The Uighur people of China's Xinjiang province are coming under unprecedented surveillance and militarization amid official fears of terrorism in the far-western region.
Xi Jinping is weighing whether he will be invited to join the authoritarian New Order—or whether Putin will desert him for Trump, and the two of them will gang up on China.
Pentagon chief Chuck Hagel signed a "joint vision" statement with Mongolia calling for expanded military cooperation—clearly aimed at further encirclement of China.
Mongolian ecology activist Tsetsegee Munkhbayar was sentenced to 21 years in prison for "acts of terrorism" after his arrest at a protest against uranium mining.
A court in China's Inner Mongolia autonomous region handed down prison terms to six herders who protested the seizure of local grazing land by a forestry company.
Over 100 ethnic Tibetans were injured and one man committed suicide as Chinese military forces broke up protests against diamond mining in Kham region, Qinghai province.
Police in China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region blocked an attempted cross-country march by traditional Mongol herders, with police assaulting hundreds in two incidents.
In Episode Five of the CounterVortex podcast, Bill Weinberg makes the case that despite the official ideology of "socialism with Chinese characteristics" and the revival of rhetoric and imagery from the Mao era, media commentators are off base in their comparison of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong. The new personalistic dictatorship of Xi is appropriating the outward forms of Maoism, but whereas the Great Helmsman used totalitarian methods to advance socialism (at least in terms of his own intentions) Xi is doing so to further entrench China's savage capitalist system. As a part of the same constitutional changes that have installed Xi as the new "paramount leader," the Chinese Communist Party is imposing further market liberalization and "supply-side" economic reform. The New Cold War between the US and China is simply a rivalry between capitalist powers. But in the global divide-and-conquer game, the leaders of oppressed nationalities within China such as the Tibetans and Uighurs look to the US and the West as allies, while left-populist governments in Latin America such as Venezuela and Bolivia similarly look to China. How can we respond to these developments in a way that builds solidarity between peasants, workers and indigenous peoples across the geopolitical divide? Listen on SoundCloud, and support our podcast via Patreon
(Photo: chinaworker.info)
