A new world situation
[…]
THE
CONTRADICTIONS DESTABILIZING THE NEW IMPERIALIST ORDER
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5 The
explosive nature of the situation in Asia
The
global changes now under way are having a particularly profound and explosive
impact on Asia. They are being felt on every level: diplomatic, economic and
social, political and military. The international alignments forged in the
period of the Cold War have been put in question, particularly in South and
Western Asia, without making way for a new system of stable alliances. In the
framework of the new world disorder, tensions among states have been
exacerbated to the point of giving new impetus to nuclear proliferation (as
seen in the Pakistan-India confrontation and North Korean nuclear blackmail of
the US, the major occupying nuclear power in South Korea).
The
first major so-called 'financial' crisis of neo-liberal globalization began in
1997-98, with lasting consequences: a process of economic (re)colonization and
tearing up of the social fabric (South Korea), political destabilization (the
structural crisis of the regime in Indonesia), delegitimation of the
international institutions and the IMF in particular (Malaysia's temporarily enlarged
manoeuvring room), and prolonged stagnation (Japan).
Beyond
Afghanistan, the military dimension of capitalist globalization also has very
serious implications for Asia. US imperialism is redeploying its forces
throughout the region. It is establishing new bases in areas where it did not
have them (the former Soviet republics). It is once more strengthening its
presence in countries where it had had to cut back; this is particularly the
case in the Philippines, its former colony, where US troops have even been sent
into combat zones. Thanks to the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), the Pentagon
has obtained unlimited access to the country's military infrastructure. Here as
elsewhere Washington is pursuing local objectives - gaining better access to
the agricultural, oil and mineral wealth of the southern Philippines - and
regional ones: keeping an eye on Indonesia, preparing for possible future
action in the South China Sea, and controlling the straits between the Indian
and Pacific Oceans through which Middle Eastern oil is transported to Japan
Washington
wants to rebuild and complete the old Cold War barriers in East Asia to contain
China, stretching from Seoul to Manila by way of Tokyo and Taipei. In this case
too US imperialist ambitions are as much economic (control of petrol and gas
reserves and of trade in them) as geo-strategic (consolidating the key elements
of a truly global military redeployment).
From
Kashmir to the Korean peninsula by way of Mindanão and the Indonesian
archipelago, Washington's new interventionist doctrine and its 'anti-terrorist'
ideology are adding an additional obstacle to the search for political
solutions based on recognition of the concerned people's right to
self-determination to territorial conflicts. They contribute to criminalizing
popular and revolutionary movements, as well as eroding the most basic
democratic freedoms. Capitalist globalization also tends in this region to
worsen gender oppression and inter-communal tensions and foster the rise of
far-right communalist and fundamentalist currents. This holds true even in
countries where the pressure towards economic globalization was only felt
relatively late, as in India: a significant fraction of the bourgeoisie has
turned to the BJP in order to push through neo-liberal counter-reforms, thus
enabling Hindu fundamentalist Hindutva currents to threaten the secular
foundations of the state.
The war
that Washington is preparing to wage against Iraq and the military occupation
that will follow it will further exacerbate contradictions in the region, which
the intervention in Afghanistan had already made acute. The consequences of
this war cannot be overestimated, at a time when there is a whole set of
focuses of major crises in Asia: US/Chinese relations (including Taiwan), the
Korean peninsula, Afghanistan-Pakistan-India, Indonesia-Philippines-South China
Sea, etc.
In this
situation, progressive and revolutionary parties and movements in Asia tend, in
many cases, to establish closer relations of solidarity with each other than in
the past. Social movements, grassroots organizations and peace movements are
coordinating their joint campaigns against the militarist dynamics and for
peoples' rights more and more effectively. The meeting of the World Social
Forum in India in January 2004 can give a new dimension to these activist
convergences.
[…]
THE
FALL OF THE STALINIST BUREAUCRACY, RESTORATION OF CAPITALISM AND INTEGRATION
INTO THE WORLD ECONOMY
[…]
2 The
Chinese dynamic: growing openings to capitalism behind the upholding of the
single party
From the
great powers' standpoint, China continues to represent an uncertain factor as
much on the geopolitical level (given the issues of Taiwan, Tibet, Central
Asia, etc.) as on the socio-economic. The ruling groups in the United States,
the European Union and especially Japan are conscious that in any scenario
(except break-up, difficult to envisage despite the potential centrifugal
forces) China will try hard in the coming decades to play the role of a great
power and assert its hegemony in Asia. Moreover, it too seems to have drawn the
lessons of the Kosovo war by pushing onwards with a further modernization of
its military potential. Russia and all countries in Eastern Europe experienced
a fall in production in the early 1990s, with a GDP in 2000 that caught up with
the level reached ten years earlier in only 5 per cent of Central European
countries. Conversely, China has experienced a growth rate of almost 10 per
cent per annum over the past 20 years, including higher than 8 per cent growth
during the Asian crisis. The Chinese figures on the decrease in the absolute
number of poor during these past twenty years are what enable world statistics
to claim that global inequalities have been reduced - while these have been
increasing in the past 20 years, not counting the Chinese statistics.
At the
same time, income gaps have grown in China parallel to the challenges to the
social progress achieved in health and education and to employment protection.
The logic of capitalist privatisation is underway, and more and more enshrined
in law.
Whence
the rise of an outbreak of social protests against inequalities, often making
specific reference to the gap between the socialist "line" and the
developing capitalist reality.
It is,
paradoxically from the standpoint of neo-liberal rhetoric, the upholding of
state and strong party power, at once repressive and supporting growth, that
have proven most attractive to foreign capital. At the turn of the millennium,
the accumulated stock of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) stood at 300 billion
dollars in China compared to 12 for Russia. But the Chinese opening had been
controlled and massively "Chinese" up until then and financing of
growth relied only partially on foreign investment - which, with its
considerable commercial precedents, gave China a power to resist neo-liberal
precepts. In relation to the size of the country, the FDI figures become more
significant. In 2000, they stood at $160 per habitant in China, compared to $85
in Russia, but 571 in Kazakhstan, approximately 1000 for Poland and about 2000
in Hungary and the Czech Republic. In substance, Chinese growth relies on
neo-mercantilism based on interventionism and State protection more inspired by
measures taken in South Korea and Japan in their years of strong growth than by
neo-liberal precepts.
Up until
the end of the 1990s, China's opening to international trade took place on an
extremely protectionist basis (for example through the non-convertibility of
its currency and strict limits imposed on financing by non-residents), as is
borne out by the fact that it was largely spared by the 1997-1998 Asian crisis.
WTO
membership was accompanied by a radicalisation of the reforms aiming to convert
the major firms more and more into share-issuing corporations) and opening up
the financial system to foreign capital, alongside the CCP's membership
becoming open to business people. In parallel, former measures of social
protection continue to be dismantled.
The
ongoing process is hampered by growing social resistance towards the growth in
inequality and the development of contingent work.
These
forms of resistance, whose origin goes back to the Tien Anmen movement, which
could shake the unified façade of the regime and lead to a break in the
institutional framework of the party-state. The socialist rhetoric must
obviously be challenged, both in terms of measures of extension of capitalist
production relations; and facing any 'moderate' or conservative wings that
would fail to place the introduction of workers' self-organisation rights and
management rights on collective property at the heart of the necessary
anti-capitalist resistance.