Liberal-Imperialist Weaponization of Human Rights Discourse on Behalf of US Empire in Venezuela and China 2010 - 2020

 

__________________________________________________________________________________________

The Liberal-Imperialist weaponization of Human Rights discourse is an element and component of Indirect Intervention, meant to undermine the Sovereignty and Self-Determination of Socialist and Subaltern States to the benefit of Hegemonic Imperialist States, most especially the United States.¹ The Principle of Non-Intervention contains within it a historically determined Class component.² Failure or refusal to recognize the content of this historically fought for and won Class component, its specific effects on the analysis of Geopolitics, and its most refined treatment, International Law, leads to hypocricies, inconsistency and cynicism of analysis, a substitution of scientific analysis for parochial (and, importantly, Imperial) moralism and moralizing. One such recurrent hypocrisy and cynicism over the past thirty years has been the enlightened false consciousness of Human Rights discourse, deployed as a weapon to legitimate and facilitate the activities of Imperial powers with respect to weaker powers, namely to expand the territory of NATO and integrate further territory into compliance with market access by American firms; to cloak their activities with a moral veneer. The so-called Human Rights of Human Rights discourse are intrinsically political, and the proliferation of Human Rights discourse in the latter portion of the Twentieth Century tracks with and is implicated within the Belle Époque of US Empire from the late 1970s to the early 2000s. Efforts to simultaneously deploy Human Rights discourse against Socialist and Subaltern States and occlude the contingent historical effects of Class Struggle constitute one element of a unitary breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention by the United States against States with a Socialist or Subaltern character - chiefly non-compliance with territorial integration by NATO and concession to economic structural adjustment.

The abuse and distortion of Human Rights claims against Venezuela and China³ over the past decade by Democratic and Republican US administrations of the United States, its sub-Imperial vassal States (UK/Can/Aus/NZ and occasionally Japan), comprador classes in peripheral States, and ideologically compliant Human Rights discourse institutions - the specific occlusion of Class Interests in the explication and analysis of Situations by these forces - coupled with illegal unilateral US economic sanctions, comprises a Composite Breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention in each case.⁴

Venezulela has been on the receiving end of several spurious Human Rights claims spearheaded by the United States, its vassal Imperialisms, and comprador classes in Latin America over the past several years. These attacks are usually voiced by the Washington based Organization of American States⁵, the Lima Group, or any other number of Non-Governmental Organizations whose purposes just happen to line up with American Oil Capital. Their methodology is to perform exactly the dissagregation Mohamed Helal criticized of the ruling in the Nicaragua case such as to weaponize it as a cudgel against the non-compliant Latin American State. That is, staging and curating instances of alleged victimization divorced from the context of the ongoing hybrid-war which the United States wages against Latin American states resistant to so-called structural adjustment,⁶ such claims purport to depict a small, almost invariably light-skinned, urban comprador elite as a victimized under-class. Rather, this light-skinned urban comprador elite has consistently conspired with the United States to subvert and destabilize Venezuela and roll back the political and economic gains made by working class Venezuelans, indigenous peoples, and Afro-Venezuelans.

China, by contrast, has been attacked with two distinct erroneous, cynical and malicious moral claims emanating from the United States, its sub-Imperial vassals, and compliant Human Rights discourse: (1) that it is conducting genocide against the Uyghur people of the Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR), North-West China; and (2) that it is complicit in the forced labour of the Uyghur people. Neither of these sets of claims survives scrutiny. Both are fabrications of US Empire and its complicit Human Rights institutions and figures. The Human Rights claims against China in fact concern, on the one hand, (1) China's efforts at deradicalization of Islamic populations in North-Western China⁷, and (2) China's efforts at poverty alleviation across the country, which, by virtue of their being State-led, are depicted as coercive.⁸ On the first claim, not only are China's efforts at deradicalization of Islamic populations reasonable when compared with other states, notably the United States, but we find moreover that the United States is itself profoundly culpable for the radicalization of Sunni Islamic populations in the Middle-East in the first place. And on the second claim, we find that it is not so much a claim that labour in China is not remunerated, but rather, more insidiously, a moral claim that State-led investment and poverty alleviation efforts are themselves intrinsically coercive. It is at this point that our friendly and well-intentioned Human Rights advocate will inform us that we must be mistaken, that the confluence of Human Rights claims and the geostrategic interests of US Empire could not possibly be occluding a specifically economic class based dynamic because, of course, China does not really have a Class character. It is merely 'authoritarian,' or 'state capitalist,' or, perhaps most erroneously, simply 'capitalist.' This claim, also, is a fabrication and distortion of US Empire, its sub-Imperial vassal States, and obliging Human Rights ideologists, the purpose of which is to sabotage or short-circuit solidarity between the working and subaltern classes in the dominant Imperialist States and States in the Global South, like China, which retain a Class character and advance the global position of the working class and subaltern peoples.⁹

For Human Rights discourse to carry any moral legitimacy at all it must contain within itself a ruthless criticism of its own Class Interests and its fidelity with the Economic prerogatives of US Empire, that is, the continuum of the old civilizing mission and the new. Moreover they must contain a criticism of Right itself, insofar as Class interests are reflected within the philosophy of Right. Human Rights discourse and its ideologists today entirely lack such a critique. It is wholly insufficient to simply ascribe the harmony of targets of US Empire and the claims of so-called 'Human Rights' advocates to coincidence, or worse, to wholly exculpate the United States and depict it, still, as any kind of champion of so-called 'Human Rights.' It is not even good enough to say that the United States is a partial, or occasional champion of Human Rights, one whose better angels ought to win out. No, 'Human Rights' are an intrinsic ideological component of the Liberal Economic and Geopolitical project. The halls of so-called Human-Rights discourse institutions are populated by the same ghouls, spooks and security consultants which attend military and security contractor conventions. If the so-called 'Human Rights' movement aspires to be greater than its lot as this contingent element of US Empire's geostrategic interests then it is incumbent upon Human Rights advocates to diagnose and extricate Human Rights from this position and role by an inclusion of Class Analysis. This requires, first and foremost, a sensitivity to which bodies and institutions make such claims, where their funding comes from, and the extent to which those claims function in conjunction with definite Imperial political projects.

The Human Rights claims made by the United States, its vassal States, comprador classes and a panoply of NGOs aligned with them¹⁰ in the last five years are neither righteous nor credible, but rather reflect, more than anything, deep Liberal Economic Chauvinism and Class hatred for Socialist and Subaltern States. In the selective, disaggregated, manipulative manner such claims are put forward, coupled with unilateral US economic sanctions against those States, they constitute one element of composite breaches of the Principle of Non-Intervention. Taken together with illegal unilateral US economic sanctions, Human Rights claims weaponized against non-economically compliant States like Venezuela and China a composite breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention in each case. The purpose of the Principle of Non-Intevention is, in part, to prevent Counter-Revolutionary efforts to sabotage the Self-Determination of States in instances precisely such as these.

______________________________________________________________________________

1 Alain Badiou writes of 1993 that the proliferation of Human Rights discourse constituted "intellectual counter-revolution in the form of moral terrorism." (iii) The purpose of this intellectual counter-revolution was to impose "Western capitalism as the new universal model." (liii) Badiou writes that in the years since 1993, "the intervention of Western bombers against Serbia, the intolerable blockade of Iraq, the continuation of threats against Cuba." (lv) have been "legitimated by a quite unbelievable outpouring of moralizing sermons." (lv) Alain Badiou, Ethics: An Essay on the Understanding of Evil tr Peter Hallward (London: Verso, 2001). In 2016, Makau Mutua charged that human rights has become "an echo chamber" (450) of "grandiose statements made by insiders - those with an interest in depicting human rights as a zeinith of human civilization." (450) Mutua writes that the early Twenty-First Century has been characterized by "several dystopian catastrophes" (451) and that "the enthusiasm that had characterized the surge of the human rights movement since the 1970s had cooled down." (451) Mutua describes human rights as an ideology, "a moral-legal-political and economic schema" (451) in which human rights are "the moral argument for the liberal project." (451) Among its critics, Mutua writes, human rights have come to be seen as "a tool to justify a new imperialism by the West over darker peoples. Makau Mutua, "Is the Age of Human Rights Over?" in The Routledge Companion to Literature and Human Rights ed Sophia McClennen and Alexandra Schultheis Moore (New York: Routledge, 2016), 450. In 2014 Samuel Moyn wrote that the credibility and legitimacy of Human Rights discourse have been undermined, in the post-1989 period, by "America pursuing low-minded imperial ambitions in high-minded humanitarian tones." (14) Samuel Moyn, Human Rights and the Uses of History (London: Verso, 2014). Michael Drake writes that the Post-Human-Rights Era has been characterized by criticism that Human Rights Institutions are "too often perfectly instep with U.S. government and foreign intervention." (1053) On the one hand, Drake writes, critics charge that the Human Rights movement is complicit with "US Imperialism," (1029) and on the other that they narrowly focus on "civil and political rights - as opposed to economic rights," (1029) notably those civil and political rights which entail a greater portion of the economy is available to capital investment conducive to American Imperialism. Drake argues as long as the human rights movement appears to be no more than a revolving door with the US State Department, "the movement will have little-to-no moral authority." (1053) Why is this? Why is it that that Human Rights discourse has come to be perceived as the handmaiden to US Empire? It is because it has been coextensive with the effort at expanding and integrating the frontiers of NATO, and thus market penetration by monopolist US financial interests, of the post-Soviet bloc. Michael Drake, "They Hate U.S. for Our War Crimes: An Argument for U.S. Ratification of the Rome Statute in Light of the Post-Human Rights Era," UIC John Marshall Law Review 52, no. 4 (Summer 2019).

2 In Nicaragua v United States of America (1986) the Court writes that the Principle of Non-Intervention is "part and parcel of customary international law," (at para 202) and that it "involves the right of every sovereign State to conduct its affairs without outside interference." (at para 202) The ICJ moreover confirmed that the principle of non-intervention applied not only to territorial sovereignty, but also required that "political integrity also to be respected." (at para 202) The ICJ found that the principle of non-intervention "forbids all States or groups of States to intervene directly or indirectly in internal or external affairs of other states." (at para 205) The ICJ notes that prohibited intervention bears on matters which the principle of State sovereignty dictates that a state may "decide freely." (at para 205) One of these matters reserved to the discretion of the State, the ICJ writes, "is the choice of a political, economic, social and cultural system, and the formulation of foreign policy." (at para 205) The ICJ found that "Intervention is wrongful when it uses methods of coercion in regard to choices, which must remain free ones." (at para 205) Nicaragua v United States of America (Case Concerning Military and Paramilitary Activities In and Against Nicaragua) (1986), [1986] ICJ Reports p 14 ['Nicaragua v United States of America (1986)']. The Principle of Non-Intervention is not merely derivative of the Principle of Respect for Sovereignty. No, it moreover includes a prohibition upon Thermidorian conduct, that is, explicitly Counter-Revolutionary action against States. This latter content, the prohibition against foreign intervention for the purposes of quashing Revolution, is not reducible to the respect for territorial and political sovereignty of all States. It is something different. Historically the United States played the primary guarantor of this freedom of Self-Determination against political interference from abroad. In seeing that the Counter-Revolutionary European powers could undermine its geopolitical position as a Revolutionary Republic, the United States adopted the role entailed by the Monroe Doctrine, the claim of extrajudicial, extraterritorial sovereignty, asserted on behalf of Revolutionary Republics. However throughout the Twentieth Century, and especially over the past thirty years, proved to be this principle's greatest hypocrite, intervening constantly in the affairs of Sovereign States all over the globe, totally flaunting from the end of the Nineteenth Century onwards the principles it had once sought to champion and ensure against the united Counter-Revolutionary powers of the early Nineteenth Century. In the course of the Spanish-American War in 1898 the Americans at first promised Self-Determination to the Filipinos, but later reneged and annexed the Philippines. And for what purpose, this incredible change of heart concerning the value of the principle of Self-Determination of States? To explicitly crush and extinguish from the earth the spectre of Class Struggle and secure all territory for exploitation by Monopoly Imperialist Capital. As De Leon argued in 1898, the primary beneficiaries of the beneficent liberation of the United States in Latin America had become, by the end of the Nineteenth Century, not independent peoples, but rather American sugar, tobacco and fruit trusts.

3 In combination with unilateral, hence illegal, economic sanctions, the United States has committed composite breaches of the Principle of Non-Intervention against both Venezuela and China over the past five years, from 2015 to 2020. To this list could easily be added Iran, Syria, Bolivia, and Yemen, among others, who have been on the receiving end of both unilateral, hence illegal, US economic sanctions and claims against their Human Rights rectitude, however we will restrict our specific analyses to Venezuela and China. While the Imperialist weaponization of Human Rights discourse alone may not constitute a breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention and the prohibition on interference with the Self-Determination of States.

4 In 2019, Mohamed Helal underook the effort of a full conceptual articulation of Coercion in International Law. Helal notes that while "the prohibition on intervention in the internal or external affairs of states" (3) is the cardinal rule of international law, what has rather attracted a great degree of attention is "violations of the prohibition on intervention and purported exceptions to this rule." (3) Helal's central claim is that while the ICJ found that the United States had acted in a coercive manner with respect to Nicaragua, in contravention of the Principle of Non-Intervention, it nonetheless found this through narrowly legalistic disaggregation of Nicaragua's claims which set the bar too high. Coercion, Helal writes, "is a dynamic process in which one or more states engage in pressure and counter-pressure at various levels of intensity using a broad range of instruments over an extended period." (62) Helal writes that it is "impossible to examine the legality of coercive practices by disaggregating the acts undertaken as part of a coercive strategy and viewing them in isolation." (62) The legality or illegality of coercion, Helal writes, must be assessed "through a holistic examination of the relationship between the relevant parties and a systematic tracking of their behavior in light of the objectives of the coercing state and the means it employs to achieve its objectives." (62) The question, Helal writes, is to determine "the point at which pressure crosses the threshold of illegality to become a form of coercion." (47) Beyond this threshold, Helal writes, one finds a "composite breach" (64) of the Principle. These composite breahces, Helal argues "consist of separate acts that are part of a common objective or a unified strategy that is, in its totality, unlawful." (83) Mohamed S. Helal, "On Coercion in International Law," New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 52;1, Fall 2019.

5 In a plea for the politicization of Human Rights discourse, Angel Oquendo argues that critics of the washington-based Organization of American States charge that "under the perverse influence of the United States [it] has no real in human rights" but rather "imposes a conservative agenda and thwarts any endeavor to revamp the responsible entities or even substitute the personnel." (23) Angel R. Oquendo, "The Politicization of Human Rights: Within the Inter-American System and beyond," New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 50;1, 2017.

6 The Composite Breach of American intervention into the Sovereign Affairs of Venezuela includes a consideration of the hypertrophy of the Monroe/Roosevelt doctrine concerning Latin America, and its having morphed into a claimed Right to inhibit, sabotage, and destroy Socialist and Indigenous political projects within the American sphere of influence. Joseph Lutta notes that the political dynamics of Venezuela are shaped, on the one hand, by "class disparity," with political power concentrated around an "urban bourgeoisie," (58) and racial dynamics wherein, "Spanish elites" dominate politics "to the detriment and expense of the Afro-Venezuelans and the indigenous groups." (58) Lutta writes that after the overthrow of the dictatorship of Marcos Perez Jimenez in 1958, successive governments implemented programs of neoliberal austerity, privatization and extractivism, which "left the masses disgruntled and disenfranchised by their political elites." (59) Lutta notes that, for example, the government of President Carlos Andres Perez had reduced oil revenues by divesting the Veneuzuelan State of its stake in the oil industry. It was in this context which Hugo Chavez came to power in 1998 and proceeded to expand the Veneuzelan State's capacity to intervene in the economic process such as to improve the station of Venezuelan working class, indigenous and Afro-Venezuelan people. Lutta notes that Chavez's Government "diverted significant proportions of the oil revenue into social welfare programs such as health care, education, housing and public infrastructure that benefited the masses." (59) Lutta writes that Juan Guaido is "the 'civilian version' of the contras since he operates under the ostensible control and support of the American government." (67) Joseph Lutta, "A Critical Analysis of Western Intervention in Foreign Nations: A Case Study of Ukraine and Venezuela," Russian Law Journal 7;4, 2019. The Human Rights claims against Venezuela consist of a litany of supposed abuses against political dissidents, totally divorced and disaggregated from their context, ie a hybrid-war conducted by the United States against the State of Venezuela. The least bit of scrutiny of the organizations funding and orchestrating this campaign, the Washington-based Organization of American States, the Lima Group, betrays that their interest is precisely to engender the situations which they claim to decry. They are provocateur organizations. Coupled with the operation of unilateral, illegal, US sanctions, their actions constitute one element of a breach of the Principle of Non-Intervention. In 2019, former UN special rapporteur Alfred de Zayas described unilateral US sanctions against Venezuela as "illegal" and "crimes against humanity." Michael Selby-Green, "Venezuela crisis: Former UN rapporteur says US sanctions are killing citizens" The Independent, 26 January, 2019 (https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/venezuela-us-sanctions-united-nations-oil-pdvsa-a8748201.html). Unilateral US sanctions against an official State Department enemy cannot be considered as apart from allegations by the United States of Human Rights abuses by that official enemy. Sanctions are specifically calculated to produce a desperate situation and coerce economic compliance.

7 The Composite Breach of American intervention into the Sovereign affairs of China includes a consideration of the American contribution to the ongoing political instability of the middle-east, that is, the strategic development and cultivation of Sunni extremism as a military bulwark, first against the Soviet Union, and now against China. These claims have, in the privately owned media companies of the West, been hyperbolically called 'genocide' and 'forced labour.' In the case of China's efforts at deradicalization, claimed to be 'genocide' by a hyperbolic Western press, none of those epithets were or have been deployed in that same presses to describe France's efforts at deradicalization. Why is this? Because of course France is not a Class Enemy, and therefore is not subject to the same opprobrium! In July of 2019, at the 41st Session of the United Nations Human Rights Council, 22 counrties, notably the UK, Australia, Canada and New Zealand criticized China's position on Xinjiang. At that session 50 counrties, notably Bolivia, Egypt, Iran, Pakistan, Russia, Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Venezuela and Palestine all supported China's position. Letter dated 8 July 2019 from the Permanent Representatives of Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Japan, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the President of the Human Rights Council A/HRC/41/G/11; Letter dated 12 July 2019 from the representatives of Algeria, Angola, Bahrain, Bangladesh, Belarus, the Plurinational State of Bolivia, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cambodia, Cameroon, Comoros, the Congo, Cuba, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Djibouti, Egypt, Equatorial Guinea, Eritrea, Gabon, the Islamic Republic of Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, the Lao People’s Democratic Republic, Mozambique, Myanmar, Nepal, Nigeria, Oman, Pakistan, the Philippines, the Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, Serbia, Somalia, South Sudan, Sri Lanka, the Sudan, the Syrian Arab Republic, Tajikistan, Togo, Turkmenistan, Uganda, the United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, Yemen, Zambia, Zimbabwe and the State of Palestine to the United Nations Office at Geneva addressed to the President of the Human Rights Council A/HRC/41/G/17. In October of 2019, at the 74th Session of the United Nations General Assembly Committee on the Elimination of Racism, Racial Discrimination, Xenophobia and Related Intolerance, 57 countries, led by Egypt, Iran, Russia, and Venezuela supported China's position on Xinjiang. At this session 24 counrties, led by the United States, the UK, Austalia, New Zealand and Canada, the so-called Five Eyes Anglo-American bloc, criticized China's position on Xinjiang. Summary record of the 37th meeting Third Committee A/C.3/74/SR.37. This is to say nothing of the United States' efforts at deradicalization over the preceding twenty years, which consisted of unilateral invasion and systematic carnage unleashed upon the muslim world as a consequence of the slightest blowback from their Sunni allies. The United States, as a corollary of its political project of liberal internationalism, simultaneously funds, arms, trains and encourages Salifist and Wahhabist Sunni Extremists, as well as uses the attempt by the States subject to this instrumentalization to deal with the problem in a rational and technocratic manner to level cynical charges of Human Rights abuses. It has done this, also, since the late 1970s, as Zbigniew Brzezinski's contribution to the Carter Doctrine. The United States profits at both ends: (1) first, by destabilizing countries not economically and politically integrated into the frontiers of NATO through the use of contras and proxies; and (2), by portraying the attempt to deradicalize Sunni Islamic populations as allegedly rife with Human Rights abuses, for which, it is contended, the State in question must be further disciplined. In November of 2020, for example, the United States revoked the designation of "East Turkestan Islamic Movement (ETIM)" as a terrorist organization, ostensibly in an effort to elevate its political standing. Liu Zhen, "China Accuses US of Double Standard as it Drops ETIM from Terrorist List" South China Morning Post, Nov 6, 2020 (https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3108846/china-accuses-us-double-standards-it-drops-etim-terrorism-list); Sha Hua, "China Irate After US Removes 'Terrorist' Label from Separatist Group" Wall Street Journal, Nov 6, 2020 (https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-irate-after-u-s-removes-terrorist-label-from-separatist-group-11604661868).

8 In July of 2019, Western China critics like Adrian Zenz and the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) pivoted from their previous claim of genocide, to claims of forced labour. They pivoted to charging that China is compelling the minority Uyghur population into forced labour. The evidence for this charge is slight to non-existent. Some of the critics acknowledge that Uyghur workers are in a wage-labour relationship, not a forced-labour relationship, and others do not. Those who do attempt to paint the wage-labour relationship and conditions under which Uyghur workers labour in such a way that they are tantamount to forced labour, and those who do not acknowledge that the relationship is that of wage-labour accuse China of something they lack evidence for, that is, unremunerated and coerced labour. Some critics elide entirely the working programs and poverty alleviation programs instituted by the Chinese Government, and others acknowledge it and attempt to portray vocational training and state-led work projects as ominous. Singh notes that Zenz contends that, even if labour is remunerated, the labour in China is coerced because "not everyone will want to be part of this rigid plan." Ajit Singh, "'Forced Labour' stories on China brought to you by US Gov, NATO, arms industry to drive Cold War PR blitz" The Grayzone, March 26 (https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nato-arms-industry-cold-war/). One wonders if, by this, they contend that every worker in liberal-democratic society wants to be part of the rigid plan of monopoly enforced laissez faire economics! What the accusation that Uyghur labour is 'not free' labour amounts to is the highly subjective and ideological charge that whereas the sale of the labouring commodity is 'free' in Capitalist States, it is 'not free' in Communist States like China simply in virtue of the State's role at the commanding heights of the Chinese economy and the utilization of economic planning. The accusation levelled is that, at least in the case of the Uyghur minority, the Chinese authorities are facilitating the use of forced or compulsory labour in contravention of International Instruments under which it is proscribed. It is important to remember, however, for the purposes of parsing forced or compulsory labour as proscribed under the International Law instruments, that Article II(b) of the ILO's Forced Labour Convention specifically exempts labour which "forms part of the normal civic obligations of the citizens of a fully self-governing country." This is not to say that the 'normal civic obligation' exemption would abrogate the necessity that work be compensated, but it would refute a notion that simply because work is part of a state-planned economic endeavor that it is de facto forced or compulsory. In fact, of one digs deeply enough into the claim, one finds that what is really being asserted is not that the labour in China is not remunerated, but rather that precisely in virtue of its being State-led, it is therefore and therein coercive. Ultimately one finds it resolves into and is reducible to a moral claim over whose workers are more ill-treated by respective conditions of remunerated labour.

9 It is a claim that, for example, World Systems theorist Samir Amin wholly rejects. Amin calls China bashing "the favored sport of Western media of all tendencies - including the left, unfortunately - that consists of systematically denigrating, even criminalizing, everything done in China. . . participat[ing] in the systematic campaign of maintaining hostility toward China, in view of a possible military attack." (85-86) Ajit Singh argues that while the "capitalist restoration narrative" (68) holds sway ideologically in the West, it actually wholly misrepresents the nature of contemporary China. Singh argues that the policies adopted by Deng Xiaoping in the period following 1978 are not reflective, in fact, of a capitalist restoration, but rather a reprisal of Lenin's 'New Economic Policy' which characterized the Soviet Union in the early 1920s. Far from a retreat from socialism, these reforms in fact reflect the strategic prerogatives of Chinese Communists to use global capital flows to develop the productive forces of society, both in terms of the sophistication of capacities of living labour (social reproduction, education, public health), and the level of technological and scientific advancement. As Singh writes, "while capitalism exists within China, public ownership of the means of production is dominant and ultimately structures and guides the movement of the entire social formation. The authority of the worker's state over capitalists allows it to set the country's political and economic agenda and prioritize the interests of the vast majority of people." (78) Ajit Singh, "China: Reform and Revolution in the People's Republic" in Keywords in Radical Philosophy and Education: Common Concepts for Contemporary Movements ed Derek Ford (Leiden: Brill, 2019). Roland Boer answers the question of whether China is Communist by answering that China is in the process of building Communism, and that Socialism with Chinese Characteristics reflects a particular iteration of the "multiple possibilities for socialism have opened up with the rich history of socialist revolutions." Roland Boer, "Is China Communist?" Taking Notes, 36, 2014. No less an authority than the World Bank credits China with having lifted 850 million people out of Poverty over the past forty years, and between 2001 and 2020 Chinese workers' wages have increased six-fold, while wages in North America remain stagnant. These views are shared by the philosopher and historian Domenico Losurdo, and World Systems theorist Giovanni Arrighi.

10 This panoply of allegedly Non-Governmental Institutions is invariably either based in Washington, DC, or funded by the National Endowment for Democracy, also based in Washington, or both. Hersch Lauterpacht argued that the use of private institutions by one State to effect subversion in another " is a clear breach of international law," (403) and that Indirect Intervention, or Subversion, is "a disguised interference with the internal relations of a foreign State. . . a denial of its independence." (403) The test as to whether a government is using an allegedly private institution to effect unlawful International purposes, Lauterpacht writes, is whether the private association in question is so closely associated with the Government and the Stat as to become indistinguishable from it." (405) Herch Lauterpacht, International Law (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1970), Helal notes on the nature of 'impartial institutes' funded by Defence and weapons companies "by misrepresenting or concealing its identity, the communicator engages in subversion that undermines and sabotages the political process, an act that should be proscribed by the prohibition on intervention." (115) Mohamed S. Helal, "On Coercion in International Law," New York University Journal of International Law and Politics 52;1, Fall 2019. As Ajit Singh notes in The Grayzone, while the ASPI is described in Western Press as "an independent, non-partisan think tank," it is in fact funded by the Australian Department of Defence and weapons manufacturers, from Raytheon, Lockheed Martin, to Northrop Grumman. Ajit Singh, "'Forced Labour' stories on China brought to you by US Gov, NATO, arms industry to drive Cold War PR blitz" The Grayzone, March 26 (https://thegrayzone.com/2020/03/26/forced-labor-china-us-nato-arms-industry-cold-war/). Singh writes that information presented by these think-tanks relfect "serious biases and credibility gaps that Western media wilfully ignores in its bid to paint China as the world's worst human rights violator." Former Australian Foreign Minister Bob Carr has alleged that ASPI reflects a "one sided, pro-American view of the world." The purpose of these think tanks is to produce threat credibility such as to financially benefit the domestic military industrial complex in the respective imperialist and sub-imperialist vassal states.