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Louis Proyect wrote
Still a tinge of Maoist red in China.
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-05-18/china-s-virus-vaccine-will-be-global-public-good-xi-says?utm_content=asia
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Maybe we're seeing the response of a society and economy that has until
now been on its way up and isn't floundering around trying to figure out
where all the brownie points went.
Last time we were in trouble globally, the Chinese government basically
rescued global capitalism with its gigantic post-2007-2009 stimulus
package, and as John Smith says "helped to fuel the rise in raw
materials costs that itself gave rise to speculative capital, and that
money was to be made by further boosting the price of raw materials" and
temporarily saving the economies of the raw materials-exporting poorer
countries.
Smith doesn't see how China will be able to exercise that option this
time around, and the countries of the global south will share in the
general debacle big-time, especially with the late and even more tragic
arrival in their countries of the full brunt of the corona virus, and as
northern investors continue to flee their markets.
Again quoting Smith, G20 "creditors are resisting calls altogether for a
voluntary standstill to loan repayments on commercial sovereign debt [in
the global south]. In other words, they are resisting even a
postponement of their debt payments...[according to Smith that includes
China among the G20 countries resisting relief to the poorer nations, by
the way. So that "tinge of Maoism," if Maoism really had that effect by
design on poorer nations and not extraction and exploitation of others
in Africa especially from the get-go, appears to be pretty thin. I was
in east Africa during the time of Mao when the Chinese were building
rail lines from the copper mines of Zambia to the seaports, constructing
roads and a bridge across the Nile through southern Sudan and its
petroleum deposits to the Red Sea, ass over teakettle, with cheap
African labor overseen by Chinese foremen and engineers]. All of the
full force of the economic crisis of the world and in their own
countries is going to be placed on the shoulders of the workers and the
farmers of these countries without any relief whatsoever. None whatsoever."
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