05 Dec Capitalist Communists and Other Anomalies of Our Age
We could – and, if you don’t behave, just might! – write several weeks of pieces on the various deleterious aspects of the 28th United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP28), currently underway in Dubai. Today, we want to focus on one of the least understood and least addressed aspects of the gathering – and of the climate change regime more generally – which is also, quite possibly, the most important. Ironically, this aspect of the climate change agenda doesn’t have anything to do with emissions numbers or temperature measurements or any of the other topics generally associated with climate discussions. Rather, it has to do with how the two sides of the climate debate interact with one another and how destructive this interaction is, both in terms of international relationships and global security.
Now, to be clear, when we say that there are “two sides” interacting with one another in the climate change arena, we don’t mean to say that there are “believers” and “deniers” working together to hash out agreements and procedures. Fat chance. COP28 is a gathering for believers only (and, of course, those who pose as believers for financial gain). Deniers – which is anyone who doesn’t agree that “the science is settled” and we’re all gonna die! – are not welcome, this week or at any time in the future.
Therefore, when we refer to the “two sides,” we mean those world leaders who think climate change is so imminent and so devastating that it must be addressed RIGHT NOW and those who care more about how they’re going to provide food, clean water, energy, and economic development for their people. Call them the global “haves” and “have nots,” the rich nations and the poor nations, the Global North and the Global South. Think here of Germany on one side, rapidly deindustrializing to curb its emissions and “save the world,” and India, on the other, announcing just two weeks ago that it is seeking private investment to expand its coal-fired energy production to keep up with rapidly increasing demand.
In brief, the leaders of the Global North wish to solve the climate crisis through a return to feudalism. They want their own people to sit down, shut up, eat the bugs, and carpool in their battery-powered toy trucks. They want the people of the Global South to be happy in their poverty, to be grateful for the “charity” they are given, and to accept all that is benevolently bestowed upon them as evidence of striving toward “climate justice.”
In last week’s piece on COP28 and Adam Smith, we briefly noted the UN’s “loss and damage fund.” This fund is the primary tool by which climate justice will be achieved:
Delegates meeting in Dubai agreed Thursday on the operationalization of a fund that would help compensate vulnerable countries coping with loss and damage caused by climate change, a major breakthrough on the first day of this year’s UN climate conference….
On X (formerly Twitter), UN Secretary-General António Guterres also welcomed the agreement to operationalize the fund calling it an essential tool to deliver climate justice. He urged leaders to support the fund and get COP28 off to a strong start….
In short, nations contributing least to greenhouse gas emissions are least equipped to deal with droughts, sea-level rise and other climate-related destruction. Lives, livelihoods and cultures could be massively altered by extreme weather events. As the climate crisis unfolds, these events will occur more frequently, and the consequences will become more severe.
The draft agreement to operationalize the long-awaited ‘loss and damage’ fund aims to help compensate vulnerable nations for the impact of climate change, by, citing just one possible example, ensuring that vital infrastructure can be rebuilt or replaced with more sustainable versions.
For their part, the leaders of the Global South are uninterested in the North’s welfare. Oh, they’ll happily take the North’s guilt-money. And why wouldn’t they? But they’ll also continue to try to develop their industrial bases and economies so as to be able to create their own wealth, to make themselves and their people rich, without having to rely on the North’s capricious benevolence.
The irony here is overwhelming. As the developed world’s “smart set” prattles on endlessly about the ugly legacy of colonialism and justifies antisemitism as a “legitimate” response to Judeo-Christian Orientalism, it is simultaneously trying desperately to lock its former colonies into a neo-colonial relationship based on the idea that economic growth and well-being are the enemies of nature and a properly functioning planet.
If hypocrisy and epistemic confusion were the only problems with all of this, that would be bad enough, galling enough to justify almost any criticism of this patently paternalist effort. But, of course, they are not. Not even close.
While the Global North plies the Global South with baubles and bribes to remain poor, one nation that fits comfortably into neither category is offering the South an alternative.
Last week, we read with interest a Bloomberg story on car sales in Mexico. We don’t generally pay attention to car sales numbers, much less in Mexico, so the story was both surprising and enlightening:
Last year the country was the No. 1 importer of Chinese models, and so far in 2023 it trails only Russia, according to data from the China Association of Automobile Manufacturers. Chinese cars accounted for almost 20% of all car sales in Mexico through October, and they’re selling faster than those manufactured in any other country, including Mexico.
Chinese car sales in Mexico rose 51% in the first 10 months of the year, with 212,169 sold, according to data from the Mexican Association of Automotive Distributors (AMDA). Every other foreign country is selling less than half that to Mexican consumers. While almost all of these vehicles are gas-powered, the trend gives China a coveted foothold in North America as it battles the US for supremacy in automotive sales.
This story is not unusual. Although the Chinese are targeting Mexico for auto exports specifically, it is targeting virtually the entirety of the Global South with various other economic, trade, and investment agreements, focusing especially on digital infrastructure. China is building wealth and building friends as well.
The Winter 2023 issue of American Affairs contains a long and buffeting piece about China’s foreign investments, penned by the inimitable David P. Goldman (i.e. The Asia Times’ “Spengler). You should, as they say, read the whole thing, but in lieu of that, the following is instructive:
China’s more than $1 trillion of loans through the Belt and Road Initiative entail a significant number of high-profile problems. These developing economies are often cartelized and corrupt, and face challenges ranging from political instability to inadequate infrastructure. Foreign investment in the Global South, outside of East Asia, has stagnated since the Global Financial Crisis, according to unctad data. Nevertheless, as a newcomer without strong relationships in the Global South, China has chosen to become an agent of transformation in local economies, beginning with mobile broadband and the ecosystem of businesses that grow from it. Perceptions of China are most favorable in countries where China has the biggest trade and investment footprint. A 2022 study by YouGov notes:
an obvious divide between the West and other parts of the world is general sentiment towards [China]. This includes majorities in nine out of twelve non-Western countries in the sample with positive views of China’s role in the world. In another example of a V-shaped pattern, there are also signs that China’s reputation may be bouncing back after the pandemic in places beyond the West. In Mexico, for example, positive views of China fell from 73% in 2019 to 50% in 2021 but changed direction this year to 59%. In both Egypt and Saudi Arabia, the positive portion for this year is 57%, up from 47% and 41% respectively in 2021. Thailand, Kenya, and Nigeria show a similar jump of at least 15% over the same period.
Just four years ago, the People’s Republic of China – and its fascistic, aggressively secretive government, in particular – unleashed a plague upon the earth that killed upwards of 3 million people. Today, the PRC’s favorables are nevertheless rising quickly, in large part because that same aggressively fascistic, secretive government is willing to invest in economic growth in the developing world. While the grand poohbahs of climate change gather in Dubai to eat, drink, be merry, and condescend to the “lesser” people, the Chinese COMMUNIST Party is out spreading capital around, trying to turn poor people into rich capitalists. Again, the irony is thick, as Goldman notes:
An historic irony is that the Communist Party of China has fostered an unprecedented wave of entrepreneurship in the developing world, by building mobile broadband networks throughout the Global South. A notionally communist party, that is, has become the most effective propagator of capitalism on record. This conclusion is richly supported by data on broadband usage, business formation, and economic growth.
This will NOT end well – for the Global North, at least.
