Category: Current Affairs

  • Taiwan is a Province of China

    Taiwan is a Province of China

    Transnistria is a de facto state with boundaries that ripple along the better part of Moldova’s eastern border with Ukraine. It was founded by Soviet loyalists who feared that their Moldavian Socialist Republic would merge with Romania in the event of a breakup with the Soviet Union. Linguistic concerns over the future of the Cyrillic script and Slavic languages in the eastern region motivated a declaration of independence in 1990, with a breakaway government established in Tiraspol. As it turns out, only one of these events came to pass: Moldova did splinter off when the USSR was dissolved but it did not merge with Romania. As the newly-found country of Moldova moved to assert their sovereignty over Tiraspol, the Russian garrison intervened on behalf of the Transnistrian cause and froze the conflict in 1992. Transnistria remains an unrecognized, de facto breakaway state all these years later.

    With its ambiguous boundaries and hammers and sickles and towering Lenin statues, Transnistria evokes a land of incomprehensible time and place. It could be Annexia from William Burroughs’ Naked Lunch, but a legal state it is not. That is because Transnistria rests wholly within Moldova’s internationally recognized borders. Moldova has every legal right to assert its sovereignty over Transnistrian territory, including by force. Blocking this option, however, is Moscow’s continued military support for the separatists, guaranteeing a civil war should Moldova attempt to reincorporate the territory. Transnistria thus persists as a de facto state without de jure legitimacy.1

    Transnistria
    Scenes from Transnistria.

    This Russian support is, of course, illegal under international law, with Article 2, Section 4 of the United Nations Charter stating: “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations.” But we need not invoke Russia to understand that this is a “might makes right” world; the United States has proved it again and again and again.

    The Island Formerly Known as Formosa

    This brings up the continued existence of the Republic of China, better known as Taiwan. Taiwan rests wholly within the internationally recognized borders of the People’s Republic of China, it is a de facto state without de jure recognition and it has been propped up by the illegal intervention of an outside power for decades. Legally speaking, China is analogous to Moldova, Taiwan is Transnistria and the United States plays the role of Russia.

    Taiwan was annexed by China during the Qing dynasty over 340 years ago in 1684, after decades of Han migration and brief occupations by Spanish and Dutch colonialists. The encroachment of European powers had flagged the geopolitical importance of this island, situated prominently 100 miles from China’s east coast. As is so often the case throughout history, indigenous people found themselves in the middle of a greater power game and they experienced violent battles against Europeans and Chinese alike, ultimately leading to severe cultural erosion over time.

    Two centuries after Taiwan had become a part of China, a nascent Japanese Empire turned its military might on both Korea and China. Taiwan was the first Chinese territory to fall into Tokyo’s hands after Imperial Japan decisively defeated Qing forces in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1895. When the Japanese were finally defeated by allied forces at the conclusion of World War II, their local authorities formally handed the island over to the Republic of China led by Chiang Kai-shek.

    Taiwan was henceforth officially recognized as Chinese territory by the United States and other western nations. Although a civil war continued on China’s mainland, US President Harry Truman indicated that he would not intervene in the fight between Mao and Chiang’s armies.

    Illegal Interference

    Truman changed his mind shortly after the outbreak of the Korean War, suddenly wary of expanding Soviet influence in the region. Truman sent the Seventh Fleet to the Taiwan Strait, preventing any attempt to take the island by the newly-formed People’s Republic of China. Mao, in turn, ordered soldiers over the Korean border and pushed the American-led coalition back to the original demarcation line between the two Koreas.

    The tension between the US and PRC led to a curious situation whereby Chiang Kai-shek’s Republic of China in Taipei became recognized as the sole representative of China by Washington and many other western governments. Taipei even represented China at the United Nations and held China’s permanent seat on the Security Council. At this time, the PRC was the de facto government of the entirety of China, minus Hong Kong and Taiwan.

    Even though very little Chinese territory was under ROC control, Washington used diplomatic pressure to create competition between Beijing and Taipei for de jure international recognition. Taking Taiwan by force was not an option for the PRC, as Chiang Kai-shek’s military dictatorship was protected by American nuclear weapons deployed to the island, in addition to naval and air force installations guarding the strait.

    If it was not for the Russian military, there would be no Transnistria. Likewise, if it was not for the American military, there would be no Republic of China. Taiwan would have been brought under Beijing’s de facto administration long ago. This is important to keep in mind considering that the People’s Republic gained unambiguous global de jure legitimacy in the 1970s after Nixon’s visit to China.

    This legitimacy was demonstrated by the expulsion of the ROC from the United Nations and the accession of Beijing to the seat representing mainland China plus Taiwan. UN General Assembly Resolution 2758 recognized “that the representatives of the Government of the People’s Republic of China are the only lawful representatives of China to the United Nations and that the People’s Republic of China is one of the five permanent members of the Security Council.”

    While a dozen tiny states recognize the ROC—like Tuvalu, Saint Lucia and Eswatini—the PRC’s “One China” principle is supported by 142 countries and is expressly acknowledged by 182 in total. The UN seat representing Taiwan passed from Taipei to Beijing many decades ago. If the issue appears unsettled, it is because Washington continues to incorporate the Chinese territory of Taiwan into its regional security architecture designed to contain China. The US sells arms to Taiwan and offers them military protection in flagrant violation of Article 2(4) of the UN Charter.

    Taiwan is the central node of the American “first island chain” of forward-deployed military bases in Asia prepared to attack China’s eastern coast at a moment’s notice. Without this strategic partnership with Taiwan’s de facto autonomous government, the first island chain is broken and blue water access to Chinese ships can no longer be denied.

    Double Standards

    If Taiwan was to gain legal statehood, the path does not run through Washington or any other third party. It runs through Beijing and a formal diplomatic settlement. Ireland gained its independence after fighting a war that forced an agreement from London. The same thing happened when South Sudan negotiated a secession procedure with Khartoum. Kosovo gained independence after experiencing a genocide of its population, and representatives from both Serbia and Kosovo agreed to take the question of Kosovar autonomy to the International Court of Justice.

    The common thread here is mutual agreement between the concerned parties—something that has never been attempted by Taipei. Enabled by American protection, the ROC has simply never felt compelled to negotiate. Without a formal settlement, Beijing retains the legal right to assert its sovereignty over the island—just as Washington asserted itself over the Confederate States and Madrid asserted itself over Catalonia.

    The Lowy Institute is a centre-right think tank from Australia that weighed in on this issue in 2021:

    Other countries cannot have cake and eat it too: deny Taiwan is a state, but defend it as if it were. In a world with a plurality of different political systems, states are not permitted to use force simply to protect democracy or “freedom” abroad. The US backed Taiwan even when it was a military dictatorship until the 1990s; its defence has never really been about freedom.

    Further, every state has a sovereign right to maintain authority over its own territory and people, including by forcibly suppressing separatism. If Taiwan is Chinese territory, China has a right to take it back and restore Chinese sovereignty—just as the US did in its own civil war. Western interference in China’s internal affairs to assist Taiwan would be an illegal use of force against China and criminal aggression. Current US arms sales to Taiwan would also be illegal force and prohibited intervention against China—just like Russia funnelling weapons to separatists in Ukraine.2

    For the American foreign policy establishment, the clear preference is to maintain the illegal status quo that facilitates US dominance over Asia. Peaceful reunification has even been described as a “worst case scenario” for American hegemony—a punishing war is preferable because it would at least diminish Beijing in the process. After Gaza, nobody should be surprised by the appalling disregard for human life demonstrated by the western ruling class.

    Building an actual rules-based order will not be accomplished by fighting Moscow whenever it behaves like Washington. That sort of cynical one-sidedness is what perpetuates the cycle of lawlessness. Recognizing Taiwan as a province of China is not about the PRC; it is about the rules-based order that the West already claims to uphold.

    Thanks for reading!


    1. It should be noted that de jure recognition can be gained through mutually-agreed upon secession procedures between the concerned parties; civil wars resulting in a peace agreement; appeals to the International Court of Justice in order to validate the existing autonomy of the aspiring secessionist party. ↩︎

    2. Ben Saul, “Would a war over Taiwan be legal?” Lowy Institute, October 14, 2021. ↩︎
  • How Trump’s Tariffs Cement A New World Order

    How Trump’s Tariffs Cement A New World Order

    There must be no doubt that the transformation of constitutional conservatism into a politics of populist reaction is attributable to the rapid societal changes of the past two decades. The ubiquitousness of smart phones, the totality of social media information, the sharp visibility of immigrant and LGBT populations, cultural backlash against perceived “woke” authoritarianism and the economic tumult of subprime mortgages and COVID have all contributed to this transformation. Throw in several years of historic inflation and the world now sits in the barrel of a second Trump presidency, much more aggressive than the last.

    For the Marxist school, Trump’s re-ascendance was mighty predictable. Within the milieu of the aforementioned social changes, we have artificial intelligence revaluing labour and China revolutionizing global trade and renewable energy and “people seem to be occupied with revolutionizing themselves and things, creating something that did not exist before.” According to Marx, it is in times like these when many people “anxiously conjure up the spirits of the past to their service, in order to present this new scene in world history [with] time-honoured disguise and borrowed language.”1

    The early returns of the second Trump administration have given us time-honoured symbolism in spades—military parades, the return of Mount McKinley and the freshly minted Gulf of America. The mass deportation orders are an echo of Eisenhower’s cringily-named “Operation Wetback” and Trump’s economic policy rests on an antiquated foundation of import duties, also known as tariffs.

    Past and Present

    American tariffs on imports now reach heights not seen in a century and this is very on-brand with Trump’s glorification of the past. 100 years ago, tariffs were a staple of independent governments looking to do two things at once: efficiently collect tax revenues at shipping ports while sheltering burgeoning industries from outside competition. Generally speaking, items that could be supplied domestically were subject to a tariff, while important raw materials supporting other industries might be exempt. Then came the Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 that blanketed imports with an effective tariff rate of 47%. This sparked a global retaliation that froze international trade just as the West entered the Great Depression. The presidential administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt began winding down many of these tariffs through bilateral deals shortly after taking office—but with so little capital circulating after a period of deflation, the harmful effects did not really reverse until the conclusion of World War II. From that point onward, the United States promoted a low-tariff, liberalized trade regime between capitalist countries.

    The American posture on liberal trade was upheld through successive administrations but the current Trump White House has folded it in dramatic fashion. But how do these tariffs stack against the historical record?

    We can see that the earliest application of tariffs were used to efficiently gather taxes at ports without the need for a sophisticated bureaucracy capable of calculating sales and income taxes. These tariffs do not appear to have had any disastrous consequences for the economy at the time—bearing in mind that this economy was much more simple and agrarian compared to today. Under the Smoot-Hawley Act, the American economy was much more industrialized and complex compared to years prior, and the tariffs were much steeper. It is seen as disastrous but only in hindsight; during the desperation of economic depression, throwing up a barrier to the outflow of capital made intuitive sense.

    Trump’s rapidly evolving tariff regime does not overlay neatly on either of these historical examples. On the one hand, the effective tariff rate at the time of writing is 18.6%—quite mild compared to the Smoot-Hawley rate of 47%. On the other hand, the American economy is more complex than ever, with commodity production and financial capital often crossing dozens of borders before valorization. In the simple, low-tax colonial economies that were developing in the Americas over a century ago, tariffs were not so imposing. But dropping duties onto supply chains that were established during an era of liberalized trade is bound to cause blockages to the existing circulation of productive and financial capital. This will suppress consumption but the full extent remains to be seen. 

    A novelty between past tariff regimes and the Trump tariffs is the strategy inherent to each. Trump’s tariffs do not seem to amount to any sort of regime or logic—there is clearly an impulse to apply them universally, but the rates are up and down on a whim. Canada is threatened with tariffs over plans to recognize a Palestinian state. Brazil gets slammed with a 50% rate for court proceedings against the former president. India, likewise, is slapped with an identical 50% rate for buying Russian oil—while Russia’s other customers in Europe and China receive no consequences. Resulting is a geopolitical shot string, and the consequences to American hegemony will take years to reckon with. Suffice to say, the only constancy to Trump’s approach is uncertainty itself—and that’s the one thing multinational conglomerates and their army of lobbyists loathe.

    Why Tariffs?

    But Trump, consummate capitalist that he is, would not maximize market uncertainty or collapse American hegemony or create capital blockages and suppress consumption intentionally. In fact, the Trump White House believes that tariffs will have the opposite effects from those listed here: capital will consolidate at home, jobs and domestic consumption will boom and American hegemony will rejuvenate, the world dancing to Washington’s ultimatums, the market nurtured under the eagle’s wing. So how does this play out?

    As with most everything concerning the motion of capitalism, Marx and Engels addressed this question of duties back in the Victorian era. Engels: 


    Protection is at best an endless screw, and you never know when you have done with it. By protecting one industry, you directly or indirectly hurt all others, and have therefore to protect them too…By taxing raw materials, it raises the price of the articles manufactured from them; by taxing food, it raises the price of labour. In both ways, it places the manufacturer at a disadvantage compared to his foreign competitor.

    We see this observation playing out in real time. Food costs are up over the early months of the Trump administration and will increase further with tariffs. Producer inflation is soaring as the cost of economic inputs rise. Automakers are shedding billions, largely due to tariffs on necessary steel and aluminum. For the crown jewel in American capitalism’s catalogue of death—the F-35 stealth fighter—prices have rocketed upward thanks to the higher cost of raw materials. No sooner does Trump clamour for weapons sales and he raises the price of everything across the entire defence industry!

    Marx, likewise, saw free trade as hastening a country’s “accumulation and concentration of capital” with workers being hurt by  “greater use of machinery” in production. What this has meant for the United States is a bloated credit and debt system, a largely automated manufacturing sector and an abundance of monopolistic financial firms and multinational conglomerates that export their capital around the world looking to realize profits in the American market. It’s as if Trump’s tariffs are meant to throw wrenches into the wheels of the economy that are turning well, while doing nothing to jumpstart the others. The motivation for American protectionism is similar to what Engels described in England in 1888: “She is relatively losing ground, while her rivals are making progress.” America is losing its sole superpower status and “it is to stave off this impending fate that Protection, scarcely disguised under the veil of ‘fair trade’ and retaliatory tariffs, is now invoked with such fervour.”

    Wither the Empire?

    When Trump opened a trade war against China during his first term, the Chinese looked outward. Since U.S. tariffs came into effect in 2018, the value of Chinese exports has increased by 50%, they became the top automotive seller in the world and they are the top trading partner to 150 countries.  Now that Trump has launched a trade war against the entire world, China sees an even greater opportunity.  They have unilaterally implemented a zero-tariff policy for all of the world’s least developed countries plus the entire continent of Africa. As students of Marxian economics, China has taken steps to suppress the financial capital system that has ravaged the American Main Street, instead directing investments into the productive sectors of their economy and expanding its global Belt-and-Road Initiative. China has made moves to bolster trade with India, Vietnam, the European Union and Britain, while strengthening relations with Latin America and the rest of the Global South. Renewable energy and automation technologies—key pillars of a future socialist economy—are progressing at rapid speed. China is almost single-handedly lowering global emissions while the West languishes under the shock of American protectionism. 

    What are the future results of Trump’s tariffs? We will not know in the near term. Trump may not even live long enough to find out. But he probably won’t like the answer.

    Thanks for reading!

    Footnotes:

    1. Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte. ↩︎
  • How Industry Created A Bird Flu Apocalypse

    How Industry Created A Bird Flu Apocalypse

    When the H5N1 strain of avian influenza was first identified in 1996, history could not dictate the path it was going to take. Highly contagious avian diseases had tended to spread like wildfire within the confines of isolated poultry operations but would burn out quickly in nature because the deaths of wild hosts inhibited spread between dispersed animal populations. But H5N1 is different. 

    As industrial agriculture and intensive livestock holdings have fanned across the world, it is apparent that disease contagion is fanning out alongside it. Maybe this isn’t entirely surprising given the multitude of other dangerous externalities that have emerged as byproducts of the industrial era: energy consumption and atmospheric recomposition leading to climate change; mass production of plastics and the clogging of waterways, whale guts and microplastic in human tissue; air coolants and a hole in the ozone layer; urban sprawl, resource extraction, crop monocultures and biodiversity collapse.

    In 1996, H5N1 struck geese farms in China and a huge number of birds were lost and that may have been the end of it. But then it struck Hong Kong. And South Korea. And Southeast Asia. And Japan. And then it struck everywhere all at once. H5N1’s body count reads like an animal apocalypse: over 300 million birds from every continent on Earth, tens of thousands of mammals including seals and dolphins, and about 500 humans struck dead. Migratory birds have spread the virus the world over but what’s astonishing about H5N1 is how it has gained strength over time, with its death rate and range of infected species becoming progressively worse.

    Bioterrorism

    When H5N1 collides with a poultry farm it’s like a missile. It infects thousands of hosts at a shot, combining and re-assorting itself in each animal body before rapidly moving to the next. These are tightly packed environments devoid of fresh air, clean water and faecal-free space—the most perfect accelerant imaginable for a rapidly mutating influenza. Thanks to the paucity of poultry operations along migration routes, the virus has continued to cycle between poultry and wild birds unabated for almost thirty years now. Wild birds pick up the bird flu from a poultry farm and, whether they survive or die, spread it to the next poultry farm along the migration route, creating a whole new strain of H5N1 to which there are no defences.  And just like that, a self-perpetuating death spiral provoking the slaughter of millions of farmed animals and mass die-offs in the wild has been unleashed.

    The havoc wreaked by H5N1 over the past three decades has made this pathogen the pioneering subject of controversial gain-of-function viral research. When questions were volleyed over the bio-terrorist potential that these new technologies raised, Anthony Fauci, former Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Diseases, replied: “Nature is the real terrorist.” Absurd, yes—we will all succumb to our biology at some point. But has nature not given birth to all things living and sustained it with purified air, filtered sunlight and an abundance of glorious freshwater and botanicals that heal? Further, is it not human industry that is degrading the life-giving functions of the biosphere—polluting our atmosphere, contaminating our oceans—even summoning an unstoppable serial killing virus from the feathery cages of battery hens?

    H5N1 could not exist absent the viral reservoir provided by billions of human-farmed poultry living in putrid conditions. Although industrial activity has birthed this virus, commerce has taken an economic hit as a result. It is this threat to industry that governments have their eye on, with Vox reporting that the US Department of Agriculture “is primarily focused of protecting the poultry industry,” staring past the unfolding catastrophe in wildlife conservation and pursuant risk of another human pandemic. The latter is a very real possibility, especially in light of studies revealing that the devastating pandemic of 1918 likely sprang from an avian strain of influenza.

    Crisis Capital

    And so, H5N1 is yet another capitalist crisis whereby private actors create an existential threat that the state must contain while simultaneously sheltering the problem-causing industry. It is overwhelmingly workers that have lost their lives to H5N1, and rank-and-file consumers and taxpayers will foot the bill for additional costs imposed on the industry. Because of this, it is unlikely that holistic approaches and reforms to Big Poultry that researchers have called for will actually come to pass.

    Karl Marx, regarding the transition from the feudal to capitalist mode of production, described the changes that capitalism brought to livestock rearing in England. As food became commodified and profit-oriented, so did stable feeding become dominant: 

    In these prisons animals are born and remain there until they are killed off. The question is whether or not this system connected to the breeding that grows animals in an abnormal way by aborting bones in order to transform them to mere meat and a bulk of fat—whereas [before commodification] these animals remained active by staying under free air as much as possible—will ultimately result in serious deterioration of life force?1

    If there is a correlation between the vectors of H5N1, ocean acidification, addiction and mental health crises, plastic waste and contamination, surging global slums, an unaffordable cost of living and even right-wing populism, then it is the entire capitalist modality that needs a rethink instead of choice industries. We have the technology and resources to implement programs of regenerative farming, resilient landscapes, wildlife conservation, sustainable cities and even a cleanse of air and oceans. But such practices simply cannot operate on a for-profit basis despite the desirability of their outcomes.

    The timeline presented here gives a snapshot of H5N1 as it has moved through the media landscape since first coming onto the collective radar. Even though almost 8,000 academic articles have been published on this topic, it has only penetrated the mainstream swayingly, oscillating from intense interest when human beings and cute baby seals are effected, and near-oblivion in years when it is seemingly contained to the fetid poultry site. By giving this invisible pathogen contours in our imaginations, we can hopefully better contextualize this virus as individuals and bring light to the correct places with our torches.

    Timeline of H5N1

    1996 

    • Contagion breaks out on goose farms in mainland China kill 40% of infected birds. The pathogen is discovered to be a highly contagious influenza virus and is categorized as “H5N1.”

    1997 

    • A “mysterious ‘bird flu’ virus” erupts among poultry farms and markets in Hong Kong, causing mass die-offs of livestock. H5N1 is determined to be the culprit. Authorities order every chicken in Hong Kong slaughtered over a two day period, plus any ducks, geese, quail or pigeons held within proximity. Workers from Hong Kong’s chicken farms and market stalls are tested for H5N1. 18 total infections were discovered resulting in six deaths.

    2001 

    • H5N1 reappears in Hong Kong, killing 800 chickens within 24 hours and forcing closed poultry markets with further culls of thousands of birds.

    2002 

    • Four ducks and a swan found dead in a Hong Kong pond. Tissue samples confirm presence of H5N1.

    2003 

    • Two members of a Hong Kong family test positive for the virus. One dead.
    • Two tigers and a pair of leopards in a Thailand zoo found dead after feeding on chicken carcasses. Tests confirm presence of H5N1 in tissue samples. A further 147 tigers go on to die of influenza or culling.
    • South Korea detects avian influenza on multiple poultry farms across the country, resulting in a cull of one million chickens and ducks.

    2004 

    • H5N1 reappears in Hong Kong, killing 800 chickens within 24 hours and forcing closed poultry markets with further culls of thousands of birds.
    • Japan, China, Cambodia, Vietnam, Laos, Indonesia, Thailand and Malaysia report outbreaks of H5N1 among poultry, evidence that the disease spread along the East Asian-Australasian Flyway. The flyway, stretching from New Zealand to eastern Siberia, is utilized by millions of wild birds belonging to 600 different species.
    • The culling of two million chickens in Vietnam prompts KFC to pull chicken from their menu in favour of fish.
    • 22 people confirmed dead in Vietnam from H5N1 and 12 in Thailand. At this point in time, up to 70% of people known to have contracted avian flu have died as a result.

    2005 

    • Over 6,000 wild birds infected with avian flu are found dead at China’s Qinghai Lake.
    • Avian flu outbreaks in Siberian poultry coincide with discovery of nearby dead migratory birds. Kazakhstan reports outbreak among chickens and Mongolia discovers 89 dead birds positive with H5N1 at two lakes.
    • Nigeria and Egypt report poultry outbreaks while Finland finds H5N1 in seagulls. Later, Croatia confirms presence of H5N1 in wild birds and Romania and Turkey report outbreaks in poultry.
    • EU leaders hold emergency talks in Luxembourg to discuss possible responses by member nations. In the U.S., President Bush recommends $7.1 billion be spent in tracking avian influenza, experimental vaccine development and stocking anti-virals.
    • Tamiflu supply is squeezed as production does not ramp up to meet new demand for the anti-viral drug. The pharmaceutical giant Roche projects a windfall of profit as a result: $875 million extra for the year, on account of avian flu concerns.
    • Hackers capitalize on bird flu fears, circulating emails that promise valuable bird flu information and gaining remote control over any computer that opens them.
    • Researchers discover an H5N1 strain that is resistant to Tamiflu. David Nabarro, senior health expert with the World Health Organization, predicts a human pandemic stemming from avian flu could kill 150 million people.

    2006 

    • H5N1 confirmed in 60 countries from East Asia through the Middle East, Africa and Europe.
    • Multiple human fatalities occur in North Africa and the Middle East and 25 die of bird flu in Indonesia. Virus appears to mainly spread from bird-to-human and shows limited capability of human-to-human infection.
    • Dr. Anthony Fauci of the National Institutes of Health tells the Associated Press: “Hopefully the epidemic [in birds] burns itself out, which epidemics do, before the virus evolves the capability of…going from human to human.”
    • Bird flu flare-up on a chicken farm in South Korea leads to a cull of 236,000 poultry, in addition to all pigs, cats and dogs within a 1,650 foot radius of the infection site.

    2007 

    • Number of human infections dwindles. The New York Times notes that as “the illness receded, the scary headlines—with warnings of a pandemic that could kill 150 million people—all but vanished.”
    • Despite fading interest, the Center for Infectious Disease Research reports the view of scientists and epidemiologists: so long as H5N1 circulates among wild birds, the risk to humans and poultry stocks remain the same.

    2009 

    • A 19 year old duck farm worker dies of avian influenza and Pakistan reports outbreak in poultry.

    2010 

    • A Hong Kong couple contracts avian influenza while travelling in mainland China, resulting in one hospitalization. Source of infection unknown as they had no contact with farmed birds. 

    2011 

    • 62 human cases of H5N1 are confirmed: 39 in Egypt, 12 in Indonesia, eight in Cambodia, two in Bangladesh and one in China. 34 deaths result.

    2012 

    • Some of the earliest ever gain-of-function research is revealed to be taking place in laboratories from North America, Europe and Asia, as scientists aim to create H5N1 strains that are highly pathogenic to people in order to better understand the potential risks. Concerns over bioterrorism and lab leaks prompt moratoriums on this type of research and academic papers to be censored. 
    • Scientists agree as little as five mutations to existing H5N1 strains could yield a catastrophic contagion among people.

    2014 

    • A 20 year old health care worker contracts H5N1 while travelling Beijing and dies in Red Deer, Alberta. North America’s first recorded fatality. Source of infection unknown.
    • World Health Organizations continues to monitor outbreaks within poultry farms and dozens of people across Africa and Asia.

    2015 

    • 100 migratory birds, including swans and pochards, found dead at a reservoir in China.

    2016 

    • India, battling H5N1 on poultry farms for two years, declares itself bird flu free in September. One month later, multiple waterfowl are found dead of H5N1 at a Delhi zoo.
    • Bangladesh, France, Niger and Nigeria report H5N1 outbreaks on farms.
    • H5N1 strains resistant to antivirals emerge in Egypt.

    2017 

    • Malaysia experiences severe H5N1 outbreak, resulting in a cull of 30,000 chickens as China bans Malaysian poultry products and a state of emergency is declared in the state of Kelantan.

    2019 

    • The digital public health publication STAT noted no new human fatalities of H5N1 in over two years. A related strain which emerged in 2014, H5N6, has killed approximately six out of 12 people infected since its detection.

    2020 

    • Amid a raging COVID-19 pandemic, China culls 18,000 chickens in Hunan province after 4,500 chickens are found dead on a farm due to H5N1.
    • Within a two week span, poultry farms in the Netherlands, Britain, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Poland, Croatia and Ukraine are hit with H5N1.

    2021 

    • An outbreak of H5N1 is reported on a poultry farm in Senegal. Later, rangers  discover 750 dead pelicans positive with the strain at a wild bird sanctuary.

    2022 

    • 8,000 Sandwich terns found dead at a breeding colony in the Netherlands.
    • British shorelines “smell of death” as hundreds of thousands of seabird corpses wash up dead after mating season, part of an H5N1 outbreak affecting the entire continent of Europe. Researchers estimate a death rate of 50–100% among wild birds which become infected with H5N1, depending on the species.
    • 13,000 seabirds in Peru turn up dead on beaches, mostly pelicans. H5N1 detected.
    • Deaths spike among wild birds in Canada, as outbreaks erupt in 200 commercial flocks across the country. 
    • H5N1 spreads rapidly across multiple detection sites in the continental United States, infecting one prison labourer who was involved with culling an infected flock in Colorado. Between culls and disease, over 50 million American domestic birds are killed. 
    • 330 seals along the Quebec and Maine coast are killed by H5N1, raising the spectre of the virus among mammals. Wild red foxes and farmed mink have also been infected, in addition to zoo mammals that were fed infected chickens. 
    • Conspiracy theories abound online, blaming Bill Gates and the CDC for releasing the deadly pathogen.
    • Globally, 77 million birds are culled in an attempt to contain the H5N1 pathogen.

    2023 

    • Based on all available information, Biosecurity specialist Juan Cambeiro reports that the likelihood of a human H5N1 pandemic breaking out in any given year is 4%. There is an 80% chance it would be worse than COVID in terms of fatalities.
    • Mass die-offs of gulls reported across Europe. Although wildlife detections are difficult measurements, by 2023 researchers estimate millions of wild birds have died due to the virus on a magnitude never before seen.
    • Eight dead skunks around Vancouver test positive for H5N1.
    • In Poland, 29 dead house cats tested positive for the virus of which 18 were indoor pets. Source of exposure unknown.
    • 485,000 animals, including mink and foxes, are culled in Finland after outbreaks on fur farms.
    • In a Canadian lab, predominant bird flu strain was found to “efficiently” spread between ferrets.
    • The number of known wild bird deaths from influenza in Peru swells to 63,000. Meanwhile, between January and October, a staggering 24,000 South American sea lions are found dead, suggesting mammal-to-mammal transmission.
    • Virus detected amongst migratory birds in Antarctica, the last continent to fall to contagion.
    • To date, 853 human cases of H5N1 have been reported with 53% of them fatal.

    2024 

    • Avian influenza detected in dead Alaskan polar bear to start the year. 48 different mammal species have been known to be infected to date.
    • Penguins begin dying of H5N1 in Antarctica while British conservationists report “catastrophic” decline of seabird population.
    • H5N1 virus found in cattle herds across six US states, then nine. Virus appears concentrated in milk and to circulate freely between cattle. True scale of bovine outbreak unknown as many producers resist cooperation with federal authorities.
    • H5N1 virus show up on grocery store shelves in milk, though pasteurization neutralizes the virus. 
    • Barn cats drinking raw milk succumb to bird flu deaths.
    • Wastewater samples reveal presence of the pathogen in six states: California, Idaho, Iowa, Minnesota, Michigan and Texas.
    • Sales of raw milk contaminated with bird flu pop as some consumers believe it will help them build immunity to the virus.

    2025 

    • $590 million contract awarded to Moderna to speed up development of a bird flu vaccine.
    • Retail prices for American eggs almost double over the previous year, as infected hens are culled en masse in the United States. Egg heists and border smugglers are reported.
    • The Moderna vaccine contract is cancelled by the Trump administration, citing “ethical concerns” over mRNA technology.
    • Robert Kennedy Jr. suggests ending containment strategies and letting bird flu spread wild.
    • Chilean scientists sequence H5N1 in Antarctic penguin populations, confirming similarities to strains decimating South American marine mammals.

    Footnote:

    1. Karl Marx quoted in “Marx as a Food Theorist?” Monthly Review, Vol. 68, No.7: monthlyreview.org/2016/12/01/marx-as-a-food-theorist ↩︎