A Decisive Year to Defeat the Oligarchy
The intentions of the elites behind the trans-Atlantic financial system for the year 2021 are clear: implement the so-called “Great Reset”/greening of the global economy, complete with its agenda of decarbonization, deindustrialization and depopulation. Now that the neoliberal model is acknowledged to have reached the limits of its usefulness, without provoking major popular backlash and revolts, the drive is on to move directly to a form of corporate fascism under the guise of “saving the planet” and/or of stopping the pandemic.
An incoming Biden Administration, as it now stands, will drop the resistance to that agenda which Donald Trump had successfully mounted, and resume the regime-change, endless war policy of the Bush-Obama years. As for the European Union, it has long since embraced the “green deal”. However, a mobilization of the concerned populations could still overturn or at least delay those plans.
A completely opposite approach to economic development is being pursued by China in the framework of the Belt and Road Initiative. Indeed, the one country that has made the greatest progress toward improving the general welfare in 2020 is China. Hard-core China-bashers such as (still) U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo or European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, attribute the undeniable success to a ruthless dictatorship and the disregard for “western values”, but their credibility is worn more than thin.
And despite the propaganda relayed by the media, Beijing has not been isolated. In the first three quarters of 2020, despite the pandemic, China’s non-financial investments in countries along the Belt and Road increased by nearly 30% compared to 2019, with the majority going to infrastructure projects. Moreover, the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership was signed by 15 Asian nations, and even the EU signed a new China-EU agreement on investments (cf. below), while Moscow and Beijing have grown increasingly close over the past year in several fields.
On the domestic front, the progress made by China was summarized by President Xi Jinping in his New Year’s message to the nation. Calling 2020 an “extraordinary year”, he noted that the country had not only managed to bring the spread of the novel Coronavirus under control, but also to achieve the goal of totally eliminating extreme poverty (cf. SAS 49/20). In 2021, the government intends to focus on the development of the rural economy and, given the many uncertainties of the international situation, will rely on domestic consumption as the primary driver of growth. Xi Jinping also underlined the country’s achievements in science and innovation, pointing to the success of the Change’5 mission to the Moon and the Tianwen-1 mission to Mars.
