In 2000 Zhang Zemin, then President of China and General Secretary of the Chinese Communist Party, unveiled his great new political insight—the theory of the “three represents”.1 Although it’s easy to ridicule the pseudo-Marxist rhetoric and the exaggerated claims of… Continue Reading
A review of Hao Ren, Eli Friedman and Zhongjin Li (editors), China on Strike: Narratives of Workers’ Resistance (Haymarket, 2016),£15.99 China on Strike: Narratives of Workers’ Resistance is an exciting and illuminating book focused on the labour struggles waged by… Continue Reading
A review of Immanuel Ness, Southern Insurgency: The Coming of the Global Working Class (Pluto Press, 2016), £15 Since the 1980s the institutionalisation of global neoliberalism has been pursued based on a range of ideological claims which have been advanced… Continue Reading
Despite earlier Saudi claims that airstrikes have been stopped, attacks against the Houthi militia in Yemen continue. What does Saudi Arabia fight for? Let’s start from the overall position of the Saudi royal family. They preside over the key conservative… Continue Reading
Videos of some of the talks at our day school on China, 28 February 2015. Jane Hardy on China’s Political Economy and Adrian Budd on China in the World Sally Kincaid speaks about the Hong Kong umbrella protests in 2014… Continue Reading
During the last two to three years tension and conflict have been increasing in East Asia.1 In 2012 this tendency was evident in the South China Sea, the East China Sea and the area round the Korean peninsula. Let’s look… Continue Reading
Major wars and economic crises force the pace of change within and between capitalist states, giving rise to new alignments and shifts in the geopolitics of world capitalism.1 At the time of writing this article, turmoil in financial markets triggered… Continue Reading
The riots and protests in Tibet earlier this year were the most significant since China’s takeover in the 1950s. Together with the protests that have accompanied the Olympic torch relay around the world, they have shown that Tibetan nationalism remains… Continue Reading
Will Hutton, in his book on China, The Writing on the Wall, writes, “To understand today’s China we need to understand how and why Imperial China succeeded and failed and how it illuminates economic development in the past and present.”… Continue Reading
This year will see the thirtieth anniversary of Deng Xiaoping’s announcement of China’s “Four Modernisations”, the economic reform programme that laid the basis for China’s economic boom. This summer’s Olympic Games, planned to be among the most spectacular ever, will… Continue Reading