A lot of people on the right spend their time these days calling Bill Gates a Communist and comparing him to Deng Xiaoing. They have half the story right but their ideology blinds them to the reality.

Gates and Deny do share a great deal in common. They are both Malthusians, both dire enemies of the global working class and both imperialists. That's because they are both very modern exponents of capitalism in it's most aggressive and expansionist phase in history.

There's nothing remotely "communist" in modern China. Deng's achievement was the final snuffing out of any such thing and the conversion of China into a modern capitalist state. You want to praise that for what it is then fine, but stop hiding behind red flags to do so.

The right need Gates to be a Communist just as they require China to still be so and the US ruling class to have been "bought" by the "reds". That's because for the pro-capitalist right wing they need the illusion that their beloved capitalism has been coroded by outside forces.

To admit to the reality, that capitalism has found a perfect place to grow in the form of modern China, that the US ruling class are not "communists" but sought out investment in China for the hyperexploitable labour there, would destroy their whole political project.

The likes of Bannon (who is just a liberal really) cannot admit that it is the logic of capitalism itself that got so much investment to pour into China. That the mass base of hyper exploitable workers, policed by a ruthless state machine, is what got those US companies to invest

The US and British capitalist right wing are invested in building a national kind of national, liberal capitalist state. They remain ignorant of the fact that the "liberty" they bang on about was, by neccesity, only available to the rich.

The dispute between Trump and Obama about TPP was in reality a difference in tactics not strategy. It was also reflective of the differing contradictions inside the US ruling class itself. On one side the financial sector stands to make billions from it's investments in China.

On the other you have those more concerned with the military and tech who are engaged in imperialist competition with the Chinese ruling class. This tension produced the TPP which was designed to stem the rapid growth of China and stymy its ability to become a danger to US power.

The plan was to ring China with more off shore low wage centres being built in the Asia-Pacific region in order to slow down Chinese economic growth. Trump threw that out, responding to demands from his 2016 voting base.