key: cord-0059585-v93c7pdx
authors: Basu, Dipak; Miroshnik, Victoria
title: Contemporary Capitalism and Imperialism
date: 2020-08-18
journal: Imperialism and Capitalism, Volume II
DOI: 10.1007/978-3-030-54891-9_6
sha: 2706f88a9aeba39e6ac8e16f9336553436b684c7
doc_id: 59585
cord_uid: v93c7pdx

This chapter analysed the development of imperialism since 1945 and its relationship with capitalism. Today we have two empires, American empire and the Chinese empire. American empires were designed to promote the Western multinational companies. It followed the theory of Lenin, but the Chinese empire followed the theory of Schumpeter, that for national prestige empire is needed, as there are no Chinese multinational companies. While American empire was having indirect control or neo-colonialism of Lenin through the Western financial organizations, Chinese empire is following classical imperial control. This chapter has analysed the development of these two empires and their devastating consequences on Iran in 1953, Guatemala in 1957, Vietnam in 1955, Iraq, Libya, Nicaragua, Syria and most recently in Venezuela by the American empire and on Tibet, Mongolia, East Turkestan, Manchuria by Chinese empire.

financed by profits of its multinational companies. Wars were fought in Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Angola, the Sinai Peninsula and elsewhere. Profits from contracts for the development and deployment of weaponry became profitable on an epic scale. The military/industrial complex came to own whole swaths of the American political spectrum on both sides of the aisle and attached itself as umbilical chord to the petroleum industry as a matter of basic expediency as one cannot fight wars without an abundance of oil and gasoline. Now, permanent war and rule by fear are accepted without question; the dominance of the military/industrial/petroleum combine is unquestioned (Hopkins 2018; Immerwahr 2019; Weiner 2007) .

In recent years, the USA has used similar strategies against Venezuela, another oil-producing country. The Trump administration was determined to depose Venezuela's elected President Nicolás Maduro. The USA placed sanctions on Venezuela's oil exports, which provide 90% of the nation's revenue, confiscated oil assets of Venezuela and asked Britain to do the same, while also insisting Venezuela should allow it to deliver humanitarian aid to the country. In Venezuela, we can see a replay of the US invasion of Mexico in 1846. A key pillar of US post-Second World War hegemony was the domination by US companies of the 'world' oil resources concentrated in the Middle East. Oil is a strategic commodity that everybody needs and is crucial to military power. The reconstruction of Western Europe, crucial to the expansion and sustaining of capitalism, depended on cheap Middle East oil supplies. Oil is also essential to the US version of energy-intensive capitalism: the spread of the motorcar, suburbs, chemical-intensive agriculture and cheap food were all dependent on cheap oil. General Wesley Clark, the NATO commander in charge of the destruction of Yugoslavia, said in March 2007 that the USA had the plan to invade seven countries in five years and it is because of oil. If there is no oil the Middle East will be like Africa, nobody would bother (Kinzer 2006; Wilford 2013) .

Containing any threats from either the Soviet Union or local nationalism to the cheap energy needed by the capitalist world economy, which Middle East oil provided was one of the functions of hegemony. That made US military power indispensable. Moreover, the alliance of US oil companies and the US government with Saudi Arabia was pivotal to the oil price stability and global economic prosperity.

However, the particular way the USA has exercised its 'oil protectorate' over the Middle East regularly has stimulated backlashes and periodic regional conflicts that actually put global energy security at risk. These challenges have been invariably stimulated either by a coercive intervention to sustain Western control of oil or by a linkage between oil and Western backing of Israel. Nationalist challenges to Western control of Middle East oil began with Muhammed Mussadeq's nationalization of the Iranian oil industry; indigenous reaction to the subsequent CIAsponsored coup to overthrow him would take decades to mature but it ultimately stimulated the Islamic revolution. Other major challenges to Western control of the oil market would come from the Arab world, where Arab nationalism saw a combination of Western imperialism and Zionism as the main threat and Arab nationalist control of Arab oil as the main key to challenging these forces (Rearden 2012; Heiss 1997) .

The USA managed, however, to turn the oil crisis to its advantage by striking a close alliance with Saudi Arabia by which it provided security in return for the Saudis' use of they're position as 'swing producer' to moderate oil prices. Given the privileged position of the dollar as the international reserve currency in which oil is sold, the new wealth of the oil producers was disproportionately 'recycled' through US banks and via arms purchases and investments in the USA. US hegemony is based on the dollar as much as its military and, since the 1970s, oil hegemony reinforced US dollar hegemony, because all countries needed dollars to buy oil and needed access to the American market to get them. That dollar allowed the USA to levy a tax on the world's economy to finance massive US military spending and imperial overreach and to impose economic measures that hurt its competitors (Dreyfuss 2005; Weiner 2007) .

After the oil price boom, the competitive position of Europe and Japan declined as the price of energy increased, ushering in the stagflation of the 1970s. This was followed by British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's attack on the European welfare state. The more limited damage of the boom to the USA was very disproportionately distributed-there the consumers suffered, Texas oil barons got higher oil prices, and power shifted to the military/oil industries concentrated. In 1974, the USA paid out $1.7 billion for Saudi oil but $8.5 billion were recycled from Saudi Arabia back to the USA. In the longer term, the US-Saudi alliance by the early 1980s had secured the stabilization of oil prices followed by a precipitous price decline that kept energy-intensive US capitalism competitive. However, that has created the conflict between Iraq and Kuwait, and Iraq invaded Kuwait and Saudi Arabia to teach a lesson for being a pro-American (Hopkins 2018) .

The subsequent US war on Iraq was intended to avoid a potent challenge to US oil hegemony. If Iraq had retained Kuwaiti oil fields and remained in a position to intimidate Saudi Arabia, thereby acquiring 'control' of over 40% of world oil reserves, it might have had the power to shape the oil market in ways inimical to US interests. While the conservative Gulf rulers, by virtue of their security dependence on the USA and their Western investments, had a shared interest with the West in ensuring stable access to oil at moderate prices, Iraq had no such stake. Iraq was, of course, in dire need of revenues and had to sell its oil at prices consumers would pay. Saddam's threat to make the terms of oil sales conditional on a favourable Western policy in the Arab-Israeli conflict caught US politicians between two powerful contradictory domestic demands-for cheap gasoline and the advancement of Israel's interests (Gendzier 1999) .

In the end, the war actually enabled Washington to reinforce its hegemony on the oil market. The USA used the war to demonstrate its continuing indispensability to protecting the world capitalist control of oil against challenges while, in making it's Gulf clients, above all Saudi Arabia, more dependent on the USA for their security. The war boosted America's relative economic standing for, while Japanese and European capitalism had become more energy efficient. US capitalism, protected by the special benefits of hegemony, had built American competitiveness on low oil prices. The war ensured prices would stay low and that Gulf petrodollars would be disproportionately recycled through US-not European or Japanese-banks and arms manufacturers. In addition, the USA actually managed to make its imperial policing profitable by inducing its economic competitors (Germany, Japan) and clients (Saudi Arabia, Kuwait) to pay for the war (Elwell-Sutton 1955) .

Prior to the intervention of NATO, there were no sectarian murders of Christians in Libya and Islamist militias tied to Al-Qaeda were small groups with no broader influence. These forces were armed and promoted when, in 2011, the Obama administration and its allies in Europe led by French President Nicolas Sarkozy and British Prime Minister Tony Blair invaded Libya (Basu and Miroshnik 2012; Hopkins 2018; Immerwahr 2019) .

The imperialist powers funnelled massive amounts of money and weaponry to Islamist militias and Al-Qaeda operatives, providing them with air support through a mass bombing campaign that killed tens of thousands of Libyans. The declared purpose was to establish democracy but the result was a chaos and disintegration of Libya.

A syndicate of Western imperialist powers got hold of Libya's oil wealth and turn its territory into a neo-colonial base of operations for farther interventions throughout the Middle East and North Africa. Syria became the major victim. Libya after the murder of Gaddafi became a training ground for CIA-backed Islamist forces preparing to fight the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. Western media described the conflict that led to Gaddafi's ouster simply as a "civil war", without even mentioning NATO's six-month bombing of Libya in 2011 (Immerwahr 2019). Gaddafi ruled for 42 years, leading Libya to a significant advance in social, political and economic matters with standard of living comparable to that of Saudi Arabia.

After the Second World War, Libya was ceded to France and the UK, and both countries linked it administratively to their colonies in Algeria and Tunisia. In 1951, it became a nominally independent country but it was in backwardness in education, health, housing, social security, among others. In 1969, Colonel Muammar al-Gaddafi removed the king with the aim to share the benefits and wealth to all Libyans. Ambitious social programmes in education, health, housing, public works and subsidies for electricity and basic foodstuffs led to a substantial improvement in the living conditions of Libyans, from being one of the poorest countries in Africa in 1969 to being the continent's leader in it's the U.N. Human Development Index in 2011. Libya had a literacy rate of 88.4%, a life expectancy of 74.5 years, gender equality, free housing and free medical service among several other positive entitlements for the citizens. It used to provide jobs for 40,000 other Africans. In 2011, Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the African continent. Fewer people lived there in Libya below the poverty line then than in Holland. Hugo Chavez and Maduro of Venezuela tried to emulate Gaddafi to uplift his people in Venezuela but could not because of American hostility (Kinzer 2006; Wilford 2013) .

The uprisings in Benghazi by the Islamic terrorists sent there by France were enough for the U.N. Security Council and NATO to intervene on behalf of the 'Responsibility to Protect' (Resolution 1973) and launched a bombing campaign between March and October 2011 which had the result of the assassination of Gaddafi and the destruction of Libya. The Western-backed counter-revolution of 2011 has resulted in Libya becoming a failed state and its economy is in shambles. In 2011, the West's objective was clearly gain control of Libya's natural resources, mainly oil. Libya sits on a resource more valuable than oil, the Nubian Sandstone Aquifer, which is the world's largest underground source of freshwater (Hopkins 2018; Immerwahr 2019) .

France's global mega-water corporations, like Suez, Ondeo and Saur, control more than 45% of the planet's water market, which is already a $400 billion global industry. For France, the 2011 revolution in Libya was about gaining control of and privatizing Libya's astounding water resources.

The regime change revolution in Libya was a major instance of imperialist hydrological warfare. Now that Libya's water profits are flowing to the West, unsurprisingly, western parts of Libya are running out of drinkable water. Due to corporate greed and neglect, two-thirds of the nation's key water conduits are no longer functioning. From oil to water, and from arms to natural gas, the 2011 revolution in Libya has given billions of dollars for the West and only wrought misery and endless civil war for Libyans (Toh 2017; Wilford 2013) .

For Eisenhower and the Dulles brothers in the 1950s, Vietnam was just another small and impoverished country that could do nothing to against the USA. After the Second World War, all imperialist countries came back to Asia to reclaim their empires while Japanese gave them limited independence. French came back to Vietnam, Dutch came back to Indonesia, the British came back to India, Burma and Malaysia. War has never ended in Asia. French were defeated in the hands of the Vietnamese in 1954. UN came in and about to organize an election to be supervised by India, Canada and Poland on behalf of the UN. However, just the day before the election in 1955 the USA organized a coup and Ngo Ding Deim, a catholic became the Dictator in a Buddhist country. Kennedy organized another coup in 1963. By August that year the President of the USA, Lyndon B. Johnson, ordered the first bombing of North Vietnam. More bombs were dropped over Vietnam in this campaign alone than the total dropped during the entire Second World War. Two million Vietnamese and more than 50,000 American soldiers would die in this war. Chemical weapons would defoliate 10% of the country's surface. All these for just to stop the Soviet Union to expand its influence in South East Asia, as Vietnam had practically no natural resources (Hopkins 2018; Immerwahr 2019; Toh 2017) .

USA and British intelligence agencies organized a coup to oust Iran's democratically elected Prime Minister, Mohammad Mossadeq in 1953 when Iran had sought to nationalize Iran's oil industry, which was under the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC), a British corporation (now part of BP). Fearing a Communist takeover in Iran, UK Prime Minister Winston Churchill and the Eisenhower administration decided to overthrow Iran's government and to put Prince Reza Pahlavi in power.

In 1908, oil was struck in Iran, but the ownership was to the British-owned Burmah Oil Company, renamed as the Anglo-Persian Oil Company (APOC), whereby Persia received 16% of "net profits". In 1921, a coup organized by the British brought a general, Reza Khan, into the government, first as the prime minister, and then by 1925 Reza Khan was crowned Reza Shah Pahlavi. In 1941, after the Nazi invasion of the USSR, the British and Commonwealth of Nations forces and the Red Army invaded Iran. The reason was to secure Iran's oil fields. Reza Shah's son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, became the Shah of Iran (Gasiorowski 1987 (Gasiorowski , 1991 .

In late 1951, Iran's Parliament approved the oil nationalization agreement. Many Iranians felt that for the first time in centuries, they were taking control of the affairs of their country. Iranian parliament and people demanded more favourable concessionary arrangements, which Britain vigorously opposed.

By September 1951, the British had virtually ceased Abadan oil field production, forbidden British export to Iran of key British commodities (including sugar and steel), and had frozen Iran's hard currency accounts in British banks. Just before the coup, by 1953, economic tensions caused by the British embargo and political turmoil began to take a major toll on Mosaddegh's popularity and political power. The people were increasingly blaming him for the economic and political crisis. Political violence was becoming widespread in the form of street clashes between rival political groups. The USA did the same for Venezuela in recent years. After the coup, five American petroleum companies, Royal Dutch Shell, and the Compagnie Française des Pétroles, were to draw Iran's petroleum.

The overthrow of Iran's elected government in 1953 ensured Western control of Iran's petroleum resources and prevented the Soviet Union from competing for Iranian oil (Abrahamian 1982; Heiss 1997; Kinzer 2003) .

Syria was invaded by the Arabic-speaking French Foreign Legion in 2011 in the pretext of Arab spring, the popular mass-movement starting in Tunisia. From Libya, where these French Foreign Legion members were went to Syria with Turkey providing base to them. Initially, they were added by Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra and ISIS to occupy both Syria and Iraq. US army came in with the excuse to protect the Kurds who were then fighting against those Turkish backed invaders. The real purpose was to occupy the oil fields of Syria. Another purpose of the US involvement was to construct a pipeline through Syria and Turkey to supply oil and gas from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf Arab states to Europe. That could destroy Russian export of energy to Europe (Basu and Miroshnik 2012; Wilford 2013; Toh 2017) .

The invasion of Syria started in 2011, after the destruction of Libya, when Syria was a prosperous stable country with no apparent economic problems. Just like in the Ukraine and Georgia, and also in Egypt and Tunisia, some very violent crowds were hired by some strange shadowy agency, financed by a group of countries in the Arabian Gulf and Turkey. The purpose was to change the regime first by creating mass demonstrations and then concerted international denouncements by mainly the Western media, followed by some violence and ultimately a change of the regime by force. The same pattern was used in country after country with two major exceptions, Libya and Syria. In both cases, initial mass demonstrations were followed by armed insurrections supported by foreign powers. In Libya, the foreign powers were France, the USA, the UK and NATO, with some involvement from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Turkey. However, in Syria the armed groups came directly from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE, Libya, Turkey and France to change the regime. The Libyan regime collapsed quickly because of the direct attacks from NATO. In Syria, NATO was not able to take part because of the opposition raised by Russia and China in the UN Security Council. In the meantime, the invading forces were not doing very well and were under serious attack by the government forces. The invading forces were crying out for Western military support. Thus, they had to find an excuse, which was created by a chemical attack on 21 August 2013 on the civilians in the suburb of Damascus blamed on the Syrian government. The fact is that whether or not there were any chemical weapons in Syria, the USA, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE would have invaded Syria anyway (www.wsws.org/en/articles/2012/…/syri-a22.htm; elitedaily.com/…/the-real-reason; www.theguardian.com/…/ Islamic State(Isis)). Economics is the real issue.

Syria has an estimated reserve of petroleum worth about 2.5 billion barrels. This is higher than the reserves of all other Arab countries except Iraq. Syria is also fortunate to have a very large reserve of natural gas. Thus, it has every potential to have large-scale chemical industries. Since 1964 Syrian oil and natural gas fields have been in the public sector of Syria. Foreign companies, except the Russians, are not allowed to enter that sector. Until the disturbances started, Syria used to earn at least $4 billion every year from its export of petroleum (www.eia.gov/country/ cab.cfm?fips=SY).

In Iraq, most important petroleum fields have already been taken over by the US-French-UK oil companies. Iraq has lost control of its oil resources. The same is planned for the Syrian oil fields. That was the reason foreign invaders have targeted these oil fields to deprive Syria of its export earnings. In future when the occupation of Syria is complete, Western oil companies will take over these oil fields after getting rid of the Russians, who discovered and developed these fields for Syria.

There is more to it. The foreign forces are guided by Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Qatar because of their plan to set up a long pipeline, controlled by USA and other Western oil companies, to export natural gas to Europe. Syria is an impediment to that plan. Thus, the Syrian war is the war of the natural gas pipeline. During the invasion of Iraq in 2003, the pipeline of Kirkuk-Banias connecting Iraq to Syria was destroyed by the US forces. However, recently an alternative pipeline between Ain Zalah and Suweidiva was opened to connect Iraq to Syria. Plans are there to set up more pipelines for both petroleum and natural gas. The purpose of these proposed pipelines is to export both petroleum and natural gas from Iraq directly to the European market.

However, another development is possibly more important (www.oxf ordenergy.org/wpcms/wp-content/…/NG-78.pdf). In 2011, Syria, Iraq and Iran had made an arrangement to construct a pipeline to export Iranian natural gas to Europe via Iraq and Syria first and then to Lebanon and ultimately to Greece through a submarine pipeline. This proposed pipeline would be 6000 miles long, with a capacity of 100-120 million cubic feet of natural gas every day. The estimated cost would be at least $10 billion. In 2013, Syria, Iran and Iraq had finalized the agreement to share the cost. Western oil companies are against this plan (www.al-mon itor.com). They will surely destroy the proposed pipeline, if the foreign forces can occupy Syria. This is the reason for the war.

The first target of the foreign invaders was the city of Homs in Syria, near the Turkish border. Homs is the place where the existing gas pipeline from Egypt ends. This pipeline was established by the Western oil companies to export natural gas from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and UAE. The plan was to extend the pipeline from Homs to Turkey to export natural gas from the Arab countries in the Persian Gulf area to Europe (www.glo balresearch.ca/iran-white…agreement/5359718).

As a result, Syria has invited the wrath of the Arab states of the Gulf. These countries have sent terrorists trained by the Taliban in Pakistan and the Arab-speaking soldiers of the French Foreign Legion, a lot of them from Libya, to destroy Syria and the planned pipeline from Iran to Lebanon. Al-Qaeda and the Taliban also have joined in. This is the reason US Secretary of States John Kerry and now President Trump wants to hand over Afghanistan to the Taliban as the price (www.dawn.com/ news/1050763).

Afghanistan was destroyed by the US-supported Pakistani mujahideen in 1992 for the same reason (http://www.counterpunch.org/brzezinski. html). The plan was to build a gas pipeline from Turkmenistan to Pakistan via Afghanistan to avoid the existing route via Russia. The socialist government of Afghanistan would not have allowed it given its close relationship with the Soviet Union. Thus, it had to go in 1992. However, there was a dispute in 1995 between the mujahideen government of Afghanistan and UNICAL, the US energy company constructing the pipeline. Thus, the Taliban was formed out of the ranks of the Pakistani army, who took over Afghanistan replacing the mujahideen. However, Iran and Russia created a new armed group called the Northern Alliance to fight the Taliban. As a result, the proposed pipeline was never finished.

The reason why the USA and its Western allies are so interested in the oil and gas resources of the Middle East lies in the economics of US dollar. Since 1972 the US dollar has not been backed by gold but instead it is just a paper currency, which the USA can print at will. The US government can exchange the dollar for any commodities or services anywhere in the world using that paper currency. No other country has that facility to print its own money to pay for imports. The value of the dollar depends on its control over the international trade of the world. Petroleum and natural gas dominate world trade considering its share of the value of the total world trade. Petroleum and natural gas are traded, except for a few countries, in terms of the US dollar only. This system provides and protects the value of the US dollar; otherwise, it will have no value at all. Thus, it is extremely important for the Federal Reserve Board (FRB) to protect the US dollar by controlling the oil and gas resources of the world in advance.

The question is which private companies control the FRB, if not the US government. The interests of the FRB and the Western oil companies thus coincide. Those, who own FRB, are the same people who own the Western oil and gas companies. FRB, a private company, has the exclusive right to print US dollar, which they lend, since 1913, to the US government and earns huge amount of money doing nothing.

Oil is not just by far the most important commodity traded internationally; it is the lifeblood of all modern industrialized economies. Until recently, all OPEC countries agreed to sell their oil for dollars only. So long as this remains the case, the Euro was unlikely to become the major reserve currency. The countries, that have refused to accept the US dollar for payments for their exports of oil and natural gas, were Saddam Hussein's Iraq, Colonel Gaddafi's Libya, Venezuela, Syria, Iran, the old Soviet Union and now Putin's Russia. Iraq and Libya were invaded and the Western oil companies have taken over their oil fields. There is an economic sabotage against Venezuela to kill the economy. Syria is on the verge of total destruction. Iran is the next target. Western countries are using the so-called Islamic terrorists to destabilize these rebel oilproducing countries with the ultimate aim of destabilizing Russia, which the USA still considers its prime enemy. This is the very reason Russia is supporting Syria when invasion of Syria was planned long in advance.

From 2015 onwards, Russia came to support Syria. As a result, ISIS and other Islamic groups retreated. Then USA allowed Turkey to occupy a whole province of Syria and areas in Kurdistan. The Kurds now are with the Syrian government. USA still is occupying the oil fields of Syria. The country of Syria is now destroyed. At least 12 million out of 22 million people became refugees, with at least 570,000 were killed.

In 1963 the Arab socialist Baath Party came to power and implemented socialist policies. Per capita income of Syria before the war in 2010 was US$4058, a middle-income country. However, economic sanction instigated by the Western countries devastated the economy even before the actual war stated in 2011 (Wilford 2013; Hopkins 2018) .

Iraq, Libya, Syria and Venezuela are the examples how successful and stable countries can be destroyed because of the American and Western aim to control the oil market. Who is the next? Algeria perhaps.

The Cold War had key consequences in Latin America, considered by the USA to be the leader of the Western Bloc. Fighting communism became the argument justifying the aggressive US presence in Latin America. In April 1948, the Organization of American States was established.

Member states pledged to fight communism on the American continent. Throughout the 1960s and '70s, the USA supported a number of coups against democratically elected leaders. By 1976, South America was covered by military dictatorships called juntas (Hopkins 2018) .

Operation, which overthrew the democratically elected President of Guatemala, Jacobo Árbenz Guzmán, in 1954, was to be one of the first in a long series of US interventions in Latin America during the Cold War. In the same period, the USA suspended economic relations and/or . This is driven both by the desire of US transnationals to lay claim on Latin America's resources and markets-not least Bolivia's vast energy and mineral reserves, including 70% of the world's lithium-and by the strategic confrontation between US imperialism and China, whose trade with the region rose to $306 billion last year.

Morales's government came to power with huge popularity in 2006 like Hugo Chavez in 1998 in Venezuela. Like Chavez, Morales declared himself an adherent of the "Bolivarian Revolution" and socialism. The leader of the coca growers' union and the first Bolivian president from the country's long-oppressed indigenous population, Morales won broad popular support. In the end, the bourgeois army, which Morales never disbanded, proved loyal to its roots in the fascist-military dictatorships of Generals Hugo Banzer and Luis García Meza and the national security state doctrine of the Pentagon's School of the Americas (Hopkins 2018; Immerwahr 2019) .

Morales went in with a mandate to shatter the neoliberal policies of austerity and privatization that had shaped Bolivian society for the past two decades. From 1985 until Morales's election in 2005, Bolivia was under the yoke of one version or another of the Washington consensus. Morales passed a law seizing tens of thousands of square miles of land deemed unproductive or illegally held and redistributed it to landless peasants. He placed the natural gas, oil, telecommunications and electricity industries under state control. He continually raised the minimum wage, which has tripled since he entered office.

Morales also dramatically increased social spending. He invested in building roads, schools and hospitals, an expansion of infrastructure that was particularly transformative in the countryside. He established modest but deeply popular cash transfer programs: a universal noncontributory pension system for Bolivians over the age of 60; assistance to households with elementary school-aged children who can demonstrate their children are attending school; and funds for pregnant women or mothers with children under the age of two without health insurance.

During the Morales era, Bolivia has seen per capita income increase threefold and has rapidly transitioned from a low-income country to a lower-middle-income country. Inflation and the exchange rate have remained exceptionally stable. At the same time, Bolivia levels of inequality went from well above the Latin American average to well below it.

Bolivia's movement toward socialism has defied right-wing predictions of food shortages, labour camps, and the collapse of private life. Instead, it has stepped in the direction of European social democracy and illustrated how a developing economy can modernize and grow swiftly without subjecting itself to austerity.

In Venezuela the regime is presiding over one of the greatest economic catastrophes the Western Hemisphere has seen in recent history. Bolivia, though, has endured because of three distinguishing qualities. Venezuela's economy has relied entirely on one resource oil and the USA put an embargo and sanctions that no country could dare to buy oil from it. In addition both the USA and the UK confiscated all assets of Venezuela in American and British banks. With the collapse of the oil price since 2014 Venezuela is in serious crisis.

Morales, by contrast, has been more focused on the long term. Bolivia's main money makers are natural gas and mineral exports like zinc, but Morales has shown an interest in diversifying the economy by investing in agriculture and industrialization. He's invested in health, education and aid for the poor, but began with a fairly minimalist welfare state to ensure sustainability.

Bolivia's gradualist economic outlook was presided over by Morales's long-standing finance minister, Luis Arce. Another quality that's helped Bolivian socialism was Morales's emphasis on racial inclusiveness-a feature that has both widened participation in the economy and also inspired more buy-in from Bolivia's majority-indigenous population. Morales has wielded symbolic power as Bolivia's first indigenous president, but also used the letter of the law to create a society that embraces and defends its multicultural diversity. The constitution he passed in 2009, which changed the country's official title from "The Republic of Bolivia" to "The Plurinational State of Bolivia", officially recognized 36 indigenous languages. Laws have been passed banning racial discrimination and requiring children to learn local indigenous languages. There was a rise in the number of lawmakers who identify as indigenous.

The end of the commodity boom affected Bolivia's economically and undermined the basis for Evo Morales' class conciliations policy. Since 2006, Bolivia's government has reaped the benefits of natural gas exports. After the neoliberal regime collapsed in 2003, Evo's election in 2005 led to what Evo's government called the "nationalization" of gas. More accurately, the government renegotiated contracts with foreign gas companies, yielding a much higher percentage of royalty payments, or rents, to the government.

By 2017, Bolivia was 42% richer than when Morales took office. For the average Bolivian, the results were even better-the country's Gini coefficient, a measure of income inequality, fell by more than 19% since Morales took office. Poverty has declined by 25% since he was elected. Although Morales has shown some disturbingly authoritarian tendencies, including doing away with presidential term limits, economically he had turned his country around. He has to pay the price for that as the USA does not like a country trying to uplift her people, sooner or later it would be destroyed like Libya and Syria and Iraq (Krauss and Daniel 2019).

The winner of the new international business order is China, which has dominated the markets of most of the developed countries. The result of that victory also has promoted Chinese imperialism in Asia. This chapter analyses the history of some of the victims of China.

China's geopolitical strategy is to use their competitive advantage of soft power to out-manoeuvre the USA, and other countries such as India, Japan, Vietnam or the Philippines, in acquiring natural resources and to allow for continued growth of their economy while gaining political influence in various countries and regions throughout the world.

China's application of unrestricted warfare is apparent when the security and military aspects of China's involvement in Afghanistan are examined. China enjoys protection of its projects in Afghanistan because of its close relationship with Pakistan. This implies that Pakistan's national intelligence agency, Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate, or ISI, exerts its influence over the Taliban to allow the Chinese projects to continue unimpeded. While Chinese workers in Afghanistan have been attacked, the level of violence is very low when compared to attacks on the USA, India and UN personnel and facilities.

It is unlikely that there will be peaceful development of China overall, as there appears to be no desire for peace and stability, but rather a development of good, old-fashioned militarism and imperialism. In the first place, the economic 'miracle' of the Chinese economy is based on the fierce exploitation of its working class and farmers, and on an export drive to destroy the manufacturing capacity of most of the countries of the world by offering cheap debt facility and cheaper manufactured products. The economic colonization accompanied by a strong geopolitical strategy to project Chinese power, both military and financial, is the building blocks for the new Chinese empire, in which the new international business order is facilitating the Chinese expansion.

Since China resumed its threats against Taiwan, India, Vietnam and the Philippines, and increasingly threatened Japan, both France and Germany have been trying to overturn the arms embargo on the People's Liberation Army for purely commercial reasons. That demonstrates the influence of Chinese finances and the lure of the Chinese markets for the European powers.

To the south of China, the country is largely underwriting the construction and development of a 1850 kilometre network of roads, rivers and ports in Vietnam and Laos, circumventing the natural defensive barriers of the foothills of the Himalayas in India, which will directly connect Chinese Kunming to Thailand. That facilitates the movement of the Chinese military to the South East Asia region whenever it needs and provides markets and natural resources for the Chinese economy.

Around India and Pakistan to the west of China, within the framework of Chinese imperialism major development is also occurring. As the USA and India enjoy an increasingly warmer relationship, Pakistan will probably look closer to China for technical and military assistance. China already supplies Pakistan with nuclear technology, including nuclear weapons.

According to the Asian Studies department at the Brooking Institute, the nuclear programme in Pakistan is essentially the result of Sino-Pakistani relations. Some news agency reports suggest that Chinese security agencies knew of the transfer of nuclear technology from Pakistan to Iran. Worldanalysis.net shows that one of the most significant recent projects is the construction of a major port complex at the naval base of Gwadar on the Arabian Sea, giving China strategic access to the Persian Gulf and a naval outpost on the Indian Ocean.

Relations between China and India deteriorated after India gave refuge to the Dalai Lama in 1959, followed by India's humiliating defeat in the 1962 war over a disputed border, and Chinese aid to Pakistan. India still claims that China occupies 38,000 square kilometres of its territories and, for its part, Beijing still lays claim to the north-eastern Indian province of Arunachal Pradesh.

China's recent demand that Arunachal Pradesh of India is a part of China has provoked a very adverse reaction from the government of India and the Indian media in general. Once again, India has failed to turn the tables against China. India should have said, China has no border with India at all, but Tibet has. By not recognizing the fact that China is occupying Tibet illegally India has once again, in practice, accepted the Chinese occupation of Tibet, Manchuria and Eastern Turkistan or the Pakistani occupations of Baluchistan and North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

There is no evidence that Tibet was a part of China before China colonized it in 1949. The same is true of Taiwan and Eastern Turkistan. If the Manchus are not Chinese, as Sun Yat Sen declared in 1911, Manchuria, which China received as a gift from Stalin in 1950, was never a part of China either (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) . However, the world has ignored this Chinese imperialism and even gives recognition to China as being one of the five controlling powers of the world affairs as a permanent member of the UN Security Council.

China has no continuous history as a nation state. Before 1279, only the central part of what is China today, was pure Chinese-that is, inhabited by the Han Chinese tribe. During 1279-1368, China was a part of the Mongol empire and it ceased to exist as a sovereign state. From 1368 to 1644, China had the Ming Dynasty of the Han Chinese tribe, but was occupied by the Manchus in 1644 until 1911.

Tibet has a history of at least 1300 years of independence. The first recorded contacts between Tibetans and Chinese date back to the seventh century, following the unification of Tibet under King Songtsen Gampo and the marriage of a Chinese princess to Songtsen Gampo in 641. This marriage alliance was sought after Tibetan armies had captured towns in Sichuan province. In 821, a treaty recognizing them as two independent nations ended almost 200 years of war between China and Tibet (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, both China and Tibet came under the influence of the Mongol empire. The Mongol's militarily conquered China while the Tibetans and the Mongols established the historically unique 'priest patron' relationship, also known as CHO-YON. The Mongol aristocracy had converted to Buddhism and they sought spiritual guidance and moral legitimacy for the rule of their vast empire from the Tibetan theocracy. As the patrons of Tibet, the Mongols promised to protect Tibet against foreign invasion. The Mongol empire came to an end in the mid-fourteenth century. Today parts of Mongolia, which is not occupied by China, is an independent country, not a part of China and Mongols are not Chinese. By the fifteenth century, political authority in Tibet had passed into the hands of contending religious hegemonies that were eventually replaced by a system of rule under the Dalai Lamas. In China, the native Ming Dynasty overthrew the Mongols. During the Ming Dynasty both Tibet and China existed as separate and fully sovereign states (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

In 1639, the fifth Dalai Lama established another CHO-YON relationship with the Manchu Emperor, who, driven out of Manchuria by the Russians, occupied China and established the Manchu Dynasty in 1644. Manchu officials or Ann bans were stationed in Tibet from 1728 until the fall of the dynasty in 1911. Ann bans were instructed not to interfere in the internal policies of Tibet and to refrain from exploitation. In 1911, Sun Yat Sen declared Manchus to be foreigners, deposed the Manchu Emperor of China Pei Wei and proclaimed China to be a republic (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

Manchuria had been a Russian territory since the sixteenth century. Russia had developed industrial cities like Harbin in Manchuria and Port Arthur in Korea. The settlement of Han Chinese in Manchuria was prohibited until late into the nineteenth century. In 1905, Japan according to the Portsmouth Treaty took over Manchuria from Russia but allowed some pro-Japanese warlords of China to rule over it from 1918. In 1931, Japan took complete control over Manchuria, renamed it Manchukuo, re-established Pei Wei as the sovereign Emperor of China and in his name they tried to occupy the rest of China. The Soviet Union took over Manchuria in 1945 after the surrender of Japan to the USA, but gave it away to China in 1950 without any consideration for the wishes of the people in Manchuria (Rearden 2012) . Despite claims of Chinese propaganda, millions of non-Chinese people living in areas presently under the People's Republic of China suffer all kinds of discrimination. The most disturbing effect of Chinese policy towards people in these areas is the demographic transformation that has been imposed upon them. In virtually every area, new Chinese immigrants have become the majority community. Manchuria has been completely absorbed and the distinct Manchu culture that was vibrant until 1949 does not exist at all anymore.

The British, after 1911, convened a tripartite conference to discuss Tibet's border with the British India in Simla in 1914 (Atchison 1929) . The Tibetans arrived at the conference with written proof of Tibet's historical independence. The Chinese delegation-present only to witness the treaty between Britain and Tibet-argued that Tibet's subjugation by the Mongols and the Manchus became an integral part of China, and should therefore be ruled as part of the new Republic of China of Sun Yat Sen from Peking. That was also the beginning of the border dispute between China and India. However, although Tibet was not really subjugated by the Mongols and Manchus, it was certainly influenced by them. Neither Mongols nor Manchus were Chinese. In fact, China itself had been occupied for a long time by both the Mongols and the Manchus (van Walt van Praag 1987).

The fact that both Tibet and China came under Mongol political influence does not indicate unification of the two countries, as China claims. Iraq, Turkey, most parts of Russia and Eastern Europe, the Indian subcontinent, northern Burma, North Vietnam and Korea were all part of the vast Mongol empire. Would that mean these areas belong to China? British India included Burma until very recently. The British empire also used to control Sri Lanka, Malaysia, Iraq and Burma. Does that mean India should now legitimately claim Sri Lanka, Iraq, Malaysia and Burma as its integral parts? Such is the absurdity of the Chinese claim (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) . The most important point is that Manchus, like Mongols, are not ethnic Chinese and suggestions that Tibet became an integral part of a 'Chinese' empire during the Manchu empire are just absurd. Tibet continued to conduct itself as a fully sovereign nation, recognized by the British empire until its occupation by Communist China in 1949 (van Walt van Praag 1987 .

Today, however, China disputes the legal status of the Simla Convention and the resultant McMahon line-the border between India and Tibet accepted by the British, the true significance of which lies in its recognition of Tibet as an independent nation with which binding agreements such as the Lhasa Treaty of 1904 could be negotiated. Throughout the Nationalist (Kuomintang) period from 1912 to 1949, no Chinese government was able to exert any influence over Tibet. During the Second World War, Tibet remained neutral, despite strong pressure from the USA, Britain and China to allow the passage of raw materials through the country. When Nepal applied for membership of the UN in 1949, it cited its treaty and diplomatic relations with Tibet to demonstrate its full international personality (van Walt van Praag 1987).

The invasion of Tibet by troops from the People's Liberation Army in 1949-1950 is described in official Chinese histories as a 'peaceful liberation'. The Seventeen-Point Plan for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet (1951) was signed between the Communist Government and Tibetan officials in May 1951, which apparently 'enjoyed the approval and support of the people from every ethnic group in Tibet' as in the Information Office of the State Council of the People's Republic of China 1992. If Tibet was part of China, then there was no need for the agreement, which was forced upon the Tibetan delegation in China for signature, and then China announced to the world that Tibet was liberated.

In fact, discrimination and the suppression of traditional practices in eastern Tibet drove hundreds of Tibetans up into the mountains to conduct guerrilla warfare, while thousands more fled west to Lhasa to escape Chinese persecution. In March 1959, growing Tibetan resistance exploded in an uprising against the Chinese occupation. The 14 th Dalai Lama fled into exile in northern India, and the subsequent Chinese crackdown in Tibet was brutal.… Tibetan sources suggest as many as 430,000 were killed in the Uprising and subsequent years of guerrilla warfare as described by the Tibet Support Group in 1994 (Terril 2003) From 1951 to 1959 China broke every promise that it made towards Tibet, resulting in the Tibetan uprising against China in March 1959. The Dalai Lama and 100,000 Tibetans escaped into exile. From that day onwards, Tibet effectively became an occupied country.

Despite promising not to get involved with the existing system of government and society in Tibet by signing the Seventeen-Point Plan for the Peaceful Liberation of Tibet, China did interfere in eastern Tibetreneging on the treaty altogether in 1959. China has renamed two of Tibet's three provinces as parts of the Chinese provinces of Qinghai, Gansu, Sichuan and Yunnan, and has renamed the remaining province of U' Tsang as Tibet Autonomous Region (TAR) (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) . On 28 October 1991, US Congress under a Foreign Authorization Act passed the resolution wherein they recognized 'Tibet, including those areas incorporated into the Chinese provinces of Sichuan, Yunnan, Gansu and Qinghai, AN OCCUPIED COUNTRY under the established principal of international law'. The resolution further stated that Tibet's true representatives are the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan government in exile as recognized by the Tibetan people as described by the US State Department Authorization Act 1991 (Terril 2003) . Some 1.2 million Tibetans are estimated to have been killed by the Chinese since 1950. Reprisals for the 1959 National Uprising alone involved the elimination of 87,000 Tibetans by the Chinese count, according to a Radio Lhasa broadcast of 1 October 1960. Tibetan exiles claim that 430,000 died during the Uprising and the subsequent 15 years of guerrilla warfare. In its 1959 and 1960 reports, the International Commission of Jurists concluded that 'there was a prima facie case of genocide committed by the Chinese upon the Tibetan nation'. These reports consider events before the Cultural Revolution of Mao-Tse-Tung, during which much of Tibet's own cultural assets were destroyed and thousands of Tibetans killed (Tibet Support Group 1994; Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

Up to 260,000 people died in prisons and labour camps between 1950 and 1984. Since September 1987, approximately 3000 people are believed to have been imprisoned for political offences such as giving out leaflets, writing letters or talking to foreigners about the Tibetans' right to independence. From March 1989 to May 1990, the Chinese administered a campaign of torture against Tibetan dissidents in prison. During 1994-1995, three nuns died shortly after release from custody as a result of ill treatment and torture in detention. Beatings and torture are still regularly used against political prisoners today. Detainees are held in sub-standard conditions, malnourished, forbidden to talk, denied medical treatment and often held in solitary confinement. According to the Tibet Support Group (1994) , 'The Chinese have refused to allow independent observers to attend so-called public trials. Prison sentences are regularly decided before the trial. Less than 2% of cases in China are won by the defense' (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

Tibetan was replaced by Chinese as the official language and despite official pronouncements there was no practical change in this policy. It is difficult for Tibetans to gain employment in the state sector without proficiency in Chinese. Secondary school children are taught all classes in Chinese. Religious practice was forcibly suppressed until 1979, and up to 6000 monasteries and shrines were destroyed. In 1995 the Chinese authorities rejected the child recognized by the Dalai Lama as the rebirth of the Panchen Lama and installed their own candidate (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) . There are an estimated 300,000 troops stationed on Tibetan territory and three nuclear missile sites. Near Lake Kokonor, the largest lake on the Tibetan plateau, there is a 20-square kilometre dump for radioactive pollutants and China has admitted depositing nuclear waste as described by the Tibet Support Group 1994 (Terril 2003; Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

China is filling up Tibet with ethnic Chinese in an attempt to destroy the ethnicity of the Tibetans. This policy has much more potential to destroy Tibet as a nation than the millions who have died from Chinese policies, the destruction of more than 6000 Buddhist monasteries, the arrest and torture of Tibetan monks, the destruction of Tibetan forests and the stationing of nuclear weapons and waste dumps in Tibet.

Samdhong Rinpoche, the Prime Minister of the Tibetan governmentin-exile, estimates that seven million ethnic Chinese now live in Tibet, where there are only 2.3 million Tibetans. In towns like Lhasa and Chengdu, 75% of the people are ethnic Chinese. According to the Tibet Support Group (1994) , it was this influx of Chinese nationals that destabilized the economy. Forced agricultural modernizations in Tibet were the cause of extensive crop failures and the country's first recorded famine (1960) (1961) (1962) , in which 340,000 Tibetans died. Tibetan farms and grazing lands have been confiscated and incorporated into collectivized and communal farms.

The resettlement of Chinese migrants has led to Tibetans becoming the minority in many areas, including Lhasa. This in turn has created high unemployment among Tibetans. Official figures put the number of non-Tibetans in the TAR at 79,000. Independent research puts the figure at 250,000-300,000, and for the whole of Tibet 5-5.5 million Chinese to 4.5 million Tibetans. In Kham and Amdo the Chinese outnumber Tibetans many times over (Basu and Miroshnik 2012) .

As with previous railways built by China in Mongolia and East Turkistan, the more recently built Tibet railway would greatly speed colonization of the area. The railway will improve China's military manoeuvrability, enable rapid troop deployments and facilitate the expansion of People's Liberation Army bases and increases in nuclear weapons stockpiles and missile deployments on the Tibetan plateau (Basu and Miroshnik 2012; Terril 2003) .

East Turkistan, another colony of China, is bordered by Kazakhstan to the north, Tibet and India to the south, and Afghanistan and Pakistan to the West. It is China's largest province of 640,000 square kilometres-onesixth of the present Chinese territory. However, it was not a part of China until 1949 and the people of that land are not Chinese either. About 96% of its population are Turkic peoples of Tajik, Kyrghyz, Uzbek or Kazakh, similar to their relatives in the former Soviet Union, commonly known as Uyghurs. The invasion of East Turkistan by the Han Chinese started in 104 B.C., and the country was occupied several times by Chinese soldiers, but none of these occupations lasted for long. There were six invasions from 104 B.C. to 751 A.D., but during that period the Chinese invaders sustained their control for only 157 years. Arab, Turkic and Tibetan forces repulsed the Chinese occupiers in 751 A.D. East Turkistan later became a part of the Mongol empire briefly. In 1876, the Manchu empire occupied East Turkistan. The people in the southern part of East Turkistan established an Eastern Turkistan Islamic Republic in 1933 and then, in 1944, established the second Eastern Turkistan Republic (Castets 2003; Yu 2018) .

East Turkistan was occupied by China in 1949 and its name was changed to Xing Kiang in 1955. Communist China has been exercising a colonial rule over the land since then. The people there, just like the people in two other colonies of China in Tibet and Manchuria, have to undergo unimaginable suffering and have been subjugated to inhuman conditions under the repressive alien rule. The year 1999 saw mass arrests and murders of the people of East Turkistan become most widespread. This policy was especially sinister in the regions of Hotan, Kashgar, Aksu and Ili. As recently as 1999, some 2500 were killed. According to Amnesty International, currently at least 250,000 people are in prison.

In 1949, Kuomintang forces of Chiang-Kei-Seik defeated by Mao-Tse-Tung invaded Formosa. They massacred the local population, who are not ethnic Chinese but a mixed population of Japanese, Chinese, Portuguese and the indigenous proto-Malays (Ushimura 2003) . However, now China claims that Formosa, renamed as Taiwan, is an inalienable part of China and China wants to reclaim it as soon as possible. History cannot support that Chinese claim.

From 1368 to 1644, China had the Ming Dynasty of the Chin or Han Chinese tribe. At that time, Formosa was occupied first by the Dutch and then by the Portuguese. For a brief period from 1645 to 1662, a half-Japanese general of the Ming Dynasty, Tei Seiko, after being driven from China by the invading Manchus from the north, occupied that island. However, the Portuguese soon regained control of the island, which they had renamed as Formosa, or the beautiful island. The Machu empire only ruled Formosa for eight years between 1887 and 1895, but Manchus were not Chinese either.

The Manchu empire of China managed Formosa for just that brief period of time and, in 1895, gladly ceded it to Japan. After that, China had forfeited its rights to the island permanently or until the signing of another international treaty. The present-day Beijing government claims that the 1943 Cairo Declaration and the 1945 Potsdam Declaration recognized China's sovereignty over Formosa. That is not factually correct. The Cairo Declaration had nothing new on the question of Chinese territorial sovereignty over Formosa. Furthermore, both the Cairo and Potsdam Declarations were not valid international treaties but, to quote Justice Radha Binod Pal, a 'victor's justice' (Ushimura 2003) , where Japan never took any part.

The People's Republic of China, which came into being in 1949, was at war with the UN in 1951 over Korea and wasn't invited to sign the San Francisco Treaty in which Japan formally renounced 'all right, title and claim to Formosa'. The Republic of China or Kuomintang was unable to represent China in that treaty. Accordingly, to follow the UN principle of self-determination, Formosa belongs only to Formosans, not to China.

The history of Tibet, Manchuria, East Turkistan and Formosa, dating back more than two thousand years, has been one of independence from China. At no time, since the founding of the nation in 127 B.C., have the Tibetans conceded their sovereignty to a foreign power. East Turkistan was occupied from time to time, but those periods of occupation were brief. Manchuria was not occupied by China until 1950. Formosa, except for seven years, was never a part of China.

China has no limit to its demands on lands, islands, rocks and reefs in the South China Sea, disregarding any international laws and conventions. China only recognizes might, not logic. Legitimate claims by other nations of East Asia have no meaning in the dictionary of China. China has claimed sovereignty across most of the South China Sea. It grants itself rights that cannot apply to an international shipping route. In fact, China imposes its demands by building military structures on uninhabited archipelagos, islets, rocks and reefs that are already possessed by other countries in the region, including Japan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. Chinese citizens are encouraged to fish everywhere under the protection of China's coastguards and to engage in prospecting for oil, with the installation of a drilling platform off the coast of Vietnam. In a direct head to head with Vietnam, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, Taiwan and Japan, Beijing claims possession of the Paracel and Spratly Islands, the Scarborough Shoal and the Senkaku Islands. It also appears to be extending its own territorial waters so much that there is practically nothing left for the rest of Southeast Asia (O'Neill 2018).

In April 2012, there was a clash between China and the Philippines over Scarborough Shoal, one of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. The confrontation between the naval vessels of the two countries continued for almost two months and in the middle of this the USA and the Philippines carried out a joint military drill in the vicinity. Japan, Australia and South Korea all sent their personnel to participate in this drill.

China deployed an armada of 80 military and civilian ships, along with support aircraft, to install a billion dollar oil rig on Vietnam's continental shelf well within its 200 mile exclusive economic zone (EEZ). According to Rodis (2012) : When Vietnam responded by dispatching 30 of its ships to defend its sovereign territory, China used high-powered water cannons to disperse them and even rammed its vessels straight into Vietnamese ships causing damage to the Vietnamese ships and injury to those on board. Vietnam may have the will to fight but clearly lacks the 'suitable' might to defend itself against China.

Vietnam is mindful about what happened on March 14, 1988 when four ships of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Navy [PLAN] landed on Vietnam's Johnson South Reef and faced Vietnamese defenders on the reef who refused to leave. The Chinese ships fired at will at the sailors and pounded the reef with heavy shells. When the dust settled, several Vietnamese ships were destroyed and 64 Vietnamese sailors lay dead. The Johnson South Reef Massacre was recorded by the Chinese Navy and shown all over China as an example of China's might.

China's recent attack against the Philippines was initiated when China moved a giant oil rig to the Recto Bank-just 85 nautical miles from Palawan. The US Energy Information Administration (USEIA) has estimated that there could be approximately 11 billion barrels (bbl) of oil reserves and 190 trillion cubic feet (tcf) of natural gas reserves in the West Philippine Sea. Ayungin is the gateway to the Recto Bank and China intends to occupy Ayungin Shoal (Rodis 2014 ).

China's occupation of the Philippine mining industry is another issue. One of China's mining companies is operating in the Philippines 'located near the Scarborough Shoal in the coastal town of Masinloc where China's Wei-Wei Group has set up a US$100 million nickel processing plant. In nearby Botolan, Zambales, China's Jiangxi Rare Earth and Rare Metals Tungsten Group Company Limited operates a US$150 million nickel exploration and cobalt processing project' (Rodis 2012) .

There is an estimated US$1 trillion in untapped mineral resources in the Philippines. Chinese mining companies, many of them operating illegally, have been exporting precious minerals such as gold and nickel out through the island country's porous coastal ports, where there are no customs officials. If China can occupy the Scarborough Shoal, smuggling precious metals from the Philippines to a Chinese base will be easy. In 1996, China occupied the Mischief Reef-75 miles from Palawan. Vietnam, Malaysia and the Philippines have separately protested against Chinese land reclamation at numerous reefs in the Spratly Islands. The fear is that they could be used for air, naval or logistic bases to strengthen China's territorial claims a long way from its mainland (O'Neill 2018).

China's aim to make Asia's seas its exclusive property, keeping Japan at bay and excluding US military presence, is just one part of a greater mission. China intends to extend its military power through Burma, Africa and Pakistan up to the Arabian Sea, on to the Persian Gulf and into the Middle East and Africa. China's defence budget is second only to that of the USA, giving it great purchasing power and increasing military capabilities (Green and Hicks 2017) .

Recent outbreak of coronavirus and resultant thousands of death all over the world is blamed on China that either China has developed this virus in its laboratory in Wuhan or it suppressed the information so that other countries could not take action beforehand. The result is worldwide shutdown and mass unemployment and bankruptcy. Most companies are having the problem of very low demand and falling share price. China is taking advantage of that. It is buying up companies after companies everywhere particularly in the developing countries.

Every nation in the world talks of peace. Throughout the twentieth century, countries have enthusiastically praised the virtues of 'stability', 'peace' and 'good relations', yet they have all been caught up in the irrationality of actively prepared for and fomented war. Among growing economic chaos, there is unlikely to be a 'peaceful rise' to Chinese imperialism-just preparations for war to expand China's economic interest through its militarism.

Big corporations in the Western world control the mass media. For example, Walmart, the biggest retail chain stores in the USA, which receives most of its supplies from China, is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who also owns some of the most important newspapers and television channels in the USA, UK, Australia, India and East Asia. The result is a continuous pro-Chinese propaganda in the media, which is blaming the democratically elected Taiwanese leaders for provoking China by not accepting the Chinese colonialism. When the interests and ambitions of the Kuomintang Chinese and China have now merged, it will not take long for the USA to discard Taiwan to its fate in order to please China and to protect the commercial interests of the American companies in China.

China recently created a new type of imperialism. In the name of Belt and Road Initiative, it is giving huge loans to a number of countries for infrastructure projects at very high interest rates. All materials for these projects including labour force would come from China, although the recipient countries could supply most of these particularly the labour forces to reduce the borrowings. When the country will be unable to pay back these loans, China will take very long-term lease of important ports, airports, mines or islands. Recently Sri Lanka when unable to repay its loan to China gave lease of an airport, Hambantota, for 100 years to China. Maldive has taken from China a loan of $250 million, which is the same as its GDP. Kenya gave up Mombasa port to China, after failing to repay its debt to China.

In Africa, similarly, a number of countries leased out their mines. China has a plan to invest $60 billion in Africa, 75% of that in oil-related industries. Sudan has taken $6.4 billion, Kenya has taken $8 billion, Republic of Congo has taken $7.3 billion, Ethiopia has $13.5 billion loan from China, and Angola has taken $25 billion from China. These are nothing when we consider Pakistan, which has taken $40 billion loan from China with a guaranteed rate of return of 30%, which it cannot repay. Therefore, Pakistan has given away Gwadar port in Balochistan for a joint military base with China. This is imperialism in another name (Toh 2017; Kesling and Emont 2019; Terril 2003) .

Both China and the USA thus correspond to the classical pattern of colonialism. They both want to capture territories to promote their business interests. In the case of American Empire the desire is to protect its overseas investments and particularly the oil industry worldwide. It can correspond somehow to the theory of Lenin. Chinese empire does not correspond to the theory of Lenin at all. China wants to capture resources of the world to promote its industry in future as a matter of national honour and prestige to wipe out 'the century of humiliation'. It corresponds to the theory of Schumpeter not Lenin.

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Structural Revolution in International Business

The Savage Wars of Peace: Small Wars and the Rise of American Power

The Uyghurs in Xinjiang-The Malaise Grows. China Perspectives

Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam

Persian Oil: A Study in Power Politics

The 1953 Coup D'état in Iran

U.S. Foreign Policy and the Shah: Building a Client State in Iran

Notes From the Minefield: United States Intervention in Lebanon and the Middle East

Countering Coercion in Maritime Asia

Empire and Nationhood: The United States, Great Britain, and Iranian Oil

American Empire: A Global History

How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States

How the U.S Is Countering China's Empire Building Plan

All the Shah's Men: An American Coup and the Roots of Middle East Terror

Overthrow: America's Century of Regime Change from Hawaii to Iraq

Evo Morales Urges Resistance to New Bolivian Government

Dividing ASEAN and Conquering the South China Sea

Council of War: A History of the Joint Chiefs of Staffs

War on Iraq

China's Mining Occupation of the Philippines

What Did Estrada and Arroyo Promise China

The New Chinese Empire

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Beyond the Judgement of Civilization: The Intellectual Legacy of the Japanese War Crimes Trials

The Status of Tibet, History, Rights, and Prospect in International Law

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America's Great Game: The CIA's Secret Arabizes and the Making of the Modern Middle East

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