The World’s Structural Contradictions are Unprecedented

Fu Mengzi

In recent years, the development of the international situation has been complicated and profound, and there are many points of view and rapid changes. If the world situation more than a year ago was a chaotic and confusing move, the situation in 2018 can be said to be unclear and irregular, and the situation at the end of the year is still the same. The global financial crisis has continued to slow down the overall trend of the world economy, and its economic, social and political impacts still exist. The current world is full of uncertainties. The policy actions of the United States under Trump have been unprecedentedly expanded, the intensity of the big countries has increased, and the coordination and struggle between the two sides have been equally prominent. The regional hotspots are complex and a good turn of the global economy next year may be just a luxury, the trade protectionism is hard to calm down and the populist influence continues to rise. Aside from the many differences in the world, it is particularly noteworthy that the world's structural contradictions and conflicts have emerged unprecedentedly. It is not single, but pluralistic, bilateral and multilateral, regional and cosmopolitan issues. It is expressed in the following aspects.

First of all, the competition of big countries, especially the state of strategic tension between China and the United States, is presented in the form of a giant screen on the world stage, triggering an escalation of the “new two poles” represented by individual countries.

Second, the world's structural contradictions are also reflected in a more microscopic level, that is, the conflict between public and private enterprises, which has become the cornerstone of competition among different types of countries.

Third, the coexistence and conflict between the concepts of nationalism and globalism has brought globalization to a crossroad, the synergy of global governance has declined, and efficiency has been discounted.

Finally, the world's structural conflicts are manifested in different ideas, and the formation of their conformity and consensus will determine the future of the international order.

China is transitioning from a regional power to a global power, from a big economy to a strong economy. In this new historical era, China needs to be more calm and cautious in observing the numerous international situations, and to relentlessly adhere to and advocate the Chinese initiative, the Chinese wisdom and the Chinese concept. Based on the construction of the “Belt and Road” initiative, we aim at expanding China’s influence, enhancing world consensus, improving global governance, and making due contributions to the building of a community of shared destiny for humankind.

Forty Years of Reform and Opening Up: China and the World

Yu Sui

What did the 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up demonstrate?

Napoleon once had a famous saying about China, "China is a sleeping lion. Once it is awakened, the world will be shaken!" It can be said that this prophecy has been proved repeatedly by the founding of the Communist Party of China and the People's Republic of China, as well as the Chinese miracle that has been created by China’s forty years’ reform and opening up. It may also be said that President Xi Jinping’s speech at the celebration of the 40th anniversary of reform and opening up seems to have endorsed this assertion when he said, "Reform and opening up is a great awakening of our Party."

The 40th anniversary of the reform and opening up was the "Awaken Lion China" highlighting the achievements and summing up the experience. It blew the horn of the enthusiasm and sent 4 points of information to the world.

First, we are proud to tell the world that the Chinese people have gone through the difficult path which was a right choice.

Second, we frankly tell the world that the great achievements of the Chinese people are united by the whole country.

Third, we earnestly tell the world that the Chinese people will continue to follow this path unswervingly.

Fourth, we solemnly tell the world that the Chinese people are fully reliable partners, and that the peaceful rise of China is not terrible.

How to see the world influence of China’s reform and opening up for 40 years?

In the past 40 years, China has indeed undergone fundamental changes, but it is still far from the goal pursued by the Chinese people. China has become the world's second largest economy, with a total economic output of about 60% of the United States, and a population that is more than four times that of the United States. In terms of per capita GDP, China ranked 70th in the world in 2018, and China is struggling to achieve poverty alleviation by 2020.

China, which is committed to national rejuvenation while not forgetting to make a greater contribution to humanity as much as possible, is an active proponent and serious practitioner who seeks peace, promotes development and cooperation.

Take the African policy announced by China not long ago as an example. President Xi Jinping put forward the "five nos" principle, that is, no interfering with African countries in exploring a development path in line with their own national conditions, no interfering in Africa's internal affairs, no imposing China's will on African countries, no attaching any political conditions in aiding Africa, and no seeking political self-interest when financing African. China not only said this, but also put it into action. If the world's major countries can do this, things will be much easier.

Today's China and the United States are very different from the Soviet Union and the United States previously.

President Xi Jinping once said to President Trump: "We have a thousand reasons to do a good job in Sino-US relations. There is no reason to ruin Sino-US relations." This is based on history and reality. This requires the leaders of the two countries to take up their courage, the two peoples to cooperate closely, and the media of the two countries to move in the opposite direction.

Economic Development is Endless and People's Livelihood is the Greatest Concern

Yang yiyong

On December 19, 2018, General Secretary Xi Jinping delivered an important speech at the 2018 Central Economic Work Conference, summed up the economic work in 2018, analyzed the current economic situation, and deployed economic work in 2019. The meeting determined that there are seven key tasks to be done in 2019. Safeguarding and improving people's livelihood is one of the seven tasks. The more the economic situation is unfavorable and the more the reform continues to deepen, the more attention should be paid to further safeguarding and improving people's livelihood. Safeguarding and improving people's livelihood is the initial heart of the Chinese Communists in the new era, which is completely consistent with the pursuit of happiness for the people and the revival of the nation. To do a good job in people's livelihood in 2019 requires not only consolidating the original fundamentals, but also further highlighting the following eight aspects:

First, keep the bottom line and carefully promote the work of people's livelihood

Second, put employment stability at a prominent position, focusing on solving the employment of college graduates, migrant workers, and retired military personnel.

Third, increase investment in pre-school education, early childhood development in rural and poor areas, vocational education, etc.

Fourth, improve the old-age care system, making efforts to solve the problem of old-age care in big cities.

Fifth, work harder to do a good job in food and drug safety, safe production and traffic safety.

Sixth, deepen the reform of the social security system, promote the national overall planning of endowment insurance on the basis of accelerating provincial-level coordination, and incorporate more good medicines for life-saving and emergency care into medical insurance.

Seventh, continue to transfer some of the state-owned capital to enrich the social security fund.

Eighth, build a long-term mechanism for the healthy development of the real estate market, insisting that the house is used for living, not for speculation, consolidating the main responsibility of the city government with different policies in different cities, improving the housing market system and housing security system.

All in all, to protect and improve people's livelihood is like to sail against the current--if we do not advance, we will go back. We must persist in doing our best, perfect the system, keep the bottom line, and strive to solve the problems concerning the people’s most direct and most realistic interests, thus improving their sense of security, well-being and happiness.

Xi Jinping's Thought of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics in the New Era and the Work Concerning the Aged

Huang Yanfen

Everyone will be old, which means that old age is an important stage that every individual must experience. Therefore, doing a good job of old age is also an important content and stage to realize the all-round development of the people. General Secretary Xi Jinping's new ideas, new ideas and new strategies on aging work are not only an important part of Xi Jinping's socialist ideology with Chinese characteristics in the new era, but also an ideological weapon that we must follow in order to do a good job in the work concerning the aged.

Xi Jinping's thoughts in the new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics are problem-oriented. From the perspective of history and reality, international and domestic correlation, theory and practice, using strategic thinking, dialectical thinking, bottom-line thinking and problem thinking, etc, the ideological method, to understand the problems of China and the world, contains not only Marxist positions, viewpoints, methods, but also features, concepts and characters full of the atmosphere of the times and practice and innovation. We must thoroughly study Xi Jinping's new era of socialism with Chinese characteristics and consciously apply it to guide the reform, innovation and development of the nation's aging work. Among them, there are six basic strategies closely related to the work concerning the aged, which should be the six fundamental principles guiding the work of aging in the new era:

1. We must persist in the party leadership.

2. We must adhere to the people as the center.

3. We must persist in comprehensively deepening reforms.

4. We must adhere to the rule of law in a comprehensive manner.

5. We must adhere to the new development concept.

6. We must persist in safeguarding and improving people's livelihood in development.

In the report of the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, General Secretary Xi Jinping also stressed, "We must always put the interests of the people in the supreme position, make the reform and development achievements more fair and accessible to the whole people, and continue to advance towards the common prosperity of all people." As mentioned above, only by upholding the interests of the people above all else and constantly pursuing the realization of the free and all-round development of human beings can we provide a continuous source of power for the development of the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era, and successfully complete the historical responsibility of our party. Since everyone will be old, with the advancement of public health and medical treatment, more and more elderly people will be in the whole population. We cannot marginalize the interests of more and more elderly people, and we must attach more attention to the life style, rights and living quality of the elderly. Actively responding to the aging of the population is a long-term strategic task of the country and is of great significance for planning and advancing aging work from the national strategic level.

Britain Goes from "the Empire on Which the Sun Never Sets" to the Decline

Li Changjiu

The United Kingdom defeated France in 1763 and the Netherlands in 1784 before becoming a European power. By 1876, the British encroached colony area of 22.5 million square kilometers, equivalent to 92 times the British mainland area of 244,000 square kilometers. Britain became the world's largest colonial empire, known as "the empire on which the sun never sets". At the end of the 19th century, Germany surpassed Britain. By the beginning of the 20th century, the United States replaced Britain's global hegemony, and Britain gradually declined.

The painful lesson of the rise and fall of China and India

The painful lessons of India and China being defeated by Britain in a short period of time and becoming colonial and semi-colonial, respectively, must be kept in mind, and the past experience, if not forgotten, can be a guide for the future.

Why India became a British colony

Western colonists successively invaded India, mainly because India was not unified and was defeated separately.

Between 1757 and 1815, the United Kingdom extracted 1 billion pounds of wealth from India and turned it into investment, which promoted the science and technology in the UK and accelerated the process of the British industrial revolution. Britain’s aggression and plundering of India brought heavy disasters and suffering to the Indian people. A British parliamentarian pointed out: "I am convinced that any civilized government at any time on the planet is no more corrupt, more deceitful, and more vicious than the East Indian government of 1765-1784."

The painful lesson of China becoming a semi-colony

First, the Qing Government was corrupt and incompetent

Second, the transfer of science centers and the backwardness of weapons

Third, neither reform nor open

Marx pointed out, "The large empire with a population of almost one-third of the human population, regardless of the current situation, was still isolated as it was strongly excluded from the world relations. Therefore, it strove to perfect the fantasy of the heavens to deceive itself. Such an empire is finally going to die in such a desperate duel in which the representative of the old world was inspired by the principle of morality, and the representative of the most modern society was to achieve the privilege of buying and selling--this is indeed a tragedy, and even the poet's fantasies will never dare to create such a bizarre tragedy theme."

Why Britain became "the empire on which the sun never sets"

From the 16th to the 17th century, the British colonists plundered a large amount of resources and wealth from the world, laying a solid material foundation for the British industrial revolution. From the 17th century to the 1830s, this was quite the time of the Chinese Ming Dynasty to the Qing Dynasty. The World Science Center was transferred from Italy to the United Kingdom. In the United Kingdom, there was an unprecedented scientific revolution, technological revolution and industrial revolution in history. In 1687, Newton published the masterpiece Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy, which was the first major synthesis in the history of science. By the beginning of the 20th century, Newton's methodology became the most universal guiding ideology of natural science research through Einstein's refinement and advocacy. The scientific revolution and its influence became the forerunner of the technological revolution. The highly efficient steam engine successfully invented by Watt, who was responsible for the repair of the Newcomen steam engine at Glasgow University, has been in production since 1786. The Watt steam engine can be used in connection with any machine tool. All the large machines, including trains and ships, are driven by steam engines, and the entire industrial production and social life have changed dramatically. This is the first technological revolution and industrial revolution in human history. After the United Kingdom, the European continent, the United States, Japan and other countries fully promoted the steam engine, thus "changing the world."

In the process of buying cheap raw materials and selling expensive processed products, the United Kingdom continued to expand its colonies. By 1876, Britain had became the world's largest colonial empire, known as "the empire on which the sun never sets".

Britain heading for decline

First, Germany's strength exceeded Britain

(1) Germany took the lead in emancipating the movement

(2) Human beings entered the "chemical synthesis era"

Second, the United States replaced Britain's global hegemony

Third, British colonies gained independence successively

After the Second World War, the British colonies were successively independent, and the UK could no longer arbitrarily plunder resources and obtain excess profits. With the independence of the colonies, the United Kingdom declined from "the empire on which the sun never sets". In 1979, the British Ambassador to France, Nicholas Henderson, before the departure of his message to the British Foreign Secretary, in a report called The Non-Commitment Report: The Decline of the UK, Its Causes and Consequences, painfully pointed out, "Today's UK is not only no longer a world power, but it is not even a European first-class country." "Today, we are regarded as the embodiment of the disease, as if we were regarded as the embodiment of success."

Top 10 International News in 2018

Yang Chengxu/Wang Yusheng

1. Establishing the guiding position of Xi Jinping's diplomatic thoughts and practicing the building of a community of shared destiny for humankind

2. Is the first meeting of the US-DPRK summit the first step in resolving the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula?

3. The China-US summit was held in Argentina, opening the door to the Sino-US trade truce.

4. The contradiction between the United States and Europe is sharp, with the divergence intensifying to an unprecedented height after the War.

5. The United States withdraws its troops from Syria. The Middle East pattern gives birth to a new change.

6. the "yellow vest" movement began in France and spread to other European countries.

7. The United States stops the Iranian nuclear agreement and restarts sanctions against Iran.

8. the US stock market fell sharply at the end of the year, questioning the prediction of the world economy

9. Prime Minister Abe’s visit to China means Sino-Japanese relations have returned to normal track.

10. Improvement of US-DPRK relations to promote the improvement of relations between the DPRK and the ROK.

Facing Chaos: Russia Returns to Realism

Feng Yujun

In May 2018, Putin returned to the Kremlin, starting his fourth presidential term and will be in power until 2024, and his ruling ideas have basically seen a "regression of realism". In fact, in the early years of Putin's administration in the early 21st century, realism was the main tone of his governance. However, as international oil prices climbed and promoted the economic growth and relative recovery of its national power, Russia's internal affairs and diplomacy entered a more "radical" period. In particular, around 2008, "the United States has declined", "multipolarization has become a reality", "Russia can make a difference" and other judgments once dominated Russia's international strategic view. In 2007, Putin's "Munich Speech", the 2008 Russia-Georgia War, and the 2014 Crimean crisis became the concentrated reflection of Russia's "strong diplomacy."

However, the following Western sanctions and the sharp fall of international oil price have severely hindered the development of Russia's economy and rapidly deteriorated the international environment. In the face of grim reality, Russia has to re-examine the international environment, adjust its international strategy and internal and external policies, and gradually return to rational and pragmatic realism.

1. Domestic affairs are more important than diplomacy

Under the changing circumstances, the importance of internal affairs and economy is further highlighted than diplomacy. Although Putin was re-elected in the presidential election in March 2018 with a high vote of 76%, his measures such as delayed retirement and tax increase had caused a relatively strong rebound in society. There have been demonstrations in dozens of cities in Russia, and the public’s job satisfaction with Putin has fallen sharply, from 82% at the highest level this year to 60% at the low. People’s trust also fell from 58.9% at the beginning of the year to 36.5% at the beginning of November.

Facing the chaos, Putin also realized that internal stability is more important than external expansion, so he put more resources and energy into improving domestic governance, maintaining economic stability and maintaining people's livelihood needs, rather than expanding international influence.

In Russia's comprehensive national strength, military strength still occupies the largest proportion. Russia’s military spending is no longer the same as that of the United States, and it has been unable to carry out an all-round arms race with the United States. However, Russia is still striving to strengthen its military, trying to maintain a critical containment of the United States and keep an "asymmetrical balance" with the United States. At present, despite the economic difficulties, Russia has strengthened its military construction, maintained a high proportion of military expenditures, and promoted the development and deployment of a series of new weapons, such as the "Salmat" Intercontinental Strategic Missile, Su -57 fighters, supersonic missiles, etc.

Second, diplomacy tends to be rational, and strives to "get through the cold winter"

After the "strong diplomacy" was blocked, Putin had clearly realized that the power gap between Russia and the United States was huge, and Russia could not compete with the United States. Therefore, Russia gradually returns to rationality and pragmatism in its relations with the United States, and seeks to ease the Russia-U.S. relations, while being prepared for the worst.

While striving to avoid a “slow cooling” of relations with the West, Russia is also stepping up its efforts to “turn eastward” and actively strengthen cooperation with China, Japan, and India.

Of course, in terms of diplomacy with the east, Russia’s biggest gain comes from China: in the political field, the two countries have frequent interactions, enabling Russia to avoid excessive “lone sense” in the relations between the major countries; in the economic field, the trade volume between the two countries has recovered rapidly, which was $87.25 billion from January to October 2018, up 28.2% year-on-year, and is expected to exceed $100 billion in the whole year; in the energy field, Russia has become China’s largest oil supplier for two consecutive years.

But at the same time, we must not neglect that China may not be able to obtain symmetrical expected returns from Sino-Russian relations: strategically, the enthusiasm for relations with Russia does not seem to ease our pressure posed by the United States, and may even worsen the US strategic perception of China; Economically, even if the trade volume between China and Russia reached $200 billion, Russia cannot replace the value of the United States in China in terms of marketing, investment, technology, knowledge, management and social governance. Under the international changing circumstances, Russia is returning to realism, and Sino-Russian relations have entered an important transitional period. The asymmetry of the national strength of the two sides, the inequality of strategic operations and the imbalance of cost and return are worthy of great attention.

US Economy is Recovering Strongly, but the Outlook is Worrisome

Zhou Shijina

The US economy is recovering strongly in 2018, and GDP is expected to reach around 3%. Trump has cut taxes on businesses and individuals on a large scale, stimulating economic growth and consumption growth. But these effects are difficult to sustain, and negative effects have begun to appear. The fiscal deficit and national debt increased sharply. The Fed continued to raise interest rates and shrink its balance sheet. Trade protectionism and tariffs affected foreign investment. Corporate costs rose, trade deficits increased, and the stock markets fluctuated. The U.S. economy was in turmoil. Its growth rate will decline in 2019 and there may be a recession in 2020.

Large-scale tax cuts stimulated rapid economic growth

The sharply growing fiscal deficit and the heavy burden of national debt have put enormous pressure on the sustainable development of the economy.

The stock market turmoil alarmed the U.S. economic downturn

The employment situation in the United States is divided into two

The Fed increased interest rate and shrank the balance sheet

Trump's trade war dragged down U.S. economic development

The US economic outlook is worrisome

The sharp increase in government bonds has led to high interest rates on debt repayment, which has greatly increased the burden on the country to pay debts. This will seriously affect the sustained and stable development of the U.S. economy. The interest rate of government bonds that appeared in early December caused the three major stock indexes in New York to have the same plunge on December 4th as on October 10. The Dow fell 3.1%, the Nasdaq fell 3.8%, and the S&P fell 3.24%. Bank stocks have become the worst segment of the S&P index. One reason is that the market worries that the U.S. bond yield curve is upside down, indicating that the economic recession is coming. Another reason is that the Wall Street worries about Sino-US trade friction have risen again (the fuse is that Huawei executives are being detained). In the past, the economy will soon be in a recession after the U.S. bond yields are upside down. Therefore, the downside of U.S. Treasury yields has intensified financial market concerns about the US economic outlook.