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Sunday, October 23, 2022

CPC concludes key 20th congress with 'confidence to create new, greater miracles' on ...Xi Jinping,and the newly elected members of the Standing Committee

 Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, and the other newly elected members of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the 20th CPC Central Committee: Li Qiang, Zhao Leji, Wang Huning, Cai Qi, Ding Xuexiang and Li Xi, meet the press at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, Oct. 23, 2022. (Xinhua/Shen Hong)

 

 

 
 
Xi Jinping elected general secretary of CPC Central Committee: communique

Xi Jinping was elected general secretary of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) at the ...

 

CPC concludes key congress with 'confidence to create new, greater miracles' on ...

Xi Jinping is presiding over the closing session of the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) ...

 

How Britain fell from grace

 

British Prime Minister Liz Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before global economic forces effectively destroyed her government. PHOTO: REUTERS

 

 

Whatever you may think of them, the British used to enjoy the reputation of a solid, well-run and responsible nation.

A centuries-old history of peaceful political change, with none of the coups, revolutions or civil wars that seem to have afflicted most other countries worldwide. A robust parliamentary system of government in which just two political parties take their turns in holding power based on electoral procedures that produce clear-cut results and solid governments with none of the unpredictable and often unstable coalition-making that afflicts most of the rest of Europe.

To be sure, the country’s politicians have always been of variable quality. But the United Kingdom’s civil service was highly rated for its professionalism and integrity, and so was its legal system, still considered an advantage and often touted as a national asset by many countries around the world.

That’s why Britain’s sudden descent into crisis looks so surprising. In just a few weeks, the credibility of some of the most critical institutions in British national life, including the prime minister, the Treasury, the Bank of England, the ruling Conservative Party, and the nation’s asset management industry, were all torn to shreds.

The country’s currency has sunk to its lowest levels in half a century, and the risk premium international investors demand to lend money to Britain is among the highest in the industrialised world.

For the first time in modern history, the British government was forced to bow to the pressure of global financial markets and withdraw a budget it had introduced only two weeks beforehand. And in another highly unusual move, the International Monetary Fund issued a rebuke to Britain using language otherwise reserved for those who manage the economies of poor and vulnerable developing nations.

Truss versus lettuce

Consequently, British Prime Minister Liz Truss, who assumed office only last month, had to ditch her policies before these were even tried, and the speculation in London is that her days are numbered.

The influential Economist newspaper had pointed out that, if one ignores the extended period of official mourning for Queen Elizabeth II – a period during which all politics were suspended – Ms Truss enjoyed only seven days of full power before the forces of the global economy effectively destroyed her government. That, The Economist suggested, is more or less the supermarket “shelf-life of the lettuce”.

Liz Truss may never recover from this cruel jibe: a British tabloid newspaper is currently offering its readers a live video stream of a lettuce head and a photograph of the Prime Minister, accompanied by the question, “which wet lettuce will last longer?”

Britain as a whole is now the butt of international jokes. Politicians in Italy – a country that will soon get its 70th government in almost as many years – have suggested that one of their retired prime ministers may be sent to London to try his hand at managing the British because he can’t do any worse than Britain’s politicians.

Mr Kyriakos Mitsotakis, the Prime Minister of Greece, a country that a decade ago had to be bailed out from national bankruptcy by global financial institutions, told Ms Truss’ government tongue-in-cheek that if they “need experience in dealing with the International Monetary Fund, we’re here to help”.

While the attention is on the UK experience, other economies and major currencies are also currently experiencing global pressure. The British pound may be down around 18 per cent to 20 per cent, but the euro is about 15 per cent weaker, and the Chinese renminbi dropped by an average of 11 per cent against the US dollar. The Bank of Japan recently spent an estimated US$21 billion (S$30 billion) trying to prop up the yen, to no avail.

However, credibility is everything in politics, finance and economics, and the UK government finally managed to lose all of these. Britain’s previously admired institutional framework and its hard-won reputation of certainty in financial policy went down the pan over the past two weeks.

And financial volatility is accompanied by political volatility. Between 1990 and 2010 – two decades – Britain was ruled by only three prime ministers. But from 2010 to now - just over one decade - the country has already known four additional prime ministers and may yet be ready for a fifth. Furthermore, no less than four politicians have served as finance ministers since January this year. These are chaotic politics Italian-style, minus the sun-drenched beaches or the delicious pasta.

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‘Cakeism’ and Brexit

How did Britain get to this sorry state? A mixture of immediate failures by the Truss administration, magnified by a much more entrenched malaise.

Ms Truss won power by resorting to the oldest trick in politics: a promise that voters can have their cake and eat it. She vowed to cut taxes and increase spending, all based on borrowing from financial markets. And she dismissed the arguments of armies of economists who pointed out that hers was not an economic policy but a fantasy.

The more she faced criticism, the more she doubled down on her promises; her pledge to cut taxes became a test of wills, which she was determined to win. So, her ill-fated budget slashed taxes much further than anyone expected and sidelined Britain’s financial regulator and the country’s civil servants.

Ms Truss quickly discovered that one should not attempt to offer a spending bonanza against the backdrop of sharply rising inflation and interest rates, a punishing global energy crisis, as well as a British current account deficit which ballooned to an unprecedented 8 per cent of gross domestic product, and all without providing any indication of how Britain intends to deal with its public finances. The Prime Minister not only ran into a flat rejection by the financial markets, she unleashed a financial rout that could only be addressed by withdrawing her entire budget.

The problem of Ms Truss was not necessarily just the financial figures she peddled but the fact that her ill-conceived budget became totemic for a more comprehensive loss of British political and economic credibility, which has been cumulative over several years. 

 

The chief culprit is Brexit, as the British withdrawal from the European Union is popularly known. The damage that Brexit inflicted on the British economy - in terms of lower growth rates, lower exports and slashed inward investment – is by now well-documented.

But a much more severe impact on British credibility has been the conduct of the country’s political elite during this divorce process from the rest of Europe. The campaign to withdraw from the EU was conducted with lies; those who supported Brexit produced made-up figures about how Britain’s trade with the rest of the world would, supposedly, more than compensate for the loss of duty-free access to European markets.

And anyone who dared contradict the Brexiters by providing actual economic facts and figures was dismissed as part of so-called “project fear”, an alleged plot by the “establishment” to keep Britain shackled to Europe.

The tactic worked not only in pulling Britain out of the EU; it also spawned an entirely new class of British politicians who believe that all they need to do is to ram their policies through regardless of what the economic realities may be and if the facts don’t accord with their views, present “alternative facts”.

During the campaign that propelled her to power, Ms Truss refused to engage in any serious discussion with the critics of her economic policy, just as Mr Boris Johnson, her predecessor as prime minister, declined to explain how Britain would thrive outside the EU. Both politicians operated on the assumption that make-believe economics can become real economics.

And the reason people like them can come to power is to be found in another negative development of British politics.

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Who chooses the party leader?

For many decades, the Conservatives and Labour – the country’s two major historic parties – were mass movements, counting millions of members. But the election of the party leaders who could then become prime ministers was left in the hands of the few, usually just the MPs in either party.

Over the past 15 years, however, mass party membership disappeared: Britain’s Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, for instance, has far more paid-up members than all the political parties combined.

Yet, curiously, the choice of who gets elected as party leader was taken from MPs and given to the parties’ entire membership. The result is that an unrepresentative group of party members – in the case of the ruling Conservatives, only around 160,000 people out of a total population of 68 million – decides who would rule Britain.

If it were left to the MPs alone, Ms Truss would have got nowhere near the Downing Street residence of British prime ministers. But she won on a platform of economic fantasies sold to people who wanted to believe in the enduring myth of having something for nothing.

Ultimately, it was left to the global financial markets to confront Britain with the rude awakening it deserves by presenting the country and its daydreaming politicians with the invoice for their mismanagement.

It’s improbable that Ms Truss will ever recover from its current debacle; the only question is whether the humiliation the UK has just experienced at the hands of global financial markets will bring to an end the age of untruthful politics that has so devalued the country’s administration.

But it won’t be easy to get out of this rut. King Charles III best summed up the national mood when he recently welcomed Prime Minister Truss to an audience with “dear, oh dear!

  https://omny.fm/shows/in-your-opinion/is-the-nominated-member-of-parliament-scheme-losin

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Saturday, October 22, 2022

China striving in unity will benefit the world more

 

Students at Zhejiang Guangsha Vocational and Technical University of Construction celebrate the upcoming 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Friday, in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. Photo: VCG

Students at Zhejiang Guangsha Vocational and Technical University of Construction celebrate the upcoming 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China on Friday, in Jinhua, Zhejiang Province. Photo: VCG

 

The report delivered to the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) further pointed out the direction of the cause of the Party and the country. In the report, "striving in unity" emerged as a very important phrase. Striving in unity is the only road the Chinese people can take to make historic achievements under the leadership of the Party. When our country's development enters a period in which strategic opportunities, risks and challenges coexist, and uncertain and unpredictable factors are increasing, it is especially necessary for us to take "striving in unity" as a source of strength to overcome difficulties.

In today's world, especially in the political arena of the West, striving in unity has become scarce. In the UK, shortly after Liz Truss announced the end of the shortest tenure ever for a British prime minister, MPs from her Conservative Party began taking sides and betting on who would become the new leader. Some Western media claimed that, plagued by internal divisions, Truss' successor will face a "long winter of discontent." In the US, although some media outlets are laughing at the drama their "iron brothers" across the ocean are embroiled in, it's just a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Surveys show that more than two-thirds of American adults are worried that this year's midterm elections will further divide the US. In an article titled "The US Is Heading Toward a Second Civil War. Here Is How We Avoid It," Time magazine said that because of political differences, approximately 20 million Americans are ready to fight in a country with over 400 million guns.

This is a common problem faced by many countries, including developed countries in Europe and the US. Partisan confrontation, social division, and internal political friction, catalyzed by weak economic growth or stagnation, are forming a dead end in a vicious circle. Dangerous extreme populism is also surging. All these have made "striving in unity" a vital form of national competitiveness - as unity is becoming increasingly difficult to achieve, it's also become increasingly valuable. It can be said that different countries face their own challenges, but there is only one thing that all societies need, and that is striving in unity. Without unity, society will be torn apart by internal friction; without striving, no matter how many family assets have been accumulated, they will be dissipated sooner or later.

As the lyric of a song that is well-known to Chinese people goes, "Unity means power." Since modern times, the Chinese people's understanding of unity has been very profound. The Chinese phrase "a plate of loose sand" corresponds to a collective memory of humiliation, suffering, turmoil and war suffered by the Chinese nation. It is the CPC that has united and organized the Chinese people to completely bring this nightmarish experience to an end. Because of the CPC, it has been possible for the Chinese nation to achieve the greatest extent and greatest degree of unity, which is also positive energy. "The Party has made spectacular achievements through its great endeavors over the past century," and this is one of the institutional advantages of socialism with Chinese characteristics. The unity of the Chinese people is the unity that closely revolves around the backbone of the CPC.

Today, striving in unity has been endowed with a new significance of the times. The acceleration of major global changes not seen in a century has brought the world into a new period of turbulent change. One thing deserves our utmost vigilance - external forces, which regard China as a zero-sum competitor or enemy, are looking for cracks in Chinese society and Party organizations with a magnifying glass and trying to take advantage of them. However, as long as China is internally united, no outside force can shake it. External suppression can only make the Chinese people more proud, confident, and assured, as well as the Chinese society more united to defeat all forces that try to provoke us and repel all those that try to sabotage us.

It must be stressed that in contrast to the scattered "unity" which the US has formed through creating an outside "enemy" and enhancing its aggressiveness, the ultimate aim of China's striving in unity is to focus on doing its own things well. We deeply understand that for a huge and developing country like China, instability, uncertainty and insecurity from the external environment are not decisive. Since reform and opening-up, we have encountered many external risks, but have managed to overcome them by doing our own things well and focusing on domestic affairs. "The great achievements of the new era have come from the collective dedication and hard work of our Party and our people." This was the case in the past, and so will it be in the future. Meanwhile, doing our own things well contributes to building the community with a shared future for mankind.

Striving in unity is the precise refinement and vivid expression of the strong consensus of the Chinese nation. The Chinese people have never had any illusions that realizing national rejuvenation would come easily, nor have they had any illusions that some external forces would stop provoking China and lend it a helping hand. When we are facing difficulties and challenges, the Chinese people's spirit of striving in unity will be even higher. Let us "fight one battle after another," move toward new victories in unity, and strive to achieve new success!

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Tweet:  #20thCPCNationalCongress came to a successful close. Delighted & privileged to have participated in & witnessed this historic event.
 
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