Israel announces ceasefire as UN says 90,000 Palestinians displaced by bombardment

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/21/gaza-m21.html




Kevin Reed
20 May 2021







The Israeli security cabinet voted unanimously late Thursday to a “mutual and unconditional” cessation of hostilities, according to a statement from the office of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

News reports said a ceasefire brokered by Egypt had been agreed to between Israel and the Palestinian groups, Hamas and Islamic Jihad, and was set to take effect at 2:00 a.m. on Friday (7:00 p.m. Eastern Time). A Hamas official also confirmed the agreement with the Reuters news agency, saying the ceasefire would be “mutual and simultaneous.”

Palestinian mourners shout slogans and wave Palestinian flags during the funeral of Mohammad Kiwan, 17, whose family says he was killed in clashes with Israeli police Thursday, May 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)

It is unclear how long the ceasefire will last before Israel resumes its decadeslong violence against the Palestinians. However, as the smoke clears, the massive toll of the Israeli onslaught on Gaza has come into view.

The Gaza Health Ministry reported on Thursday afternoon that at least 232 people have been killed, including 65 children, and more than 1,900 have been wounded by the Zionist regime. As of Wednesday, the UN Office for Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) said that the casualties in the West Bank stood at 25 deaths, including four children, and 6,309 wounded. Total casualties in Israel were reported at 12 dead and 796 injured on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the UN OCHA said on Thursday that more than 90,000 Palestinians have been displaced from their homes over the past 11 days by Israel’s assault on the Gaza Strip.

The OCHA report stated that hostilities resulted in additional displacements, bringing the cumulative number of “internally displaced persons (IDPs) to about 91,000, including 66,000 seeking protection in 58 UNRWA schools across Gaza and over 25,000 staying with host families.”

OCHA spokesman Jens Laerke also told the Turkish Anadolu Agency, “Overall, the situation remains alarming. Hostilities between Israeli forces and armed groups in Gaza continued for the ninth day yesterday, but at a lesser intensity. On the other hand, clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces across the West Bank, including in East Jerusalem, intensified.”

In remarks at the White House after the announcement of the ceasefire, US President Biden fully backed Israel’s violent assault, declaring, “The United States fully supports Israel’s right to defend itself against indiscriminate rocket attacks by Hamas and other Gaza-based terrorist groups that have taken the lives of innocent civilians.”

Biden also said he “commended” the Israelis for bringing the immediate conflict to an end after 11 days and, during a call earlier in the day, the President “assured” Prime Minister Netanyahu of continued US military support.

Just one day before the ceasefire announcement, Biden was praising Netanyahu for making progress in “degrading the capabilities of Hamas and other terrorist elements.”

As reviewed yesterday on the World Socialist Web Site, responsibility for the murderous campaign by the Israeli Defense Forces on Gaza lies squarely with US imperialism. The bombardment of defenseless Palestinians is being carried out with weapons and funding provided by the US government and with the endorsement of both the Democrats and Republicans in Washington D.C.

Al Jazeera reported that Palestinians in Ramallah celebrated as the ceasefire took hold early Friday, according to correspondent Safwat al-Kahlout, who said the sounds of fireworks and gunshots into the air could be heard. “Thousands of people went into the street to celebrate,” al-Kahlout said as Palestinians considered the ceasefire to be a victory.

An example of the violence directed against innocent civilians was an Israeli air raid on a Gaza family home, which killed a Palestinian man with disabilities, his pregnant wife and their three-year-old daughter, as reported by Al Jazeera on Thursday.

Relatives and authorities said that Eyad Salha and his wife, both age 33, were preparing to eat lunch on Wednesday, when “a missile tore through the seaside building’s facade and destroyed all three rooms in their Deir el-Balah flat, in the central Gaza Strip,” Al Jazeera reported.

Salha’s brother said the man had been unable to walk for 14 years and was not an armed fighter. “What did my brother do? He was just sitting in his wheelchair. What did his daughter ever do? What did his wife do?” he told the AFP news agency.

Joe Biden FAILS His Own Campaign Promises

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfeEcYwUGD8

Nexteer workers defy UAW intimidation on eve of vote on sellout deal

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/21/next-m21.html




Jesse Thomas
20 May 2021







This week, several “rollout” meetings were held by the United Auto Workers (UAW) Local 699 on the most recent Tentative Agreement (TA2) for approximately 2,500 Nexteer auto parts workers at the former General Motors plant in Saginaw, Michigan. The proposed contract is widely recognized by workers as a repeat of a rotten deal rammed through by the UAW in 2015 after a strike that lasted less than 24 hours. An effort by the UAW to push through a prior version of the deal was defeated by 85 percent in February of this year.

Picketing Nexteer workers in 2015 (WSWS Media)




The purported purpose of the meetings was to give workers information about the agreement in advance of the vote, which is being conducted today between 4 a.m. and 8 p.m. However, many workers reported that they were not even provided with the full, 230-page contract document. Instead, a vague, three-page “highlights” summary, which sugarcoats the agreement, was released to the membership while the full agreement was only leaked in a private online forum.

Several Nexteer employees reported to the WSWS that the meetings were a farce where little or no information was provided. In many cases, UAW officials tried to intimidate workers who challenged them. Speaking about a meeting on Wednesday, one worker told the WSWS Autoworker Newsletter, “First off, they held these meetings in the plant as opposed to the union hall, which meant that nobody could ask any questions without management being there to oversee. Secondly, the machines were still running while the meetings were going, so nobody could hear anything. I saw a guy raise his hand and tell the union rep that he had been standing there for 20 minutes and he couldn’t hear a single word of what he was saying.”

Another Nexteer worker gave the following account. “The rollout meeting was a JOKE. We could barely hear anything and there was time for only two questions. One of my co-workers approached the bargaining chairman and asked a question about the new classifications. Then, the chairman told him to ‘shut the f[***] up’ not once, but twice, and gave him the finger. When he told the other union rep standing there that he wished to document the chairman’s harassment, she simply shook her head and walked away.

“The union reps are even trying to stop people from discussing the details about the contract online,” the worker continued. Referring to the Facebook online discussion forum “saginaw unions no holds bar,” from which the WSWS’s material was removed this week, the worker said, “I saw that workers’ posts have been being removed from Facebook. I believe one of the admins of the ‘no holds bar’ group is on the UAW electoral board, so he could be in the union’s pocket. I saw someone posted a poll trying to tally who was voting ‘no’ and who was voting ‘yes,’ and they removed it. It’s all very shady. They’re desperately trying to control this conversation.”

Another employee denounced the contract, which introduces a “Semi-Skilled” classification of employee. The categorization would create a layer of essentially low-paid apprentices on the shop floor who would be used to siphon off as much work as possible from the higher-paid skilled tradesman. This is a component of a broader attempt by the company to carry out a sweeping attack on the workforce, further casualizing the workforce and shifting health care costs onto the employees.

“I really hope this contract gets shot down. I’m a ‘no’ vote for sure. While it tries to make it look like there are more opportunities for in-house employees, actually it pits specialized and general workers against one another, driving the price of all labor down. Every employee loses out on this deal in the long run because while the unskilled workers might have the chance to earn a bit more, they won’t make nearly what they deserve, and it’ll be a fraction of what they’re currently paying out to the journeymen.”

He continued, “Our union has absolutely no backbone. Paying dues to them is literally like giving a donation.”

Another worker spoke to the WSWS on the contract. “I am definitely voting no, and I think it is going to be a close vote. I know a lot of people who are planning to vote no. The biggest issue for me is that they want to hire part-timers who will work 30 hours a week.

“There will be 334 part-time workers who will be in a special classification. A lot of the newer people say they are just going to lay off those who were recently hired to be replaced by the part-timers. One reason they want this classification could also be that the company will save money because that group will not get the health insurance. They have to pay out of every check for it.

“The union is telling us that with the new part-time hires the company won’t have to go into ‘critical’ status, which means that the company can enforce mandatory overtime. They claim we won’t lose overtime if we want it, but we will not go critical—that is, we won’t be forced into overtime so much. A handful of the legacy workers who are left now make the $23.50. By the end of the contract, they expect everyone will be at $21.50 except, of course, those part-time workers!”

The worker continued, “Then there is the whole issue of the onsite medical. They are trying to get us to leave our own doctors by offering several perks if you go to the onsite medical clinic. I really don’t want such a personal thing as going to my doctor being done where I work. I have a pretty good doctor now, and a long relationship, but I want my privacy.

“When it comes to COVID infections in the plant, they hypocritically take the opposite approach. While they’re trying to get everybody to go to an onsite doctor, when someone tests positive in the plant, they won’t tell you who it is because of privacy concerns! They don’t let you know when someone around you has had it, and there is no special sanitizing and disinfecting.

“I have been here more than a decade. The union is telling us to vote for the contract. They say ‘Oh, this is the best contract ever.’ I have to say things have really changed. Once I was so happy and proud to be a union worker. But now the union is letting the company get away with anything. I am really disgusted.

“I think it would be a good thing to have something new, independent committees. I would like to see that happen. I would be a part of that. The union is like a business, everything for the company”

The WSWS Autoworker Newsletter urges Nexteer workers to follow the example of the Volvo Truck workers in Virginia who have formed the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee to provide a voice for workers and create a fighting organization to defend their interests against the corporations and the company-controlled UAW. To get more information about building a Nexteer rank-and-file committee, e-mail autoworkers@wsws.org or go to www.wsws.org/workers.

An Open Letter to UAW International President Rory Gamble, UAW Secretary-Treasurer Ray Curry, and UAW Local 2069 President Matt Blondino

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/21/vrfc-m21.html




Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee
21 May 2021







The following is an open letter written by the Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee (VWRFC) at the New River Valley Plant in Dublin, Virginia to UAW International President Rory Gamble, UAW Secretary-Treasurer Ray Curry, and UAW Local 2069 President Matt Blondino. Volvo workers can contact the VWRFC at volvowrfc@gmail.com or text to (540) 307-0509‬.

On Sunday May 16, we the workers at Volvo Truck in Dublin, Virginia voted down the tentative agreement you brought back and asked us to approve. The result was not even close. We packed the union hall to vote by 91 percent against the toilet paper you called a contract.

Despite your arrogant predictions that the contract would pass “by 60 percent,” the opinion of rank-and-file workers was loud and clear. All of us, core and non-core, skilled trades, assembly and salaried workers, said with a resounding voice: “No!”

Volvo Truck workers last month [Source: UAW 2069]

Your TA came after a series of rotten maneuvers. Before you began your “negotiations” with the company, you carried out a survey supposedly to find out what workers wanted, which you simply ignored. Then you called us out on a strike without proposing any demands that we were fighting for.

On April 30, you abruptly declared that the strike was over and that a tentative agreement was reached. You sent us back to work after two weeks of sacrifice on the picket lines without having a chance to look at, let alone vote on, the agreement.

Then followed the lies and bullying: Rosy “highlights” that painted over a rotten sell-out combined with threats that this was the best we could get. Only by demanding the contract details did we learn anything real about the agreement, and once we learned what you had really done, we swiftly and decisively rejected it.

Now you are carrying out a new “survey” of workers while we remain on the job stockpiling trucks for Volvo. No doubt you intend to send this survey to the same place you sent the last one—into the trash.

So that there be no mistake, we, the rank-and-file workers of Volvo, make the following declaration:

First, we will not accept any contract that is negotiated behind closed doors. All negotiations must be supervised by a representative of the rank-and-file workers. We will not accept another contract proposal cooked up behind our backs, for the simple reason that this would only produce another sellout.

Second, we outline here the minimal basis for an agreement that workers will accept:
A 25 percent across-the-board wage increase to restore income lost over the last three contracts.


Maintain current health insurance rates and coverage.


Fully paid health care benefits for retirees, with no copays or premiums.


End the multi-tier wage system and transfer all workers to top-tier pay and benefits.


Eliminate the Alternative Work Schedule and keep current overtime rules.


Implement a COLA clause to meet the soaring prices of consumer goods.


Five personal days for all workers, not just salary workers.


A $3,500 contract ratification bonus.

We are not interested in hearing talk about how the company cannot “afford” these demands. Even in the midst of our strike, Volvo reported $1 billion in profits in the first three months of 2021 alone. The stock price has doubled in the past 12 months. Martin Lundstedt, the CEO, makes $51 million a year.

Third, any resumption of strike activity cannot be used to starve us into submission in order to get us to agree to the same deal we already defeated. Strikers must be provided with full income for the duration of, and from the beginning of, any strike, paid for from the $700 million UAW strike fund that has been built up with our dues money.

Fourth, we will not accept another attempt to force a contract through with lies and threats. Any new agreement must be provided in full to all workers with two weeks for us to review and discuss before a vote.

The company is already saying that it is “confident” that “both sides” in this dispute can reach an agreement. But let us be clear: One of these sides is us, the rank-and-file workers of Volvo. It is our lives and livelihoods at stake. We have mouths to feed, bills to pay, and children to educate.

These are not requests but demands. And we are prepared to fight for them.

Sincerely,

The Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee

To all Volvo workers:

We cannot fight for our interests if we don’t have our own organization that is accountable to us, not to the company or the UAW officials. The Volvo Workers Rank-and-File Committee is this organization!

Join the VWRFC! Email us at volvowrfc@gmail.com or text to (540) 307-0509‬.

Republicans block investigation into January 6 attack

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2021/05/21/pers-m21.html




Patrick Martin
20 May 2021







The US House of Representatives passed a resolution Wednesday calling for the establishment of a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack on Congress. The bill passed the House by a vote of 252 to 175, but Republican Senate Leader Mitch McConnell and other top Republicans declared their determination to block the passage of the bill in the upper chamber.

At least 10 Republican senators would have to join the 50 Democrats to overcome a filibuster against the bill, and only a handful have indicated they would support the bill after ex-President Donald Trump—the instigator of the January 6 coup attempt—demanded that congressional Republicans block the proposal.

The U.S. Capitol is seen as national guard members pass by on Capitol Hill in Washington, Thursday, May 20, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)




It was Trump who invited the fascist mob to Washington on January 6 for a rally outside the White House, then gave a speech urging them to march on the Capitol and fight for him. At the Capitol, they broke through police lines that had been deliberately weakened and stormed into the building seeking to halt the congressional certification of the Electoral College votes that gave Democrat Joe Biden a sizable victory.

The pro-Trump attackers chanted in support of hanging Mike Pence, Trump’s vice president, because he was presiding over the joint session of Congress. They voiced their desire to kill House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and other Democrats. The violence of the attack was such that 140 Capitol police were injured.

These events took place only 135 days ago, but already there is a concerted effort to bury them, to dismiss their significance, even to purge them from the collective memory of the American public. This was epitomized by the Republican House backbencher, Andrew Clyde, who declared that what transpired on January 6 was nothing more than a “normal tourist visit.” (There are photos from that day of Clyde joining other representatives in desperately barricading the House chamber against the attacking mob.)

The Democratic-led effort to establish a bipartisan commission to investigate the January 6 attack is not, however, a genuine effort to expose the forces involved in the attempted coup d’état. That is demonstrated by the constant invocation of the 9/11 Commission, by Speaker Pelosi and other leading Democrats, as the model for the probe they wish to conduct.

The 9/11 Commission was an official whitewash of the events of September 11, 2001, which deliberately concealed the connections between US intelligence agencies and the Al Qaeda hijackers, who were permitted to enter the United States, enroll in flight schools, and prepare their coordinated assault, even as the CIA and FBI tracked their movements and did nothing to interfere.

The mindless excuse of “failure to connect the dots” was advanced to disguise the reality that the military-intelligence apparatus allowed the attacks to go forward because this served a definite strategic goal: creating a political climate in the United States in which the projection of American military power into the Middle East and Central Asia could be carried out, through the invasions first of Afghanistan and then Iraq.

If anything, the proposed January 6 Commission will be an even greater exercise in political cover-up, since the party that incited the attack—with baseless claims that the 2020 presidential election had been stolen—would be given equal say in the conduct of the investigation. It is as though, in the aftermath of a multimillion-dollar bank robbery, when the gunmen were brought to trial, the getaway driver and the lookouts were seated in the jury!

As usual in the operation of the American two-party system, the Democrats pleaded endlessly with the Republicans, made one concession after another, only to have the Republicans arrogantly denounce the final result of the negotiations as insufficient. Thus, Pelosi conceded equal numbers on the commission, although the Democrats have majorities in both houses of Congress, and no subpoenas to be issued without Republican approval.

But after Friday’s announced agreement between the Democratic chairman of the House Government Oversight Committee and the Republican ranking member, who had been delegated by Pelosi and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy to work out the deal, the Republicans reneged on it in a matter of days.

As late as Monday, May 17, the House and Senate Minority Whips, Representative Steve Scalise and Senator John Thune, indicated that the Republicans were not seeking to block the establishment of a bipartisan commission. On Tuesday, however, came the intervention of ex-President Trump, who issued a statement denouncing the proposed commission and demanding, by name, that McCarthy and McConnell shut down all discussion of it.

McCarthy, evidently tipped off in advance from Mar-a-Lago, had already issued a statement Tuesday morning declaring his opposition. McConnell was still professing himself “undecided” about whether to back the commission and “willing to listen” to the proposal. But on Wednesday, hours after Trump’s statement was made public, McConnell announced himself flatly opposed to what he called “the House Democrats’ slanted and unbalanced proposal.”

The Democratic response during the debate on the House floor was to attack the Republicans from the right. Ohio Democrat Tim Ryan denounced the Republican position as “a slap in the face to every rank-and-file cop in the United States” because they opposed a bipartisan investigation of people “hitting the Capitol Police with lead pipes across the head.” He added, for good measure, that abandoning bipartisanship undermined the position of the United States “if we’re gonna take on China.”

Such comments are not only reactionary, they are a diversion from the central issue posed by the January 6 events. The fascist attack on Congress was an attempt to overturn the 2020 election, in which 81 million people voted for Biden, and to keep Donald Trump in the White House as a dictator in all but name.

While spearheaded by fascist groups like the Proud Boys, the attack was only possible because of a systematic stand-down by the massive military and police apparatus that surrounds the seat of the American government, including tens of thousands of National Guard and Army troops. One of the most critical aspects of the coup attempt was the deliberate delay in the deployment of these forces to the Capitol, despite appeals by congressional leaders and even Vice President Mike Pence that they be mobilized.

A critical role was played by Trump’s appointees at the Pentagon, acting Secretary of Defense Christopher Miller and Army Secretary Ryan McCarthy, who controlled the activities of the D.C. National Guard and for three hours and 19 minutes (199 minutes) rebuffed pleas from the Guard commander, General William Walker, that he be allowed to send his troops to rescue those besieged in the Capitol.

In a statement published March 5, 2021, the WSWS explained:


The events of January 6 were far from a surprise. For months prior to the insurrection, there was an ongoing political crisis during which the president of the United States made clear that he would not accept the peaceful transfer of power. The intelligence agencies and military were well aware of the plans and threats targeting the date of January 6, in particular.

Rather, a decision was made not to act as a definite political strategy was implemented. For more than three hours, the fascistic groups had virtual free rein over the Capitol building. The militarily trained elements within the rioters knew that they were being given time to seek out hostages among the Senators and Representatives.

In that event, Trump would have declared a state of emergency, shut down Congress, delayed indefinitely the certification of Biden’s victory, and opened negotiations that would have resulted, in one form or another, in a Democratic capitulation to the continuation of his presidency. The military only stepped in and secured the Capitol after it became clear that the attack had failed to achieve its objectives and Trump had publicly called it off.

The WSWS statement drew the following conclusion:


No investigation carried out under the auspices of the Democratic Party will serve to expose the forces involved in the conspiracy. As a party of Wall Street and the military itself, the Democrats are terrified of the political and social consequences of the revelations.

The one hundred and ninety-nine minutes of January 6 are a warning. As serious as the event was itself, no less significant is the response. Democratic rights cannot be entrusted to any faction of the ruling class or its political representatives. The working class cannot be left unprepared for the next stage. It must organize itself independently, on the basis of its own program, in opposition to the capitalist system.

The impending demise of the Democrats’ political fig leaf of a bipartisan commission into January 6 only further vindicates this assessment.

China: demographic crisis?

Michael Roberts




https://thenextrecession.wordpress.com/2021/05/23/china-demographic-crisis/




Much has been made recently of the slowdown in population growth in China. China’s population grew at its slowest rate in decades in the ten years to 2020, according to the latest census data, which also showed that births declined sharply last year. The nation’s once-in-a-decade census, which was completed in December, showed its population increased to 1.41bn in 2020 compared with 1.4bn a year earlier. The population grew just 5.4% from 1.34bn in 2010 — the lowest rate of increase between censuses since the People’s Republic of China began collecting data in 1953. Those over-65s now make up 13.5% of the population, compared with 8.9% in 2010 when the last census was completed.

This has led many China observers and Western economists to argue that China’s phenomenal growth rate that has taken over 850m Chinese out of poverty (as officially defined) is now over. The argument is that living standards have only risen for the average Chinese because China brought its huge workforce from the land and into the factories in the cities to produce goods for exports at low prices. Now with an ageing population and falling working-age population, China’s economy will flag. Given falling working population, along with an intensifying campaign by the US and its Western allies to isolate China economically and technically, China’s growth story is over.

But is that true? Real GDP growth depends on two factors: more employment and more productivity per worker. If it is true that China’s workforce is not going to rise but even fall over the next decades, that means sustaining economic growth depends on raising the rate of productivity growth.

In a previous post, I have argued against the sceptics who reckon that China cannot achieve growth rates of say 5-6% a year over the remainder of this decade, or more than twice the rates forecast for the major capitalist economies (the US Congressional Budget Office forecasts just 1.8% a year for the US).

For a start, while China’s labour productivity growth rate has declined in the last decade, it was still averaging over 6% a year before the pandemic struck. That compares with just 0.9% a year in the advanced capitalist economies. Even if you accept the revisions made by The Conference Board to China’s productivity record (which I don’t: – see the post above), China still achieved an over 4% a year productivity growth in the last decade, some four times faster than in the advanced capitalist economies.

So even if the labour force does not grow in this decade (or even decline by say 0.5% a year), real GDP growth in China is still going to be at a minimum of 3.5% a year, and much more likely to be 5-6% a year, close to the Chinese government’s forecast in its latest five-year plan.

Ah, but you see, China cannot maintain previous productivity growth rates because its economy is badly imbalanced, so the latest argument of Western China ‘experts’ goes. What is this imbalance? Well, up to now China has grown fast partly because of its labour supply (which is no longer rising) and partly because of massive investment, led by the state sector, in industry, infrastructure and technology.

But now, continued expansion of investment can only be achieved by credit injections and rising debt. And that lays the basis for either poor productivity growth or a debt crisis, or both in the next decade. The answer, according to these experts, is that China should reduce its investment ratio (successful in boosting the economy) and switch to raising consumption and expanding service industries.

You might ask, how successful have capitalist economies been while their investment ratios have fallen back and consumption has dominated? Not at all. So this all smacks of the crude Keynesian view that it is consumption that drives investment and growth, not vice versa. And behind this is also the ideological aim to reduce China’s state sector domination and push for a service sector dominated by capitalist enterprises (including foreign ones), particularly in banking and finance.

I have presented the arguments against this consumption model in a previous post on China, so I won’t repeat them here. Suffice it to say that they don’t hold water. Indeed, as Arthur Kroeber, head of research at Gavekal Dragonomics, has put it: “Is China fading? In a word, no. China’s economy is in good shape, and policymakers are exploiting this strength to tackle structural issues such as financial leverage, internet regulation and their desire to make technology the main driver of investment.” Kroeber echoes my view (as above) that: “On a two-year average basis, China is growing at about 5 per cent, while the US is well under 1 per cent. By the end of 2021 the US should be back around its pre-pandemic trend of 2.5 per cent annual growth. Over the next several years, China will probably keep growing at nearly twice the US rate.”

So there is no reason for China to abandon its growth model based on state-led investment in technology to compensate for the decline its workforce.

It has been the reason for its high productivity growth compared to the West in the last few decades and will continue to be so, as long as the government does not buckle to the siren words of the Western experts. Those siren words have already led to the further opening-up of the financial sector to foreign companies and an increasing reliance of portfolio capital flows (namely financial investment) rather than productive investment. Since 2017, foreign investors have tripled their holdings of Chinese bonds and now own about 3.5 per cent of the market. Equity inflows have been comparable. That makes for an increased risk of a financial bust and damage to China’s productivity performance.

The move to investment in technology rather than heavy industry and infrastructure is key to China’s sustainable growth rate and to reducing the rise in greenhouse gas emissions, where China is now the world leader.

According to a recent report by Goldman Sachs, China’s digital economy is already large, accounting for almost 40% of GDP and fast growing, contributing more than 60% of GDP growth in recent years. “And there is ample room for China to further digitalize its traditional sectors”. China’s IT share of GDP climbed from 2.1% in 2011Q1 to 3.8% in 2021Q1. Although China still lags the US, Europe, Japan and South Korea in its IT share of GDP, the gap has been narrowing over time. No wonder, the US and other capitalist powers are intensifying their efforts to contain China’s technological expansion.

Asian, Black, and Palestinian Protesters Unite Against Militarized Police, Occupation

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3n-ROYZUC7Y