Europe has performed the rather remarkable feat of losing the US-Iran War despite not formally participating. German Chancellor Friedrich Merz has said that the war will place a burden on the European economy “as heavy as we recently experienced during the Covid pandemic or at the start of the Ukraine war.” EU energy chief Dan Jørgensen has advised Europeans to curb transportation use to save fuel. Christine Lagarde, the president of the European Central Bank, warned the effects are “probably beyond what we can imagine at the moment.” The very real possibility of stagflation hangs across the economy as projected growth figures plunge and fuel protests spread.

Europe once more sleepwalks into an economic and political crisis, and this time it may not be able to find an exit.

At first glance, Europe appears to be in a better position than most to weather the economic storm caused by American and Israeli actions in the Middle East: while a substantial quantity of Europe’s fertilizer comes from the region, just 6 percent of its crude oil and under 10 percent of its natural gas pass through the Strait of Hormuz. However, Asian markets, which receive up to 80% of their supply from the Gulf, simply outbid Europe for the remaining supply. The emerging economic crisis, then, is symbolic of Europe’s dwindling clout in the global economy.

Yet, more than just another economic shock, this moment has come as an existential crisis for Europe’s image of itself and its place in the world. The latest war has punctured two of the most persistent myths of post-WW2 Europe: that the US will keep Europeans safe, and that this safety was offered for purely altruistic reasons.

First, let us deal with the faltering American security apparatus.

Future historians may look back on the 2026 US-Iran War as the beginning of the end of the American Empire. Already in our own time, some are likening the conflict to the Suez Crisis - the 1956 British invasion of Egypt (aided, as the US is today, by Israel). When the British were forced into a humiliating withdrawal, it destroyed what was left of British military prestige - and along with it British hopes of maintaining Great Power status.

The Iranians are hardly the first people to sap the American Empire’s will to fight. From Korea and Vietnam to Afghanistan and Iraq, the histories of the Cold War and Global War on Terror are littered with battlefields which the Americans were forced to abandon in the face of fierce opposition. Yet, despite winning precious few wars, the myth of American military invincibility has endured. Americans across the political spectrum will tell you that their army could have won these wars if only they had “taken the gloves off”. In this telling, it was the US commitment to liberal (read civilized) values that prevented total victory. The Americans could have defeated the Taliban at any point during the 20-year occupation of Afghanistan, it is just that the Pentagon is such nice guys, they didn’t want to. Obviously absurd and transparently racist, the myth gave comfort to a certain type of American: we might not have healthcare, they tell themselves, but at least our boys can whip your boys in a fight.

The Trump administration came into power believing the liberal propaganda, and so, supposing that abandoning all “woke” military doctrines would allow for easy victory, very publicly took the gloves off. On social media and in a press conference, Trump and his officials announced Iran would be sent back to the Stone Age, that this was a war in which no quarter would be given, and that American military force would bring an end to Iranian civilization. Donald Trump threw the entire might of the American war machine at Iran, assassinating their leadership, destroying infrastructure, and massacring civilians. Iran remains standing. The myth of US military dominance does not.

Why a historic humiliation for American hard power is so disastrous for Europe may be difficult to comprehend if you are not European, but it comes down to something called the American Security Umbrella. During the Cold War, much of Europe outsourced security to the US military-industrial complex. To simplify somewhat, the US took over much of the security of the continent, and this gave Europe the time and resources to focus on building our much vaunted social democratic welfare states (or at least that is what we told ourselves). What the Americans got out of the arrangement was never very clearly stated because what they got was control of the European continent in every area that mattered.

Learning, as we did recently, that the US security infrastructure is not fit to fight a 21^st-century war would be bad enough, but watching the US abandon the Gulf States (an area that exists under the same security umbrella) to their fate as soon as the going got tough must have given European leaders heart palpitations.

Worse was to come, for, unable to bring an adequate resolution to the conflict with Iran, Trump is turning once more to an easier and more pliant target: Europe.

He has already implied that he holds Europe responsible for American humiliation in the Strait of Hormuz. He has claimed, in a rambling press conference, that “they [Europe] must grab it [the Strait of Hormuz] and cherish it. They could do it so easily. We will be helpful, but they should take the lead in protecting the oil that they so depend on.” Later, Trump said in an interview “they haven’t been friends when we needed them...we’ve never asked them for much… it’s a one-way street.” Throughout the war Trump has also done nothing to hide his vitriolic displeasure at European leaders, and has threatened to withdraw American security guarantees from the continent completely.

Now, as it becomes increasingly clear the easy wins Trump loves will not be found in the Middle East, Washington’s sights return to Greenland, with Trump declaring on Truth Social “NATO WASN’T THERE WHEN WE NEEDED THEM, AND THEY WON’T BE THERE IF WE NEED THEM AGAIN...REMEMBER GREENLAND, THAT BIG, POORLY RUN, PIECE OF ICE!!!” Mark Rutte, NATO Secretary-General, rather laconically, has called these developments a “disappointment.”

Plans are afoot to build European independence - the EU’s “ReArm Europe/Readiness 2030“ plan aims to mobilize €800 billion by the end of the decade. However, the continent is starting with severely degraded military capacity (the British Army, for example, currently has more horses than tanks), and a truly independent rearmament policy would require an industrial base that decades of off-shoring means Europe just doesn’t have. Despite the changing mood at the grassroots (a recent poll found that everyday people view the US as one of the greatest threats to Europe), there is a deep ideological reluctance among the current crop of European leaders to take the steps required to chart a truly independent path forward. When, for example, Belgium’s prime minister, Bart De Wever, called for the normalization of relations with Russia to regain access to cheap energy, he was roundly rebuked from figures across the EU and within his own government. For the Europeans to become a pole in the emerging multipolar world (or even just to secure their independence from an increasingly predatory United States) they would require both the means and the will to do it - and currently they lack both.

For those for eyes to see the US military and security presence on the continent was always about an insidious need to control rather than a benevolent desire to protect European social democracy (read, as just one historic example, about the Cold War Operation Gladio). But, by making a show of consulting with their supposed allies, and occasionally allowing symbolic dissent, previous American presidents gave European elites what they needed to legitimize the process to their own people - that is to say they gave Europe plausible deniability. Trump, in making the nature of US Empire explicit and turning its gaze upon Greenland, has ensured that even the most committed European Atlanticist can no longer plausibly maintain the myth of American benevolence. And yet, despite all that, European elites seem psychologically incapable of contemplating a serious break with the United States.

The war in Iran has weakened Europe economically, but, and perhaps more importantly, it has wounded America politically. And a wounded predator, sensing death, is much more dangerous. Europe, so close and so weak, presents an increasingly tempting target for American predation.

Long used to viewing themselves as the cockpit of human civilization, the nations of Europe have, in subordinating themselves to American power, moved from the subjects of history to its objects. They cannot act, only be acted upon. After centuries of colonialism and decades of aiding and abetting US imperialism there is unlikely to be much sympathy in the emerging power centers of the Global South as Europeans slowly awaken to their new reality.

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Writer and educator working in Beijing. Writing about China and politics mostly.

Doug’s X page: @doug_rooney

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In the shadow of renewed conflict in Iran, the global energy landscape is fracturing under the weight of unprecedented risks. US-Israeli strikes have prompted Tehran to restrict navigation through the Strait of Hormuz, halting tanker traffic and disrupting up to 20 percent of the world’s seaborne oil trade. This is equivalent to 12 million barrels per day of crude oil. Prices have surged by 12 percent by morning trading on 2 March, embedding an $8 per barrel risk premium, while LNG shipments from Qatar face similar perils. Compounding this, Houthi re-activation in the Red Sea has forced rerouting around the Cape of Good Hope, adding weeks to voyages and billions in costs. These aren’t isolated incidents; they signal a new era of “oil risk” where geopolitical flashpoints can choke supply lines overnight, threatening economic stability for oil-dependent nations.

This volatility underscores a stark reality: Long-term electrification of transportation and industry isn’t just an environmental imperative; it’s a non-negotiable strategy for national sovereignty.

By shifting from imported fossil fuels to domestically generated electricity, countries can insulate themselves from maritime chokepoints and foreign supply disruptions. Even oil-rich Arab states have recognized this, pouring tens of billions into renewables despite their vast reserves. Saudi Arabia aims for 50 percent renewable energy by 2030, investing over $40 billion annually from its Public Investment Fund into solar, wind and hydrogen. The United Arab Emirates has exceeded 7.7 GW of installed renewable capacity, with projects set to reach 23 GW by 2031, backed by 190 billion AED in investments. These “electro-petrostates” are decarbonizing grids to free up oil for export, reducing domestic emissions while bolstering energy independence.

For nations without such reserves, the stakes are higher. Electrification enhances Energy Return on Energy Invested (EROEI) by leveraging efficient renewable sources, yielding more usable energy per input and fostering sustainable growth amid finite fossil resources.

China’s ascent in the electric vehicle (EV) sector exemplifies this foresight. Facing perennial threats to its oil lifelines - 80 percent of imports pass through the Strait of Malacca, a chokepoint historically vulnerable to US naval interdiction - China has invested strategically for decades to mitigate these risks. The result? A world-leading EV ecosystem born from anticipated energy insecurity, now delivering unparalleled scale and affordability. By addressing its own vulnerabilities, China has at the same time solved EROEI challenges for itself and for the globe: Cheaper batteries and efficient supply chains make electrification viable for emerging markets, enabling energy sovereignty where high-cost Western systems once priced them out.

This transition extends far beyond passenger cars. In 2025, China’s new energy heavy-duty truck sales exploded. Electric trucks now dominate over 20 percent of heavy-duty sales, displacing diesel and slashing emissions in logistics. Rail electrification is equally transformative. China’s high-speed network, already 70 percent electrified, integrates hydrogen fuel cells for long-haul efficiency, with prototypes like a 2,400-kW hydrogen train entering trials. Shipping follows suit, with electric and hydrogen vessels emerging; witness the methanol-fueled Guoneng Yangtze 01 in commercial operation and ammonia tugs completing bunkering tests. These advancements are shields against oil shocks, proven by China’s diesel demand peaking in 2024 amid electrification embedment.

Global conditions have never been more conducive to accelerated electrification. Electricity demand is forecasted to surge 3.6 percent annually through 2030, driven by EVs and industry, while renewables will meet 90 percent of the growth, surpassing coal by 2026. EVs are 3 to 4 times more efficient than internal combustion engines, converting 75 to 90 percent of energy to motion versus 20 to 30 percent. By 2050, road transport could slash energy use by 70 percent while supporting 70 percent more travel, with electrification driving most savings. Yet, this momentum hinges on leadership in supply chains and breakthroughs, areas where China reigns supreme. Dominating 70 percent of global clean tech manufacturing, including EVs, batteries and solar energy, China is leveraging economies of scale to halve battery costs and standardize innovations like LFP chemistry. Its “three verticals and three horizontals” roadmap integrates upstream mining to downstream infrastructure, fostering systemic synergies.

This dominance is evolving beyond exports into a profound globalization of production footprints, transforming electrification into a shared capacity-building endeavor. Chinese EV powerhouses like BYD, Geely and Chery are establishing factories worldwide, localizing assembly to bypass trade barriers, create jobs and transfer technology to host economies. BYD’s facilities in Thailand, Brazil, Uzbekistan, and a new plant in Hungary ramping up in 2026 exemplify this shift, enabling region-specific models while integrating local suppliers. Chery’s $800 million investment in Vietnam’s largest Southeast Asian factory, targeting 200,000 units annually by mid-2026, further illustrates how these ventures build resilient supply chains, from component sourcing to final assembly.

Battery giant CATL is extending this model upstream, with a $6 billion integrated hub in Indonesia spanning nickel mining to battery recycling, and plants in Spain and Hungary. Overall, Chinese OEMs’ overseas manufacturing capacity is set to nearly double to 4.3 million vehicles per year by 2026, concentrated in Europe and Southeast Asia. This localization not only mitigates “oil risk” for partner nations by embedding electrification capabilities but also boosts global EROEI through optimized, proximate supply networks, reducing logistical vulnerabilities and empowering emerging markets to leapfrog into sustainable mobility.

Some 15 years ago, a number of western commentators argued that China’s then commitments to developing EVs was a sign of wasted investment. The passage of time suggests that these pronouncements were premature and ill-judged. For nations pursuing energy sovereignty, engagement with Chinese capabilities is inevitable. Tariffs and barriers may slow imports, but they can’t erase the affordability and efficiency China offers. In a world of mounting oil risks, those who board this electrification “train” will fast-track resilience; those who resist risk being left at the station, vulnerable to the next shock. The path forward is clear: Electrify now, or pay later.

*The article was first published on CGTN

About the Author

Warwick Powell is an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology. He’s also working at the intersection of China, digital technologies, supply chains, financial flows and global political economy & governance.

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Editor's note: Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter, the chief editor of LeftWord Books, and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily the views of China Up Close.

Iran is in turmoil. Across the country, there have been protests of different magnitudes, with violence on the increase with both protesters and police finding themselves in the morgue. What began as work stoppages and inflation protests drew together a range of discontent, with women and young people frustrated with a system unable to secure their livelihood. Iran has been under prolonged economic siege and has been attacked directly by Israel and the United States not only within its borders, but across West Asia (including in its diplomatic enclaves in Syria). This economic war waged by the United States has created the situation for this turmoil, but the turmoil itself is not directed at Washington but at the government in Tehran.

There are reports – such as in the mainstream Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz in October 2025 about Israeli “influence operations aiming to install Reza Pahlavi as Shah of Iran” – that Israeli intelligence has a role in the protests, and the United States has openly told the protestors that it would bomb Tehran if the violence by the government increase. Last year, protests took place in twelve South Pars oil refineries, where 5,000 contract workers in the Bushehr Gas Refinery Workers Union marched with their families on December 9 in Asaluyeh to demand higher wages and better working-conditions. When the workers took their struggle to the National Parliament in Tehran, where they called for an end to the contract work system, the Israelis and the United States took advantage of these sincere protests to attempt to transform a legitimate struggle into a potential regime change operation.

To understand what is happening, here are six points of historical importance that are offered in the spirit of discussion. Since 1979, Iran has played a very important role in the movement beyond monarchies in the Arab and Muslim world, and it has been an important defender of the Palestinian struggle. Iran is no stranger to foreign interference, going back to the British control of Iran’s oil from 1901, the 1907 Anglo-Russian Convention that divided Iran into spheres of influence, the 1921 coup that put Reza Khan on the throne, the 1953 coup that installed his son, Mohammed Reza Shah Pahlavi to the throne, and then the hybrid war against the Iranian Revolution from 1979 to the present. Here are the six points:

1. The Iranian Revolution of 1978-79 overthrew the rule of the Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi, and due to the strength of the religious clergy and its political formations resulted in the creation of the Islamic Republic in April 1979 with the Constitution of the Islamic Republic coming into effect in December 1979. The other currents in the revolution (from the communist left to the liberals) found themselves largely sidelined and even – in some cases – repressed. The March 1979 protests on International Women’s Day in Tehran followed the restrictions on women’s rights (particularly against the compulsory hijab policy), which forced the government to accept the demands of the protests – but this was a short-term win, since in 1983 a mandatory hijab law was passed.

2. The Revolution followed the military coup of Zia ul-Haq in Pakistan in 1977, the Saur Revolution in Afghanistan (August 1978), the establishment of the Yemeni Socialist Party (October 1978) that took the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen into the Soviet sphere and that led to the North-South war in Yemen (February-March 1979), and the capture of power by Saddam Hussein Iraq in July 1979. The entire region of south-western and central Asia was catapulting in political somersaults. Some of these developments (Pakistan, Iraq) offered advantages to the United States, and the others (Afghanistan, Iran, Yemen) being counter to US objectives in the region. Very quickly, the United States attempted to press its advantages by trying to overthrow the Islamic Republic of Iran, the People’s Democratic Republic of Yemen, and the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan.

3. The pressure by the United States on these processes led to a war-like situation in all three countries: the US and its Gulf allies urged Iraq to invade Iran unprovoked in September 1980, starting a war that lasted till 1988; the Gulf Arab states urged North Yemen to invade South Yemen after the assassination of Salim Rubaya Ali (a Maoist who was negotiating the merger of the two Yemens); finally, in Afghanistan, the US began to fund the mujahideen to start an assassination campaign against cadre of the People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. Iran, Afghanistan, and Yemen saw their social projects narrowed by the attacks they faced from outside. Afghanistan crashed into over forty years of terrible violence and war, even though the Democratic Republic of Afghanistan remained in place for 18 years; the Marxist government in South Yemen remained until 1990, but it was a pale shadow of its own expectations; Iran, meanwhile, saw its Islamic Republic survive a harsh sanctions policy that followed the end of the war by Iraq (in 1988).

4. The Islamic Republic faced several important, consecutive challenges: The most important came from US imperialism, which not only fully spurred Iraq’s war, but supported initiatives by the former Iranian elites to restore their rule and supported Israeli attempts to undermine the Islamic Republic (including direct attacks on Iran, sabotage operations, and assassinations of key figures from the science professions and military). It is the United States and Israel that have been systematically trying to erode Iran’s power in the region, with the assassination of General Qassem Soleimani in 2020, the harsh attack on Hezbollah during the Israeli genocide and the assassination of Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah in 2024, and the overthrow of the government in Syria in December 2024 with the installation of the former al-Qaeda chief as President in Damascus.

The old Iranian elites, led by the Shah at first till his death in 1980 and then his son, so-called Crown Prince Reza Pahlavi, joined with the Europeans and the US to restore their rule. It is important to know that while the Shah had sat on the Peacock Throne from 1941, he was forced to accept a democratic government from 1951 to 1953 – which was overthrown by Western intelligence services and then the Shah was encouraged to exercise absolute rule from 1953 to the revolution of 1978-79. The Shah’s bloc has consistently wanted to return to power in Iran. While the Green Movement of 2009 had a very small monarchical element, it represented the dominant classes who wanted political reforms against the more plebeian presidency of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. It is telling that the United States has ‘chosen’ the Shah’s son, who lives in Los Angeles, as the figure of this uprising.

Limitations to the republic’s transformative social agenda were present as it tolerated sections of the old elite, allowing them to hold their property, and therefore allowing the formation of a stratified class system that benefited sections of these property owners and an emergent middle class. After the death of Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in June 1989 and the end of the Iran-Iraq War, the government adopted large parts of the International Monetary Fund’s structural adjustment policies, which – one way or the other – remained in place for decades (the policy was driven by Mohsen Nourbaksh, who was the Minister of Economic Affairs from 1989 to 1994 and then head of the Central Bank from 1994 to 2003). The economy was not organized along socialist lines in 1979, but it had built a strong role for the state and for public planning due to the needs of the war economy and due to the commitment to Islamic social welfare. Nourbaksh could not totally dismantle the state, but he conducted currency and banking reform as well as he did cautiously integrate Iran into the global economy. The class divergence and the difficulties of life for the majority of Iranians increased due to the combined impact of the US-European sanctions regime, the military threats by the US-Israelis (that has led to high military spending in Iran – still at around 2.5% of GDP it is much lower than the 12% of GDP during the reign of the Shah), and to the neoliberal policies pursued by the increasingly neoliberal finance ministers of the government (such as Ali Tayebnia from 2013 to 2017 and Ali Madanizadeh from 2025). It was this limitation of the Islamic Republic that has led to cycles of economic protest: 2017-2018 (around inflation and subsidy cuts), 2019 (around fuel price hike), 2025 (by bakers), and 2025-26 (soaring inflation and the collapse of the Iranian rial).

5. While the current protests are largely driven by a record-high Rial to USD exchange and a 60% food inflation rate, the transition from labor strikes in South Pars to coordinated urban violence points towards a deeper level of intervention. The administration has favored sections of the import-export sector, which has worked in the context of the sanctions, to assist the commodity-exporters at the expense of the importers – a situation that is not easy to correct. Yet the abrupt 30-40% currency drop is a classic hallmark of external financial manipulation. Therefore, what began as business owners protesting the Central Bank without interference, soon morphed into a violent, top-down assault on the state fabric. The “protests” shifted overnight from peaceful assemblies to high-intensity urban sabotage resulting in the deaths of roughly 100 law enforcement officers, with claims that some officers were burned alive, a security member was beheaded, and a medical clinic was torched, claiming the life of a nurse, for instance. The use of close-range small arms fire against civilians further suggests an attempt to maximize domestic tension and provide a pretext for foreign intervention. The geopolitical orchestration behind the chaos became undeniable as the US State Department and Mossad openly cheered the violence in real-time. Once authorities disabled Internet access, the protests significantly lost strength, which places into question the spontaneity of the movement and lends truth to the thesis that there is a destabilization strategy at play, seeking to benefit from the current international conjuncture.

6. The opposition has taken to the streets but recognizes that it does not have the strength to seize power. There are reports of US and Israeli interference, and it does not help the opposition that the Shah’s son has been both claiming credit for the protests and seeing himself as its beneficiary. With Trump at the helm of hyper-imperialism, and with Israel amid a period of what it feels are endless victories, it is impossible to know what these dangerous cliques will do. As the mobilizations lose steam, which will take place, the US-Israel might take advantage of the situation to strike Tehran and other cities with more force than it did in June 2025. This should be a worry not only for the people in Iran, the vast mass of whom do not wish an attack on their country, but also the people of the Global South – who will find themselves as the next target after Venezuela and Iran.

Real problems bedevil the population, but these problems are not going to be solved through a hyper-imperialist aerial bombardment by the United States and Israel. The Iranians will need to sort out their own problems. The sanctions regime and the threats of violence do nothing to allow that to happen. It is easy to say “solidarity to the Iranians” in the West, where protesters are being beaten and even killed for their support of the Palestinians and their anger at the anti-immigration policies. And somehow, it seems to be much harder to say “end the sanctions,” and therefore allow the Iranian people to breathe into their own future.

Source: Globetrotter

About the Author

This article was produced by Globetrotter. Vijay Prashad is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are On Cuba: Reflections on 70 Years of Revolution and Struggle (with Noam Chomsky), Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism, and (also with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of US Power. Chelwa and Prashad will publish How the International Monetary Fund is Suffocating Africa later this year with Inkani Books.

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The dawn of January 3, 2026 marked a dramatic escalation in US foreign policy when American special forces, backed by airstrikes involving over 150 aircraft, raided Caracas and seized Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro and his wife Cilia Flores. The US pledges to "run" Venezuela until a "safe, proper and judicious transition" has been achieved. This operation, dubbed "Operation Absolute Resolve," echoes centuries of US imperial interventions in Latin America, reviving the Monroe Doctrine in a modern guise dubbed the "Donroe Doctrine." Yet, as history demonstrates, such actions often become a "rod for America's own back" - a self-inflicted burden of instability, resentment and strategic overreach that undermines US interests far more than it secures them.

The Monroe Doctrine, proclaimed in 1823 by the then president James Monroe, warned European powers against meddling in the Western Hemisphere, ostensibly to protect nascent republics but effectively asserting US primacy. Theodore Roosevelt's 1904 Corollary expanded this into "gunboat diplomacy," justifying interventions to enforce stability and debt repayments, as seen in the 1902-03 naval blockade of Venezuela by the UK, Germany and Italy - with tacit US approval - to collect debts. This episode, which bombarded Venezuelan ports, foreshadowed a pattern: foreign powers using economic pretexts to exert control, often over resources like oil, which would later define US-Venezuela relations.

Cold War-era echoes are even more pronounced. The US backed dictators like Venezuela's Marcos Pérez Jiménez in the 1950s, providing CIA assistance amid torture and repression, to safeguard oil interests against perceived communist threats. Interventions in Guatemala (1954), the Dominican Republic (1965), Chile (1973) and Grenada (1983) followed similar scripts: Ousting leftist leaders under anti-communist banners, only to install regimes that bred long-term chaos and anti-US sentiment. The 1989 invasion of Panama, which captured Manuel Noriega on drug charges, offers the closest parallel to Maduro's fate - yet it left Panama economically dependent with migration issues unresolved, much like the Venezuelan refugee crisis today. These actions, justified as defending democracy or combating narcotics, often masked hegemonic control, entrenching cycles of intervention and backlash.

The 2025 US National Security Strategy (NSS) formalizes this revival through the "Donroe Doctrine." Venezuela, with the world's largest oil reserves, serves as the doctrine's first test case. The NSS prioritizes the region for direct US military intervention over Asia, deploying naval forces to curb migration and trafficking. Furthermore, it views instability like Venezuela's as a direct threat to US security.

The January 3 intervention embodies these echoes. Months of planning, including CIA tracking and troop rehearsals on a mock Maduro compound, culminated in strikes disabling air defenses, jamming the grid and extracting the couple via the USS Iwo Jima.

Casualties reached at least 80, mostly Venezuelan security forces, no US forces were killed and there were "few" injuries. Venezuelan acting president Delcy Rodríguez's changing attitude toward the US from defiance to seeking collaboration suggest internal fractures, as well as the risk of guerrilla resistance from Chavista militias.

Herein lies the "rod for America's own back." Historical interventions have consistently boomeranged: Panama's capture of Noriega didn't end drug flows; Iraq's 2003 invasion, justified by dubious WMD claims, cost trillions, thousands of lives and US credibility, fostering ISIS and regional instability. Venezuela risks similar quagmires - prolonged occupation amid armed opposition, exacerbated migration (already straining neighbors), and humanitarian crises from strikes causing blackouts and deaths. Global backlash is swift. Domestically, there are Americans fearing endless wars and taxpayer burdens. Threats of further strikes to pressure post-Maduro leaders only heighten escalation risks.

Some critiques frame it as resource imperialism, punishing Venezuela's socialist experiment while ignoring internal causes like corruption. Conservatives defend it as pragmatic against threats, yet acknowledge parallels to failed nation-building. With reasonable assurance, destabilizing consequences loom: entrenched resistance, allied pushback and multipolar shifts accelerating US decline. US' moves, while tactically bold, repeat historic follies, turning hemispheric dominance into a costly entanglement that weakens America more than its adversaries. In reviving the Monroe Doctrine, the US risks forging its own chains in a world no longer tolerant of a unilateral empire.

*The article was first published on Global Times

About the Author

Warwick Powell is an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology. He’s also working at the intersection of China, digital technologies, supply chains, financial flows and global political economy & governance.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

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At the end of September, a new Chinese infrastructure project reached completion and immediately went viral on both Chinese and Western social media. This was the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge in southwest China’s Guizhou Province - otherwise known as the tallest bridge in the world.

The bridge is over 9 times higher than San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge, floating 625m above the Beipan River. At a staggering 2,890 meters long, the bridge connects two sides of the Huajiang Grand Canyon, shortening the time locals take to navigate the canyon from over two hours to under two minutes.

However, the new bridge is important to the economic development of the region, not just because it facilitates trade and provides easier access to otherwise fairly remote mountainous communities. The regional government has realized the potential tourist draw of the world’s tallest bridge, and has drawn up a detailed tourism plan for the area with a focus on extreme sports, science education, and sightseeing. The plan appears to be working since during China’s recent national day holidays, around 220,000 people made a trip to the area.

The viral potential of the world’s tallest bridge is pretty obvious (for one thing, the views are stunning), but reactions to videos and pictures of the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge were a little different on Chinese and Western social media. While Chinese netizens marveled at the engineering feat of building such a long bridge in a remote location, one question dominated Western social media discussions: why can’t we build something like this?

Why Can’t the West Build Anything?

The West wasn’t always like this. In the 18^th century, the United Kingdom built a network of canals, viaducts, roads, and bridges so well constructed that they are still used today. In the 19^th century, Britain then established the world’s first rail network, and, while there are no geographical barriers in Great Britain to rival those of China, British engineers had no problems building infrastructure in all the different climates and geographies of their vast empire (at least when it suited the interests of British financiers to do so). In the U.S., too, the 19^th and early 20^th centuries saw the construction of such epic infrastructure projects as the transcontinental railway and the Hoover Dam. Yet, today, these great engineering marvels are being left to crumble, and very little is being done to replace them. So, what has changed?

I think we can get a pretty clear idea of what is going wrong by zooming in on one of the most egregious examples of infrastructure mismanagement: Britain’s High Speed 2 (HS2) rail service (so-called because Britain’s first - and only - high speed rail service connects London to Paris).

By the first decade of the 21^st century, British transport officials were becoming embarrassed. High-speed rail had come to Asia in the 1960s, and it had arrived in mainland Europe by the 1980s. Yet, in Britain, the nation that had given the world the railway, the trains had become infamous for being slow, outdated, expensive, and plagued with delays and staff shortages. As a matter of national pride, then, it was decided in 2010 to link all of England’s major urban areas with high-speed rail. So, one of the last acts of Gordon Brown’s Labour government before leaving office in 2010 was to set up HS2 Limited - a private company which would spend the public funds set aside to build HS2 from London to the north of England.

Problems developed with the project very quickly. In 2011, HS2 Limited estimated the cost of the project at $32 billion. Only two years later, that had been revised upward to $50 billion. Today, the cost of the whole project is estimated to be somewhere in the region of $100 billion. What is worse, in 2023, the then-Prime Minister Rishi Sunak announced that he would cancel the northern part of the service. This means that only two cities - London and Birmingham - will be connected by high-speed rail. In other words, British taxpayers are now likely to pay more than double the initial estimate for less than half of the originally proposed line. And it still isn’t done: even the truncated HS2 line connecting London with Birmingham, the UK’s second largest city, will not be fully operational until sometime in the 2030s. Even then, the terminal station will not actually be in central London. Instead, HS2 will terminate in the suburbs, meaning that, if we factor in transfer times from suburban to central London, journeying between Birmingham and the capital by high-speed train will take about the same time as taking the slower (but direct) regular train. So much for the promise of high speed.

How did the largest infrastructure project in a generation become a national embarrassment so great that it is now used as evidence by conservatives in the U.S. to argue against plans to bring high-speed rail to the U.S.? Well, as China has shown, infrastructure on this scale requires national guidance, expertise, and, most crucially, long-term planning - and, unfortunately for rail commuters in the United Kingdom, the British government is lacking in all three.

The last decade has been rather tumultuous for the island kingdom, and this has allowed the chaotic management and ballooning costs to pass under the radar. For example, a key 2017 parliamentary vote to expand funding took place in the middle of Brexit. The transport secretary at the time would later admit to the BBC that the largest constitutional debate in generations meant that parliament had neither the time nor inclination to give proper scrutiny to Britain’s largest infrastructure project. Neither parliament nor government ministers had a clear idea what they were signing off on. This has been an issue throughout the project: HS2 Limited has outlasted seven Prime Ministers and ten Transport Ministers. When turnover at the top of government is this high, oversight becomes much more difficult and, since no minister is likely to be in their job for long, encourages short-term thinking while discouraging the development of any kind of expertise.

Yet, the chaos of the British political system ultimately proved a liability for HS2, for, without proper government buy-in, its continued funding became entirely dependent on a couple of key backers - principally Boris Johnson as both Mayor of London (2008-2016) and Prime Minister (2019-2022). Importantly, however, by 2023, Johnson had left both government and parliament in disgrace. This gave an opportunity to a government aide called Andrew Gilligan (called “rabidly anti-HS2” by the Financial Times) to push the new prime minister, Rishi Sunak, into axing half the project. The southern half would have also probably come on the chopping block if it had not been for Sunak’s defeat in the 2024 election.

To put all this in perspective, China has added about 40,000 km to its high-speed rail network while Britain waits for the opening of a single line over some of the flattest land in the country. But the reason Britain can’t build (and China can) is not due to geography or the economy. Instead, the fundamental reason Britain (and much of the rest of the West) has lost the ability to build reliable infrastructure is due to the political system.

The Governance Lessons of British Misadventures

HS2 has been such an embarrassing disaster because British politics in the last few decades has just not been capable of producing the type of long-term planning that is required for large-scale infrastructure projects. HS2 did not - and does not - have broad institutional support, but instead was driven through by charismatic individuals who saw the project as beneficial for their own political advancement. However, once the individuals left office, the project was left defenseless. In short, large infrastructure projects often take decades, but British politics can only think in terms of the next election cycle.

Of course, these are not governance problems found in the UK alone: Britain’s closest international partner, the United States, is also bedeviled by an inability to plan ahead. Indeed, the top frustration of many nations in dealing with both the Trump and Biden administrations has been that the Americans often cannot clearly articulate what they want. This is because, much as with Britain’s HS2, the structure of the American political system makes it very difficult for the government to commit to one policy long term since the opposite party (or even just a rival wing of the same party) will renege on any promise once it gains control of either the White House or Congress.

China has become the gold standard for global infrastructure construction, but projects like the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge or the national high-speed rail network require a huge amount of resources and, most crucially, the iron guarantee from the government that these projects will be completed and form part of a greater strategy for development. For example, local businesses are now able to develop tourism around the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge precisely because they can depend on the government to see the project to completion, and know that there is a long-term plan to integrate their efforts into the wider regional development plan. In the United Kingdom, by contrast, businesses were left reeling by Sunak’s surprise 2023 announcement canceling parts of HS2 since many had made long-term plans on the premise that the government had already committed to linking them to London by high-speed rail. And over in the U.S., similar economic chaos has been caused by the flip-flopping over things like internet regulation and trade deals.

The contrasting tales of the Huajiang Grand Canyon Bridge and HS2 are not merely about concrete and steel, but about governance and political will. The Anglo-American infrastructure crisis is not an economic or technological failure; it is a governance failure. The crumbling and mismanaged infrastructure is merely another symptom of a political structure that hasn’t worked for decades, and is now trapped in the kind of short-term thinking that makes large infrastructure projects nearly impossible. So, the question should not be why the West can’t build anything, but how the West makes governance work again.

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Writer and educator working in Beijing. Writing about China and politics mostly.

Doug’s X page: @doug_rooney

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

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The new Japanese Prime Minister, Sanae Takaichi, provoked a diplomatic firestorm when she suggested that Japan may become militarily involved in stopping the process of Chinese reunification. This is a doubly sensitive issue given Japan’s role in the 1930s and 1940s in propping up puppet separatist regimes as part of their attempt to add China to the Japanese Empire.

Every few years, a Japanese politician will say or do something that will provoke a furious response from China or the Republic of Korea (ROK). China and the ROK’s reaction to the return of Japanese militarism and a more bellicose foreign policy is often met with bafflement in the West, where Japan’s actions are inevitably framed as a response to living in an “unstable region” by our media.

The West is baffled only because the history of Japanese fascism is a subject on which it is ignorant. This ignorance is inexcusable since it downplays the role of Asians in the fight against fascism in the 20^th century. More than that, however, it obscures the crimes committed against our own citizens by the Japanese Empire.

I want to share here just one of those war crimes. This is a British story of heroism and perseverance, but it is also a story I knew nothing about until a Chinese director decided to shed light on the incident. Remembering it now might help Westerners understand a bit better why rising fascism in Japan is just as worrying as anywhere else.

The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru

The Lisbon Maru was a cargo liner pressed into service by Imperial Japan to transport British Prisoners of War (POW) to internment camps after the Battle of Hong Kong. 1,816 Allied prisoners were crammed into the holds of this decrepit ship, and, in late September 1942, it set sail towards Japan. Three days out from Hong Kong, the Lisbon Maru was hit by an American torpedo. Over the next 25 hours, the ship slowly sank to the bottom of the sea.

The Japanese were now left with a quandary. The Lisbon Maru would have to be abandoned, but what should they do with the 1,816 prisoners? A few options were available: they could transfer the POWs to other ships that made up the convoy of which the Lisbon Maru was a part. Or, if there wasn’t enough room for all the servicemen aboard the other ships, the nearby Dongji Island (within sight of the sinking cargo liner) offered a convenient place to temporarily hold the POWs until more Japanese ships arrived.

The commanders of the convoy and the army attachment did neither of these things. Instead, they ordered the British soldiers sealed in the holds. The Japanese soldiers and sailors then evacuated the ship. A small detachment of soldiers was left on board. Their only job was to shoot any POWs who managed to escape the hold. Their duty, they were told, was to go down with the ship. The Japanese convoy, despite knowing that American submarines were active in the area, then circled the sinking ship to make doubly sure that no British soldiers escaped.

The POWs did eventually escape the hold and overpower their death guards. When they jumped into the sea in hopes of swimming to safety, the Japanese ships opened fire. The Japanese would continue to fire until disturbed by local Chinese fishermen from Dongji Island. Horrified by the carnage they could see from the shoreline, the fishermen sailed out to do what they could to help the British soldiers. The guns stopped not because the Japanese had been made to feel guilty by the bravery of the Chinese or persistence of the British, but because they worried the fishermen might report what Japan had done, and that this would make Imperial Japan look bad in the eyes of the world. In all, 828 POWs died in this massacre at sea.

The ordeal of the Allied POWs did not end with the sinking of the Lisbon Maru. The survivors would spend the rest of the war in brutal conditions in Japanese POW camps - death rates in Japanese camps ran at about 20% (seven times higher than for British soldiers interned in Germany). Those who did manage to return home were often left with debilitating mental and physical wounds that never fully healed.

I remain shocked by these events not only because of the sheer pointless cruelty of the Japanese actions, but because, despite being British, I only learned about this event after watching the 2023 Chinese documentary The Sinking of the Lisbon Maru. I have a Master's degree in history and (briefly) served in the British army, yet I had never heard of this horrific war crime perpetrated against British soldiers. And I don’t think I am alone: in the documentary itself, again and again, the survivors and their families recount a feeling of being forgotten by the country they served so gallantly. In the reporting that followed the release of the documentary, the adjectives “untold”, “little-known”, and “forgotten” appear regularly.

The heroes of the Lisbon Maru are not alone in being forgotten. Britain is a country obsessed with World War Two, yet the average Brit has a greater working knowledge of the Soviet war against Nazi Germany than our own fight against fascism in Asia. The Royal British Legion (the UK’s largest armed forces charity) calls the soldiers who fought the Japanese in South and South East Asia the “Forgotten Army,” while a recent history of the British Far East campaign calls it the “Forgotten War.”

Regardless of your opinion about the British Empire, I think most of us would consider this a tragedy. These men were, for the most part, in their late teens and early twenties. They crossed half the world to do what they thought was their duty. They fought, suffered, and died in large numbers for their country in one of the most brutal wars in history. And, after all that, when they returned home, their sacrifice was largely forgotten.

What made Britain forget the men and women who died in Asia when we hold the veterans of every other theatre of World War Two in such high regard?

This has to do with Japan’s role after the war. Very quickly after 1945, Japan became an important node in East Asia in America’s fight against communism. From bases in Japan, America supported the Nationalists in the Chinese Civil War, supplied its troops during the Korean War, and kept watch on the Soviets in the Pacific. In order to keep Japan in the American camp, prosecution for war crimes was kept to a minimum (to use just one example, Hirohito, in whose name these atrocities were committed, was allowed to remain as Emperor). In order to keep the Western public on board, it was important not to dwell too long on or delve too deeply into what exactly our new allies had been up to during the war.

China and the ROK have not forgotten the atrocities committed by fascist Japan. Chinese and South Koreans understand that when Japanese politicians embrace militarism, or visit the graves of war criminals and downplay their atrocities, this is not ancient history. There is a direct link connecting the leaders of Japan today with the fascists who shot British soldiers swimming from a sinking ship. Whitewashing the crimes of fascist Japan is an attempt to return to fascism. We in the West owe it not just to the Asians who suffered under Japanese Imperialism but to our own countrymen to remember that.

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Writer and educator working in Beijing. Writing about China and politics mostly.

Doug’s X page: @doug_rooney

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

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I will focus on the importance and role that the development of productive forces plays in the process of achieving the building of a socialist state in China.

We are witnessing a defining moment in human history, debatably as transformative as the shift from feudalism to capitalism 500 years ago. Some suggest parallels with the crises of the last century, such as World War I, which ended the Age of Empires.

Yet, today’s global transformations appear more profound, driven by countries like China, which seeks to reshape global economic and social paradigms through socialism. This claim may seem overstated, but it is necessary to make sense of what China is currently undertaking.

In its 20th Congress, the Communist Party of China (CPC) outlined its second centennial goal: building a modern socialist state by 2049.

This raises a critical question: Is this just a slogan, or is China really and seriously working toward this goal? What if it succeeds? Specifically, what if production relations in the world’s second-largest economy become socialist?

Historically, the CPC has demonstrated an ability to convert slogans into actionable programs. These programs translate into daily struggles for hundreds of millions of Chinese citizens, and most of these goals have been achieved. The latest example is the elimination of extreme poverty. Thus, I can confidently state that slogans in China are made to be implemented.

So, how will China build a modern socialist state by 2049?

For five decades, the Communist Party of China has led the nation toward one central goal: socialism. At every stage, there has been boldness—boldness in presenting new ideas, adapting Marxist theory to align with Chinese realities and characteristics, confronting imperialism, liberating China politically and economically, and carving out an independent development path free from colonial dictates.

Later, in 1978, China entered a new phase marked by “reform and opening up.” This phase saw the liberation and development of China’s productive forces, with the aim of “building socialism in China,” as repeatedly emphasized by Deng Xiaoping: “According to our experience, in order to build socialism, we must first of all develop the productive forces, which is our main task. This is the only way to demonstrate the superiority of socialism. Whether the socialist economic policies we are pursuing are correct or not depends, in the final analysis, on whether the productive forces develop and people’s incomes increase. This is the most important criterion. We cannot build socialism with just empty talk. The people will not believe it”.

Then, the “reform and opening-up” policy launched by the CPC aimed to develop productive forces, not to abandon socialism, but to strengthen it. These policies achieved the rapid development of China’s productive forces.

Since the CPC’s 18th Congress, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era, emphasizing technology and innovation as pillars of development. This approach is encapsulated in the concept of “New Quality Productive Forces,” introduced by President Xi Jinping.

According to Marxist political economy, science and technology play a crucial role in advancing productive forces. Marx famously noted the transformative impact of productive forces on societal production modes, stating: “The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill society with the industrial capitalist.”

Thus, the long journey toward building a modern socialist state necessitates a new wave of liberating and advancing the productive forces. Therefore, the concept of “New Quality Productive Forces” is a key term for understanding China’s modernization model and will serve as a driving force for socialist modernization.

Over the past decade, China’s efforts in this regard have been remarkable. Two years ago, I visited Qingdao and its automated port, where I was surprised to witness the unloading of one of the world’s largest cargo ships. The operation involved no workers on the dock—only dozens of highly efficient and complex robots.

For instance, a friend once asked me, “What will happen to the workers replaced by robots at Qingdao Port?” This is indeed a legitimate question, given that we are observing a novel experiment unprecedented in human history.

Until now, our understanding has been shaped by the Western capitalist model. In Qingdao’s case, the replacement of workers by robots would, in a capitalist system, aim to maximize surplus value, generating immense profits for a small group of capitalists while leaving the workers unemployed and impoverished. However, this transformation must also be viewed through the lens of the Chinese socialist model.

Before I continue, let me note that, of course, I’m not speaking about today’s cases, but just as an expectation for the future when China consolidates its socialist transformation. Today, China is still on this path and, according to the CPC, has already entered the primary stage of socialism—a phase expected to last over a century. The goal by 2049 is not to begin socialism, but to deepen and modernize it. Until then, there will still be many issues to address, including class disparities. Therefore, now I have no idea what happened to those workers in Qingdao.

So, this transformation must be reexamined through the lens of the Chinese socialist model. Unlike the Western capitalist model, China’s means of production are under state control, led by the CPC, which prioritizes public welfare. Consequently, surplus value is redistributed across society rather than concentrated in the hands of a select few capitalists. This is how China eradicated extreme poverty—a feat impossible in capitalist systems like the United States.

Through centralized control over surplus value and its redistribution to enhance societal welfare, China can ensure universal access to basic needs such as education, healthcare, housing, and transportation. Meanwhile, workers displaced by automation, like those in Qingdao Port, can engage in other meaningful pursuits without worrying about basic necessities.

In the Chinese context, if productive forces continue to develop and the path toward socialism progresses, workers will benefit in two key ways: first, by having more free time; and second, by moving away from hard labor toward jobs aligned with their talents and aspirations. This vision is not utopian but rather grounded in theoretical principles increasingly achievable through China’s ongoing experience.

As long as the CPC maintains control over the means of production and fulfills its role as the vanguard of the working class, implementing strategic plans guiding the country step by step toward socialism, these goals will be realized sooner than expected. Looking back 70 years, we see the extreme hardships endured by the Chinese people, working tirelessly for a single daily meal. Comparing that to today’s reality shows that nothing is impossible and that China is on the right path.

Following and learning from this experience will be immensely enriching—not only for researchers like us but also for all people worldwide seeking a way out of the crisis imposed by imperialist capitalism.

About the Author

Adham Sayed is a senior research fellow at the Institute of East Asian Studies, Zhejiang Gongshang University.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

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I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

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In the shadow of ancient Korean temples in Gyeongju, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum convenes its 2025 summit this October/November, a gathering that once symbolized the triumph of open markets and cross-Pacific unity. Founded in 1989 amid the euphoria of the Cold War’s end, APEC was envisioned as a pragmatic antidote to rigid trade blocs, promoting voluntary cooperation among 21 diverse economies - from the emerging powerhouse China to island nations like Papua New Guinea. Champions like Australia’s Bob Hawke and Paul Keating subsequently, and Japan’s Noboru Takeshita, saw it as a vehicle for mutual economic benefit, fostering trade liberalization without the binding constraints of institutions like the European Union. Over the decades, APEC delivered solid results. These included tariff reductions accelerated by the 1994 Bogor Goals tripled intra-regional trade to $8.7 trillion by 2019, while initiatives like the APEC Business Travel Card eased cross-border commerce since 2001.

Yet, as leaders assemble under South Korea’s theme of “Building a Sustainable Tomorrow,” the forum’s aspirations feel increasingly fraught, if not hollow. Geopolitical rifts, protectionist surges, and the persistence of bloc political alignments have transformed APEC from a bridge across the Pacific into a fractured arena, where consensus is elusive and irrelevance looms. In this moment of conjuncture - to borrow from historian Fernand Braudel - short-term crises collide, testing whether APEC can endure the longue durée of shifting global power.

The United States’ waning commitment to multilateralism stands as the most glaring fracture. Once APEC’s de facto steward, Washington now views such forums through the lens of “America First” skepticism, amplified under President Donald Trump’s second term. Since January 2025, the administration has reimposed sweeping tariffs and prioritized attempts to strike bilateral deals, echoing Trump’s first-term withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). At the IMF’s April 2025 meetings, Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent conditioned U.S. support for global institutions on “reciprocal benefits,” a thinly veiled demand for concessions favoring American industries. This retreat is quantifiable. The 2025 Multilateralism Index from the International Peace Institute shows a decline in U.S. engagement across trade forums, even as others ramp up participation. For APEC, this means diluted influence; Trump’s in-person attendance in Gyeongju - his first as president - comes amid domestic pressures to revive U.S. manufacturing, sidelining regional pledges. His August 2025 summit with South Korean President Lee Jae-myung focused on bilateral tech transfers and attempts to impose investment commitments from South Korea to the U.S. rather than any substantial discussions around APEC-wide integration. The forum’s 2025 priorities - AI governance, demographic resilience, and green transitions - risk becoming peripheral, vetoed by a U.S. more inclined to unilateral action than collective strategy, with limited interest to green transitions (after all, Trump has described climate change as a “hoax”) and little signs of a willingness to abandon AI unilateralism.

At the heart of this disarray lies the U.S.-China trade war, a conflict that has metastasized into a regional malaise. Reignited in February 2025 via the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, U.S. tariffs now exceed 10% on over half of APEC members, with China facing 50-100% duties on sectors like electric vehicles and semiconductors. Beijing’s countermeasures have disrupted supply chains as businesses rerouted product channels, fast-tracked imports to avoid impending tariffs, or abandoned trade altogether. APEC’s May 2025 trade ministers’ meeting in Jeju forecasted regional export growth plummeting to 0.4% for the year, down from 5.7% in 2024, blaming “fundamental challenges” from protectionism. In Gyeongju, expect debates on WTO reforms, where the U.S. calls for “market reciprocity” to clash with China’s advocacy for developing-nation exemptions, mirroring the forum’s 2023 failures in San Francisco.

Compounding these tensions are bilateral rivalries that erode APEC’s cohesion. The forum’s inclusive membership now amplifies disputes into multilateral static. South China Sea clashes pit the Philippines against China, with Manila’s enhanced U.S. alliances raising regional tensions. The Diaoyu Dao is another focal point of regional bilateral tensions, straining Tokyo’s role as a U.S. partner. Even semi-neutral players like Singapore are confronting real challenges. ASEAN’s 2025 growth forecast dropped 0.5% due to disrupted trade routes and tourism. North American frictions add to the mix, with Canada and Mexico navigating USMCA renegotiations amid Trump’s assorted tariffs. Collectively, these spats have spawned 345 new trade restrictions across APEC by October 2025, the highest in a decade, per the Jeju statement. Such fragmentation undermines APEC’s role as a strategic canvass for economic alignment, turning it into a venue for grievance airing rather than resolution.

Washington’s pivot to “minilaterals” - smaller coalitions - further fragments the landscape, positioning them as bulwarks against China. Groups like the Quad (U.S., Japan, India, Australia), AUKUS (U.S., UK, Australia), and the U.S.-Japan-Philippines trilateral form a “security latticework,” with exercises like Balikatan expanding; all of which raises the heat in the region. These minilaterals drain APEC’s vitality. The Quad’s August 2025 supply-chain accord bypassed forum-wide digital trade discussions, leaving APEC’s innovation agenda underfunded. For host South Korea, this splinters the summit’s “connect, innovate, prosper” ethos, reducing it to parallel dialogues rather than unified action.

External shadows deepen the gloom. The Russia-Ukraine conflict’s ripples - global food inflation at 8% above pre-2022 levels - batter APEC’s vulnerable economies, with rice prices surging 12% in Indonesia and Peru during Q3 2025. Meanwhile, BRICS - expanded to include Indonesia, Egypt, and others - emerges as a parallel forum - if not a functional alternative or rival to APEC, commanding 40% of global GDP (PPP) and advancing currency multipolarity through national currency settlements and the expanded role of the New Development Bank. At its October 2025 summit, BRICS lambasted U.S. tariffs, highlighting a parallel order that overlaps with APEC members like China, Indonesia, Vietnam and Russia, who leverage it to influence forum dynamics.

This conjuncture - a Braudelian tangle of immediate crises - portends struggle for common ground in Gyeongju, much like 2023’s rifts over Ukraine and Gaza. Yet, the longue durée offers hope amid peril. APEC survived the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis by adapting to peer reviews and capacity-building. Today, evolving power balances - China’s ascent, India’s rise, Russia’s re-emergence - could force reinvention. If BRICS eclipses the G7 by 2030, APEC might pivot to multipolarity. Host Lee Jae-myung’s “pragmatic flexibility” - balancing U.S. ties with China outreach - could yield breakthroughs, like a Xi-Trump dialogue easing rare-earth tensions or frameworks for AI ethics and green finance.

Ultimately, APEC’s fate hinges on rediscovering its flexible origins. In a world of zero-sum mentalités, where trust erodes amid 345 restrictions, the forum must evolve beyond ceremony. Gyeongju could plant seeds for revival - modest pacts on sustainability or digital standards - or confirm decline, outshone by minilaterals and blocs. As Braudel reminds us, conjunctures pass, but longue durée endures through adaptation. For APEC, the choice is to reinvent itself as a high-stakes barometer of Pacific cooperation, or fade into irrelevance in a multipolar storm.

About the Author

Warwick Powell is an Adjunct Professor at Queensland University of Technology. He’s also working at the intersection of China, digital technologies, supply chains, financial flows and global political economy & governance.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

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Twenty-Three Minutes on the Missouri

On the morning of September 2, 1945, in Tokyo Bay, the Second World War officially ended. The setting was theatrical yet austere. A teak-decked American battleship, the USS Missouri, was anchored amidst an armada of Allied vessels. The ceremony lasted barely twenty-three minutes. Japan’s foreign minister, Mamoru Shigemitsu, hobbled up the gangway on his wooden leg to sign the Instrument of Surrender. Behind him stood General Douglas MacArthur, tall and imperious, flanked by American, British, Soviet, Chinese, French, Dutch, Canadian, Australian, and New Zealand representatives. Cameras clicked, pens scratched, and the world’s most destructive war was brought to a close.

Yet, the tableau was misleading in its simplicity. At the time, it implied a story of great-power confrontation and victory, a war won largely by the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union. Absent from the teak decks that morning were the representatives of the millions of men from China, India, Africa, and the Arab world who had fought in lands far from home, often for empires that denied them sovereignty, citizenship, and dignity. Their sacrifice was immense. Their presence, however, was erased.

From Missouri to Tianjin: Memory and Multipolarity

It is precisely these absences that make the 80th anniversary of the end of the war today so charged with meaning. Commemoration is no longer confined to the American-led tableau in Tokyo Bay. In Tianjin, at the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) summit over the last few days, leaders of China, Russia, India and other Eurasian states gathered under banners of multipolarity and “true multilateralism.” Their summit deliberately reframed history, not through the narrow lens of the “Big Three,” but by evoking the reality that victory in 1945 was global.

The symbolism is striking. Where Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Joseph Stalin once sat in judgment of the world, today Xi Jinping, Vladimir Putin and Narendra Modi appear together on a different stage, presenting themselves as heirs to a broader coalition than the Atlantic order ever admitted. Linking the end of the Second World War with the current momentum of the Global South is not contrived. It reflects the very truth that victory was achieved by armies drawn from Asia, Africa and the Arab world. The SCO’s language of sovereignty and equality thus resonates as a modern echo of the forgotten millions who fought without a voice in shaping the peace.

China’s Overlooked War

One of the most overlooked contributions to the Allied victory was that of China itself. For fourteen long years before Japan’s surrender, stretching back to 1931, China fought a grinding, total war against the Imperial Japanese Army. China suffered more than 35 million military and civilian casualties during the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931–1945). China also suffered more than $100 billion in direct property damage and war expenses, along with an estimated $500 billion in indirect economic losses at 1937 prices. Due to the great sacrifices of the Chinese people, at its peak, over 1.86 million Japanese soldiers were pinned down in China, unable to be redeployed elsewhere. This not only drained Japan’s strength but also prevented Tokyo from striking north against the Soviet Union or south in even greater force against Southeast Asia.

In Western memory, China’s role is often relegated to a footnote. School textbooks dwell on Normandy, the Battle of the Bulge and Pearl Harbor, while the epic scale of the Sino-Japanese War, including the pivotal battles of Shanghai, Nanjing, Wuhan and Changsha, is blurred out. Yet, without China’s resistance, the strategic geometry of the Second World War would have looked entirely different.

This is precisely the point Russian President Vladimir Putin emphasized in his recent interview with the Xinhua News Agency ahead of the SCO summit. He argued that China’s prolonged resistance helped prevent Japan from striking the Soviet Far East, freeing Joseph Stalin to concentrate his forces on the existential fight against Nazi Germany. Had Japan subdued China, Putin noted, Berlin and Tokyo could have presented a united front against the USSR, a scenario that would have radically altered the balance of the war.¹

Putin’s framing is not just political spin. It echoes long-standing assessments in Russian and Chinese historiography. For both Moscow and Beijing, the war was not won by the Atlantic powers alone but by the combined weight of Eurasia, including the millions of Chinese soldiers and civilians who absorbed Japan’s fury. As such, for China, this history is not simply about remembrance, it is about asserting a legitimate place at the center of global order, a claim underscored by its planned Victory Day parade on September 3, 2025, in Beijing.

The Global Army That Defeated Fascism

India’s Immense Contribution

By 1945, the British Indian Army had become the largest volunteer force in human history with over 2.5 million serving men and women. They fought in nearly every theater, from the deserts of North Africa to the mountains of Italy, from the jungles of Burma to the beaches of Malaya. According to official British and Commonwealth sources, between 87,000²-110,000 Indians died and tens of thousands more were wounded or captured. Their victories at the Battles of Imphal and Kohima, hailed as the “Stalingrad of the East”, stopped the Japanese advance into the subcontinent. At Monte Cassino, Sikh regiments climbed shattered abbey walls under German fire. In North Africa, Indian divisions helped Montgomery push Rommel back across the desert.

This was not an imperial force coerced by conscription. Most of these soldiers volunteered. They sought livelihoods, adventure or a sense of duty to king and country. Yet, when they returned home, they were met with famine, poverty and colonial contempt. The Bengal Famine of 1943, exacerbated by wartime policies, estimated to have killed up to four million civilians even as Indian troops fought abroad. The paradox was stark. Indians bled for freedom overseas but were denied it at home.

Africa’s Unheralded Role

More than one million Africans served the Allied cause. They came from Britain’s colonies of Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, Kenya, Uganda and from French and Belgian territories. Some carried rifles while many more carried supplies. They were the porters, engineers, stretcher-bearers and scouts without whom campaigns could not have been sustained. In the jungles of Burma, the 81st and 82nd (West African) Divisions fought alongside Indian and British troops, hauling artillery through leech-infested swamps, crossing rivers under fire and pushing back Japanese forces along the Kaladan River.

Yet, in European memory, their role has been nearly obliterated. School textbooks and commemorations seldom mention the African divisions. Where they appear in photographs, they are often nameless figures, anonymous bearers of burdens, not acknowledged as soldiers of equal stature.

North Africa and the Arab World

France’s liberation was in no small part owed to the Army of Africa comprising hundreds of thousands of Algerians, Moroccans and Tunisians. The Moroccan Goumiers, famed for their mountain warfare skills, broke German positions in the Italian Apennines, helping open the road to Rome. Algerian tirailleurs were among the first to enter southern France during Operation Dragoon in 1944. In total, over 400,000 North African troops fought for France.

Yet, when Paris was liberated in August 1944, French authorities carried out the infamous policy of “blanchiment” - the whitening of forces. African and Arab soldiers were removed from frontline units so that photographs of victory parades would show only white faces. Those who had died on Italian slopes or Provençal beaches were erased from the image of triumph.

Arab troops also served in smaller but significant formations. The Arab Legion, under British command, fought in Iraq and Syria, ensuring Middle Eastern oil remained under Allied control. Syrian and Lebanese volunteers joined Free French forces. Their war, too, was fought not for their own liberation, but to secure the empires that occupied them.

The Grand Alliance that Wasn’t Just a Troika

When historians recall the “Grand Alliance” of the Second World War, the image that dominates is of the Big Three - the Troika of Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin - who met at Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam. In popular imagination, these three leaders, representing the United States, Britain and the Soviet Union, are credited with forging the coalition that defeated Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan.

This picture, however, is profoundly incomplete. In reality, the Grand Alliance was the largest coalition ever assembled in human history, comprising over fifty nations. At its height, the Allies mobilized an astonishing over seventy million men and women under arms across every continent.

The war effort stretched far beyond the Big Three. Canada, Australia and New Zealand sent divisions to Europe, Africa and the Pacific. China absorbed the bulk of Japan’s military might for ten long years before Pearl Harbor. Indian soldiers fought under the British flag in multiple theaters. African and Arab troops marched in French and British formations. The Caribbean contributed sailors, airmen and merchant mariners. Even small nations like Nepal, whose Gurkhas became legendary, or Ethiopia, which resisted Italian occupation, were part of this coalition.

This reality is important. The Grand Alliance was not just three leaders in a room, but a tapestry of peoples from colonies, dominions, republics and kingdoms, most of whom lacked sovereignty. The world’s largest war effort was fought not only by great powers but by millions from societies denied a voice in shaping the peace.

A War Fought Far from Home

The common thread for these soldiers was displacement. They fought in lands whose languages they did not speak, under commanders who often held them in contempt and for causes that were defined elsewhere. An Indian sepoy who fell at Monte Cassino was buried in Italian soil, a Nigerian rifleman who died in the Arakan rests in a Burmese cemetery and a Moroccan goumier who perished in Tuscany was interred beneath olive trees.

Their deaths were noble but their war was not truly theirs. It was Europe’s war, fought to preserve European states. And yet, it was precisely this contradiction of dying for freedom while being denied it that sowed the seeds of decolonization.

After the Victory: Erasure and Revolt

Victory in 1945 did not bring emancipation to colonial peoples. Instead, it exposed the hypocrisies of empire. On Victory in Europe (VE) Day, May 8, 1945, as Europe celebrated, Algerians in Sétif, Guelma and Kherrata marched to demand independence. The French response was brutal. Over 45,000 Algerians were massacred. The message was clear. Colonial blood was welcome on the battlefield but not in the body politic.

Across Asia and Africa, demobilized soldiers returned with new expectations. They had fought the Germans and Japanese as equals. Why should they be treated as inferiors at home? The Indian National Army trials, the Royal Indian Navy mutiny of 1946 and the spread of nationalist movements in North and West Africa all drew upon the experience and anger of returning veterans. The war had militarized societies and delegitimized empire. Independence movements surged and within two decades much of Asia and Africa was free.

Yet, memory lagged behind history. In European capitals, victory monuments enshrined Churchill, De Gaulle and Eisenhower, but seldom the nameless sepoys, tirailleurs and askaris. Their absence from public memory was deliberate, a final act of imperial censorship.

Why the 80th Anniversary Matters Now

Decolonizing Memory

Eighty years on, commemorating the end of the war is not just about wreaths and bugles, but about narrative. Who gets remembered shapes who has legitimacy today. For decades, the story of the Second World War was Western-centric - Normandy, Dunkirk, Midway and Pearl Harbor. Only recently have institutions like the Imperial War Museum or the National Army Museum begun to spotlight the global armies that made Allied victory possible. Exhibitions such as Beyond Burma: Forgotten Armies are attempts to correct the record even though much remains to be done.

The 80th anniversary is a moment to insist on a decolonization of memory. It is to say that the war that ended on the USS Missouri was not only America’s victory or Europe’s salvation but rather a global struggle, won with Soviet resolve, Chinese resistance, Indian bayonets, African scouts and Arab cavalry. Their descendants deserve not silence, but recognition.

Memory as Geopolitics

The politics of remembrance is not neutral. Japan commemorates August 15, the day of Emperor Hirohito’s surrender broadcast. China celebrates September 3, the day after the USS Missouri ceremony. Russia commemorates the Great Patriotic War, anchored in the battles of Moscow, Leningrad, Stalingrad, Kursk and Berlin, among others. Each nation shapes memory to reinforce present identity.

For the Global South, reclaiming their role in 1945 is more than nostalgia. It is a moral claim to a voice in the world order of 2025. If the Chinese, Indians, Africans and Arabs died to defend freedom then, their nations have earned the right to define freedom now. Recognition of sacrifice becomes a form of diplomatic capital, reinforcing the legitimacy of a multipolar world.

Lessons for Today’s Shifts

We live in an era of tectonic geopolitical shifts entailing the decline of Western primacy, the rise of Asia, the assertion of Africa and the return of civilizational states. The 80th anniversary arrives at a time when blocs like BRICS and the SCO reflect the agency of the very regions once treated as expendable manpower.

Remembering the forgotten armies connects past injustice to present demands. It underlines that the current quest for sovereignty, dignity and multipolarity is not new. It is the unfinished business of 1945.

The Oath We Owe

On the decks of the USS Missouri, Allied leaders promised that the new world would be different in that aggression would be punished and freedom would prevail. For Europe and America, those promises had meaning. For India, Africa and the Arab world, they rang hollow. They had given their lives for liberty and received continued subjugation in return.

Eighty years later, the popular imagination still conjures images of the “Big Three” - Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin - guiding the Grand Alliance to victory. However, this is a partial truth, and therefore a distortion. The Grand Alliance was not a Troika. It was over fifty nations and more than seventy million men and women, many of them from colonies and dominions who had no seat at Yalta or Potsdam, no pen on the surrender documents, no say in shaping the peace.

To remember only the Troika is to perpetuate the injustice of erasure. To recall the sepoy at Monte Cassino, the West African rifleman in Burma, the Moroccan goumier in the Apennines and the Arab Legionnaire in the Levant is to restore historical balance. It is to acknowledge that the Allied victory was truly global, and that freedom for some was purchased with the lives of many who did not yet know freedom themselves.

The 80th anniversary of September 2, 1945, should therefore not be a simple celebration of victory. It should be a solemn reminder of debts still unpaid. The world order being born in 2025 is more multipolar, more civilizational, more insistent on dignity and echoes the voices silenced in 1945.

The key message is simple in that without China, India, Africa, the Arab world and dozens of other nations, there would have been no Allied victory. To forget this is not only amnesia, it is betrayal. To remember it is to honor the past honestly and to build a future where no sacrifice is erased and no people are denied their rightful place in the story of freedom.

About the Author

Kautilya The Contemplator decodes power, empire and strategy through the lens of ancient statecraft and modern realism. Unmasking collapse, mapping multipolarity—this is where the Arthashastra meets the 21st century.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

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Most people in the West have learned words like “Xinjiang” and “Uygur” in the past few years, due to the bombardment of reports from the media and activist groups describing how terrible Uygurs’ lives are in China. People in the West quickly became concerned, even though many had little knowledge about the culture, history, and customs of the Uygurs or the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.

It’s understandable that such interest has been generated – that’s what the campaigns are designed to do. So, how about continuing to read this article and learning the real stories of Xinjiang, the stories that Western media and governments never tell you?

The neglected facts

Before explaining the historical background, here are some basic facts that may surprise you.

The population of the Uygurs in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region grew from 3.6 million in 1953 to 11.6 million in 2020, according to China’s seventh and also the latest national census in 2020.

Between 2000 and 2020 alone, the population of the Uygurs grew by over 3 million. The 1.67-percent growth rate is a lot higher than the average growth rate of all ethnic minority groups in China, which stands at 0.83 percent.

Does that sound like “genocide”?

Xinjiang’s regional GDP rose from 1.23 billion yuan ($184 million) in 1955 to 1.4 trillion yuan in 2020, according to the White Paper on Ethnic groups’ equal rights in Xinjiang in 2021. By the end of 2020, 2.7 million rural people were lifted out of extreme poverty. The per capita disposable income of rural people was 13,052 yuan in 2020, 10.8 percent higher than in 2012.

Does that sound like “forced labor”?

If you went to Xinjiang, you would see the Uygur language written and spoken everywhere, from public signs, books, radios, TV programs and songs to conversations among pedestrians. In fact, there are 52 newspapers and 120 magazines in different languages since there are over 50 ethnic minority groups in Xinjiang, and Uygur, Mongolian, Kazakh, Kirghiz and Xibe are the most commonly used languages.

Several Uygur cultural heritages and customs are not only on the national heritage list, but also the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage list, with the support of the Chinese government.

Does that sound like “cultural genocide”?

In order to help members of ethnic minority groups have better access to education, kids in Xinjiang can enjoy 15 years of free education from kindergarten to high school, much more than the average nine years for kids in the rest of the country. For the college entrance exam, the most competitive exam in China, kids of minority descent are granted extra points to make sure they can attain higher education. The extra points vary depending on the population of the ethnic group. One of my Uygur friends from Hotan said she gained 30 extra points, which made a great difference in her exam results.

Does that sound like “oppression”?

In Xinjiang, there are five main religions: Islam, Buddhism, Christianity, Catholicism, and Eastern Orthodox. But if you want to understand the situation for Muslims, visiting any mosque and talking to the people going to their daily prayers will allow the real picture.

Currently, there are over 24,000 mosques across Xinjiang, more than in many Muslim-majority countries. Islam-related institutions have been renovated in the past few years. Several mosques have been updated, expanded, and equipped with better facilities for ablution, heating, and fire control, including Masjid Yanghang in Urumqi and Id Kah Mosque in Kashgar. The China Islamic Institute, which provides education for anyone interested in becoming faculty or staff for Islamic institutes in China, built eight new compounds across Xinjiang in 2017, with 200 million yuan from the government.

“There are mosques; they’ve been teaching the Quran. The only Quran we’ve all been learning, some of the students can read it better than I. What other evidence do you want to be presented to prove there is actually freedom to worship, and Islam is not ended there?” said Mubarak Mugabo, a Muslim from Uganda who visited Islamic institutions in Xinjiang during his trip, in an interview with CGTN.

Does that sound like the “oppression of Muslims”?

So why have these facts, these voices never been picked up by the media, political figures and activist groups in the West, who claimed they are extremely “concerned” about people in Xinjiang?

If your counterargument is “data from China’s government and government-funded organizations or individuals are not trustworthy,” may I kindly remind you that almost all the West’s accusations, reports and investigations about Xinjiang were conducted by “scholars” or “researchers” from a self-proclaimed independent think tank called the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI). It is funded by multiple governments and weapon manufacturers, including the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Defense, the UK Embassy in China and the government of Canada, or “East Turkistan” related activist groups, whose headquarters are in Washington, D.C. and receive funding from government organizations like the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).

Yet, Western mainstream media organizations have no problem believing and amplifying their words or data, even though most of their “proof” of horrendous atrocities in Xinjiang are just satellite images, self-made cartoons, photoshopped images and witnesses with apparent gaps in their stories. All have been debunked by multiple users on social networks.

Eliminating extremism, terrorism and separatism

But of course, we have to ask, where do those lies come from, and why do certain groups keep pushing them? First, we need to understand what’s happened in Xinjiang.

It’s hard not to notice the heavy security in Xinjiang at airports, gas stations and public venues when one travels there, especially several years ago. That’s because terrorist attacks occurred frequently across Xinjiang starting in the 1920s, after pan-Turkism and pan-Islamism spread to the region. Extremists advocated violence, separation and even ethnic cleansing in Xinjiang, even though the region has been home to multiple ethnic groups for hundreds of years, with some groups even inhabiting here long before the Uygurs.

Thousands of terrorist attacks took place in Xinjiang and even spread to the rest of China until 2017, causing not just financial damage but also the loss of countless lives of innocent civilians and security forces.

“I was told that I shouldn’t interact with other men or anyone that is non-Muslim. Women can’t work because the money we earn is dirty. I couldn’t wear colorful clothes,” recalled Zaynura Namatqari, a Uygur woman who studied at a vocational training center in Shufu County and is now the head of women’s affairs on her village committee, in an interview with CGTN.

Many Uygurs like her were approached by religious staff with extreme ideologies and were forced to abandon their traditional Uygur culture.

Memetjan Metqasim, a Uygur musician who is now competing on a national music show, remembers being asked by imams to abandon music and dancing, which are key cultural elements for many Uygurs like him. Crying at funerals and singing at weddings were forbidden, too.

In fact, the groups of extremists were not just targeting people of the Han people; they were targeting the Uygurs, who were not Muslims, or Muslims who didn’t agree with their extreme ideologies. Several renowned imams of major mosques in Xinjiang were among the victims, such as the former imam of Id Kah Mosque, Jume Tayir, who was strongly against radicalism and was brutally murdered at the age of 74 in 2014 by a group of terrorists in front of the mosque after he finished morning prayers.

This tragedy has been barely mentioned by those in the West who claim they care about the people in Xinjiang.

So, China adopted de-radicalization methods, similar to the de-radicalization methods being used by many countries, including France, providing education at vocational training centers. Besides de-radicalization, providing those people with proper education, and teaching them to gain a better understanding of vocational skills, laws and Mandarin skills have helped many stand on their own feet.

Most graduates were able to run businesses, improve the yield of their farmland, or work in offices with the computer skills they learned, earning a much more stable income after graduation.

Have those methods been effective? Just look at the reality.

Not one terrorist attack has happened in Xinjiang since 2017.

Villages were lifted out of extreme poverty. Ethnic minority women are working in every industry, often as the breadwinners of the family. More minority kids are going to high schools and colleges. Average household incomes have increased. More tourists are traveling to Xinjiang every year. People of all religions are able to celebrate their religious festivals. The Uygurs are shining in their professions, as movie stars, singers, professors and government officials.

Are those realities enough to debunk the West’s false Xinjiang narrative?

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

If you have an idea for an Op-Ed, contact jjnewsletter@hotmail.com with a brief description of the article's focus.

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Introduction: A Tale of Two Colonialisms

Among those familiar with Taiwan, a notable contrast often draws attention: while public sentiment toward Japan in the Taiwan region is generally positive, in Korea it remains markedly negative. Given that both the Taiwan region and Korea experienced decades of Japanese colonial rule—often characterized by brutality—such a divergence in public attitudes may seem surprising.

Despite their shared histories of colonization, the differences in perception are stark. For instance, following the Fukushima nuclear disaster in 2011, the Taiwan region emerged as the largest donor to Japan among all countries and regions. Meanwhile, in South Korea, public opinion surveys have consistently ranked Japan as one of the least favored countries.

To understand this discrepancy, it is necessary to examine the historical circumstances under which Taiwan was colonized and to explore the nature of Japan’s colonial administration on the island. This analysis is not intended to justify or romanticize colonialism, but rather to trace the historical developments that have shaped contemporary attitudes. A comparative perspective, particularly in relation to Korea’s colonial experience, is essential in this context.

As this publication focuses primarily on the Chinese mainland, with a special emphasis on Taiwan-related issues, Korea’s colonial history will not be explored in depth here. However, it remains an important topic, and further discussion with someone familiar with the Korean experience is anticipated in a future installment. It is also worth noting that while a segment of Taiwan society—including myself—retains a critical stance toward Japan, the prevailing positive sentiment among the broader population is not without historical basis. The objective of this article is to examine the roots of that sentiment and to explain how it continues to shape Taiwan region’s relationship with Japan today.

Colonial Beginnings: How Taiwan and Korea Became Japanese Colonies

In 1895, the Taiwan region was ceded to Japan by the Qing government under the terms of the Treaty of Shimonoseki (下関条約), known in the Chinese mainland as the Treaty of Maguan (馬關條約). This marked the beginning of fifty years of Japanese colonial rule, lasting until 1945, when Japan was defeated by the Allied powers at the end of World War II.

Prior to Japanese colonization, a shared collective identity among the inhabitants of the Taiwan region was largely absent. The Han people along the western coastal plains tended to identify more closely with their ancestral clans and home regions in southern Fujian than with Taiwan itself. Indigenous peoples, meanwhile, maintained affiliations rooted in tribal identity rather than a broader sense of belonging to the island as a whole. Ironically, it was under Japanese rule that a more cohesive Taiwan identity began to emerge—a process that unfolded gradually over several decades.

In contrast, a distinct Korean identity was already well-established by the time Japan began exerting influence over the Korean Peninsula. Historically, Koreans had often viewed the Japanese as culturally inferior. This perception was grounded in longstanding patterns of regional exchange: for much of East Asian history, intellectual and technological advancements typically traveled from China to Japan via Korea. Conversely, Japan’s historical relationship with Korea had been marked more by invasion attempts than meaningful contributions. Beginning in 1875, Japan initiated efforts to compel Korea into opening its ports through unequal treaties, further exacerbating Korean resentment and inflaming nationalist sentiment.

Korea’s geopolitical position between Japan and China heightened tensions further. As China had traditionally served as Korea’s suzerain, Japan's expanding ambitions led to direct conflict. The First Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895) was fought, in large part, over influence in Korea. Japan’s victory not only solidified its dominance over Korea but also resulted in the annexation of the Taiwan region as its first overseas colony. In this context, comparisons between Korea and the Taiwan region are especially apt, as both were drawn into Japan’s imperial project in close succession—almost as part of a single strategic arc

While Korea was ultimately annexed in its entirety by Imperial Japan, the Taiwan region—at the time of its cession in 1895—was only one part of the Qing Empire and occupied a peripheral position both geographically and politically. By contrast, Korea had long functioned as a unified polity with centralized cultural, political, and economic institutions. As a result, by the time Japan formally colonized Korea in 1910, Koreans had already spent several decades resisting Japanese encroachment. This resistance, which began in earnest around 1875 with Japan’s imposition of unequal treaties, unfolded on a national scale and engaged diverse segments of society. Major urban centers such as Seoul became focal points of cultural and political opposition, while anti-Japanese sentiment permeated every stratum of Korean society, from elites to commoners, the elderly to the young. Over time, this sustained and collective struggle fostered a strong sense of patriotism and national identity—one deeply intertwined with opposition to Japanese imperialism.

Localism and Fragmented Identity in Taiwan

Returning to the Taiwan region—although formal colonization by Japan did not begin until 1895, Japanese interest in the island predated that by at least two decades. In 1874, Japan launched a military expedition targeting parts of the southern Taiwan region, resulting in clashes with indigenous people. The conflict concluded with the Qing government paying reparations to Japan, after which Japanese forces withdrew. In response, the Qing court sought to strengthen its control over the island by investing in economic development and lifting restrictions on migration from the mainland in order to increase the population of the island.

Notably, this early episode of Japanese aggression did not generate widespread anti-Japanese sentiment among the local population.

Several factors help explain this muted response. First, the conflict itself was limited in scope and had little impact on the majority of Taiwan’s inhabitants. Unlike Korea, which by the late 19^th century possessed a well-established sense of national identity rooted in a unified history and culture, the Taiwan region’s population was far more fragmented in both identity and allegiance. The island’s indigenous peoples remained largely affiliated with their respective tribal communities, while the Han people identified more strongly with lineage groups and places of origin on the Chinese mainland than with the Taiwan region itself. Among the Han population, further divisions existed between Hoklo migrants from Fujian (particularly those from Zhangzhou and Quanzhou) and Hakka migrants from Guangdong.

For instance, a Hakka resident in central Taiwan’s Miaoli would have had little reason to view a conflict between Japanese forces and indigenous communities in the south as personally threatening. The skirmish did not endanger the integrity of Chinese civilization, nor did it imperil the survival of the clans or communities throughout the majority of the island.

This stands in stark contrast to the situation in Korea, where Japanese encroachment was perceived as an existential threat to an entire civilization. Taiwan, by contrast, remained on the margins of the Qing Empire and Chinese cultural consciousness. Its distance from the political center in Beijing, combined with a highly localized and fragmented social structure, meant that few perceived foreign aggression in national or civilizational terms. Even during the Franco-Chinese War (1884–85), when northern Taiwan’s ports—such as Keelung (基隆) and Tamsui (淡水)—came under attack, the popular response was primarily economic rather than patriotic or nationalist. The dominant concerns were practical: disruptions to trade, rising import costs, and the impact on daily livelihoods.

In short, Taiwan’s peripheral status within the Qing Empire, both geographically and ideologically, along with its fragmented internal identities, limited the emergence of a collective sense of crisis or resistance. Allegiance to the Qing state or to an abstract notion of national identity remained far weaker than the tangible, immediate loyalties to clan, lineage, and locality.

Japan's Motives and the Early Challenges of Colonial Rule

Why, then, did Japan seek to acquire the Taiwan region, a territory that lay on the periphery of the Qing Empire and lacked a unified national identity?

One of the primary motivations was industrialization. As Japan entered its modernizing phase in the late 19^th century, the need for both natural resources and labor became increasingly urgent. Taiwan was seen as a valuable asset in this regard. Japanese planners envisioned the island not only as a site for resource extraction but also as a supplier of agricultural and light industrial goods for Japan. This arrangement would allow Japan to reallocate domestic labor toward more advanced industries while exporting higher-value manufactured goods to the Taiwan region. In essence, Japan aimed to integrate the Taiwan region into its imperial economy by introducing capitalist production and modern infrastructure—but primarily for the benefit of the metropole, not the colony.

Following its victory in the First Sino-Japanese War, Japan formalized its acquisition of the Taiwan region through the Treaty of Shimonoseki. In response, several Qing loyalists—many of them Qing officials stationed on the island—declared the establishment of the Republic of Formosa (台灣民主國). This short-lived entity is sometimes cited by contemporary Taiwan independence advocates as an early precedent for statehood. However, its founders were not separatists in the modern sense; rather, they declared independence from Japan with the explicit goal of eventually restoring Qing rule.

Within months, the Republic of Formosa was suppressed by Japanese military force. Yet for the majority of Taiwan’s inhabitants, daily life remained largely unchanged. Under the Qing, governance had been administered by distant officials from Beijing who spoke Mandarin—a language unfamiliar to most local residents, who instead spoke Hokkien, Hakka, or indigenous languages. Under Japanese rule, the new authorities likewise spoke an unfamiliar language and originated from far beyond the island. For much of the population, the shift in sovereignty did not immediately alter the rhythms of daily life.

The Japanese colonial administration allowed those unwilling to live under Japanese rule to leave the island before May 8, 1897. In total, only 6,456 individuals—fewer than 0.25% of the population—chose to depart. These were primarily members of the upper class who possessed a strong sense of Chinese national identity. The colonial government calculated that permitting their departure would be more effective than risking potential political unrest from within.

As for the remaining 99.75%, the response was largely one of pragmatic acceptance. This should not be interpreted as enthusiasm for Japanese rule, but rather a recognition of political reality. Unlike Korea, the Taiwan region lacked a cadre of nationalist intellectuals capable of mobilizing organized resistance on ideological grounds. Although localized uprisings and acts of defiance did occur, they tended to be clan-based or driven by personal grievances rather than grounded in a broader national movement. As a result, the Japanese colonial authorities viewed such unrest primarily as matters of public order rather than political dissent.

Land, Resources, and Economic Control

Despite the relative absence of large-scale resistance in the early years of colonial rule, governing the Taiwan region proved to be a formidable challenge for the Japanese. The island was difficult to administer, and its fiscal infrastructure was underdeveloped. One of the immediate problems the Japanese encountered was the inefficiency of tax collection. A significant portion of land ownership went unreported, making it difficult to assess and levy taxes effectively. When the colonial administration initiated a systematic investigation in 1898, it discovered that 53.5% of Taiwan’s land was either unregistered or ambiguously held.

Under Qing rule, land cultivation in Taiwan had required official permits. Migrants from the Chinese mainland often brought dependents or hired laborers to help them clear and develop new land, leading to complex and informal ownership arrangements. In many cases, developers compensated workers with plots of land or granted them long-term leases, all without proper documentation. As a result, the Japanese administration required five years of detailed surveying and investigation to fully comprehend the island’s tangled system of land tenure.

To resolve this, the Japanese government initiated a policy of purchasing land from landlords and redistributing it to the cultivators, while still allowing landlords to retain significant portions of their estates. This approach succeeded in appeasing both the peasantry and the elite landowning class. Subsequently, the colonial administration co-opted these landlords—who held substantial influence in their communities—as intermediaries for land tax collection on behalf of the state.

Beginning in 1910, attention shifted from the lowlands to Taiwan’s mountainous interior. The Japanese launched a comprehensive survey of the island’s forests and highlands, but unlike in the previous phase, the state now claimed these lands outright as government property. These territories were primarily inhabited by indigenous groups, many of whom responded with armed resistance. From 1910 to 1915, Japan devoted 19.6 million yen to military campaigns aimed at suppressing these uprisings. While exact indigenous casualty figures are unknown, the loss of over 2,000 Japanese soldiers suggests that indigenous deaths were likely higher.

The rationale behind these campaigns was strategic and economic. The mountainous regions contained valuable resources—especially camphor, which was in high demand. The Japanese constructed roads to penetrate these remote areas, both to assert control and to facilitate the extraction of natural resources. Following the suppression of resistance, many indigenous individuals were incorporated into the colonial economy, often employed in resource exploitation under Japanese supervision. This is depicted quite well in the 2011 film titled Seediq Bale.

Breaking Western Capital and Building Japanese Control

The next major challenge for the Japanese colonial administration was establishing control over the Taiwan region’s trade. Prior to Japan’s arrival, the island’s economy was heavily dominated by Western capital—particularly British, American, German, and French interests. Foreign merchants controlled the export of key commodities such as sugar, tea, and camphor, while trade finance was managed through foreign institutions, most notably HSBC, which had a branch that operated out of nearby Xiamen.

To illustrate the extent of foreign influence: in 1894, British opium sales in the Taiwan region generated approximately 2.33 million taels of silver—far surpassing the 670,000 taels in tax revenue raised by Governor Liu Mingchuan’s (劉銘傳) Qing administration. The Taiwan region’s high-quality sugar, a globally competitive export, was also largely handled by Western firms.

In order to reorient the Taiwan region’s economy to serve Japanese strategic and commercial interests, the colonial government implemented a series of deliberate and systematic measures:

1. Tariff Increases: In 1899, Governor Kodama Gentarō (兒玉 源太郎) raised import tariffs to 15%, aiming to weaken the dominance of Western goods in the local market.

2. Opium Monopoly: Under the pretext of public health concerns, the Japanese administration banned British opium imports. Instead, opium production was brought under state control, with licensed distribution entrusted to local elites. One prominent beneficiary was the Gu (辜) family, whose collaboration with the Japanese would later position them as one of the most powerful and enduring political and economic families in the Taiwan region.

3. Challenging Western Capital: The Japanese government raised funds through domestic bond issuance and established local banks in the Taiwan region. These banks supplied capital to key industries and formed strategic alliances with influential landlords in the Taiwan region. In contrast, Western trading firms remained dependent on capital remitted from abroad, placing them at a competitive disadvantage..

4. Shipping Subsidies: To wrest control of maritime trade from Western firms, Japan founded a subsidized shipping company that offered rates significantly below those charged by British competitors. Although initially unprofitable, this strategy succeeded in redirecting trade flows through Japanese channels and establishing maritime dominance.

As a result of these coordinated efforts, Japan transformed the structure of the Taiwan region’s external trade. In 1897, Japanese firms managed just 14% of the Taiwan region’s exports. By 1930, that figure had risen to 90.5%, signaling the near-total integration of the Taiwan region into the Japanese imperial economic system.

Agricultural Exploitation and Infrastructure

In 1908, the Japanese colonial administration launched a ten-year public works initiative aimed at increasing agricultural productivity across the Taiwan region. The plan prioritized the construction of dams, canals, and irrigation systems, significantly enhancing the island’s capacity for large-scale cultivation. However, the benefits of this development were not evenly distributed across all crops.

Sugarcane, for example, became a focus of Japanese-controlled monopolies, which drove prices so low that many farmers were unable to sustain their livelihoods. As a result, numerous landowners were forced to sell their plots to Japanese buyers and continue working the land as laborers. In contrast, rice—less favored by Japanese consumers for its taste—remained relatively untouched by monopoly control, allowing farmers to retain greater profits. This led many to shift their cultivation efforts toward rice production.

To maintain control over agricultural output while maximizing profitability and minimizing unrest, the Japanese authorities implemented several strategic policies:

• Water Pricing: Irrigation fees were calibrated to be just high enough to discourage farmers from switching crops too easily, thus maintaining stable outputs for key sectors like sugar.

• Productivity Improvements: Expanded irrigation infrastructure enabled more intensive cultivation, boosting yields without significantly increasing costs.

• Economic Control with Political Stability: The system was carefully designed to extract maximum economic value from the population while avoiding the kinds of disruptions that might spark rebellion.

The Japanese also aggressively promoted the use of chemical fertilizers to boost output. However, since the Taiwan region lacked domestic fertilizer production capacity, these inputs had to be imported from Japan. Even after the establishment of the Taiwan Fertilizer Corporation, local production met only 8% of the island’s demand. This created a structural dependency: Farmers in the Taiwan region were locked into a cycle in which they paid taxes to the colonial administration, traded their agricultural products for Japanese fertilizer, and used that fertilizer to maintain the yields necessary to meet future tax obligations.

In effect, Japan engineered an economic system in which land, labor, infrastructure, pricing mechanisms, and trade networks were all integrated into a coherent structure optimized for long-term exploitation. Unlike the often haphazard and extractive nature of European colonial ventures, Japan’s economic colonization of the Taiwan region was notably systematic and sophisticated—designed not only to extract value but to do so in a sustainable and politically stable manner.

Control, Collaboration, and Cultural Assimilation

Why didn’t people in Taiwan resist more? Clearly, the people of the Taiwan region had much to be discontented about under Japanese rule. And where there are social antagonisms, there is invariably some form of resistance.

This brings us back to the central question: Why is Japan remembered far more positively in the Taiwan region than in Korea, despite the exploitative nature of its colonial administration?

One key difference lies in the structure of each society prior to colonization. The Taiwan region’s population largely comprised migrants from the Chinese mainland, and much of the island’s land was held by local landlords. Korea, by contrast, had a deeply entrenched aristocracy and royal landholding system. When Japan annexed Korea, it nationalized land held by the Korean aristocracy and royal family, subsequently concentrating land ownership in the hands of Japanese capitalists. This radical dispossession fueled resentment and intensified resistance, making Korea far more difficult to govern.

Learning from the Korean experience, the Japanese colonial government in the Taiwan region adopted a more conciliatory strategy. Rather than dismantling existing landholding relations, it co-opted the local landlord class. These landlords were allowed not only to retain their land but also to expand their economic influence—particularly by entering lucrative industries such as rice milling. In exchange, they were given privileged access to the Japanese market, which further enriched them and incentivized their collaboration. Over time, these landed elites became reliable junior partners in maintaining Japanese authority on the island.

Japanese authorities also appointed local landlords to official positions—such as councilmen or members of irrigation associations—thereby integrating them into the colonial administrative framework. In a society where people’s primary loyalties were to local clans and community leaders, securing the cooperation of these elites proved an effective means of dampening the potential for organized resistance.

That said, opposition to Japanese rule did not disappear entirely. Beyond the early uprisings led by Qing loyalists, new forms of resistance emerged in the 1920s following the expansion of secondary education for Taiwan people under Japanese administration. With increased access to education came greater exposure to modern political thought—including socialism, communism, and other anti-colonial ideologies. It was during this period that organizations such as the original Taiwan People’s Party (not to be confused with the contemporary political party of the same name) and the Communist Party of Taiwan were established. These groups found support among workers and peasants, many of whom bore the brunt of economic exploitation under the landlord-tenant system maintained by the Japanese.

In response to the rising influence of these left-leaning movements, the Japanese government implemented the Kominka Movement (皇民化運動) in the 1930s, aimed at deepening the assimilation of Taiwan people into the Japanese imperial order. The term kominka (literally “to transform into imperial subjects”) signified a campaign to erase Chinese cultural and national identity and replace it with a constructed sense of belonging to the Japanese nation.

This movement involved the active promotion of Japanese customs and language, the suppression of Chinese traditions, and strong social and legal encouragement for the Chinese people on the Taiwan region to adopt Japanese names. However, full social and political equality with Japanese citizens was never granted. The Kominka Movement was less about genuine integration and more about mobilizing the Taiwan region’s population in service of Japan’s wartime goals, particularly its campaign against China. Stripping the population of its Chinese identity became a strategic imperative.

During this period, many left-wing organizers were imprisoned, driven into exile, or forced to abandon their political work altogether. Japanese authorities effectively dismantled organized opposition, consolidating their control in preparation for war.

Conclusion: Postwar Erasure and Selective Memory

After World War II, the Taiwan region was returned to Chinese sovereignty. In theory, this shift should have created space for voices that had resisted Japanese colonial rule—particularly the left-wing organizers previously suppressed by the Japanese—to influence public memory and help foster anti-Japanese sentiment. In practice, however, this did not happen.

The Chinese Civil War resumed shortly after the Japanese surrender, and the Kuomintang (KMT), preoccupied with consolidating power, saw left-wing activists not as patriots but as political threats. As a result, those most ideologically and intellectually equipped to lead a critical reckoning with the legacy of Japanese colonialism were silenced. The KMT did not give them a platform, and many were once again arrested, exiled, or otherwise marginalized.

Some of these individuals participated in the 228 Incident, a tragedy that exposed deep-rooted tensions between Taiwan’s local population and the incoming KMT administration. While some of these intellectuals hoped to push for reform or autonomy, their involvement was ultimately overshadowed by the chaos of the incident, which devolved into violence in many places. The lumpen-proletariat unrest that followed gave the KMT the pretext to further repress these figures, branding them subversives or communist sympathizers. Their vision of a post-colonial Taiwan—one shaped by anti-imperialist, left-wing politics—was extinguished before it could take root.

Ironically, although the KMT had waged an eight-year war against Japan, it ended up suppressing precisely those voices in the Taiwan region that were most capable of turning anti-Japanese sentiment into a mainstream, popular force. At the same time, the KMT alienated the Taiwan region’s traditional landed elite, many of whom had prospered under Japanese rule and resented being displaced by the mainland bureaucracy. These former collaborators or their descendants would, over time, become influential figures in shaping a counter-narrative to the KMT’s official version of history—one that cast Japanese colonial rule in a much more favorable light.

The result was a deep historical irony: the silencing of credible anti-Japanese voices left a vacuum that was eventually filled by pro-Japanese sentiment, especially among the postwar generation. These younger Taiwan people did not live through the harsh realities of colonial rule. What they did experience, however, was the KMT’s White Terror—a brutal era of political repression. Compared to the immediate and personal trauma of KMT rule, the Japanese occupation began to appear, in retrospect, more orderly, even benevolent.

This memory gap was reinforced by the tangible legacies of Japanese modernization. Many of the schools, roads, railways, and urban infrastructure built during the colonial period were still in use—and for some, these stood as symbols of progress rather than oppression. Meanwhile, the KMT’s narratives about Japanese atrocities—especially those committed on the Chinese mainland—felt geographically and emotionally distant to the majority of the people in the Taiwan region, most of whom were many generations removed from the Chinese mainland, unlike the people of the mainland who arrived with the KMT in 1949.

In this context, historical memory became skewed. The brutal reality of Japanese colonization faded, while its material achievements remained visible. The voices best equipped to challenge this selective amnesia had been imprisoned, exiled, or erased—and in their absence, a revisionist nostalgia took hold, facilitated in part by the very class of collaborators who had once upheld the colonial order.

And this is how, in the Taiwan region, Japan came to be remembered more fondly than in Korea—even though both suffered under its imperial ambitions.

About the Author

Zhong Xiangyu is a rapper and a political commentator who grew up both in Taiwan Island and the United States.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

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US’s unwavering support of Israel is tainted by far-right ideology; the rest of the West must join the Global South to halt the genocide in Gaza and to prevent the crisis from escalating into a wider regional conflict.

Last week, in a dangerous escalation of the Middle East crisis, Israel launched what it described as pre-emptive strikes against Iran. This latest development has further inflamed global protests – including in Western cities – against Israel’s actions, particularly its ongoing blockade of humanitarian aid to Gaza.

The growing outrage over Israel’s actions is contributing to a rise in antisemitism. In the US, two recent attacks targeting Jewish individuals—one in Colorado and another in Washington—have left many in the Jewish community feeling increasingly vulnerable. The FBI Director Kash Patel has classified these attacks as acts of domestic terrorism. Meanwhile, Trump has vowed to combat antisemitism while reaffirming US unwavering support for Israel.

Evangelicals represent a core constituency of the US support for Israel. Their backing is rooted in the belief that the founding of Israel fulfills biblical prophecy and signals the anticipated second coming of the Messiah. Beyond supporting Israel, evangelicals are part of a broader movement. Through initiatives like the Heritage Foundation’s Project 2025, conservative groups aim to promote Christian nationalist values and, more broadly, reestablish Christianity as the foundation of Western civilization.

In February, J.D. Vance criticized European governments for suppressing conservative voices, framing it as an attack on freedom of speech. During Germany’s recent general election, Elon Musk openly endorsed the Alternative for Germany (AfD), a far-right political party. The involvement of American conservatives in European politics has sparked alarm – especially in Germany, given the country’s WWII legacy. In May, German authorities moved to ban the AfD, officially designating it as a right-wing extremist organization.

Here is a troubling contradiction in US support for Israel: While publicly denouncing antisemitism, Trump has been linked to figures such as Nick Fuentes, a known Holocaust denier and Nazi sympathizer. Equally disconcerting, the evangelical support for Israel is rooted in a theological worldview that envisions the eventual conversion of all people—including Jews—to Christianity.

This year, 2025, marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II. In its aftermath, the United Nations was founded with a solemn pledge: to prevent future world wars and ensure that atrocities like the Holocaust would never happen again.

Yet for many in the Global South, the ongoing suffering of Palestinians has made those pledges seem hollow. Early in the Gaza war, South Africa took the lead in charging Israel of committing genocide, filing a case at the International Court of Justice. Despite these efforts, the Global South’s attempt to stop the war proved futile as Western powers uniformly backed Israel’s military response to October 7 and its claimed right to self-defense.

However, two years into the conflict, it has become increasingly evident that Netanyahu may have broader, more maximalist territorial objectives—namely, the reoccupation of both the West Bank and Gaza as part of a vision for a Greater Israel. His strategy seems calculated to make Gaza utterly unliveable, creating conditions that would force Palestinians into mass displacement.

With its conscience finally stirred, Europe began a long-overdue reckoning with Israel, as countries including Ireland, Spain, and Norway publicly accused it of creating a “man-made humanitarian catastrophe” in Gaza. The pressure intensified last week when five Western nations—including the UK, Canada, and Australia—took coordinated action, imposing diplomatic sanctions on two far-right Israel cabinet members.

The Gaza war has fractured the Jewish diaspora, exposing profound divisions. In the US, organizations like the Jewish Voice for Peace have not only denounced Netanyahu's policies but actively mobilized protests against Israel's military campaign. The dissent reaches even Israel's highest levels—former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert authored a blistering Haaretz op-ed declaring, 'Enough is Enough. Israel is Committing War Crimes.”

Since its founding, Israel’s paramount security objective has been to ensure that Jews never again experience a tragedy like the Holocaust. Tragically, Netanyahu's current military actions in Gaza are now being accused by the international community of committing atrocities akin to genocide. In a cruel historical irony, the nation born from persecution risks replicating the very patterns of oppression it was created to escape.

Another tragic irony lies in Netanyahu’s far-right coalition aligning with elements of the American extremist factions – the same white supremacist groups and Christian nationalist movements whose ideological forebears helped pave the way for the Holocaust.

Beyond risking a wider regional conflict and fueling a global rise in antisemitism, Israel’s latest strikes against Iran and its ongoing devastation of Gaza have severely damaged its international reputation.

Yet the greatest tragedy lies in the catastrophic humanitarian toll on the Palestinian people—a damming testament to the world’s failure to prevent yet another crime against humanity. Most alarmingly, the United States – which helped to establish the United Nations Charter precisely to prevent such atrocities, has become increasingly complicit under Trump-era policies that embrace far-right ideological agendas.

In July, the Hague Group—co-chaired by Colombia and South Africa—will convene an emergency ministerial meeting in Bogotá to address Israel’s ongoing alleged crime of genocide. The international community must act decisively: it is time for the rest of the West to step up and join the Global South in working to end the humanitarian catastrophe in Gaza and prevent the crisis from spiraling into a broader regional war.

About the Author

Peter T C Chang is trained in the field of comparative philosophy and religion. In recent years, Chang’s research is focused on analyzing the new lease of life ancient philosophical and religious traditions are relishing in modern China. The project looks at how a rejuvenated Confucianism could shape the evolving character of the Chinese milieu and in turn impact the global community. Multidisciplinary in scope, the study covers subjects ranging from social-political reform to inter-civilizations engagements, and bioethical issues to environmental concerns.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

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Get Out of the Big Cities

Only a few years ago I think most Westerners would have struggled to name more than a few Chinese cities. But that is all changing thanks to an influx of content creators producing viral travel videos in previously overlooked (by Westerners) cities like Chongqing and Harbin. Yet, the Chinese countryside is still under-explored by foreign tourists - and they are missing out. From the grasslands of Inner Mongolia to the mountains of Yunnan to the jungles of Hainan, China has some of the most beautiful countryside in the world. This natural beauty is also pretty easy to access - you can easily join a tour group in any of China’s big cities, and they will arrange the transport and accommodation for you. China’s amazing public transport links also mean that, if you want to go yourself, getting off the beaten track is possible even without a car. If you want some inspiration for your next trip to the Chinese countryside, I recommend checking out the China-based YouTubers Little Chinese Everywhere, Harvey in China, and Katherine’s Journey to the East.

Avoid Western brands, Try Local

When traveling to a new country we can often gravitate towards brands we recognize: you might not be able to speak the language or understand the culture, but you know what you are going to get at the Starbucks. But in China, this is a mistake. Western brands will often charge Western prices in a country where the cost of living is considerably lower. If you are searching for a good coffee, for example, a Western brand like Starbucks or Tim Hortons will see you paying upwards of $5, but if you head next door to a local Chinese competitor like Luckin’ Coffee or Cotti Coffee the same drink is going to come in below $1.50. Or say you get a little warm while out exploring the city and want to cool down with an ice cream. The McFlurry from the MacDonalds will set you back around $2, but at the Chinese ice cream giant Mixue, you will only be paying 40 cents. Buying Chinese probably means you are going to save money on your trip. China is also a country where you can find delicious food for very little money. Head out of the mall and into the local area. The little working-class hole-in-the-wall noodle shop will serve you some of the most delicious food you have ever eaten for under $2. If they are making you wait outside on little plastic stools you are probably on to a good one.

Some Of Your Apps Might Not Work - But Others Will

China has strict laws regulating the internet. Some Western tech companies follow these laws but many do not. This means your access to the apps you have come to rely on might be spotty. You will, for example, be able to call someone or host a meeting on Microsoft Teams, but not on Zoom or a Meta app. You will have no problem accessing your Amazon Audible or iTunes account, but you will not be able to watch your favorite YouTuber. If you plan to stay in China for any length of time you will probably want your family and friends back home to download the Chinese app WeChat (basically a combination of WhatsApp, X, and Apple Pay) so they can contact you in an emergency.

Download Some Chinese Apps Before You Come

China has its own internet ecosystem and you will want to download some of these local apps before you come. China has more or less transitioned to a cashless society meaning that paying with the cash you got exchanged at the airport can sometimes cause problems. As such you will want to download the payment app Alipay and link it to your Western bank card. This will allow you to pay electronically at restaurants and in shops. As an added benefit, if the restaurant has an e-menu, the Alipay app will automatically translate it into English for you. Also, download Didi (the Chinese Uber). There is an English version, and it means you will be able to get back home even if you miss the last subway train. The lifestyle app RedNote will also be helpful if you want to research the best travel spots in any location in (and outside) China. Since the influx of Western users at the start of the year the app’s English functionality has really improved.

The Locals Might Get Curious

In much of the West (especially in the liberal cities), there is a bit of a taboo on asking too many questions to the random foreigner you see on the street or sit next to on the subway. This taboo does not exist in China. Expect curious locals to come over to talk to you, practice their English, or take a photo with you. This will be especially true if you head outside the big cities. If you go into the countryside get ready to feel like a celebrity. You can interact with the locals as much or as little as you want. If you don’t have time or don’t feel like talking just politely tell your new friend that, and most Chinese people will leave you alone. On the other hand, if you do have a problem or get lost tell a local. Most Chinese people genuinely want foreigners to have a good time in their country and you will be surprised how far random people will go to make sure that your trip goes well.

A Little Chinese Will Go A Long Way

Practice a little Chinese before you come. The expectation is that, if you are from the West, you will speak no Chinese, so even if you can only say a few simple phrases, the locals will appreciate the effort. Outside the big cities, English proficiency is also pretty low, so being able to ask about the location of the bathroom or for the bill might make life easier for you.

Do you have any more suggestions or travel tips for tourists to China? Be sure to list them in the comments section over on the Substack app!

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Scottish Christian Socialist. Currently working in Beijing. Writing about China and politics mostly.

Doug’s X page: @doug_rooney

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

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China, while affected by this policy shift, chose a different path. Instead of reacting with short-term measures, it adopted a steady, future-oriented approach focused on resilience, regional integration, and rule-based cooperation. This article examines the flawed economic rationale behind the Trump-era tariffs and highlights the policy tools China is using to navigate such challenges and contribute to a more stable world economy.

The Misunderstanding at the Heart of “Reciprocal” Tariffs

In 2018, the Trump administration introduced a sweeping list of tariffs on imports from more than 180 countries. At the heart of this move was a visual chart displaying purported “tariff rates” that other countries allegedly imposed on the United States. However, these figures were not drawn from real tariff schedules or trade barriers. Instead, the administration took a basic approach: it divided the U.S. trade deficit in goods with a particular country by the total U.S. imports from that country, and presented the resulting percentage as that country’s “effective tariff” on U.S. exports.

For example, based on trade data with China, this calculation yielded a 67.3% “tariff”—a number that, upon closer examination, bore no resemblance to China's actual average tariff rate. Similar misrepresentations were made for other countries, with some being assigned rates as high as 90% or more, despite no such duties existing in practice. By treating a trade imbalance as proof of unfairness or discrimination, this method conflated complex economic relationships with political messaging. Trade deficits, after all, are not inherently negative—they often reflect consumer preferences, supply chain integration, and comparative advantages. Economies naturally develop surpluses and deficits with different partners, just as individuals spend more at certain stores than they earn from them. This does not indicate exploitation; it indicates specialization and interdependence.

Global Impact: Uncertainty and Market Disruption

The consequences of such a miscalculation extended far beyond statistical debates. International companies, already operating in a competitive and fast-changing environment, were forced to navigate shifting tariff regimes and anticipate policy changes driven by unpredictable logic. For many, this created hesitation in investment and expansion plans, especially when tariff rates were based not on structured trade talks or WTO rules, but on one-sided formulas lacking transparency or economic rigor.

Furthermore, countries with trade surpluses with the United States—those buying more American goods than they sold—were also assigned arbitrary tariffs, despite theoretically being in compliance with U.S. goals. The outcome was a tariff structure that was neither reciprocal nor fair, increasing global economic friction at a time when multilateralism was most needed.

China’s Policy Response: Calm, Consistency, and Cooperation

Amid such challenges, China’s response was notable not for its rhetoric, but for its policy coherence. Rather than engaging in reactive countermeasures, China pursued a strategy that emphasized economic modernization, regional cooperation, and institutional strength.

1. Strengthening Multilateral Trade Frameworks: China reaffirmed its commitment to multilateral trade, becoming a core advocate of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—the world’s largest trade agreement. This demonstrated China’s willingness to uphold open, inclusive trade that benefits all participants, particularly developing countries seeking equitable access to global markets. At the same time, China supported efforts to reform and enhance the World Trade Organization (WTO), recognizing the need for a modernized system capable of addressing 21st-century trade issues while ensuring fairness and transparency for all members.

2. Advancing the Belt and Road Initiative: Through the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), China continued to invest in infrastructure and economic connectivity across Asia, Africa, and beyond. This initiative has helped diversify China’s trade partnerships and opened new avenues for global cooperation, especially among developing economies. By promoting trade routes, financial integration, and people-to-people exchange, the BRI has strengthened China’s economic resilience and contributed to the shared development goals of many partner nations.

3. Fostering Domestic Consumption and Innovation: With the rollout of the “dual circulation” strategy, China placed greater emphasis on domestic consumption, innovation, and technological self-reliance, while maintaining openness to global trade. This rebalancing aligns with China’s long-term vision of sustainable development, reducing overdependence on any single export market and ensuring steady growth despite external uncertainties.

Lessons for the Global Community

The Trump administration’s approach underscores a broader lesson for international economic governance: policy must be guided by evidence, not emotion. Simplistic calculations or politically driven narratives can mislead both policymakers and the public, undermining trust and cooperation. Trade disputes must be resolved through transparent dialogue, data-driven analysis, and respect for international institutions. When countries replace collaboration with unilateralism, the global economy suffers—especially the small and medium-sized enterprises that rely on stable rules to participate in international markets. China’s response demonstrates that it is possible to manage disputes with maturity and foresight. Instead of retaliating in kind, China reinforced its commitment to openness and balance, showing that strength in economic policy comes not from confrontation, but from consistency.

Looking Ahead: Building a Fairer World Economy

The post-pandemic era offers a chance for nations to rebuild a more just and sustainable global economy. Rather than repeat past mistakes, it is crucial that future trade policies are rooted in mutual benefit, not zero-sum thinking. China’s emphasis on infrastructure connectivity, multilateralism, and domestic resilience offers a model of pragmatic internationalism. It reminds the world that, even in periods of tension, cooperation and reason remain the most powerful tools for progress. As we move forward, let us recognize that global trade is not a scoreboard of winners and losers, but a shared system of value creation. And in safeguarding that system, countries like China—through calm policy, global engagement, and strategic vision—will continue to play a vital leadership role.

About the Author

Moatasim Al Khatib ( 王伟): UAE-born Master's student at Tsinghua University’s School of Public Policy and Management, where he is a scholarship recipient. Before moving to Beijing, he worked in private sector consulting for the public sector and later served as a Data and Economics Specialist for the UAE government. He has also worked with non-profit organizations in the Middle East and Scandinavia. He has a keen interest in China and is the co-founder of the Global Sino Institute, a think tank initiative focused on fostering global dialogue on China’s economic and policy landscape. His research interests include public policy, institutions, and macroeconomics, and he aspires to pursue a PhD in National Economics.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

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In 2005, Xi Jinping, then secretary of Zhejiang Province, wrote an article in the Zhejiang Daily newspaper called “Green Mountains and Clear Waters are also Gold and Silver Mountains.” The article argued in favour of Hu Jintao’s concept of the scientific outlook of development, which emphasized the harmony between humanity and nature and underlined that while economic development was vitally important, this could not come at the expense of the environment. This would become known as the “Two Mountains Theory.”

Upon becoming president in 2012, Xi would make the “Two Mountains Theory” a cornerstone of the Chinese government’s approach to development. However, the concept underpinning his “Two Mountains Theory” - that of an ecological civilization - did not originate with Xi. Instead, his 2005 article and the green policies he has championed, first as secretary of Zhejiang and later as president of China, are part of a larger movement within Chinese society that was inspired by theories of ecological civilization coming out of the European scientific community in the 1960s and 1970s. What Xi and other leading Chinese theorists did was to fit these concepts into the Chinese context. Today, China has made the concept of an ecological civilization very much its own, and, I would argue, you cannot understand contemporary China without first understanding what China means when it talks about its ecological civilization.

China’s Ecological Civilization

The concept of an ‘ecological civilization’ was first proposed by European researchers in the late 1960s. The term began to be used by Chinese academics in the 1980s and quickly gained in popularity among scientists and researchers. In the 1990s and early 2000s, prominent politicians such as Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping began to push for theories of ecological civilization to be adopted as Chinese government policy. In other words, as President Xi would later summarize it in a statement at a United Nations event, Chinese society would “seek a kind of modernization that promotes the harmonious coexistence of man and nature.”

Although the modern term “ecological civilization” was first proposed by Europeans, the ideas behind the concept have deep roots in Chinese Daoist traditions. Ancient Daoist texts like the Dao De Jing hold the natural environment in high regard, and Chinese environmentalists have long drawn from these ancient source texts in making their case for the importance of protecting the natural world. Of course, the philosophy of the natural world found in ancient Chinese texts does not always match perfectly with modern environmental ethics, but, as early as 1995, the China Daoist Association would release a “Declaration on the Environment” which would attempt to bridge the gap between modern environmentalism and ancient Daoist philosophy. In so doing, they became part of a movement advocating for the acceptance of an ecological civilization rooted in Chinese cultural values. This has also helped modern Chinese theorists and policy makers situate their green philosophy in China’s idea of itself as a civilization. This might go part of the way to explain why the tensions that have arisen in Europe and North America over the green transition have been considerably less pronounced in China.

The campaign in the 1990s and early 2000s to introduce more green thinking into Chinese political discourse and policy making was largely successful, and ecological civilization would become firmly embedded in China’s political mainstream in 2007 when, at the 17^th Party Conference, it was adopted by the CPC as a way to develop the country and save the planet. Over the next decade, China’s theoretical approach to ecological civilization would continue to develop until it was formally adopted into the Chinese constitution in 2018.

China’s approach to achieving an ecological civilization rooted in a concept of sustainable development can be seen more recently in China’s ambitious dual carbon goal. This has set out a framework for China to achieve peak carbon emissions by 2030 and carbon neutrality by 2060. If achieved, the dual carbon goal would form a road map for other developing countries to industrialize without sacrificing their environment. As of the start of this year, China looks set to meet the first part of the dual carbon goal early.

Ecological Civilization in Practice

The scale of China’s green transformation in the last few decades is truly staggering. In 2023 alone, China would spend more on its green transition than the rest of the world combined and accounted for 75% of the global wind farm and the majority of solar panel installations. China’s EV batteries account for 60% of the global market. Around 40% of the world’s hydrogen refueling stations are in China, along with the world’s largest green hydrogen project and the world’s first zero-carbon factory. Between 2012 and 2021, CO2 per unit of GDP dropped by 34.4%, and energy consumption per unit of GDP decreased by 26.4%. The Ecological Conservation Redline adopted in 2017 has constrained human activity and enhanced environmental protections in 95% of China’s most valuable ecosystems and in 100% of the plant and animal habitats under state conservation orders. We could go on.

Of course, the national government has been an important factor in pushing for a green transition, but in a country as big, complex and diverse as China it would be impossible for the central government to implement any policy on the scale of the green transition if there wasn’t also substantial buy-in for the project on the ground. When trying to understand what China’s ecological civilization looks like in practice, it is to this interplay between national, provincial, and local government with the business community and civic society that we must turn.

The Role of National Government: As we have seen, the national government has played a pivotal role in providing ideological guidance for the type of ecological civilization that the rest of Chinese society is aiming to create. In speeches, guidelines, meetings, and policy documents, the central government has shaped the framework in which provincial and local governments, as well as the private sector, operate. They also have an important role in co-coordinating and offering guidance on cross-province projects like the Three-North Shelterbelt Forrest Program, the largest forest program in the world. But the largest impact the central government has in facilitating the green transition is probably its financial role: research funding, for example, has increased for green technology, rising by 70% between 2017 and 2023, and over the next few years the government is aiming to see funding for green and environmental protection reach $2.1 trillion. Yet, as with much of China’s development goals, the building of an ecological civilization is a whole China affair.

Ecological Civilization in the Localities: National policy decisions and guidelines may sound very impressive in their scale but remain somewhat abstract. At the national level, ecological civilization is represented by data: percentage increases, billions spent, number of units produced, and so on. However, it is at the city and county level where we can best get an idea of how China’s ecological civilization isan impediment and brings benefits to everyday people.

The small city of Shuitou in Zhejiang province is a good example of ecological transformation in action. In the 1980s and 1990s, Shuitou was China’s leather capital, home to over 1000 tanneries. However, leather working is a heavily polluting industry, and, as a result, by 2000, Shuitou was one of the most polluted cities in all of China. When the economic downturn hit the city in the mid-2000s, Shuitou used this as an opportunity to pivot to a less polluting industry: pet toys and treats. By 2023, pet products were worth $630 million to the city, 60% of the world’s dog chews were made in Shuitou, and the city’s environment had improved immeasurably. The transformation of Shuitou is the kind of thing that is often meant when speaking of China’s ecological civilization. The pet industry is not really part of the new green industries of China (although we could argue that encouraging better pet care contributes to the goal of humanity living in better harmony with nature). However, the transformation of the city from China’s leather capital to its premier pet town improved the environment, reduced pollution, and made Shuitou a more livable place for its residents.

The planning model used to achieve this is also very much in keeping with the model used elsewhere to achieve an ecological civilization: while the local government were instrumental in pushing for the transformation of the city, it would not have been possible without local entrepreneurs taking up the challenge and setting up their own pet product businesses. This is a green transition that has buy-in from all levels of society, and this was possible because making the local area more environmentally friendly also came with very direct and very obvious economic benefits for the residents.

Another good example of this partnership between local government and business can be seen in the town of Jixian in Shaanxi province, which has found new economic vigour as home to the Chinese EV giant BYD’s largest factory. There, 40,000 workers are directly employed in producing the new electric vehicles that have become a central feature of China’s green transition.

Or we could examine the Erhai Lake region in Yunnan, which, until recently, suffered from major environmental problems partly due to local herders’ animals defecating on the shore of the lake. The local government built four factories that process 1,300 tonnes of cow dung a day. This has solved Erhai Lake’s pollution problem while also producing fertilizer, which is then shipped all across China and South East Asia, and bringing much needed jobs to an underdeveloped region. The cleaning up of pollution on the lake has also helped facilitate the growth of Erhai’s tourism industry, bringing in even more jobs to the region.

These are three illustrative examples, but there are thousands more such cases developing all across China. At the local level, we can see the key concepts of China’s ecological civilization and the “Two Mountains” theory in practice: improving the environment while growing the economy. In Shuitou, for example, rather than closing the factories causing the pollution, the industry is repurposed into a more environmentally friendly sector. On Erhai Lake, rather than simply banning the already impoverished herders from the shoreline, the problem has been turned into a way to grow the local economy. In this way, the local people and communities are fully bought into the green transition since they can directly envision how their lives improve both in terms of a healthier living environment and greater economic prosperity.

The Role of Business in Scaling the Two Mountains: The focus on economic growth means that the business community has also been brought in to help build China’s ecological civilization. Over 800 large Chinese companies have already pledged to reach carbon neutrality by 2050, but it is in the emerging green technology sector that the power of the Chinese business community can truly be felt.

Perhaps no company is more important to China’s green transition than BYD. The EV manufacturer has helped pioneer China’s EV revolution: in 2015 EV market penetration in China was less than 1%, by 2022 it was 25.6%. Of course, part of this transition has been due to government policy: for example, one province has introduced plans to ban the sale of fossil fuel-powered vehicles by 2030, and fiscal policy has tended to favour electric vehicles. But the slick marketing campaigns and desirable products of EV companies like BYD have been an important component of the transition away from fossil-powered vehicles.

BYD is not the only EV company operating in China, but it is certainly the largest and most successful: in 2022, it surpassed Tesla as the world’s top EV vehicle manufacturer in terms of global sales, and in 2023, it became the first EV company to enter the top 10 global car companies. This reach beyond China’s borders has meant BYD has also become an important part of the global green transition away from reliance on fossil fuels: it is their sales teams, for example, that are at the forefront of convincing the fossil-fuel dependent Gulf States to switch to electric cars.

Of course, the primary purpose of BYD and China’s other green tech firms is not environmentalism. These are businesses, and, as such, their top priority is making profit and finding business success. Yet, the construction of China’s ecological civilization has created an environment in which investing in the green transition is a good way to make money. Just as the residents of China’s factory towns can see prosperity in embracing the ideas of ecological civilization, so too can China’s business leaders. There are few better examples of the successful interplay between the national government’s green guidance and the Chinese business community than BYD’s rising dominance in the global car market.

What China’s Ecological Civilization Means for the World

Pollution has not entirely disappeared in China, but the building of an ecological civilization means that today, China is closer to achieving the dream of living in harmony with nature that President Xi outlined in the Zhejiang Daily 20 years ago than ever before. China has achieved remarkable progress on the environment by demonstrating to normal people as well as to business and community leaders that they need not choose between the environment and economic prosperity. Indeed, preserving the environment and tackling pollution can often be a route to economic prosperity.

During the period in which China has been building its ecological civilization, the country has also become increasingly important to the global economy. This has meant that, especially in the Global South, China has also become increasingly important to the world’s green transition. For example, Chinese companies have a 60% share of the global EV battery market. China is also increasingly central to the global renewable energy industry - and this is true even in the Global North. New Zealand, for instance, has received 89% of its solar equipment from China, and so Chinese factories have become vitally important in that country achieving its own climate goals.

The centrality of China to the green transition can also be seen in its famed infrastructure projects. East Africa’s largest solar power plant was built by China, as was the Der Aar Wind Farm, one of South Africa’s largest. China was also behind Suriname’s hybrid microgrid solar power project, which ended rural reliance on diesel for the generation of electricity. They also helped build Brazil’s colossal Belo Monte Hydropower plant. As the United States returns to climate denial under the Trump administration, China will be the Global South’s only realistic partner in achieving a green transition that still delivers industrial development.

Despite having deep roots in Chinese culture, the adoption of an ecological civilization was not a foregone conclusion. China’s current success in the green transition is due to decades of hard work by Chinese politicians, business leaders, and the common people. There is still a lot of work to be done, but, with Trump back in the White House and an anti-green backlash brewing in Europe, China has become the world’s last best hope for climate justice.

Further Reading

China’s Ecological Transition: Latest Issue of Wenhua Zongheng journal

China’s Renewable Sector Explained

The Great Green Wall of China Explained

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Scottish Christian Socialist. Currently working in Beijing. Writing about China and politics mostly.

Doug’s X page: @doug_rooney

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China’s economic diplomacy is fundamentally altering global trade dynamics through targeted policies such as “Made in China 2025.” This initiative represents a cornerstone of Beijing’s industrial strategy, designed to transition the nation from being the world’s factory for low-cost goods to a global leader in high-value industries. By focusing on sectors like artificial intelligence (AI), semiconductors, and robotics, China is positioning itself at the forefront of technological innovation while reshaping global trade rules. This policy-driven approach provides valuable lessons for nations seeking to modernize their industrial frameworks and assert their roles in a competitive global economy.

Key Policies and Impacts

One of the most impactful components of China’s economic diplomacy is the “Made in China 2025” initiative. This policy prioritizes advancing ten critical industries, including next-generation information technology, robotics, aerospace, and new energy vehicles. Central to its implementation is substantial government funding, amounting to hundreds of billions of dollars allocated to research and development (R&D). These funds support both state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and private firms in driving innovation and technological advancement. A pivotal example within this framework is China’s semiconductor policy. The government has recognized semiconductors as a critical sector for economic and technological independence, particularly in the face of geopolitical tensions and trade restrictions. To address this, Beijing established the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund, also known as the "Big Fund." This fund has mobilized over $50 billion to develop domestic capabilities in chip manufacturing, design, and innovation. As a result, China has made significant strides in reducing its reliance on foreign semiconductor imports, positioning itself as a key player in the global chip supply chain.

The role of innovation hubs further amplifies the impact of “Made in China 2025.” Cities like Shenzhen and Zhongguancun, often referred to as "China’s Silicon Valley," exemplify the success of integrating research, manufacturing, and commercialization. Tax incentives, grants, and favorable regulations within these hubs have fostered ecosystems where startups and established firms thrive. For instance, Huawei and BYD, headquartered in Shenzhen, have emerged as global leaders in telecommunications and electric vehicles, underscoring the effectiveness of China’s industrial clusters.

Stakeholder Perspectives

For governments, China’s policies illustrate the potential of leveraging industrial strategies to drive modernization. The focused investment in semiconductors demonstrates how strategic planning can enhance self-sufficiency in critical technologies, a lesson increasingly relevant for nations facing supply chain vulnerabilities. Policymakers worldwide can adopt similar frameworks to identify and prioritize industries crucial to their national security and economic resilience. From the private sector’s perspective, policies like “Made in China 2025” provide fertile ground for collaboration and growth. Domestic firms benefit from generous state support, while foreign companies have opportunities to partner with Chinese entities on cutting-edge projects. However, navigating the regulatory landscape and competing with state-backed competitors can pose challenges for international businesses.

For global institutions, policies like China’s semiconductor initiatives raise questions about market distortions. Subsidies and protections for domestic firms challenge the principles of fair competition, necessitating discussions on how to balance national priorities with global trade norms. These tensions highlight the need for international frameworks that accommodate innovation while ensuring equity.

Comparative Insights

China’s semiconductor strategy under “Made in China 2025” highlights a stark contrast with the laissez-faire approach of the United States. While the U.S. relies on private-sector leadership in innovation, China’s state-driven model mobilizes centralized resources to achieve strategic objectives. Europe, meanwhile, has implemented initiatives like the European Chips Act to boost semiconductor capabilities but lags behind China in terms of funding and speed of execution. For developing nations, China’s approach offers a roadmap for bridging technological gaps. Countries in Southeast Asia and Africa, for example, could replicate aspects of China’s industrial policy by creating sector-specific funds and fostering innovation hubs to address local challenges. This targeted approach provides a feasible alternative to traditional reliance on foreign investment and technology transfers.

Challenges and Critiques

Despite its successes, “Made in China 2025” faces significant challenges and criticisms. Geopolitically, China’s semiconductor policy has been met with pushback, particularly from the United States. Export controls and sanctions targeting Chinese firms, such as Huawei, have exposed vulnerabilities in China’s supply chain, especially in high-end chip manufacturing. These restrictions underscore the difficulty of achieving complete self-sufficiency in a highly globalized industry. Domestically, the heavy reliance on subsidies has raised concerns about inefficiencies and resource misallocation. Some state-owned enterprises have struggled to innovate despite substantial funding, leading to calls for better accountability and performance benchmarks. Moreover, the perception that foreign firms face disadvantages in the Chinese market has strained international trade relationships. Environmental concerns also pose challenges. The semiconductor industry is energy-intensive, and while China has made strides in renewable energy, the carbon footprint of its industrial growth remains a critical issue. Balancing rapid industrialization with sustainability goals will be essential for long-term success.

Policy Recommendations

To emulate China’s achievements, policymakers worldwide should consider adopting sector-specific strategies that align national priorities with global trends. Establishing funds similar to the National Integrated Circuit Industry Investment Fund can accelerate development in critical areas such as AI, renewable energy, or advanced manufacturing. Governments should also foster innovation ecosystems by integrating academia, industry, and public institutions, creating environments conducive to R&D and commercialization. Transparency and international cooperation are equally important. Policymakers must ensure that subsidies and protections are accompanied by clear objectives and measurable outcomes to maintain credibility in global markets. Furthermore, collaborating with international institutions to set industry standards can mitigate tensions and promote fair competition. Finally, sustainability must be a core component of industrial strategies. Investing in energy-efficient technologies and green manufacturing processes can address environmental concerns while enhancing global competitiveness.

Call to Action

Governments, businesses, and global institutions must engage with China’s policies like “Made in China 2025” to draw lessons and address challenges. Policymakers should adapt elements of China’s strategic approach to foster innovation and resilience, while ensuring transparency and fairness. Collaboration between nations on shared priorities, such as semiconductor development and sustainability, can build a more balanced and inclusive global trade system.

About the Author

Moatasim Al Khatib ( 王伟): UAE-born Master's student at Tsinghua University’s School of Public Policy and Management, where he is a scholarship recipient. Before moving to Beijing, he worked in private sector consulting for the public sector and later served as a Data and Economics Specialist for the UAE government. He has also worked with non-profit organizations in the Middle East and Scandinavia. He has a keen interest in China and is the co-founder of the Global Sino Institute, a think tank initiative focused on fostering global dialogue on China’s economic and policy landscape. His research interests include public policy, institutions, and macroeconomics, and he aspires to pursue a PhD in National Economics.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

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At the start of this winter the community council got bad news - the county government is no longer going to cover the running costs of the Partnership Centre. However, the county hasn’t made a decision to close the Partnership Centre. Instead, they have told the community council that it is their decision if they want to keep the Centre running after the county pulls funding in the summer.

But this isn’t much of a choice: without help from the county, the local community council will have to find an extra £8000 a month for upkeep costs. In the working-class town where I grew up, it is inconceivable the community will find this kind of money. Next year, the Partnership Centre will close because the government has slashed local budgets, but, on paper at least, the decision will have been made by the local community, and this will probably be enough to ensure the lion’s share of the blame is laid at the feet of the community council.

I was thinking about this story recently when I attended the Beijing Forum on Swift Response to Public Complaints. This Forum was primarily to discuss the progress made on the 12345 Hotline (more on this later), but experts from North America and Europe were also in attendance to share their thoughts on local governance.

The key concepts put forward by Western contributors were those of a responsible citizenry and localism. We heard about how difficult it was for central or municipal government in the West to coordinate with local communities: for example, about how, during the pandemic, New York City government initially found it difficult to establish adequate local testing centres because the municipal government simply didn’t have a good idea of where in the local community had the capacity to host them.

In Europe and North America the solution for this kind of administrative fog is decentralization. Those decisions that can be made in the local area will be made there because, we are told, local people will have a better understanding of local needs and capacity than a bureaucrat in a city hall, regional assembly, or national government. The future of Western municipal government is creating responsible citizens who will work as partners with the government to deliver for their local area.

In the United Kingdom, we have been testing this style of local government for decades. From Tony Blair’s commitment to devolution to David Cameron’s Big Society to Keir Starmer’s new deal for the regions, successive British governments have been championing localism as a solution to difficult local problems. And there is a reason it has attracted support from across the political spectrum: it sounds really good. Who doesn’t like the idea of putting local people in charge of their own lives?

Yet, I couldn’t help but keep thinking about my mum and her community council. They have been empowered to make a decision for their local community, but resource constraints mean that there is only one realistic outcome. In theory, local people are making decisions about their town. In practice, though, the government is outsourcing blame for a funding decision that was ultimately taken in London. This is localism not as a practical solution to administrative problems, but as a way to offload guilt for austerity onto local people.

At the Conference the Chinese philosophy for local governance was also on display, and it was markedly different from the Western variation. A representative example of this Chinese theory of local governance is the 12345 Hotline.

The Beijing 12345 Hotline was established in 1987 as a “Mayor’s Hotline” (there were back then only three operators and one line). The Hotline has since expanded into a comprehensive citizens’ complaint system, operating in eight languages with 1700 operators. Between January and September 2024, the Beijing Hotline received around 18 million calls and reported a satisfaction rate of 97%. Since being first set up in the 1980s, the complaints hotline has expanded across the country, with most major cities having their own version.

The Hotline exists so that normal citizens can alert the government to problems in their local area. This can be anything ranging from a stray cat causing a nuisance to traffic problems in your morning commute, to a workplace violating health and safety regulations. The operators will assess the problem and either try to solve the issue there and then or pass the issue on to the relevant department.

The 12345 Hotline has solved this conundrum of administrative fog for Chinese city governance. Through the hotline, citizens now organically report problems and concerns about their lives to the district and city government. Putting all this data together gives the municipal and provincial governments a pretty good idea of what works and what needs to improve, while it gives residents (both Chinese and foreign) a way to communicate directly with the government.

Of course, the 12345 Hotline isn’t the only mechanism by which local residents can pass on their complaints and ideas to the government: for example, one sub-district administrator reported great success in setting up WeChat groups for various stakeholders in the local community (one for foreigners, another for business owners and so on). Another attendee reported holding regular focus groups with different representatives of the local community.

All this is to say that Chinese municipalities have found a way to deliver on the promise of localism championed by Western politicians and academics. Local people are included in a continuous process of consultation about their local community. Unlike in the case of my hometown, however, local people are not set adrift from the central government, tasked with dealing with problems that are beyond the scope of local resources to solve. Instead, local people and communities are integrated into a decision-making process that ultimately includes the national government - what is called in China a whole-process people’s democracy.

While Western politics is often about parceling out responsibility (and blame) for a problem, Chinese politics is about trying to find a solution to a problem. The 12345 Hotline is probably the most representative example of this solution-orientated approach to local governance. And judging by the positive response of Chinese citizens, it is an approach to local governance that resonates with everyday people.

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Scottish Christian Socialist, currently working in Beijing. Lecture in English literature and language.

Doug’s X page: @Doug_rooney

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

Call for Contributors!

I’ve added an “ Op-Ed” section to China Up Close. It’s an open platform I specifically designed to let everyone share their own perspectives with the world. Articles can be related to any topic as long as you’re highly passionate about it! Article length is recommended to be within 700 - 900 words.

If you have an idea for an Op-Ed, contact jjnewsletter@hotmail.com with a brief description of the article's focus.

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Secretary of State - Marco Rubio

Senator Marco Rubio is set to replace Anthony Blinken as the United State’s top diplomat. This is a worrying development for anyone who is a fan of peace since the Floridian Senator has been obsessed with regime change operations. In the Senate, his chief foreign policy obsession has been Latin America (so much so that during the first Trump presidency, he earned the moniker “Secretary of State for Latin America”). In particular, he has backed coups in Venezuela and championed tough (and completely illegal) sanctions on Cuba. However, over the years, he has also developed a side interest in China. He was the chief voice of support for the Hong Kong protests in the US Senate, even inviting key leaders of the protests to Capitol Hill. Of course, it goes without saying that Rubio’s support for protests has not extended to the BLM or Palestine protests at home - but then he is hardly the first US Senator to only support protests when they further US geopolitical interests.

More recently, his interest has shifted to the Taiwan island. He is the author of the rather Orwellian named “Taiwan Peace Through Strength Act,” which, if passed, would see the United States deepen its involvement with the separatist movement there - and directly contradict the official US government policy of respecting the One China Principle. The bill is very unlikely to pass, especially now that Rubio seems set to leave the Senate for the cabinet, but it does give us a window into his thinking. Rubio is willing to work with whichever groups happen to be useful in increasing tensions with China. This strategy of tension is a well tested ploy used by the United States against its adversaries going all the way back to the Cold War and beyond. In the State Department, we should expect Rubio to use whatever levers he can find to further this aim.

US Trade Representative - Jamieson Greer

After the Secretary of State, it will probably be the US Trade Representative who has the most impact in Washington on the shape of the China-US relationship. On the campaign trail and after, Donald Trump has made renegotiating America’s trade relationship with other countries a key pillar of his agenda. As such, the US Trade Representative will be in an important position in the early days of the Trump presidency. For this role, Trump has tapped Jamieson Greer, another China hawk.

Greer is almost certain to pass the nomination process - he has received the full support of Trump’s first Trade Representative, Robert Lighthizer, and has experience in trade policy. During the first Trump presidency, he served as Lighthizer’s chief of staff and was a key architect of the US-China trade war, which defined the relationship near the end of Trump’s first term. Greer does not seem to have mellowed after four years in the private sector: he has recently praised Biden’s new tariffs, for example.

Now, I don’t think we should necessarily take Trump literally when he proposes 60% tariffs on Chinese goods (this is probably meant more as a starting position in negotiations.) However, we should take the intent (to renegotiate the China relationship) seriously. Greer is a man who knows his way around the US Trade brief, and who is fully on board with his boss’ tough on China talk. However, Biden had already locked in Trump’s trade war as US establishment policy when he refused to change tact at the start of his own presidency. Greer, in the role of Trade Representative, may tinker with individual policies, but his appointment really represents more of the same rather than a radical rupture in how the US approaches trade with China.

National Security Advisor - Mike Waltz

On a list of China hawks, Mike Waltz is probably the most anti-China of the bunch: as a member of the House of Representatives back in 2022, he even called for a US boycott of the Winter Olympics in Beijing. As National Security Advisor, he will have a key role inside the White House, advising Trump on defense and foreign policy issues. He has strong links with the Neocon wing of the foreign policy establishment, having worked as a policy advisor to both Donald Rumsfeld and Robert Gates in the Defense Department and having served in Special Forces operations in Afghanistan and the Middle East. In other words, we can expect Waltz to be working with Rubio in trying to make US foreign policy as hawkish as possible.

US Ambassador to the United Nations - Elise Stefanik

US Congresswoman Elise Stefanik is an odd choice for Ambassador to the UN since she appears to hate the institution. A staunch defender of Israel, she has repeatedly accused the UN of antisemitism and was a strong supporter of the Biden administration’s decision to freeze funds to UNRWA, the UN agency responsible for Palestinian relief. At the UN, we should expect her to use her position to further fight Israel’s corner. She is also a fierce critic of China: in the House, she was a member of the House Republican China Taskforce from where she repeatedly denounced China and supported the Taskforce’s anti-China legislation. At the United Nations, she will, of course, have to work with China, one of the other five permanent Security Council members. If her career in the House is anything to go by, expect tension in the relationship.

US Ambassador to China - David Perdue

The US Ambassador to China is unlikely to have a top role in the formulation of US policy to China, but, to be fair, Trump could have picked a worse candidate than former Georgia Senator David Perdue. Prior to entering the Senate in 2015, Perdue was a top corporate executive with business dealings in China. At different periods of his life, he lived in Singapore and China’s Hong Kong SAR, and in the Senate, he served on the Foreign Relations Committee. Questions have been raised about the suitability of some of Trump’s picks, but in picking Perdue, he has found someone who is fairly well qualified for the role of Ambassador.

Wild Card - Elon Musk

The richest man in the world has been called the “buddy in chief” of President Trump. He spent over $200 million dollars in the 2024 Presidential campaign and was an important surrogate for Trump on the campaign trail. Since the election, he has also been seen hanging out with Trump in various locations and has been proposed as the co-head of the new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) - despite the name, it is not actually a government department. Musk has become a big personality in MAGA-world, but unlike many of the other figures in that world, he also has extensive ties with China. His EV company, Tesla, has a large factory in Shanghai, which accounts for about 40% of Tesla’s manufacturing capacity and is thought to have generated around $54 billion for the company over the last 3 years. China is also one of the largest markets for Tesla outside the United States. Musk himself also has a good working relationship with the Chinese Prime Minister, Li Qiang, dating back to Li’s time as Party Secretary of Shanghai, and Musk met with Chinese President Xi Jinping during Xi’s visit to San Francisco in 2023.

All of this means that Musk could be a valuable bridge between the US government, the American business community, and China. Certainly, Musk appears willing to take on the role, but it will all depend on whether Musk can drown out the loud voices of the China hawks that still crowd the corridors of power in Washington, DC.

Conclusion

So far it looks like the Trump administration is going to be staffed mostly with China hawks. With the possible exception of Elon Musk (who isn’t going to hold a government position anyway), Donald Trump is likely to be surrounded by people who favor competition and confrontation rather than cooperation. There are, however, reasons to be optimistic (or at least not too pessimistic). First, a confrontational stance with China is hardly a decisive break with the Biden administration: sadly, confrontation is just baked-in to US policy these days, and it is just something we are going to have to deal with regardless of the party in the White House. Second, China is the top priority of a few of the officials we have listed here. The US is facing an unprecedented crisis at home and abroad. With the US foreign policy establishment finding renewed focus on the Middle East and with Republicans eager to find a resolution to the Ukraine crisis, it is possible that Chinese policymakers might be able to find space for constructive dialogue with the new administration.

About the Author

Douglas Rooney: Scottish Christian Socialist, currently working in Beijing. Lecture in English literature and language.

Doug’s X page: @Doug_rooney

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Their mission was to tackle the seemingly impossible task of bridging deep-seated Sino-US misunderstandings amid heightened political fragmentation.

In the words of Craig Allen, president of the US-China Business Council, both countries are profoundly entangled economically, and pulling that apart would be very difficult and costly. “But that doesn’t mean that politics will lead us in that direction,” he told the US-China Hong Kong Forum, attended by envoys, politicians and financial pundits.

According to China’s official data, unveiled in November, the value of trade between it and the US surpassed $560 billion in the first 10 months of this year, with over 70,000 US companies operating in the world’s second-largest economy, generating $50 billion in profits annually.

However, the likelihood of increased protectionism promoted by Trump presents a “great risk”, said Stephen Roach, a senior fellow at Yale Law School, who stirred discussions this year with his Financial Times opinion piece titled “It pains me to say Hong Kong is over”.

As part of Trump’s “America First” nationalist agenda, the billionaire Republican once vowed to jack up tariffs on all imports coming into the US from zero to between 10 to 20 percent, and boost those on Chinese products to 60 percent. The president-elect also announced recently he would slap 25 percent tariffs on all imports from Canada and Mexico, with an additional 10 percent on Chinese goods.

Roach warned that problems associated with the new US policy would invite retaliation from all US trading partners. The International Monetary Fund has also cautioned that the introduction of higher tariffs on a significant portion of global trade by the middle of next year could lower global growth by 0.8 percent in 2025 and by 1.3 percent in 2026.

During his first term as US president, Trump raised tariffs on Chinese imports from three percent in 2018 to 19 percent, and these are still in force. Some pundits have suggested that Trump might not be serious enough to press ahead with his renewed tariff threats, but Roach gave a heads-up at the Hong Kong forum that China and the world have to take Trump more literally this time.

The Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, long seen as China’s entrepot and offshore financial hub, has to bear the brunt across the economic spectrum. “Trump 2.0 will affect exports from the Chinese mainland and, by extension, Hong Kong’s position as a transshipment hub,” said Chim Lee, senior analyst at the Economist Intelligence Unit. These developments will impact Hong Kong’s already weak consumer and business sentiment, and therefore consumption and investment activities, especially in the transport and logistics sector, he added.

More broadly, as happened after US tariffs were enforced in 2018, the current threats could be a harbinger of fresh trade frictions. “For most economies, we can probably expect slightly increased dependence on partners, other than the US, for trade,” said Adam Ahmad Samdin, an assistant economist at Oxford Economics. “If higher tariff rates are applied on China, we can also expect more supply chain reshuffling, much to the benefit of other economies like Vietnam.”

Embracing flexibility

“We are on the edge of a changing world. I think the mindset has to change overall,” said Savana Pires, director of international business and development at Porto Business School, referring to the US presidential election.

Two weeks after Americans went to the polls, Pires led a group of 10 MBA students from the Portuguese business school to Hong Kong under one of four overseas exchange programs, others being in the US, Germany and India. During their weeklong trip, the students attended lessons at the Chinese University of Hong Kong and visited local companies to gain insights into the city’s economic landscape.

“When we first thought about coming to China in 2020 or 2021, people doubted us. They said ‘Why China? No one would want to go.’ But we decided to give it a try, and now, here we are, in our second year. I think we will keep coming for the next 10 years,” said Pires.

Flexibility has been Porto Business School’s mantra in recent years. Pires recalled a challenge they faced when a group of students from the West African nation of Ghana was unable to obtain visas to visit Portugal. Instead of allowing the setback to derail their plans, the school pivoted, taking the program to Dubai, where professors and students could meet. “Dubai offered them visas, so we found a solution,” said Pires. “Political issues might create barriers, but we have to overcome these challenges and keep facilitating global communication and learning.”

The European business school’s educational communication approach offers a glimpse into how the world is adapting to global headwinds with alternatives.

Since Hong Kong began its post-pandemic economic recovery bid in 2022, the SAR government has been ramping up efforts to promote the city and attract new investments to reboot its growth engine and restore its image as Asia’s world city. Chief Executive John Lee Ka-chiu, Financial Secretary Paul Chan Mo-po, and other government officials have led delegations to various parts of the world in recent years to develop business collaborations and forge closer ties on top of Hong Kong’s traditional partnerships with the US and Europe.

InvestHK — the SAR government’s investment promotion agency — said it helped 150 mainland and 172 overseas enterprises set up shop or expand their operations in the city in the first half of this year — up 43 percent, compared with the same period in 2023. These companies have pledged to invest HK$38.3 billion ($4.9 billion) in investments to boost the local economy and create more than 3,500 jobs.

The injection came amid prolonged geopolitical tensions, as seen in the scaling back of foreign businesses’ presence in Hong Kong, and a US bill that could potentially shut the SAR’s trade offices in the US. Data from the Census and Statistics Department shows that the number of regional headquarters in Hong Kong has seen a continuous decline from 1,541 in 2019 to 1,336 last year. The steepest drops were among companies from the US, Japan and the UK.

Establishing new links

Among the bright spots to have emerged are the large economies in Southeast Asia and the Middle East. Pinpointing where the specific opportunities lie, answers could be found at a summit held in the SAR in September featuring the Belt and Road Initiative — a China-proposed transcontinental project that aims to promote connectivity and cooperation.

At a panel discussion, Andrew Gan, an independent director of the Philippine Stock Exchange, highlighted the potential for deeper collaboration among bourses. He said the Philippines has been a “long-only” market for an extended period, and it would be interesting to work with Hong Kong to explore short-selling and derivative markets. Opportunities relating to environmental, social, and governance issues also show great potential as the Southeast Asian country “takes it very seriously”, he said.

Apart from the Philippines, Indonesia’s establishment of social enterprises is a major area where Hong Kong’s strength in professional services could play an indispensable role, said Cahyo Muzhar, director-general of legal administrative affairs at the Indonesian Ministry of Law and Human Rights.

According to Muzhar, Indonesia is in the process of laying down the legal framework for social enterprises — a type of business that combines profitability with addressing social or environmental issues. These businesses are normally micro, small or medium-sized companies that are desperate for financing. On that note, Hong Kong, as a business and financial center, is a “role model” for cooperation, he said.

Tengku Zafrul Aziz, Malaysia’s minister of investment, trade, and industry, said his country and Hong Kong ought to explore the huge potential of the Islamic compliance market together, noting that an estimated 60 percent of the world’s Muslims are in Asia. “This goes beyond just food and finance, but also tourism, beauty products and so much more,” he said.

Southeast Asian economies have performed impressively this year. According to McKinsey & Co, GDP growth was recorded across all countries in the region in the second quarter of this year, with Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand and Vietnam achieving the highest year-on-year growth over the past four quarters.

China and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations are each other’s largest trading partners, with the 10-member regional grouping accounting for 15 percent of China’s total trade last year — an increase of 10 percent from 2010. China accounted for 20 percent of ASEAN’s total trade last year — up from 12 percent in 2010 — according to McKinsey.

For Hong Kong, ASEAN’s support is crucial in the SAR’s bid to join the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership — the world’s largest free trade agreement, which includes 15 economies in the Asia-Pacific, and is expected to further deepen the region’s economic interdependence.

The Middle East’s geostrategic location at the crossroads of Europe, Asia and Africa offers Hong Kong businesses access to a vast market base. There is growing potential for collaboration among investors in Hong Kong and Saudi Arabia, including opportunities to tap into each other’s stock markets through exchange-traded funds.

However, Pires warned that cultural and social differences with new friends could create significant hurdles, and misinformation would present difficulties, citing misconceptions about working conditions in China, where it is claimed that workers have to toil for up to 20 hours daily in factories.

Up to 80 of 125 MBA students from Porto Business School have mandatorily opted to go to the US for their studies. But, according to Pires, next year could see a big shift with annual compulsory US studies to be made optional. The change would allow students greater flexibility in choosing destinations that align with their personal and professional goals.

“The US is still important, but it’s an established way. We need to try new ways,” said Pires. She identified three regions — China, the Middle East and Africa — that will shape the future of the international business landscape. For Africa, she pointed to Angola and Mozambique as natural focal points for Portugal due to their shared history. She also highlighted the untapped potential in countries like Morocco, Tunisia, Kenya, South Africa, Ghana and Zimbabwe.

For Hong Kong, the mission is clear — adapt and seize the opportunities in this shifting global pattern.

Lawrence Li Lu-jen, chairman of Hong Kong’s Financial Services Development Council, succinctly put it: “Everyone in the world is forming new partnerships. We in Hong Kong must find our niche in this realignment.”

This article was originally published as the China Daily cover story on December 6th, 2024:

https://www.chinadailyhk.com/hk/article/599534#Cushioning-headwinds-2024-12-06

About the Author

Yifan Liu is a financial journalist based in Hong Kong, covering macroeconomics, the financial market, and emerging business trends. He has won the Hong Kong News Awards 2023 as the champion for his coverage of crypto woes.

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

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On October 30, 2023, Israeli authorities said that they had killed “dozens” of Hamas fighters in the first days of their ground invasion. Meanwhile, Gaza’s Ministry of Health has struggled to keep its website online given the lack of electricity, internet, and attacks. Nonetheless, at noon on October 29, the Ministry of Health said that the death toll in Gaza is now 8,005 (of which 67% are women and children). For those who doubt the numbers, the Ministry of Health has been releasing lists of the dead with their Israeli identification numbers (it is a sign of the occupation of the Palestinians of Gaza that when they are born, they must be registered not by the Palestinian Authority but by Israel). Save the Children says that more children (3,195) have been killed by Israeli bombing over these three weeks than have been killed in total across all conflict zones since 2019.

The UN Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA) said that by Sunday the 29th, 1.4 million Palestinians out of 2.3 million were internally displaced, with 671,000 taking shelter in 150 UNRWA facilities. Most of the dead by Israeli bombs and tank shells have been civilians. The ratio of dead between combatants (few) and civilians (many) is startling, far beyond what takes place in a war (in contrast, of the 1,400 Israelis killed on October 7 by Hamas and other factions, 48.4% were soldiers). By saying that they have killed “dozens” of Hamas militants—the purported target—and having at the same time killed thousands of Palestinians, the Israeli authorities have admitted to the world that their war has resulted in far more civilian deaths than combatant deaths.

Meanwhile, the Israeli military has sent its bulldozers to destroy homes and businesses in northern Gaza as well as in the West Bank city of Jenin. Little in this maneuver looks like a military operation since these homes and businesses are not military institutions. Given the history of the bulldozing of housing in the West Bank to create settlements and the “apartheid wall,” this bulldozing in Gaza and Jenin appears like a massive civilizational campaign of ethnic cleansing to create what the Israeli political class calls Greater Israel (Eretz Yisrael Hashlema). The Israeli political class is famous for saying that they want to change the “facts on the ground” so that any negotiations with the occupied Palestinians are based on those “facts” and not on “claims.” This is what Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has been doing for decades through illegal settlements in the West Bank: erasing the fact of Palestinian claims on their land and establishing the right of Israelis to the entire landmass from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea. Effectively, the Israeli political class appears to be using the conflict that began on October 7 as the pretext to do what it had planned to do for decades, namely, to erase Palestinians from historical Palestine and to erase the Palestinian nation as an entity.

Two-state, one-state, three-state

When Palestinian political forces agreed to a “peace process” that resulted in the Cairo Interim Agreement (1994) and the Oslo Accords (1994), it adopted what was known as the “two-state solution” to the Israeli occupation of Palestine. The basic outline of the Oslo Accords was that a Palestinian Authority (PA) would govern the territory seized by Israel in 1967 (East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank). The Oslo Accords, argued Gaza-based Professor Haider Eid, created a “Bantustan” (such as the “African homelands” created by apartheid South Africa). The implication of the establishment of the PA was that it would neuter actual Palestinian claims to the land (including the right of return of Palestinian refugees, established by UN resolution 194 in 1948), and—at the same time—it would allow the Israeli state to change the “facts on the ground” by the creation of more and more illegal settlements. Furthermore, after the Second Intifada (2000-2005), Israel cut off the “safe passage” requirement of Oslo that allowed Palestinians in East Jerusalem, Gaza, and the West Bank to travel across these zones. By 2005, Israel had annulled the Oslo Accords, although the Palestinian political class remained bound by them as the only sliver of hope for the establishment of the state of Palestine (even if it would be a small fragment of historical Palestine).

The reality of the “two-state solution” disappeared as the settlements increased in the West Bank, as Palestinian control over East Jerusalem was increasingly absorbed by Israel, as the right to return was set aside, and as Gaza was bombed almost every year. In that context, several important Palestinian intellectuals began to raise the question of the “one-state solution,” with one Israeli-Palestinian state based on a non-ethnic, secular, and democratic idea of citizenship. By 2021, a majority of scholars of the region said that the actual facts show Israel to be “a one-state reality akin to apartheid.” The idea that Israel is an apartheid state is now well-established in United Nations documents and human rights reports. This assessment demonstrates two things: first, that Israel and the Occupied Palestinian Territory are already “one state” and second, that it is an apartheid state with the Palestinians in a second-class category. Advocates of the “one-state solution” argue that the reality of a singular state now requires equal citizenship for all who live in Israel/Palestine. The current Israeli political class refuses to accept the idea of a democratic and secular one-state, because they are wedded to an ethno-nationalist project of a “Jewish State” that erases the possibility of full citizenship for Palestinian Christians and Muslims.

If the “two-state solution” is no longer practical and if the “one-state solution” is blocked by the Israeli political class, then all that remains for Netanyahu and others is the “three-state solution.” This is the solution that seeks to remove large parts of the Palestinian population from East Jerusalem, Gaza, the West Bank, and perhaps even from within Israel’s 1948 lines and send them to the three states of Egypt, Jordan, and Lebanon. The bulldozers coming behind the tanks in Gaza are attempting to push the Palestinian refugees (70% of them are descendants of those sent to Gaza in the Nakba or Catastrophe of 1948) through the Rafah Crossing into Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. This “three-state solution” is precisely ethnic cleansing, a crime under international law. For decades, the Israeli political class has been willing to conduct genocidal policies—including this bombardment of Gaza—to facilitate its ethno-national, apartheid state project that requires the erasure of Palestinians and Palestine.

In 2014, in the aftermath of Israel’s Operation Protective Edge, the Office of the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court (ICC) opened an investigation into the situation in Palestine. Nothing much came of this investigation. During this current attack on Gaza, the prosecutor Karim A. A. Khan went to the Rafah Crossing and said that Israel’s blockade of humanitarian aid into Gaza may be a crime under ICC jurisdiction. Indeed, the fact of apartheid is already a crime under the 2002 Rome Statute that created the ICC. Both the “one-state reality akin to apartheid” and the “three-state solution” of ethnic cleansing are serious crimes that require investigation. Will Khan ask the judges of the ICC to frame arrest warrants against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his colleagues?

Page Editor: Jin Yulin

About the Author

Vijay Prashad: He is an Indian historian, editor, and journalist. He is a writing fellow and chief correspondent at Globetrotter. He is an editor of LeftWord Books and the director of Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research. He has written more than 20 books, including The Darker Nations and The Poorer Nations. His latest books are Struggle Makes Us Human: Learning from Movements for Socialism and (with Noam Chomsky) The Withdrawal: Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, and the Fragility of U.S. Power.

Vijay Prashad’s X page: @vijayprashad

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