’s Jewish background and identity as a Russian-speaker, he has not shied away from decking himself out in the wares of Ukrainian nationalism, sporting a traditional Ukrainian necklace and grasping a royal-like scepter during his inaugural speech.

Zelensky concluded his remarks with the slogan “Glory to Ukraine,” which was first used by Ukraine’s far-right OUN and UPA military forces that carried out war crimes against Jews during World War II, with the backing of Nazi Germany.

In an interview prior to his election, Zelensky stated that he accepted fascist Stepan Bandera as “hero of Ukraine” for certain regions of the country.

Zelensky will continue implementing the brutal austerity policies imposed on Ukraine by the International Monetary Fund (IMF). A meeting is scheduled between the new government and the agency next week.

IMF investigators have been in Kiev recently to determine whether the country is on the “correct path” to receive another $1.3 billion in funds. Under the current $3.9 billion IMF agreement signed in December 2018, Ukraine must significantly raise what it charges the population for gas. Initial price hikes left several Ukrainian cities effectively without heat this past winter.

Amid worsening trade war, Chinese president calls for new “Long March”

Peter Symonds

With the Trump administration ratcheting up its economic war against China, President Xi Jinping has called for a new “Long March,” saying the country had to prepare for “difficult situations.” Xi’s comments are another indication that any prospect of an agreement to end the escalating trade conflict is remote.

The Long March refers to the tortuous retreat by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and its Red Army during the country’s civil war to escape their encirclement by the Nationalist army of Chiang Kai-shek. The march of 9,000 kilometres through remote and difficult areas of western China began in 1934 and lasted more than a year. According to one estimate, of the 100,000 soldiers who set out, just 7,000 survived the cold, disease and fighting to reach Shaanxi province.

Xi visited the monument at the start of the Long March in Jiangxi province on Monday in a bid to revive the CCP’s image. A week before, the CCP Politburo voted to launch a propaganda campaign to try to convince the public that the party remained true to its original aspirations.

The CCP long ago abandoned any adherence to the Marxist principles of socialist internationalism, basing itself instead on the nationalist Stalinist perspective of “Socialism in One Country.” From the 1970s, moreover, it presided over the restoration of capitalism, leading to a widening gulf between rich and poor, and a CCP apparatus that defends the interests of the super-rich.

Xi has not ruled out further trade talks. He spoke in vague terms and did not name Donald Trump or the United States. Invoking the Long March, however, he said the country “must be conscious of the long-term and complex nature of various unfavourable factors at home and abroad, and properly prepare for various difficult situations.”

Above all, the remarks were aimed at rallying the CCP bureaucracy. China faces global economic and financial instability, aggressive US tariffs and increasingly frequent US naval provocations in the South China Sea and the Taiwan Strait. Domestically, the regime fears the growing signs of unrest in the working class as the economy continues to slow.

Xi was accompanied on his three-day tour of Jiangxi province by Vice Premier Liu He, China’s chief trade negotiator with the US. The latest talks in Washington broke up on May 10 after Trump imposed tariffs on an additional $200 billion worth of Chinese goods. No date was set for another meeting.

The Trump administration dramatically heightened the economic war last week by barring the use of telecommunications equipment manufactured by the Chinese tech giant Huawei and placing the company on a “restricted entity list,” citing national security concerns. Major American corporations, such as Google, Qualcomm, Broadcom and Intel, joined the embargo, declaring they would no longer allow Huawei access to critical software and hardware components.

The moves against Huawei provoked angry responses in China. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Wang Yi branded Washington’s actions a “classic case of economic bullying.” He accused the US of wanting to “block the development path of China” and using “unwarranted charges and national power to suppress a private Chinese enterprise like Huawei.”

Wang’s comments go to the heart of the intractable issues in the trade talks. The US is determined to prevent China from becoming an economic challenger in key hi-tech areas and is prepared to use every means to achieve that end. That is why it is accusing China of intellectual property theft and providing illegitimate subsidies to Chinese corporations.

As part of his Jiangxi tour, Xi visited one of China’s rare earth mining and processing facilities, sparking speculation that Beijing could use a ban on rare earth exports to hit back at the US.

Rare earths, while quite abundant, are essential to the production of a wide range of items, including smartphones, lasers, missile systems and superconductors. China accounts for 90 percent of global production and the US depends on China for 80 percent of its rare earth imports.

Xi made no reference to the trade war during his visit to the JL MAG Rare Earth factory in Ganzhou, which specialises in magnetic rare-earth elements. However, the presence of China’s top trade negotiator at his side spoke volumes. In 2010, amid a tense standoff with Japan over disputed islets in the East China Sea, China banned rare earth exports to that country, forcing concessions.

More hawkish voices in China have publicly called for similar measures against the US. The state-owned Global Times hailed Xi’s visit to the factory and declared that US demand for rare earth minerals was “an ace in Beijing’s hand.” The US would require years to rebuild its rare earth industry, enabling China to “control the life-blood of the US high-technology industry” and “win a trade war against the US.”

The South China Morning Post reported on an article last week by Jin Canrong, who suggested that China ban rare earth exports to the US as part of a strategy to counter Washington’s measures. Jin also called for Beijing to consider dumping its holdings of US treasuries, currently estimated at $1.13 trillion. Such a move would not only hit the US financial system but generate financial instability globally. As well, Jin suggested that China close its markets to major American corporations such as General Motors and Apple.

A CNN article entitled “China’s latest trade war card isn’t as strong as Beijing thinks” indicates that the Trump administration and the US military and state apparatus are preparing for such eventualities. China’s ban on exports to Japan in 2010 provoked alarm in Washington and led to a congressional hearing to discuss “China’s monopoly on rare earths: Implications for US foreign and security policy.”

More recently, in February 2018, the US Department of the Interior listed rare earths as a separate category on a draft list of minerals critical for “security and economic prosperity.” The US undoubtedly has increased its stockpiles of rare earths and other vital raw materials and drawn up plans for alternative sources.

Trump’s aggressive moves against Huawei and President Xi’s muted, but nevertheless pointed, response signal a new stage in the descent into trade war. While both sides continue to talk about talking, they are preparing strategies that would lead to spiralling economic warfare and ultimately military conflict.

Speaking at a disarmament forum in Geneva on Wednesday, China’s disarmament ambassador Li Song warned of the dangerous consequences of the “unilateral and bullying practices” of the US. He said treating countries as rivals risked turning them into enemies, even if that was not intended.

Indian big business propels Modi and his Hindu supremacist BJP to a second term

Keith Jones

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Hindu supremacist Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) have emerged strengthened from the country’s national election.

While final results are still being tabulated, the BJP has increased its share of the popular vote, surpassing 37 percent, and captured more than 300 Lok Sabha seats. This gives it an absolute majority in the lower house of India’s parliament, even without taking into account the 40 or more seats won by its partners in the National Democratic Alliance (NDA).

India’s stock markets, which had soared after exit polls were released last Sunday announcing a BJP victory, again set record highs Thursday as the scale of the BJP/NDA election victory became apparent.

Big business is salivating at the prospect of Modi’s government accelerating pro-investor “reforms” and aggressively asserting India’s great power ambitions amid trade war and surging global geo-political tensions.

So eager was Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to solidarize himself with Modi, he congratulated his Indian counterpart on his re-election even before India’s Election Commission had completed tallying the votes in just one of the 543 Lob Sabha constituencies.

In his congratulatory message, US President Donald Trump said Modi’s return to the “helm” means “great things are in store for the US-India partnership.” Continuing down the path blazed by previous Congress Party-led governments, the Modi-led BJP government has transformed India into a veritable frontline state in Washington’s strategic confrontation with China.

In the run up to the election there were numerous signs of mounting social anger and growing working class opposition to the BJP government and, more generally, to the ruinous outcome of three decades of neo-liberal capitalist restructuring. India has become one of the world’s most socially polarized countries. A tiny voracious ruling elite appropriates the fruits of capitalist expansion and condemns more than 800 million people to eke out an existence on the equivalent of little more than US $3 per day.

But the palpable opposition to chronic poverty, agrarian distress, mass joblessness (India’s unemployment rate is at a 45-year high) and the Hindu right’s abuse of Muslims and other minorities could find no positive expression in the politics and parties of the Indian bourgeoisie.

In this there are striking parallels with developments around the world. The working class is moving to the left and as attested in the worldwide upsurge in class struggle—from last December’s plantation workers strike in Sri Lanka and the “Yellow Vest” movement in France, to the worker revolt in the Mexican maquiladora center of Matamoros, the wave of teachers’ strikes in the US, and the mass anti-government protests in Algeria—seeking to assert its interests. But in so far as this opposition has yet to take the form of an independent political movement of the working class striving for workers’ power, extreme right forces in country after country, including Trump in the US, the Lega in Italy, and Brazil’s Bolsonaro, have been able to exploit the mass disaffection with the pro-austerity, pro-war establishment “left” and liberal parties.

Faced with a vile and politically incendiary BJP election campaign, laden with militarist, anti-Pakistan and ant-Muslim rhetoric, the opposition parties cowered and connived, “answering” Modi and BJP President Amit Shah with their own reactionary appeals. When Modi seized on a terrorist attack in disputed Kashmir to foment a war crisis, ordering air strikes deep inside Pakistan and bringing South Asia’s nuclear-armed rivals closer to war than at any time since 1971, the opposition parties fell over one another in proclaiming their support and hailing India’s military.

An historic collapse of the Congress Party and the Stalinist CPM and CPI

The Indian elections are an historic repudiation of the Congress Party—the Indian bourgeoisie’s first, and till recently only, “national” party—and of the two Stalinist parliamentary parties, their Left Front electoral bloc, and affiliated trade union apparatuses that have dominated “left” politics in India since independence.

The Congress has won or is leading in 52 seats, which would represent a gain of just eight seats from 2014 when it suffered its worst-ever electoral defeat. The Congress gains were entirely at the expense of the Left Front—principally in Kerala where the Communist Party of India (Marxist) (CPM) leads the government—and the AIADMK, a right-wing regional party that governs Tamil Nadu.

The Congress actually lost seats to the BJP, as the ruling party and its NDA allies swept or won the lion’s share of seats across western and northern India, including in Uttar Pradesh, Maharashtra, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Jharkhand, Chhattisgarh and Haryana—states with a combined population of almost 800 million—and in the national capital territory, Delhi.

Among the losers was Rahul Gandhi, the Congress Party’s dynastic president. He failed to hold the Nehru-Gandhi family “pocket borough” of Amethi in Uttar Pradesh. But Gandhi will have a seat in the incoming Lok Sabha because he successfully contested a second constituency in Kerala.

The Congress made a calibrated appeal to social discontent, promising to increase the derisory sums India spends on health care and education, and to phase in a “guaranteed annual income” scheme, under which the poorest 20 percent of households would receive 72,000 rupees (about $1,025) annually.

India’s workers and toilers rightly deemed these promises to be simply not credible. The Congress has been issuing pledges to “banish poverty” since long before most Indians were born, while ruthlessly defending the interests of the Indian bourgeoisie. With the shipwreck in 1991 of its state-led capitalist development project—which it cynically had labelled “Congress socialism”—the Congress Party spearheaded the Indian bourgeoisie’s drive to forge a new partnership with imperialism, based on transforming India into a cheap-labour production hub for global capital.

Most of the heavy lifting in initiating and implementing “big bang” reforms—deregulation, privatization, the slashing of corporate taxes, the casualization of work, establishment of Special Economic Zones, etc.—and in forging a “global strategic partnership” with US imperialism was carried out by Congress-led governments from 1991 to 1996 and 2004 to 2014.

The Stalinists have suffered an even more ignominious electoral and political collapse. Their popular support among India’s workers and toilers has hemorrhaged. For decades they politically suppressed the working class—containing and defusing the mass opposition to the economic “reform agenda,” and propping up a succession of right-wing governments at the Centre, most of them Congress-led, that implemented “pro-market” policies and sought closer ties to Washington.

Together, the CPM and the older, smaller Communist Party of India (CPI) have won just five Lok Sabha seats. Moreover, in four of the five they were elected on the coattails of a DMK-Congress electoral alliance in Tamil Nadu.

In the three states traditionally considered the electoral bastions of the Left Front and where the Stalinists have repeatedly led governments—West Bengal, Kerala, and Tripura—they won just 1 seat. In West Bengal, whose state government the CPM led for 34 years ending in 2011, its share of the popular vote fell to single digits. The BJP made a breakthrough in a state where it was till recently a minor player.

One development exemplified the corruption and political rot that prevails in the CPM after decades in which it administered the capitalist state apparatus in West Bengal, and after 1991, implemented what it itself labeled “pro-investor” policies. Much of the CPM apparatus defected to either the state’s current ruling party, the right-wing Trinamool Congress, or the Hindu supremacist BJP. Among the BJP’s 18 victorious candidates in West Bengal was a former CPM state legislator, Khagen Murmu.

In the national election held 15 years ago, the CPM-Left Front, buoyed by a wave of popular opposition to the BJP/NDA’s first-ever full-term national government, emerged as the third largest bloc in parliament, with more than 60 MPs. The CPM promptly put its new-found influence to work corralling various regional and casteist parties behind the Congress, serving as the midwife of the right-wing Congress-led United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government and its principal parliamentary prop for the first four years of its decade in office.

In 2019, the Stalinists aspired to play the same criminal role. Their response to the dramatic intensification of class struggle, as epitomized by the bourgeoisie’s embrace of Modi and the recent wave of strikes and peasant protests, has been to redouble their efforts to chain the working class to the parties of the bourgeoisie and its state. They waged an “Anybody but BJP” campaign, calling for support to whichever party or alliance in a given state had the best chance of defeating the BJP/NDA. They proclaimed their backing for a faction of the bourgeoisie to form an “alternative secular” government—i.e. another big business government committed to pro-investor reform, the Indo-US alliance, and the rearmament program that has given India the world’s fourth largest military budget.

In the days before the vote count, CPM general secretary Sitaram Yechury was one of a handful of “trusted” leaders who met with Gandhi and his mother and former Congress president Sonia Gandhi, to discuss, if the parliamentary arithmetic permitted, how they would stake their claim to government.

For decades the Stalinist have justified their support for right-wing governments with the claim that this was the only way to block the BJP’s path to power. The end result is that the BJP and Hindu right are a greater menace than ever.

With the working class politically smothered by the Stalinists and prevented from advancing its own socialist solution to the social crisis, the BJP has been able to exploit popular anger and frustration over rampant social inequality and ever-deepening economic insecurity.

A government of crisis and reaction

A mood of apprehension, at least among the more perceptive sections of the ruling elite, overhangs the corporate media and stock market’s celebrations of Modi’s electoral triumph.

Indian and world capitalism are mired in systemic crisis. The Indian press is full of warnings about the multiple problems that beset India’s economy—a banking system weighed down by corporate debts, causing the credit system to seize up; a drop in consumer demand, rooted in a protracted agrarian crisis, years of government austerity and mounting unemployment; and the threat posed by the development of trade war.

The Indian bourgeoisie is playing an especially foul role on the world stage. Through its strategic integration with Washington, New Delhi is encouraging US imperialism’s reckless offensive against Beijing, while leaning on the US to bully and threaten Pakistan and build up India’s nuclear-armed military.

The extreme dangers this poses for the people of India, the region and the world have been starkly demonstrated by the three war crises India has passed through since 2016—two with Pakistan and one with China.

Moreover, as India becomes sucked into the maelstrom of great power conflict, it is facing a host of escalating demands from its ostensible US ally that gravely threaten the Indian bourgeoisie’s economic and strategic interests. These demands include cutting off oil imports from Iran and Venezuela, eliminating what remains of India’s barriers on American trade and investment, and ending or at least dramatically curtailing New Delhi’s strategic partnership with Russia.

As everywhere, the ruling class’ response to the cascade of economic and strategic threats is more aggression—against the working class and rural poor, and against its capitalist rivals.

Modi’s stoking of Hindu communalist reaction has prompted handwringing complaints from sections of the elite who fear he is destabilising and discrediting the Indian state, and could reap a whirlwind. But the demand emanating from corporate boardrooms in India, London and New York is that the BJP government must dramatically accelerate structural changes aimed at intensifying the exploitation of the working class.

“Not only has economic momentum slowed,” declared a Times of India editorial this week, “there are incipient signs of stress on the price front, while global trade wars (perhaps even real wars) are breaking out. Consequently, the next government will have no option but to press the accelerator on reforms.”

The working class—whose specific weight has vastly increased as a result of India’s capitalist development and integration with global capitalism—will come into headlong conflict with the Modi government, and sooner rather than later. The crucial question is to arm it with a socialist internationalist program. The Indian working class must constitute itself as an independent political force in opposition to all factions of the Indian bourgeoisie and its parties, rally the rural poor and all the oppressed behind it in the fight for a workers’ government and socialism, and unify its struggles against austerity, social inequality, and the threat of war with the international working class in a global offensive against capitalism.

German government steps up military intervention in Mali

Gregor Link

Against a backdrop of growing conflicts between the major world powers in Africa, the German grand coalition government (Christian Democratic Union CDU, Christian Social Union, CSU, and Social Democratic Party, SPD) is preparing a massive military intervention in Mali and the entire Sahel region of North Africa.

The intervention is taking place behind the backs of the population and is part of the German government’s Africa Strategy, aimed at advancing its economic and geo-strategic interests on the continent. By relying on military means German imperialism is returning to the colonial and militaristic traditions which caused immeasurable suffering on the African continent in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Two weeks ago, the German parliament (Bundestag) voted by an overwhelming majority to extend the German army (Bundeswehr) missions in Mali, EUTM and MINUSMA, and the involvement of the German navy in the EU mission Atalanta off the Somali coast for another year.

The government has allocated a total of almost 400 million euros for the three operations up until May 2020. In accordance with the two mandates, the Bundeswehr can station a total of up to 1,100 German soldiers in Mali. The West African country has been effectively under joint German and French occupation since 2013.

In contrast to the previous mandate, the German army now has the task of ensuring the “restoration of state authority” in central Mali. Formerly the German intervention was restricted to the north of the country.

The aim of the new mandate is “to ensure the increased presence of armed and security forces to create the conditions for a return of state administrative structures.” This explains the real purpose of the intervention: neo-colonial control and exploitation of the resource-rich country and the police-military repression of growing opposition to the imperialist occupiers and their hated puppet regime in Bamako.

The country’s government is currently experiencing fierce opposition from the working class and the impoverished rural population. At the end of April, the Malian government of Prime Minister Soumeylou Boubèye Maïga was forced to resign following mass protests and strikes.

The trigger for the protests was a massacre in the village of Ogossagou near Burkina Faso, involving the deaths of around 160 people, including women, the elderly and youth. Another 55 people were injured. The protests were directed against the Western occupiers, under whose eyes the massacre had taken place, and against the indifferent reaction of the Malian government. There are now indications that Malian government forces were involved in the massacre. A dozen uniformed persons are alleged to be among the attackers.

The German grand coalition is acquainted with the crimes committed by the Malian troops it has trained. Already last year, the UN Security Council issued a report listing 344 human rights violations involving 475 victims. Malian military and security forces were involved in 58 of these cases. In addition, Minusma has carried out investigations into 44 cases of extrajudicial executions by Malian soldiers. Instead of withdrawing its forces in light of this carnage the German government is expanding its murderous campaign across the entire Sahel region.

The entire parliamentary debate made clear the full extent of the war plans of the German ruling class. In his plea for deployment, the SPD deputy responsible for African affairs, Christoph Matschie, explicitly named the “stabilization” of the Malian government and the enforcement of the “state monopoly on power” as the objectives of the MINUSMA mission. Mali, according to Matschie, is “a state in the Sahel region that has enormous significance for the stability of the entire region.”

The speaker of the CDU/CSU parliamentary group, Andreas Nick, also pleaded in his speech for an expansion of the mission across the entire region. The country’s “problems” were by no means limited to Mali but concerned “the entire Sahelian zone.”

Nick continued by noting that during the course of her trip to Africa at the beginning of May, Chancellor Angela Merkel had again emphasised “the importance of the G-5 states of Burkina Faso, Mali and Niger for Germany and Europe, as well as the need for action locally.” Now it was important to “enable our partners in the Sahel to assume even more responsibility for providing for their own security. German and European support for the G-5 countries in financing, training and upgrading the “Force Conjointe du G5 Sahel” is an important step in that direction.”

In the course of implementing its war plans in close cooperation with France, the German government is increasingly coming into conflict with US imperialism. Nick expressed his “great” regret that “the granting of a robust UN mandate under Chapter VII for the ‘Force Conjointe’ had so far failed due to US opposition. The declaration of purely financial reasons and the focus on the purely bilateral work of the US in this region,” Nick concluded, “was not easy to understand.”

To put it more directly: following active participation by the German ruling elite in US regime change wars during the last two decades, it is now criticising US imperialism from the right. A “robust deployment under Chapter VII” requires a brutal combat mission and involving the same murderous and illegal practices used in the US-led wars against Libya, Afghanistan and Iraq.

The defence spokesman for the CDU/CSU, Henning Otte, made clear in his speech that the German government is considering the use of combat drones in Mali and the surrounding region: “We want the use of Heron TP (drone) equipment to continue. Training is already taking place and I say very clearly on behalf of the Union: When necessary we also want to be able to support our soldiers by arming them with the Heron.”

The “debate” over German combat missions in the Bundestag made clear the traditions the ruling class is drawing upon. Speaking on behalf of the far right AfD, Rüdiger Lucassen, a former official at the Ministry of Defense, demanded that the real nature of the operation be revealed to the public: “The entire motion is a document aimed at concealment, full of empty phrases at a time when soldiers need clarity. This is dishonest, cowardly, and deeply irresponsible given the fact that you expose our men and women to this danger.”

In fact, there is no lack of clarity regarding the aims or methods employed by the German government in the Sahel region. The plan is to use brutal force to enforce the interests of German imperialism throughout the region and, as an integral component, erect a kind of “death barrier” to block off “Fortress Europe.”

In addition to the direct deployment of German armed forces and the formation of African units such as the “Force Conjointe,” the German missions involves arming the authoritarian regimes of the Sahel.

Handelsblatt reported that Merkel promised the Burkina Faso government 17 to 20 million euros during her trip to Africa. The money is to be spent on “expanding the capacities of the police and gendarmerie” and “advice from the Bundeswehr” on how best to combat “illegal migration.” During her subsequent visit to neighbouring Niger, Merkel praised the country’s government, stating that it had “undertaken a decisive fight to deter illegal migration” and had “done outstanding work” in recent years.

The “outstanding work” cited by Merkel consists of African regimes with the support of the European Union forcing refugees into the desert where many perish horribly through starvation and thirst. According to reports, EU-trained units have not only secured borders but also occupied waterholes in the Sahara. As a result, the UN refugee agency UNHCR reports that more people are now dying in the desert than in the Mediterranean Sea.

In order to advance their inhuman policies, the ruling class is increasingly conducting covert, illegal military operations. German army special forces are stationed in Jordan, Tunisia, Cameroon and Niger, operating in secret and without any parliamentary mandate. Around 20 naval troops have been training local government soldiers in the Tahoua region of Nigeria for a year.

The results of the votes and the contributions by the opposition parties confirm that there is no opposition to the return of German militarism within the ranks of the ruling class. The Greens and the neo-liberal FDP agreed to all of the Bundeswehr operations by a large majority. The far-right AfD voted nearly unanimously for the EU mission, Atalanta.

The Left Party—the only party to vote against all three deployments—is itself deeply integrated into the structures of German imperialism and plays a central role in Africa’s politics. The Left Party spokeswoman for defence, Christine Buchholz (Marx 21), began her speech by referring to her regular troop visits to the Malian front: “I’ve been to Mali four times in recent years—the last time in February—and the situation has worsened from year to year.”

Stefan Liebich, chairman of the Left Party in the Foreign Affairs Committee and a member of influential think tanks such as the Atlantik-Brücke and the German Council on Foreign Relations (DGAP), criticised the new mandate from the right. “The European Union and the German army train Malian forces but we cannot decide what the Malian army does and how it does it,” he lamented. The current mandate implies “the notion that somehow one is demonstrating responsibility with purely training missions but without actually taking up any responsibility.”

Macron’s Labor Law in France: Unions organize 3,000 layoffs at Carrefour supermarket chain

Anthony Torres

With the support of the trade unions, the Carrefour supermarket chain in France is set to destroy up to 3,000 positions over the next year, utilizing measures contained in the Labor Law imposed by the Macron government at the start of its term in 2017. The company signed a so-called Collective Breaking of Contract (rupture conventionelle de collective—RCC) with the Workers Force (FO) and the CFE-CGC union federation this week, allowing it to force through thousands of “voluntary” redundancies.

The agreement was negotiated over many weeks between the company and the unions. While 1,230 jobs are to be destroyed, the company and unions clearly anticipate pressuring far more workers to resign, with an upper limit of 3,000 layoffs as part of the agreement. The General Federation of Labor (CGT), the third union covering Carrefour workers, did not sign the RCC—not because it did not support it, but because its signature was not needed to push it through, given that it had already been passed by FO and the CFE-CGC. The CGT has therefore fraudulently postured as an opponent of the destruction of jobs.

All the unions have worked to sabotage any struggle by Carrefour workers, who mobilized last year in opposition to the company’s cost-cutting plans. They are creating the conditions for further attacks, not only on Carrefour workers internationally, but on workers at Auchan and Casino, which are also carrying out major restructuring operations. The urgent task confronting supermarket workers is to organize a struggle independently of the unions on an international scale.

The redundancies at Carrefour will particularly affect workers in jewelry departments, multimedia, payroll, administration and service stations, which are subject to competition from online commerce and specialized retailers. The company will seek to reduce 15 percent of staff in its 46 supermarkets, in addition to attrition from retirements.

The management is seeking to increase the profitability of the chain as rapidly as possible by laying off staff.

With the disguised layoffs of 3,000 Carrefour workers, the Macron government is collaborating in a major offensive against jobs taking place on an international scale—including hundreds of job cuts announced at Ford on Monday, and the liquidation of British Steel this week, eliminating 5,000 jobs and threatening 20,000 more. These attacks underscore the pro-business character of the unions’ “social dialogue” with the corporations.

The negotiations have nothing to do with improving the conditions of the working class but are aimed at organizing the destruction of jobs and lowering labor costs in order to boost profits and competitiveness of the giant corporations against their global rivals. The RCC, introduced as part of the Labor Law as a new mechanism for mass layoffs, and requiring that the unions sign off on any restructuring, demonstrate the ever more direct incorporation of the unions into the attacks on the working class.

In an interview with the newspaper Les Echos, Macron’s minister of labor, Muriel Pénichaud, declared that the Labor Law “is beginning to yield its fruits, we are in a good dynamic with the new measure, which meets our twin objectives of developing the social dialogue and juridically protecting it.” Since the decrees that created the RCC came into force in December 2018, 96 RCCs have been initiated, and 60 signed by the unions. More than half have involved large corporations, according to the Ministry of Labor.

The labor minister added that 142 supplementary collective agreements on pay and working time, which can take precedence over employment contracts, had been concluded by March 31.

At Carrefour, the RCC is part of a transformation plan seeking to increase the exploitation of an already super-exploited workforce. To justify this action, CEO Alexandre Bompard announced that “after a year 2017 that was globally difficult because of market competition, 2018 will be a year of struggle, because it will be the first stage of the Carrefour 2022 plan.”

Under this plan, begun at the start of last year, the company expects to save €2 billion off the backs of its workforce. As Bombard announced his plan, Carrefour posted an enormous profit of €773 million.

The allies of the workers in France in their struggle are workers internationally. Carrefour initiated its assault on workers in Asia and Latin America, before beginning its restructuring in Europe. It has already destroyed 4,400 positions, through so-called voluntary redundancies in multiple countries and the closure of Dia stores in France.

These attacks are only possible due to the complicity of the trade unions, which have isolated the Carrefour workers who went on strike last year from other sections of the working class, including railway workers in France and their fellow Carrefour workers around the world. While the year 2018 was marked by an upsurge of working-class struggle around the world, including the “yellow vest” protests in France, the unions have been even more determined to sign off on further layoffs in order to prevent any united fight against the company.

The RCC, as opposed to previous mechanisms for corporate restructures, does not require that the company even formally invoke a difficult economic situation, present or in the future, as justification.

Jean-Phillippe Dubs, of Alès Group, a specialist provider of cosmetics that laid off 80 workers using an RCC, described its advantages to Le Monde: “It permits us to improve our accounts internally in a less traumatic way than a social plan. We carried out our restructure as a family, without any experts or procedures of consultation, as it should have been the case for the Plans for Saving Jobs or Plan for Voluntary Departures.

The unions adopt without any ambiguity the point of view of the corporations. The FO and CSC-CGE declare in the letter announcing the RCC that the “workers are aware of the necessity of transforming the supermarkets.” They propose certain symbolic measures, including the “putting in place of a commission of local follow-ups” and a “procedure of prevention and evaluation for the organization and workload.” But it is the unions’ own policies that will lead to the increase in workload.

To fight against Carrefour’s restructuring, workers must organize independently of the union apparatuses that are orchestrating this offensive. Workers need their own independent rank-and-file action committees to coordinate a fight with their co-workers, including internationally. This requires a political struggle against the Macron government and its political allies, waged on the basis of a socialist and international perspective.

British Steel collapse threatens 25,000 jobs

Robert Stevens

Nearly 5,000 steelworkers’ jobs and another 20,000 in supply industries could be wiped out after Tuesday’s announcement that British Steel is insolvent.

The company, owned by “vulture fund” Greybull Capital, is the second largest steel producer in the UK after Tata. Its main plant is in the town of Scunthorpe in the Northeast of England where steel production goes back 150 years and where more than 3,000 workers are employed. Other jobs are threatened at the company’s plants in Skinningrove, north Yorkshire and at Blaydon, in Gateshead. The firm also has a research and development facility in Rotherham, South Yorkshire.

British Steel was declared insolvent after talks with the Conservative government broke down Tuesday evening over an emergency state loan of around £30 million. The High Court ordered the “compulsory liquidation” of British Steel, appointing the Official Receiver to oversee the process along with the accountancy firm EY.

Steelworks at Scunthorpe [Credit: Ashley Lightfoot]

Every job lost will be a tragedy for workers and their families in the areas of the country, long blighted by deindustrialisation, joblessness and low-paid work. Scunthorpe, with a population of just 83,000, is heavily reliant on employment at the plant. Unemployment in North Lincolnshire stands at 4.8 percent and would almost double to 8.4 percent (twice the national average) with the closure of the Scunthorpe plant. Workers at present earn around £36,000 ($45,528), compared to the average wage in Scunthorpe of just over £22,000 ($27,827).

Employees turning up for work on Wednesday were uncertain whether they would still be in a job in 24 hours. Those who spoke to the media said they were being kept in the dark about what was happening. A 19-year-old employee expressed the fears of many, “It's going to be terrible for the town, everyone in Scunthorpe has a family member who works here so the effect will be huge.”

One of British Steel’s main suppliers, Hargreaves Services, a logistics firm based in the northeast of England, said that 170 jobs could be impacted if British Steel closes.

The Scunthorpe mill is one of only two integrated steel producers in the UK, the other being Tata’s plant in Port Talbot, South Wales that employs more than 4,000 workers.

British Steel’s insolvency threatens to be a virtual coup de grâce against a once powerful section of the working class. The steel industry was nationalised by the post-World War II Labour government and then renationalised by Labour in 1967, after the 1953 Tory Churchill government took it back into private hands. In 1967, the nationalised British Steel Corporation employed a workforce of 268,000, with steel producing plants such as Consett, Corby and Ravenscraig becoming household names. Sheffield was once world famous as “Steel City,” with 150,000 workers employed there in the industry.

The death knell of the steel industry was sounded by the Thatcher Conservative government that privatised it in 1988, followed by one plant closing after another. The Tories and steel corporations could not have decimated thousands of jobs were it not for the trade unions, which sold out the 1980 national steel strike and have never lifted a finger to defend a single job since then.

According to the GMB trade union, more than 150,000 steel jobs have been lost in the UK since the 1980s. In 1981, steel still employed 186,000 workers. Only 32,000 remain today. Entire regions were economically and socially devastated by steel plant shutdowns and the parallel closure of the coal industry—following the defeat of the year-long miners’ strike of 1984-85 that the unions were also responsible for.

In the nearly four decades since the steel strike, 40,000 steelworkers lost their jobs in Yorkshire and the Humber alone and 25,800 in the West Midlands.

The unions have insisted for decades that workers cannot oppose demands for redundancies, pay and pension cuts and productivity hikes because sacrifices are needed to keep “our” steel industry afloat in a cutthroat global steel market.

The unions have repeated this mantra on behalf of the few parasites who run Tata and Greybull to this day, even with virtually no industry left to save. When Greybull bought Tata’s Long Products division in 2016, including the Scunthorpe plant, the Community union general secretary, Roy Rickhuss, dubbed the formation of British Steel as a “new chapter in the course of the UK steel industry.”

Greybull initially returned a profit, but only after collaborating with Community and the other steel unions in imposing a restructuring programme involving a cut in pay and pensions.

Last autumn, British Steel cut 400 managerial, professional and administrative jobs across its operations in the UK, Ireland, France and the Netherlands. In response, Community declared that the firm’s decision, having just reported first quarter profits of £21 million, “will come as a body-blow to the workforce who have already made huge sacrifices to make the business sustainable.” Nevertheless, it declared, the job losses came during "challenging times for UK steelmakers" and the union only implored the government to step in to “Save our Steel.”

Greybull executives hailed their intimate relationship with the unions in a statement on the insolvency, declaring, “The workforce, the trade unions and the management team have worked closely together in their determination to strengthen the business”.

What the unions were defending was an asset-stripping operation by individuals previously involved in the collapse of two other firms employing thousands of workers, Monarch Airlines and Comet. Their collapse led to the taxpayers footing bills running into tens of millions of pounds.

Greybull was able, with the support of the unions, to receive grants and loans of hundreds of millions of pounds from the public purse, utilising the name of “British Steel” to justify self-enrichment by a handful of multimillionaires. The last loan, handed over by the government only a few weeks ago, was worth £120 million. It was made necessary as a result of British Steel losing vast sums through a gamble involving the selling of additional carbon emission credits and will likely never be paid back.

After presiding over a disaster threatening the livelihoods of British Steel workers, the unions and Labour Party now demand—again in the “national interest”—that Prime Minister Theresa May’s crisis-ridden government take temporary control of what remains of Greybull’s operations, before organising its sale to yet another private corporation. Under conditions of a raging trade war, with the US leveling tariffs against the world’s largest steel producer, China, a glut of steel on the world market and a fall in demand, the only company that would even consider taking on the Scunthorpe plant would be a Greybull Mark 2!

The unions and Labour’s strategy chimes almost word for word with that of the Financial Times, which editorialised, “If both of the remaining large furnaces close, Britain’s defence industry will become almost entirely dependent on foreign producers or smaller outfits that buy raw steel from elsewhere.” It advised, “The government should keep the assets running, and consider injecting further capital itself. Then a well-planned sale into private hands will be needed….”

British Steel workers must reject the reactionary nationalist programme of the unions and Labour Party of relying on the good graces of the Tories and another profiteering outfit to save their jobs.

Steelworkers in the UK are part of an international class, which must combine their immense collective strength to oppose every attack on their jobs, wages and conditions by globally-organised corporations.

Workers in Scunthorpe and at other British Steel plants must unite with Tata workers and steelworkers in Europe and internationally in opposition to a fratricidal struggle for dwindling markets amid an escalating trade war.

To fightback, workers must turn to the formation of democratically controlled rank-and-file committees, independent of the corporate-controlled unions and based on a socialist perspective. These committees should make preparations for national and cross-border strikes to stop the British Steel plant closings and mass layoffs everywhere.

The steel industry must be transformed into a public enterprise, collectively owned and democratically controlled by the working class, as part of the establishment of a planned socialist economy in the UK and internationally.

PESCO Vs NATO: European Integration and the Transatlantic Challenge

Manuel Herrera

Debates surrounding the Permanent Structured Cooperation (PESCO) and North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) tend to approach both as if they are in opposition. The dominant argument is that PESCO and NATO will produce significant strategic divergences on either side of the Atlantic, and ultimately weaken both US and EU military capabilities against potential rivals (such as Russia and China). Could these two arrangements be seen in a new light, i.e. as complementary to each other, rather than as opposing forces?

What Motivates PESCO?

The European integration process has always faced difficulties in addressing security and defence matters. As early as 1952, the idea to create a European Defence Community did not get off the ground. It was not until the signing of the 2007 Lisbon Treaty that the Common Security and Defence Policy (CSDP) was created, but this continued to face operational, capacity-based, and financial difficulties. Finally, in 2017, these shortcomings were addressed with the activation of PESCO.

PESCO's activation is justified through Russia’s destabilising actions, the arc of instability spanning the Middle East and North Africa, terrorist attacks, and lone actors or Islamic State (IS) fighters returning from Syria and Iraq. Adding to this is the lack of trust in the transatlantic alliance since US President Donald Trump came to power. As a consequence of these factors, the number of intra-EU summits on security and defence has increased significantly. This points to a seismic shift in the mood within the EU on military affairs, with most policymakers across the bloc finally agreeing that hard power is essential for their survival.

PESCO and the Future of NATO

PESCO also has the potential to be valuable for NATO from a transatlantic point of view. The best way to address misgivings about PESCO among non-European NATO states (Albania, Canada, Iceland, Montenegro, Norway, Turkey, and the US) is by further strengthening EU-NATO ties. This includes fostering symmetry between NATO’s Defence Planning Process and the European Defence Agency’s Capability Development Plan, and further implementing and advancing the 2016 joint EU-NATO declaration and its ensuing 42 action points, as well as the EU Council conclusions adopted by the EU and NATO in December 2017. Both the EU and NATO have a shared and vital interest (such as countering Russia and aiming for peace and stability in Europe) in enhancing European military capabilities, and this incentive should be enough to reach common ground on the issue.

NATO defines military capability targets for individual states, but in many areas, European allies have become too small (such as in terms of industrial size) to generate these capabilities by themselves. Collectively, however, Europeans are much better placed to address the capability question. That they choose to do this in a European framework is perfectly logical, more so because the European Commission can co-finance PESCO projects for up to 30 per cent from the EU budget. All additional capacity that Europe acquire thanks to PESCO can still be deployed for operations in all possible frameworks, including NATO. NATO will thus not necessarily be undermined by PESCO's creation. While certain cracks have indeed appeared in the EU-US relationship recently, such as regarding defence spending, PESCO's ability to increase EU member states' military capabilities will ultimately enable more collective territorial defence and expeditionary operations in the NATO framework.

In order to improve these capabilities, PESCO seeks to publish a common European call for tender that will be open to all manufacturers in Europe, and award one contract to build a single armament model (e.g. tank, aircraft, etc.). Manufacturers participating in PESCO projects will undertake them on a multinational basis (the project will be granted to several manufacturers from different countries). The aim to is have states whose companies participate in a PESCO project to share tendering costs and produce models that can be used by all PESCO member states, rather than each state manufacturing its own weapon model. Through this, the European Commission expects to address the current imbalance between member states' individual military expenditure and common military capabilities.

An area of concern for the US is how this call for tender is motivated by the need to make European defence industry more competitive vis-à-vis foreign industries. If this comes to pass, Europe will obviously buy cheaper and from within, rather than the US. Other concerns come from the potential degradation of US influence on European military affairs if the EU manages to become a truly autonomous strategic actor. The US has thus begun expressing its concerns about greater intra-EU cooperation, saying that all PESCO projects must be in close coordination with NATO, in which Washington has major sway.

Challenges to EU Integration in Defence and Security

Despite the significant momentum to establish PESCO, there is still no consensus on how to create, organise, or wield joint military power. The likelihood of the EU's ability to marshal the political will, technical capability, financial resources, and mutual trust that are essential to pose a credible military front ­­— that is independent of the US — to security threats is also uncertain. In addition, there is reluctance among some European leaders, such as Prime Minister Mark Rutte of the Netherlands, about ceding authority on national security, and, in some cases, concerns about undermining NATO.

The two main obstacles to further EU integration in security and defence are continuing political divisions with regard to the identification of threats and foreign policy priorities, and the Union's militarily weaknesses. Concerns over sovereignty, trust, technical, bureaucratic and financial hurdles, and defence industry issues complicate the scenario.

Conclusion

If implemented well, European defence initiatives such as PESCO will address the precise US ask of a stronger European pillar within NATO. The US will in fact welcome greater European defence spending, investments in military capabilities, and enhancement of operational readiness. Although there still remains a great deal of scepticism in Washington about European defence plans, their level of ambition, and practical applications, if integrated correctly, PESCO could be a net positive from a transatlantic perspective.

Xi and China’s Fourth May Revolution: Can State Control and People’s Empowerment be Reconciled?

Vijay Shankar

Since 1919, the Fourth of May movement has been evoked by Chinese scholars and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)  as a beacon for independence and enlightenment. How the array of critical thoughts that the movement represented will translate into policies that debunk authoritarianism  remains unresolved.

World War I ran its grisly course and all the while theorists argued whether dynamics for cessation could be found in the very causes that triggered it. Were the answers in the crisis that erupted on the assassination of the Archduke Ferdinand? Was it in the nature of the alliance system? Or, conditions of aggressive militarism that drove countries to the brink? Or could it have been in the structure of imperial polity?

While none of these considerations contained a tenable rationale for reconciliation, what did bring about cessation was strategic exhaustion coupled with the collapse of motivation.The US’ weighing-in on the side of the Allies decided the victor. Devastation caused by the war fashioned a perception that it was a ‘self-inflicted’ mortal wound to the ‘eminence’ of imperial boom. And so the peace settlement of Versailles in 1919 was an instrument to make good territorial, colonial, economic gains and indeed salvage some pride for the victors through the imposition of punitive, geographic, military, and financial terms on the vanquished. What the Treaty fatally failed to perceive was the emergence of a cluster of unsettled precarious nation states in West Asia and East Europe; and a disdain for the dormant appetite for expansion in Russia, the down-but-not-out Germany, and China.

The Treaty of Versailles, among its many contentious terms, awarded Japan control over German colonies and territories in the Pacific and , to China’s anguish, German concessions in Shandong. This led to a major uprising that over the next decade saw the coming of warlords, fragmenting of the Qing Empire, and colonial avarice; all against the backdrop of a nationalist revolution. China, it will be recalled, had sided with the Allies, and many Chinese expected Shandong back. Instead, the Allies awarded it to Japan. That decision ignited fury among Chinese students, who saw it as a betrayal by Western countries and by Chinese leadership. Anger spread in universities and colleges across Beijing, and on 4 May 1919, students from 13 campuses in the capital came together in protest. The upsurge spread to other cities in China, inspiring strikes and boycotts. This forced the government in Beijing to refuse to ratify the Peace Treaty.

This day entered history as a watershed for Chinese philosophical thought. Chinese intellectuals linked the protests with the ‘New Culture Movement’, the name they gave to a flux of ideas that had spread in universities, newspapers, and literary circles. Ideas included anarchism, socialism, feminism, artistic experimentation, and reforming written Chinese. Summed up as the tempestuous advent of "Mr Science and Mr Democracy; science “stood for ‘modernity’, the ‘West’ and a general distaste and iconoclastic approach to Chinese tradition.”

Shandong has been China’s political, economic, and cultural centre since ancient times. The founder of Confucianism lived here. Chinese culture, beliefs, and folklore were rooted in Confucius’ teachings and philosophy. He broke from convention in which culture and education were controlled by aristocrats. He publicly put forth a slogan "just education, no discrimination." The students’ protests of 1919 sought to reinstate and expand on these very traditions.

Now, the CCP has cast itself as the rightful heir to the legacy of the ‘New Cultural Movement’ as its strongest suite for legitimacy. However, what is of substance is that the challenge of empowering the people is unfulfilled. In this circumstance, the Fourth of May can neither be buried nor ignored. So, notwithstanding how unpalatable the disclosure and debilitating the impact of restructuring, it is an innate process that looms over China’s future.

Having graduated from Deng’s grand strategy of “Hide the light, bide the time,” Xi’s vision of ushering a ‘new era’ is founded on two critical milestones spread over three decades starting with 2020, by which time China should become an all-round prosperous society, and then by 2035, complete a basic socialist modernisation project. The next 15 years is to be devoted to attaining the status as a “leading world power,” and a wealthy socialist state; restoring to China its “lost glory.” Whether Xi has accounted for the needs of democracy on the path to socialist modernisation in the first 15 years or whether it is even tenable is the moot point. After all, the whole scheme appears to be a hail back to Soekarno’s failed “Guided Democracy” — conceptually, a democratic government that functions as an autocracy. While legitimised by controlled elections, the people are not empowered to bring about changes in national policies, motives, and goals. Undeterred by this foundational contradiction, Xi commemorated the Fourth of May by exhorting Chinese youth to “obey and follow the party.” A strange way for the renewal of 'Mr Democracy'!

The most important change that a century has wrought is the shift in global power structures. The collapse of the British empire in the wake of World War II ushered in ‘Pax’ Americana (ironically a period marred by over 50 years of warfare). The prediction of the Asian Century is now coming true, with the emergence of China, Japan, India, South Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore as global economic pivots. China’s economic growth has been incredible; a phenomenon that is only 40 years old. Yet, the century-old conundrum that Xi faces remains unchanged: having taken ownership of the Fourth of May, how indeed is science-technology-wealth to be divorced from the increasing urge for democracy? Will the despot’s ‘socialist modernisation project’ ever reconcile this imbalance between the CCP’s iron hold and empowerment of the people?