“Does the wealth of the Western world still come from imperialist extraction?”

In very large part, yes. IMF-classified “advanced economies” drain $10 trillion from the rest of the world each year, through unequal exchange underlying international trade.🧵
sciencedirect.com/science/articl… “Is that a lot?”

Yes. It’s over a tenth of the entire world’s GDP. And it doesn’t even include lesser mechanisms of exploitation like the payment of interest in debt, royalties for patented technology, or other forms of rent.

The actual number is likely a bit higher.

Housing prices fell dramatically in the US in 2007-2008.

Housing prices are falling dramatically in China right now.

What's the difference?

In one sentence: Chinese banks will not make people homeless.

In several sentences... 🧵 The reason why so many people lost their homes during the 2008 financial crisis has to do with adjustable-rate mortgages (ARMs).

In the US, ARM-dealing was highly predatory, promising very low interest ("teaser rates") to begin with, which would then greatly increase later on.

Sometime in the next seven years, a human being will set foot on the Moon for the first time since 1972.

That human will probably be a Chinese taikonaut, and the outrage from the West will be like nothing we’ve seen.

A thread 🧵 on China 🇨🇳 and the New Space Race 🚀 Let’s briefly review the history of the United States’ Moon policy.

JFK’s famous promise of a Moon landing by 1970 was fulfilled. But it may not surprise you to learn that Western plans since then have been…overly optimistic.

The progress China has made in renewable energy just THIS YEAR makes the entire rest of the world look like it's standing still.

I wrote in December that to call China the "world leader in renewable energy" was a colossal understatement.

That’s even more true today.

Thread 🧵

Even the Western press considers the PRC's climate target to be all-important to preventing complete global disaster. It was estimated to reduce projected temperature by 0.3 degrees Celsius, the largest *drop* ever calculated by climate models.
foreignpolicy.com/2020/09/25/xi-…

Sudan’s government did everything the IMF told it to. It devalued its currency by 10x, cut fuel subsidies, and normalized relations with Israel.

But instead of forgiving Sudan’s debt as promised, the Paris Club reneged. Sudan’s debt is still increasing.
https://t.co/Nn8ubmAhB2country.eiu.com/article.aspx?a…




The power the IMF (and its puppet masters the US and Europe, which control its policy decisions) has over countries like Sudan is immense. To make a deal for debt relief, the victim country must enact “reforms” FIRST, before receiving anything.

France is the second-strongest economy in the EU, the only nuclear power, and is energy-independent. If any country can lead Europe out from under the US thumb, it’s France.

However, it can’t without undergoing some fundamental social changes.

Thread 🧵 Everyone is saying the word “multipolarity” these days. When do we get there, exactly?

The best academic writing about it I know of is from Samir Amin. In 2006, his take was that an anti-neoliberal, anti-imperialist Europe was a key criteria for a multipolar world to exist.

We're often told that Belt and Road Initiative projects go unfinished, take too long, are bad for the environment, don't hire locals, displace communities, cause too much debt, &c.

But these criticisms usually rely on selectively-chosen cases, not a comprehensive analysis. 🧵 Though we're so often told that the opposite is true, a study by McKinsey of infrastructure projects across eight African countries found that Chinese enterprises “overwhelmingly employ and train local workers”.
mckinsey.com/featured-insig…

When the United States has a crisis, the government bails out the corporations

When China has a crisis, the government bails out the people

Thread 🧵 When the Evergrande Group defaulted in 2021, western media expected it to get a multi-billion-dollar bailout like the US govt gave AIG in 2008.

Evergrande’s billionaire chairman Xu Jiayin was in the Party, and the Party’s corrupt, right? So of course there’d be a bailout.

Wrong

People keep saying China is going to “collapse” at any minute.

If they give a reason, it’s almost always an aging population, and housing oversupply.

Those are surely challenges for China. But both problems are worse—much, much worse—in Japan.

Thread 🧵 Let’s compare population pyramids real quick. Yes, China’s is getting a bit top-heavy, but Japan’s is positively teetering.

The proportion of the Chinese population older than 60 is just under 20%.

In Japan, it’s already 36%.

THE DUPLICITY OF THE WORLD BANK

and how it relates to China

and the struggle against extreme poverty

A thread 🧵 I cite World Bank statistics all the time. I think they're generally accurate because they coordinate with each country's own census bureau, surveys, &c.

The World Bank doesn't fabricate numbers—you can't just make up data for group projects without your lab partners realizing.

We don't hear much about Tibet in the news these days.

Why not? Because it's getting harder to hide the truth: the average Tibetan has a much better life in China than elsewhere.

It’s become so obvious that the only way for the west to cope has been to ignore it.

Thread 🧵 I mentioned earlier how the trend of rising income among the poor in China greatly accelerated in the 21st century.

In 2000, the Tibetan Autonomous Region had the LOWEST rural income—ranked
31st out of 31 provinces.

By 2020, it was ranked 22nd.

https://twitter.com/kyletrainemoji/status/1616241635968548865

In the west, the poor are getting poorer.

In China, the poor are getting richer.

Thread 🧵 The real (inflation-adjusted) incomes of the poorest half of the Chinese population increased by more than four hundred percent from 1978 to 2015, while real incomes of the poorest half of the US population actually declined during the same time period.
nber.org/system/files/w…

What's been happening to western social democracy over the past 30 years?

Nothing good.

A thread 🧵 A brief history.

As an ideology, social democracy is older, but with very minor exceptions, as an existing political mechanism, it's only a century old. The beginnings can be found in the "Progressive Era" in the US and the UK's now-defunct Liberal Party.

Some folks cited these passages by Lenin as evidence he disagreed that neocolonialism is a more profitable form of exploitation.

Actually, these quotes do not conflict with that claim.

A (short, I promise) thread 🧵 I already wrote about why and how Lenin’s theory of imperialism requires clarification now that the mechanisms of exploitation changed.

I think these quotes are a lot easier to reconcile.

https://twitter.com/KyleTrainEmoji/status/1612908057104908293

World War II was the last inter-imperialist war.

Those who believe we are currently seeing, or will soon see, a new inter-imperialist war are mistaken. If we ever do, it won't be soon.

A thread about decolonization, the USSR's errors, and the US-Japan conflict. 🧵 Before you can understand inter-imperialist conflict you need to know the difference between colonialism and neocolonialism from the imperialist's perspective.

The most crucial point: empires prefer neocolonies, because a neocolony is MORE PROFITABLE than a direct colony.

In 1916, Lenin called imperialism the highest stage of capitalism.

In 1965, Kwame Nkrumah said that neocolonialism is the last stage of imperialism.

Both are obsolete. Since 1990, we’ve been in a new, even higher stage.

A 🧵 on debt, finance, the US, the Arab Spring and China. Lenin and Nkrumah were correct in their time. But imperialism keeps changing, so theory must change too. Clinging to old models despite new data is the essence of dogmatism.

Nkrumah in fact predicted a new stage would result from the socialist bloc's collapse. Then it collapsed.

How China stopped a genocide that the United States and the United Kingdom caused

A thread 🧵 The UK colonized Sudan in the late 19th century, and structured its economy to produce one export commodity (cotton). It still primarily produced cotton and other cash crops (sesame, peanuts, &c.) after independence, until the end of the 20th century.
socsci.uci.edu/~vbernal/bio/B…

According to the UNICEF report on the transition to capitalism, there were more than three million deaths resulting from the catastrophic drop in living conditions after the USSR’s dissolution

unicef-irc.org/publications/3…

https://twitter.com/ukraine/status/1607067227253272576

The overall decline in life expectancy in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe was actually the largest ever recorded anywhere in the absence of war or natural disaster

pages.nes.ru/vpopov/documen…

To say that China is the "world leader in renewable energy" is a colossal understatement.

Actually, China is the ONLY country in the world that both has enough resources to make a real difference AND is actually treating the climate emergency like it’s an emergency.

Thread 🧵 In each year from 2020 to 2022, China accounted for about 140 gigawatts of new renewable electricity generation capacity, more than the United States, the EU, and India put together. (A gigawatt is enough to power three-quarters of a million homes.)
ft.com/content/33ca0d…

The technology ALREADY EXISTS that will enable the next generation of human beings to live forever without suffering any infirmity or sign of age.

A thread on how you can ensure that your children will be immortal TODAY 🧵 ChatGPT is just the latest proof that technology is still advancing exponentially. Some believe immortality will be achievable by uploading your conscious mind into a computer. HOWEVER, such theories are still basically science fiction and won’t be realized for decades, if ever.

This thread is about the Ferghana Valley railway in Kyrgyzstan and what it says about Chinese foreign and domestic policy 🇰🇬 🇨🇳 🚂 🧵

I think the project proves, as much as a railroad can, the character of Chinese investment in the region. The western press has spilled a tremendous amount of ink trying to convince you that the PRC has a colonial relationship with its western province of Xinjiang.

But here is what some actual colonial rail systems look like: