Gaza Inside Out

As China’s rapid urbanization and growth slow down, some pundits fear the country may face a future similar to Japan’s post-boom era of economic stagnation, characterized by a stable, aging society. This shift, driven by government planning focusing on technology, education, and healthcare, may result in a tranquil, less dynamic urban environment, where the elderly population plays a dominant role, creating a conservative and stability-oriented culture—though, for Dreyer, “Japanification” hardly seems like a negative outcome for China.

“As poorer and more exotic Chinese regions showcase their particularity and uniqueness for tourists from richer places, the discrepancy between historical progress and what remains of China’s cultural history, whether of rural tradition or urban socialism, becomes commodified. The people from rich, generic cities desire the knotty, complicated country that they left behind. The one they live in now—the anonymous land of the internet, which summons food, images and products of all varieties on demand—is lonely.”

Ayşe Zarakol discusses how ‘middle power’ nations see the reconfiguration of world politics as a moment of opportunity. She illuminates the framework of the global order beyond its Western conceptions, with particular attention to how middle power nations are leveraging membership in organizations like BRICS+, the New Development Bank, and the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation to develop new identities separate to that of historically dominant blocs—often outside of mainstream media coverage.

“There are all these conversations that are happening that are kind of bypassing the players that we consider to be the central actors in international relations. At the same time, the core conversations are still going on, but you have the middle powers playing a more active role, they are more confident because they look at the West and the West is weakened or concerned with its own problems so they think they have more of a say. They’re more likely to use Western institutions to challenge Western policy. … I think you have middle powers more confidently operating in the existing environment and at the same time looking for ways to have maybe parallel conversations or parallel institutions, not really to replace the existing order, but to create new channels and maybe new bilateral relationships that don’t center the West.”

The waning influence of the nation-state, exacerbated by global authoritarianism and climate crises, has created a fragmented political landscape where the state both obstructs and is essential to achieving progress. Táíwò argues for a 21^st century version of what Immanuel Wallerstein described a “two-step” strategy favored by the radicals of the twentieth century: “first gain power within the state structure; then transform the world.” A modern “two-step” strategy, according to Táíwò, must first dismantle the power of fossil fuel interests, which will create the conditions for broader social and environmental justice. Then comes the transformation of the world.

“But if the “two-step” point of view is correct, it is fossil capital that we must topple in this century, not the state system or any particular state within it. Withdrawal from the state or state politics is not obviously an answer to the question of how to delink the world economy from fossil capital, unless done in a way that involves alternative energy systems on a scale that would be atmospherically relevant. After all, the emissions of ExxonMobil and the Pentagon poison the air and raise the temperature in Mexico and Syria too. Those who are skeptical of political solutions involving contesting for or with state power directly ought to explain how that abdication fits into a political trajectory that ends in the political defeat of fossil capital on a planetary scale, not simply our successful refusal to be complicit with its reign.”

Relying on private investment alone to bridge the global finance gap for decarbonization is insufficient and irresponsible. Arun argues that significant public investment is essential for coordinated, predictable, and non-extractive funding. He highlights successful examples in the United States and China, demonstrating how robust public spending can effectively mobilize private capital toward state-directed goals.

“What is certain is that the same policymakers focused on mobilising private capital seem set against the very reforms that would support lower-income countries’ ability to spend on urgent climate change mitigation and adaptation projects, and to build the state capacity they need to meet both climate-related and other urgent goals. This orientation is revealing: while the United States and China demonstrate the benefits of jettisoning neoliberal development policy, the Washington Consensus remains on life support elsewhere. So long as countries in the Global South remain unable to mobilise adequate public financial resources, the biases of private institutional investors and the inaction of Global North policymakers will set the speed limit on the pace of global decarbonisation.”

Mainstream neoclassical economics reduces complex decisions to abstract cost-benefit analyses. But this philosophical rejection of utilitarian calculi—in part to defend minorities from majority repression—is unsuited for issues that require “fundamental reorganization of the underlying social order,” like climate change. According to Ha-Joon Chang:

“If you want the market to deal with the climate crisis it cannot. And even free market economists … will accept that there has to be some role of the state. Because they accept that there has to be carbon budget; the government has to regulate the carbon market; they say ‘oh government needs to give more subsidies to the research in renewable energy’; and most problematically they say a government should de-risk this investment in the renewable energy, so that the private sector can get only the gains but not the cost. They want the government but only to serve the private sector so it’s not as if they are you know totally against the government, they actually want a very strong government but to serve the private sector.”