According to Jeffrey Sachs and William Schabas, there are credible charges of human rights abuses against Uighurs, but those do not per se constitute genocide. And we must understand the context of the Chinese crackdown in Xinjiang, which had essentially the same motivation as America’s foray into the Middle East and Central Asia after the September 2001 attacks: to stop the terrorism of militant Islamic groups.

If capital sees the Olympic Games as the end of a pandemic and a way out of an existential crisis that could have—but didn’t—signal its collapse, the left must observe the Olympics as a beginning; as a launching point to organize and build to the next crisis, taking the failure of this one as a lesson and not an acceptance of our system’s seemingly eternal power.

Canada’s role in obstructing India and the rest of the Global South in their attempts to waive vaccine patent rights is immoral, unjust, and completely illogical, propping up a system of extreme vaccine inequality by allowing just 16 percent of the world’s population, all of whom reside in wealthy countries, to maintain control of half of all confirmed vaccine orders.

Today, the world faces a terrible pandemic, the deepening and disastrous effects of climate change, and an increasing danger of global war. We are concerned about Xinjiang and welcome ongoing investigations to determine what is actually happening and what might be done. But we should align ourselves with emancipatory goals, and not fall into the trap of reviving a declining, imperial ‘West’ against the rest.

Chinese and American leaders are now playing a game of chicken that couldn’t be more dangerous for both countries and the planet. Isn’t it time for the new Biden administration and its Chinese opposite to grasp more clearly and deeply that their hostile behaviors and decisions could have unforeseeable and catastrophic consequences?

Flying under the radar of Canadian media, Mongolia has long been one of Canada’s closest partners in Asia as a source of strategic metals and minerals, while occupying a fulcrum point between Southeast Asia, Russia and the Middle East. Yet, little light has been shed on the bleak implications of the increasing demand for lithium, and other strategic resources found across Central Asia that are essential to the energy transition.

The colonization of Kashmir has been unfolding for more than half a century, marking a direct assault on local culture and identity, the rapid expropriation of land, heightened economic marginalization, and the accelerated forces of settler-colonialism. We must insist that Canada take leadership to pressure the Indian government and push for the realization of self-determination for the people of Kashmir.

We must learn to resist China’s dispossession and discrimination against Uighurs and other ethnic minorities as part and parcel of a global movement against racial subjugation, colonialism, police brutality, surveillance, and incarceration. Only then will we be able to realize that working-class interests transcend borders, regardless of what the elites in our respective countries keep telling us.

The arrest of Huawei executive Meng Wanzhou was a colossal blunder by the Trudeau government, executed at the request of the now almost universally discredited Trump administration, which blatantly admitted that she was being held hostage as a bargaining chip in the former president’s trade war with China. Canada should release Meng and chart a new course for relations with China—before it’s too late.

China presents its Belt and Road Initiative as a way to address global deficits of development, peace and governance and has called for an international community with a shared future, while some of its critics see these initiatives as a challenge to a Western-dominated liberal world order and an attempt at securing hegemony. But the Chinese model suggests a new, anti-imperialist model of international governance may well be taking shape.