Thread by @EuropeanPowell

This🧵draws parallels between Truss' model of investment zones to those installed in Shenzen, China, another model of capitalist achievement lauded by the libertarian right. Even Chinese citizens needed visas to enter the quarantined ‘corporate zone of economic experimentation’.

Inside this zone, local entrepreneurs were left to self organize as corporate management had been handed Govt powers. The zone had a huge influx of foreign investment as land and labor were aggressively commodified.

1987 an inland market was set up, a deluge of venture capitalists descended onto Shenzen, huge swathes of land were taken from rural usage and transformed into private property, this was one of the biggest transfers of public wealth to private hands in modern history. UK next!

As zone fever gripped the nation, on paper the results were staggering, in 1980, officials hoped to bring in 300,000 people to Shenzen by 2000, the real number was 10million, by 2020 the population doubled to 20million
Template of a China of enclaves was set, total 'zonification'

A reserve army of migrant labourers moved between the city and the countryside, mini zones 'permitted' town and village enterprises to produce and sell for the larger markets dominating the region. Sunak and Hunt’s SEZs will do much the same thing by weaponising deregulation.

What Sunak is doing with his Freeports&SEZ’s is restructuring sovereignty so it enables in newly written anti-EU law the hypermobile movement of capital in and around increasingly competitive zones, a patchwork of sovereignty bought up by selling off public assets #BrexitDisaster

In 1990 Milton Friedman said the right model for Eastern Europe after state socialism was not the US, GB, it was Hong Kong. Capitalism did not need democracy to work, the path to success was the 'zone'. For God's sake UK wake up and stop whats coming next to post Brexit UK.

Brexit UK, a perfect model for the zone, an isolated island, a 3rd country that wants nothing to do with EU regulation and protectionism. Govt despises ECHR, anti-immigration is cover for domestic workers rights being shredded to allow the corporate zone to treat people as slaves

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