by K.J. Noh

This chapter was originally a speech delivered at the celebration of the 75th Anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC).

Friends, colleagues, comrades, it’s a great honor for me to join you in this extraordinary, historical moment of celebration and reflection on the 75th anniversary of the founding of the PRC.

As it has been said many times before, in the current historical moment, we are seeing changes unseen in a century—changes both great and terrible. We are currently seeing the unravelling of the Empire—and its last desperate, violent, hideous death rattle. 

We are seeing the unmasking of 500 years of Western “civilization” and the laying bare of its hypocrisy and unspeakable brutality. We are seeing the true face of capitalist imperialism, not its made-up public relations face, but its resting capitalist face. And it’s not pretty.

One of the precipitating factors of the end of the Empire—not the only factor, but a very important one, because it allows countries to resist hegemony together—is the rise of China. The rise of China is one of the greatest success stories in the history of human civilization.

We could talk about China’s accomplishments all day. There are too many to list, but we can highlight three.

We all know in 1949 when China stood up, liberating half a billion people, 10-20% of China’s population was still addicted to opium. In four years, the CPC eradicated opium addiction, liberating 90 million people from this colonial scourge. It’s also one of the greatest public health accomplishments of the twentieth century, and chances are good that you’ve never heard of it. But by giving everyone the means of production—at the time, by redistributing land—and by offering everybody education, community, meaning, hope, purpose, and doing so at scale—because it has to be done at scale—the Party was successful. You can’t do this in dribs and drabs, tinkering at the edges; you have to do it all at once for everyone.

We all know and understand that we can’t liberate anyone until everyone is liberated. We must liberate each other because we are fundamentally socially interconnected, and therefore we are all a part of each other’s futures. 

We saw the same thing with extreme poverty alleviation. In China, poverty is not seen as an individual failing, as it is in the capitalist West. It is a whole-of-society responsibility requiring a whole-of-society response. It focused on everyone.

And so, 850 million people were brought out of extreme poverty. “The poor will always be with us,” says the West; but China’s accomplishment in eliminating poverty lets the world know that poverty is not an immutable, social, historical fact—it is a policy choice. We can raise everyone up if we all work together. That’s the way it works, and it works that way for everything. If we start from this principle, we can succeed, no matter how vast and immense the challenge is. 

China is therefore proof positive of the power of people’s solidarity, the power of a people’s leadership, and the power of scientific planning according to socialist principles to overcome unthinkable challenges. This is how China accomplishes things, and it accomplishes them at scale—at a scale so vast that nothing under heaven, as it is said, is left behind. 

Now, there is another achievement that China is working on. Yes, a socialist society is its ultimate goal, but this is an important stepping stone on the way to it. And it is a big one—it is the creation of an ecological civilization. China is literally greening the planet, creating single-handedly the conditions, the means, and the material tools to transition to a sustainable energy regime, to enable sustainable development, and turn back the tide of global warming. 

And it is doing it at a scale that is truty inconceivable—but necessary. A challenge of this magnitude means you have to do this at that scale, and China knows how to accomplish things at scale. It knows how to solve problems even when the problems are unthinkably immense. And the leadership and the people do not flinch at the immensity of the challenge. 

China is concretely showing us the pathway out of global climate catastrophe. As I said before, none of us are safe, good, or well until all of us are. That’s true for poverty alleviation, it’s true for drug eradication, and it’s especially true for fighting global climate change. Until all of us are safe from the effects of the climate crisis, none of us are.

All the West needs to do on this issue is work together with China. China has provided the tools and the map showing the path out. To reduce it to its simplest terms, going green means going red.

However, from the U.S. standpoint, they don’t want that. They do not want an energy transition if it means the Chinese are going to be leading it. They would rather be dead than red. The US would rather burn up the planet than give China its place in the sun. If China is on the side of renewable energy, then the U.S. has to be firmly on the side of global warming, because it’s more important to the U.S. to beat China than to beat global warming. 

We can see that right now, in the massive sanctioning of Chinese sustainable technologies that could shift the balance. If the planet heats up, we’re all dead, but if China cools the planet and saves the world, then we are no longer the coolest, and that’s worse than death. That’s how the leaders of the U.S. think. 

So, we can’t talk about China’s successes without talking about the U.S. hostility towards China. The U.S. sees China as its enemy, and is determined to take down China and all its accomplishments. Therefore the U.S. is preparing war—kinetic war—against China. 

Washington is abuzz with talk of war with China. It’s seen as necessary, inevitable, and—incredibly—winnable. “Winnable” means they are planning to use nuclear weapons.

We have seen from Palestine and Lebanon that there are no limits to the depravity of what the Imperial ruling class will do to stay in power. Nothing is off the table. Nothing is too inhumane, too brutal, too illegal, or too dangerous. Nothing shocks their conscience. Nuclear war is definitely on the table, in the policy papers being distributed, in the military table-top exercises they conduct, and in the field training and air exercises that are now being conducted with the greatest intensity since World War II. To put it bluntly, the U.S. ruling class would rather see the end of the world than the end of their power and privilege.

So we are at a turning point in history; a crisis that is both opportunity and danger, hope and terror, unseen possibility and unthinkable tragedy. It’s not if, but when.

Now, there are three distinguishable steps on the way to war. The first is information war: inventing the enemy and then demonizing them. They are manufacturing consent and shutting down opposition, like shutting down the skies before bombing. We’re being fire-hosed and carpet-bombed with lies about China.

The second is shaping the theater logistically for war, with arms, alliance, exercises, prepositioned stocks of fuel and material, and troops.

The third is provocation. There is non-stop provocation by the U.S.—in the Taiwan Strait, in the East China Sea, in the South China Sea, on the Korean peninsula, and everywhere else in the region. This follows the increasing, expanding ambit and intensity of proxy war in Europe and the genocidal terror in the Middle East. Kurt Campbell, Biden’s “Asia Czar” and the architect of the Pivot to Asia, has threatened to unleash “a magnificent symphony of death” across a “unified field [of war]”.

We can all see and feel the shutting down of anti-war dissent, of opposing voices and alternative media. That’s a key characteristic of the information war—silencing opposition, silencing voices of peace. It’s like deploying anti-aircraft batteries and imposing a no-fly zone. You shut down the skies before you drop the bombs; and you shut down the opposition before you drop the narrative bombs. You attack opposition to war, attack those who want good relations or negotiations with China. You attack divergent voices and platforms in order to create a no-think zone. No thinking, no dialogue, no peace. 

The U.S. literally seeks full spectrum dominance in all domains of war, but especially in the space domain: outerspace, cyber space, and information space, mental space; it literally seeks to occupy your mind. 

So, resistance in this critical moment begins at the most fundamental level, with first not letting your mental space be occupied, colonized, and dominated. It means resisting the narrative dominance of the dominant narrative: that China is threatening the world, that war is thinkable, that war is justified. It means resisting the normalization of war, of genocide, of terror, of atrocity, of lies and propaganda. We can be vectors of this transmission of lies of propaganda, or we can impede its transmission.

It is therefore incumbent on all of us to re-engage in the mental martial art of critical thinking. We must strengthen our psychic immune system against this type of mental violence, this mental virus, this colonization of our mental spaces. We must re-orient and de-occupy ourselves, kick out the colonizing narratives, and recommit to “seeking truth from facts”. What we need to do is tune up our critical thinking engines constantly, with the precision tools of wit, humor, parody, perspective, context—and facts.

Share the truth: the rise of China and the liberation of the Global South is not a threat to the peoples of the world. Instead, it is a transformative moment of hope for human history.  

The stakes are immense. The future of the planet is at stake. As Brian Berletic said, “A war against China is a war against the world.” We have already been inducted, and we all have a part to play. 

Where do we start? We start with clear minds and courageous hearts. 
Decolonize and de-propagandize your minds and resist together! The future of China, the future of the Global South, and the future of the world depend on it! 

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K.J. Noh is an award-winning journalist, political analyst, and educator focusing on the geopolitics and political economy of the Asia Pacific region. Originally from South Korea, he writes for Counterpunch, Dissident Voice, Black Agenda Report, Asia Times, Popular Resistance, Monthly Review, Pressian, Marxische Blatte, People’s Daily, and Global Times. He also does frequent commentary and analysis on various news programs and is the co-host of The China Report on the Breakthrough News Network. He recently co-authored a study on the military transmission of infectious diseases by U.S. troops and its implications for the Covid epidemic.