Here is the next section from the original article http://web.aanet.com.au/tplatform/Urumqi.html continuing on from what was pasted in the initial post:
So Back To: Why, Why, Why?
Yes, why is the mainstream media so hostile to the PRC? This is a question that has been greatly exercising the minds of pro-PRC, Chinese international students and migrants. One theory is that the Western media’s warped stance on issues like Tibet and Xinjiang are a product of simply being ill-informed of the facts. Certainly, there are some reporters in the Australian media who are ignorant. However, this is far from the full story. Many Western journalists are all too knowledgeable and they use their knowledge to help them better impose a biased viewpoint upon their audience. Consider this: when the March 2008 riot took place in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Beijing quite understandably imposed restrictions on Western media access to the region to stop them inflaming the situation. However, this lack of access gave the Western media just the excuse they needed to rely totally for “information” on the pronouncements of anti-communist Tibetan exile groups. The Western media simply broadcast the most far-fetched claims about a supposed PRC “brutal crackdown” in the Autonomous Region. So, when the Urumqi riots happened, Beijing tried a different policy. The Chinese government gave the Western media free access to Urumqi – access to a live domestic conflict zone which was somewhat unprecedented for any government to grant (certainly not the access the U.S. government gave the media when they stormed the Iraqi city of Falluja or Israel when it invaded Gaza). Beijing hoped that the now better informed Western media would give more accurate accounts than the ones they gave about Tibet last year. Instead, while the Western reporters were themselves now better informed, they used still more cunning methods to deceive their audience and mislead them as to what the real truth was. You see, a lack of knowledge of the facts is not the underlying problem here!
Then what is? Many think it is the racism in the Western countries that shapes its media’s hostility to the PRC. That certainly is a factor, especially in Australia, which for decades last century even had a White Australia Policy formally excluding non-white people such as the Chinese from entering the country. However, if racism were the only factor then it cannot explain why the Australian media has a rather sympathetic attitude to other Asian countries. For example, the media here covers up for the murderous repression by the capitalist Philippines government. In the last few years, the Philippines security forces and right-wing death squads have assassinated literally hundreds of trade unionists, peasant activists and leftist student organizers. But how much coverage does that get in the Australian media? And how much do the Western media report about the frequent arrests of striking workers in capitalist South Korea? In one day alone on May 16 in the city of Daejon, South Korean police arrested over 450 trade unionists. Did that make headlines on Channel Nine or even SBS World News?
Some people have suggested that China is particularly the target of racism in the West because it is becoming a world power and the patronizing Western media cannot stomach the rise of a non-white country. True enough. However, if that were the only reason that the American, European and Australian media slanders the PRC then why are they not also attacking the other non-white world powers. For example, the mainstream media in Australia and America are favourable towards Japan – this despite the fact that both countries fought a major war against Japan. And although there is plenty of anti-Indian racism in the Australian media, the Indian political regime generally gets a positive depiction. When in 2002, racist mobs from India’s majority Hindu community went on a rampage in Gujarat province and murdered up to 2,000 Muslim people, the Western media not only did not give much prominence to the riots but did not try to use the events to attack the Indian political establishment. This is despite the fact that, unlike in the Urumqi riots, the state authorities from India’s Gujarat province, criminally, actually encouraged the bloodletting.
So, clearly, being a non-white world power is not enough to make one a target of Western media hostility. A few Chinese people then speculate that there is a particular Western hostility to ethnic Chinese people. Yet Chinese-majority countries other than the PRC get sympathetic coverage from the Western media. Take Singapore. Then there is Taiwan. It is telling that Greg Sheridan, the hard core China-basher who is Foreign Affairs editor of The Australian newspaper, just loves Taiwan. It is instructive also to look at the Western media coverage of Typhoon Morakot that hit both Taiwan and the PRC. Morakot killed hundreds of people in Taiwan but less than fifteen people in the PRC. The relatively low death toll in the PRC, despite immense material damage, was due to a massive state-organised evacuation there of nearly one million people. In contrast, in Taiwan, a heavy death toll occurred because the Taiwanese government was callously slow to rescue people stranded by the typhoon, many of whom are from Taiwan’s indigenous groups. Yet the Taiwanese regime’s negligence which has led to angry outcries by relatives of those who were stranded received little headline coverage in the Australian media. Nor has the Australian media pilloried Taiwan President Ma Ying-jeou for his crude statements blaming victims for not evacuating. In contrast, imagine how the media would have reacted if PRC president Hu Jintao had done a similar thing!
The different way in which the PRC and Taiwan – both majority ethnic Chinese entities - are portrayed goes right to heart of why the Western media hates the Peoples Republic of China. You see, Taiwan is ruled by a capitalist state and the PRC by a socialistic one. And this is the overwhelming reason why the mainstream Western media is hostile to the PRC while being sympathetic to Taiwan. In Australia, Europe and the U.S., all major media outlets are owned by either capitalist high-fliers or by capitalist governments. These capitalist owners ensure that their news outlets produce a line supportive of their class interests as capitalists. And that plainly means hostility to workers states like the PRC. Despite the incomplete, hesitant and precarious nature of the PRC’s transition to socialism, the billionaire media bosses understand that the existence of some form of workers power in the world’s most populous country is an obstacle to capitalist exploitation. Their hatred of the PRC and Cuba mirrors their hatred of militant trade unions at home, organizations which their media outlets also spare no effort in slandering.
Tycoons Call The Tune
The ownership of the Australian media is typical of the structure of media control throughout the capitalist world. As well as all the main newspapers being owned by either Murdoch or the Fairfax empire, we have the biggest TV network Channel 7, a whole lot of magazines and half of Yahoo7 being largely owned by tycoon Kerry Stokes and rich private equity investors under Kohlberg Kravis Roberts. Then we have Channel 9 (formerly owned by one of Australia’s richest men, James Packer) that is owned by the private equity high fliers in CVC Asia-Pacific. Meanwhile, James Packer, Rupert Murdoch and Kerry Stokes are all major owners of Foxtel alongside Telstra Corporation. Then there is ABC and SBS … which are both directly funded by the Australian capitalist state.
Defenders of the “capitalist democracy” ignore all this or when confronted with the truth about media ownership claim that it does not really matter because of “journalistic ethics” and the “strong traditions of press freedom and democracy in Australia.” However, back on planet Earth, it is he who pays the piper that calls the tune. This is why the Murdoch media outlets often produce a very similar political slant – a conservative, right-wing one - despite being spread across many countries from the U.S, to Britain to Asia to Australia. During the lead up to the onslaught against Iraq in 2003, all of the 175 newspapers owned by Rupert Murdoch around the world editorialized in favour of the invasion! And while the rich media moguls may not direct every single stance taken by the outlets that they own, their ownership of these media organisations ensures that the outlets always produce a bias favourable to their class interests as capitalists.
Rupert Murdoch, Kerry Stokes or J.B. Fairfax don’t have to call up their editors all the time for the “right line” to get through. They have already carefully hired the executives and managers who they know will choose editors that will push the kind of politics that they want. Being capitalist leaches on million dollar salary packages, the executives themselves have an interest in ensuring that their media outlet promotes capitalist rule. Therefore, the kind of editors and journalists that they hire are all going to be supporters of the capitalist system. A prospective journalist showing sympathy for the socialistic PRC at a job interview is certainly not going to get very far!
Meanwhile, when the tycoon owners have a strong opinion on a particular question, they can make clear their views through statements at board meetings or informally through quiet chats at company dinners and speeches at functions. The editors and journalists then know that it is best for them to “report” within these parameters set out by their ultimate boss if they are to get future promotions within the company. Those that are too independent and try push another line risk being squeezed out of their job. At best they would get sidelined into writing an occasional piece for, the less well read, opinion pages of the newspaper – articles that will, of course, always be buried amongst a whole lot of other pieces asserting the prescribed line.
Such is the nature of the “free press” in capitalist “democracies.” Yet, because of the credibility that they achieve as a result of their nominal independence from government and their formally “uncensored” status, the capitalist-owned media is all too effective at deceiving their audience. The nature of the “free” media in Western countries typifies the nature of “democracy” under capitalist rule: it looks like everyone is getting an equal voice but, actually, because the rich capitalists have most of the wealth and control key institutions, it is they who end up with the decisive say on all major issues. Let us note that even in the most nominally “democratic” of capitalist countries, the rich capitalists not only own the media but also control the other means of shaping public opinion – for example, the book publishing houses. Furthermore, the wealth of the rich elite allows them to be able to pay for political advertisements, finance brochures and leaflets and hire meeting rooms to a much greater degree than working class people. These capitalists are also disproportionately able to fund political parties, hire lobbyists and bribe (or should we say “gift”) politicians.
Through the rich ruling elite’s ability to shape public opinion and thus also the way people vote, the much vaunted “one person, one vote” of capitalist “democracies” becomes in practice more like “one dollar, one vote.” In any case, no matter which party is voted into office in capitalist “democracies,” the state that the governing party will administer is itself a machine whose every module - from its police, prisons and courts to its army, bureaucracy and spy agencies – is connected by a thousand wires to the capitalist elite. The uniform of the operator can change colours but the state machine remains pre-programmed to be always the capitalist’s machine. Thus, just as the “independent” media in capitalist “democracies” are subordinate to the capitalist tycoons that own the outlets, the capitalist “democracies” themselves are in reality only “democracies” for the rich.
Pro-Capitalist Agenda Versus Real Solutions
The capitalist media’s bias against the PRC reflects more than simply the tycoon’s emotional hatred for workers states. It is also a manifestation of something more sinister. It is part of a conscious effort by the Western ruling classes to promote capitalist counterrevolution in China. This they seek to do by, on the one hand, directly putting political pressure upon the PRC socialistic state and, on the other hand, by building support in their own countries for anti-communist Chinese exile groups (like Falun Gong, pro-Dalai Lama groups, World Uyghur Congress, various Chinese “pro-democracy” outfits etc). This agenda was particularly apparent in an August 12 article by foreign affairs editor of The Australian, Greg Sheridan. Sheridan’s piece aimed to not only build support for Rebiya Kadeer but to direct her supporters on how they can best weaken the PRC. Sheridan advised Kadeer to leave aside her campaign for a separate state for a while and “concentrate instead on human rights, cultural autonomy and democracy” so as to win stronger support from Western leaders. The likes of Sheridan really have no genuine concern for the Uyghur people but only hope to make the anti-communist section of the Uyghur community a more powerful club with which to attack socialistic rule in the PRC. At one point in the article, Sheridan suggests that Kadeer (in the manner of the Dalai Lama) could push for a “one nation, two systems” set up in Xinjiang. This is a reference to the arrangement China currently has with Hong Kong, where Hong Kong is part of the PRC “one nation” but maintains a separate, i.e. capitalist, system. Sheridan hopes that by using the banner of “one nation, two systems” to re-establish the capitalist system in the likes of Xinjiang and Tibet, socialistic rule throughout the PRC will be corroded.
Now, the fact that the Western media spouts all those lies about the Urumqi riots does not mean that there are not real problems and ethnic tensions in the Xinjiang-Uyghur Autonomous Region and elsewhere in China. That the World Uyghur Congress and their ilk were able to mobilise people to commit the horrific atrocities on July 5 shows that there are grievances amongst the Uyghurs that they could exploit. Furthermore, the fact that a completely false rumour that ethnic Uyghur workers had raped two Han women could cause the massive June 26 brawl between local Han workers and Uyghur workers in a toy factory in Shaoguan city, Guangdong Province - a brawl that left two Uyghur workers dead - shows that while the ugly face of Han chauvinism may have been pushed back a lot since the pre-1949 days, it has not yet been fully eradicated. Until China’s transition to socialism is complete – and before this happens unemployment, poverty, financial insecurity and economic rivalry cannot be completely wiped out – ethnic chauvinism and resentments will to some extent still remain. What is needed to build ethnic unity in China is not a return to capitalist rule as the Western media wants but, in fact, the exact opposite. What is necessary is to intensify the drive towards socialism. This will be apparent if we look more closely at some of the social conditions that bred the ethnic tensions in Urumqi and Shaoguan city.
Firstly, although China’s ethnic minorities have gained the most from the founding of the PRC workers state in 1949, economic inequalities between the various ethnic groups have grown since the institution of pro-market reforms in 1978. The post 1978 reforms weakened central planning, meaning that those regions that are, for historical and geographic reasons, poorer have had relatively less wealth transferred to them from the richer regions than in the days of greater planning. Thus, the standard of living in poorer Western regions like the Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region did not develop as fast as the coastal areas. Furthermore, the greater role of the market in the post-1978 period also led to generally greater inequality even within individual regions. Ethnic Uighurs noticed the growing difference in wealth not only between the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region and wealthier provinces but also between themselves and Han and Hui residents in Xinjiang who had the advantage of personal, family or educational connections with richer parts of the country. These income differences have been cynically exploited by Kadeer and her ilk. To be sure, official preferential education and other policies favouring ethnic minorities have helped to maintain improvements in the social conditions of the Uyghur people (seen in the continued rising of life expectancy and literacy levels). So has, in more recent years, President Hu Jintao’s moves to revert back to some central planning measures to transfer resources from the richer Eastern provinces back to the poorer Western regions. However, these measures have thus far not been rolled out fast enough, in part because more right-wing elements within the Communist Party of China - such as remnants of the so-called “Shanghai faction” (which was most vociferously represented by the now disgraced, former Shanghai party secretary Chen Liangyu) and pro-market advocates – have resisted Hu’s plans.
Secondly, the post-1978 emergence of a profit-driven private sector and partial erosion of the previous Iron Rice Bowl system, under which state enterprise employees have guaranteed lifetime jobs and social benefits, has led to unemployment and job insecurity for Chinese workers. This has been exacerbated by the world economic downturn. For, although the PRC economy through its state sector has powered on through the global economic crisis like no other country in the world, the collapse of capitalist economies abroad has still hit China’s heavily private-owned export sector hard, leading to many job losses. And when people have to compete for the right to earn a living then this always fuels ethnic divisions.
Thirdly, the growth of a private sector over the last 30 years means that there are many self-employed people and economically insecure small businessmen competing in the market in areas like retail, textiles and light manufacturing. The desperate economic competition between self-employed producers fosters personal rivalries between them – inevitably growing also into ethnic rivalries.
A similar effect has come from the introduction of the “Household Responsibility” system in agriculture over the last three decades. Under this system, although the agricultural land itself remains collectively owned, farmers no longer work the land together or share its produce. As a result the solidarity between farmers is not what it used to be in the days of the collectives. Furthermore, the millions of former farmers and their children who have migrated to the cities to join the industrial workforce enter factories without the strong collectivist traditions that long-time state enterprise employees enjoy. This was, no doubt, a factor in the June 26 brawl at the toy factory in Shaoguan city.
To address each of these problems requires the strengthening of the socialistic, public sector of the Chinese economy as opposed to the private sector. The mass layoffs by private enterprises during the global downturn have proven that this profit-driven sector cannot be relied on to guarantee jobs for workers. Although the Communist Party government’s measures have boosted hiring by state firms to partly compensate for private sector job losses, it is imperative for the sake of employment that the labour-intensive light manufacturing sector be brought back under state ownership. This can be commenced through the state taking over the more viable of closed down private firms, consolidating them into larger operations and reopening them as state-owned enterprises. Furthermore, private bosses that violate China’s new pro-worker Labour Law by illegally laying off employees should be severely punished by having their firms immediately nationalized without compensation. Meanwhile, the state-owned enterprises should themselves be more geared to boosting employment and the famous Iron Rice Bowl system for employees of state firms should be gradually rebuilt. In general, the state-owned enterprises need to be subject to greater overall planning to meet key social goals rather than be left to operate under “market principles.” This will ensure that the state enterprises not only put employment high up in the list of their priorities but also devote more energy to developing the poorer Western regions of China and commit to special hiring of economically disadvantaged ethnic minorities like the Uyghurs.
The cutthroat competition between struggling self-employed people - competition that fuels ethnic rivalries - should be relieved through the formation of cooperatives. The PRC governments should encourage the formation of such producer cooperatives by providing incentives for individuals to join into such cooperatives – such as promises of free equipment, transport vans/trucks and cheap credit. These cooperatives can then grow into larger collectives – collectives that will unite within them peoples of all ethnicities. A similar process of voluntary recollectivisation should be fostered amongst farmers. Meanwhile, premier Wen Jiabao’s plan to replace the collective operation of forests with a “Housheold Responsibility” system, similar to that which was introduced in agriculture, should be scrapped.
Don’t Listen to What Confucius Says!
And Don’t Seek Common Ground with The Kuomintang!
To further develop inter-ethnic relations in China is not only a matter of directly addressing economic issues. Ideological and social factors are also important. Consider some of the changes in these areas that have happened in recent decades. With the emergence of a small capitalist class in China in the post-1978 period, Beijing has more and more embraced Chinese nationalism as an ideology to hold the different classes together. Reverence for pre-1949 Han Chinese traditions and Confucianism are being slowly revived. Some of this is happening in very subtle ways. From 2008, the former Golden Week public holiday during May Day – the international workers day – was reduced to a one-day holiday and instead national holidays celebrating old Chinese traditions - Tomb-Sweeping Day, Dragon-boat Festival and Mid Autumn Festival – were introduced. Although the move was motivated as a technical measure to reduce public transport overcrowding during Golden Week holidays, the ideological dimension of the change is also apparent. In part, such moves are motivated by a wish – a rather unrealistic one – to appease the rulers of the imperialist powers by presenting the PRC in a way that is less offensive to these capitalists. The outside image of the PRC was to be not that of a socialistic state founded through an anti-capitalist revolution but as a “Confucian” country seeking to live in harmony with the outside world and based, not on class struggle, but on Chinese cultural traditions. The push to present this new image accelerated in the lead up to the 2008 Beijing Olympics as the conciliatory Chinese government hoped that an appeasing image of the PRC would pacify the Western push to disrupt the Games. Sadly, at the Olympics opening ceremony itself, the historical part of the performance was weighted so as to emphasise more the pre-1949 history and Confucius than the 1949 revolution, Mao and the Peoples Republic.
Now to embrace the rich positive aspects of Chinese history – music, invention, arts, dress, etc – is good. However, when the overall pre-1949 societies are simultaneously portrayed in a positive light then this is offensive to China’s ethnic minorities because in these pre-1949 regimes the minority peoples were brutally oppressed, not to mention the mass of Chinese peasants, workers and women.
A problem arises not simply when the pre-1949 political order is in any way lauded but even when its ideological/philosophical underpinnings are prettified. For when this happens, one starts to glorify some pretty reactionary trends. In particular, when Confucianism is commended, what is being praised is an ideology that preaches that women are subordinate to men. Confucian thought was a big portion of the ideological basis for the compulsory marriage of all girls according to their parents’ wishes in pre-1949 times. The Confucian system of ancestor worship only by males (and that only of male ancestors) encouraged the terrible practice in pre-1949 China of girl children often being murdered by their parents because they could not perform the duties of ancestor worship. It is for all these reasons that the Communist Party of China, quite rightly, fought against Confucianism in the first decades after it took power. Although today it is not the most reactionary aspects of Confucianism that are being praised but more benign ones like benevolence, any revival in this ideology which is based on ritualized hierarchical relations is a bad thing. It is an obstacle to building an egalitarian society where the toiling classes rule and women are liberated. Furthermore, the partial rehabilitation of Confucianism is particularly hurtful to the feelings of many ethnic minority peoples. For it was Confucian ideology that tried to make their ancestors deferentially kowtow to the Han and Manchu officials of the feudal/capitalist governments that oppressed them in pre-1949 times.
Similar suspicions amongst minority peoples will now be created by some of the hype that has surrounded the PRC’s improved relations with capitalist Taiwan. Although it is quite permissible for workers states to, for tactical advantage, seek better diplomatic ties with one or another capitalist country, this should never involve any blurring of the political line that separates the workers state from the capitalist state in question. Unfortunately, however, Beijing has accompanied its improved relations with Taiwan with attempts to find common ground with Taiwan’s Kuomintang rulers on the basis of common Han Chinese heritage and even on the basis of some shared political ground - like mutual respect for Sun Yat-Sen. However, stressing a shared Chinese cultural heritage with Taiwan’s capitalist rulers may not only leave the PRC’s non-Han ethnic groups feeling a bit excluded but can breed cynicism amongst some in these minority communities who would think that they are being asked to remain part of the PRC for the sake of socialism, yet the PRC is embracing Taiwanese rulers who are capitalist simply because they are Han Chinese.
Furthermore, any attempt at all to find common political ground with the Kuomintang, who after all are the brutal capitalist/landlord party that was overthrown in the 1949 Revolution, is insulting to the PRC’s ethnic minorities. Just think how the Uyghur and Kazakh peoples of Xinjiang would feel about any tempering of opposition to the Kuomintang. During Kuomintang-ruled China, the Han governor of Xinjiang from 1928-1933, Jin Shuren, terribly discriminated against non-Han peoples. He incited ethnic conflicts by confiscating land from the Kazakhs and Uyghur peoples on the promise of giving it to Han Chinese (actually he only gave it to his cronies). His successor, warlord Sheng Shicai, was also a brutal Han chauvinist who used torture against Kazakh and Uyghurs (and also killed Han communists like Mao Tse Tung’s brother Mao Zemin). The Kazakhs in Xinjiang were quite justified in both rebelling against this racist capitalist/feudal regime and in seceding from it to establish a pro-Soviet East Turkestan Republic from 1944 to 1949 (which allied itself with the People’s Liberation Army).
The glue that holds the different ethnic groups of China together is not the pre-1949 traditions and less still the philosophies and Chinese regimes of those times but common solidarity with the struggle to found and build the socialistic PRC. It is this struggle that began the liberation of the toilers of all ethnicities. And it is this struggle that started the march towards freedom from discrimination for the minority communities. So let us celebrate not Confucius or any “common” heritage with the Kuomintang but let us instead proudly and grandly celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the Chinese Revolution that occurred on October 1!
Where Will The Truth Come From?
Notwithstanding their feigned concern for China’s ethnic minorities, if the Western media’s drive to destroy the PRC workers state was successful it would lead once again to the subjugation of minority peoples. For a new capitalist regime will inevitably be Han-chauvinist – just like Chiang Kai-Shek’s Kuomintang.
Regrettably, in Australia it is not only the capitalist media that is seeking to undermine the PRC. Even some socialist groups echo the mainstream media’s anti-PRC propaganda. In a shocking piece of journalism for a bona fide left-wing newspaper, the Socialist Alliance group’s Green Left Weekly ran an article in its July 11 issue that was titled “East Turkestan: Chinese Oppression Behind Riots.” The article, which would have fitted well in any Rupert Murdoch publication, began with a sentence echoing the U.S. government-funded World Uyghur Congress’ lies about the events: “On July 5, hundreds were killed in the East Turkestan capital, Urumqi, after protests by Uyghurs against racism and discrimination were attacked by Chinese security forces.” The article then gets no better - at one point even spreading the utter falsehood that, “the Uyghur language is being phased out of the education system” in Xinjiang! Fortunately, not every political organization in Australia has fallen in behind the anti-communist, anti-PRC crusade. The Communist Party of Australia, for example, has sometimes written articles effectively exposing anti-PRC propaganda. And we in Trotskyist Platform (TP) have not only opposed the anti-communist, anti-PRC drive in our journals but have actively campaigned in solidarity with the PRC workers state. Following the anti-PRC mobilizations in the West that followed the March 2008 riots in the Tibetan Autonomous Region, TP widely distributed here a pro-PRC Open Letter of Solidarity with Consular Staff of The Peoples Republic of China And with China’s Masses.
It is the duty of all who call themselves socialists in Australia to expose the anti-socialist media propaganda against the PRC. Such work by local communists will be a factor in how the anti-PRC campaigns will ultimately be defeated. The efforts of pro-PRC, Chinese international students in spreading awareness of Red China’s achievements are also crucial. The magnificent mobilisation of pro-PRC students to defend the April 2008 Olympic torch relay in Canberra certainly had an impact. For one it smashed the myth that the entire Chinese population is an imprisoned mass craving for the West to “free” them from “communist tyranny.” When, during the torch relay, ignorant white anti-communist demonstrators yelled out “Free China!”, pro-PRC Chinese students responded powerfully by shouting back: “We are free back in China! What are you talking about?”
However, the mass of Australian working class people will only start to see the dishonesty of the mainstream media’s portrayal of the PRC when they connect it with the media’s similar hostility to workers organisations and struggles at home. When they notice that the Murdoch papers that condemn the PRC’s attempts to stop pro-capitalist forces are the very same newspapers that go hysterical when CFMEU construction union officers enter building sites to challenge greedy capitalist bosses. Australian trade unionists will dismiss anti-PRC propaganda when they understand that enmity to the organisation of Chinese masses to rule in a socialistic state is just an extreme form of the media’s hostility to workers here who organise to fight for their rights through industry-wide union campaigns (or “pattern bargaining”). When they understand that anti-PRC media rants reflect the capitalist owners of the media’s own class prejudice – prejudice that makes these tycoons hostile to societies like the PRC and Cuba that are ruled by the toiling classes just as it makes them continuously want to slander the poor and unemployed in Australia as unworthy people deserving of their fate.
It is to help the Australian working class realize this connection between the capitalist attacks that they face at home and the attacks on the PRC that Trotskyist Platform devotes much patient work to. We seek to build a strong bond between the Australian working class and the PRC workers state. This partnership should not be an alliance of convenience but true unity based on identical interests and working class solidarity. The Australian working class must be won to seeing the PRC as their state because, despite its many conciliations to the capitalist enemy, the PRC is still a form of working-class peoples state. Similarly, we hope that those of the students who participated in the pro-PRC, Canberra torch relay demonstration not mainly because they are Chinese but because they are pro-socialist will see the Australian masses struggle as their struggle. And we hope that these Chinese students will actively support the class struggles of the Australian toiling classes.
When the exploited classes in the West see pro-communist supporters of the PRC joining their struggles it will help them to see that the PRC is indeed (in however a deformed way) a workers state. When the Western working classes then start to support the PRC workers state they will pull themselves closer to understanding the need for themselves to also take state power in their own countries. When the oppressed masses in the West take state power by deposing their capitalist exploiters then the PRC will finally be safe from counterrevolutionary attacks. And all the internal obstacles to China’s march to socialism will gradually fall off - like cockroaches denied a food source. |
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发表于 2010-5-22 21:00
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