Poland – At a crossroads of ideologies
Poland is increasingly seen as the gateway between eastern and western Europe.
Post-war Poland has enjoyed proper independence now for little more than 35 years. And it wants to keep it that way. But there are external pressures which Poles believe put them under very real threat.
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Al Jazeera
a day ago
- Al Jazeera
The real reason the West is warmongering against China
Over the past two decades, the posture of the United States towards China has evolved from economic cooperation to outright antagonism. US media outlets and politicians have engaged in persistent anti-China rhetoric, while the US government has imposed trade restrictions and sanctions on China and pursued military build-up close to Chinese territory. Washington wants people to believe that China poses a threat. China's rise indeed threatens US interests, but not in the way the US political elite seeks to frame it. The US relationship with China needs to be understood in the context of the capitalist world system. Capital accumulation in the core states, often glossed as the 'Global North', depends on cheap labour and cheap resources from the periphery and semi-periphery, the so-called 'Global South'. This arrangement is crucial to ensuring high profits for the multinational firms that dominate global supply chains. The systematic price disparity between the core and periphery also enables the core to achieve a large net-appropriation of value from the periphery through unequal exchange in international trade. Ever since the 1980s, when China opened up to Western investment and trade, it has been a crucial part of this arrangement, providing a major source of labour for Western firms – labour that is cheap but also highly skilled and highly productive. For instance, much of Apple's production relies on Chinese labour. According to research by the economist Donald A Clelland, if Apple had to pay Chinese and East Asian workers at the same rate as a US worker, this would have cost them an additional $572 per iPad in 2011. But over the past two decades, wages in China have increased quite dramatically. Around 2005, the manufacturing labour cost per hour in China was lower than in India, less than $1 per hour. In the years since, China's hourly labour costs have increased to more than $8 per hour, while India's are now only about $2 per hour. Indeed, wages in China are now higher than in every other developing country in Asia. This is a major, historical development. This has happened for several key reasons. For one, surplus labour in China has been increasingly absorbed into the wage-labour economy, which has amplified workers' bargaining power. At the same time, the current leadership of President Xi Jinping has expanded the role of the state in China's economy, strengthening public provisioning systems – including public healthcare and public housing – that have further improved the position of workers. These are positive changes for China – and specifically for Chinese workers – but they pose a severe problem for Western capital. Higher wages in China impose a constraint on the profits of Western firms that operate there or that depend on Chinese manufacturing for intermediate parts and other key inputs. The other problem, for the core states, is that the increase in China's wages and prices is reducing its exposure to unequal exchange. During the low-wage era of the 1990s, China's export-to-import ratio with the core was extremely high. In other words, China had to export very large quantities of goods in order to obtain necessary imports. Today, this ratio is much lower, representing a dramatic improvement in China's terms of trade, substantially reducing the core's ability to appropriate value from China. Given all this, capitalists in the core states are now desperate to do something to restore their access to cheap labour and resources. One option – increasingly promoted by the Western business press – is to relocate industrial production to other parts of Asia where wages are cheaper. But this is costly in terms of lost production, the need to find new staff, and other supply chain disruptions. The other option is to force Chinese wages back down. Hence, the attempts by the United States to undermine the Chinese government and destabilise the Chinese economy – including through economic warfare and the constant threat of military escalation. Ironically, Western governments sometimes justify their opposition to China on the grounds that China's exports are too cheap. It is often claimed that China 'cheats' in international trade, by artificially suppressing the exchange rate for its currency, the renminbi. The problem with this argument, however, is that China abandoned this policy around a decade ago. As the International Monetary Fund (IMF) economist Jose Antonio Ocampo noted in 2017, 'In recent years, China has rather been making efforts to avoid a depreciation of the renminbi, sacrificing a large amount of reserves. This may imply that, if anything, this currency is now overvalued.' China did eventually permit a devaluation in 2019, when tariffs imposed by the administration of US President Donald Trump increased pressure on the renminbi. But this was a normal response to a change in market conditions, not an attempt to suppress the renminbi below its market rate. The US largely supported the Chinese government in the period when its currency was undervalued, including through loans from the IMF and World Bank. The West turned decisively against China in the mid-2010s, at precisely the moment when the country began to raise its prices and challenge its position as a peripheral supplier of cheap inputs to Western-dominated supply chains. The second element that's driving US hostility towards China is technology. Beijing has used industrial policy to prioritise technological development in strategic sectors over the past decade, and has achieved remarkable progress. It now has the world's largest high-speed rail network, manufactures its own commercial aircraft, leads the world on renewable energy technology and electric vehicles, and enjoys advanced medical technology, smartphone technology, microchip production, artificial intelligence, etc. The tech news coming out of China has been dizzying. These are achievements that we only expect from high-income countries, and China is doing it with almost 80 percent less GDP per capita than the average 'advanced economy'. It is unprecedented. This poses a problem for the core states because one of the main pillars of the imperial arrangement is that they need to maintain a monopoly over necessary technologies like capital goods, medicines, computers, aircraft and so on. This forces the 'Global South' into a position of dependency, so they are forced to export large quantities of their cheapened resources in order to obtain these necessary technologies. This is what sustains the core's net-appropriation through unequal exchange. China's technological development is now breaking Western monopolies, and may give other developing countries alternative suppliers for necessary goods at more affordable prices. This poses a fundamental challenge to the imperial arrangement and unequal exchange. The US has responded by imposing sanctions designed to cripple China's technological development. So far, this has not worked; if anything, it has increased incentives for China to develop sovereign technological capacities. With this weapon mostly neutralised, the US wants to resort to warmongering, the main objective of which would be to destroy China's industrial base, and divert China's investment capital and productive capacities towards defence. The US wants to go to war with China not because China poses some kind of military threat to the American people, but because Chinese development undermines the interests of imperial capital. Western claims about China posing some kind of military threat are pure propaganda. The material facts tell a fundamentally different story. In fact, China's military spending per capita is less than the global average, and 1/10th that of the US alone. Yes, China has a big population, but even in absolute terms, the US-aligned military bloc spends over seven times more on military power than China does. The US controls eight nuclear weapons for every one that China has. China may have the power to prevent the US from imposing its will on it, but it does not have the power to impose its will on the rest of the world in the way that the core states do. The narrative that China poses some kind of military threat is wildly overblown. In fact, the opposite is true. The US has hundreds of military bases and facilities around the world. A significant number of them are stationed near China – in Japan and South Korea. By contrast, China has only one foreign military base, in Djibouti, and zero military bases near US borders. Furthermore, China has not fired a single bullet in international warfare in over 40 years, while during this time the US has invaded, bombed or carried out regime-change operations in over a dozen Global South countries. If there is any state that poses a known threat to world peace and security, it is the US. The real reason for Western warmongering is because China is achieving sovereign development and this is undermining the imperial arrangement on which Western capital accumulation depends. The West will not let global economic power slip from its hands so easily. The views expressed in this article are the authors' own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial stance.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Israel strikes Syria, even though it poses no threat
The Struggle for Southern Syria Pinch Point Israel's army has shown it is prepared to fight to enforce that stance. But why? One theory is that Israel wants to keep its neighbour weak and divided. But there are members of Netanyahu's government who think the land is theirs. And they want to move in – permanently. Video Duration 05 minutes 12 seconds 05:12 Video Duration 04 minutes 56 seconds 04:56 Video Duration 04 minutes 45 seconds 04:45 Video Duration 00 minutes 43 seconds 00:43 Video Duration 05 minutes 59 seconds 05:59 Video Duration 05 minutes 30 seconds 05:30 Video Duration 05 minutes 58 seconds 05:58
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Al Jazeera
Russia's drone attacks on Ukraine hit record high in July
Russia fired more than 6,000 drones on Ukraine in July, more than any other month since it launched its full-scale invasion in 2022, the AFP news agency and the Kyiv Independent reported. The drone attacks killed dozens of people and injured many more. They also damaged civilian targets, including many homes, a kindergarten and an ambulance. According to the AFP news agency, data published by Ukraine's air force showed that Russia fired 6,297 long-range drones into Ukraine last month, up by nearly 16 percent compared with June. The Kyiv Independent reported that Russia launched a record 6,129 Shahed-type drones in July, 14 times more than in the same month last year, when Russia launched just 423 drones. Ukrainian Air Force spokesperson Yurii Ihnat told the Kyiv Independent that the real number of Russian drone attacks may be higher, since figures are based on estimates. In just one night on July 9, Russian forces launched a record 741 drones and decoys on Western Ukraine, more than the number of drones it launched in the entire month of July last year. The combined Russian missile and drone attacks on July 9 killed at least eight people in Ukraine's Sumy, Donetsk and Kherson regions, even as Ukrainian forces shot down all but 10 of the drones launched that day. The July 9 attack came a day after United States President Donald Trump said his administration would help send Ukraine more 'defensive weapons', just days after the Pentagon had said it was halting deliveries of some weapons to Ukraine, due to low stockpiles. 'They have to be able to defend themselves,' Trump said, as he announced that European allies would finance Patriot air defence systems for Ukraine, from the US weapons company Raytheon. 'They are getting hit very hard now,' he added. Russia's heavy drone and missile attacks continued right up until the end of the month, with an attack on Ukraine's capital, Kyiv, on July 31 killing at least 31 people, including five children, and wounding 159 others. Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy said that Russia used more than 300 drones and eight missiles in the attack. According to the AFP, Russia also fired 198 missiles into Ukraine in July, more than in any month this year except in June. The number of drones Russia fired in June was the second-highest amount after July, with 5,337 in total, according to the Kyiv Independent. That included some 479 drones fired at Ukraine on June 9, just ahead of the start of a prisoner swap the two countries had agreed to at talks in Istanbul. Peace talks continued in Turkiye last month but have so far failed to reach a lasting ceasefire agreement, even as Trump has threatened to impose new sanctions on Russia and countries that buy its exports. Russian drones flying higher Russian forces have adjusted their drones since the 2022 invasion, so that they now fly several kilometres above ground, making it harder to shoot them down with machineguns. This has made Ukraine even more dependent on US air defence weaponry, including the recently announced European-funded Patriot systems. Russia also sends a combination of drone types to Ukraine. More than half carry explosives, but there are also decoys designed to waste Ukrainian defensive missiles and reconnaissance drones, which track Ukraine's air defence team locations. Heavy drone barrages are also used to overwhelm defence systems when missiles are fired. Russia imports both its heavy Mohajer-6 drones and cheaper, slower Shahed 'kamikaze' drones from Iran, which it described as an 'important partner' in late 2024. Ukraine, which became the world's largest major arms importer from 2020 to 2024, has increasingly been buying its own supplies of millions of drones from local manufacturers.
