The imperialist conflict between the US and China, which has erupted with full force in the past few years, opens a new historical stage of global capitalism and international relations. It is proceeding at dizzying speed especially due to the Covid-19 pandemic and is much more than a standard trade war. It contributes to a partial reversal of globalization but it is also a stage in the general economic, geopolitical and strategic clash between US imperialism and the rising challenge of China for domination over the planet. In previous historical epochs such clashes would always lead to war – in the 20th century, two world wars.
“There is something eerily reminiscent of the summer of 1914 about the state of US-China relations,” warned The Guardian in an editorial. Other commentators call this a “new cold war” and with the qualification that this is a global struggle, not between capitalist and non-capitalist social systems but between imperialist powers, socialists can also use this description. This “new cold war” between the two most powerful imperialist states, which at certain stages will draw in other imperialist rivalries – the European Union, Russia, India and Japan – is now the main axis around which the global situation revolves. It will be a long drawn out process affecting all spheres – economic, political, social and geopolitical and a key defining feature of world relations in the next period.
Come hear socialist activists from the most important areas on the frontline of this conflict talk about the need to fight both US and Chinese imperialism with international working class solidarity.
One of 18 discussions at Revolutionary Ideas Online Festival of Resistance and Socialism:
US-China inter-imperialist rivalry: a New Cold War?
Saturday, 28 November
2-4 pm
Further reading:
World Relations || Inter-Imperialist Conflict and a New Cold War
The US-China Cold War || Towards a Bipolar Global Economy
New Cold War || Conflict in the South China Sea — a Socialist Analysis
