Man-made canals like Panama and Suez face unprecedented challenges from extreme weather patterns and geopolitical tensions that reveal the fragility of our global trade networks, write ROX MIDDLETON, LIAM SHAW and MIRIAM GAUNTLETT
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An error occurred while searching, try again later.Xi Jinping in context
JULIDE YAZICI explores the ideological struggle in China today
As climate change makes vast mineral deposits accessible, the island’s 56,000 residents face unprecedented pressure from Trump’s territorial ambitions while struggling to maintain their traditional way of life, writes JOHN GREEN
Student Mahmoud Khalil’s arrest and threatened deportation are terrifying — but the moribund Democrats are still failing to mount any meaningful resistance against the slide toward autocracy, reports LINDA PENTZ GUNTER
From golf and football to Formula One, the kingdom uses unprecedented investments in global sport to divert attention from its persecution of journalists, dissidents and women, write BELLA KATZ and ROGER McKENZIE
With trade wars backfiring, allies resisting military demands, and approval ratings plummeting, Trump’s dangerous pursuit of colonial ambitions threatens to end the ‘American century’ with catastrophic conflict, warns CLAUDIA WEBBE
As Britain plans to increase military spending to 2.6 per cent of the GDP while health services face devastating cuts and drug costs soar, working-class Scots urgently need united resistance, argues DREW GILCHRIST
As the government moves to rein in academy freedoms, former darling of conservative education reform Katharine Birbalsingh cries ‘Marxism.’ Education columnist ROBERT POOLE examines how academisation has failed our children while enriching executives and empowering ideologues at the expense of democratic accountability
ALAIN BADIOU, in his book Petrograd, Shangai: Les Deux Revolutions du XXe Siecle (the two revolutions of the 20th century), describes the revolutionary impact of the Cultural Revolution on his generation as follows: “Every subjective and practical trajectory has found its nomination in the tireless creativity of the Chinese Revolution.”
The Cultural Revolution was a creative project of engaging new militants to the revolutionary ideological struggle. Mao conceived the Cultural Revolution as a “struggle“ against an objective reality, the danger of deradicalisation that every revolution faces.
The Cultural Revolution, so to speak, emerged as a forced creativity. The harsh reality that the desired society could not be achieved immediately after a socialist revolution, the paradoxical nature and unique challenges and responsibilities of continuing this struggle from a state position were being learned by experience, and the leaders of the Chinese revolution had no ready-made prescription, neither from theory nor from experience.
