Has the Pentagon been caught using Twitter for pro-West disinformation?

• Facebook and Twitter have shut down dozens of fake accounts, suspecting they were created by the US military
• The Pentagon refuses to confirm or deny the US military was behind the accounts, but launches ‘review’

Agence France-Presse

The US Department of Defence has launched a review of its psychological warfare operations after the discovery of fake accounts on social media promoting pro-West disinformation, an official confirmed.

Pentagon spokesman Pat Ryder confirmed the review after a Washington Post report said social media giants Facebook and Twitter had shut down a number of fake accounts suspecting they were created by the US military.

Ryder did not say confirm or deny that the military was behind fake accounts, and said the information still needed to be reviewed.

He cautioned against assuming that the Defence Department was behind the accounts, leaving it possible that another government agency was involved.

He said the review is “an opportunity for us to assess the current work that’s being done in this arena”.

The Washington Post noted a report last month by Graphika and the Stanford Internet Observatory on pro-Western covert influence operations.

The report said Twitter and Facebook parent Meta had removed nearly 150 US and Britain-origin accounts in July and August engaging in “inauthentic behaviour”.

The Graphika-Stanford investigation said that, after analysing the accounts they discovered an interconnected web of accounts on eight social media platforms that had been using “deceptive tactics” to promote pro-Western narratives in the Middle East and in Central Asia.

The accounts came from a series of campaigns over five years rather than one single effort, the report said.

The accounts “consistently advanced narratives promoting the interests of the United States and its allies while opposing countries including Russia, China and Iran,” it said.

Citing unnamed government sources, The Washington Post tied at least some of the activity to the Pentagon, and said that officials of the US Central Command, which oversees operations in the Middle East, were “facing scrutiny”.

Ryder said the military’s psychological operations, or “military information support operations”, are structured and legal, and are to support activities in the field.

“These are not public affairs operations,” he said.

“It’s an aspect of warfare as old as warfare itself, and we conduct those operations in support of national security priorities,” he told reporters.

He noted that military deception operations were crucial in World War II, and are an integral part of the warfighting toolkit.

“There are opportunities in conducting operations against adversaries where you may want to use information in a way that is going to help them think a certain way - not truthful information,” he said.

“What I would highlight is that they must be undertaken in compliance with US law and Defence Department policy and we have safeguards in place and are committed to observing those safeguards,” he said.

Vladimir Putin’s war on Ukraine must not be allowed to undo decades of Sino-German economic cooperation

• China is not Russia. Its economic ties with Germany run far deeper, and Berlin needs good relations with Beijing to retain its leading position in Europe
• Without key raw materials from China, including metals, Europe and in particular Germany will not be in a position to advance ecological change

Thomas O. Falk

Relations between China and Germany go back a long way and have intensified since diplomatic relations were established in 1972 under German chancellor Willy Brandt. Since then, both sides have benefited greatly in areas such as science, technology and education – as well as trade, key to the flourishing cooperation.

A rising China needs Germany and the rest of Europe as markets for its products to ensure economic growth. Germany needs China for its manufacturing, particularly in electronics and chemicals, and for raw materials.

Previous German chancellors Helmut Kohl, Gerhard Schröder and Angela Merkel understood that amicable and beneficial relations with China were in Germany’s best interests.

Today, China is by far Germany’s largest trading partner, with bilateral trade worth more than €245 billion (US$250 billion) last year. Germany remains Europe’s primary investor in China, with direct investment increasing from US$1.5 billion in 2010 to US$14.55 billion in 2020.

It is a relationship that works. However, Russia’s war in Ukraine is now having an adverse impact on Sino-German cooperation.

Berlin has, in the past, been highly critical of Beijing’s handling of human rights. Now China’s refusal to condemn the Russian invasion and join Western sanctions against Moscow has called into question the strategic partnership. After all, Germany’s “Zeitenwende” (turning point), postulated by Chancellor Olaf Scholz after Russia’s attack, will also see Berlin readjust its stance on Beijing.

President Frank-Walter Steinmeier announced recently that Germany must not become dependent on China for key raw materials. “In some strategically important fields, our dependence on Chinese raw materials is significantly greater than our dependence on Russian gas in recent years,” he said.

But this statement is based on reactionist views and ill-advised values rather than sound political and economic conclusions. Germany’s U-turn must not disguise that it was caught off guard by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, despite the red flags.

Germany has over the past decades grown dependent on Russian gas, oil and coal – particularly during Steinmeier’s time as foreign minister.

Despite evidence of Russian President Vladimir Putin increasingly being seen as a pariah, the Russia-Georgia war in 2008 and annexation of Crimea in 2014 – plus contract killings on German soil and hacking attacks on the Bundestag – Merkel and Schröder continued to champion Russian-German relations.

The tone only changed following Putin’s war on Ukraine and subsequent energy crisis, with Germany now facing the possibility of running out of gas, which could leave people without heating this winter.

But China could now inadvertently get caught up in the backlash over Russia’s aggression, amid German naivety, with the false equivalency prevailing in Germany that China is basically another Russia.

This is a misjudgment, however. Russia, with an economy smaller than Italy’s, is essentially a gas station with nuclear weapons that has initiated the most significant war on European soil since the second world war.

Yes, Germany made itself dependent on Russian energy, but this is a temporary issue and the government is working hard to rectify things.

China is the present and the future, and for Berlin to maintain its leading position in Europe, German-Sino relations must continue to flourish, rather than decline.

Of course, it’s possible to be critical of China’s stance on a number of global issues. But Germany should give Beijing the benefit of the doubt and emphasise that there’s no comparison with the regime in Moscow.

Unlike Russia, Germany’s relationship with China is very much two-way. It is not about largely unprocessed raw materials such as oil or gas, but products in complex supply chains. German companies are heavily involved through their investments, while China relies on German technology.

More than two decades ago, business with China accounted for about 1 per cent of German trade volume. Today, more than one-tenth of German imports come from China. German exports to China have also increased significantly, accounting for more than 7 per cent of total exports.

Another pivotal point, especially if Germany and the rest of Europe are serious about going green, is that the European Union is 75-100 per cent dependent on imports for most metals. Among the 30 raw materials the EU classifies as “critical”, several are imported almost exclusively from China, such as rare earths (98 per cent), magnesium (93 per cent) and bismuth (93 per cent).

The EU estimates that with the move towards cleaner energy, demand for cobalt alone will be five times higher by 2030. Moreover, Germany’s ambitious electric-vehicle vision requires lithium, and EU demand could increase 18-fold by 2030.

Steinmeier can demand alternatives to China for raw materials as much as he pleases. But, without China, Europe and in particular Germany will not be in a position to advance ecological change or continue to prosper.

Germany, which has played a positive role in promoting China-EU relations, must be aware of this, and Putin’s war must not be allowed to undo decades of cooperation.

There will always be differences of opinion between Beijing and Berlin. But it shouldn’t hide the fact that positive Sino-German relations have been and continue to be a win-win state of affairs.

Thomas O. Falk is a UK-based independent journalist and political analyst

Russia’s war in Ukraine is more than just a battle of ‘good vs evil’

• Democracy is part of the story, but the truth is that Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine is complex and involves numerous factors
• Ignoring Russia’s ‘civilisational turn’ and mobilised historical memory leads to a flawed understanding and ineffective policies

Nicholas Ross Smith

New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern received some scorn recently when she said in a speech to the Lowy Institute that the war in Ukraine should not be characterised as a war of “democracy vs autocracy”. Much of it has centred on the belief that Ardern betrayed the courageous Ukrainians fighting the autocratic Russians for their chance at a democratic future.

Democracy is undeniably part of the story of the war in Ukraine. Remember, it was not the threat of Nato expansion that sparked Russian action against Ukraine in 2014 but, rather, the prospect of Ukraine aligning politically with the European Union.

Importantly, though, the Kremlin’s fear was not democracy in Ukraine per se. Historically, Ukraine has never been close to reaching the kind of reform which would justify calling it a “liberal democracy”. Under Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, it was not threatening to change this any time soon.

Furthermore, the EU’s once-lauded ability to facilitate democratic transitions has been stymied by domestic issues. What Russia feared most was the perceived threat of having a disloyal regime in Ukraine, the most important country in its self-anointed “zone of privileged interests”.

After witnessing the Arab spring and the toppling of numerous authoritarian regimes across the Middle East and North Africa – especially the brutal demise of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya – the Kremlin chose to see the prospect of having a Western-aligned democratic Ukraine on Russia’s border as something of a Trojan horse.

Furthermore, the broader claim that Russia and China represent a serious global challenge to democracy seems to be tenuous. Russia and China are increasingly authoritarian states that have taken action to undermine liberal democracies.

But the problems in liberal democracies at the moment have more to do with internal issues – such as political polarisation, the rise of extremism and demagoguery and increasing economic hardship – rather than any external interference.

Ardern’s refusal to reduce the Ukraine war to a simple dichotomy should be applauded. She is one of only a few leaders resisting the urge to view the Ukraine war or China’s rise in the Indo-Pacific as simple tales of good vs evil. Such Manicheanism is a hallmark of neoconservatism.

The truth is that Russia’s decision to invade Ukraine is complex and involves numerous factors beyond the lens of democracy vs autocracy. For instance, the “civilisational turn” that has occurred in Russia is extremely important.

When Russian President Vladimir Putin returned to office in 2012, he began explicitly evoking the concept of Russia as a unique, non-European civilisation to justify his strongman rule at home and reassert Russia as a significant global power.

Civilisational states are fundamentally exclusive and insular. While that might result in more domestic cohesion and regime stability, internationally it can be extremely divisive. As foreign policy expert Jeffrey Mankoff argued, Putin’s desire was for Russia to embark on a grand national cause of making Russian civilisation “a cultural and geopolitical alternative to the West”.

Ukraine became an important component of the idea of Russian civilisation, particularly as Russia identifies the medieval state of Kievan Rus as its historical starting point. The politics of historical memory have been front and centre of Russia’s belligerence against Ukraine.

What started as Russian action framed on the pretence that it wanted to “help the Ukrainian brothers to agree on how they should build and develop their country” has morphed into questioning the very existence of Ukraine as a nation.

History, especially when combined with the assertion of a unique civilisation, can be a trap. It might give leaders and politicians significant power at home, but it can also unleash forces they cannot control. As political scientist Maria Mälksoo argues, states that mobilise historical memory run the risk of actually doing “self-inflicted harm to the object of defence in the very effort to defend it”.

The war in Ukraine is further complicated by the legacy of colonialism and postcolonialism. Russia’s denial of Ukraine’s sovereignty and its invasion is, at its heart, an act of recolonisation. Some have likened this to reconstituting the Russian Empire.

All of this is occurring against the backdrop of great power politics. Although hard power largely went out of fashion as a key aspect of understanding international relations in the initial post-Cold-War era, it would be foolish not to realise that power relations are crucial to the calculations of states. Changing regional geopolitical contexts should not be dismissed as unimportant.

Rightly or wrongly, Russia and China interpret Western action as an effort to undermine their power. The United States casts a long shadow and can be ignorant about how this affects non-allies, especially great powers that are notoriously fearful and paranoid.

Ardern made a compelling point when she said diplomacy cannot succeed “if those parties we seek to engage with are increasingly isolated and the region we inhabit becomes increasingly divided and polarised”.

Make no mistake – in the context of the Ukraine war, Russia is undeniably in the wrong. The Ukrainians deserve to win and come out of the conflict with a liberal democratic future and a clear pathway to EU membership.

However, pushing simplistic narratives about the conflict and broader international issues will inadvertently result in simplistic policies that do not grasp the complexity of these issues. On this point, Ardern is right to try to offer a more nuanced view.

Nicholas Ross Smith is an adjunct fellow at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand

China ‘not to blame’ for African debt crisis, it’s the West: study

• High-interest loans from private Western lenders account for most of the burden on countries in Africa, Britain’s Debt Justice charity finds
• Campaigners are calling on the G7 to stop using Chinese loans as ‘distraction’ while letting their own banks, asset managers and oil traders off the hook

Jevans Nyabiage

African countries owe three times more debt to Western banks, asset managers and oil traders than to China, and are charged double the interest, according to a study released on Monday by British campaign charity Debt Justice.

This is despite the growing accusations by the US and other Western countries that China’s lending is behind the debt troubles faced by some African countries.

The study said just 12 per cent of the continent’s external debt was owed to Chinese lenders, compared to 35 per cent owed to Western private creditors, according to calculations based on World Bank data.

Interest rates charged on private loans were almost double those on Chinese loans, while the most indebted countries were less likely to have their debt dominated by China, the study found. The average interest rate on private sector loans is 5 per cent, compared to 2.7 per cent on loans from Chinese public and private lenders.

The study was released ahead of the G20 finance ministers meeting from July 15-16 in Indonesia. Campaigners are calling on Western countries, particularly Britain and the US, to compel private lenders to take part in the Common Framework – the G20’s latest debt relief scheme.

The study found a dozen of the 22 African countries with the highest debts were paying more than 30 per cent of their total external repayments to private lenders. These included Cabo Verde, Chad, Egypt, Gabon, Malawi, Morocco, Rwanda, Senegal, Tunisia and Zambia.

South Sudan is one of the hardest hit in this category, with 81 per cent of its debt repayments going to private creditors, and just 11 per cent to China. Ghana is also paying more than half of its external debt obligations to the private sector, with 11 per cent going to China and the rest to multilateral lenders and other governments.

Chinese lenders accounted for more than 30 per cent of loan payments in six of the 22 most indebted countries – Angola, Cameroon, Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Ethiopia and Zambia.

The study calculations showed 59 per cent of Angola’s foreign debt payments serviced Chinese lenders. And Djibouti – where China has poured billions of dollars into building ports and free trade zones, and also set up its first overseas military base – makes 64 per cent of its external debt payments to Beijing.

Debt Justice policy head Tim Jones said Western leaders blamed China for debt crises in Africa, “but this is a distraction”.

“The truth is their own banks, asset managers and oil traders are far more responsible but the G7 are letting them off the hook.”

Jones said China had taken part in the G20’s Debt Service Suspension Initiative during the pandemic, while private lenders did not. “There can be no effective debt solution without the involvement of private lenders. The UK and US should introduce legislation to compel private lenders to take part in debt relief,” he said.

The G20 initiative, unveiled in May 2020, provided 48 economies with temporary cash-flow relief, delivering about US$12.9 billion in debt service payments by the end of December when it ended.

But the exclusion of private and multilateral lenders meant countries that applied to take part in the initiative saw just 23 per cent of their external repayments suspended.

In 2020, Zambia became the first African country to default – on US$3 billion in dollar-denominated bonds – in the pandemic era. It is now in the process of restructuring about US$17 billion in external debt as a precondition to securing IMF loans of US$1.4 billion.

Lusaka owes Chinese lenders about US$6 billion, which has gone into building mega projects including airports, highways and power dams.

The initiative’s replacement, the G20 Common Framework, allows participating countries to agree to restructure debt with bilateral lenders and the International Monetary Fund (IMF). The nations are then supposed to seek similar debt treatment from private sector creditors.

Only Chad, Zambia and Ethiopia have so far applied for help through the Common Framework, but all are still waiting for debt relief.

The G7 countries have blamed China for the failure of the debt relief programme to help heavily indebted countries avoid default, doubling down in May with a statement from the finance ministers of the world’s seven most advanced economies.

“With regards to the implementation of the Common Framework, it remains essential that all relevant creditor countries – including non-Paris Club countries, such as those like China, with large outstanding claims on low-income countries facing debt sustainability challenges – contribute constructively to the necessary debt treatments as requested,” they said.

Yungong Theo Jong, head of programmes at the African Forum and Network on Debt and Development (Afrodad), said multilateral and private lenders remained the biggest creditors to African governments.

“Loans from China have increased Africa’s indebtedness, but by far less than Western lenders. All lenders must participate in debt relief. Western governments must lead the way by making private lenders cancel debts,” he said.

In the eyes of others, the US is not the benign power it thinks it is

Dani Rodrik

• America’s foreign policy goals are often self-serving, while its designs for a rules-based international order primarily reflect the interests of its business and policy elites
• What’s good for the US may not be good for the world. The sooner Washington recognises that, the better

When I started teaching at Harvard’s Kennedy School in the mid-1980s, competition with Japan was the dominant preoccupation of US economic policy. The book Japan as Number One by Harvard’s premier Japan expert at the time, Ezra Vogel, set the tone of the debate.

I remember being struck back then by the degree to which the discussion, even among academics, was tinged by a certain sense of American entitlement to international pre-eminence. The United States could not let Japan dominate key industries and had to respond with its own industrial and trade policies – not just because these might help the US economy, but also because the US simply could not be No 2.

Until then, I had thought that aggressive nationalism was a feature of the Old World – insecure societies ill at ease with their international standing and reeling from real or perceived historical injustices. American elites, rich and secure, may have valued patriotism, but their global outlook tended towards cosmopolitanism.

But zero-sum nationalism was not far from the surface, which became clear once America’s place atop the global economic totem pole was threatened.

After three decades of US triumphalism following the fall of the Berlin Wall, a similar process is now playing out on a vastly greater scale. It is driven both by China’s rise – which represents a more significant economic challenge to America than Japan did in the 1980s and is also a geopolitical risk – and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

The US has responded to these developments by seeking to reassert its global primacy – a goal American policymakers readily conflate with that of establishing a more secure and prosperous world. They regard US leadership as central to the promotion of democracy, open markets and a rules-based international order.

What could be more conducive to peace and prosperity than that? The view that US foreign policy goals are fundamentally benign underpins the myth of American exceptionalism: what is good for the US is good for the world.

While this is undoubtedly true at times, the myth too often blinds American policymakers to the reality of how they exercise power. The US undermines other democracies when it suits its interests and has a long record of meddling in sovereign countries’ domestic politics. Its 2003 invasion of Iraq was as clear a violation of the United Nations Charter as Russian President Vladimir Putin’s aggression against Ukraine.

US designs for “open markets” and a “rules-based international order” often primarily reflect the interests of US business and policy elites rather than smaller countries’ aspirations. And when international rules diverge from those interests, the US simply stays away (as with the International Criminal Court, or most of the core International Labour Organization conventions).

Many of these tensions were evident in a recent speech by US Secretary of State Antony Blinken on America’s approach to China. Blinken described China as “the most serious long-term challenge to the international order”, arguing that “Beijing’s vision would move us away from the universal values that have sustained so much of the world’s progress”.

Blinken is correct that many of the elements of the post-World-War-II order, such as the UN Charter, are not purely American or Western. But it is far from certain that China poses a greater threat to those truly universal constructs than the US does. For example, much of the trouble that US policymakers have with Chinese economic practices relates to domains – especially trade, investment and technology – where universal rules hardly prevail.

According to Blinken, the US “will shape the strategic environment around Beijing to advance our vision for an open, inclusive international system”. Again, who could possibly oppose such a vision?

But China and many others worry that US intentions are much less benign. To them, Blinken’s statement sounds like a threat to contain China and limit its options, while bullying other countries into siding with America.

None of this is to claim an equivalence between current US actions and Russia’s invasion of Ukraine or China’s gross human rights violations in Xinjiang and land grabs in the Himalayas and South China Sea.

For all its faults, the US is a democracy where critics can openly criticise and oppose the government’s foreign policy. But that makes little difference to countries treated as pawns in America’s geopolitical competition with China, which often struggle to distinguish between the global actions of major powers.

Blinken drew a clear link between China’s authoritarian practices and the country’s presumed threat to global order. This is a mirror-image projection of America’s belief in its own benign exceptionalism. But just as democracy at home does not imply goodwill abroad, domestic repression need not inevitably lead to external aggression. China also claims to be interested in a stable, prosperous global order – just not one arranged exclusively on US terms.

The irony is that the more the US treats China as a threat and attempts to isolate it, the more China’s responses will seem to validate America’s fears.

With the US seeking to convene a club of democracies openly opposing China, it is not surprising that President Xi Jinping cosied up to Putin just as Russia was preparing to invade Ukraine. As the journalist Robert Wright notes, countries excluded from such groupings will band together.

To those who wonder why we should care about the decline of America’s relative power, US foreign policy elites respond with a rhetorical question: would you rather live in a world dominated by the US or by China?

In truth, other countries would rather live in a world without domination, where smaller states retain a fair degree of autonomy, have good relations with all others, are not forced to choose sides, and do not become collateral damage when major powers fight it out.

The sooner US leaders recognise that others do not view America’s global ambitions through the same rose-tinted glasses, the better it will be for everyone.

Dani Rodrik is professor of international political economy at Harvard University’s John F. Kennedy School of Government. Copyright: Project Syndicate

Russia-Ukraine war: Europe failed by not building alliances with Asia

Chandran Nair

• After outsourcing its security to the US and Nato, Europe now finds itself in a pseudo-proxy war. Asia should learn from this lack of strategic leadership
• European leaders lacked the spine to embrace China, India or Russia with an independent foreign policy – instead drinking deeply from America’s warlike doctrine

Lost in the fog of war is the truth that the Russia-Ukraine crisis has revealed the failings of Europe’s leaders on two fronts.

First, why did they not see this coming? Because they are in denial about the nature of their subservient relationship with an increasingly reckless and hegemonic United States.

Second, why do they maintain this relationship with America? Because they lack the spine to embrace the alternative: an independent foreign policy on a more equal standing with the rest of the world – especially with Asian powers such as China and India.

If Europe, with its history of triggering global wars, is to move towards peace once more then it must first face up to these leadership failings and chart a new course based on something more than narrow alliances rooted in a shared European heritage and race.

Wars must be avoided at all cost and it takes true leadership to maintain peace, not ideological posturing and pandering to special relationships. Countries always act in their self-interest – the protection of national security, for example – but in this instance the leaders of Europe failed to protect their citizens by imposing a national security threat upon Russia.

This is not a defence of Vladimir Putin. Instigating war and its horrors is unforgivable, and he must be held responsible for his actions. But we should not be blindsided: it is a geopolitical reality that any country would feel its national security was at risk when faced with a military coalition, which it cannot join, expanding towards its borders. This type of provocation is intolerable and Western leaders should not have expected it to be endured.

Yet many in the West still arrogantly believe all other nations must mirror their ideologies and are deserving of antagonism if they do not. This stance is naively insufficient for a multipolar, globalised world that is sadly also overmilitarised – something Europe should have already recognised.

If China, India or Venezuela began a process similar to Nato’s expansion with their neighbouring countries, it would cause geopolitical uproar – the mere presence of Chinese ships at the edges of the South China Sea triggers anti-China sentiment from the West.

War is avoided through diplomacy, communication, and an acute understanding of the fears and concerns of others. Leaders in Asia understand this, for the most part, given the wars the region has endured – many of which have their roots in the colonial era – and as such, they invariably push for peace and not military escalation. Witness Southeast Asia, which since the end of the Vietnam war – fought to liberate the country from centuries of foreign domination – has not seen a major conflict. Despite the presence of foreign military powers like the US, the region has maintained a non-aligned foreign policy and tried not to take sides.

America’s determination to dominate Asia militarily has typically been justified by a carefully crafted and crafty narrative that Asian nations are apparently incapable of building and enjoying peace without the military presence of the most warlike nation on the planet.

Europe’s leaders have gone to great lengths to conceal their lack of leadership by transforming Putin into a pariah and even calling for regime change, instead of pursuing a diplomatic approach. In doing so, they and the international commentators that echo them abdicate responsibility for not pre-empting the war; they can instead lay the blame entirely at Putin’s door and paint him as a movie-style villain. So it was with Saddam Hussein, Muammar Gaddafi, and anyone else seen as unsavoury by the West. The same treatment is now being meted out to Chinese President Xi Jinping. But diplomacy means forging friendships, even with enemies, to avoid catastrophic outcomes. This simple logic and calculus was cast aside as Europe outsourced its security to the US and Nato.

Which leads us to the first front: European leaders were helpless to prevent this war from occurring because of their coveted close relationship with America.

This relationship is ultimately predicated on a shared European heritage and the post-war ideological unification of the US and Europe as leaders of the “free world”, which the rest of the world now largely sees as an outdated coalition of Caucasian nations spearheaded by the Anglosphere. Europe – Britain especially – has desperately tried to maintain this “special” relationship with big brother America in recent decades, leading many European leaders to outsource decision-making to Washington on issues of geopolitical importance, from interventions in the Middle East to trade agreements, economic restructuring, and sanctions. This in turn further emboldened the US and encouraged its belligerence.

It has also prevented Europe’s leaders from creating an independent strategic foreign policy approach that places them in control of their own regional security. A key tenet of this strategy should have been cultivating ties with Russia and China 20 years ago to build world peace. Instead, the Europeans chose to tether themselves to an insecure America and allow themselves to be drawn into an ideological partnership of global dominance and supremacy, based on Cold War mindsets – a position that is singularly unsuited to guarding Europe’s self-interest and its critically important role in the emerging post-Western world.

Europe saw China simply as a trading partner and a threat, rather than an ally. More often than not, it chose to follow the prescriptions of the US – a country that has been at war for much of its existence, and that allows domestic politics to become the catalyst for militaristic intervention in other parts of the world.

Rather than working with Russia to prioritise peace, European leaders drank deeply from US doctrine and ultimately capitulated to it. Now, Europe is caught in a bind: looking to American foreign policy as its North Star when this was what got it into this unnecessary war in the first place. After all, the US is unlikely to come to Europe’s aid if the conflict worsens – funding and weapons are one thing, but ground, naval, and air support against another nuclear power is not on America’s agenda. And there is no reason to expect a domestically insecure Joe Biden will sue for peace when he is desperate to strengthen his position with the American public by showing how tough and righteous he is. If that means war in Europe against one of America’s detractors, so be it.

The business of war

European leaders should have been acutely aware that the US has the largest military-industrial complex in the world. Since 9/11, one-third to one-half of the Pentagon’s US$14 trillion in spending has gone to for-profit defence contractors, while dozens of members of Congress and their families own millions of dollars’ worth of stock in these companies. America is the most capitalist country in the world, and the arms industry is big business. But the market can only grow if conflict and military expenditure increase around the world. For European leaders to be aware of this and not act accordingly is a failure of strategic leadership. There is a lesson here for Asia, too: make military spending a large part of your national budget and economy, and ruin awaits on many fronts.

Why did the Europeans not act on this knowledge? Answering this question brings us to the second front: they do not have the backbone to stand up to Washington and sacrifice elements of their relationship with the US, which offers them a disproportionate place in the global hierarchy of nations, so they can be free of American influence in their affairs. By the same token, how much longer will Japan kowtow to a US foreign policy that is increasingly dictated by neocons and instead forge one that is independent and built with its Asian neighbours?

It should have been clear to the Europeans since the turn of the millennium that America’s political system was beginning to become a destabilising global force, rather than a unifying one. Yet no European leader has taken concrete steps to limit US interventionism or create an independent foreign-policy approach. The result is that Europe now finds itself in a pseudo-proxy war with Russia – a conflict that is right on its doorstep, not in some faraway place in the Middle East or Asia.

Where is the European leader willing to call this out with one simple statement? And better yet, follow it up with diplomatic action? What is the principle that European leaders think they are defending when negotiations break down and lives continue to be lost?

Moral posturing

Europe’s lack of leadership was not much talked about before the crisis. But just as war has united the West in its desperation to maintain the anachronistic “struggle of light over dark” (an actual quote from The Economist to describe the conflict) that so defines its moral posturing, so has it given voice to those observers and commentators seeking to bring periphery conversations to the surface. European leaders should heed such opinions, even if they are a departure from the actions of their forebears.

Europe should come to terms with the end of empire, and centuries of privilege, and reach out to Asian powers that are going to shape the course of the 21st century. That means making allies of China, India, and Indonesia – total population 3 billion – rather than condescendingly viewing them as former colonies not worthy of a “special” relationship. They may not share a common European heritage, but do such archaic and even racist ideas still matter in the 21st century?

Europe needs to come to terms with the harsh reality that America is not on its side, because what drives the US geopolitically is ultimately domestic gain – both bolstering its position as global hegemon and retaining its economic privileges, such as its dollar as the world’s reserve currency. Asian leaders, meanwhile, need to understand that despite the significant build-up of US military power in the region over the last half-century, it is not in their best interests to allow “Nato-isation” to occur. Asia needs to work collectively to curb US military expansion and make sure Washington understands that the region is not made up of client states, and is in fact capable of maintaining peace without outsourcing its security like the Europeans.

After spouting righteous rhetoric against Russia and Putin, European leaders are finding themselves face-to-face with militaristic escalation that they are not equipped to deal with. This is not a war that generals marched into; it is a war that politicians lacking strategic leadership skills allowed to happen. Across Asia, political leaders need to be aware of this all important lesson.

Chandran Nair is founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow and member of the Club of Rome’s executive committee. He is also the author of ‘Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World’ and ‘The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy and Society’.

American aggression needs to be reined in for the good of Asia and the world

 Chandran Nair

• Decades of exceptionalism, ideological obsessions and a deep-rooted sense of superiority is catching up with the United States
• The world needs to appreciate the rapid shifts in the global order arising from the US’ toxic domestic situation, and how its political elite distracts people from its decline with an aggressive foreign policy anchored in outdated doctrines

US President Joe Biden visited Asia last week and triggered panic across the region when he spoke out of turn and unproductively about war with China.

At a time when the world is reeling from the effects of the war in Ukraine and when so much of the region is still trying to recover from the pandemic, including the economic fallout, Biden chose not to speak about peace and collaboration but instead deliberately fuelled tensions. This is unconscionable.

It is high time for leaders of the region to no longer remain passive to such bullying and reckless behaviour, or worse, exude subservience in the presence of Western leaders by outsourcing the management of regional issues and differences to them, including bilateral tensions.

Biden’s comments brought into clear focus Washington’s fearful obsession over the rise of China, which is an unprecedented challenge to its assumed role as global leader. This challenge is made much more uncomfortable for the US and its Western allies by the fact China is a non-Caucasian civilisation, and its rise upturns 400 years of Western dominance of world affairs, often referred to as the “rules-based” global order.

But the truth is that decades of exceptionalism, ideological obsessions and a deep-rooted sense of superiority is catching up with the US. There exists a major frontline within the nation that is tearing it apart but about which its leaders remain in full denial.

As soon as Biden returned to the US after his warmongering mission to Asia, he was greeted by the latest in an ongoing tragedy at home – 21 people, including 19 children, killed by a domestic terrorist armed by America’s home-grown merchants of death, the gun industry.

Biden’s response was to scold the nation, by lamenting, “When are we going to stand up to the gun lobby?” A plea of a helpless man, coming from supposedly the world’s most powerful leader.

What, therefore, gives Biden the right to posture as the leader of the so-called free world? His statements are primarily based on an outdated reliance on projecting America’s military might and apparent willingness to go to war to defend the world against the US version of the “bad guys”. This is despite its defeat in all the major wars it has triggered over the last half a century, from Vietnam and Iraq to Afghanistan. All examples of people seeking to be free of foreign occupation.

The long-held fear across Asia of a reckless militaristic empire starting a war here is quickly being replaced by a new realisation and awakening: that all of these machinations are the desperate throes of a nation that is entirely unwilling to share power with others, and is internally wracked by conflict and social decline.

The US thus desperately seeks refuge or even reassurance in its self-appointed role as leader of the “free world”, driven by a desperate desire to retain its privileges by projecting aggression across the world.

Much of this hinges on the leveraging of fig leaves, such as leading the fight against authoritarian states, defending democracy or standing up for universal values and providing security guarantees for the nations of the world.

But in reality, the US is seemingly incapable of protecting even its children. So, Biden came to Asia, spoke and war mongered but he did not conquer. People across the world have begun to see through the veneer of American exceptionalism, as the bullying and intimidation has persisted for too long.

The hypocrisy is far too obvious to explain away. This is a tipping point, as formerly colonised populations around the world – subservient through centuries of indoctrination – are now beginning to see the emperor with no clothes on.

To understand the implications of the decline of the US on the rest of the world, one has to understand the true nature of the broken state of affairs. This means looking well beyond the supposed might of the American economy.

The reliance on economic performance indicators to assess the strength of the US and amplify its power, glosses over deep-rooted structural failings, and this is a grave mistake – and even a form of denial. These are wholly superficial and inappropriate indicators of a society’s well-being and resilience.

A true reflection of the realities in the US would include the following indicators:

• The unabated gun violence and the killing of its children, to which a corrupt political system has been unresponsive. A nation that cannot protect its children from such wanton slaughter is immoral and has no right lecturing the world about values, human rights or democracy.

• The continuing large-scale systemic discrimination of black people, including killings such as the one in Buffalo.

• An entrenched industrial military complex (IMC) that thrives on selling and exporting guns, weapons and war.

• A growing right-wing white supremacist movement now led by the former President who only last week sharing a post speaking about an impending civil war – incitement?

• Extreme and growing inequalities, yet a completely detached belief among the majority that a “thriving economy”, which in reality serves the very rich, represents success and progress. This is worsened by the degree of idolisation in American media.

• The widespread and slow death being inflicted on millions of Americans by the nature of their consumption habits, abetted by the structure of the US’ unfettered capitalist economy – in particular the stranglehold of the junk food and pharmaceutical industry. The Covid-19 pandemic further exposed the severity of this underlying health crisis.

• A public that is inured to foreign conflict and has scant regard for the death and destruction inflicted on non-Americans by the country’s never-ending wars.

This is not to say other countries do not have some of these issues. But none exist on this scale. Most importantly, no other country with these large scale internal challenges borne out of political failure and societal fissures seeks to relentlessly occupy the higher moral ground and impose upon or dictate to others in order to maintain economic dominance; not even China.

The world, and especially a fast-growing Asia, needs to appreciate the rapid and fundamental shifts in the global order arising from the US’ toxic domestic situation, and how its political elite distracts the world and Americans from its decline (and obvious lack of moral authority) with an aggressive foreign policy anchored in outdated doctrines. Their recklessness threatens all of us. This dangerous trend will reach a potentially catastrophic tipping point far more significant than those expressed at the World Economic Forum last week in response to the war in Ukraine.

It is time for the world, perhaps led by the large nations of Asia, to demilitarise the world of the American Military Industrial Complex (AMIC) by developing a 21st century doctrine of security and peace that is not tethered to the war machine that is the AMIC.

It is an oxymoron to talk about peace and security guarantees and expect to be led by a nation that has been at war for 93 per cent of the time since its independence and has the world’s largest defence spend – more than the next nine countries combined. With so much capital, the door is wide open for vested interests, and the defence industry has dangerously become a significant player in the US economy.

Europe is only beginning to understand, albeit rather late in the day, the consequences of outsourcing its security to a war industry with such interests, given that the AMIC now appears to have seen an opportunity to prolong the conflict in Ukraine and serve its interests.

The AMIC poses an existential threat to world peace because it has partially captured the political economy of the most powerful country on the planet.

Five of the nation’s biggest defence contractors spent a combined US$60 million to lobby the US government in 2020. The media worships military people – who have investments in defence stocks – and have them on their payroll. Many politicians have stakes in the military industrial complex, and the tech and finance industries are embedded in it.

For this reason, the US is believed to be one of the biggest threats to world peace. The military industrial complex has become so large that it does not care about winnable wars. It simply needs wars, period.

Overcoming the challenge presented by the AMIC can be compared with the task of decarbonising the world through a move towards more non-fossil fuel energy sources. It will be a long march, but the world did not start by asking the fossil fuel industry to come up with solutions, and nor does the world ever expect the sector to be fully supportive.

Instead, new frameworks and doctrines have been created for a new major transformation of our energy future. We need the same to tackle the AMIC and its natural penchant for war.

This is a massive industry with tentacles everywhere in the US, including among lawmakers, media groups and the tech and financial industry. Overseas it is omnipresent, with an unknown number of subsidiaries around the world, aided by corrupt governments who are clients.

It is no secret that defence budgets in most developing countries are where large-scale corruption is most prevalent. It is a money spinner just like the fossil fuel industry, and taming it will require bold new approaches about shaping the future of the world.

It will need to start with a revolution of the mind among Asian leaders, including the complete rejection of their subservience to the US and its Western alliance. Asian leaders should recognise that by curbing their need to emulate or seek guidance or legitimacy from America in foreign policy affairs, they will reduce opportunities to feed the AMIC and thereby sow the seeds for a less risky future based on regional self-determination.

This is the first step towards rebuffing the confrontational ideologies of the USA and it Western allies and for building a new framework that will once and for all toss the tensions of the past into the dustbin of history, which have been so expertly used by Western powers to continue to divide the nations of Asia.

This will allow for regional heavyweights like China, Japan, Korea, India, Indonesia to come together and map a new future for the region rather than continue to be actors in a divide and rule, neocolonial geopolitical theatre marshalled by the US.

It will compel a rising power like China to honour its commitment to a peaceful rise as the demilitarisation of the AMIC becomes an enabling doctrine for a new regional peace and security pact. This outcome is not a far-fetched undertaking, as the example of Asean has proven.

While far from perfect, Asean has slowly and surely built a doctrine of its own that has allowed for peaceful coexistence in a way that also works to improve the livelihoods of its people. It has, most importantly, avoided war despite the presence of the AMIC.

The behaviour of the Korean and Japanese leaders during the visit of the US president was awkward to watch and not befitting of these two great nations and their cultures and seemed to belong to a bygone era. Imagine a peace and security treaty involving China, Japan and Korea that does not involve current day security guarantees by the US and its Western allies, which to date have only served to divide and heighten tensions.

Asian leaders need to realise that a post-Western world is being born, and that means drawing new lines of alliances and steering a new course, which will be a departure from the highly dangerous drivers of US and Western intentions in the region, rooted in preserving an old archaic and even imperial order.

Ideally, Europe will be a willing partner, but it now seems unlikely as the war in Ukraine and the billions of dollars of US military aid flowing in is only going to make Europe behave like client states of the US, Nato and the AMIC.

Chandran Nair is the founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow and ExCom member of the Club of Rome. He is also the author of ‘Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World’ and ‘The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy and Society’.

Chandran Nair is the founder of the Global Institute for Tomorrow and ExCom member of the Club of Rome. He is also the author of ‘Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post-Western World’ and ‘The Sustainable State: The Future of Government, Economy and Society’.

China's Gen Z has the power to make or break Western brands

BLOOMBERG

They’ve got money to burn, eschew foreign labels, and are driven by a swelling sense of nationalism that can ensnare even the biggest global brands. They’re China’s Generation Z and they’re shaking up shopping.

The 270-million-strong cohort born since the mid-1990s is already flexing their power: they have the fastest spending growth out of any generation in China, are top buyers of cosmetics and tourism services, and have upended online shopping.

Their influence will only grow, with spending set to rise fourfold to 16 trillion yuan (S$3.3 trillion) by 2035, according to China Renaissance.

Meeting the demands of the young, nationalistic and exacting Gen Z will require an immense shift in how Western companies - who have bet that decades of demand for foreign goods will endure - do business in China and poses an unprecedented challenge to their market dominance.

It also sets the stage for a rise in domestic companies to meet growing appetite for, and pride in, China-made goods.

“Gen Z is the first real consumer generation in China,” said Mr Zak Dychtwald, founder of trend research company Young China Group. “Similar to the baby boomers in the US, China’s Gen Z are redefining the country’s consumer economy and will continue to do so in every single life stage that they go through.”

It’s not just the sheer size of the market that sets them apart from their peers. Unlike their counterparts in the US or Europe, who grew up during the global financial crisis and its aftermath, China’s young shoppers have known nothing but sustained growth - the pandemic is the first major blight on the economy in their lifetimes - and many were only-child ‘emperors,’ doted upon by parents willing to spend to meet their every need.

That’s now reflected in their money habits. About a quarter of China’s Gen Z don’t save at all, compared with the global average of 15 per cent, according to an OC&C report.

They’re also more likely to be impulsive with their purchases. The term Moonlight Clan has been coined to describe people who spend their entire paychecks each month - or an entire lunar cycle, according to McKinsey & Co.

The group also prefers to spend their money on themselves, and is less inclined to have kids or buy property, which are becoming increasingly unaffordable.

But what truly sets China’s Gen Z apart from previous generations, and poses the greatest threat for multinationals from Sony Group Corp to Christian Dior SE and Nike Inc is their growing nationalism, fuelled by Beijing’s desire to flex the country’s rising global clout.

It has put governments and companies on an increasingly delicate footing, lest they find themselves at the centre of a storm of criticism.

Young, proud Chinese drove the backlash against Hennes & Mauritz AB and Nike after the companies denounced the use of cotton from the Xinjiang region due to accusations of human rights violations against its Uighur minority. H&M, in particular, has become a cautionary tale with its business in China yet to recover.

The gap left behind paved the way for local rivals like Anta Sports Products Ltd and Li Ning Co - who support Xinjiang cotton - to surpass them in sales by introducing products targeting local consumers, including apparel emblazoned with Chinese characters and sneakers inspired by the Forbidden City.

By the end of January 2022, Anta and Li Ning dominated 28 per cent of sneaker sales, 12 percentage points higher than before the Xinjiang outcry.

It’s a shift echoed across other consumer segments, with local drink maker Genki Forest to cosmetic brand Perfect Diary gaining market share and customer loyalty in sectors that used to be dominated by international names.

Local brands’ “key focus is maintaining their brand position relevant to the Chinese consumers, while global brands must balance not only the trends in China, but also globally to ensure it does not become different things in different countries,” said Mr Kenny Yao, a director at AlixPartners Shanghai, a consulting firm that advises clients on developing businesses in China.

Unimpressed

Unlike their parents, China’s Gen Z tends to be less impressed by products simply because they’re foreign. Western trends dominated the market once China started to open up to foreign investment in the late 1970s.

It sparked an influx of brands from McDonald’s Corp to Toshiba Corp, Adidas and Starbucks Corp. That helped fuel China’s rise into the world’s second-biggest economy.

Ms Sarah Lin, a 22-year-old student in Beijing, said her parents still get excited by items that only have foreign-language labels because they assume it’s a premium product.

But during the time she studied abroad, she realised many brands considered high end in China are mass-market names at home. Now, she prefers to research products and is happy to buy domestic names due to their improving quality and designs that appeal to her.

“In the past, people would think those who wear Li Ning can’t afford Nike, but foreign brands are not as mysterious to me as to my parents,” said Ms Lin. “I don’t want to pay any premium for a brand’s origin, I’ll only pay for its designs and value for money.”

Meeting the needs of more discerning customers is also proving a challenge for some foreign brands. Each year, companies from LVMH to Zara roll out collections of handbags to sweaters to mark the Lunar New Year, but their styles - usually emblazoned with traditional folk art and lots of red and gold - are often made fun of by young Chinese consumers who want to express their individual style rather than buy mass-produced fashion that treats them as a monolith.

Other firms have been more targeted in appealing to Gen Z. Prada SpA’s recent Lunar New Year collection involved a competition for under-30s artists to have their work judged and chosen for a project. Toothpaste brand Crest used a multi-day immersive event that had users solving a murder mystery as part of a new-product launch.

Growing pride

A growing sense of cultural pride has developed alongside a maturation of Chinese brands. And while the shift to buying local isn’t unique to China, few places in the world have the extensive government support and state media apparatus to push the idea on to consumers so comprehensively.

The revival of hanfu - a traditional, flowing style of clothing characterised by a robe worn over a skirt - is a case in point.

Initially a small-scale movement in the mid-2000s, it’s grown into a market worth 10 billion yuan a year and is drawing investor interest. Designer Shisanyu raised over 100 million yuan in an April last year, led by Loyal Valley Capital and Bilibili, while Sequoia-backed retailer Shierguangnian has emerged as a top seller.

Like their peers worldwide, China’s Gen Z grew up online and the country’s use of social-commerce has become an increasingly important tool for brands.

The sales channel, which allows users to buy products through social media platforms and interact directly with live streamers, is expected to grow into a more than US$1.6 trillion (S$2.2 trillion) business by 2025.

That’s about half of total e-commerce sales and up from one-fifth in 2019, according to China Renaissance.

It’s proved to be a fertile source of revenue for domestic brands. Florasis, a Chinese cosmetics brand founded in 2017, has become the country’s biggest, supported by livestreamers who demonstrate products and engage with users.

But Western firms, not as accustomed to the method of selling, have had more mixed results.

An hour-long livestream by Louis Vuitton in 2020 drew viewers, but also complaints that the setting was too low-end for the luxury label. Both domestic and foreign firms are also grappling with mounting short-term headwinds as China’s pursuit of Covid Zero leaves it stuck in a cycle of lockdowns and reopenings that are taking a growing economic and social toll.

The youth jobless rate hit a record in April and Gen Z has the most conservative view on increasing spending this year, according to an OC&C report in December.

Demanding tastes

Still, Gen Z’s increasing power means their preferences will re-shape the consumer sector for decades to come.

“Foreign brands need to be aware that, compared with older generations, China’s young shoppers are even more demanding,” said Ms Veronica Wang, partner at OC&C Strategy Consultants.

They “can no longer enter the market arrogantly, saying ‘hey this is our cool product, take it’. They need to try understanding better what Chinese consumers want and like, embracing Chinese culture and being more open-minded to adjust themselves to fit in the local market.”

Ms Wang highlighted South Korean eye-wear brand Gentle Monster as an overseas label able to gain ground with younger Chinese consumers through constant product innovation and themed stores, which speak to Gen Z’s desire for a memorable experience.

Foreign companies will also need to empower their teams in China, who can better read local consumption patterns and make rolling out new products more efficient.

“The greatest misperception of China is that modernisation means Westernisation,” said trend researcher Mr Dychtwald. “That’s been the gamble for all brands.”

Why weaponising democracy against China will backfire on the US

By Chandran Nair

• Washington’s Summit for Democracy has made half the world a pariah by defining as ‘authoritarian’ any country that does not share its choice of political system

• But countries have grown sceptical of the West’s motives. It’s time the West accepted there is value in plurality

Unknown to most people, the United States has embarked on an exercise to divide the world into two blocks – “democracies” and “authoritarian” states. 

What’s more, the US defines “authoritarian” as any country that refuses to follow the prescriptions of the West with regard to the political system it adopts.

Yet the United Nations Charter, signed in 1945, did not mention the word democracy – because it is each nation’s sovereign right to pursue its own political system. And a nation’s choice is legitimised solely by its people.

America’s divisive exercise – the Summit for Democracy, to be held on December 9, 2021, in Washington – goes against the principles of the United Nations Charter.

Of the 101 countries invited, 28 per cent are categorised as “partly free”, while 3 per cent are considered “not free”. There is no “alternative political system” category. Thirty-nine European countries were invited, but only 17 African countries, four from South and Central Asia, and two from the Middle East. Notably, China is absent, and as a main theme of the summit is “Defending against authoritarianism” – this is thinly veiled belligerence on an international scale.

This means that of the 193 countries in the world, the US believes 92 are undeserving of its definition of international recognition and are essentially pariah states. That is almost half the world. But the world possesses a diversity of political systems that we must all learn to accept and work with to make multilateral cooperation more effective. Dividing the world into two camps is limiting, regressive, and a reflection of a Cold War mentality that is counter-productive.

Ultimately, this summit is yet another American attempt to curtail the rise of China and demonise it: post-summit, it is likely that countries will be expected to take action “in support of democracy”. Given the proximity of the Beijing Winter Olympics to the summit, we can expect to hear threats of boycotts and read scathing statements from Western politicians and commentators on China – some are already calling it the “Genocide Olympics”. This is part of a wider strategy to impose a pax Americana world order by weaponising the noble notion of democracy, bolstering Washington’s declining stature and hegemonic global influence.

This approach is not new. It is the age-old “with us or against us” strategy, and delivers all the consequences that a hegemon can inflict upon non-compliant states, including sanctions on the weak and the poor. Yet the more the West attempts to convince the world that China is the threat, the more it isolates itself in its own echo-chamber of Cold War-esque narratives.

The strategy, which is guaranteed to fail, raises three questions:

1. Why does most of the world not see China as the over-arching global threat?

2. Why is acceptance of a plurality of political systems essential for a multi-polar and more equal world?

3. Is there a need for the resurrection of a spirit of non-alignment in the new post-Western world?

In answer to the first question, decades of Western hypocrisy have undermined trust in its assessments of China. Decades of double standards have eroded the credibility of the West, from repeated invasions of Asian and Middle Eastern nations to exploitative behaviour across the world.

So why doesn’t the world view China as the villain despite the best efforts of the West to vilify it?

First, many non-Western nations were colonies of, or exploited by the West (and continue to be). They recognise the West is driven by the desire to maintain its economic superiority, which has come from centuries of imperial power. This is why non-Western countries have to be legitimised as “civilised and democratic” by Western gatekeepers if they are to be offered the opportunity to live peacefully and prosperously, without sanctions, trade wars, and real wars.

Second, many post-colonial nations have suffered from the neoliberal prescriptions of the West and seen how it has used the “spread” of democracy to deny them their own sovereign rights. They have seen how the West selectively uses human rights arguments to undermine the legitimate actions of other nations, while turning a blind eye to blatant human rights violations by Western-aligned states.

Third, non-Western countries may have qualms about the Chinese governance model and aspects of its foreign policy, but they also respect China’s successes. They are not fooled by biased Western reporting: they look at the facts, see the results, and visit China to understand it.

They see a government that has worked for the people and produced results. These non-Western nations want to produce the same results for their people, rather than adhering to more of the misleading and condescending Western rhetoric about democracy as a utopian fast-track.

Lastly, China has been ramping up its investment and relationship-building across the world – such as through the Belt and Road Initiative and coronavirus vaccine agreements.

So, what has China achieved that these countries seek to emulate? For starters, its poverty alleviation rate. In 1994, the government set a goal of lifting 80 million people out of poverty within seven years – by 2021, it had uplifted 800 million.

Additionally, over the last two decades alone, China’s Gross National Income (GNI) per capita grew from US$940 in 2000 to US$10,410 in 2019. This is double the rate achieved by Russia, the second-fastest growing BRICS economy.

China has seen success abroad, too. Since 2000, China has spent US$843 billion on bilateral aid, spread across 13,427 projects in 165 countries. The People’s Liberation Army last fought a major conflict over 40 years ago, compared to the endless wars of the West. China made the decision to stop building new coal-fired power projects overseas in 2021, and it has already pledged 1.2 billion yuan (US$190 million) for climate cooperation with developing countries, and 1.2 trillion yuan being issued in green bonds.

China is not faultless; it has contentious issues of its own to tackle. The Uygurs are an example: China needs to do better at accounting for itself and communicating its version of events to the world.

Western criticism of the situation is an attempt to justify its moral authority and legitimise its rejection of other political systems. But it is a double standard.

The dire condition of America’s migrant camps on the border with Mexico (including disease and sexual abuse) or its grisly use of torture at Guantanamo Bay are not equated to failings of the democratic system. Yet a comparison of the same magnitude is readily made between Xinjiang and the ideologies of the Communist Party of China.

It is in China’s interest to come clean and work with bodies like the UN to reassure the world that these charges are either false or exaggerated.

But it is also only fair and in the interest of global peace that Western nations and their allies who are accused of war crimes – in Afghanistan, Iraq, Palestine - allow UN investigations to be carried out.

Flying the democracy banner should not be used as cover to run roughshod over international norms, nor should “non-interference in internal matters” be a pathway to carrying out abuses.

The US would do well to remember that there is value in embracing different political systems for a more equal world. Why? Because China has demonstrated that a nation does not need to meet the West’s definition of “democracy” to achieve success for its people.

This is because democracy is not defined by simplistic notions about free speech or Western electoral processes. Democracy is the right of all peoples, and cannot be arbitrarily judged by the US.

According to the United Nations Charter: “The UN does not advocate for a specific model of government but promotes democratic governance as a set of values and principles that should be followed for greater participation, equality, security and human development”.

This is to say that the political systems of a country and its method of governance are important because they must ultimately serve the people, enable them to have a sense of participation, satisfaction and improvements to their quality of life. Democracy is just one approach to this, so it is reasonable to conclude that China has developed a successful governance system suited to its culture, history, and the needs of its population.

The need for other countries to pursue their own modes of governance may be rising. Faced with peak population, pandemics, technology overreach, climate change, resource constraints and the crisis of consumption-driven capitalism, each nation will have to adapt in its own way.

For many countries, the dated prescriptions of former imperial powers or settler communities (the US, UK, Australia, Canada) are unsuitable.

The West should recognise that diversity in political systems is the natural order of things in a complex and changing world, and can only enrich the global majority. Nations should learn from each other, encourage, even teach. This is what geopolitical equality looks like.

This brings us to the last of the three questions: given that other nations do not see China as the tyrant painted by the West, and that political plurality is a good thing, it is time to reverse the dangerous attempts of the West to confront China under the pretext of democracy.

This does not need to be done in a way that risks tension, or war. It can be achieved through the spirit of non-alignment.

Non-aligned nations must refuse to allow the West – driven by anxiety at losing its position – to divide and endanger the world. They must now address this and no longer remain subservient.

Non-Western countries have a right to be non-aligned: to determine the nature of their political and governance systems and be supported in the learning and building process. Where some go astray, diplomatic means should be used to persuade and encourage reforms built on mutual respect and understanding.

These nations should not be bullied by self-serving Western foreign policy into accepting a single political system that is clearly failing, even in the West – where some demand the right to not wear masks during a pandemic, or the right to carry guns.

The West must recognise that narrow interpretations of democracy can no longer be weaponised.

Fundamentally, the question is: what is the role of the state?

The answer is clear: to secure the right of its citizens to have safe and dignified lives devoid of drudgery and suffering.

When coupled with the existential threats of the 21st century, the irony is that the Chinese system of governance is in many ways the most suited to meeting this objective.

Lawyers add to damages suit for Chinese-American scientist Sherry Chen

Robert Delaney and Owen Churchill

    Sacked hydrologist is seeking US$5 million from US government after her dismissal on spying grounds was partially reversed

Chen’s case prompted Congress members to raise concerns that federal employees were being racially targeted

Lawyers for a Chinese-American scientist have filed a complaint against the US departments of commerce and justice to support a lawsuit seeking US$5 million in damages resulting from her partially reversed dismissal from a government job.

Charges against National Weather Service hydrologist Xiafen “Sherry” Chen – who had been accused of passing informa­tion about US dams to a Chinese official – were dropped in 2015 after nearly two dozen members of Congress signed a letter requesting an investigation into whether federal employees were being racially targeted. Chen has since remained on administrative leave.

The complaint – filed on November 1 by Chen’s lawyer, John Hemann of the law firm Cooley LLP, and announced on Tuesday – was made after Chen learned that the Commerce Department unit that investigated her – the Investigations and Threat Management Service (ITMS) – was disbanded following a Senate committee report that called it “a rogue, unaccountable police force without a clear mission”.

In 2019, Chen filed a civil suit against the two government departments, seeking accountability for wrongful prosecution. The separate complaint filed this month adds new accusations, including “intrusion into private affairs, false arrest, intentional and/or negligent infliction of emotional distress”, and is required to give the government an opportunity to respond before the claims become part of the lawsuit.

“Sherry Chen’s successful and very private life was derailed when ITMS … launched an illegal criminal investigation of Ms Chen based entirely on one colleague’s false and racially charged accusations,” the complaint says. “ITMS had no legal authority to investigate her, and that what happened to her was part a discriminatory scheme to target employees of Chinese and Southeast Asian descent.”

The complaint continued that “even after the … administrative judge issued a scathing opinion that reinstated Ms Chen, the [Commerce Department] continued to refuse to acknowledge the injury it has caused Ms Chen. Instead, it continues to try to destroy what is left of Ms Chen’s professional career by refusing to let her set foot in the office and appealing the administrative judge’s decision”.

The departments of commerce and justice did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

Tuesday’s development comes as pressure grows on President Joe Biden’s administration to address concerns that scrutiny of Chinese government espionage efforts has led to the racial profiling of Asian and Asian-American scientists and researchers by federal agencies.

The Biden administration has maintained a number of China-related policies inherited from the administration of former president Donald Trump. Those include the China Initiative, a Department of Justice (DOJ) programme ostensibly focused on bringing prosecutions in economic espionage cases but which advocacy groups say has disproportionately targeted those of Chinese descent.

Calls on the administration to axe the programme surged recently after its first case to go to trial ended in the defendant’s acquittal.

Hu Anming, a professor at University of Tennessee, was cleared of all charges in September after a federal judge ruled that the government failed to provide sufficient evidence that he had intended to defraud Nasa.

But even when charges against individuals like Chen and Hu are dropped, rights groups warn that the reputational, financial and emotional tolls on them and their families remain.

On Monday, civil rights group Asian-Americans Advancing Justice (AAJC) wrote to the Biden administration urging it to end the China Initiative, which it said had driven “fearmongering” and the criminalisation of Asian-American and Asian immigrant researchers.

“While we recognise that there are legitimate threats from China’s government, there are serious concerns of the DOJ profiling Asian-Americans and Asian immigrants and criminalising integrity issues under the ‘China Initiative,’” said John Yang, AAJC’s president.

One of the first actions taken by Biden as president was to issue a memorandum denouncing anti-Asian racism and providing guidance to the DOJ on how to process hate crime reports, amid a wave of discrimination against the Asian-American community during the Covid-19 pandemic.

“We urge federal agencies to follow President Biden’s commitment to combat racism and xenophobia against those of Asian descent and look forward to these efforts,” AAJC wrote in its letter.

Remember Mao’s famine, forget Churchill’s racism: how the West colonised Asian minds

• History, as taught by Western ‘victors’, defines other countries through their low points. We are constantly reminded of China’s Tiananmen moment, yet colonial atrocities from First Nations genocides to Bengal’s famine are diluted or covered up
  
  
• It is this selective retelling of history that enables the West to cling to an identity built on superiority and that has non-Westerners believing it. It is why some young Hongkongers have come to believe they are not Chinese

In late June and early July, First Nations communities in Canada found over 1,000 unmarked graves of children in Indian residential schools, which were run by the Roman Catholic Church from 1899 to 1997. This has led to activists burning Catholic churches and taking down statues of Queen Elizabeth II and Queen Victoria.

These residential schools often coercively separated First Nations children from families, forcing them to speak English and learn European curriculums. Any attempt to dress, speak, or act like a First Nations individual was punished. There were 130 schools like this, with estimates that over 6,000 children died due to poor sanitation, little protection from the cold, or abuse from school staff. Similar practices existed in Australia, where up to one in three First Nations Australian children were taken by federal, state and church education initiatives. They are collectively referred to as the Stolen Generation, and it has led to social trauma and inequality that persists today.

However, these tragic events are largely hidden in Canada’s history, and certainly from international perceptions of the country. Instead, Canada has a global reputation for being friendly and polite, and is not known for this “cultural genocide”, as the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada described it in 2015.

But other countries around the world are absolutely defined by unsavoury moments in their history: global media will refer to Tiananmen Square when discussing China; to state-backed assassinations in discussions of Russia; to corrupt, incompetent leaders in African countries and dictators in Latin America.

Yet is America defined by “pioneers” destroying First Nations culture and committing genocide? No. Is Australia defined by settlers waging war on the First Nations people who until 1967 were not even considered citizens in their own country? No. Is tiny Belgium defined by its horrific colonial treatment of the population in Congo? No. The list is long.

Here, a pattern begins to emerge in how Western and non-Western countries are portrayed and perceived in lay understandings of historical events.

Common historical narratives of Western countries cover up or dilute colonial atrocities, war crimes and genocides. This includes even recent ones, such as the illegal invasion of Iraq. Sometimes these events are espoused as “building civilisation or bringing freedom”. Conversely, non-Western nations are defined by their historical stains, which cling to them like monikers, while the larger body of their histories are quieted or ignored. China’s celebration of the 100th Anniversary of the Communist Party in July was invariably criticised with references to its dark past, including famine and the Cultural Revolution. Yet celebrations in the West are hardly ever viewed in the same way. For example, July 4 celebrations are rarely discussed with reference to the slaughter of First Nations Americans.

The world is woke to Western posturing, white privilege

This is not accidental. It is a selective retelling of history that enables the West to maintain its global dominance through the indoctrination of Westerners and non-Westerners alike – or as the brilliant French-West Indian political philosopher Frantz Fanon called it: colonisation of the mind.

It is critically important that young people understand what “colonisation of the mind” means so they begin to ask the right questions about their countries and the current world order. In the context of retelling history, it refers to how curated historical viewpoints are used to construct opposing identities in the minds of Westerners and non-Westerners, to the benefit of the former. For a Westerner, this identity is based on superiority: believing you and your culture are better than others, and that the West’s current global dominance is unrelated to the colonial rape of the world. For a non-Westerner, this identity is based on subservience: believing Western people and cultures are better than your own and should be emulated because they represent advancement and equality.

Some may scoff and consider this as outdated postcolonial rhetoric and an attempt to twist history or even a conspiracy theory. But to quote an oft-used phrase: “History is written by victors.” This aptly – if simplistically – explains why the world has been spoon-fed certain re-tellings of history, because the victors of the last few centuries have been Western colonialists and conquerors. In fact, the phrase itself is an example: it is attributed to Winston Churchill, though he did not invent it (the source is unknown). The man is lauded for the wisdom of a phrase that is not his own, but is he known for passing deeply racist foreign policy that resulted in the starvation of three million Bengalis? No. British students are taught about famines caused by Mao, but not those caused by Churchill.

It is in schools around the world where much of this conditioning occurs, through syllabuses that stem from Western colonial education systems, particularly those exported by France, Spain, Portugal and Britain. These curriculums were replicated in colonies across Africa, South America, Southeast Asia, India, and Japan, and their modern-day counterparts often do not explain how colonisation has enabled the West to continue its economic and cultural influence into the present day. Young people in Hong Kong are a good example, as they are taught through a British education system to dislike China and worship the West. They are enamoured by all things Western and some even educated to believe they are not Chinese. Missionary schools throughout the colonies played an important role in this “mind capture” with religion sadly used as an instrument of subjugation.

Instead, imperialism, colonialism, and racism are painted as things of the past, as if ended by the decolonisation and civil rights movements of the twentieth century. This selective teaching promotes the myth of the “benevolent West”: that the West has acted as a benign force towards other cultures and that it continues to have a positive influence on the world through its economic models, governance systems, cultures, and more.

Essentially, it is very effective propaganda.

And this propaganda does not just obscure the dark parts of Western history; it also ascribes global progress and modern civilisation to the West, which leads non-Western populations to believe that Western civilisation is the greatest. Westerners attribute the origin of many scientific concepts and theories to the Ancient Greeks or Renaissance thinkers: Plato, Aristotle, Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and others.

In fact, the Renaissance is described in history books as the apex of human achievement in art and science, almost as if the rest of the world lived in darkness and ignorance before it. Yet this is patently not true: the Indian mathematician Baudhayana wrote a theorem on right-angled triangles one hundred years before Pythagoras; the Bengali Jagadish Bose was the first to discover ways to receive and emit radio waves, before Marconi; the Persian mathematician Muḥammad ibn Musa al-Khwarizmi introduced the concept of zero to the West; the Arab writer Al-Jahiz proposed the concept of natural selection far before Jean-Baptiste Lamarck and Charles Darwin did.

By excluding the innovations of non-Western thinkers from school syllabuses around the world, Western countries enable their societies to be held in the highest regard, as the founders of the modern world. By contrast, non-Western peoples are more likely to be unaware of their historical lineage, which has been eroded by the combined forces of colonialism and globalisation. Most Asian millennials have very little appreciation of the harm inflicted by the French and Americans in Vietnam through wars that killed millions.

This subservience explains why many of the elite in former colonies – such as Hong Kong, Singapore, India, and Malaysia – are more interested in emulating British and Western culture than their own or that of any others. The movie Crazy Rich Asians is a great example of this fetish.

So, when will the West come clean on this? The world is increasingly “woke” to the selective nature of global history, especially as more tragedies like these unmarked graves are revealed. But will the United States fund studies to determine how many million Native Indians were actually killed by the settlers? Will Australia come clean on the same subject so that there is a proper account in history?

White privilege: to dismantle it, we must first learn to ID it

It is unlikely, and we cannot wait for the West to repent or admit its crimes. It is incumbent on others to fund the research and writing of their story before it is too late. I would encourage everyone, especially Millennials – Westerners and non-Westerners – to pick up an alternative history book and get the facts. Then think about history as it is being written now – what is being doctored as you read this? What is your understanding of China? Do you understand the historical context of what is going on in Myanmar now? Do you understand how democracy was thwarted in Iran by the West and what led to the current state of affairs? Do you even know what happened in Iraq less than twenty years ago? And as the poor people of Afghanistan yet again endure another unravelling of their country, do you know how the country has been a pawn in wider geopolitical struggles going back decades and involving Western powers?

It is time for the West to stop using historical legitimacy to claim ownership of leading the world into the future by its own reckoning. And it is also time for Westerners and non-Westerners alike to produce alternative and more honest narratives, to unmask this privilege and help create a fairer world.

Chandran Nair is Founder and CEO of the Global Institute for Tomorrow. His next book, Dismantling Global White Privilege: Equity for a Post Western World, is due in December

Debt-trap diplomacy a myth: no evidence China pushes poor nations to seize their assets, says academic

The ‘waiver of sovereign immunity’ clause causing fear and uproar in African nations is not well understood, says US professor

Analysts say there remain other concerning issues around China’s loans in Africa

There is no evidence China aims to deliberately push poor countries into debt as a way of seizing their assets or gaining a greater say in their internal affairs, researchers and analysts said – countering Washington’s narrative that China was engaging in “debt-trap diplomacy”.

Deborah Brautigam, a professor of international political economy at Johns Hopkins University and founding director of the China Africa Research Initiative (Cari), considers the “debt-trap” narrative a myth.

Cari has scrutinised thousands of Chinese loan documents, mostly for projects in Africa, and reports that it has not found any evidence that China seizes the assets of other countries if they fail to pay loans.

The revelation comes at a time when dozens of African countries are either in or at a high risk of debt distress. Most of the countries – including Angola, Ethiopia, Kenya and Zambia, which are among the top borrowers from China – have sought debt relief. Beijing has since provided some debt relief to more than 20 countries and, for some countries, has cancelled interest-free loans that were maturing in 2020, according to the Chinese Ministry of Commerce.

But the debt-trap narrative became more pronounced in 2017 when reports circulated that China had seized the Sri Lankan port of Hambantota when the South Asian country fell behind in servicing its debts. However, Cari researchers say that instead of the port being seized by China, Sri Lanka privatised 70 per cent of the Chinese-financed port to a Chinese firm.

Colombo had secured two loans from China – US$307 million for the first phase of the port project and a further US$757 million – both from China Exim Bank – to build the Hambantota port. When it faced a cash crunch, Sri Lanka decided to lease the underperforming Hambantota Port to more experienced operators – and chose China Merchants for the job. This made the Chinese company the majority shareholder in a 99-year lease that helped Colombo raise US$1.2 billion.

But throughout US president Donald Trump’s administration, the Sri Lankan port became the most cited case of a Chinese “debt trap” and used as an example that Beijing had seized the strategic seaport as collateral.

Besides Sri Lanka, fears of asset seizure also spread to Africa two years ago with rumours that China would take over Zambia’s power producer and Kenya’s main port if the countries failed to repay loans they took from China to construct major projects.

In a 2018 speech, former US national security adviser John Bolton warned that China “is now poised to take over Zambia’s national power and utility company to collect on Zambia’s financial obligations”.

Trump’s officials argued that China was luring poor nations into taking unsustainable debts to build massive projects so that when they failed to repay the loans, Beijing could seize their assets, thereby extending Beijing’s strategic or military reach.

Brautigam said the narrative that China was deliberately setting debt traps created a lot of concern among civil societies in a number of countries, including in Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Kenya, Zambia, Tanzania and Nigeria.

“This was reflected in opposition party politics in these countries,” she said.

In Zambia anti-Chinese sentiment became a linchpin of opposition politics. During the 2006 presidential campaigns Michael Sata warned opponents against giving away Zambia’s sovereignty. But when he was elected president five years later, he changed his tune and allowed Beijing to continue to fund key infrastructure projects in the country. Sata died in office in 2014.

“Waving the China card proved potent campaign fodder,” Brautigam told the South China Morning Post.

However, she said officials in government in most of these countries had continued to negotiate new loans from Chinese financiers. She said the Cari database listed 20 confirmed new loans in Kenya, Zambia, and Nigeria signed in 2018 and 2019.

Tanzania was an outlier, Brautigam said. “They haven’t borrowed from China since [President John] Magufuli was elected on an austerity platform in 2015.” It was under Magufuli that Tanzania put on hold the US$10 billion Chinese-financed Bagamoyo port project because of concerns about the terms and ability to repay the loan.

Further, there has been an uproar in Kenya and Nigeria since it emerged that loan contracts contained a “waiver of sovereign immunity” clause.

In a recent study on asset seizures, Brautigam, Meg Rithmire, an associate professor at Harvard Business School, and Won Kidane, an associate professor of law at the Seattle University of Law, said the waiver of sovereign immunity allowed a sovereign state to be sued in a foreign court or submit to international arbitration.

The three reviewed several Chinese loan contracts and found that most included language on the waiver of sovereign immunity concerning arbitration and enforcement. The researchers found no Chinese “asset seizures” for sovereign lending in Africa or globally.

Brautigam said that in Nigeria especially, local experts and technocrats in government provided very clear explanations of the waiver of sovereign immunity clause and why it was a standard clause in international loan contracts. It was mainly politicians outside the executive branch who chose not to look at these facts and used these charges to score political points, Brautigam said.

“But it is true that these concepts central to international project finance and commercial law are quite technical and often not well understood,” she said.

David Shinn, a professor at George Washington University’s Elliott School of International Affairs, said the US narrative on debt-trap diplomacy was flawed because of its lack of nuance.

“The real issue is China’s holding of 20 per cent of Africa’s debt, not debt-trap diplomacy,” Shinn said.

He said there were eight to 10 countries in Africa now in debt distress where China held more than 20 per cent of their debts.

“This is a cause for concern. China is also talking about possible debt-for-equity swaps,” he said.

W. Gyude Moore, a senior policy fellow at the Centre for Global Development and a former Liberian minister of public works, echoed the sentiment, saying it was important to understand why some countries borrowed from China.

“In many instances, these are projects that have struggled to attract financing from commercial, bilateral and multilateral lenders. For example, on Hambantota the initial firm was Canadian,” Moore said.

He said he had seen the waiver of sovereign immunity clause in a loan document for a water filtration plant in the Philippines.

“I think Chinese policy banks – sometimes with the assistance of Western consultants – began reflecting the commercial nature of these loans and it shows here with the immunity question. One can interpret it as a hedge against the risk of non-payment,” Moore said.

China has repeatedly denied it has plans to use loans as a way to seize strategic assets.

“There is nothing like that [China taking over the property]. The inclusion of the sovereignty clause is a common practice in many international commercial agreements,” said Sun Saixiong, the press officer at the Chinese embassy in Nigeria, last year. “We see the issue as more of Nigeria’s internal affairs.”

However, Moore said he was not aware of a systematic effort from Beijing to counter the narrative. “Various Chinese diplomats have, on occasion, responded to the accusations in their speeches. Not certain there’s been a systematic effort to refute the claims. But I could be wrong,” he said.

Analysts expressed hope for a less confrontational response to China under US President Joe Biden.

Shinn said the “tone on this issue [debt-trap diplomacy] in the Biden administration will be different and criticism will be based on facts, not misinformation”. Hence, it would be less confrontational, Shinn said.