The Unexpected Path To The Mamari Tablet – A Personal Discovery

Rongorongo – nl.wikipedia.org

06-04-2025 ~ I never expected to make a meaningful contribution to one of the world’s last undeciphered writing systems—especially not over a single weekend. But sometimes, curiosity grabs hold of you, and before you know it, you’re completely consumed by a mystery that refuses to let go.

It was a regular Friday night. I was unwinding, scrolling through a few things online, when something sparked a memory—the Rongorongo tablets of Easter Island. I remembered reading about them years ago, and how nobody had cracked their meaning. That thought just stuck. No Rosetta Stone. No living tradition. Just intricate glyphs carved into ancient wood, waiting.

I’ve always loved learning about ancient human history, especially the things that are still unanswered. I look at it like this: if there’s a theory about why something might be the way it is, and there’s even a small chance it can be proven or disproven with just a little effort, I’m going to give it a shot. This was my first time seriously trying something like this.

Out of curiosity, I pulled up some high-resolution images and started reading about the clues researchers had already uncovered—especially on the Mamari Tablet, or Text C, which is one of the most complete examples we have. That’s when I came across Line 9. I read that it had 30 repeating glyph sequences. Some scholars believed this line might represent a calendar, maybe even a lunar one, but nothing was definitive. Others noted glyphs that resembled crescents, counts that suggested structure, or placement that hinted at timekeeping—but no one had locked it down.

I zoomed in and started staring at those glyphs myself. The repetition felt deliberate, and the sequence had a clear structure to it. I started cross-referencing the glyphs with known lunar night names and reading more about how Polynesian cultures organized their time around lunar cycles. That’s when a possibility started forming—what if this wasn’t just a random line of glyphs, but a sidereal calendar based on the stars, not the moon’s phases? It felt like something worth chasing.

So I went all in. I spent that weekend doing nothing else. I compared glyphs, chased down clues, and with the help of AI-assisted pattern recognition, I started seeing connections. Line 9 looked like it was mapping out a 13-moon sidereal calendar that started on the summer solstice. Then I looked at Line 8—and sure enough, I started seeing patterns that echoed the same structure.

By Sunday night, I had something real. Not a full translation, but a theory built on cultural logic, repeated glyphs, and calendar alignment. I wanted to share it, to put it out into the world. I tried a couple of academic publishing sites—they didn’t load or wouldn’t take the file. So I went with Zenodo. It was simple, credible, and got the job done. I uploaded the paper on June 1, 2025, got a digital object identifier, and figured that was the end of it.

Then the email came. The Easter Island Foundation had seen my work. The president—Mary Dell Lucas—reached out and said they wanted to feature my findings in their official newsflash. I couldn’t believe it. Getting recognition like that from the people who actually safeguard the legacy of Rapa Nui meant everything.

I’m not claiming I’ve solved Rongorongo. Far from it. But I think I’ve found something that fits—something that makes cultural and structural sense. I welcome critique. I hope people challenge it. That’s how progress happens.

This whole experience showed me that you don’t need a grant, a lab, or a university to make a meaningful contribution. Sometimes, all it takes is a question you can’t let go of, a weekend you’re willing to lose, and the tools to follow the thread.

By Michael Baldwin

Author Bio: Michael Baldwin is an independent researcher focused on ancient knowledge systems, site alignments, and the symbolic and energetic decisions behind how ancient cultures shaped their environments.

Credit Line: This article was produced by Human Bridges.




Trump’s Animosity Is Bringing Europeans Closer Together And To The Rest Of The World

C.J. Polychroniou

06-03-2025 ~ There is an emerging consensus among European policymakers and experts alike that Trump wants to do to the E.U. what he is doing to the U.S.—destroy its civil society.

The European Union came into existence in 1992 with the signing of the Maastricht Treaty, which led to a single market, border-free travel, and the euro. Since then, the E.U. has evolved in various ways, although it has stopped short of developing a centralized fiscal authority and setting up a European army. Moreover, the E.U. has long been plagued by a number of legitimacy problems that have given rise to Euroscepticism among both left-wing and right-wing citizens.

Nonetheless, certain recent global developments are forcing the E.U. to upend many long-held ideas and norms about its own security and relations with other countries. Russia’s war in Ukraine and the sudden shift in U.S. policy toward Europe have made both policymakers and citizens across the continent more aware of the need not only for deeper integration and a new European governance architecture but also of the historical necessity to create a new world order. While Russia’s war in Ukraine has forced the E.U. to rethink its energy policy and compelled countries such as Finland and Sweden to become full members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), it is U.S. President Donald Trump’s hostility toward Europe and its institutions that is bringing Europeans closer together and even making them realize that the E.U. is a safe haven when all is said and done.

Indeed, the latest Eurobarometer survey, which was released on May 27, 2025, reveals the highest level of trust in the E.U. in nearly two decades and the highest support ever for the common currency. The overwhelming majority of respondents also displayed support for a common defense system among E.U. member states and opposition to tariffs. Equally impressive is the fact that a huge majority agreed that the E.U. is “a place of stability in a troubled world.”

These findings come just days after Trump told a rally in West Mifflin, Pennsylvania that he will double tariffs on steel and aluminum imports to 50%. This move, which will take effect on June 4, prompted the European Commission to announce that Europe is prepared to roll out countermeasures in order to retaliate against President Trump’s plan to increase steel and aluminum tariffs. It said that it “strongly” regrets Trump’s threat and that “if no mutually acceptable solution is reached both existing and additional E.U. measures will automatically take effect on July 14—or earlier, if circumstances require.”

The concern among many Europeans is that U.S.-E.U. relations are not only seriously damaged but that the U.S. has now become Europe’s enemy. Since coming to office, Trump has launched an active campaign against European democracy, with members of his administration not only bashing Europe but openly supporting far-right parties across the continent.

The common perception about Europe is that it is indecisive, too slow to act, even when major crises come knocking at its door. There is an element of truth in that, as the E.U. has shown a proclivity for reactive rather than proactive political behavior. But the Trump shock appears to be rousing Europe from its geopolitical slumber. The E.U. is standing up to the bully in Washington and is looking after Europe’s own interests with greater zeal than ever before. This is because there is indeed an emerging consensus among European policymakers and experts alike that Trump wants to do to Europe what he is doing to the U.S.–i.e., destroy its civil society. MAGA hates Europe for cultural and political reasons. For Trump, as Célia Belin, senior policy fellow at the European Council on Foreign Relations and head of the Paris office, aptly put it, “Europeans are an extension of his political opposition at home… and Europe is thus a symbol of the political ideals [that] Trump seeks to eliminate, transform, and subjugate.”

In its attempts to find a new role in world affairs in the Trump era, Europe is not merely reacting to Washington’s whims but seeks to implement policies that reinforce its own strategic autonomy, both internally and externally. The European Commission has updated its industrial strategy by speeding up clean energy and pursuing new trade agreements with reliable partners. While some European leaders see both Russia and China as representing a threat to the rules-based international order, there have been numerous calls by various policymakers across the continent for a closer collaboration between China and the E.U. in light of “Trump’s ‘mafia-like’ tactics.” European Union leaders will travel for a high-stakes summit to Beijing in July after failing to convince Chinese President Xi Jinping to visit Brussels for a summit marking the 50th anniversary of E.U.-China diplomatic relations. And France has called for a stronger E.U.-China alignment on climate action amid the U.S.’ withdrawal from the Paris agreement.

China is the E.U.’s second-largest trading partner. Europe is, in fact, not only growing more dependent on China for manufactured goods but, in spite of differences in bilateral relations, such as China’s position on the war in Ukraine, is actually warming up to the idea that the E.U.-China relationship is an essential vehicle for tackling global challenges and safeguarding international multilateralism.

Europe is also looking into other regions of the world as part of a concerted effort to promote ever more vigorously its own strategic autonomy. Since Trump took office, the E.U. concluded a free trade agreement with Mercosur, an economic bloc made up of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, and Bolivia, with scores of other countries (among them are Chile, Columbia, Ecuador, and Peru) as associate members. Mercosur, or the Southern Common Market, is the fifth-largest economy and encompasses more than 285 million people.

The E.U.-Mercosur agreement, which had been in the making for 25 years, still needs to be ratified, and Argentina’s far-right Milei government, which is in close political-ideological alignment with the Trump administration, could prove to be a stumbling block to its ratification. Argentinian President Javier Milei is, in fact, more interested in signing a free trade agreement with the United States, which would be in violation of Mercosur regulations.

After many years of negotiations, the E.U. is also close to finalizing a free trade agreement with India. The 11th round of negotiations between India and the E.U. concluded on May 16, and there is a firm commitment by both sides to strike a deal by the end of 2025. As European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen said, this agreement would be “the largest deal of its kind anywhere in the world.

If ratified, the E.U.-Mercosur free trade agreement will create a market of around 800 million people. When finalized, the E.U.-India free trade agreement will create a market of close to 2 billion consumers.

Trump is trying to remake the United States in his own image and also to destroy the E.U., which he says is “nastier than China.” One would like to believe that it is probably unlikely that he will succeed in remaking the U.S. in his own nasty image, but it is positively certain that he will not succeed in destroying Europe and its institutions, even though there is a lot that needs to be done to create a fairer and more inclusive Europe. In the meantime, however, Trump’s “mafia-like tactics” are bringing Europeans closer together and the continent ever closer to other regions of the world.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/europe-versus-trump

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).

 




Alongside China’s, Which Social Credit Systems Are Developing?

John P. Ruehl – Source: Independent Media Institute

06-03-2025 ~ China’s state-run social credit system has drawn global attention for years, but other versions are actively spreading. These systems increasingly shape the behavior and outcomes of citizens’ lives, often without their knowledge.

By the late 2010s, China’s “social credit system” (SCS) was increasingly viewed as a notorious government effort to monitor personal behavior, shape public conduct, and control access to services. While the system traces back to the 2000s, it was officially expanded and formalized in 2014.

For example, in 2019, mixed martial arts fighter Xu Xiaodong made headlines when his social credit score was lowered “for insulting tai chi grandmaster Chen Xiaowang,” according to Quartz, which also led to him facing travel restrictions. In contrast, citizens in Rongcheng who earned the highest ratings of “AAA” through acts of charity and civic duty enjoyed perks like discounted energy bills.

Personal reputation and risk scoring tools have also spread globally, particularly in the private sector. These systems go well beyond customer loyalty programs or service prioritization. Their growing social, legal, and economic consequences make it urgent to understand how these systems work and how automation will make them faster, less transparent, and more consequential.

In the U.S., tenant verification companies like RentGrow have mistakenly blacklisted renters for years, prompting a 2024 consumer protection lawsuit. Insurers are increasingly using non-financial data such as shopping habits and social media activity to build behavioral profiles and alter their services, pushing legal boundaries.

Ensuring trust, accountability, and good behavior in citizens and consumers is not inherently harmful when done by governments and companies, respectively. But when this exercise is powered by vast datasets and opaque surveillance tools, often involving scoring, these real-time behavior monitoring systems are prone to misuse.

China
China’s government-run SCS is the world’s most advanced, though it is yet to be completely implemented. Instead of isolated blacklists or points systems, it aims to collect and analyze a wide range of data, including finances, social behavior, and government records, to score citizens and implore them to follow state-approved norms.

The concept emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s, with local pilot programs starting in 2009. Rongcheng became an early test case by 2013, giving around 700,000 residents a baseline score of 1,000. Scores improved through actions like donating blood or volunteering, unlocking advantages like free medical checkups. Meanwhile, deductions were made for offences like tax evasion, which could cut off government benefits (though for many, the impact was minimal).

After Chinese authorities announced a national six-year development program in 2014, dozens of other “demonstration cities” emerged. Local governments often used small companies to help build the infrastructure and tech giants to scale it. In Hebei province, Tencent and WeChat help promote the nickname “Deadbeat Map” for an app that alerts users when someone with unpaid debt is nearby and encourages users to report them. Millions of other Chinese citizens have been blacklisted from flights and high-speed rail, or investing in real estate or other products due to low social credit scores, according to a 2019 Guardian article.

While Chinese companies helped build the state-run SCS, some were entrusted to create their own. Giants like Alibaba and Tencent, whose apps are deeply woven into daily life through e-commerce, media, banking, insurance, transportation, and other services, use reputation profiles to expand their influence over users further.

Alibaba’s Zhima Credit, launched in 2015, scores users on financial history, education and career, social connections, and charitable acts. Higher scores offered deposit-free rental apartments and expedited visas, yet its role shrank after 2018 when the government declined to renew private credit licenses. Tencent started its own social credit feature within its WeChat app in 2018 but suspended it within a day after public backlash, before rolling out another version in 2019.

Chinese public reaction to the individual SCS has been mixed. Criticism grew in several cities where programs penalized minor infractions, like missing dinner reservations. Central authorities called for the enforcement of penalties only through formal legal channels in 2019, and some cities switched to reward-only models.

Despite its image as a centralized system, China’s SCS remains incomplete. The government is wary of empowering private firms too much or provoking public retaliation, and a national rollout planned for 2020 was delayed by the pandemic and infrastructure gaps. Still, draft social credit laws were introduced in 2020 to unify standards, followed by another in 2022. In March 2025, new national guidelines called for fully integrating social credit into economic and social life, reflecting Beijing’s long-term efforts to bring the system fully online.

United States
While China’s government-run SCS is unique, American companies have quietly built a sprawling and mostly unregulated personal scoring counterpart. Less centralized than China’s, it is in some ways more sophisticated, as profit-driven firms have experimented with minimal oversight.

What began in the 1950s as a way to assess creditworthiness has grown into a massive industry tracking and scoring individual citizens’ behavior. Companies collect data from online records and digital footprints to assign scores or create blacklists. Some keep these ratings secret, while others sell or share them. Together, they have created profiling systems that increasingly determine access to jobs, homes, services, and more.

Insurance companies led the way in using non-financial data for risk scoring. Car insurers, for example, regularly purchase speed, braking, and location patterns from automakers to set premiums. Meanwhile, education platforms like EAB’s Navigate generate student risk scores based on dropout likelihood, engagement, and future success, shaping their lives long before graduation.

An investigation by nonprofit publication the Markup found “that the software, Navigate… used by more than 500 schools across the country, was disproportionately labeling Black and other minority students ‘high risk’—a practice experts said ends up pushing Black kids out of math and science into ‘easier’ majors.”

In public settings, tools like Alessa alert casinos when a visitor’s behavior triggers its proprietary “risk score.” Patronscan, the largest ID scanning firm in the U.S. (and active in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand), allows a person to “either be flagged at a particular venue for up to five years, or flagged across the company’s entire network for up to one year,” according to a 2024 article in the Markup. The company faced a 2023 lawsuit for allegedly violating Illinois’s biometric privacy laws, but denied wrongdoing and settled the case in 2024. It also flags high spenders as “VIPs,” prompting venues to offer them preferential treatment.

Data analytics company LexisNexis, meanwhile, builds extensive risk profiles for landlords, employers, and insurers using public records, court filings, and third-party data, with limited avenues for individuals to dispute errors. Trulioo offers global identity and fraud risk assessments, with especially deep coverage in the U.S. due to the expansive datasets and permissive privacy laws in the country.

American citizens have been drawn into the scoring economy as both subjects and participants. Platforms like Uber and Airbnb rely on user ratings to determine who gets rides, accommodation, and work. Yelp and Google reviews offer public feedback, but can also be weaponized by review bombing, which has harmed innocent businesses and creators.

While not as advanced as Chinese government efforts, U.S. government scoring systems include the Automated Targeting System (ATS), used by the Department of Homeland Security’s Customs and Border Protection, to assign individual risk scores based on travel data, visa status, and airline records.

Additionally, police departments in Chicago and Los Angeles began trialing threat scores for citizens in the early 2010s, incorporating social networks, past police interactions, and location. These scores influenced policing strategies, including the use of force and proactive interventions. Despite officially ending the use of this system in Chicago and Los Angeles in 2019, predictive policing returned under new names and methods in both cities, often with the aid of private companies. The Federal Bureau of Prisons’ PATTERN Risk score, rolled out in 2022, meanwhile, assesses re-offense risk for prisoners.

The U.S. public reaction has grown increasingly wary of more open scoring systems. Backlash to personal ESG (environmental, social, and governance) scores and corporate reputation metrics led to their diminished use. In 2023, Utah’s House Business and Labor Committee approved HB281, a bill to prevent the state from creating or using systems that employ social credit scores to reward or punish citizens.

Though the Equal Credit Opportunity Act (ECOA) of 1974 offers some federal protection for financial credit scoring, no comparable safeguards exist for behavioral scoring or digital blacklists. California Consumer Privacy Act (CCPA) grants basic data access and deletion rights to individuals, but opaque scoring systems have largely sidestepped it, and automated decisions do not need to be explained. The true number of such systems, both commercial and government-run, remains unknown, making them difficult to monitor or challenge.

Other Global Practices
Europe has attempted a more substantial regulatory approach to using personal data in scoring systems. The General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), implemented in 2016, provides a comparatively stronger legal foundation, requiring companies to disclose why personal scores may change, for example. However, enforcement is uneven, and loopholes remain.

Alongside private scoring tools, European governments have introduced their own social credit systems under more benign branding. In Italy, Rome and Bologna launched the smart citizen wallet in 2022, a pilot project rewarding citizens for eco-friendly behavior like recycling or using public transport. In the UK, “loyalty points” schemes in supermarkets monitor spending habits (as well as physical activity) for use in pilot health programs, an initiative introduced during Boris Johnson’s tenure as prime minister.

Social credit systems are more widely accepted in parts of East and Southeast Asia, where stronger state capacity, centralized digital infrastructure, and cultural norms make behavioral tracking less contested. In South Korea, a state-led “Green Credit,” encouraging sustainable living by rewarding eco-friendly actions, has been in place since 2011.

Private initiatives have also emerged in Asia, notably through super apps that combine multiple services, building consumer profiles to control access and perks. Japan’s all-in-one app Line, widely used for communications, payments, and other utilities, raised eyebrows in 2019 after announcing plans to implement an AI-driven social scoring system to reward and restrict users based on their online and offline behavior. Given Line’s ubiquity, its experiment is a major step toward privately governed social credit structures.

Though promoted as tools to encourage good behavior and deter bad conduct, these systems amplify social pressure and push societies toward a digital panopticon—a state of constant surveillance driven by government and commercial incentives. These models will continue to mature and become more dangerous in the U.S. and other countries that lack adequate data protection. Without strict limits on surveillance by both governments and corporations, fears of AI misuse, algorithmic bias, false correlations, and harmful feedback loops will only grow as these scoring systems govern more of everyday life.

By John P. Ruehl

Author Bio: John P. Ruehl is an Australian-American journalist living in Washington, D.C., and a world affairs correspondent for the Independent Media Institute. He is a contributor to several foreign affairs publications, and his book, Budget Superpower: How Russia Challenges the West With an Economy Smaller Than Texas’, was published in December 2022.

Credit Line: This article was produced by Economy for All, a project of the Independent Media Institute.




C. J. Polychroniou On Socialism, Left Internationalism, And The Climate Crisis

05-29-2025 ~ The return of Left internationalism inspired by the vision of socialism needs a dramatic turnaround on the global ideological and political landscape.

Has neoliberal globalization run its course? Should the Left be on the side of tariffs or protectionism? Can Left internationalism be revived? Political scientist, political economist, author, and journalist C. J. Polychroniou tackles these questions in an interview with the independent French-Greek journalist Alexandra Boutri.

Alexandra Boutri: In a recently published essay, you argue that the Left should endorse a new vision of globalization and fight accordingly for a new world order. Can you briefly spell out the pitfalls of neoliberal globalization and why the current world order is a failure?

C. J. Polychroniou: The first thing that stands out about neoliberal globalization is that it has led to an extremely high degree of economic inequality by altering patterns of income distribution and resource allocation while at the same time undermining economic and social rights. As Miatta Fahnbulleh put it a few years back in an essay that appeared in Foreign Affairs, the system “is not working in the interest of the majority of people.” The actual record of neoliberal globalization on economic growth has also been quite dismal, with postwar “managed capitalism” outperforming the neoliberal model on every count. On top of that, under the form of globalization prescribed by neoliberalism “the average global temperature has risen relentlessly,” as Robert Pollin has pointed out. Neoliberal globalization has been bad for people and the environment alike.

As far as the current world order is concerned, it would be hilarious if it weren’t so tragic. We have a world in permanent crisis literally since the end of the Second World War, with the nuclear sword of Damocles hanging over humanity’s head. The Doomsday Clock is now closer than ever to midnight. The current war in Ukraine, the annihilation of Palestinians in Gaza and the seizing of land in the occupied West Bank by violent religious extremists under the protection of the Israeli army speak volumes of the dramatic failure of the United Nations and the so-called international community. There is no lawful world order. International law only applies when it suits the strong.

Alexandra Boutri: Has neoliberalism’s model of globalization run its course?

C. J. Polychroniou: The current system has been in a terminal state since the outbreak of the global financial crisis of 2007-08. The resurgence of right-wing nationalism across the globe is interrelated to the profound contradictions built specifically into the neoliberal version of globalization. The backlash against globalism by the likes of U.S. President Donald Trump and his MAGA faction needs to be understood in connection with the changes that are occurring in the world economy. Trump is using protectionism as a means of altering the global supply chain in favor of U.S. production and imposing tariffs to reduce the U.S. trade deficit but is simultaneously unleashing the most vicious form of neoliberalism inside the country. He is attending to the mythology of American Exceptionalism and Manifest Destiny by trying to reassert the dominance of the United States in the world economy while destroying functioning government as part of a plan to axe safety-net programs and letting corporations run roughshod over labor. Trump’s domestic agenda is the most neoliberal since the onset of neoliberalism. It constitutes an open war against working people and social rights, against the poor and the environment. It’s all about making the rich richer and the poor poorer. It’s a domestic agenda based on the politics of astonishing greed and shocking cruelty. Trump’s election therefore does not mean the end of neoliberalism or of globalism.

Alexandra Boutri: Free trade or protectionism? Is this an actual choice for the Left?

C. J. Polychroniou: It depends on what one means by the “left.” You have left-wing liberals, social democrats, left-wing socialists, communists, and anarchists. Left with capital L tends in some circles to refer to the anti-capitalist, socialist-communist-anarchist camp. Personally, I don’t consider the Democrats in the United States or the Social Democrats in Europe as part of the Left. Their loyalty is to capitalism. Hence, they are not agents of transformational change. They want to maintain the existing socioeconomic system but with some modifications in place to make it less disagreeable. The social democratic tale was about capitalism with a human face. It was a popular political program for the first few decades after the end of the Second World War, and it was of course an improvement over laisses faire capitalism and a bourgeois state that catered exclusively to the interests of the capitalist class. Nonetheless, we should be reminded of an old radical dictum: There cannot be democracy, social justice, and equality as long as power belongs to capital.

The debate regarding free trade versus protectionism is as old as political economy. For what it’s worth, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels confronted this issue back in the 1840s, in the struggles over the Corn Laws. Marx saw free trade for what it is—i.e., “freedom of capital,” and mocked the claim of free-traders that the absence of tariff barriers would abolish the antagonism among classes. But this does not mean that Marx took the side of protectionism, which he saw as a system to defend the status quo. Thus, as he put it, “One may declare oneself an enemy of the constitutional regime without declaring oneself a friend of the ancient regime.”

Interestingly enough, though, Marx ends up in the end endorsing free trade but purely on political grounds because he saw the free trade system as accelerating the prospects of radical change.

The goal of the Left is to move beyond capitalism by constructing an equitable and sustainable economy and a just world order. Rudolf Hilferding, in his book Finance Capital, published more than a century ago, wrote: “The proletariat avoids the bourgeois dilemma—protectionism or free trade—with a solution of its own; neither protectionism nor free trade, but socialism, the organization of production, the conscious control of the economy not by and for the benefit of the capitalist magnates but by and for society as a whole.”

Alexandra Boutri: Until recently, antiglobalization was exclusively associated with parties and movements of the Left. However, internationalism has historically been a core component of the Left’s ideological worldview. What happened to Left internationalism but also to social democratic parties whose collapse coincides with the collapse of the antiglobalization movement and the emergence of right-wing antiglobalism?

C. J. Polychroniou: The antiglobalization movement came to life in the 1990s and peaked during the early 2000s. It was inspired mainly by so-called far-left ideologies which saw free trade agreements, multinational corporations, and international economic organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank promoting a new version of colonialism. During those years, millions of people turned out across the world to raise their voice against global corporate power. Center-left and reformist left parties in general did not join the protests against global capitalist expansion for the simple reason that they had embraced neoliberalism and were being showered in turn by campaign cash from big corporations and the financial sector. In a word, they had betrayed the working class in the same manner that the socialist parties had betrayed internationalism in 1914 at the start of the First World War.

The history of European social democracy may be summarized as follows: a period of rather impressive achievements on the social, political, and economic fronts during the first few decades following the end of the Second World, which were made possible because of the role of different actors in the emergence of a social democratic consensus, and capitulation to neoliberal capitalism in the latter part of the 20th century, especially after the end of an era where you had leaders like Willy Brandt in Germany, Bruno Kreisky in Austria, and Olof Palme in Sweden who were undeniably dedicated to the struggle for social justice and economic democracy. The leaders that came after them across the European continent took the position that Keynesian economics no longer had applicability in the new world economic order that had emerged following the collapse of the Bretton Woods system and that fiscal orthodoxy was the way to go. In the 1980s, the so-called socialist governments of Francois Mitterrand in France, Bettino Craxi in Italy, Felipe González in Spain, and Andreas Papandreou in Greece not only failed to carry out even the minimal set of promises they had made to voters during the pre-electoral period, but their economic programs followed the neoliberal prescriptions proposed by the IMF and the World Bank.

The antiglobalization movement of the 1990s was associated with far-left politics and was attacked as such by mainstream media and the establishment parties across the political spectrum. In the eyes of many citizens across Europe, the “left” was still represented by social democratic and socialist parties. It may have taken voters quite a long time to realize that the parties of the establishment left had sold out to global capitalism, but when they did, the consequences were cataclysmic in their impact.

In 2000, 10 out of 15 countries in the European Union still had social democratic or socialist parties in government even though they had abandoned all the traditional social democratic ideas and policies. Nearing the end of the second decade of the new millennium, we could find social democratic parties in government in only two countries in Europe. Even the euro crisis did not help the parties of the traditional left to make a comeback. What was happening instead is that far-right parties were gaining ground across Europe and around the world. The far-right was reinventing itself with a backlash against globalism. The European far-right even adapted the language of the left to its own ends. Of course, it succeeded in doing this by taking advantage of the betrayal of center-left parties as well as of the left’s fractiousness and disunity—issues that have long plagued the left worldwide. Defeating the far-right is, of course, of paramount importance for the future of democracy and of the Left.

The history of Left internationalism is too long and complex to discuss here. Suffice to say, though, that it has both positive and negative aspects. The Second International betrayed the cause of socialism. The Third International, which was created by Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky in 1919, was a powerful force toward world revolution, a major step toward world socialism. However, under Josef Stalin, it became purely an instrument of Soviet state policy to advance the Stalinist view of “socialism in one country.” And the Red Lord officially dissolved the Third International in 1943.

It’s hard to revive Left internationalism when the left is fractured and there is so much confusion about what the left even represents in today’s world. Of course, there is a plethora of progressive social movements at the forefront for social change, but the return of Left internationalism inspired by the vision of socialism needs a dramatic turnaround on the global ideological and political landscape.

In the postwar era, Cuban internationalism stands virtually alone as an alternative form of globalization. Still, the Left needs a new internationalism that combines solidarity and the quest for social justice and equality with a global climate change policy. The latter is by far the most important issue facing humanity in the 21st century, and nothing would be of greater importance than if the new Left internationalism was built around taking on the greatest challenge of our times—i.e., preventing Earth from becoming unlivable.

Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/left-internationalism-and-climate

Alexandra Boutri is a freelance journalist and writer.

C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).




The Left Needs A New Globalization Vision To Counter The Far-Right Surge

C.J. Polychroniou

05-24-2025 ~ The way out of neoliberal globalization is by developing a new globalization that is democratic and free from the destructive tendencies of capitalist accumulation.

The left is in shambles everywhere while hard-right and far-right parties are riding high in polls across the world. I contend that globalization is at the heart of these developments, and thus it is critical that the left comes to terms with what has gone wrong with its approach to neoliberal globalization and develops in turn an alternative vision of world order.

Globalization came to be a dominant force in our lives sometime around the 1980s. It coincided with the rise of neoliberalism, although globalization is not a 20th-century phenomenon. The 19th century contained a huge burst of globalization. In fact, between 1850 and 1913, the world economy was probably as open as it became in the late 20th century. Tariffs fell, free trade agreements proliferated, trade flows skyrocketed, information flows accelerated, and migrants flowed to all corners of the globe. Neither Europe nor the U.S. had any restrictions on migration. In the U.S., no visas or passports were even needed to enter the country.

That wave of globalization was interrupted because of World War I, and the next wave of globalization did not occur until the early 1980s. In many ways, the new wave of capitalist globalization was more intense than the one that had preceded it as it was characterized by massive financial deregulation and the acceleration of capital flows while trade integration became more rapid than ever. By the 1990s, the new wave of globalization had reached such heights that the world was increasingly becoming a global village. Let’s call it the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave.

However, there was one huge qualitative difference between the 19th-century and the late 20th-century waves of globalization. While capital movements exploded during the late 20th-century wave of globalization and multinationals moved across the world in search of cheaper labor, labor migration was severely restricted. In contrast, migration became truly globalized in the late 19th century. And the late 20th-century wave of globalization, which was supposed to produce unrivaled benefits for all, also had another dark side: While it was not openly imperialistic as the 19th-century wave of globalization, it was based nonetheless on highly exploitative structures that were not much different from those of colonialism. After all, capitalism has always nurtured dependence, inequality, and exploitation.

Under the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave, the Global North took advantage of the weakness of the Global South by trapping millions of its workers in a relentless cycle of exploitation while offshoring had dramatic impacts on the standard of living of average citizens back in the Global North as well-paid industrial jobs became few and far in between, wages stagnated, and the social safety net was torn apart, partly because of less government revenues due to neoliberal tax cuts for corporations and the rich and partly on account of simple ideological reasoning. Austerity for the masses but subsidies, tax breaks, and bailouts for industry and the financial sector is a central aspect of the ideological agenda of neoliberalism. And while some developing nations did benefit from the great connectivity in the global economy that has been unleashed since the early 1980s, it is primarily the elites in the Global South, as much as it is in the Global North, that gained the most from the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave.

Enter politics.

By the late 1990s, grievances over the direction of the capitalist world economy united people to demand change and an anti-globalization movement surfaced across the globe, protesting specifically against the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave. Protests and demonstrations against the World Trade Organization, the World Bank, and the International Monetary Fund became a common feature of the anti-globalization movement across a large number of countries from 1995 to 2018. The anti-globalization movement was inspired by left-wing ideologies and was impressively transnational. Latin America’s anti-globalization movement was especially successful, resulting in support and eventually electoral victory for left-wing parties in scores of countries in the region. Indeed, a database on political institutions reveals that in the early 1990s, 64% of Latin American presidents came from a right-wing party. But a decade later, that number had shrunk to half.

The anti-globalization and anti-capitalist movement was no less prominent in Europe. In the summer of 2001, more than 300,000 people from all over Europe gathered in Genoa, Italy to voice their opposition to the G8 Group, while the Italian police unleashed violence of a dimension unknown up to that point in postwar Western Europe. In the spring of 2002, more than half a million people in Barcelona mobilized against the European Union Heads of State and Government under the banner against Capital and War.

The anti-globalization movement had come of age. The prospects for radical change had never looked more promising than they did during the first decade of the new millennium. The winds of change were still in the air in the second decade of the new millennium as the rise to power of the Coalition of the Radical Left (Syriza) party in Greece brought hope to leftist movements worldwide, although it was abundantly clear to anyone willing to pay close attention to Greek politics at the time that the leadership of the party had made a decision to switch its ideological profile from radicalism to pragmatism in anticipation of its coming to power.

There is indeed one impressive thing about the rapid and sweeping changes brought about by the neoliberal hyper-globalization wave, and that is none other than the fact that the world now spins faster. Extraordinary social, political, and ideological changes can happen from one decade to the next. And, lo and behold, by the end of the second decade of the new millennium, not only did the radical left critique of globalization lose its appeal for the working class and huge chunks of youth, but anti-globalism emerged as a major ideological tenet of the extreme right.

However, the backlash against globalism by hard-right and far-right parties was not based on a scathing critique of neoliberal capitalism but was seen instead as a political project advanced by Marxism and the radical left with the double aim of destroying national culture and replacing the nation-state with institutions of global governance. This is of course an evasion of what capitalist globalization is all about, but it would be naïve to think that the backlash against globalism by the far-right does not have socioeconomic roots. The anti-globalist sentiment that brought President Donald Trump to power in the United States and scores of other authoritarian political figures across the world is driven by both cultural and socioeconomic factors and is nurtured by the “us versus them” mentality. The far-right of course is not anti-systemic and in fact enjoys the support of digital moguls like Elon Musk. As such, it is fooling voters on the economy with promises of a new order. The far-right’s anti-globalism stance begins and ends with the imposition of draconian measures against immigration and the creation of a culture of cruelty.

The anti-globalism of the far-right is perverse and irrational, and thus it may speak volumes of the need of a widely and publicly educated citizenry to sustain democracy, but it also calls attention to the gross political failures of the reformist left parties that came to power during the height of the anti-globalization period. Indeed, while the contradictions of neoliberal globalization led to electoral victories of left parties in scores of countries across the world during the last couple of decades, the shift to global neoliberalism was not countered by the parties of the reformist left that came to power. They may have criticized neoliberal hyper-globalization while they were in opposition, but they did very little once they came to power to combat its destructive effects. At the very best, they increased spending on social programs but did not try to diminish the spread of globalization on their economies and societies. Subsequently, by failing to tame, let alone shrink, capitalist globalization, they quickly saw their political fortunes decline and found citizens changing sides. This is the principal factor that has activated a turn to the far-right across the globe, including the United States, although Trumpism also needs to be considered in light of the peculiar social, cultural, and ideological features of the country.

The problem with the reformist left vis-à-vis neoliberal globalization remains. That is, it advances a critique of the consequences of capitalist globalization but seems to accept the phenomenon as inevitable and unalterable. In doing so, it leaves the field open for far-right populists to make inroads with disgruntled voters by appealing to their worst instincts as in the case of immigration.

We also know that pressure “from below” to tame or even reverse neoliberal globalization, a view that was held by the main body of the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s and 2000s, is a flawed strategy. The way out of neoliberal globalization is by developing a new globalization that is free from the destructive tendencies of capitalist accumulation and operates through political processes in which democracy and globalization are in a symbiotic relationship and thus support and reinforce each other.

The left is historically obligated to advance an alternative vision of a world order beyond capitalism. A world order where the rights of labor are at the pinnacle of human society and thus the means of production are collectively owned by workers while the exploitation of nature is seen as injustice.

In sum, systemic change for ending neoliberal hyper-globalization is a prerequisite but such a project mandates anti-systemic consciousness and a comprehensive political program for a new world order. If the left fails to develop the courage to engage itself economically, politically, ideologically, and culturally in the making of an alternative world order, capitalist globalization will continue to reign supreme, and the far-right will be its main political beneficiary.

Source: https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/left-needs-new-globalization-vision

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C.J. Polychroniou is a political economist/political scientist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. His latest books are The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic and the Urgent Need for Social Change (A collection of interviews with Noam Chomsky; Haymarket Books, 2021), and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (Verso, 2021).




Understanding Inequality In China: An Interview With Vamsi Vakulabharanam

Vamsi Vakulabharanam
Associate Professor of Economics at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst

05-24-2025 ~ Economic inequality is a global phenomenon. And while the data suggests that inequality between countries has fallen, inequality within countries has risen. China, for instance, a country with very low levels of inequality just a few decades ago, now features inequality levels that are comparable to those in the US.

What are the structural mechanisms generating inequality in China since the transition was made from state socialism to market reforms, and what were the sources of equalization during the Mao years? Is China equipped to weather the storm of US tariffs? Political economist Vamsi Vakulabharanam sheds light on these questions in the interview that follows. Vakulabharanam is Associate Professor of Economics and Co-Director of the Asian Political Economy Program at the Political Economy Research Institute (PERI) at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. He is the author of the recently published book Class and Inequality in China and India, 1950-2010

C. J. Polychroniou: Inequality has been on the rise across the globe for several decades although it manifests itself in different ways in different societies and its causes are quite complex.  In the United States, however, it is widely acknowledged that economic inequality has risen sharply since the 1980s and that this is largely due to the promotion of neoliberal economic policies. But what about China, which has experienced rapid growth over the past several decades? Inequality has also increased sharply in China even though it is believed that its leadership rejected the neoliberal prescriptions for economic reform. What are the causes underlying the rise of inequality in China? 

Vamsi Vakulabharanam: Global economic inequality (focusing on economic inequality among all the individuals in the world) has two components – economic inequality within countries and economic inequality between countries. Since the 1980s, after neoliberal economic reforms were introduced across the world, there has been a consistent increase in within-country inequality, barring very few exceptions for brief periods (e.g. the pink tide in Latin America). Economic inequality between countries has tended to decrease marginally because of the fast-paced growth in populous countries like China and India. Both these countries have witnessed rapid economic growth between the 1980s and 2010s, even as they have become more unequal internally. What this has done is to catapult a small proportion of the Chinese and Indian elites (capitalists, professional classes and political elites) into the global middle and upper classes during the same period, where these select groups have witnessed significant convergence with their counterparts in the developed capitalist world.

In China, the economic reforms initiated after 1978 tended to reduce inequality until the mid-1980s. This is because the initial reforms were focused on agriculture and in creating special economic zones (e.g., Shenzhen) that led to rapid economic growth in sectors and regions that had witnessed slower growth in the previous three decades. At the same time, the rural non-agricultural sector (e.g., Township and Village Enterprises) grew rapidly and contributed significantly to a spurt in exports from China during the 1980s. After 1985, when the coastal development strategy was initiated, within-country inequality began to rise in China. This increase in inequality had two major sources. The coastal region (and river delta regions) tended to grow faster compared to the central and western regions, thereby creating a trend of rising regional inequality. At the same time, as the urban sector started growing faster than its rural counterpart, there was a rapid growth in the gap between urban and rural areas. These two processes started by the early 1990s to push up the inequality rates up in China.

After 1992 and until about 2007, inequality in China rose continuously, partly due to the continued increase in the urban-rural gap and regional inequalities (the latter roughly until about 2000). However, new processes were added during this period to those that were already heightening inequalities. Despite the popular conception that China did not adopt neoliberal economic policies, the distinctive experience of China rests on two grounds. First, the economic reforms were implemented gradually as opposed to the Russian experience, although most of the prescriptions of the Washington Consensus were implemented in China not in one shot but over time (indeed, scholars like David Harvey have pointed out that growth in China can be described as neoliberalism with Chinese characteristics).

Second, China has maintained a mixed-ownership (in terms of productive resources other than land) economy, although the state-owned enterprise sector (SOE) has a smaller proportion now as the private sector operations have grown over time. There was a significant privatization of SOEs around the turn of the century. They also contributed to a smaller share of total employment over time, partly due to the rapid growth of the private sector but also because state owned enterprises engaged in large scale retrenchments during this period (between 1995 and 2002, over 50 million workers were retrenched in China). The rising inequality process after 1992, therefore, incorporated a new dimension. In urban areas, inequality among classes started to rise. This was, in part, because millions of migrants entered cities to work in manufacturing and in the informal sector after 1992 (without a change in their residency status from rural hukou to an urban one). The distance between some original urban constituents and the migrants tended to increase during this period, while there was higher competition for jobs at the lower end between migrants and some of the older urban residents (e.g., the retrenched workers). There was a faster growth of incomes for  the urban elites such as owners, managers, professionals and political elites compared to the rest of the urban population such as older urban workers and migrant workers who had moved from rural to urban areas. This new dimension, Class, is what I focus on in my new book Class and Inequality in China and India, 1950-2010. By the early 2000s, income inequality in China (even without including high net worth individuals in the sample) has tended to be as high as it is in the US. Wealth inequality has also risen rapidly in China during this period and has tended to equal wealth inequality levels in the capitalist Global North.

From the mid-2000s onwards, inequality in China has remained at high levels although it has tended to stagnate or mildly reduced. There are many factors that are causing this outcome but let me highlight a few here. First, around 2007, the coastal regions witnessed labor shortages, so wages showed an upward tendency, causing some equalization in incomes. This was also the period when some economists began to speculate that the Chinese economy was witnessing a Kuznets moment of transformation in inequality dynamics. Simon Kuznets (Nobel prize winner in economics) had hypothesized in 1955 that within-country inequality in capitalist countries would rise at low levels of per capita income and then tend to decline at higher levels of per capita income. Whether it was a Kuznets-like moment or not, economic activity began to shift to the central and western regions, applying a downward pressure on regional inequalities as well. Second, the Chinese state initiated a new set of welfare-oriented policy reforms that did not go very far but addressed the urban-rural gap and the gap between urban populations and the migrants. While this was by no means revolutionary, it put brakes on the rising inequality process.

All in all, there were four periods after the 1978 economic reforms during which China witnessed very different sets of inequality dynamics. Between 1978 and 1985, it witnessed a reduction in inequality. During the 1985-92 period, inequality tended to rise. Between 1992 and mid-2000s, inequality rose precipitously. Post-2007, inequality has tended to stagnate but is still comparable to inequality levels in the US.

C.J. Polychroniou: Was there inequality in China prior to the initiation of economic reforms and trade liberalization? In other words, what is the socialist legacy in China regarding inequality?

Vamsi Vakulabharanam: The socialist legacy regarding inequality is that there was a significant equalization of incomes and wealth between 1949 and 1978. There were four sources of equalization, and three sources of inequality during this period, with the former dominating over the latter for the entire Mao era. While precise data is not forthcoming for this period, the structural evidence is overwhelming, pointing to this conclusion.

The four sources of equalization were the following: (1) Private wealth was largely eliminated; (2) in units like communes or state-owned enterprises enhanced equality; (3) regional inequality was reduced (inter-provincial inequalities went down); and (4) there was significant equalization of access to health care and education.

The first source of equalization is the elimination of private wealth. In rural areas, large scale land reforms were implemented in 1952, and the collectivization of land was successfully completed by 1956. This meant that rural land was owned collectively by village communes. In urban areas, land was owned by the socialist state, so private landownership was largely eliminated. By the 1950s, productive enterprises were largely owned by the state (State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) or the collectives, so private property (save minor assets) was largely eliminated in rural as well as urban areas.

The second source of equalization was the creation of income equality in local units such as communes or state-owned enterprises. This is a case of within-unit equalization in rural areas, which kept open the possibility of between-unit inequality across the country. In urban spaces, within productive enterprises, wage differences were brought to a minimal level by the 1950s. In fact, the Gini Coefficient for urban areas in 1978, when survey-based income data is again available from the National Bureau of Statistics, was below 0.2. China was among the most equal urban spaces in the whole world at that time.

The third source of equalization was in terms of reducing regional disparities. During the Mao period, there was a conscious policy effort to eliminate regional inequalities. This was implemented by relocating productive activity (industrial) to inner provinces away from the more affluent coastal provinces. This process brought about significant levels of provincial equalization, which is reversed in the post-1980s period.

The fourth source of equalization was in terms of education and health care. China expended its resources to implement universal elementary and school education from the very inception of the socialist state. This was in sharp contrast to the Indian development experience, wherein scarce resources were significantly divided between the elites and the large population that was without any formal education. In terms of health care too, China was able to provide universal, high-quality care to its urban population typically through employment-based health care programs. In rural areas, peasants were trained to provide primary health care, and this is how the famous institution of “barefoot doctors” was created.

However, there were broadly three kinds of inequalities that continued. These were (1) between-commune inequalities in rural areas; (2) urban-rural gaps; and (3) political and ideological inequalities. First, in terms of the between-commune inequalities, the main source of the differences across communes came from fertility differences, ecological differences and historical differences. This meant that rural income inequality remained high in China despite the elimination of private wealth, and it was much higher than urban inequality during the Mao period. Second, there was a significant and persistent gap in urban and rural incomes, with a significant deterioration occurring during tumultuous periods, such during the Great Leap Forward campaign and in the aftermath of the Cultural Revolution. The urban population was kept under check and rural migrants were not allowed into cities. Rural populations also had restrictions on intra-rural population and were largely confined to particular villages and communes. Rural populations had lower incomes than their urban counterparts despite the claim of the state being a peasant-based state. This conclusion can be reached by comparing income data from some communes and workers’ wages in cities and the 1978 data once it was made available on a larger scale. Third, there were power and status differences between party leaders and the rest of the population at all levels. These differences may or may not have translated to the economic domain, but they were important markers of non-economic inequalities in everyday life of this period.

In sum, economic and erstwhile political elites were eliminated. Private wealth was eliminated. Within-unit economic equality was established in rural units. Urban equality was implemented across the country, along with educational and health equities. While some inequalities remained, the overall dominant trend during the whole socialist period (or what has been termed the Mao period between 1949 and 1978) was one of greater equality.

C. J. Polychroniou: The Chinese economic model in place since the late 1970s is called a market socialist economy. Is that an accurate description? I mean, is it possible for an economy to be socialist if it has a stock market?

Vamsi Vakulabharanam:This is an interesting question. In my own understanding, there are two phases in the evolution of the Chinese economy after 1978. The first phase is between 1978 and the early 1990s. This is the phase that Giovanni Arrighi emphasized in his book Adam Smith in Beijing, where he argues that Chinese reforms largely ushered in markets but did not engage in processes of accumulation by dispossession, whereby people are stripped of their productive assets leaving them with nothing but their ability to perform labor. I could see people making a case for China being market socialist during that period.

My criticism of Arrighi is that in the post-1992 period, there was significant retrenchment of workers as mentioned above but, in addition, land dispossession processes occurred at a rapid pace to pave the way for private sector manufacturing and infrastructure (e.g., three gorges dam). A lot of migrant workers that moved from rural areas to urban areas were dispossessed of their means of production in their villages, and many of them today have no villages to return to while possessing no major assets where they currently live, including housing in urban areas. Overall, a significant majority of the workforce in urban areas works for the private sector now. According to surveys in major cities, close to half the urban workforce is engaged in informal work. The private sector in China is largely indistinguishable from the private sector in the capitalist world in the sense that its profitability is based on a capitalist mode of exploitation of workers. The Chinese state has retained ownership and control over some key sectors such as telecommunications, energy (e.g., petroleum and electric power), military equipment and infrastructure (e.g., railroads). Many SOEs in today’s China also function on broad capitalist principles. In any case, the private sector is the dominant one in the overall Chinese economy. The state may have greater leeway over the private sector, especially after 2012, compared to the immediately preceding period inside the country and compared to other capitalist countries, but it is unmistakable that the larger economy is governed by capitalist dynamics. I would characterize the current Chinese economy as a mixed-ownership capitalist economy, not a market-socialist one.

C. J. Polychroniou: What is the stance of the Chinese Communist Party on inequality? Does it take economic inequality and hence wealth redistribution seriously? 

Vamsi Vakulabharanam: The official stance of the Chinese Communist Party on inequality has not changed since the time of reforms. Deng Xiaoping’s Let some people and some regions get rich first dictum affords a certain freedom-in-the-concrete for experimenting with policies that are deeply capitalist in nature. The real question is whether the emergence and entrenchment of capitalist class structures in the larger society changes the complexion of that dictum and creates a new one – in order to help those that did not get rich first, let there be another people’s revolution. Since the party is inspired by Marx, I am sure that its leaders are not unaware of the fact that the economic processes they have unleashed perpetuate class-based inequalities.

The real history of the Chinese economy and society after the initiation of the economic reforms, and especially after 1992, would indicate that the party turned a blind eye to issues of economic inequality in the interests of economic growth. It is true that the overall GDP of the Chinese economy has risen dramatically since the reforms and that different classes have improved their economic conditions more rapidly than they did during the socialist period. However, some classes (such as the urban elites, as I show in my book) have witnessed significantly sharper increases in their incomes and wealth holdings and have become deeply entrenched in their class positions. China has more dollar billionaires (814) than the US (800), according to the 2024 Hurun rich list. At the same time, more than 250 million internal migrants have no significant assets or even hukou in urban areas, while they are allowed to work in cities by the Chinese state. In a significant number of these cases, their village entitlements may have been eroded by the expanding urban spaces. This sort of a gap could not have arisen if the Chinese state was committed to egalitarianism, even with some leeway for a dictum like some inequality is acceptable if the overall economy achieves significant growth.

The Chinese Communist Party must rediscover egalitarianism in the deeply unequal society that China has turned into after the market reforms of 1978.

C. J. Polychroniou: The Trump administration has backed down from its disastrous trade war with China, but there is no doubt that tensions are still simmering. How would the trade war affect China’s economy?

Vamsi Vakulabharanam: I am not a trade economist, but there are some obvious implications that everybody is aware of. Tariff hikes by the US will, in the short-term, lead to reductions in Chinese exports to the US and will increase unemployment in export-oriented sectors. Since China has imposed retaliatory tariffs, this will lead to price increases in those sectors in which China imports US goods. I show in my book that China and India still have a very unfavorable unequal exchange with the US, and these tariffs will worsen that condition even more. China may lose some more surplus value to the US in this new situation. However, China has considerable leverage in its trade relations with the US and is using it, which is the reason why the Trump administration backed down.

The Chinese state and the party are strategic entities and deeply responsive to changes in the global economy. In the medium-run, I expect the Chinese state to redirect its exports to other parts of the world and continue its economic journey without too many hiccups.

What is interesting to see is whether this trade war heightens the awakening of the party to address the inequalities inside the country that we have discussed here. That is another route that China can take to reduce its dependence on the US and other developed countries, with which it has an unfavorable labor value exchange, even now, in international trade. In general, the main response of China after the global crisis of 2008 has been to externalize its internal contradictions (e.g., inequality) by focusing on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) initiative. The aim behind the BRI initiative is for China to expand its global presence but also to provide an outlet to the crises of Chinese capitalism.

Perhaps this is the opportunity for the party to deeply rethink the future trajectory of the Chinese society, and particularly its deeply unequal nature. It is by no means an easy task because China now has deeply entrenched class structures.

C.J. Polychroniou is a political scientist/political economist, author, and journalist who has taught and worked in numerous universities and research centers in Europe and the United States. Currently, his main research interests are in U.S. politics and the political economy of the United States, European economic integration, globalization, climate change and environmental economics, and the deconstruction of neoliberalism’s politico-economic project. He is a columnist for Global Policy Journal and a regular contributor to Truthout as well as a member of Truthout’s Public Intellectual Project. He has published scores of books and over one thousand articles which have appeared in a variety of journals, magazines, newspapers and popular news websites.  Many of his publications have been translated into a multitude of different languages, including Arabic, Chinese, Croatian, Dutch, French, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, and Turkish. His latest books are Optimism Over Despair: Noam Chomsky On Capitalism, Empire, and Social Change (2017); Climate Crisis and the Global Green New Deal: The Political Economy of Saving the Planet (with Noam Chomsky and Robert Pollin as primary authors, 2020); The Precipice: Neoliberalism, the Pandemic, and the Urgent Need for Radical Change (an anthology of interviews with Noam Chomsky, 2021); and Economics and the Left: Interviews with Progressive Economists (2021).

Source: https://www.globalpolicyjournal.com/blog/23/05/2025/understanding-inequality-china-interview-vamsi-vakulabharanam