TeleSUR invites Atilio Boron, Political Scientist and Sociologist from Argentina, to provide his insight into the historical significance of China’s War of Resistance against Japanese Aggression and the World Anti-Fascist War, especially in the geopolitical context of today, 80 years after its end. teleSUR
00:00This is a key moment for China that is showing the world how China is a leading force, a geopolitical force in the current political scenario in China, and how it is influencing the rest of the world.
00:20Hi, Adilio Borong, once more. Thank you very much for joining us.
00:24Yes. Well, China is today, without any doubt, one of the major players in the international arena.
00:33And this is why, for the United States, China is the enemy to defeat.
00:38The problem is that China has become very, very powerful, not in offensive terms.
00:46Yes. This formidable display that we are seeing here of all sorts of vehicles and missiles and so on, they have essentially a defensive character.
01:01Compare, I think the US has about 13 or 14 carriers. China has one, and probably is going to have a second one in a few months more.
01:16So, carriers are essentially offensive weapons. You can put many planes there and then go to the seas and have these planes attacking targets overseas.
01:33But, essentially, in the case of China, China has an enormous defensive capacity, and this is why many military in the US are extremely reluctant to launch military operations against China,
01:48because they know that they will be defeated, because they know that they will be defeated if they go so.
01:52But, beyond that, China is one of the, as I mentioned to you, a country which has acquired a phenomenal gravitation in world affairs.
02:06Take the case of Latin America, for instance. Take the case of the economic relations between China and the countries in Latin America and the Caribbean in the year 2000, for instance.
02:17The size, the size, the volume, total volume of the economic commercial exchange between China, Latin America and the Caribbean was about 12 billion dollars.
02:28Okay? 12 billion dollars in the year 2000. In 2024, the volume is 488 thousand billion dollars.
02:42That means an increase of 40 times, approximately 40 times, the volume of the economic exchange between Latin America, the Caribbean and China.
02:55That gives China a prominent role, even if it is not a military role, but it is a crucial economic role, a crucial technological role.
03:07Because China, and this was said a few years ago by former President Jimmy Carter, in a famous speech he made, saying that the US was the more world-like countries in the world.
03:28He said that, saying we are approaching our 250 years of independent history, and considering all that long period, 250 years, only during 19 years, our country was not involved in foreign wars.
03:45And we have then lost an enormous amount of money, and brain resources. And this is why China, if you look, I am quoting President Carter, if you look at the history of China,
04:03China, since the victory of the revolution, October 1, 1949, China was in no war at all during all this period.
04:14And that is why they made an economic progress in all the more important areas of today, having to do with satellites, informatics, telecommunications, robotics, artificial intelligence, in which China is really leading the race.
04:36And the US is falling behind, and falling behind any time more because of all these errors in the matter of economic investment or disinvestment in science and technology and universities.
04:51And therefore, the influence of China is basically not only economic, it's a technological influence, extremely important technological advance, which was given for a country which 80 years ago was one of the poorest countries in the world.
05:11Devastated by the war with the Japanese and all that, today they are in the prime position.
05:20Devastation, the high-speed trains, which China has, have no rivals in any other part of the world.
05:29They have more than 35,000 kilometers of high-speed trains.
05:35The US has no more than 1,200 kilometers, and the high-speed trains in America would not be considered high-speed in China
05:49because the standard speed of the trains in America, or the what in America they call high-speed is about 200 kilometers.
06:00In China it's at least 400 kilometers, not to mention the new rail connection between Beijing and China, in which the trains go at more than 500 kilometers per hour.
06:16So that's an enormous advance, which of course overflows over all the rest of the world.
06:23And the Americans are looking from outside this phenomenal increase in the productivity, in the sciences, and also in the model of governance.
06:39Or today, even if you look at very conservative economic press, all are looking or are talking about the new forms of capitalist governance.
06:50Well, they made a mistake. China is not capitalist. China is a special form of socialist with market economy in a combination, but in which the leading role is in the hands of the state and the Communist Party, and not in the hands of the market.
07:12But all are saying that, well, we have to learn what China has done.
07:19About two or three days ago, for the first time in decades, decades, decades, okay, the American government bought 10% of, I don't remember, a company, the shares of a company.
07:38For the first time in more than 20, 30 years. This is absolutely ridiculous. The development which was obtained by China was something which had to do with the private initiative, but especially with the phenomenal role of the state and the excellency of the professionals which work in the state.
08:01This is something which Deng Xiaoping mentioned very, very well in the Congress of the party in 1978, in which he said that the starting point of the new China was that the old economic model failed, was to have an efficient public administration.
08:22And then Xi Jinping said to the Congress, we don't have that in China. We have a very unprofessional, ill-prepared, poorly motivated public administration, but we don't have a vibrant bureaucracy able to conduct the process of economic growth of China.
08:43You have to have a very unprofessional, and they have a very unprofessional, and they have to form that new class of public administrators and they did, and they find that, the way to do it.
08:52And this is why this phenomenal progress that we are seeing here in military, as we see in science, in computer science, in artificial intelligence, all this story of the deep sea,
09:06You remember when Donald Trump took over and said that, well, we are going to invest 500 billion dollars in the development of a special machine, searching machine, and four or five days later appeared the Chinese with a deep sea.
09:27And the deep sea is a fantastic artifact in which you can have, in a very, very short period of time, all kinds of information that you need.
09:42And it costed nothing, coins, a small chain, by comparison with this huge amount, which meant corruption, because we have to understand that most of the money that is invested in economic development in the U.S. goes to the military industry.
10:03And the military industry later on asks the policy makers to start wars, because if I am a manufacturer of helicopters, I need to have wars in which I can send some of the parties at war my helicopters and then produce more, more, and more.
10:23And the political campaign of the governor, the senator, the U.S. representatives, not to mention the president, is financed by the, essentially, the three or four branches of the economy.
10:37And the first one, the first one, is what Eisenhower, in the year 1961, call the military, the industrial military complex.
10:46And today we have the big pharma, which is another complex.
10:50We have Wall Street, financial capital.
10:53Basically, these are the people who financed the political career of the politicians in America and the results, you see, are easily outside.
11:07Thank you very much, Atelier Ferrer Analysis, for joining us today amid the celebrations taking place in China in this 80th anniversary of the victory and the resistance against Japanese aggression.
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