China will 'eat our lunch,' Biden warns after clashing with Xi on most fronts
U.S. President Joe Biden and his Chinese counterpart Xi Jinping held their first phone call as leaders and appeared at odds on most issues, even as Xi warned that confrontation would be a "disaster" for both nations.
While Xi has called for "winwin" cooperation, Biden has called China America's "most serious competitor" and vowed to "out compete" Beijing.
Yesterday, Biden told a bipartisan group of U.S. senators at a meeting on the need to upgrade U.S. infrastructure the United States must raise its game in the face of the Chinese challenge.
Biden said he spoke to Xi for two hours on Wednesday night and warned the senators: "If we don't get moving, they are going to eat our lunch."
"They're investing billions of dollars dealing with a whole range of issues that relate to transportation, the environment and a whole range of other things. We just have to step up."
The White House said Biden emphasized to Xi it was a U.S. priority to preserve a free and open Indo-Pacific, a region where the United States and China are major strategic rivals.
He also voiced "fundamental" concerns about Beijing's "coercive and unfair" trade practices, as well as about human rights issues, including China's crackdown in Hong Kong and treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, and its increasingly assertive actions in Asia, including toward Taiwan. White House spokeswoman Jen Psaki said Biden also expressed concern about China's lack of transparency over the coronavirus.
All the rights issues Biden mentioned were ones Beijing has explicitly told his administration it should stay out of.
Xi told Biden confrontation would be a "disaster" and the two sides should re-establish the means to avoid misjudgments, China's foreign ministry said.
Xi maintained a hardline tone on Hong Kong, Xinjiang and Taiwan, calling them matters of
"sovereignty and territorial integrity" he hoped Washington would approach cautiously.
The call was the first between Chinese and U.S. leaders since Xi spoke with former President Donald Trump last March 27, nearly 11 months ago. Since then, relations between the
world's two biggest economies have plunged.
Trump blamed China for starting the COVID-19 pandemic and launched a series of actions against China, including a trade war and sanctions against Chinese officials and firms considered security threats.
Last November UWI, no less, issued a release saying it was negotiating an agreement with the government here to train 20,000 Guyanese over the next five years through its Open Campus. The idea was to help advance Guyana’s human development strategy it was stated. This announcement came in a context where there had been no human resources survey, no discussion with stakeholders locally and no attempt to seek input from UG. Furthermore, a casual scan of the UWI Open Campus website did not give anyone confidence that it was going to transform the youth of this country, in addition to which there was not a great deal on offer which could not potentially be provided at Turkeyen.
Critics, of course, homed in on the ignoring of UG, more particularly when it has been grossly underfunded for so many decades, not to mention having been subject to political interference and sometimes eccentric restructuring. And now, the public was told, our educational resources were to be spent not on our own tertiary institution, but on the University of the West Indies. Substantive issues aside, the very least which could be said about this release is that it was a public relations disaster.
Nothing much more was heard about the proposal thereafter, but it seems that since then the pandemic has concentrated minds wonderfully at the Ministry of Education. They have recently announced a far more rational and comprehensive approach to online learning at the tertiary level. The idea is to enable students to access online programmes from six universities through the launch of the National Open Learning Institute at the end of this month. The fashioning of this institute is the work of Dr Jacob Opadeyi, a former Vice Chancellor at UG, who was also involved in last November’s plan. Minister Priya Manickchand was fervent in her praise of his work.
Director (pro tempore) Opadeyi was reported as saying that there will be an offer of 4,540 scholarship placements at universities such as the Indira Gandhi Open University, the University of Applied Science in Germany, the Open University in the UK and, of course, the UWI Open Campus. Classes would begin in July. Arrangements are already in place with these institutions, while negotiations are being finalised with a further two relating to oil and gas sector courses.
He told this newspaper that the programmes themselves would not be confined to undergraduate certificates, but would also encompass Bachelor’s degrees, post-graduate diplomas and Master’s degrees.
While this is altogether a more viable programme than its limited predecessor, critics can still say the decision on what scholarships to offer is not founded on any prior human resources survey. While no one will argue about oil and gas sector courses, one has to presume
that everything else has just been decided by a closed circle either within the Ministry of Education, along with Dr Opadeyi and perhaps other officials in central government. However, their response this time around would presumably be that given the immediate needs of the society, the exigencies of the pandemic did not allow for preliminary fact-finding and analysis.
What does redeem the scheme somewhat in this regard is the fact that those who do not secure scholarships can still apply privately, and they no doubt will choose their own preferred courses, irrespective of the areas identified by government. This potentially could expand the variety of the total complement. What is a godsend for them is that they will be able to benefit from the volume discount which the government has negotiated, Dr Opadeyi citing the example of a degree programme offered at a negotiated price of US$1,000 which will be the same for those with scholarships and those without.
The University of Applied Science in Germany, he said, was offering an 80% discount on their courses, while there would be a 45% discount on tuition fees from UWI once they could ensure an enrolment of 150 students in the programme.
Online learning long antedates the appearance of Covid-19 in our communities, and US universities such as Arizona, Oregon, Florida and Colorado have been offering degree courses for a good time, while others have also made possible the pursuit of postgraduate qualifications as well. Britain’s Open University, for example, has been functioning since 1969, and is the largest academic institution in the UK. Guyana’s new approach, therefore, is hardly a novelty in terms of the academic world at large.
What the Director of the National Open Learning Institute did say, however, was that his negotiations in relation to online tertiary education had come partly in response to the travel restrictions created as a consequence of the pandemic, but that they were making a distinction between programmes designed to be completed online as against those which were being administered online as a consequence of Covid-19. What the difference would be in practice was perhaps not altogether clear.
What he said next, however, is something which no one will dispute: “[I]t is going to radically change Guyana’s education landscape because we are looking at people in Region 1, Region 8 or Region 9 being able to study without leaving their home or workplace.
We are looking at people who are in Georgetown, such as police officers or immigration complete their programme wherever they are.”
Which brings us back to UG and how it is accommodated within this new tertiary dispensation. On the announcement by UWI last November, Turkeyen was suitably affronted. In a release it said, “The national University has not ceded its mandate and responsibilities and UG is now offering more than 1000 courses online as part of `The University of Guyana Blueprint 2040’ strategy framework.”
However, Minister Manickchand told this newspaper recently that the new programmes were a direct response to needs. And while the Ministry was working with both UG and the Cyril Potter College of Education to put their programmes online, they still would not have the capacity to cater for the large enrolment being contemplated. “How many students can I enrol at UG and CPCE right now? I need hundreds of teachers right now,” she said.
She cannot be gainsaid where that is concerned. Online courses are arguably not the major issue at the local university in any case; it is rehabilitating it with a major infusion of funding in the first instance which is. And there are areas where the government should be investing very substantially in Turkeyen with a view to building up a world-class capacity in a given field. One which comes immediately to mind is the environment and associated matters, given our forest, the existence of Iwokrama, our unique and diverse flora and fauna, and so on. Ninety per cent of us live precariously along a littoral much of which as things stand is below high-tide level, and academically speaking we should have more than a passing interest in climate change, and its impact on the coastal societies of the Caribbean.
Online learning will, as Dr Opadeyi says, change the education landscape. Independently of that UG still needs to be rescued, and it is incumbent on the Ministry to open up discussions with the authorities there, as well as the wider society in relation to how that is to be done, and how Turkeyen will take its place within the new landscape.
Mulatto, dougla, buffiana, blasian – there are many words that are used to describe the Black mixed child. It was not so long ago when social orders stood firmly against miscegenation that these children would be considered persona non grata. Today, the mixed Black child is portrayed as a mythical creature with powers to cure racial disharmony.
We all know the popular calls to douglarize the nation or make mixed babies to end racism today. Chances are that you’ve been one of those sounding the trumpet for mixed relationships as you see them as being revolutionarily necessary in times of such unease. Coming out of a history of illegality and rejection, the push for the Black mixed child is steadily increasing. Persons believe that in mashing together distinct lives and cultures, they can play a part in achieving the colorblind future they have long envisioned; a future where racial lines are so blurred and ambiguous that they have no bearing over the lives of their children. It is a nice thought but it is not a thought based wholly on reality. Mixed children will not deliver us from ethnic anxieties towards each other just like how centuries of enslavement that birthed mulatto children did not change the anti-Blackness in our society, but rather solidified other systems of anti-Blackness such as colorism.
White supremacy is insidious and manifests itself in dangerous ways. All the push for the mixed Black child buys into is white ideals of perceived beauty and respectability. While these children can often fit into the accepted standard of beauty and can benefit from this, they are not immune from experiencing the structural racism that comes with their Blackness. The idea is though, the further removed from Blackness one is, the better chances they have of getting a proper education, jobs and benefitting from white power systems. This is certainly true as those who adhere more closely to white ideals are readily more able to secure high paying jobs, higher education, access loans etc. but the complexity of Black lineage does not always make it so cut and dry.
We bandy past the identity struggles these children have to contend with and the often hostile mixed race family dynamics and social environment in which they are raised. Rather than subverting racism, the portrayal of the mixed Black child as possessing superpowers for racial healing directly plays into racism and antiBlackness. This push for the mixed child did not occur outside of the scope of our fiercely race and class conscious society. There are a lot of moving parts and rationales behind the push for mixed children and certainly love is amongst these, but it is often not the dominant reason.
One can frequently come across Black persons who have internalized anti-Blackness to such a degree that they do not want to have relations with fellow Black people because they do not want their children to have “Black skin, Black hair, Black nose.” They seek out partners who they believe will reward them with a child that deviates from perceived standard Blackness.
Driving all of this is the standard image of what the mixed Black child should look like. They have Eurocentric features; light skin, light eyes and curly hair. But not all mixed children fit this narrow standard and often find themselves facing rejection from their families. This is because the entire idea of the mixed Black child is to remove them further from Blackness and towards a look that is racially ambiguous. On the flip side, there are white and non-Black people of colour who see in Black partners, a chance to create “exotic” children who will bring them closer to Blackness and protect them from charges of being anti-Black.
Many actively weaponize their proximity to Blackness as an excuse as to why they cannot be racist. We see it frequently how people would utilize their friends, family members and partners to suggest they are a Black ally or are equipped to speak on behalf of the Black experience. They believe that their proximity to Blackness somehow makes them exempt from racism. It would be a much simpler world if persons were truly able to compartmentalize their lives in such a way that they would never have friends, family or partners of other races or classes – simple in the sense that it would take away a lot of the pretensions we continue to see today. But people do not live non-binary lives and many are able to work with, befriend and even love those from varying ethnicities while harbouring anti-Black stereotypes, thoughts and actions against them and others.
While the look of our population is steadily changing, the ethnic fears and unease still remain a featured part of our society. The unions we form should be based on mutual respect and understanding of distinct cultures rather than surface level tolerance. We must too be selfaware of the white ideals we continue to place on ourselves, others and future children.