China Is Not Our Enemy

With President Biden recently describing the Chinese premier Xi Jinping as ＂a dictator,＂ the shooting down of Chinese balloons in US airspace, the increasing of US military aid to Taiwan, and the banning of US exports of microchips to China, the American drumbeat for a new cold war with the world’s second largest economy is getting ever louder.

This new found aggression towards China is profoundly mistaken, in the view of authors Jodie Evans and Mikaela Nhondo Erskog. Their crisply focused and richly informative new book, based on years of first-hand experience and extensive research, lays out an accessible history of China, examines its culture and current economic strategy, and in particular focuses on the outlook of the younger generation. It concludes that a strategy of peaceful co-existence will be far more beneficial for working people in both countries, especially for the many Chinese Americans resident in the US, and vital in reducing the risk of a cataclysmic military confrontation between two nuclear powers.

Jodie Evans is an American political activist, author, and documentary film producer. Evans served in the cabinet of California Governor Jerry Brown and managed his 1992 campaign for the presidency. She co-founded the women’s anti-war activist organization Code Pink with Medea Benjamin and others. She is the board chair of the Rainforest Action Network.

Mikaela Nhondo Erskog is a researcher and editor at Tricontinental: Institute for Social Research and part of Pan Africanism Today Secretariat, which coordinates the regional articulation of the International People’s Assembly. She is also part of the No Cold War coordination committee, a peace platform promoting multipolarity and maximum global cooperation, and a member of the Dongsheng collective where she focuses on China-Africa relations through her new podcast, The Crane: An Africa-China Podcast.