How China Became a World Power

How China became a world power

Published Nov 24, 2009 9:17 PM

Talk given by WWP Secretariat member Deirdre Griswold at the WWP National Conference Nov. 14.

It is amazing that so little has been said in the imperialist media about the 60th anniversary of the Chinese Revolution, especially considering that one-fifth of the world’s people live in China and that it has become the manufacturing hub for much of the globe.

If you added up all the people of North, Central and South America, plus the Caribbean—in other words, all the 38 countries of the Western Hemisphere–you would still need to add 400 million more people to reach the size of China. And the many different peoples in China all live under one central government and are affected by its plans for development.

It was an earth-shaking event when, on October 1, 1949, after the defeat of the U.S.-supported Kuomintang army, Mao Zedong addressed a huge crowd in Tienanmen Square and said, “The Chinese people have stood up.” The revolutionary war, which had gone on for decades, not only liberated the peasants from the tyranny of the landlords and the workers from capitalist exploitation but it had an enormous impact on world events – and on Workers World Party.

While our party was officially formed a decade later, the world view of its founders was first expressed in a 1950 document by Sam Marcy on the global class war.

At that time, the Soviet Union was considered the leader of the international communist movement. Both the USSR and People’s China were helping defend the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea against a massive invasion and war by U.S. imperialism, which was aimed at crushing the spread of revolution in Asia.

Marcy’s document recognized that the Chinese Revolution was not just an agrarian reform or a national liberation struggle—although it incorporated both these vital features. He argued that it represented a fundamental change in class forces and that the new state rested on the working class and was oriented toward the building of socialism.

But, said Marcy in 1950, the revolution was not “chemically pure.” What did that mean?

The working class of China was then very small. In the course of the revolutionary war, the Communist Party had built what it called a “bloc of four classes” that included not only the workers, peasants, and petty bourgeoisie but also elements of the capitalist class not aligned with either Japanese or Western imperialism.

Nevertheless, Marcy argued in the left movement here at the time that all who were for socialism, for workers’ power, had a duty to stand with China and the other workers’ states against domestic reaction and imperialist intervention.

Marcy’s analysis proved correct. The Chinese Communist Party moved forward with expropriating the propertied classes. It inspired the masses of people to create social forms of production in the countryside as well as the cities.

The first issue of Workers World newspaper in 1959 contained an article on China called “Hail the Communes!” The communes were a tremendous step forward in the effort to raise up the peasantry and increase productivity so that China could feed its hundreds of millions of people.

After liberation from the blood-sucking landlords, farmers had begun to build collectives where labor was pooled and their product shared. But the communes went much further. They were a higher form of social organization. They brought schools and clinics to the countryside. They provided child care and made it possible for women to join social life on an equal basis after centuries of the deepest oppression. They incorporated small manufacturing with agriculture and taught new skills. The communes provided the elemental necessities of life—food, shelter, clothing—from the cradle to the grave. The Chinese called this social security the “iron rice bowl.”

In the 1960s, China kept moving to the left under the leadership of Mao Zedong. Eventually it would launch the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, an attempt to uproot privilege and a growing bureaucracy. At the same time, it championed revolutionary movements, especially in the many countries that were trying to break the bonds of colonialism and neo-colonialism that kept them poor and underdeveloped.

To understand why this leftward movement was thwarted and China moved to the right under Deng Ziaoping, you have to see the world context.

Beginning in the 1950s, the U.S. threatened both China and the Soviet Union with nuclear war. Both countries had to divert scarce resources to build up their military defenses. By the mid 50s, the USSR under Khrushchev tried to bring about an accommodation with the U.S. under the slogan “peaceful coexistence.” Relations between the two huge socialist countries became strained as Moscow made agreements with Washington on nuclear arms at the expense of China.

In 1960 Soviet technicians who had been helping China with many infrastructure projects were suddenly withdrawn.

By 1962, the U.S. was already waging war against the revolutionary movements in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. In 1965 the CIA engineered a bloody military takeover in Indonesia in 1965 that destroyed the largest communist party in the world outside the socialist countries and slaughtered an estimated 1 million people.

The Chinese Communist Party by this time had opened a debate with the Soviet leaders, accusing them of watering down Leninist doctrine on the rapacious nature of imperialism and failing to give the liberation movements the help they needed.

Here in the U.S., China’s attempts to revive revolutionary Marxism and Leninism and champion the national liberation struggles won adherents, especially among the youth and in the Black movement. Our party vigorously supported China on these questions.

But the split in the world movement took its toll. A cornerstone of U.S. imperialism’s strategy was to deepen this split. An editor of the New York Times, Harrison Salisbury, even wrote a book in 1969 called “The Coming War between Russia and China,” which really was an attempt to incite such a war.

An all-out war didn’t happen, but the Chinese leaders made a grave error when they took their polemic against the policies of the Soviet leaders much further and characterized the USSR as “social-imperialist.” This derailed much of the world movement. It precluded any efforts to have a united front against the real imperialists and actually laid the basis for a turn to the right inside China itself.

In the 1970s, while the war in Vietnam was still raging, China invited President Richard Nixon to Beijing. It was a move that shocked and demoralized many in the movement here. It was a prelude to China’s later “opening” to Western investment and allowing the capitalist market to operate there.

The leader of Workers World, Sam Marcy, analyzed these political developments and you can read his articles online, as well as in our party pamphlets on China.

A revolutionary workers’ party cannot close its eyes to political issues like these, particularly a party in the very center of world imperialism. What happens in China is of the greatest consequence to the workers and the oppressed peoples here.

In this world capitalist economic crisis, when many workers are afraid for their jobs if they haven’t lost them already, capitalist demagogues like Lou Dobbs get paid to make sure that the workers’ anger is turned against immigrants and China instead of against the bosses here who lay them off or cut their wages.

China’s growth in the last two decades has been the most dynamic in the world. The working class has grown by several hundred million people. The standard of living of the masses has risen, but the wealth of the new bourgeoisie—still a small class–has risen even faster.

Who do we credit for this rapid development? The capitalists who invested in China to make a quick buck? Or the revolutionaries who pulled China out of the middle ages, ended illiteracy, achieved the beginnings of industrialization, brought millions out of famine and an early death by organizing the masses to change their conditions of life?

China’s rapid growth is proof that a centralized and planned economy, even one that has allowed market forces to operate, is vastly superior to capitalist anarchy. Not only has production soared but the infrastructure is being modernized. Even the environmental movement is starting to admit that China is becoming a world leader in the transition away from fossil fuels and toward a more sustainable economy. In the current world H1N1 epidemic, China has registered 30 flu deaths, compared to 4,000 in the U.S. (which has only one-fourth China’s population). This is proof of China’s ability to spin on a dime when it comes to dealing with potential disasters, and proof of a sophisticated medical system that has already inoculated nearly 60 million people against the flu. Such quick action is impossible when medical care is shackled to producing profits for private corporations.

The leaders of the Chinese Communist Party have gambled that they can contain the growing capitalist class and keep it under control. But the world capitalist economic crisis is affecting China, especially in its export-oriented businesses, many of which are privately owned. However, China’s stimulus plan, which goes directly to producing jobs, has softened the effects of the crisis.

At the same time, the class struggle has also surged in China as workers fight against layoffs and poor working conditions—especially in the privately owned sector of the economy. Strikes and demonstrations are on the rise, along with plant occupations and even direct action by workers against their bosses and managers.

Some of the struggles are directed against corrupt officials. Where does corruption come from? It comes from bourgeois elements who have the money to buy political influence and favors. China has actually executed quite a few millionaires for corruption, unlike the U.S., which reserves the death penalty for the poor and oppressed.

We continue to stand with China against imperialist threats, attempts to carve off areas like Tibet and Taiwan, and domestic reaction. And we stand with the Chinese workers, who have become bolder in fighting for their rights—which include the right to a job and a decent standard of living.

We say no to China-bashing, whether it comes from CNN or from backward elements in the union movement here. Above all, we are dedicated to building a revolutionary workers’ movement in the U.S. that can undo this highly militarized, imperialist regime that is holding back all humanity, so that our class everywhere will be free to control its own destiny and build a workers’ world.
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Swine flu fears for hajj pilgrims

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia – The road to Mecca for Islam’s annual hajj is littered with needles this year. Before you even leave your country of origin you have to get vaccinations for meningitis, seasonal flu, yellow fever, and for the lucky, the H1N1 vaccine. 

Our trip started in Cairo, where Egyptian authorities are keen to prevent their residents from catching the H1N1 virus during the yearly pilgrimage and bringing it back home. 

They insisted on a complete physical, including blood tests, chest x-rays and electrocardiograms to make sure we were healthy enough to travel before we were even allowed to get the H1N1 vaccine, which Egypt requires of all hajj pilgrims. China, Turkey, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Jordan and others also are mandating the H1N1 vaccine.

Why are they so afraid? For at least five days, more than three million pilgrims from 160 countries are assembling in one place at one time, worshipping, eating and sleeping next to each other. For Muslims, it is the spiritual voyage of a lifetime; but for the H1N1 virus, it is the opportunity of a lifetime to hitch a ride on hosts that will deploy to the four corners of the earth.

Saudi Press Agency via EPA

Hajj pilgrims wear protective face masks ahead of the start of the hajj in Mina, Saudi Arabia, on Tuesday.

That is why the Saudi government, in conjunction with the World Health Organization and the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, has been hard at work for several months reviewing every possible step of the pilgrims’ journey – from pre-departure, arrival, pilgrimage, departure and post-departure – to limit the spread of the virus and its chance to mutate.
…(read more)

How to ‘unlock’ the presumed brain dead

Rom Houben, a conscious man presumed brain dead for 20 years, won’t be the last person found to be imprisoned in their bodies, says Celeste Biever

EPI’s Urgent Call For More Jobs Gains Momentum

EPI’s Urgent Call For More Jobs Gains Momentum

EPI has joined forces with a coalition of national organizations in
calling for more action to create jobs. On November 17, EPI hosted the panel discussion, Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis, where the heads of the AFL-CIO, the NAACP, and other groups warned that today’s high unemployment could stunt an entire generation’s lifetime earnings and devastate minority communities.

The coalition, which consists of EPI, the AFL-CIO, Center for
Community Change, the NAACP, and the National Council of La Raza, issued an Urgent Call for Action to Stem the U.S. Jobs Crisis,
recommending many of the same policy actions that EPI proposed last month in its five-part approach to large-scale job creation. These
include additional aid to strapped state governments, public-sector
job creation, as well as investments in infrastructure and tax credits
to create private-sector jobs. The group also advocates extended
emergency unemployment compensation and subsidies for COBRA health insurance into 2010.

Unemployment: The civil rights issue of our time

The Call to Action praised the Obama administration for moving swiftly earlier this year to pass the Recovery Act, which has already created at least 1.1 million jobs. But it stressed that additional help was needed. “The Great Recession is an unfolding social catastrophe,” said Deepak Bhargava, executive director of the Center for Community Change. “If we act quickly, a jobs program could put millions of people to work in 2010.”

Much of the discussion at the Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis panel
focused on the groups hardest hit by the jobs crisis. Although the
nationwide unemployment rate of 10.2% is the highest level seen in 26 years, it is much higher for communities of color: 13.1% for Hispanic workers and 15.7% for black workers.

“Make no mistake. This is the civil rights issue of our time,” Wade
Henderson, president and CEO of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, said at the event. “There can be no equal opportunity without economic justice and a stable job that provides a living wage.”

Dire States

One component of the Urgent Call for Action, the need for more relief
to state governments, was outlined in more detail in the Briefing
Paper, Dire States, by EPI Policy Analyst Ethan Pollack. After drawing
down rainy day funds, states face a two-year, $357 billion budget
shortfall for the fiscal years 2010 and 2011, the paper shows, while
local governments face an additional $80 billion shortfall.

After accounting for budget relief provided by the Recovery Act, state and local governments will still face $331 billion in shortfalls that will
have to be closed with spending cuts and tax increases. This would put a significant drag on economic growth and make it more difficult to get the economy back on track.

On November 19, EPI hosted the panel discussion Spurring Job Creation: The Role of Federal Aid to State and Local Governments, which featured Pollack and a group of other speakers discussing the severe budget crunches faced by most state and local governments. Douglas Palmer, the mayor of Trenton, New Jersey, delivered the keynote address, where he stressed that most of the country’s unemployment was concentrated in metropolitan areas like Trenton, which has a 17% jobless rate. Most U.S. cities are expected to make additional job cuts next year, he said.

900,000 more jobs could be lost next year

Mark Zandi (pictured), chief economist at Moody’s Economy.com said
that while Recovery Act spending helped the economy expand in recent months, the economic recovery remained very fragile and could come under more pressure in late 2010 when the majority of stimulus funds runs out.

He said additional budget relief to state and local governments would be needed to sustain the recovery. Another speaker, Iris Lav, senior advisor at the Center of Budget and Policy Priorities, said that without additional federal relief, the cuts that state and local governments would be forced to make to balance their budgets would cost an additional 900,000 jobs in 2010.

Eisenbrey on jobs in America, arbitration in Canada

EPI Vice President Ross Eisenbrey has been taking EPI’s five-point
plan for job creation on the road. He presented the plan to a group of
labor and business leaders and state and local government officials at a workshop at the annual meeting of the National Network of Sector Partners and the Insight Center for Community Economic Development.

Eisenbrey also addressed the University of the District of Columbia’s
Open Forum on Jobs Creation, where he debated solutions to the U.S. jobs crisis with Barbara Lang, president of the D.C. Chamber of
Commerce, and Daniel Whitley, from the USDA’s Office of Global
Analysis. New York Times columnist Bob Herbert called for enactment of a public service employment program, citing Eisenbrey’s statement that “By itself, the private sector is unable to create jobs in the numbers the United States needs to obtain a robust, full economic recovery.”

Eisenbrey also presented unpublished research on the success of first contract arbitration in Canada, during a November 13 event sponsored by American Rights at Work. Labor law in Canada’s Manitoba province includes a provision nearly identical to one in the Employee Free Choice Act that permits a party negotiating a first contract to choose mediation and then binding arbitration if no agreement is reached within 120 days.

The research from Manitoba shows that although very few contract negotiations end with an arbitrator imposing a contract, the provision helps motivate labor and management to reach contracts on their own. In those cases in Manitoba that did go to arbitration, the results were generally positive.

The system provides a model for the United States, where the majority of workers who do manage to form unions are still unable to bargain for a first contract in a timely manner, often because employers fail to bargain in good faith or use stalling tactics to preserve the status quo.

EPI in the news

The New York Times wrote about EPI’s Spotlight on the Jobs Crisis and the growing call by African American leaders for more policy action to create jobs. Politics Daily featured an interview with EPI President Lawrence Mishel outlining how a jobs creation program could be funded in part with a small tax on financial transactions.

Given that financial transactions precipitated the economic collapse, Mishel said, “it’s not only poetic justice—it’s good economics and has great political appeal.” A Reuters story cited Pollack’s Dire States paper and said that looming state and local budget cuts were a “time bomb” for jobs.
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The Mission of EPI
To inform and empower people to seek solutions that will ensure
broadly shared prosperity and opportunity.
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Swine flu mutation fears may be premature

A mutation found in three cases of pandemic swine flu has raised fears that the virus is becoming nastier, but the evidence doesn’t show anything of the kind

Plant forests across Britain to beat climate change, say scientists

Valerie Elliott, Countryside Editor

The creation of new forests and woodlands across the country will help to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by 10 per cent and protect communities at risk of flooding, according to a scientific study for the Forestry Commission.
Planting trees in 23,000 hectares a year for the next 40 years — about the size of Queen’s Balmoral estate, or a town the size of Kettering, Northamptonshire — would result in just an extra 4 per cent of land for trees, bringing a total of 16 per cent forest in Britain.
In flood plains and upland areas such as Cumbria, where extreme rainfall and flooding is already a reality, there is a need for new forestry to capture rainfall and lessen the flood risk. Trees in city and town centres would help to mitigate expected higher temperatures, while new woods along rivers will provide shade and help to protect aquatic eco-systems.
Professor Sir David Read, chairman of the study, told The Times that one of the crucial findings of the report was the importance of woods in river catchment areas. “Trees intercept rainfall and retain water, and one of the problems we are seeing now in the Lake District is [that] there is nothing to stop the water running off the hills,” he said. “We must look again at the contribution of forestry in the uplands and returning them in the direction they once were before we deforested them.”

The professor, one of Britain’s leading plant scientists, accepted that new forests would be controversial in some areas and that it was important for communities to have their say in how areas embrace the challenges of climate change. “What we need is an integrated examination of land use across the UK so that a consensus can be reached on how we tackle our changed circumstances,” he said.
In order to achieve this sylvan future, however, the professor said that Britain must accept the introduction of non-native species to replace native trees. Iconic species such as the English oak and the beech could be destroyed by higher temperatures in the South of England and the Sitka spruce, the most commercial tree in Britain, is likely to be confined to the North and North West.
He said: “We have to think now what is going to replace them. It is possible that Pyrenean, downy or white oak will do better in future conditions, but we urgently need the trials now to test these species. We have got to find out now which species will be best for the environment. We can’t wait until 2050. We can’t be squeamish, as we have been in the past, about replacing native species with non-native species, though of course there would need to be proper safeguards and we would have to assess the potential for invasiveness.”
He suggested that the Sitka spruce grown in Britain, predominantly in Scotland, were from seeds from British Columbia, but that it would be prudent now to try strains that currently grow in the warmer climate of southern Oregon. His scenario envisages many new woodlands for the South of England that would not only capture carbon emissions but that would also be used as an energy crop to reduce the use of fossil fuels.
These woods would comprise willow and poplar, and more mixed deciduous forests of sycamore, ash and birch. The Scottish landscape would continue to be dominated by conifers, he suggested, while in Wales there would be a mixture of new broadleaf and conifer plantations.
Future rainfall patterns forecast most extreme weather on the west coast of Scotland, in the North West of England and the west coast of Wales, and therefore he believed that these areas should be considered a priority for new forests.
The assessment, thought to be the first national study of this kind in the world, is intended to trigger a new debate between the Government and landowners over future land use.
Professor Read said: “By increasing our tree cover we can lock up carbon directly. By using more wood for fuel and construction materials we can make savings by using less gas, oil and coal, and by substituting sustainably produced timber for less climate-friendly materials.
“While so many emission-reduction measures have negative connotations, tree planting can be a win, win, win solution: people love trees, we benefit from them in so many different ways, and now we know they could play a significant part in reducing the UK’s CO2 emissions.”
Hilary Benn, the Environment Secretary, said that the Government intended to work with communities and businesses to ensure that sufficient trees were planted to tackle climate change. He pledged to do more to increase forestry. “Forests and trees are an important part of the way we live and interact with our surroundings, and we cannot underestimate the role that trees will play in reducing our carbon emissions,” he said.
Many traditional forests have been restored. A century ago there was just over 5 per cent woodland, while today it is 12 per cent. Estimates for the maximum cover since the last Ice Age suggest Britain was once 80 per cent forest.

Insurers face 100 million pound hit from floods in England

The British insurance industry faces a hit of up to 100 million pounds ($165.4 million) from last week’s floods in northern England, the Association of British Insurers said on Monday.

The total insured loss will be in the range of 50 to 100 million pounds, based on the current tally of about 1,000 claims, an ABI spokesman said, adding that the damage estimate could be revised in the days ahead.

The latest loss estimate falls far short of the 3 billion pound bill picked up by the insurance industry following severe flooding in the summer of 2007.

Hundreds of people were rescued by emergency services in Cumbria, northern England, on Friday after heavy rain triggered what Britain’s Environment Agency described as a “1 in 1,000 year” flood.

British insurance shares were mostly higher by 1055 GMT, with Aviva, RSA, and Royal Bank of Scotland, owner of insurer Direct Line, up by between 1.3 percent and 2.7 percent. ($1=.6047 Pound)

Bridges at risk amid British floods

Flooding continued on Monday, November 23rd. Wind and rain were still battering Cumbria in northern England, putting more bridges at risk and leaving flood-hit locals isolated and without services.

Six pedestrian and road bridges have already collapsed, and 11 others are closed.

Emergency services are finding it increasingly difficult to carry out rescues and evacuations.

About 314 millimeters of rain fell in 24 hours - the highest level since records began - over Cumbria as torrential rains swept across Britain and Ireland.

There are still dozens of flood warnings in force in Northern England and Wales, with more rain forecast for the coming days.

About 60 people are still sheltering in reception centers and more than 700 properties remain without power.

An urgent safety review of Cumbria’s 1,800 bridges is underway, with emergency services warning one bridge in the coastal town of Workington could collapse at any time.

Calva Bridge, which is 150 years old, feeds the surrounding town with electricity and gas. It has been condemned because in the past 24 hours a dip has appeared in the road and a big crack is getting bigger.

Without that bridge, Workington and the town of Cockermouth have been left isolated, which is a major concern to local MP Tony Cunningham.

“They are running short of medication. I have got serious concerns about people who perhaps need heart tablets or need insulin,” he said.

“I have been in touch with the local authorities. They are having to go as far as Carlisle, which is 35 miles away, to bring things like bread and milk.

“People are running out of food. Things are getting pretty desperate.”

Workington’s other bridge has already collapsed, taking the life of a policeman who was diverting motorists away from it.

Source:
Reuters, “Insurers face 100 million pound hit from floods in England“, accessed November 23, 2009
ABC News Australia, “Bridges at risk amid British floods“, accessed November 23, 2009

George Osborne waves carrots not sticks in pitch for green mantle

Ben Webster

Being the greenest party is unlikely to be a decisive factor in next year’s general election but that did not stop the Conservatives yesterday making a pitch for the mantle.
George Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, made a series of environmental commitments that had two things in common: they will not cost the taxpayer a penny to implement, nor will they force individuals to change their behaviour.
The theme of his speech was that carrots were better than sticks when it comes to getting people to embrace a low-carbon lifestyle. This neatly avoids anything that might be unpopular with voters.
Mr Osborne teased his audience by stating that “there is a role for green taxation” and claimed that rewarding people for recycling was an example of a “clever green tax”.

Yet in praising the reward scheme run by the Tory-controlled Windsor & Maidenhead Council, he neglected to mention that the rewards were paid for not from taxes but with in-kind donations of goods and services by local businesses.
Mr Osborne garnered positive headlines yesterday by suggesting that he would make all councils introduce such schemes. Yet the only specific commitment was simply to “give councils detailed information” so that they could decide for themselves whether they wanted to take part.
Mr Osborne’s other main commitment — to cut central government emissions by 10 per cent in 12 months — is also weaker than it sounds if one looks at the detail of the policy.
Individual departments will not have to cut emissions by 10 per cent. They will have to make a contribution to the overall 10 per cent target but the Conservatives are not yet saying how much effort each will have to make.
There is no new money to help departments to introduce any energy-saving measures, such as more efficient heating and better-insulated buildings.
The Conservatives made much of their pledge to cut the budgets of departments that failed to meet their emission reduction targets. It later became clear, however, that the laggards would not face any cut in their main budgets, only a trimming of their funding for energy bills.
Mr Osborne’s most promising green pledge was also the simplest: the Conservatives will expose energy guzzlers in Whitehall by requiring the real-time energy consumption of government buildings to be published online. “That way the public can hold ministers and civil servants to account for their performance.”
That was the nearest that his speech came to proposing any kind of stick to spur us to reach out for the carrots.

Australian Opposition Backs Carbon Caps

By RACHEL PANNETT
CANBERRA — Australia’s opposition leader said he will rally support to pass a government plan to cap the country’s greenhouse-gas emissions after Prime Minister Kevin Rudd agreed to key compromises aimed at placating critics of the effort.
If Australia’s Parliament passes the carbon plan into law — which now appears likely — in a vote scheduled this week, Mr. Rudd will have achieved a significant political victory as other nations struggle to contain carbon emissions world-wide.

A similar plan has moved slowly in the U.S. Senate, and talks between world leaders to carve out a new global pact to replace the Kyoto Protocol in Copenhagen next month appear unlikely to yield a binding deal.
Australia is the biggest per-capita polluter in the developed world because it uses fossil fuels, chiefly coal, for around 90% of its electricity generation. Like the U.S., it is a heavily industrialized economy that has previously resisted capping emissions for fear it could crimp economic growth.
Australia accounts for only about 1.5% of global emissions, so any such program would be largely symbolic in terms of the broader global picture. But it would put further pressure on countries such as the U.S. to accelerate their plans to approve carbon-reduction schemes. One of Mr. Rudd’s first acts in office in 2007 was to add Australia to the signatories of the Kyoto Protocol, isolating the U.S. as the only major developed economy not bound by mandatory caps.
Following weeks of discussions between the government and opposition Liberal-National coalition negotiators, Mr. Rudd and Climate Change Minister Penny Wong offered seven billion Australian dollars (US$6.48 billion) in compensation, including loan guarantees and other assistance for coal miners, electricity generators, liquefied natural-gas projects and others. They also offered to permanently exclude agriculture from the program.

Liberal Party leader Malcolm Turnbull said the government made the offers on the condition that its carbon program would pass this year. The opposition leader said the plan is “good for the environment, it is good for farmers, and it offers us one of the best near-term opportunities for carbon-dioxide abatement.”
The plan still faces some opposition, including from mining companies and some environmentalists who believe the latest compromises weaken the plan. But Mr. Turnbull’s support increases the odds a plan will be approved. Although the governing Labor Party won a majority in Australia’s lower house of representatives at the last election, it needs the support of at least seven opposition senators in the country’s upper house to pass any new laws — a number Mr. Turnbull is expected to deliver.
If passed, the government plan will see Australia introduce in July 2011 a market-based carbon-trading program similar to one operating in Europe since 2005, forcing the nation’s biggest polluters to pay for their greenhouse-gas emissions. The aim, by 2020, is to reduce Australia’s emissions by at least 5% from levels at the turn of the century.
Environment groups and industry were united in their skepticism toward Tuesday’s deal. Sen. Bob Brown, whose environmentalist Greens Party holds five seats in the upper house Senate, described it as a “black day for the environment,” adding that Mr. Rudd has “caved in to the big polluters” at the expense of households. The Greens are expected to vote against the plan.
Meanwhile, the coal industry continued to hold out for a better deal. Queensland Resources Council Chief Executive Michael Roche said the latest compensation package for coal — which saw government support doubled to A$1.5 billion over five years, mainly in the form of free permits for carbon emissions — represents less than 10% of the A$14.5 billion cost the coal industry faces over the next decade if the carbon program is established. Concessions to miners also is a large part of the U.S. debate.
“Every ton of coal not produced in Australia as a result of this tax will simply be produced by our competitors, who are not being penalized in the same way by their governments,” Mr. Roche said.
Opposition lawmakers rejected an earlier version of the legislation in August. Key changes since then include making 75% more free permits for carbon emissions available to electricity generators, and extending the compensation period for the sector to 10 years from five years in a package now valued at A$7.3 billion, up from around A$3.9 billion.
Write to Rachel Pannett at rachel.pannett@dowjones.com

Feared Asian carp may be near U.S. Great Lakes

There are signs Asian carp may have breached barriers designed to keep the prolific fish out of the Great Lakes, which could spell ecological disaster for the vital source of fresh water, authorities said on Friday.

Concentrations of DNA discovered by Notre Dame University researchers may indicate the presence of bighead and silver carp upstream from two electrical barriers designed to bottle up the invasive fish.

Environmentalists say that if the fish reach the Great Lakes, about 20 miles from the barriers, they would quickly destroy the lakes’ $4.5 billion fishery by consuming other fish and their food sources. Only Lake Superior among the five lakes may be too cold for the carp, which can reproduce rapidly and reach 100 pounds (45 kg).

The Great Lakes are the world’s largest body of surface fresh water and are relied on by 30 million people in the United States and Canada for drinking water and recreation.

“This is devastating news,” Andy Buchsbaum of the National Wildlife Federation said of the discovery of carp DNA in the Cal-Sag channel 8 miles from Lake Michigan.

“We have to hope that there aren’t enough population of fish to reproduce and create an epidemic of Asian carp in the lakes,” he said.

The barriers are on the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal, which is fed by several waterways that flow away from Lake Michigan. The canal is connected by various rivers to the Mississippi River.

Two electrical barriers constructed in recent years in the canal near Chicago were designed to shock the carp and keep them out of the lake.

The DNA could be from carp feces or eggs carried by ship and barge traffic, but it could indicate the carp have breached the barriers, Buchsbaum said.

CLOSE LOCKS

Environmentalists called for the immediate closing of several locks separating the lakes from the inland waterways, and pressed for a permanent solution that would separate the Great Lakes from the Mississippi River watershed.

“Right now we have a last shot at keeping these carp out of Lake Michigan, and that’s to close the locks,” said Joel Brammeier of Alliance for the Great Lakes, an environmental group.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers said it and other agencies had met since Wednesday to consider the best course of action. Authorities will be sampling the channel to try to locate any loose carp.

“We’re not discounting any options,” which could include shutting the locks, a spokesman for the Corps of Engineers said.

The waterways are used by barges serving steel plants and other industry in the area. The lock separating the Chicago River from Lake Michigan would also be affected, although tour and pleasure boat traffic is down because of the season.

The invasive bighead and silver carp have come to dominate the Mississippi River watershed that is linked to Lake Michigan by a network of canals.

The carp were introduced into the Southern United States in the 1970s to help clean man-made fish farms. They escaped into the Mississippi River during flooding two decades later.

The omnivorous fish — which are known to injure boaters because they often leap out of the water at the sound of a passing motor — make up 95 percent of the biomass in sections of the Illinois River.

The Corps of Engineers said it would go ahead with planned maintenance on one of the two barriers beginning on December 2. As part of the maintenance project, authorities will bar ship traffic and introduce a fish poison, rotenone, into several miles (km) of the Chicago Sanitary Ship Canal downstream from the barriers to kill all fish, including the carp.

Source:
Reuters, “Feared Asian carp may be near U.S. Great Lakes“, accessed November 20, 2009