Category: Aggregated

Tsinghua Professor Hu Angang, a staunch defender of China’s directed credit and SOE system, was given pages in the Council on Foreign Relations’ Foreign Affairs May/June issue to write on China’s “New Normal” — centered on slower growth. He debunks the western pundits talking about the failure and inevitable crash of China’s economy.

With all the various measures of China’s economy being used to show China’s economy to be bigger or smaller than that of the US, Hu writes: “The best method for comparing the two economies objectively is power generation, since it is physical and quantifiable. It also closely tracks modernization: without electricity, after all, or at least without a lot of it, one can’t run factories or build skyscrapers.

“In 1900, China generated 0.01% of the power the United States did. That figure rose to 1.2% in 1950 and 34% in 2000, with China surpassing the United States in 2011.” The article has a graph showing electricity generation for the two countries from 1980 to 2012, showing the lines cross in 2011.

Hu provides other meaningful statistics:

• Chinese life expectancy at 76, compared to 79 in the US;
• comparable educational standards;
• income inequality now lower in China than in the US.

Hu notes that the 2011-2015 12th Five Year Plan already called for a growth rate of about 7%, and that China had achieved five of its critical goals:

1- To create 45 million new urban jobs — 50 million were created;

2- expansion of service sector jobs from 43% to 48% — achieved;

3- lifting spending on scientific innovation from 1.75% of GDP to 2.20% – reached, resulting in 50% more patent applications in China than in the US

4- expansion of healthcare, which now covers 95% of the population

5- environmental indicators, which have improved but have far to go.

In an interview with France2 on April 21, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad delivered a stinging denunciation of France and other Western governments for their material support for the jihadists—the nonexistent “moderate opposition”—and for creating the chaotic conditions in the region which led to ISIS’s emergence.

Responding to France2‘s hostile and provocative interviewer, David Pujadas, who quoted “analysts” charging that it was Assad who helped ISIS emerge, Assad shot back that ISIS “was created in Iraq in 2006 under the supervision of the Americans. I’m not in Iraq and I wasn’t in Iraq, and I wasn’t controlling Iraq. The Americans controlled Iraq, and ISIS came from Iraq to Syria, because chaos is contagious.” When there is chaos in a certain country, he continued, “this is a fertile soil for the terrorists to come. So, when there is chaos in Syria, ISIS came to Syria. Before ISIS, came al-Nusra Front, which is al-Qaeda, and before that you had the Muslim Brotherhood. They all represent the same grassroots for ISIS to come later.”

The Syrian President repeatedly debunked Pujadas’s assertions that the Syrian army uses chemical weapons, chlorine gas, barrel bombs, etc. returning to the central point that the intervention of Western nations created the conditions for ISIS’s creation. Look at the air raids carried out by the 60-nation “coalition,” he said. Syria is a small country, but “what we do is tenfold sometimes, than what they do in one day. Is that serious?…they’re not serious so far. And the other proof is that ISIS has expanded in Syria, in Iraq, in Libya, in the region in general. So how can you say it was effective? They’re not serious, that’s why they don’t help anyone in this region.”

The point is, he emphasized, “the coalition against terrorism cannot be formed by countries who support the terrorists at the same time…they send weapons to the same terrorists under the title of ‘moderate opposition’…So, this is a contradiction. It doesn’t work.”

Al-Assad reserved his harshest words for the French. In response to Pujadas’s asking al-Assad whether he takes any responsibility for what’s happened in Syria in recent years, Assad replied “thing are not absolute… Everybody has a responsibility. We have our own problems in Syria…but now I’m talking about what brought ISIS here: the chaos, and your government, the government—or if you want to call it regime—the French regime, as they call us, is responsible for supporting those jihadists that they called the moderate opposition.”

As for his willingness to engage in dialogue with France, Assad stated, “We’re always interested in dialogue with anyone, but that is based on the policy. How can we make dialogue with a regime that supports terrorists in our country, and what for?… When they change their policy, we’ll be ready to make dialogue….” Assad made a point of noting that Francois Holland is the most unpopular president in the history of France since the 1950s.

When Pujadas mentioned that the French Prime Minister had denounced Assad as a butcher, Assad caustically replied, “the statements of the officials in France, no one is taking them seriously now, for one reason: because France is a satellite somehow to the American policy in the region; it’s not independent, it doesn’t have the weight, it doesn’t have the credibility.” He underscored that he was interested in what Syrian people think, not the French.

While a decision is expected by the emergency meeting of EU government leaders on April 23 (the first one since 9/11), the recent refugee tragedy is spurring a debate in Italy on: 1. What to do immediately? 2. What to do in the long-term? 3. Who is responsible for the mess in Africa?

Hardly anyone objects to the assertion that a standard of rescue operations must be re-established, which should at least be equal to the Mare Nostrum operation. Mare Nostrum allowed Italian ships to save human lives regardless of whether they were in international, Italian, or Libyan territorial waters. Mare Nostrum cost EU9 million per month, entirely financed by Italy. Triton has been funded with EU3 million per month.

The Renzi government is also pushing the “go and destroy” policy, i.e., sink the smugglers’ boats, which on one side won’t prevent smugglers from getting vessels elsewhere, and at the same time runs the risk of producing collateral damage to innocent people.

The real issue is how to eliminate the two roots of African emigration: war and poverty. On one hand, the Libyan state must be rebuilt, and on the other side, capital must be invested to develop those countries. Nothing on this can be expected from the EU, as it would mean getting rid of British geopolitics, challenging London and Obama and the financial markets.

However, there is a lot of resentment in Italy against the Anglo-French coalition that initiated the Libyan war, and the Obama administration which has backed it. Everybody knows that Washington is currently backing the pro-terrorist factions in Tripoli and thereby making any political solution impossible.

A preferred target of attacks is former French President Nicholas Sarkozy, “who had the gall to inform his allies that he had given the order to attack, after his bombers had taken off,” as the weekly Panorama writes.

“Does anyone remember Sarkozy, Cameron and Erdogan’s triumphant speeches in 2011 in Benghazi?” asks Il Sole 24 Ore strategist Alberto Negri.

And the conservative daily Il Foglio even calls for “Bringing Sarko la Racaille to the UN Court,” using the term “racaille” — vermin, riffraff — that then Interior Minister Sarkozy used to characterize the immigrants who rioted in the French suburban slums, the banlieues.

In Great Britain, UKIP MEP Nigel Farage issued a scathing attack on Cameron and Sarkozy, as reported by the Daily Telegraph, which asked whether a “stronger Europe” wouldn’t help solve the problem. He shot back, “It was the European response that caused this problem in the first place. The fanaticism of Sarkozy and Cameron to bomb Libya. They have completely destabilized Libya, to turn it into a country with much savagery, to turn it into a place where for Christians the place is now virtually impossible. We ought to be honest and say we have directly caused this problem.”