My understanding was that what
@spring2017 was talking about was in the context of the current geopolitical struggle between China and the West. I do not believe there is a universal answer to all circumstances, so I do not believe *every conflict* is due to class struggle, just as I do not believe *every struggle* is due to race.
So, only in the context of the current geopolitical struggle between China and the West, my observations lead me to believe that its nature is more of a class struggle than a racial one.
First, let's talk about the confounding variable, which is history. Europeans were the first nations to industrialize, and thereby gained tremendous power over the rest of the world. For 200-300 years, European culture has been the pre-eminent and dominant culture of the world. Europe was also the birth place of capitalism, so this particular ideology became associated with wealth and prestige, especially after the fall of the Soviet Union.
Europe happens to be predominantly populated by the Caucasian race, and they also happen to have a history of African slave trade. As human beings, the only way you can treat another human being as property is if you can convince yourself that that other person is not a real human being. That is the root of modern racism in America. For centuries, white Americans (and Europeans) have convinced themselves that the "negroid race" were sub-humans only deserving of being treated like cattle by their white masters. By extension, they also convinced themselves that their race and culture were the saviors of other, inferior, cultures and races. That is the legacy that we are dealing with today.
So definitely, racial elements play a role in the current struggle. However, I would argue that the class struggle is the more fundamental dynamic.
The crux of the matter is motivation and interest. Who benefits, and who has the motivation and the power to make things happen the way they do?
Why is the US attacking China, and why now? Why are US allies cooperating with the US even against their own apparent national interests? It's easy to blame the timing on Trump, but as we can see from Biden's actions, the US hostility was going to happen even under a different leadership.
So what were the developments that led the US to focus their aggression against China like never before?
The race for 5G is one of those developments. 5G has the potential to usher in a new industrial revolution, and like the previous revolutions before it, the nation that wins that race will gain serious advantages against their rivals. By attacking leading Chinese high-tech companies, the US hopes to cripple the lead China has managed to gain in the 5G race.
At least that was what we all thought at first, until the HK riots started.
The HK riots had nothing to do with China's 5G development. Not even the most optimistic US strategist would claim that disrupting HK would affect Huawei's 5G dominance. So what was the purpose of instigating insurrections in HK? If it was only that one incident, even as serious as it was, we could dismiss it as just the West trying to exploit existing tensions.
Then the Uyghur genocide claims started. Keep in mind that the claim of Uyghurs being imprisoned in mass concentration camps predate the HK riots. However, no genocide claims were ever advanced (unless you count the nebulous "cultural genocide" claims) until the HK situation had largely stabilized.
This was very obviously a follow-up attack to HK. HK and Xinjiang were part of the same strategic theatre, while the sanctions on Huawei et al. were part of a different theatre.
So what does HK and Xinjiang have in common?
OBOR.
Xinjiang is the gateway to the Belt, while HK is (or was?) one of the gateways to the Road. We all know what OBOR is about, so I won't repeat it here, but I would ask the question: why would the US, and the West, feel threated by OBOR? China has had other economic partnership initiatives before without incurring such hostility, so what is so special about OBOR?
My belief is that this is because OBOR threatens two strategic interests of Western Capitalism: the Middle East, and Africa. OBOR has the potential to link the economies of Iran and Iraq, two of countries with the biggest oil reserves outside of Saudi Arabia, with the economy of China. Where the US has had to pay the price of 40k casualties and 2 trillion USD to secure the oil reserves of Iraq, China threatens to undo all of that through economic cooperation. That is simply unacceptable for the likes of Exxon Mobile and BP.
Likewise, Africa has long been the playground of European colonialists, even after the supposed independence of those African nations. France effectively controls the economy of all nations in the
Françafrique. The US and the UK also have a long history of giving supposed "aid" to impoverished nations in return for exploitative access to their natural resources. For years, these Western actors have been warily eyeing China's successes in Africa, and now OBOR threatens to take those successes to a whole new level.
It is clear to me that the current geopolitical tensions are highly economic in nature, and that the racial aspects are just existing tensions that are being exploited by the West to harden domestic opinion against China, quite possibly in preparation for an armed conflict. What's more, these economic conflicts are driven entirely by the interests of the Western Capitalist class who are loathe to abandon their existing models of exploitation against the weaker nations of the world (what Twitter folks call the "Global South"). To me, that is quite clearly a class struggle.
