China asserting its hegemony with its increasingly authoritarian leadership, appears to traverse on a similar path. In handling domestic issues, China uses its military might to create fear among the workers and peasantry.
by Lionel Bopage
Even before the COVID-19 pandemic hit the global scene, neo-liberalism was fraying,as evident from the appearance of powerful and aggressive populist, nationalist and fundamentalist currents on the world stage. COVID-19 heightened these fissures.It is in this context we need to discuss the escalating tensions between China and the West.
The attack led by the US ruling class was instrumental in attempting to pull countries like Australia and the United Kingdom intoan unholy alliance against China. The racial riots in the US, has blunted this mobilisation to a certain extent, but the campaign continues, especially in South Asia, wooing India, which is led by a neo-liberal and religious fundamentalist regime, to have a go against China.At the moment,there is a tense standoff between Indian and Chinese troops along the contested border. The key factor driving the heightened tensions between them is the US push to harness India to its strategic agenda of transforming South Asia and the Indian Oceanto thwart China’s ‘belt and road’ initiative.
Therefore, we need to understand that this is a new cold war situation, where the west is increasingly intensifying their intimidation of China.Looking at China, Taiwan and Hong Kong, we also need to be mindful of the class nature of their respective working people.
Taiwan
At the end of Chinese Civil War in 1948, the Chinese Communist Party and the People’s Liberation Army defeated the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang retreated to Taiwan. The Chinese mainland population in Taiwan grew to 10 percent of itspopulation and was known as the “Outside People”. They constituted a political and economic elite during the Chiang Kai-shek’s iron fist rule. The rest of the “Local People” comprised mainly of those who had arrived with the early Han migration waves, combined with 1 to 2 percent of the indigenous people.
Social tensions in Taiwan grew due to a combination of factors: cultural estrangement caused by the "de-Japanization" program, economic hardships caused by a failed post-war economy, and the growing friction between the “Outside People” and the “Local People”. Island wide clashes once escalated into an uprising against the Taiwanese authority. Troops deployed to suppress opposition led to many killings, disappearances and imprisonments. This was the prelude to the white terror of the fifties.After decades of Chiang Kai-shek authoritarianism, the democracy movement turned Taiwan into a liberal democracy. The Kuomintang was in power for several decades and remains a major political player. It is conservative but supports unification with mainland China. The major issue in Taiwanese electoral politics appears to be nationalistic and relates to independence versus unification agenda.
The Democratic Progressive Partyin power today was a left-leaning party and followed major socio-economic reforms but has become increasingly conservative on many fronts. The Democratic Progressive Party is unravelling the labour reforms carried out in late 2017.It can hardly be identified as a left leaning party anymore. The DPP and other more pro-independence political parties rely on US imperialism as a way of preventing military threats mainland Chinais posing. Yet, the US actually seem to prefer Kuomintang because their pro-unification stance is seen as providing more stability regarding cross-strait relations.The political left in Taiwan has been pro-independence and has been an influence on the anticolonial uprisings and the self-determination of the Taiwanese people.
Many parties in Taiwan with names associated with working class appear to be identified as labour because they hold pro-unification positions or have pro-Beijing ideological orientations. The labour movement in Taiwan is weak despite having to endure the fourth-longest working hours in the world. The Kuomintang regime repressed unions during its authoritarian rule. Only state sponsored unions were allowed to exist, and the state used them as tools for leveraging labour to suit the ruling junta’s political, strategic and economic agenda. According to reports, Taiwan has seven hundred thousand-plus Southeast Asian guest workers, i.e., 6 percent of the workforce and growing. With migrant worker marriages, the demographics of Taiwan is said to be changing. There are different nationalities and an informal working class. Organising these workers has become one of the key challenges of the labour movement.
The current radical labour activism appears associated with the Sunflower Movement. In many recent strikes, including those of the Chinese airlines and flight attendants, the workers who took part were quite young. Most of the worker mobilisations appear to come from young activists but split on the lines of independence or unification with the mainland China. With current Hong Kong protests being associated with kidnappings, disappearances, killings and possible suicides and being similar to what they experienced during the four decades of political suppression, the fear of an authoritarian nationalist China appears to be rising in Taiwan.
Many in the traditional left support unification because they see China as a socialist paradise, while some others have moved beyond that conception. A political exchange is difficult as some of the left activists in Taiwan cannot travel to mainland China or Hong Kong, due to the fear of being kidnapped or being refused entry. Those of the left overseas need to collaborate with the working people in Taiwan and the Taiwanese left in a spirit of international solidarity.
Hong Kong
Hong Kong has been a pressure cooker for a long time, being politically divided with those who support autonomy and those who wish for unification with China. Causes of the protests are many-fold and include demands for democratic rights andrecognising national identity of Hong Kong residents, and the contradictions between the two social systems. Obviously, protestors are extremely dissatisfied over the vast social and class inequality. There are calls for self-determination, worker rights, gender equality, minority rights etc. and appear to comprise a more militant younger generation of activists. Some of these movements are said to be supported by the US based National Endowment for Democracy.Strong right-wing populist and nativist currents tap into the growing Hong Kong national identity.Also, many residents, owners of small businesses, and financial and tourism companies appear to have been offended by the violence and destruction caused by the protests.
Hong Kong and China are one country. Ultimate aim of the “one country, two systems” model was the full integration of Hong Kong with the mainland by 2047. As China increasingly asserted its sovereignty and authority over Hong Kong, contradictions and clashes were inevitable. Elections in Hong Kong today are limited in scope. Through direct elections, the electorate can choose only half of the Legislative Council representatives. The other half are elected through associations from lists of approved candidates. An Election Commission selects the Chief Executive.
Hong Kong does not have extradition laws with China, or Taiwan. Also, Hong Kong does not fully enjoy the democratic rights assured under the Basic Law. The 2019 protests including violent confrontations with authorities, strikes, and student boycotts, including the June 16 and August 18 demonstrations that drew 1.7 million participants were sparked by the introduction of an Extradition Law. In the wake of the continuing protests, the Hong Kong Chief Executive, first used an extremely violent heavy hand and then withdrew the bill but has not given assurances that the bill will not be reintroduced.
With China suppressing and censoring political opposition, it is not surprising the people of Hong Kong are suspicious and nervous. People of Hong Kong were not consulted. Many believe the Extradition Law will be used against anyone holding different political views to the Chinese Communist Party.Some countrieswith extradition treaties do not take into account the democratic rights of the people to be extradited. This is clearly demonstrated in the attempts to extradite the Australian Julian Assange to the US. In China where Australian citizens, irrespective of whether they have committed a criminal offence or not, have not being granted access to lawyers.
The Hong Kong government states that the protesters are voicing additional demands beyond the original ones.China believes that the U.S. and the British are exploiting the mass discontent to provoking an attempt to separate Hong Kong from China. From Beijing’s point of view, this could spread to the mainland and undermine China’s socialist system. This scenario is a plausible one to anyone who needs to transform the global exploitative system to a non-exploitative one.Nevertheless,the size of the protests, scope of their demands and the persistence of their agitations appear to belie such a scenario.
The Umbrella Movement was a product of opposing the electoral changes China approved, i.e., for appointing an election committee to pre-approve candidates for the chief executive position before voters cast their votes at an election. The extended protests ended when the Hong Kong Legislative Council ditched proposed reforms. The “pro-democracy” campaigns and leaders appear to have grown out of Hong Kong Civil Human Rights Front that emerged from the Umbrella Movement of 2014. Some of them are said to be backed by the right-wing U.S. based National Endowment for Democracy.Yet, the protests appear to involve broader segments of society taking more anarchistic forms.
The Hong Kong Occupy type protest movement came into being during the global financial crisis. It rejected capitalism characterised by extreme wealth inequality, the power of oligarchs, rapid urban development, and environmental destruction. Rampant corruption has led to a longstanding housing crisis. Property sales are the primary source of government revenue. Property prices have grown many fold, making the situation of young people hopeless without being able to afford housing and thus to start a family.
Hong Kong workers have their own protest history. Often strikers walk off jobs demanding better pay and conditions. Wages are stagnating. The government spends bare minimum on health care, education, housing, and other social programs. The trade union movement in Australia needs to do more to protest against China’s repression in Hong Kong, Xinjiang and against their own workers’ strikes. International worker solidarity can be highly effective in this regard.
China
We understand that the Chinese path of social development did not go through a bourgeois democratic phase that allowed people to enjoy the rights of freedom of expression, association and movement. Yet, while the rest of the capitalist world grinds its working class into poverty, the wages of Chinese have grown dramatically every year. In the last several decades, China has lifted several hundred millionpeople out of poverty. Nevertheless, the very same economic reforms appear to have created historically unprecedented economic, social, and political issues.
This June marksthe 31st anniversary of the gruesome massacre in Beijing. China was in the throes of a mass movementthat paralysedBeijing thatspread tomany other cities.In 2018 left-wing activists, students and workers were suppressed in the aftermath of a workers’ struggle in southern China. These workers and youth were also accused of “colluding with foreign forces”, a charge used to denigrate every form of opposition.In the Muslim-majority region of Xinjiang, an entire population is being terrorised with more than a million incarcerated in the so-called vocational training centres. The entire region appears to have become more or less a digital police state.
China has what it calls a socialist democracy rooted in Chinese nationalism, with the Chinese Communist Party as the single ruling party headed by a life-long leader. It appears to have an authoritarian way of empowering people. Having undergone colonial humiliation of dismembering its territory, China does not want it to happen again. In addition, China does not want the current social disturbances to destabilise the existing socio-economic and politico-legal system in the mainland.
Conclusion
If the Chinese Communist Partyfollows an inclusive path in its political trajectory, it can achieve its declared aim of socialism. Otherwise it will follow a path similar to the one that led to Soviet Union’s demise. Soviet Union’s politically decadent and unaccountable leadership, corrupt bureaucracy, autocratic policies, its interventions in Afghanistan and its ‘deformed socialism’ contributed to its collapse. The aggressive actions of the American empire abetted that demise.Soviet Union also intervened militarily in Hungary, Poland and Czechoslovakia crushing popular movements and propping up puppets who did their bidding. In spite of its overwhelming military prowess, it overreached itself and self-immolated.
China asserting its hegemony with its increasingly authoritarian leadership, appears to traverse on a similar path. In handling domestic issues, China uses its military might to create fear among the workers and peasantry. A similar situation in handling problems of ethnic and religious discrimination and of minority rights in the autonomous regions such as Tibet and Xinjiang. In the meantime, China is entangled with the problems in Hong Kong, Taiwan, India, Japan and Vietnam. In the new cold war situation, taking on the American Empire in addition, could lead China towards the same destination that the Soviet Union went to, being forced to fight battles on all fronts, instead of negotiating with its own minorities and neighbours.The most important ingredient for socialism to be victorious in China is to rely on its own working people. A victorious movement of the working people in Hong Kong and Taiwan will not depend only on their own workers, but also on the international solidarity the workers of mainland Chinacould extend. That is the incredible potential of the Chinese working class.
I believe what is necessary today is active international solidarity and a proletarian outlook-basededucation program that would engender working class consciousness. This requires reviving the best internationalist traditions of the working-class movement, re-emphasising the eternal need of the workers to speak and act independently of capitalist regimes and their ruling elites.
What the workers in China, Hong Kong and Taiwan need is grassroot working class solidarity against state violence, authoritarian policies, and anti-working-class regimes.
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