China

New centres of capital

As of 2014, “developing Asia” — China, Singapore, South Korea, Malaysia, Taiwan, and other countries — became a bigger exporter of foreign direct investment than North America (the US and Canada) or the whole of Europe. The United Nations agency which monitors such things, UNCTAD, reports that “developing economies” produced 36% of all foreign direct investment in 2014, up from less than 10% as recently as 2003 (UNCTAD World Investment Report 2015). The shift is not a blip, or a sudden and temporary development due to economic difficulties in the USA and Europe. It is the latest step in a...

The urban dystopia

“The Yankees have invented a stone-breaking machine. The English do not make use of it, because the ‘wretch’ who does this work gets paid for such a small portion of his labour, that machinery would increase the cost of production to the capitalist.” (Marx, Capital: Volume One) My recent visit to Shanghai was the last of nine in which I have glimpsed urban development “the China way”. My photo story captures themes present in each of my visits that have haunted me. The former Chinese Communist Party leader, Deng Xiaoping, who initiated the era of “opening and reform”, famously said:...

How Chinese economic wobbles hit workers

At the end of November, two Chinese government researchers published an estimate that over the past five years US$6,800 billion of investment in China has been wasted on bridges to nowhere and homes and offices with no one in them. The estimate is disputed, but few doubt that huge excess capacity has been built. The Chinese government is trying to slow down the investment surge gently, and producer prices in China have been deflating since mid-2011. The Chinese economy has a big build-up of debt, including debt whose counterpart is assets currently unused and maybe likely to be unused for some...

Backlash against Hong Kong democracy protests

Talks between protestors and the government in Hong Kong reopened on Thursday 16 October. Hong Kong Chief Executive Leung Chun-ying will not be attending as protesters have refused to talk to him! On Tuesday 21 Leung said that while Beijing would not back down on vetting candidates (for 2017 elections for the Chief Executive), the selection committee could become more democratic. This has been described by the government as an “olive branch”. It is a long way from the core demands of the protesters for full democracy. Violent clashes with police have become more frequent. On Wednesday 15th...

Hong Kong protest: time to regroup

The tide has continued to turn against the democracy protest movement in Hong Kong. The HK Government became emboldened to break off talks with the HK Federation of Students. It insisted on adherence to the Basic Law provisions and the recent decision of the China’s People’s Congress to limit chief executive candidates to not more than three, vetted by 50% approval of an election committee packed with Beijing supporters. The students’ demands that the HKSAR government files a supplementary report to Beijing was ignored. When the talks were first cancelled, a surge of protestors went back on...

China versus Hong Kong unions

Anonymous emails have been sent to Hong Kong media alleging that the only independent union movement in China — the Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions — is in the pay of the United States. The South China Morning Post and the Hong Kong Standard have reported that they received emails with attachments showing that the HKCTU had received US$ 2 million from the AFL-CIO , USA national union centre’s key aid agency the Solidarity Center. “A labour rights group that backs Occupy Central has received grants from a US-based NGO, according to files shared with the media,” the South China Morning...

Next steps in Hong Kong

The protest movement in Hong Kong has been forced to retreat in the face of orchestrated violent attacks by Beijing-funded triad gangs, with the complicity of the police force. The gangs began their attack in Mong Kok, a high density urban working class district with a high concentration of organized crime. The spontaneous occupation of Mong Kok on 29 September — in response to the deployment of teargas — was initially hugely successful and took the police completely by surprise. By 1 October, with the protest movement highly mobilised over two public holidays, the student leaders called for...

FireChat: yet another spurious techno-panacea

Hardly a day doesn’t go by when we don’t hear about some new “revolutionary” technology that is going to make the world a more open, transparent, and better place. There have been a few high profile ones in recent days, including the new social network Ello, which is being pushed as the “anti-Facebook” (it’s nothing of the sort). Ello claimed that 30,000 people per hour have been trying to sign up to be users of the beta version of its software. And the mass street protests in Hong Kong have focussed attention upon an app for smartphones called “FireChat” which is, apparently, going to bring...

The fly in China's ointment

The current wave of protest has spread like wildfire from the Admiralty area, where the administration centre of the Hong Kong government is located, to Wanchai, Central and Causeway Bay areas on Hong Kong Island, and to Mongkok in the centre of Kowloon. In short, the major roads of HK's financial district and all key urban areas with the highest population density is occupied 24 hours around the clock by protestors. The escalation of protest was directly triggered by the police's use of teargas in the Admiralty area. From 6 pm to well past midnight yesterday, the police fired 87 rounds of...

Hong Kong workers strike for democracy

Democracy protests in Hong Kong are escalating, and the state has responded with severe police repression and brutality. The protests are against limitations on candidates for a 2017 election, by universal suffrage, for the next Hong Kong Chief Executive. All candidates will be vetted by a nominating committee composed largely of Beijing loyalists, making it impossible for genuine radicals and democrats to stand. Since 1997 when Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule by Britain, the “one country, two systems” framework has allowed Hong Kong to have relative freedom for the press, courts and...

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