While most of the media frame conflict with China in Manichean, us-versus-them terms, past and present actions by Canada and other Western states reveal a centuries-old pattern of colonialism, imperialism, military threats, diplomatic isolation and other forms of aggressive behaviour aimed at weakening and ‘containing’ the world’s most dynamic and populous economy.

In recent weeks movements in different countries have toppled statues and put the police and other institutions upholding systemic racism on the defensive. Yet, amidst unprecedented protests against racism, there has been remarkably little interest in the white supremacist foreign policy alliance currently driving conflict with China.

Trump is a symptom as well as a cause of the polarisation of the US political system, more divided now than at any time since the Civil War ended in 1865. Yet the decline of the US is much greater than the rise of China, significant though that may be, and it is naive to imagine that Beijing will simply displace Washington at the top table.

Kerala, India’s communist state, has managed to flatten the curve with forceful measures. They activated controls at airports and train stations to detect the entry of the virus into the state, and established temporary quarantine shelters to lodge tourists and non-residents. This was followed by aggressive testing, contact tracing, long quarantine periods, shelters for migrant workers, and cooked meals for those most in need.

What will the post-coronavirus world look like? History tells us that in times of crisis, large corporations and the most vulnerable in society seek refuge under the protection of the state. The 2008 financial crisis already made clear that markets alone cannot drive competitiveness and prosperity. On the contrary, state intervention is crucial.

The popular argument that lithium is necessary to transition vehicles away from fossil fuels usually doesn’t go deeper to critique the influence of Canadian and US companies on economic priorities and policies in those countries with substantial lithium deposits. For at least two decades, mineral prospecting in Mongolia has gone hand-in-hand with neoliberal policy intervention, and the looming lithium boom signals that this will only intensify.

China’s rapid growth has produced prosperity and reduced poverty. It has also generated less wholesome economic, social, and ecological consequences which are now catching up with it, making the much-vaunted Chinese model increasingly less attractive for developing economies.

On December 13, the United Nations high commissioner for human rights released a powerful statement that criticized India’s new citizenship law. This “fundamentally discriminatory” Citizenship (Amendment) Act of 2019 would expedite citizenship for persecuted religious minorities from India’s neighboring countries. But in the list of those minorities, it names only Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, Jains, Parsis and Christians. It does not mention Muslims.

This attack on the very being of Kashmir is unprecedented. The Kashmiris will sooner or later respond by taking to the streets. With thousands of troops already deployed across Kashmir to silence dissent, there is every reason to fear for the safety of every single Kashmiri living under Indian rule today.

The year 2018 marks the fortieth anniversary of the beginning of China’s economic reform programme, originally initiated in 1978. The rise of migrant workers’ strikes since early 2000s and the efforts of the Chinese government to rebalance and reregulate workplace relations have created fertile ground for labour studies and labour activism in China.