China’s economic ascendancy in Africa threatens US imperialism

Jean Shaoul

China’s economic ascendency and the ensuing rivalry between Beijing and Washington, representing the world’s two largest economies, are being played out across the resource-rich African continent.

China has supplanted the United States and the European Union as Africa’s main trading and investment partner. Earlier this month, top officials from almost all of Africa’s 54 countries went to Beijing for the triennial Forum on China-Africa Co-operation (FOCAC), where China’s President Xi Jinping pledged $51 billion in investment through credit lines and Chinese business investments in Africa over a three-year period. He offered backing for more infrastructure projects and the creation of at least one million jobs. Xi said that China was ready to step up cooperation with Africa in industry, agriculture, infrastructure, trade and investment.

The 2024 FOCAC Summit Opening Ceremony [Photo by Paul Kagame / Flickr / CC BY-NC-ND 2.0]

The Beijing meeting follows the expansion of the BRICS bloc (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa) to include two African countries, Egypt and Ethiopia, as well as several other new members.

Xi promised a three-fold increase on the number of infrastructure projects across the continent compared with those pledged at the last Forum in 2021, with an emphasis on “small and beautiful” schemes based on China’s advanced and green technologies. China would launch 30 clean energy projects, as well as 30 infrastructure connectivity projects. Also on offer was cooperation on nuclear technology and help with the power generation and transmission vital in helping the continent to industrialise. Xi called for a China-Africa network of land and sea links.

He gave assurances that China would expand its non-resource imports from Africa, reiterating a pledge to expand market access for African goods, particularly agricultural goods, that currently face very tight inspection and quarantine restrictions.

While the pledge to invest $51 billion represents a 27.5 percent increase from the last 2021 summit, it was less than the peak $60 billion pledged in 2015 and 2018. Much of that reduction was the result of the fall in infrastructure borrowing as Ethiopia, Zambia and Kenya struggled to repay the loans for major infrastructure projects taken out over the preceding decade.

The Forum was held amid rising competition from the US and Europe, as well as from the so-called “middle powers,” Russia, India, Japan, Turkey, Saudia Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, for influence in Africa.

At stake is China’s access to Africa’s vast mineral resources, including large oil reserves, diamonds, gold, silver, uranium, copper, cobalt, nickel and lithium, which it currently mines in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC), Zimbabwe, Botswana, and elsewhere, as well as the establishment of local refining facilities for raw materials and markets for its renewable energy and high-tech products.

As the US and the European Union impose high tariff walls on Chinese goods, Beijing is focusing on Africa not only as a market for its high-value exports—electric vehicle sales to Africa rose by 291 percent in 2023—but also as a manufacturing location, taking advantage of the continent’s low wages, in a bid to circumvent the prohibitive tariff barriers it faces in the advanced countries.

China views Africa, with its rapidly rising population expected to reach 1.7 billion by 2030—an increase of around 400 million from 2024—as an important export market, while its 54 votes at the United Nations could provide Beijing with a counterweight to the domination of US imperialism.

China’s trade with Africa

China’s trade with Africa has grown exponentially since the early 1990s, particularly after China joined the World Trade Organization (WTO) in December 2001 and encouraged the free movement of capital, people and products in both directions. China is now by far the continent’s largest bilateral trade partner, surpassing the US in 2009.

About 25 percent of Africa’s exports, primarily minerals, fuels and metals that are critical for defence, renewable power and electric vehicles, go to China, while about 16 percent of its imports come from the country. In 2023, its trade with China was more than double that with India, the continent’s second-biggest single trade partner.

In 2023, total trade with China reached a record $282 billion, or 9.9 percent of Africa’s GDP—up from less than $200 billion, or 7.8 percent of Africa’s GDP in 2019, largely due to the surging demand for minerals, especially those critical for the transition to green energy. China expects the annual trade volume to reach $300 billion by 2035. Nevertheless, Africa’s trade with China is very one-sided, accounting for less than 5 percent of China’s global trade.

The first seven months of 2024 have seen a 5.5 percent increase in trade, driven primarily by Africa’s export of raw materials. Chinese exports to Africa totaled $97 billion in the same period, while Africa exported goods worth $69 billion, mostly raw materials, reflecting Africa’s longstanding pattern of trade imbalance.

While these figures relate to the entire continent, most of China’s trade is with just six to eight of Africa’s 54 countries, including South Africa, Nigeria, Egypt, Algeria, DRC and Angola.

Nevertheless, the composition of China’s imports from Africa is changing, disrupting its relations with the countries concerned. Beijing is buying less oil from Africa, switching instead to the Gulf, Russia and elsewhere in Asia. Angola saw its ranking as China’s second most important supplier of oil fall to eighth in 2023. South Sudan, Sudan and Nigeria have all seen their hydrocarbon exports to China fall by more than 60 percent.

In its place, China is importing minerals and increasingly starting to refine and process them locally. Chinese companies have opened processing plants in Zimbabwe, Nigeria and Morocco, among others. In the case of agricultural products, typically raw commodities, China has started importing flash-frozen avocados from Kenya, beef from Namibia, and coffee from Ethiopia and Rwanda.

Also of growing importance are China’s ecommerce platforms, Kilimall, Tmall, JD.com and Kikuu, that provide a virtual—and crucial—entry point, or digital marketplace, for African suppliers into world markets and participation in the global manufacturing supply chains from which African manufacturers have hitherto largely been excluded. It is this lack of access to global markets that has in part caused manufacturing in sub-Saharan Africa to fall from 18 percent of GDP in 1981 to 11 percent last year, as most African countries remain locked in colonial-style trading relationships in which they export raw materials and import finished goods

China’s investment in Africa

Beijing has also become the continent’s biggest investor, pledging $191 billion between 2006 and 2021, often in the form of grants, credit, and loans to finance major infrastructure projects, typically under its Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).

It has invested in 53 out of Africa’s 54 countries, mostly in port areas along the coast of Africa16 in the West, eight each in the North and the East, and two in the South. These include Djibouti Port (Djibouti), where it has built its first overseas military base, Port Sudan (Sudan), Port Said-Port Tewfik (Egypt), Port Ain Sokhna (Egypt), Zarzis Port (Tunisia) and El Hamdania Port (Algeria).

China has used its connectivity projects in Africa (including rail and road lines) to link its industrial (including minerals processing) and energy projects in the hinterland to transportation infrastructure, including ports along the African coastline.

Many BRI infrastructure projects, such as the $3.8 billion railway between Nairobi and Kenya’s port city of Mombasa, increased the indebtedness of countries already deep in the hole, forcing China to cut back on its BRI investment after several countries either defaulted or struggled to keep up with debt repayments. According to Boston University’s Global Development Institute, the value of new loans to African countries fell to about 0.15 percent of African GDP in 2021 from its peak of 1.2 percent in 2016.

Last year, China approved loans worth $10.8 billion to Africa, in the first annual increase since 2016, signing an agreement in February with Zambia and Tanzania to upgrade the TAZARA railway line, built decades ago by the Chinese, that transports copper and other critical minerals to Dar-es-Salaam on the Indian Ocean. It follows pledges in January to invest up to $7 billion in the Sicomines copper and cobalt joint venture in the DRC and about $1.3 billion for a railway linking Kano, Nigeria’s second largest city after Lagos, and Maradi, the second largest city in neighboring Niger.

While Xi announced Beijing’s intention to expand its infrastructure investment, this is expected to take the form of numerous smaller projects based on China’s advanced and green technologies, such as its $14 million Africa Solar Belt program to supply 50,000 African households, including in Chad and Nigeria, with solar energy, and $50 million for a solar farm in Burkina Faso.

Xi also announced a major shift: investment in industrialization to take advantage of Africa’s low-wage economy, financed via corporate rather than public investment. Such production facilities are aimed at Africa’s growing middle class, as well as global markets and supply chains for products based on exploiting the continent’s vast natural resources.

Crucially, finance for industrialisation will come in the form of Chinese yuan, not the US dollar, as part of China’s broader push to increase the international use of its currency and curb the dollar’s dominance. At present, almost all cross-border transactions—trade settlements, development finance and foreign direct investment—between China and African countries are carried out in dollars.

While this use of the dollar integrates these countries into the global financial system, it exposes them to volatility in financial markets. Since January 2022, when the US Federal Reserve began a series of interest rate hikes, African countries have seen their currencies depreciate by an average of 19 percent relative to the dollar as investors switched to higher paying US Treasury bonds and the US/NATO-led war against Russia in Ukraine pushed up the cost of grain imports. This has increased their indebtedness and the cost of servicing their debt.

The yuan is not set to replace the dollar as the premier international trading currency, but Xi’s announcement indicates that it will play an increasing role in trade invoicing and settlements between China and Africa. This initiative takes place as Africa is rolling out its Pan-African Payment and Settlement System (PAPSS), developed by African Export-Import Bank (Afreximbank), that allows African countries to settle their intra-African trade (currently very low) in local currencies, a development that Beijing is encouraging.

Beijing is also increasing its use of bilateral currency swap agreements whereby China’s central bank, the People’s Bank of China, provides yuan-denominated trade credit to local commercial banks in around 40 countries, with several in Africa, including Nigeria, aimed at expanding bilateral trade as well as providing emergency support for key African countries that are close to defaulting on their loans. It has also supported the New Development Bank, a multilateral institution set up by the BRICS group of countries in Shanghai with the intention of using member countries’ currencies for lending and international loans.

Concerns about potential Western sanctions, particularly US-led freezing of $300 billion worth of dollar assets of Russia’s central bank, largely held in the European banking system, together with other financial sanctions, are fueling China’s efforts to limit US financial domination, via yuan-denominated transactions and its support for the PAPSS and similar systems elsewhere.

China is seeking to restructure its loan portfolio to the 25 African countries that the IMF estimates are in or at risk of debt distress. Chinese creditors, public and private, are believed to hold about 13 percent of this debt. It is engaged in debt renegotiation restructuring and relief with countries including Angola, Ethiopia and Kenya. China and other creditors have agreed to Zambia repaying its debt over a longer period, while writing off $840 million. Beijing is also providing short-term loans to countries in distress, with at least seven African countries receiving bailout loans.

Washington has responded by accusing Beijing of “debt diplomacy” by luring African countries into taking on significant debt that they struggle to pay back, allowing Beijing to then seize lucrative assets.

The US response

Washington’s key concern is that the new trade routes being built under the BRI would divert trade away from the US and that China’s increasing economic clout would heighten its political influence, with China’s access to African ports giving its military greater power projection capability. Nevertheless, despite its bitter opposition to the BRI, citing concerns over debt and environmental sustainability, the US has failed to come up with an appealing alternative.

Last year, after decades of declining influence in Africa and amid mounting concern about China’s growing control over vital mineral resources, the US signed hundreds of deals worth $14.2 billion with African countries in a bid to counter China’s growing influence. The 547 trade and investment agreements were a 67 percent increase on 2022 in both number and value. In a landmark deal, seen as a win for Washington over China and Russia in Africa, a US company won a bid to help build Ghana’s first small nuclear reactor.

The US is seeking to rival China’s BRI via the G7’s Partnership for Global Infrastructure and Investment (PGII) with “developing” nations that aims to deploy more than $600 billion by 2027. It is participating in a $10 billion project to finance the Lobito Corridor to “dislodge the Chinese.”

The project involves the renovation and expansion of a 1,300-kilometre-long railway line—largely destroyed during the US-provoked civil war—that will transport critical minerals from the resource-rich DRC as well as Zambia’s Copperbelt province to Angola’s Lobito port, on the Atlantic coast. It includes the expansion of Lobito port and construction of solar energy power plants and bridges around rural communities. The US has announced an agreement that would expand the Lobito Corridor to reach nickel deposits in Tanzania, widening US access to Africa’s critical minerals, and potentially creating the first coast-to-coast east-west rail connection in Africa.

The US International Development Finance Corporation’s loan of $1.2 billion for the Lobita project is noteworthy because Angola was once a cold war battleground and later the largest recipient of China’s loans in Africa. Luanda still owes about $17 billion of the $45 billion it borrowed from China, mostly in the form of loans backed by oil.

Most of minerals from the DRC and Zambia are currently transported via the Chinese-financed railway linking Zambia and Tanzania (the TAZARA railway) to Dar-es-Salaam on the Indian Ocean or must be trucked to Angola at a far greater cost. The development of the Lobito Atlantic Railway means there will in the future be a choice between exporting via the Atlantic Ocean or the Indian Ocean or—to put it more bluntly—between the US/Europe and China. However, this is questionable since Chinese companies dominate the DRC’s mining region and are to carry out $1 billion worth of upgrades to the competing TAZARA railway that has different railway gauges.

As a Biden administration fact sheet put it, the political imperative now is to “outcompete China on the world stage” and this includes Africa, as great-power tensions over critical minerals heat up.

Half of UK families on Universal Credit regularly running out of food

Dennis Moore

As the Labour government cut winter fuel payments for millions of pensioners and insisted on keeping the two-child cap on benefits, research from leading UK charity the Trussell Trust has shown that some of the country’s poorest households will face another winter of hardship.

The Trust operates 1,400 food banks—the biggest network in the UK. It has called for urgent action after findings showed that half the roughly 6 million people claiming Universal Credit (UC) welfare payments had run out of food in the past month. One in five (around 1.6 million people) have had to use a food bank in the last year.

Nearly seven in ten are having to borrow money or use credit, with just under half behind with debt repayments and bills or finding it a “constant struggle” to keep up with them. One fifth were at risk of homelessness in the last 12 months.

Over a third of UC claimants are in work. Of these, over two thirds have been unable to pay for essentials like food and bills in the last six months.

Footprints in the Community food bank in northern England receives donations [Photo: Twitter/Footprints UK]

The findings follow those of YouGov research commissioned by the Trust this February, which also found that roughly half of UC claimants had run out of food the previous month. A fifth, over one million people, could not afford to cook hot food in the previous three months. Two fifths had been forced to skip meals to keep up with rent or utilities.

That research specified that over 40 percent of claimants were behind on one or more household bills. Over a third had fallen into debt, and more than 40 percent were unable to keep their homes warm that winter. A quarter either missed a doctor’s appointment or could not travel to work at some point in the previous three months due to the cost.

The design of the universal credit system throws many claimants into debt from the outset, since payments are not made for the first five weeks, forcing people to take out an “advance payment” which must then be paid back through deductions on future payments. Almost a quarter (23 percent) of people currently claiming universal credit are having deductions taken to repay an advance payment. Nearly two thirds of these report experiencing hunger.

Emma Revie, CEO of the Trussell Trust, said its research showed people in hardship were being “pushed to the doors of food banks” because of inadequate benefit support. “These findings show clearly that people cannot wait for an economic turnaround to improve their current situations,” she added.

Nothing of the sort is coming in any case. This winter, households across the UK will see their energy bills rise by 10 percent on average, after a new price cap was set by the Ofgem energy regulator—increasing the average bill by £149 to £1,717 a year.

Larger families are in particularly dire straits. Low-income households receive an extra £3,455 a year for each child they have, but this is capped at the second child. The impact is particularly severe for some of the poorest ethnic groups in the UK, with 43 percent of children in households with one adult of Bangladeshi or Pakistani origin (400,000 children) affected, compared to a national average of 17 percent (2.4 million children).

A further 110,000 children nationally are not technically excluded by the two-child limit, but only because their household’s income is already restricted by the benefit cap for households with no one in work—£22,020 outside London and £25,323 a year in London.

Labour’s new welfare payment restriction, means testing winter fuel allowance, will add hundreds of thousands of elderly people to this growing toll of victims of austerity. Only people living alone with an income of less than £11,334 a year (or £17,313 a year for couples) will now receive the allowance—tied to the earnings threshold for pension Credit. Moreover, 880,000 households eligible for pension credit do not claim it, and so would not receive the new means tested fuel allowance either.

Labour’s own analysis, obtained through freedom of information requests, estimates that 780,000 of these will not take up their entitlement. The government is counting on them not doing so, since this would largely wipe out the £1.4 billion saved by the cut.

This disclosure came after the government admitted it had not carried out a full assessment of the policy’s impact, which Labour said it was not obliged to produce. The analysis also showed that nine in 10 pensioners aged between 66 and 79 would lose their allowance, with eight in 10 over eighties losing the benefit.

While millions of benefit claimants face the prospect of a desperate winter ahead, Starmer’s Labour Party repeatedly calls for fiscal discipline and threatens more “tough decisions” that will have to be made soon.

Australian Labor government unveils sweeping political censorship laws

Mike Head

Working closely with the Liberal-National Coalition, the Australian Labor government is rushing to ram through four far-reaching political censorship bills in the final parliamentary sessions before the next federal election, which it must call by May.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and opposition leader Peter Dutton [Photo: X/@AlboMP, Facebook/Peter Dutton ]

The bipartisan Labor-Coalition laws would (1) ban access to social media completely for teenagers up to the age of 16, (2) impose jail terms of up to seven years for circulating personal information about Gaza genocide supporters and other warmongers, and (3) up to seven years for supposed “hate speech” that threatens “the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth” and (4) punish alleged online “misinformation,” particularly anti-government comment.

Taken together, these provisions would result in a wartime-style censorship regime not seen in Australia since World Wars I and II, when opposition to these imperialist wars was essentially outlawed and anti-war and socialist leaders were imprisoned.

This is occurring today under conditions in which the already limited popular support for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government is collapsing, above all because of its deep attacks on working-class conditions and its ongoing support for the escalating US-armed Israel genocide in Gaza and US militarism globally.

The growing hostility has produced, according to the corporate media polls, the near-certainty of a “hung” parliament and a fragile minority government after the election, whether headed by Labor or the Coalition, amid mounting social unrest and political disaffection.

The bills being proposed by Labor and the Coalition are a warning of the anti-democratic measures that the corporate and political ruling class will take to suppress dissent and opposition in the period ahead, particularly as the US-led war drive intensifies, regardless of the outcome of the impending election.

First, Albanese declared last week that his government would legislate before the end of the year to set a minimum age limit, between 14 and 16, for teenagers to access any social media platform, without revealing how this ban would be implemented or enforced.

This is a far-reaching attack on the rights of young people to access information and communicate, free of the lies, distortions and propaganda of the corporate-controlled media, the real source of misinformation. That has included promoting the “weapons of mass destruction” fraud to justify the barbaric US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003 and demonising opposition to the Gaza genocide as antisemitic or “terrorist.”

Albanese said the government would run an unspecified “age verification trial” before introducing age minimum laws this year. This could include the use of facial recognition technology or other means of data-tracking and surveillance. That poses a direct threat to the fundamental democratic rights of all internet users, as well as those of young people.

The law would put Australia, along with the US, among the first countries in the world to impose age restrictions on social media. Previous attempts, including by the European Union, have stalled following complaints about reducing the online rights of teenagers, but this offensive is continuing globally.

In Brazil, a Supreme Court judge recently announced the indefinite suspension of X/Twitter, blocking millions of people from one of their main sources of information and communication with an international audience.

Young people around the planet, like the rest of the population, are connected via social media like never before in human history. The capitalist class regards that a threat to its rule amid mounting social inequality, political unrest and a plunge into war.

The opposition and horror to the genocidal barbarity being inflicted on the Palestinian people by the Israeli government has been fueled in part by the access to information through social media. This is independent of the mainstream media outlets that in the most cases support and justify Israel’s actions.

Australia has one of the world’s most online populations, with four-fifths of its 26 million people on social media according to tech industry figures. Three quarters of Australians aged 12 to 17 had used YouTube or Instagram, a 2023 University of Sydney study found.

Experts have condemned the proposed ban, challenging the unsubstantiated government and corporate media claims that social media is harming the mental health of young people.

Daniel Angus, director of the Queensland University of Technology Digital Media Research Centre, said: “This knee-jerk move ... threatens to create serious harm by excluding young people from meaningful, healthy participation in the digital world, potentially driving them to lower quality online spaces.” It would remove “an important means of social connection,” he wrote on LinkedIn.

To claim support for the ban, Albanese cited the Alannah & Madeline Foundation, a charity committed to protecting children from online harm. But Sarah Davies, the foundation’s chief executive, told the media:

“A massive concern for us is that actually children and young people don’t think this is a good idea … There are cohorts of children and young people who find the use of tech and social media incredibly empowering and positive, and basically we will be denying them that ability.”

Davies called instead for serious regulation of tech companies—not just social media—including banning the selling of data of young people, restricting algorithms that selectively direct people to favoured sites and forcing tech companies to give users the highest privacy settings by default.

While Davies did not say so, her comments highlight the real source of “social harm”—the corporate control of both social and non-social media, permitting billionaires such as Rupert Murdoch and Elon Musk to determine content.

The proposed laws would reportedly lay out a broad definition of “social media services” that would drag into its net any service that enables online social interaction between two or more people, allows people to connect with some or all other users and allows them to post material to that service, as well as search engines and app stores.

Games popular with children such as Roblox, chat apps like Discord and streaming platforms like Twitch could be banned.

“Doxxing,” “hate speech” and “misinformation”

Second, under the guise of updating the Privacy Act, the Albanese government introduced a bill last Thursday to outlaw the so-called malicious release of personal data online, known as doxxing, punishable by up to seven years in prison.

The new crime’s definition is deliberately vague. It covers any release of personal information “where a reasonable person would consider the conduct to be, in all the circumstances, menacing or harassing.”

This law is explicitly aimed, in the first instance, at prosecuting opponents of the Gaza genocide, after much-publicised complaints that details of members of a Zionist WhatsApp group were published online in February.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus told parliament: “The creation of this offence also responds to a recent, shocking incident of a group who were targeted with doxxing on the basis of their religion.”

This turns reality on its head. The WhatsApp group served as a vehicle for various Zionists to make vexatious complaints to employers targeting Palestinian activists, dig up dirt on perceived opponents and doxx medical professionals.

Doctors were anonymously reported to the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency—threatened with de-registration—on the basis of fraudulent allegations of antisemitism for having publicly opposed Israel’s mass murder of Palestinians. The doxxing laws would seek to outlaw any exposure of such witch-hunting activities.

Alleged victims of a “serious” invasion of privacy would also be given the right to sue for damages, with exemptions for corporate media journalists, police and intelligence agencies. At the same time, business data collection and trading would be protected, with the definition of “personal information” excluding digital identifiers, which enable targeted advertising.

Third, the government also introduced laws last Thursday to create new penalties of up to seven years in jail for “hate crimes.” These consist of making comments deemed to be threatening force or violence against a group or member of a group, including on the basis of race, gender or “political opinion.”

This test is amorphous as well, based on whether “a reasonable member of the targeted group would fear that the threat will be carried out.” The punishment would rise from five to seven years’ imprisonment if “the threat, if carried out, would threaten the peace, order and good government of the Commonwealth.” That could cover any comment seen as a danger to the political establishment or the capitalist system.

Also, a person could now be prosecuted if they did not intend force or violence to result but were merely “reckless” as to that possibility. A previous defence of making comments in “good faith” would be removed too.

Fourth, on the same day, the government tabled a Combatting Misinformation and Disinformation bill to fine internet platforms up to 5 percent of their global revenue for failing to prevent the spread of “misinformation” online.

This would require tech platforms to set codes of conduct governing how they shut down “misinformation” or “disinformation.” That would be material that allegedly “is reasonably likely to cause or contribute to serious harm.”

That “harm” could be to election integrity or public health, designated “critical infrastructure” or emergency services, or “the Australian economy, including harm to public confidence in the banking system or financial markets.”

This could cover any criticism of the financial elite or anti-capitalist sentiment.

“Disinformation” is loosely defined as existing “if there are grounds to suspect that the person disseminating, or causing the dissemination of, the content intends that the content deceive another person.”

The actual codes of conduct would be largely left to the discretion of the digital platform conglomerates, which have long records of blocking anti-war and socialist postings. At the same time, the bill protects “professional news content” produced by officially accredited media outlets—the main sources of misinformation.

These measures are unprecedented, except in wartime. Nothing like this has been seen since World War II, when the federal governments, first conservative and then Labor, issued regulations to place the entire press, broadcasting and film industry under the control of a Director General of Information, who was directly responsible to the prime minister and the war cabinet.

National Security regulations outlawed “interference in the war effort,” such as industrial action that held up war production, supposed disloyal statements and undermining public morale by spreading false rumours. Police were handed wide powers of arrest on suspicion of any such conduct.

After police raids on their offices and homes, three Trotskyists were jailed for up to 12 months for possessing literature exposing the imperialist character of the war, calling for the election of soldiers’ committees in the army, and hence “causing disaffection” in the armed forces.

Today’s bipartisan rush of censorship bills is another warning that preparations for involvement in a potential US-led nuclear war against China are well advanced. The enactment of such wide-ranging censorship laws is an attempt to prevent the inevitable mass anti-war movement that will arise.

Canadian authorities keep a lid on the ravages caused by Long COVID

Frédéric Charlebois

Although ignored by the authorities and the mainstream media, COVID-19 continues to wreak havoc in Canada. This is epitomized by the case of Long COVID sufferer Sébastien Verret. A Quebec resident, Verret contracted the virus during the first wave of the pandemic in 2020, while working as a volunteer in a seniors’ home (CHSLD) replacing staff who had fallen ill.

In a constant state of pain, unable to be autonomous and without access to suitable and sufficient physical and economic resources, he is now considering using medical assistance in dying (MAID). “My request, relieve me, help me or kill me, I can’t take it anymore,” he publicly declared. “Rest assured, I’m not suicidal and I have no dark ideas. I want to live, but a life with dignity.”

Canadian military personnel deployed at a Quebec CHLSD or long-term care home during the pandemic's first wave in the spring of 2020. [Photo: CAF]

As well as highlighting how the ruling class is perverting MAID into a mechanism for getting rid of the most vulnerable in order to cut social spending, this tragic story sheds light on the state’s total lack of social and financial support for people with Long COVID—the virus’ post-infectious syndrome.

Among the most significant physical sequelae associated with Long COVID are: extreme incapacitating fatigue; post-exertional malaise; generalized aches and pains; palpitations, tachycardia and dizziness.

Overall, Long COVID has the ability to attack virtually every organ in the body, from the kidneys to the lungs and skin. From a neurological point of view, it also causes cognitive impairment, brain fog, memory loss, and impacts on concentration and mood.

According to various studies, the disease increases the risk of autoimmune disease, doubles the risk of having a heart attack, stroke or blood clot in the lungs, and triples the risk of developing an unusual heart rhythm. In addition, it increases the risk of diseases such as Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s and dementia.

We still don’t know all the complications that can arise from repeated COVID infections. But the number of workers who will have to live with its debilitating effects is likely to grow massively, as the capitalist ruling class in Canada and internationally pursue a “Forever COVID ” policy. They all insist—despite a massive trove of scientific data to the contrary and the examples of China, New Zealand and other countries in the pandemic’s early stages—that an elimination and eradication strategy is “impossible” and “too costly.”   

Long COVID remains poorly recognized by the healthcare system, available studies are not widely disseminated, and there are only a handful of professionals in Canada who specialize in its treatment. Under these conditions, according to some studies, patients are twice as likely to develop symptoms associated with depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress.

At a time when the long-term consequences of COVID are increasingly impossible to conceal, and the pandemic that has already claimed millions of lives worldwide continues unabated, the ruling class persists with its “profits before lives” policy.

Cartoon from the 1875 Canadian Illustrated News showing infectious diseases. In a contemporary version, the COVID pandemic would occupy a prominent spot, with capitalist governments in place of the reaper. [Photo: Bibliothèque et Archives nationales du Québec]

In recent weeks Canada has experienced a summer wave of new COVID-19 infections, fueled above all by the KP.3 variant, the latest evolution of the Omicron JN.1 sub-variant responsible for last winter’s wave. Exact infection figures are impossible to determine due to the complete dismantling of public health measures. In terms of mass screening, the federal government has abandoned precise monitoring of the situation on its website since June 11. However, the latest available data on wastewater underscores the fact that the virus continues to circulate across the country without the slightest restriction.

According to data from Ottawa and the provinces, the national level of viral activity in wastewater is at the “high” indicator, with test positivity rates between 10 and 20 percent in most provinces.

Considering that there are only 65 wastewater sites coast-to-coast that submit their data for analysis, representing 28.8 percent of the Canadian population, and that hospitalizations and deaths caused by COVID are deliberately omitted from official statistics, it’s clear that any estimate of the current level of viral circulation is well below reality.

Quebec is one of the hardest-hit provinces, with outbreaks in 110 long-term care facilities and 54 health care centers. The number of infections and hospitalizations is at its highest level since the last winter wave. As of August 20, more than 1,250 people had been hospitalized. And 30 deaths are reported each week due to the disease.

After months of insisting that the pandemic is over and dismantling what limited public health measures remained, all levels of government are keeping the public in the dark and doing their utmost to keep the lid on data concerning the possible consequences of contracting the disease and developing Long COVID and other complications.

For this reason, few workers are aware of the ongoing danger posed by the virus, and many live with the debilitating effects of Long COVID without being able to explain the source of their symptoms.

In Europe alone, an estimated 36 million people fell victim to Long COVID during the first three years of the pandemic, representing 1 in 30 people. It is has quickly become one of the most common diseases in the world. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that 10-20 percent of people who contract the virus will develop Long COVID. According to other studies, this rate rises to 50 percent in hospitalized patients.

In Canada, according to Statistics Canada, some 7 percent of the adult population, or 2.1 million people, live with complications of the disease.

While science remains unclear as to the exact reasons why people develop Long COVID, empirical experience underlines that the disease runs rampant without any discrimination regarding the patient’s age, origin, gender or pre-infection state of health.

What’s more, numerous studies point to a correlation between reinfections and the possibility of developing Long COVID or worsening symptoms in those already affected. The only certainty is that this is a direct consequence of the ruling elite’s rapid reopening of the economy during the first waves of COVID and the abandonment of all public health measures, from systematic testing and quarantining to masking and readily-available vaccinations for all.

Brazil faces new wave of the pandemic amid shortage of COVID-19 vaccines

Fátima Ferrante & Guilherme Ferreira

Amid a new wave of the COVID-19 pandemic around the world, Brazil has seen a consistent increase in the number of cases of the novel coronavirus in recent weeks. It is the second wave of the pandemic this year in the country.

COVID vaccinations in the town of Eldorado do Sul (RS), June 2024 [Photo by Marinha do Brasil / CC BY 2.0]

According to hugely underestimated data from the Ministry of Health of the government of Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers Party - PT), deaths from COVID-19 rose from 229 in July to 334 in August, while cases more than doubled in that period, from 17,964 to 36,970. This increase was also identified by the Todos pela Saúde Institute (ITpS), which saw the positivity rate reach 23 percent in mid-August, an increase of 10 percentage points in one month.

In September, cases continued to rise. Data released on Thursday showed that the number of COVID-19 cases increased from 7,180 in the epidemiological week of August 25 to 31 to 16,722 from September 1 to 7, while the number of deaths decreased from 89 to 62 in the same period. In total, Brazil has 38.9 million cases and 713,000 deaths from COVID-19.

The last two InfoGripe bulletins, published by the Oswaldo Cruz Foundation (Fiocruz) on September 5 and 12, also pointed to a long-term upward trend in cases and, consequently, Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) in 17 of Brazil’s 27 states, particularly “due to the high movement of people between the state of São Paulo [Brazil’s most populous and one of the hotspots of the current wave] and other regions of the country.”

The InfoGripe bulletin of September 12 also pointed to a higher incidence of COVID-19 cases and deaths caused by SARS. It reported that 32 percent of cases and 52 percent of deaths from SARS in the last four epidemiological weeks were caused by COVID-19, much higher than those caused by Respiratory Syncytial Virus (9 percent and 4 percent), Influenza A (14 percent and 25 percent) and Influenza B (3 percent and 4 percent).

According to the Ministry of Health, so far in 2024 there have been around 112,000 hospitalizations and 7,000 deaths from SARS, 25 percent of which were from COVID-19.

COVID-19, however, is much more than a respiratory syndrome. There is growing evidence of the debilitating effect that SARS-CoV-2 can have on various organs and systems of the body well after the initial infection, a condition also known as Long COVID.

In a mid-July interview with Intercept Brasil, Monica de Bolle, a senior researcher at the Peterson Institute for International Economics and an expert in immunology, said: “SARS-CoV-2 is a systemic virus. It has been characterized by respiratory disease, so the lay population understands that it is a respiratory virus, but SARS-CoV-2 is not a pure and simple respiratory virus, it lodges anywhere in our body.” 

This, in turn, has been completely ignored by the Lula government. According to de Bolle, “There is nothing in Brazil, nothing that the MS [Ministry of Health] has done, to take care of these people [with Long COVID] properly. There’s even a lack of training because SUS [National Health System] physicians won’t necessarily know how to identify Long COVID.”

With unimpeded circulation, new variants of the novel coronavirus have emerged and spread throughout Brazil and the world. In recent months, the global increase in cases has been driven by the KP.2 and KP.3 variants, which have been dubbed FLiRT variants, in reference to mutations at important sites in the spike protein of SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, which make them more transmissible.

The variants KP.2 and KP.3 descend from the variant of concern JN.1, which was responsible for the global wave of cases in late 2023 and early 2024, including in Brazil. In recent months, the LB.1 variant, which also descends from JN.1, has started to spread around the world. In Brazil, it has already overtaken JN.1, with data from the last quarter (May, June and July) showing that LB.1 accounts for 34 percent of cases.

That COVID-19 is still a cause for concern in this fifth year of the pandemic testifies to the total failure of capitalist governments and ruling elites around the world to offer a scientific response to a virus whose effects can be debilitating even for high-performance athletes, as was recently seen at the Paris Olympics.

In Brazil, the Lula government has deepened the “COVID forever” policy of fascistic ex-president Jair Bolsonaro. Since taking office at the beginning of last year, he has abandoned the most basic measures to monitor the pandemic, such as mass testing and monitoring the presence of SARS-CoV-2 in sewage water. Meanwhile, the government continues to misinform the population about the scientific aspects of the pandemic and to carry out a vaccination campaign against COVID-19 that has been a complete fiasco.

Positivity rate for SARS-CoV-2 (in green) and other respiratory viruses in Brazil between August 19, 2023 and August 17, 2024 [Photo: Todos pela Saúde Institute (ITpS)]

Without alerting the Brazilian population that the country is experiencing a new wave of the pandemic, the Lula government’s Ministry of Health posted on Instagram on September 7 a series of recommendations to “prevent” COVID-19. “The first and most effective [action] against severe forms of the disease and hospitalizations is the vaccine,” according to the Health Ministry’s post, followed by “physical distancing in suspected cases,” “hand hygiene” and “cleaning and disinfecting environments.”

In the comments section, users of the social network responded angrily to the publication of the government that promised to follow science in its supposed “reconstruction” of Brazil after the years of destruction by the Bolsonaro government.

One of them reads: “How come you don’t mention MASKS???? It was the masks that saved us before the vaccine and now they’re not even mentioned? Surreal and absurd.” Another comment drew attention to the fact that the Lula government is ignoring the scientific knowledge on the transmission of COVID-19: “Hand hygiene ... Cleaning the environment, physical distancing?! What is that? COVID is transmitted by aerosols and the only way to prevent it is with effective masks and an air-filtered environment! It’s a lot of misinformation, they’re playing games with us!!!”

Although the Lula government is following the strategy of the world’s ruling elites of limiting its response to COVID-19 to vaccinations, even this has been inadequate and plagued by problems. At the end of last year, it ruled out universal vaccination against COVID-19, which is being offered to children between the ages of six months and five years, the elderly and other specific groups. However, there are increasing reports in the Brazilian media about the lack of COVID-19 vaccines in health centers.

In Minas Gerais, the second most populous state in Brazil, the daily O Tempo reported on September 7 that in 52 percent of 211 cities in the state there is no vaccine against the XBB subvariant of Omicron, which is the most up-to-date vaccine against COVID-19 that the Lula government bought. In São Paulo, the city of 12 million inhabitants that is the capital of the state of the same name, a report on the g1 website on September 6, titled “Parents report lack of COVID-19 vaccine for children in health centers in the capital,” showed that of the “164 health centers in the southern part of the city, 79 have no COVID-19 vaccine.”

At the beginning of May, the Lula government launched a new phase of the vaccination campaign against COVID-19, with the distribution of around 10 million doses of Moderna’s monovalent vaccine against Omicron’s XBB.1.5 subvariant. So far, only 2 million doses have been administered. Further exposing the Lula government’s negligence, it announced at the launch of the campaign that its aim was to “vaccinate at least 70 million people” this year, according to the Ministry of Health’s website.

In this context, the Lula government’s use of Independence Day, on September 7, to supposedly celebrate the resumption of vaccination campaigns, particularly for children, is totally hypocritical. In a report in Folha de S. Paulo in the beginning of July, the director of the Brazilian Society of Immunizations (SBIm), Isabella Ballalai, said that, contrary to what the Ministry of Health claims, “It’s not just a question of misinformation, fake news, etc. The biggest factor [in vaccine hesitancy] is lack of information. We also know how important access to doses is.”

In the Intercept Brasil interview mentioned above, Monica de Bolle reinforced Ballalai’s observation, denouncing the “duplicity” and “ambiguity” of members of the Lula government, including its health minister, Nísia Trindade, who denounced the Bolsonaro government’s criminal response to the pandemic, but “are now acting as if the virus is less important.” For her, this “contributes to vaccine hesitancy continuing to rise.”

As a faithful representative of Brazil’s corporate and financial rulers, the Lula government is overseeing the destruction of the public health system and other social rights won by the working class. As shown by the government’s neglect of the pandemic and it recent freezing of almost 10 percent of the health budget to ensure Lula’s “new fiscal framework” and “zero deficit target” for this year, any illusions that it might be pressured to change its right-wing trajectory have been completely exploded.

Russian authorities step-up anti-immigrant measures and propaganda

Maxim Zotov

Recently, Russian authorities have been increasingly calling for greater restrictions on the rights of immigrants. On September 4, Vyacheslav Volodin, chairman of the State Duma (the lower house of the Russian parliament), proposed banning low-skilled migrant workers from bringing their families to Russia. The next day, Dmitry Medvedev (former prime minister and president of Russia), deputy chairman of the Russian Security Council, proposed something similar. He called for the families of migrants who are coming for seasonal labor to be banned from entering Russia. “We, of course, will not be able to overcome individual trends there, but what can be done: if a person comes to us for seasonal work—why the hell does he drag his family with him?” Medvedev said.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, right, and Speaker of the State Duma, the Lower House of the Russian Parliament Vyacheslav Volodin toast during the ceremony at the Kremlin's St. Catherine Hall , Russia, Thursday, May 30, 2024. [AP Photo/Alexander Kazakov]

At the same time, the pro-Kremlin Komsomolskaya Pravda online newspaper reported that the State Duma is planning to pass a bill from the far-right Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), which provides for restrictions on the entry and stay of families of low-skilled workers.

In addition, LDPR deputies have proposed to abolish free education for immigrant children and introduce fees, claiming that there is a serious shortage of places in schools because of foreign children, as well as low school performance because foreign children have a poor command of the Russian language.

Several deputies from the New People party also made a number of proposals regarding migrants in Russia. Vladislav Davankov (one of the leaders of New People, a member of the State Duma and the party’s candidate for the March presidential election) proposed raising by 2.5 times the fee for a labor permit, which allows migrants who are in Russia visa-free to work in the country, to 250,000 rubles a year (US$2,800), an extremely large sum for any worker in the former Soviet Union. Currently, a labor permit costs 8,000 rubles (US$90) per month.

Another New People MP, Sardana Avksentyeva, sent a request to the Interior Ministry with two proposals. One of them concerns the mandatory submission of biometric data for all foreign citizens. Previously, only those citizens who arrived for a period of at least 90 days have been required to submit biometric data. Another proposal concerns the obligation for all migrants staying for more than 90 days to obtain a document on their command of the Russian language, knowledge of Russian history and the basics of Russian legislation. Presently, only those who are going to obtain a labor permit are obliged to obtain a document on their knowledge of the Russian language. This applies not only to those who are already in Russia, but also to those who are only planning to travel to the country. If the language proficiency test is not passed, deportation from the country will follow without the possibility of re-entry. In many regions of Russia, this threatens thousands of immigrant workers who are playing an essential role in the economy.

It is worth noting that Avksentyeva, in proposing to toughen the Russian language exam for immigrants, made nine punctuation, stylistic and semantic errors in her request to the ministry.

There are an estimated 12 million immigrants in Russia, almost 8 percent of the total population. Most immigrant workers come from the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union, extremely poor countries that suffered even greater social disasters than other regions of the former Soviet Union as a result of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s restoration of capitalism. Tajikistan, the poorest of the former Soviet republics, experienced a civil war in the 1990s. Half of the country’s GDP is derived from remittances by immigrant workers, the overwhelming majority of them in Russia. In Russia, they are subject to brutal conditions of exploitation, which in turn serves to intensify attacks on the working class as a whole. 

As in other countries, Russian politicians combine these attacks on the democratic rights of immigrants with xenophobic rhetoric, pointing to an allegedly increasing number of crimes on the part of migrants, their low qualifications and their poor command of the Russian language.

By attacking the democratic rights of migrant workers, the oligarchy is attacking the democratic rights of the entire working class. In the context of the ongoing war, any movement of the working class, whether of an economic or, particularly, a political nature, poses a huge danger to Putin’s regime.

With the promotion of anti-immigrant chauvinism, the oligarchy seeks to divert such a movement of the working class, which they fear most of all. By dividing workers along national, racial, linguistic, religious or other lines, they seek to shift their responsibility for social disasters (unemployment, low wages, etc.) onto immigrants and undermine the class consciousness of workers.

The Russian bourgeoisie significantly intensified its anti-immigrant witch-hunt in the wake of the March terrorist attack on Moscow’s Crocus City Hall. The terrorist attack bears the imprints of Washington and Ukraine all over it. The imperialist powers and NATO-backed sections of the Russian elites also organized antisemitic protests at Makhachkala airport in October 2023 and terrorist attacks in Makhachkala and Derbent at the end of June this year. Through such terrorist attacks and provocations, the imperialist powers are seeking to utilize and deepen splits within layers of the Russian elites, which are divided into pro-NATO and nationalist camps. There are also significant tensions between regional elites and the dominant oligarchs in Moscow. At the same time, US imperialism is seeking to destabilize the country, by whipping up ethnic and religious tensions. Russia is home to over a hundred different nationalities, and 26 million Muslims, roughly 15 percent of the population.

Fully aware of their destabilizing impact, the Putin regime has not fully adopted the most extreme xenophobic policies of the far-right nationalist faction of the oligarchy. As a Bonapartist regime, it is maneuvering between the different strata of capitalists. In contemporary Russia, the regime maneuvers between the openly NATO-backing section of the Russian elite and the far-right, between the working class and the bourgeoisie, and between the national interests of Russian capitalists and the interests of Western imperialism.

However, especially in the wake of the terrorist attack in Moscow, the Putin regime has increasingly legitimized and adopted this anti-immigrant rhetoric as part of its efforts to whip up Russian chauvinism and divide the working class. Having emerged out of the Stalinist bureaucracy’s nationalist betrayal of the October Revolution of 1917, the Putin regime is very conscious of the danger posed by a united movement of the working class against war.  

The growing attacks on immigrants are an international trend. In the US, the Republican Party is engaging in fascist attacks on immigrants, which are not countered by the Democratic Party in any way, highlighting their bankruptcy in the face of the threat of fascism in the US. In Germany, the anti-immigrant policies are supported by all the major capitalist parties, with the Social Democratic Party (SPD), the Greens and the Christian Democrats (CDU) adapting ever-more openly to the rhetoric and policies of the neo-fascist Alternative for Germany (AfD).