By Chris Fry
On January 3, the People’s Republic of China successfully landed a spacecraft with a rover on the far side of the moon. To accomplish this feat, in May, the PRC had placed a relay satellite in a “halo orbit” around the moon, where it could simultaneously view both Earth and the far side of the moon, which is always turned away from our planet.
Chinese scientists were thus able to control the landing of the satellite in the Von Kármán crater as well as to direct the rover across this lunar surface and relay back data and pictures. This breakthrough by the PRC could foreshadow many developments in space exploration. For example, a radio telescope built on the moon’s far side would be sheltered from Earth’s electromagnetic interference, providing a much clearer picture of the universe and its origin.
This historic and unprecedented scientific, technical and engineering accomplishment received relatively little coverage by the U.S. corporate media, as they continue their ceaseless chatter that the PRC’s technical successes stem from the theft of U.S. technology; however, some know better.
Chinese-American U.S. astronaut Leroy Chiao wrote an article for CNN, in which he stated that “China has surpassed all other nations with a new achievement,” continuing:
While China is preparing its space station, with plans to start sending parts up in 2020, America is planning to exit the International Space Station — the collaborative effort of 15 nations — in 2024-2025. According to an internal NASA document obtained by The Washington Post in early 2018, the plan is based on the unrealistic idea that we can transition management of the facility to a commercial entity.
…the White House [is] seemingly more intent on creating the so-called “Space Force,” a new military branch, than investing in a real space exploration program.
In fact, China’s moon landing is only the latest technical and engineering accomplishment, most of which come at least in part or whole by the socialist country’s state-owned companies and government agencies.
U.S. imperialism’s bargaining chip: the kidnapping of Meng Wanzhou
On December 1, during a trade conference in Buenos Aires, Trump and President Xi announced a 90-day “truce” in the escalating U.S. trade war against China. Trump pledged to hold off the 25 percent tariffs that he had threatened to impose on $267 billion of Chinese imports. On that same day, on orders from U.S. Justice Department, Canadian police in Vancouver arrested Meng Wanzhou, deputy chairperson of the Chinese telecom giant Huawei, as she was returning from Buenos Aires back to her home in China.
The U.S. is calling for Meng’s extradition to the U.S. to face charges that her company violated U.S.-imposed sanctions against Iran. Of course, the sanctions themselves are acts of economic warfare designed to overturn the elected government of Iran because it has resisted the Pentagon and Big Oil since the 1979 revolution there. Additionally, there is no evidence whatsoever that Huawei tried to sell anything to do with Iran’s terminated nuclear program.
The charges against Meng and Huawei are clearly spurious. The U.S. is accusing Huawei of “tricking” a pair of Western banks into conducting financial transactions with Iran by creating a “false” subsidiary. On this basis, the Chinese executive faces 60 years of U.S. imprisonment.
At first, both Canada and the U.S. announced this arrest as merely an enforcement act of criminal justice but Trump, who apparently was not told of the arrest beforehand, let the cat out of the bag when he was asked by a Reuters reporter if he would intervene in the case. “Whatever’s good for this country, I would do,” he said. “If I think it’s good for what will be certainly the largest trade deal ever made — which is a very important thing — what’s good for national security — I would certainly intervene if I thought it was necessary.”
It should be noted that no U.S. politician or any corporate media outlet has objected to Meng’s arrest. Huawei is a major developer of the new 5G technology with 100 times faster data speed for networks and cell phones, and U.S. imperialism has no problem at all lining up behind Trump to smash its competition.
Trump’s new war chief: “Remember China, China, China!”
Acting U.S. Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan, who replaced fired Jim “Mad Dog” Mattis, held his first meeting with the chief of the branches of the U.S military on January 3. The contents of the discussion was largely kept secret, but a participant at the meeting did reveal one statement from the new defense secretary: “‘While we’re focused on ongoing operations, acting Secretary Shanahan told the team to remember China, China, China,’ the official said.”
Since Trump unleashed his trade war with China, the Pentagon has matched his moves with a series of provocations near Chinese islands and the Chinese coast. Even while trade talks between the U.S. and China were going on in Beijing January 7-9, the USS McCampbell, a guided missile destroyer, sailed within 12 miles of a Chinese island in what the U.S. Navy calls a “freedom of navigation” exercise. Since China has never threatened any commercial shipping, this warship’s maneuver can only be seen as a threat of an imperialist blockade and open war.
The People’s Republic of China, just like every other socialist country, has a right to demand and expect normalized trade relations with capitalist countries. Certainly, U.S. and Western banks and corporations have extracted vast fortunes from Chinese labor ever since the PRC leadership opened their country to imperialist owned factories and allowed internal capitalist enterprises to flourish.
U.S. imperialism expected that this would eventually lead to the downfall of socialism in China, just as it did in Russia. Instead, the leadership of the PRC has strengthened the workers’ state institutions in China, has reinstituted and increased economic planning, and has tightened its control over the nation’s development.
China’s famous Silk Road initiative is projected to spread key development projects across Asia, Africa and Europe, where Trump and U.S. imperialism can only offer occupying military bases and weapons sales.
Of course, it is to be hoped that a temporary agreement can be reached between U.S. imperialism and the PRC and economic and military warfare averted; however, the only permanent solution is to end the parasitic, profit-hungry capitalist system in the U.S. that thrives on racism, bigotry and war.
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