Roland Boer's Blog, page 29

Full text of Singapore Summit Statement between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump

Here is a translation of the full statement from the Singapore Summit today:

President Donald J. Trump of the United States of America and Chairman Kim Jong Un of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) held a first, historic summit in Singapore on June 12, 2018.

President Trump and Chairman Kim Jong Un conducted a comprehensive, in-depth, and sincere exchange of opinions on the issues related to the establishment of new U.S.-DPRK relations and the bui...

Mao’s ‘contradiction analysis’ valid more than 60 years later: on the decline of the USA

Back in 1957, Mao gave a long speech called ‘On Correctly Handling Contradictions Among the People‘ (I am reading it at the moment as part of my Chinese language study). He was thinking about such matters more intensely at the time, since he had been revising part of his lectures on Dialectical Materialism, first given in Yan’an in 1937. That part would become ‘On Contradiction‘, the most important and influential writing on philosophy in China in the twentieth century.

‘On Correctly Handling...

China and DPRK working closely together

With the various coverages of the meeting tomorrow between Kim Jong Un and Donald Trump, a small but important detail may not have received the attention it deserves. Kim Jong Un and his team flew in an Air China plane from Pyongyang to Singapore. Kim has a plane that he can use, so why a Chinese plane? It is not any plane, but one of those used by members of the Chinese Politburo for overseas travel.

The message is clear: the DPRK has the backing of China in the current process. Indeed, sinc...

The Socialist State: Philosophical Foundations

This book outline deals with the socialist state, examining an alternative path through the Marxist tradition in order to understand the realities of the socialist state, with a focus on China. These realities include a many-layered enmeshment of state and society, the nature of the multi-party system, the practices of socialist democracy, and future directions, all in light of distinct emphasis that Marxism – as a guide for action – is front and centre in China. The method is simply working...

The Socialist Welfare State: A Brief (and Intriguing) History

‘Do you think Europe – especially Scandinavia – is more socialist than China?’

This question used to be more common 7 or 8 years ago. But it came up recently while I was in Yunnan province, in the far southwest of China. It is of course connected with the impression that Scandinavia had a developed welfare system, which some seem to think indicates a socialist influence. And Scandinavians love to cite this one, although by now it is wearing quite thin.

The ‘Scandinavia had’ is quite deliberat...

Korea takes another step in solving its own problems

While the United States is looking increasingly desperate and floundering, the two parts of Korea have taken yet another step in solving their own problems – a long-standing wish and policy, as I have pointed out on a number of occasions.

Yesterday, Moon Jae-in ducked across the informal border for a candid and unannounced discussion with a new friend, Kim Jong Un. As one does in Korea!

No better source that Rodong Sinmun to report on it (KCNA carries the same report):

The top leaders of the...

How to find your soul

As Mao observes in ‘On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the People’:

Not to have a correct political orientation is like not having a soul

Australia’s split identity

While I do not pay much attention to the sheer childishness of what passes for ‘politics’ in Australia, I am intrigued by its split identity.

Let me put it this way: about 60,000 years ago a planned migration took place. Those who became the first peoples in Australia came from south-east Asia, heading southward across a series of islands to the mainland. They were homo sapiens, while Neanderthals still roamed Europe. But their arrival made it clear that the country was part of south-east Asi...

Why Is So Much Research on the State Inadequate for Analysing the Socialist State?

While researching my book on the socialist state, I have been digging into the literature. There is plenty of it, although I have been focusing on theoretical material and on research relating to specific features of the Chinese state. To my dismay, I have been struck by the inadequacy of most of this research.

Why? The philosophical assumptions are determined by the nature of the European liberal nation-state, or more accurately, the bourgeois state. In what follows, I deal with three topics...

Second meeting between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un

In case the rest of the world missed the message of the first meeting between Xi Jinping and Kim Jong Un, they have just had a second at the beautiful port city of Dalian.

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Addressing each other as comrades, they affirmed the four principles of close ties between China and the DPRK:

Xi stressed that he and Kim held their historic first meeting in Beijing in March this year, during which they had a long and in-depth communication, and reached principled consensus in four aspects on developing...