CWI’s Zhang Shujie forced to flee China

[Crux]

CWI’s Zhang Shujie forced to flee China

12/01/2012
Repression against left activists increasing in China
By CWI reporters
http://www.socialistworld.net/img/20120112Grafik1426890699801298847.jpg
The ongoing and intensifying state crackdown in China, increasingly targeting left activists and critics, is highlighted by the case of 24-year old Zhang Shujie, a supporter of the Committee for a Workers’ International (CWI).
Zhang is a socialist and advocate of independent trade unions and workers’ rights in China. He is a contributor to the chinaworker.info (http://www.chinaworker.info/) website and a supporter of the CWI, which has members and supporters in many countries including China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. Since 2009, Zhang has been a correspondent for the chinaworker.info site and for the bi-monthly magazine, Socialist. Both the website and the magazine are banned in China.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-01-12Grafik4551918994175646872.jpg CWI Chinese bi-monthly magazine, ’Socialist’.

In February 2011, Zhang became one of countless victims of the latest wave of repression in China, driven by the Beijing dictatorship’s fear of revolt following the fall of the dictator Mubarak in Egypt and the explosion of revolutionary struggle across the Arab world. The plight of left activists in China, who are increasingly targeted by the regime, is almost never reported by the capitalist media globally, which prefers to focus on cases involving liberals or pro-Western dissidents whose ideas are more to their liking.



In October 2011, Zhang managed to leave China, evading his police ‘minders’ with the help of friends and comrades in the CWI and others, in China, Hong Kong and Europe. These include parliamentarians Joe Higgins (http://www.joehiggins.eu/) and Paul Murphy of the Socialist Party (CWI) in Ireland, and ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung, legislator for the LSD in Hong Kong. Had Zhang remained in China he risked a long period of detention, with state security agents threatening he could be charged with “divulging state secrets” and “inciting subversion against state power”, which is punishable by ten years imprisonment. These charges are commonly brought against dissidents in China today. The definition of “state secrets” is very broad, covering for example the questioning the government’s version of the number of schoolchildren killed in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, to the amounts of foreign currencies held in China’s reserves. Zhang is currently in Sweden, where his case will be discussed at a hearing in the Swedish Riksdag (parliament), on human rights and state repression in China, at the end of January.
How state repression works

Zhang was called to a meeting with state security agents in the city of Chongqing on February 24, 2011. This was at the start of a large-scale pre-emptive crackdown in China to snuff out discussion of a ‘Jasmine Revolution’ inspired by events in the Middle East and North Africa. Zhang was not allowed to contact a lawyer or to inform his family. Security agents said they ‘knew everything’ about his activities and told him he could be detained indefinitely, i.e. ‘disappeared’, unless he gave them information about everyone he had met or been in contact with, ‘confessed’ his links with the CWI, and agreed to ‘cooperate’ with the security forces. Such methods are typical for the state security forces in China.



When Zhang was first taken for interrogation he was held for 28 hours during which time he was made to stand, deprived of his spectacles and refused food for several hours. Despite the fact that he was never formally charged with an offence, his computer, mobile phone and bank documents were seized and examined for evidence. He was warned he could face several years imprisonment for ‘contact with a banned organisation’ and for ‘crimes relating to state security’. He was told that he could avoid this fate if he ‘cooperated’ with the security forces. With no alternative, Zhang agreed to their demands. Unknown to police and against their explicit instructions, he contacted CWI comrades to seek advice and help.
In the following months the state security officers read correspondence between Zhang and his comrades, instructing him on how to reply. They urged him to volunteer to attend meetings in Hong Kong, which they would pay for. They gave detailed instructions that he should photograph meeting participants and other activists with his mobile phone and collect personal information. While the main focus of their enquiries was the CWI-linked group Socialist Action and mainland China CWI supporters, the Chongqing state security department also quizzed Zhang about this groups’ ties with other radical forces such as the League of Social Democrats (LSD) and legislator, Leung Kwok-hung. They wanted to know if there was a possible link-up between the CWI and Leung, whom Zhang has met during previous visits to Hong Kong. LSD is a radical pro-democracy group which is not connected to the CWI.



As a separate legal and juridical entity, China’s police and courts have no writ inside Hong Kong. According to Hong Kong’s ‘Basic Law’ (mini-constitution) its citizens’ rights to political association are legally protected and the mainland state authorities have no formal powers to interfere with or monitor these activities.



This means that the Chongqing branch of state security instructed Zhang, under threat of imprisonment, to engage in ‘unconstitutional’ activities in Hong Kong. These security officials subsequently paid for Zhang’s visit to Hong Kong to attend a CWI meeting in October 2011, and gave instructions to collect information on political activists in the city – including an elected member of Hong Kong’s legislature.
Zhang had no intention of carrying out the regime’s dirty work. He made arrangements with CWI comrades and supporters to leave China, during his visit to Hong Kong.



This case exposes the brutal and lawless methods of the Chinese dictatorship despite its efforts to project a more sophisticated image. Foreign governments and the multinational companies whose interests they hold closest to heart have largely dropped any criticism of human rights abuses and the Chinese regime’s increasingly repressive rule. Those who have dared to challenge this repressive system and paid the price for this deserve the support and solidarity of all left and democratic forces.

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-01-12Grafik1710913694059896388.jpg

‘Chilling’ crackdown in 2011

Today, China is experiencing the most severe police crackdown for more than a decade, a process that Amnesty International has described as ‘chilling’. Hundreds of writers, lawyers and activists have been rounded up and ‘disappeared’ by police. The targeting of high profile individuals such as artist Ai Weiwei and activist lawyers such as Gao Zhisheng, has been used to warn others and underline that nobody is untouchable. Within this wider crackdown, the targeting of prominent activist lawyers, those who have defended other victims of repression, has dealt a huge blow to any suggestion of an independent legal system emerging in China.
In the final days of 2011 several court verdicts dispelled any suggestion of a let up in the crack down. Sichuan-based writer Chen Wei was sentenced to nine years in prison for ‘subversive writing’ and Guizhou-based Chen Xi was given a 10-year sentence, also for “inciting subversion” in trials either side of Christmas Day. Another high profile dissident, Ni Yulan is currently on trial in Beijing for “making trouble” due to her role in defending victims of land grabs and could also face a draconian sentence.



Last year, China’s internal security budget ballooned to 624 billion yuan (US$95 billion), exceeding its military budget. The influence of hard line proponents of repression within the regime has been strengthened. With a crucial leadership and governmental succession due to occur in 2012, and amid severe economic challenges that could trigger social unrest, the current regime has effectively given carte blanche to the security forces to write their own rules in subduing potential opposition voices.
Security forces have made increasing use of forced disappearances, secret detentions and other ‘extra legal’ measures effectively shifting the parameters as far as China’s already limited legal rights of expression are concerned. “Such acts are carried out in more and more blatant ways, with officials abandoning even the pretence of obeying the law,” noted Amnesty International in a June 2011 report.



New and more intrusive internet controls, plans for the world’s biggest security database to boost social controls, and tough new restrictions on ‘weibo’ micro-blogging sites, which have become a popular means of exposing official abuses and reporting mass protests, are all part of the same pattern of increased authoritarian controls.
Repression against chinaworker.info

Recent years have seen a marked upswing in left wing and anti-capitalist ideas in China, similar to processes internationally, where growing numbers of young people especially are rejecting the capitalist market system in the light of the global financial crisis and widening inequality. Previously, the Chinese regime did not pay much attention to left critics, believing that liberal and ‘pro-Western’ influences represented its biggest political threat. This began to change decisively in and around 2008, and the state security’s monitoring and attacks on left groups and individuals has increased significantly.



Maoists, ‘New leftists’, Trotskyists and others who stand up for workers’ rights, especially those who advocate independent organisations for working people, have been detained and in several cases brought to trial for ‘inciting subversion’, ‘violating social order’, and similar charges. Several of these cases have been reported on chinaworker.info.
Zhang Shujie’s political activity, and the activity of other CWI supporters in China, is of a literary nature. He has written and translated articles for the chinaworker.info website and ‘Socialist’ magazine (the magazine is circulated as an underground e-magazine inside China with the help of many courageous individuals).

http://www.socialistworld.net/img/article/2012-01-12Grafik5399214684258479916.jpg An article by Zang in ’Socialist’ magazine.

Chinaworker.info, which was set up by CWI members in 2004, has aroused the ire of the Chinese dictatorship. The website and CWI supporters have organised solidarity actions in several countries in support of workers’ strikes against sweatshop conditions. They have also staged protests to publicise the cases of arrested activists. In China the supporters of the CWI network with labour activists, migrant rights advocates, LGBT activists and others whose beliefs and political activity force them to cross the line into ‘illegality’ in China.



Several young workers and students with links to chinaworker.info have been arrested over the last three years, in circumstances similar to the case of Zhang Shujie. In 2009, a book published by chinaworker.info in Hong Kong, dealing with the twentieth anniversary of the 1989 Beijing massacre (‘Tiananmen – Seven Weeks that Shook the World’ ISBN 978-91-633-4709-2) was banned in China. This book was listed by the government as one of the top five ‘illegal political books’ of the year, alongside ‘Prisoner of the State’ the memoirs of former Communist Party leader Zhao Ziyang. Local governments and post offices were instructed to hunt down copies of the book. Zhang Shujie, writing anonymously, was one of the contributors to this book.



In October 2009, CWI member Laurence Coates, a founder of the chinaworker.info website and another of the authors of the banned ‘Tiananmen – Seven Weeks that Shook the World’, was refused entry to China. He was accused by Chinese officials of being a “potential threat to national security”.



No amount of repression can save a totalitarian regime once the people lose their fear, a process that is already underway in China. With the economy lurching towards crisis, a bursting property bubble and unprecedented levels of debt, the misnamed ‘communist’ dictatorship has every reason to dread the future. The intensified surveillance and attacks on left critics – including CWI supporters – shows the powerful potential for genuine socialist ideas in China. These ideas can be summarised as: immediate and full democratic rights, the end of single-party rule, free elections to a revolutionary constituent assembly, a workers’ and poor farmers’ government, big increases in basic wages and a maximum 8-hour working day, free public healthcare and education, and democratic public ownership of the biggest companies and banks.
The case of Zhang Shujie and thousands like him underlines the need to step up the struggle against state repression in China, to demand the release of all political prisoners and an end to police terror. To this end, the CWI is preparing to launch a major campaign in support of victims of persecution in China, and especially socialists like Zhang. This campaign will include solidarity actions, appeals for donations, and protests against the Chinese state’s repression.

[Ostrinski]

Damn. Solidarity.

[DaringMehring]

Solidarity... what that guy did takes guts.

[Ocean Seal]

Don't understand why anyone who is a leftist still defends China.

[Crux]

Don't understand why anyone who is a leftist still defends China.
In b4 the vegan "marxist". Or the psl:ers. Although I must say I am rather curious what they have to say about this. Probably something narrow and u.scentric like: "the U.S gov. does not like china therefore it should not be critisized". Although to be fair the psl believes it's alright to be critical within the ccp. Perhaps they should wake up and smell the coffee.

[danyboy27]

Don't understand why anyone who is a leftist still defends China.

Anti-imp do, they support Iran has well, go figure.

[manic expression]

Although to be fair the psl believes it's alright to be critical within the ccp. Perhaps they should wake up and smell the coffee.
I do believe tea is the appropriate drink in this case. Please bear in mind that I speak for myself here: Just because I support the CPC doesn't mean I agree with everything they do. In fact, my position is all about the prospect of pushing the CPC left, which is possible due to the presence of working-class voices in the party. At any rate, it's hard to comment on this only hearing one side of the story, except that I expect the PRC to treat such activists fairly, and if that did not happen then that is wrong and it needs to be addressed and ameliorated. On another note, what I will say is that in my opinion, socialists shouldn't spread blatant falsehoods about what happened in 1989, and nor should they meet and work with a group of social democrats (something never denied by the article). But above all, this is only one (inherently biased) report on an issue and it's unreasonable to draw any concrete conclusions from it.

Also, the police were not formally interfering in Hong Kong, calling their actions "unconstitutional" is not a correct statement from what I can tell from this article.


Today, China is experiencing the most severe police crackdown for more than a decade, a process that Amnesty International has described as ‘chilling’. Hundreds of writers, lawyers and activists have been rounded up and ‘disappeared’ by police. The targeting of high profile individuals such as artist Ai Weiwei and activist lawyers such as Gao Zhisheng, has been used to warn others and underline that nobody is untouchable.
Please, let's be sensible about this. Amnesty International says whatever it thinks will bring in more attention and donations from liberal capitalists. I don't believe a word they say about the PRC and neither should any other progressive, and moreover I can't bring myself to care very much if they are "chilled" when they think of China. Ai Weiwei was trying to evade 5.3 million yuan in taxes, then he went and appealed to the US media when he was released on the understanding that he wouldn't. He's presently walking the streets as the case is now under review. Gao Zhisheng, a darling of the Falun Gong cult, was arrested because he kept violating the terms of his probation.

If you want to associate your cause with those two, that's entirely your choice.

[Crux]

I do believe tea is the appropriate drink in this case. Please bear in mind that I speak for myself here: Just because I support the CPC doesn't mean I agree with everything they do. In fact, my position is all about the prospect of pushing the CPC left, which is possible due to the presence of working-class voices in the party. At any rate, it's hard to comment on this only hearing one side of the story, except that I expect the PRC to treat such activists fairly, and if that did not happen then that is wrong and it needs to be addressed and ameliorated. On another note, what I will say is that in my opinion, socialists shouldn't spread blatant falsehoods about what happened in 1989, and nor should they meet and work with a group of social democrats (something never denied by the article). But above all, this is only one (inherently biased) report on an issue and it's unreasonable to draw any concrete conclusions from it.
oh boy...no they "disappear" such activists. Or put them in prison for 5-9 years for "divulging state secrets" or other made up charges. And yeah, your Communist Party Member card does not save you in such cases either as several examples have already shown. Why would you want to push the CCP to the left? You seem to be gobbling up what the leadership is saying anyway (I am reminded by TVM's hilarious claim that Hu Jintao is on the "left" of the CCP). And indeed the LSD are in part social democrats, but they are also at current the main radical left force in HK, standing in opposition to both pro-capitalist CCP stooges and pro-capitalist Pandemocrats, which creates an entirely different dynamic. For example I would not describe Leung Kwok Hung as a social democrat. You should take a gander at what the Beijing-front parties are doing in HK, capitalist pig dogs to be sure.

As for blatant false-hoods about 1989, we have an eyewitness report. Again you swallow the regime's story hook, line and sinker. Perhaps you should drop the pretense about wanting to "push the CCP to the left" and just come out openly as a regime stooge?


Also, the police were not formally interfering in Hong Kong, calling their actions "unconstitutional" is not a correct statement from what I can tell from this article.
Only they were and how you are not seeing this can only be explained by willfull blindness.


Please, let's be sensible about this. Amnesty International says whatever it thinks will bring in more attention and donations from liberal capitalists.
Incidentally that is even more true of the PRC regime.


I don't believe a word they say about the PRC and neither should any other progressive, and moreover I can't bring myself to care very much if they are "chilled" when they think of China. Ai Weiwei was trying to evade 5.3 million yuan in taxes, then he went and appealed to the US media when he was released on the understanding that he wouldn't. He's presently walking the streets as the case is now under review. Gao Zhisheng, a darling of the Falun Gong cult, was arrested because he kept violating the terms of his probation.

If you want to associate your cause with those two, that's entirely your choice.
If you fail to see how it is a part of a general crackdown that is again your willfull blindness. As the article notes the regime has, since 08, focused more on the radical left. Including maoists, but I guess they are class traitors for "conspiring against the regime", amirite?

[manic expression]

oh boy...no they "disappear" such activists. Or put them in prison for 5-9 years for "divulging state secrets" or other made up charges.
a.) General statements do you no good here.

b.) We've already seen that "disappeared" "activists" had evaded taxes or flagrantly violated their parole...just because it wasn't reported on CNN doesn't mean someone was "disappeared". However, if leftists are being mistreated, then it's wrong and it should be addressed...I've already said this. By the by, when I responded to your request for an opposing view, I trusted you would have read the response instead of instinctively stamping your feet at whatever came next.


As for blatant false-hoods about 1989, we have an eyewitness report. Again you swallow the regime's story hook, line and sinker. Perhaps you should drop the pretense about wanting to "push the CCP to the left" and just come out openly as a regime stooge?Wow, a single "eyewitness report". Very good, very good indeed. Maybe in a few more decades you'll have a cowboy suit and a set of trains.

But none of it would change the virtual consensus that the protestors murdered unarmed soldiers without provocation and that PRC forces were forced to respond to these attacks.


Only they were and how you are not seeing this can only be explained by willfull blindness.Explain how they were formally interfering by enlisting someone to go to meetings in HK.


Incidentally that is even more true of the PRC regime.Except it isn't.


If you fail to see how it is a part of a general crackdown that is again your willfull blindness.If it was so general, then you could have chosen from a wide variety of individuals who didn't happen to be a western-friendly tax evader and Falun Gong's favorite lawyer. But, of course, you didn't, you chose to align yourself with the western media's cause celebre because it sounds good to liberal ears.

Like I said, it was your choice, you should stand by it and accept how it speaks volumes about your politics.

[Crux]

a.) General statements do you no good here.
How convenient this article (http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1716/) just came up. Otherwise you can just search chinaworker.info


b.) We've already seen that "disappeared" "activists" had evaded taxes or flagrantly violated their parole...just because it wasn't reported on CNN doesn't mean someone was "disappeared". However, if leftists are being mistreated, then it's wrong and it should be addressed...I've already said this. By the by, when I responded to your request for an opposing view, I trusted you would have read the response instead of instinctively stamping your feet at whatever came next.
Seen *where*? A little bird whispered in your ear? I think not, regime stooge. And you say "if" leftists as if it isn't already happening? But of course your regime friendly sources would never speak of that.


Wow, a single "eyewitness report". Very good, very good indeed. Maybe in a few more decades you'll have a cowboy suit and a set of trains.

It's more than you've got, so...


But none of it would change the virtual consensus that the protestors murdered unarmed soldiers without provocation and that PRC forces were forced to respond to these attacks.
Consensus of the regime propaganda you mean? Of course that is perhaps all you need to say you have "virtual consesnsus" in China related questions.



Explain how they were formally interfering by enlisting someone to go to meetings in HK.
Yes they were. By enlisting someone to spy on political activists and an elected representative.


Except it isn't.
Hahaha, who do you think they are trying to attract? Foreign investement not M-L groupuscules that have failed to catch up on thing's since the 70's.


If it was so general, then you could have chosen from a wide variety of individuals who didn't happen to be a western-friendly tax evader and Falun Gong's favorite lawyer. But, of course, you didn't, you chose to align yourself with the western media's cause celebre because it sounds good to liberal ears.

Like I said, it was your choice, you should stand by it and accept how it speaks volumes about your politics.
You consequently siding with the regime or pleading ignorance speaks more volume about you.

[Tim Cornelis]

Unbelievable. Unbe-fucking-lievable that people still defend this hyper-ultra-capitalist bastion that is China and the Communist Party of China.

The notion that you will be able to push the CPC "to the left" because there is supposedly working class involvement with the party is beyond reason.

The working class is not a revolutionary force. The working class are people who sell their labour power. These people can very well be reactionary and conservative. It does not mean anything. Only if the working class is revolutionary, does its involvement in a particular party mean anything.

And of course, the People's Republic will treat political prisoners fairly. What a farce. How can you possibly make such a blatantly idiotic statement?!

If the US was doing the exact same thing, you would be decrying the US as fascist, totalitarian, reactionary, bourgeois, counter-revolutionary, and what not, but now that the government who is doing it purports to be "socialistic", it's all gooooood mayne.

[Per Levy]

@goti: you're long enough on here to know that this is hardly unbelivable.

@maniac: did it ever occur to you that communists should fight for workers and not for party officials of a so called "communist" party? did it ever occur to you that communists should be solidaric with other communists that get repressed and not with pro-capitalists partys that do the repression?

[manic expression]

How convenient this article (http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1716/) just came up. Otherwise you can just search chinaworker.info
Being sentenced to jail is not the same as being "disappeared".


Seen *where*? A little bird whispered in your ear? I think not, regime stooge. And you say "if" leftists as if it isn't already happening? But of course your regime friendly sources would never speak of that.Seen in the examples of Ai Weiwei and Gao Zhisheng. Do try to keep up.

And if all you can come up with is "woe is us" reports from organizations that already oppose the PRC, then that tells us how paper-thin your case is.


It's more than you've got, so...Not really (http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12341&news_iv_ctrl=1261). Citations of anti-PRC sources (such as the Wall St Journal) are in there. The consensus is that the PRC was responding to unprovoked violence against unarmed soldiers...what happened in 1989 was a battle, not a massacre. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar, a fool or just completely misinformed.

In other words, you have nothing except blatant falsehoods.


Yes they were. By enlisting someone to spy on political activists and an elected representative.They were asking someone to attend some meetings and tell them what happened afterwards. Not official intervention.


Hahaha, who do you think they are trying to attract?You heard it here first, everyone, the PRC survives out of donations from liberal capitalists.

:laugh: And here I thought you'd take the time to figure out what you're responding to.


You consequently siding with the regime or pleading ignorance speaks more volume about you.Yes, it says I'm a socialist who doesn't leap to conclusions after one unsourced report while you're opportunistically taking up Falun Gong's cause.

[manic expression]

The working class is not a revolutionary force.
Well, that saved me a lot of time.


@maniac: did it ever occur to you that communists should fight for workers and not for party officials of a so called "communist" party? did it ever occur to you that communists should be solidaric with other communists that get repressed and not with pro-capitalists partys that do the repression?
Yes, communists must fight for the rights of the masses, and right now that's best done through empowering progressive forces within the CPC. The vast majority of the membership is working-class, and those workers are already politicized...we must look to them for any progress in China first and foremost.

As for solidarity, the article expressed solidarity with Ai Weiwei, a tax evader whose first idea was to appeal to western news networks; I think we should be asking questions of their priorities.

[Renegade Saint]

Does anyone else have a feeling of a deja vu? Except that the "progressive forces" we're supposed to be supporting are in the Democratic Party.

Face it: the CPC is at least as capitalistic as the US Democratic party. The CPC allows capitalists to join the party[!]. What more is there to say?

[Threetune]

...

... What more is there to say?

Class divisions reflected in the party, that’s what.

"These two models have made people conscious of the factions. They will seriously consider which model they support," Qiu says. "An even bolder prediction is that maybe the Communist Party could split along those lines, and become two parties: one for the middle class, let's call it a Liberal Party; the other for the lower class, the Democratic Party."
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/06/142047654/cake-theory-has-chinese-eating-up-political-debate (http://www.npr.org/2011/11/06/142047654/cake-theory-has-chinese-eating-up-political-debate)

[Renegade Saint]

Class divisions reflected in the party, that’s what.

"These two models have made people conscious of the factions. They will seriously consider which model they support," Qiu says. "An even bolder prediction is that maybe the Communist Party could split along those lines, and become two parties: one for the middle class, let's call it a Liberal Party; the other for the lower class, the Democratic Party."
http://www.npr.org/2011/11/06/142047654/cake-theory-has-chinese-eating-up-political-debate (http://www.npr.org/2011/11/06/142047654/cake-theory-has-chinese-eating-up-political-debate)
Wow, a political party that has more than one social class within it (that 'might' eventually break the party apart)? That doesn't sound like the Democratic party at all!

[Threetune]

Wow, a political party that has more than one social class within it (that 'might' eventually break the party apart)? That doesn't sound like the Democratic party at all!

What's your point?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

You need to start with the underlying class nature of the state. What property forms are the armed fist of the state defending? Although the CCP has allowed far too much encroachment by capital into the Chinese economy, they maintain a planned and collectivized economy in key sectors. Consider even the dominance in light manufacture, that the Chinese are now in a dominant world position, that was part of a plan (as is their development of huge desalination plants, green energy, etc.). Many of the comrades here get all caught up in the anti-democratic regimes, rather then the class nature of the state. And you do wind up lining up with US and world imperialism when you attack China in the way that you do. The biggest problem with the CCP' latter day Stalinists, is that all of these encroachments of capital will trend towards real counterrevolution.

Who gives a shit if there are a few capitalists in the CCP. It is horrible, but it doesn't change the class nature of the state. There are lots of workers in the fucking Democratic and Republican parties. Does this prove, Q.E.D. that they are workers' parties? Saint seems to think that ends the discussion. But he was convinced that either China has never been any kind of historically progressive state or that it ceased to be that sometime in the 1950s when their politics became "bad."

"Independent trade unions" has historically referred to anti-communist, pro-capitalist formations within the deformed worker's states (e.g., Solidarity). Frequently these formations are under the tutelage of the CIA. I don't know the details here, and I'm sure that saint will bust my balls about this.

A very rough measure of the gains of the Chinese revolution is to compare China to India. Still makes China look very good.

But to Manic I would say, that in order for the workers to have political power, the CCP will have to be fractured, not reformed. It is a horrible, sclerotic, Stalinist party that endangers the gains of the Chinese Revolution in so many different ways.

I deplore attacks on leftists by the Chinese regime. That is obviously a problem. But it is all too easy to wind up attacking the CCP from the right.

[Threetune]

Solidarity in Poland (Solidarność) was in fact a right wing political party in its leadership and policy.

Its mission statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_statement) declares that Solidarity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_(Polish_trade_union)), "basing its activities on Christian ethics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_ethics) and Catholic social teachings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_social_teachings), works to protect workers' interests and to fulfill their material, social and cultural aspirations."


The Trotskyist ‘left’ of the CWI’s Zhang Shujie type mentioned at the top of this thread, were deeply involved in the imperialist attack on the workers state in Poland and are unapologetic about their role in joining in with every reactionary on the planet in undermining that state and ushering in full blooded capitalism.


Is it any wonder the Chinese state want to repress them? I think it’s a shame that the idiot revisionists let him escape. But then again, who’s to say he wasn’t ‘turned’ by the cops to spy on the reactionary Trots.

[Crux]

Being sentenced to jail is not the same as being "disappeared".

Seen in the examples of Ai Weiwei and Gao Zhisheng. Do try to keep up.

And if all you can come up with is "woe is us" reports from organizations that already oppose the PRC, then that tells us how paper-thin your case is.
Are you *trying* to say you are ignorant about CCP members being arrested and sentenced for "diculging state secrets" and similar such nonsense? If you are well, no suprise there.


(http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12341&news_iv_ctrl=1261)Not really (http://www2.pslweb.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=12341&news_iv_ctrl=1261). Citations of anti-PRC sources (such as the Wall St Journal) are in there. The consensus is that the PRC was responding to unprovoked violence against unarmed soldiers...what happened in 1989 was a battle, not a massacre. Anyone who says otherwise is either a liar, a fool or just completely misinformed.

:laugh: I sure hope the regime is paying you for your lies, "comrade". You deserve it.




Yes, it says I'm a socialist who doesn't leap to conclusions after one unsourced report while you're opportunistically taking up Falun Gong's cause.
And again it is down to pleading ignorance and apoligism. Pitfull. If you are so deeply ignorant and misnformed as you profess to be, perhaps you should investiagte a bit further before you speak the next time. To me it seems that you've hardly even read the OP.

And just to briefly adress the cause of independent trade unions: http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1192/

[DaringMehring]

You need to start with the underlying class nature of the state. What property forms are the armed fist of the state defending? Although the CCP has allowed far too much encroachment by capital into the Chinese economy, they maintain a planned and collectivized economy in key sectors. Consider even the dominance in light manufacture, that the Chinese are now in a dominant world position, that was part of a plan (as is their development of huge desalination plants, green energy, etc.). Many of the comrades here get all caught up in the anti-democratic regimes, rather then the class nature of the state. And you do wind up lining up with US and world imperialism when you attack China in the way that you do. The biggest problem with the CCP' latter day Stalinists, is that all of these encroachments of capital will trend towards real counterrevolution.

Who gives a shit if there are a few capitalists in the CCP. It is horrible, but it doesn't change the class nature of the state. There are lots of workers in the fucking Democratic and Republican parties. Does this prove, Q.E.D. that they are workers' parties? Saint seems to think that ends the discussion. But he was convinced that either China has never been any kind of historically progressive state or that it ceased to be that sometime in the 1950s when their politics became "bad."

"Independent trade unions" has historically referred to anti-communist, pro-capitalist formations within the deformed worker's states (e.g., Solidarity). Frequently these formations are under the tutelage of the CIA. I don't know the details here, and I'm sure that saint will bust my balls about this.

A very rough measure of the gains of the Chinese revolution is to compare China to India. Still makes China look very good.

But to Manic I would say, that in order for the workers to have political power, the CCP will have to be fractured, not reformed. It is a horrible, sclerotic, Stalinist party that endangers the gains of the Chinese Revolution in so many different ways.

I deplore attacks on leftists by the Chinese regime. That is obviously a problem. But it is all too easy to wind up attacking the CCP from the right.

1) The conditions of Chinese workers are terrible. You think they're committing suicide at Foxconn and wildcat striking Shanghai just because? They're among the most exploited proletarians.

2) The Party includes:
a) massively wealthy "princelings;" children of prominent Party members who owe everything to a form of inheritance; and, overlapping
b) capitalists. Big capitalists, who build replicas of wonders of the world to satisfy their own egos.

3) Chinese workers don't have free/good/reliable health care.

4) China's environment is a disaster zone. You can wipe the grime off your hand just from standing out in the Beijing air too long. Good luck not getting cancer.

5) They have a "houkou" system to keep peasants on the land, but because of the needs of production many illicitly migrate to the cities to work in factories anyway. So, they produce their own class of internal illegal immigrants.

That is not any kind of socialist-proletarian-Marxist "class nature of the state." Workers don't hold the power and their exploitation is extreme. Nationalization doesn't mean socialism. The English, French, Japanese, etc. gov'ts have at various times had mass nationalizations.

That isn't to say that Chinese revolution was wrong -- many huge gains, like women's equality, and Chiang's regime was super-capitalist with a fascist lean -- in fact it was heroic. But by now, it is defeated. Of course further study, discussion, etc. required but that's for a history thread.

But:

Calling out someone like Zhang Shujie who did what he did on the behalf of a socialist direction in China, and justifying his repression, is terrible. You think CPC is going to do anything good when any dissenting socialist voice can be stamped out?

[Crux]

Solidarity in Poland (Solidarność) was in fact a right wing political party in its leadership and policy.

Its mission statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mission_statement) declares that Solidarity (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solidarity_%28Polish_trade_union%29), "basing its activities on Christian ethics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Christian_ethics) and Catholic social teachings (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_social_teachings), works to protect workers' interests and to fulfill their material, social and cultural aspirations."


The Trotskyist ‘left’ of the CWI’s Zhang Shujie type mentioned at the top of this thread, were deeply involved in the imperialist attack on the workers state in Poland and are unapologetic about their role in joining in with every reactionary on the planet in undermining that state and ushering in full blooded capitalism.


Is it any wonder the Chinese state want to repress them? I think it’s a shame that the idiot revisionists let him escape. But then again, who’s to say he wasn’t ‘turned’ by the cops to spy on the reactionary Trots.
Okay I've had it with your sad bullshit, your attacks, lies and your delusions de grandeur (your "leninism" is hilarious but it has nothing to do with the actual methods of lenin). Consider yourself ignored. You do not deserve my attention from this day on, scum.

[manic expression]

Are you *trying* to say you are ignorant about CCP members being arrested and sentenced for "diculging state secrets" and similar such nonsense? If you are well, no suprise there.
Don't blame me when you can't back up your points.


I sure hope the regime is paying you for your lies, "comrade". You deserve it.
Not everyone thinks like you, Amnesty International.


And again it is down to pleading ignorance and apoligism. Pitfull. If you are so deeply ignorant and misnformed as you profess to be, perhaps you should investiagte a bit further before you speak the next time. To me it seems that you've hardly even read the OP.
Except my use of the OP is why you're presently stuttering and stumbling for something resembling an answer.


And just to briefly adress the cause of independent trade unions:
Some people really never learn from past mistakes.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Manic-really, you think Gao Zhisheng should be punished for "violating his parole"? Who said the conditions of his parole are justified? The bourgeois courts in the US use "parole violation" to harass people, why wouldn't the bourgeois courts in the PRC?

As for Ai Weiwei, there's a legitimate question as to whether the degree of the state response is a reasonable one for "tax evasion", especially since the state was harassing him before the charge of tax evasion was leveled. It does look like they were searching for a crime to pin on him, and went with tax evasion Rico-style. Maybe he did it but it doesn't change the political nature of why they went after him in particular.

However, that raises the very legitimate question as to why the authorities are spending so much energy monitoring a fairly harmless artist when members of the CCP are using corrupt business deals to hide taxes and disappear people. And yes, people are really "disappeared" in China. There are numerous privately-owned black prisons in Beijing where bureaucrats and businessmen send people who are trying to petition the government. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_jails ) There are also villages where CCP members help businesses steal people's farms, hide pollution statistics and sell poisoned goods both to the Chinese people and foreign countries. I think the government of China should focus more on prisons or abusive business practices like that than an artist not paying all of his taxes ... the problem, obviously, that the people who finance those prisons or hire them out have much more political and economic power and as such are normally unaccountable (although the CCP does clamp down on the most egregious cases ... but usually in a delayed manner and not nearly rigorously enough to stop such abuses).

Instead of picking on the corrupt bureaucrats and the bourgeoisie, the government concentrates on an artist who allegedly dodges taxes and a lawyer who defended people who happened to be in a Chinese new-age cult and complained about being tortured by the state but "violated his parole". And who cares that he defended Falun Gong members, do they not deserve lawyers because their religious organization had some questionable beliefs? Sorry if I don't really buy your defense of the CCP on this.

As for "progressive forces" in the CCP, I find your faith to be misdirected. There are progressive forces in UK's Labour, America's Democrats and most of the so-called "Socialist" parties of Western Europe, however these progressive voices are routinely marginalized or even repressed. When they do find their voices, they end up with some hack pretending to be a Leftist like the current leader of Labor. There's no more to ensure that the party ends up siding with the working class against the bourgeoisie any more than Labor or the Democrats, except for the highly questionable claims it makes to be a "Communist" party. But a red flag does nothing to change the class nature of the party, as evident by the bourgeois "communists" who all became Social Democrats when the Berlin Wall fell. And like when the wall fell, because the "vanguard party" is so corrupt, many workers who would otherwise have supported real communism would find social democracy to be a "safer alternative"

Even on an international scale this is evident, with things like the PRC selling out Vietnam to America when Mao met Nixon, or supporting violent bourgeois kleptocrats all over the third world which became the basis for the export of its Capital, i.e places like Zambia or Cambodia. China is becoming the next Imperial Capitalist superpower, and has been for decades, even someone like Enver Hoxha seemed to have realized that back in the 60s or whenever it was that Albania split from the Chinese bloc. What is sad, though, is that international socialists act as apologists for the repression of real Leftist voices.


This is a government which represses non-state unions, does not look kindly on strikes, and is constantly looking to appeal to international Capital as well as boosting domestic Capital. I'd rather side with the CWI on this (am not a member fyi) than the CCP, that is for sure.

[Threetune]

The Trotskyists have been fucking up Leninist revolutionary theory on trade unions since forever.





V. I. Lenin

THE TRADE UNIONS,
THE PRESENT SITUATION
AND TROTSKY'S MISTAKES

“… My principal material is Comrade Trotsky 's pamphlet, The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions. When I compare it with the theses he submitted to the Central Committee, and go over it very carefully, I am amazed at the number of theoretical mistakes and glaring blunders it contains. How could anyone starting a big Party discussion on this question produce such a sorry excuse for a carefully thought out statement? Let me go over the main points which, I think, contain the original fundamental theoretical errors.
Trade unions are not just historically necessary; they are historically inevitable as an organisation of the industrial proletariat, and, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, embrace nearly the whole of it. This is basic, but Comrade Trotsky keeps forgetting it; he neither appreciates it nor makes it his point of departure, all this while dealing With "The Role and Tasks of the Trade Unions", a subject of infinite compass. …”
http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TUTM20.html (http://www.marx2mao.com/Lenin/TUTM20.html)

[manic expression]

Manic-really, you think Gao Zhisheng should be punished for "violating his parole"? Who said the conditions of his parole are justified? The bourgeois courts in the US use "parole violation" to harass people, why wouldn't the bourgeois courts in the PRC?
Who said the terms were unjustified? If this is such a clear-cut case of "repression" then it should be easy to prove it...right?


As for Ai Weiwei, there's a legitimate question as to whether the degree of the state response is a reasonable one for "tax evasion", especially since the state was harassing him before the charge of tax evasion was leveled. It does look like they were searching for a crime to pin on him, and went with tax evasion Rico-style.
So you think he's innocent just because the PRC wasn't nice to him (with such horrible "harassment" as letting him contribute to the design the National Stadium) before he was charged?


However, that raises the very legitimate question as to why the authorities are spending so much energy monitoring a fairly harmless artist when members of the CCP are using corrupt business deals to hide taxes and disappear people. And yes, people are really "disappeared" in China.
To address the main points of this paragraph: you're right that it makes no sense for them to monitor a "fairly harmless artist" (harmless enough to appeal to the western media after getting busted for tax evasion) at the expense of the PRC's image abroad...so the logical answer is that it's because he's guilty and not because they don't like his personal views. Also, CPC bureaucrats get caught in corruption and are punished for it as well. The former vice-mayor of Beijing is just one example.


As for "progressive forces" in the CCP, I find your faith to be misdirected. There are progressive forces in UK's Labour, America's Democrats and most of the so-called "Socialist" parties of Western Europe, however these progressive voices are routinely marginalized or even repressed. When they do find their voices, they end up with some hack pretending to be a Leftist like the current leader of Labor.
There's no such thing as a membership of the US Democrats. Labour tossed aside any mentions of socialism long ago.


Even on an international scale this is evident, with things like the PRC selling out Vietnam to America when Mao met Nixon, or supporting violent bourgeois kleptocrats all over the third world which became the basis for the export of its Capital, i.e places like Zambia or Cambodia. China is becoming the next Imperial Capitalist superpower, and has been for decades, even someone like Enver Hoxha seemed to have realized that back in the 60s or whenever it was that Albania split from the Chinese bloc. What is sad, though, is that international socialists act as apologists for the repression of real Leftist voices.
You forgot recognizing Pinochet's coup as legitimate.

Yes, I strongly object to all of that. And yet my disagreement does not make the PRC something other than what it is.


This is a government which represses non-state unions, does not look kindly on strikes, and is constantly looking to appeal to international Capital as well as boosting domestic Capital. I'd rather side with the CWI on this (am not a member fyi) than the CCP, that is for sure.
Non-state unions have a good track record of jumping to the right faster than anyone. Solidarity was already brought up and it's a perfect example, it's the cautionary tale here. Workers striking against a worker state is tantamount to workers striking against themselves.

[Threetune]

Okay I've had it with your sad bullshit, your attacks, lies and your delusions de grandeur (your "leninism" is hilarious but it has nothing to do with the actual methods of lenin). Consider yourself ignored. You do not deserve my attention from this day on, scum.

Point out the "lies" if you can and I'll retract and apologise unreservedly.
Fail to, and we'll know it’s you that's full of stinking "bullshit" as you say.

[Threetune]

But:

Calling out someone like Zhang Shujie who did what he did on the behalf of a socialist direction in China, and justifying his repression, is terrible. You think CPC is going to do anything good when any dissenting socialist voice can be stamped out?

How do you know what's going on in this bit of routine policing?
Every reactionary on the planet is hell bent on kicking-in China. What better way than to pose as a 'left' opposition 'looking out for the workers’.
Naive middle class or what?

You might want to ask why every reactionary mob, every religious loon from the Pope to the Dali Lama, every capitalist state and every Trotskyist party are all as one on wanting the defeat of the state in China but say fuck-all of critical interest about the absolute centres of imperialism, and never ever actually do anything about it. Interesting that, isn’t it?

[Per Levy]

Workers striking against a worker state is tantamount to workers striking against themselves.

but maniac, what is when the working conditions in this so called "workers" state are so terrible that workers kill themself because of it?
what is when there are no safty regulations and workers loose limbs or get hurt seriously other wise(not to mention the many deaths in mines and so on)?
and what is when the "worker" state is selling out the its workers to private capital?
are these cases where you would support strikes of workers against this "worker" state? or should they just hope that "left" wing of ccp somehow gains massive support someday in the future? or maybe they just should send some petitions to their goverment, that will probally help, not?

i make it clear, china is not a worker state but a capitalist state, the workers have as much power as workers do in other capitalist nation, almost none except sometimes to create unions to fight for the rights of workers and so on. and as what i see you maniac, you're nothing else then supporter of a capitalist state.

[Threetune]

Why is it that the entire liberal ‘left’ caucus on here believe that workers are going two achieve instant “liberation” after thousands of years of feudalism and hundreds of years of capitalism? The whole point of building and having a workers state after a revolution against capitalism is to organise a society which is still drugged with inequality. !!!!

The communist state exists to mitigate the contradictions between existing class interests which will still exist after the revolution. Only an idiot thinks that all classes and all class contradictions will disappear in the revolution.

[DaringMehring]

The communist state exists to mitigate the contradictions between existing class interests which will still exist after the revolution. Only an idiot thinks that all classes and all class contradictions will disappear in the revolution.

So in your opinion PR China is a Communist state and adjudicates class conflict, such as it exists, in favor of the working class?

[Threetune]

Being as you have just joined in the DEBATE perhaps you would like to give US your opinions.

[Ismail]

China is becoming the next Imperial Capitalist superpower, and has been for decades, even someone like Enver Hoxha seemed to have realized that back in the 60s or whenever it was that Albania split from the Chinese bloc.Hoxha noted in his diary that back in 1972 or so a Chinese official told an Albanian counterpart that the Chinese didn't really want to support Marxist-Leninist parties and wished that they stopped trying to visit China, etc. This was around the time that the Chinese were courting the Americans.

This is what Hoxha said about China's prospects in his 1978 work Imperialism and the Revolution, pp. 341-343, 382-383:

To become a superpower it is absolutely essential to have a developed economy, an army equipped with atomic bombs, to ensure markets and spheres of influence, investment of capital in foreign countries, etc. China is bent on ensuring these conditions as quickly as possible. This was expressed in Chou En-lai's speech in the People's Assembly in 1975 and was repeated at the 11th Congress of the Communist Party of China, where it was proclaimed that, before the end of this century, China will become a powerful modern country, with the objective of catching up with the United States of America and the Soviet Union...

In these conditions, in order to become a superpower, China will have to go through two main phases: first, it must seek credits and investments from US imperialism and the other developed capitalist countries, purchase new technology in order to exploit its local wealth, a great part of which will go as dividends for the creditors. Second, it will invest the surplus value extracted at the expense of the Chinese people in states of various continents, just as the US imperialists and Soviet social-imperialists are doing today.

China's efforts to become a superpower are based, in the first place, on its choice of allies and the creation of alliances. Two superpowers exist in the world today, US imperialism and Soviet social-imperialism. The Chinese leaders worked out that they must rely on US imperialism, on which they have pinned great hopes of getting assistance in the fields of the economy, finance, technology and organization, as well as in the military field....

The present-day Chinese policy is also aimed at establishing friendships and alliances with all the other developed capitalist countries, from which it seeks political and economic benefits.

[....]

China cannot go ahead with its course of transforming itself into a superpower without intensifying the exploitation of the broad working masses at home. The United States of America and the other capitalist states will seek to secure superprofits from the capital they will invest there, they will also press for rapid and radical transformations of the base and superstructure of Chinese society in the capitalist direction. The intensification of the exploitation of the multimillion strong masses to maintain the Chinese bourgeoisie and its gigantic bureaucratic apparatus and to meet the repayment of the credits and interest to the foreign capitalists, will undoubtedly give rise to deep contradictions between the Chinese proletariat and peasantry, on the one hand, and the bourgeois-revisionist rulers, on the other. This will bring the latter into confrontation with the working masses of their own country, a thing which cannot fail to lead to sharp conflicts and revolutionary outbursts in China.To give you an answer on when Albania broke with China, Albania entered into the Chinese sphere, as it were, in 1961 when the Soviets broke off diplomatic and economic relations with Albania. Outside of opposition to Soviet social-imperialism and revisionism, though, they didn't really have anything in common. Accordingly when opposition to revisionism was toned down on the Chinese side and the denouncement of Soviet social-imperialism was turned into "American imperialism is less of a danger than Soviet social-imperialism," Albania's relations with China began to decline. In 1977 Hoxha wrote an unsigned article in Zëri i Popullit attacking the "Three Worlds Theory" and thus indirectly criticizing the Chinese leadership. Hua Guofeng fired back with an indirect attack on Albania in an article in People's Daily in an attempt to defend the "theory." Cordiality in Sino-Albanian relations ended in 1978 when China broke off its economic agreements (which had been in decline since the early 70's) and attacked the Albanians as "dogmatists."

[Threetune]

Okay I've had it with your sad bullshit, your attacks, lies and your delusions de grandeur (your "leninism" is hilarious but it has nothing to do with the actual methods of lenin). Consider yourself ignored. You do not deserve my attention from this day on, scum.

Come on you fraud lets resolve this crap once and for all. Put up or shut up.

[DaringMehring]

Being as you have just joined in the DEBATE perhaps you would like to give US your opinions.

You must have missed my earlier post in the thread.

[Threetune]

You must have missed my earlier post in the thread.

Go on then and answer this.

How do you know what's going on in this bit of routine policing?
Every reactionary on the planet is hell bent on kicking-in China. What better way than to pose as a 'left' opposition 'looking out for the workers’.
Naive middle class or what?

You might want to ask why every reactionary mob, every religious loon from the Pope to the Dali Lama, every capitalist state and every Trotskyist party are all as one on wanting the defeat of the state in China but say fuck-all of critical interest about the absolute centres of imperialism, and never ever actually do anything about it. Interesting that, isn’t it?

[Lev Bronsteinovich]

How do you know what's going on in this bit of routine policing?
Every reactionary on the planet is hell bent on kicking-in China. What better way than to pose as a 'left' opposition 'looking out for the workers’.
Naive middle class or what?

You might want to ask why every reactionary mob, every religious loon from the Pope to the Dali Lama, every capitalist state and every Trotskyist party are all as one on wanting the defeat of the state in China but say fuck-all of critical interest about the absolute centres of imperialism, and never ever actually do anything about it. Interesting that, isn’t it?


Most of your points are well taken -- but I object to the point about Trotskyist parties. The Spartacists, IG, BT and Revolutionary Regroupment all defend China against any capitalist country. We do call for a political revolution to oust the bureaucracy, but recognize the class nature of the state.

[DaringMehring]

Go on then and answer this.

How do you know what's going on in this bit of routine policing?
Every reactionary on the planet is hell bent on kicking-in China. What better way than to pose as a 'left' opposition 'looking out for the workers’.
Naive middle class or what?

You might want to ask why every reactionary mob, every religious loon from the Pope to the Dali Lama, every capitalist state and every Trotskyist party are all as one on wanting the defeat of the state in China but say fuck-all of critical interest about the absolute centres of imperialism, and never ever actually do anything about it. Interesting that, isn’t it?


Why were the Germans trying to "defeat the state of England" in WWI, why were the Italians trying to "defeat the state of Austria," etc. --- because of inter-Imperialist rivalry. The capitalists always try to stir up hatred of other countries to use as a tool in their inter-Imperialist games. When it comes to China, they hide it behind "human rights violations" -- like they actually care about that shit. They love the fact that China fucks its workers for capitalist profit.

And the stuff about "Trotskyists" -- well... it seems that you're constantly losing track of reality and drifting into rages against the Trotskyists in your mind. It's not relevant.

You haven't answered the simple question. You said China was a Communist state. According to Marxism, the state exists to adjudicate class struggle in favor of the ruling class. Since the working class should be the ruling class of a socialist society, until classes dissolve altogether, you are saying that the Chinese state sides with the workers. When I called you out, you wouldn't answer. Is that really what you think? And the bunch of ways I listed that workers are fucked over in China, just like in every capitalist country, is just some kind of "Trotskyist" fantasy?

[DaringMehring]

Most of your points are well taken -- but I object to the point about Trotskyist parties. The Spartacists, IG, BT and Revolutionary Regroupment all defend China against any capitalist country. We do call for a political revolution to oust the bureaucracy, but recognize the class nature of the state.

And what? The capitalist class doesn't exist in China, just the "bureaucracy?" In the 50s-60s when the capitalists were on the ropes a typical deformed workers' state "political not social revolution" made sense and almost happened in the Cultural Revolution. But nowadays, there has to be a social revolution to expropriate all the 271 Chinese billionaires (http://www.newser.com/story/127902/chinese-billionaires-double-in-two-years.html) and all the multi-millionaires under them as well. There can be no socialism while those people are around.

[Renegade Saint]

You might want to ask why every reactionary mob, every religious loon from the Pope to the Dali Lama, every capitalist state and every Trotskyist party are all as one on wanting the defeat of the state in China but say fuck-all of critical interest about the absolute centres of imperialism, and never ever actually do anything about it. Interesting that, isn’t it?

It'd be interesting if it were true. I doubt a major capitalist state in the world wants to see the collapse of the Chinese government. It would wreck havoc on the economy. What makes you think that any of, say, the G8 want to see the Chinese state fall apart?

[manic expression]

It'd be interesting if it were true. I doubt a major capitalist state in the world wants to see the collapse of the Chinese government. It would wreck havoc on the economy. What makes you think that any of, say, the G8 want to see the Chinese state fall apart?
A "Balkanized" China would be at least 500x easier to control and dictate terms to. It would do away with the most viable challenger to US hegemony.

[Crux]

A "Balkanized" China would be at least 500x easier to control and dictate terms to. It would do away with the most viable challenger to US hegemony.

Ah I see. Me I see thing's in terms of class. When you say China is a "viable challenger" what exactly is their "challenge"? Or do you simply mean they are challenging US-hegemony with a Chinese-hegemony and you think this is a good thing because of the lovely pro-worker regime of china?

[manic expression]

Ah I see. Me I see thing's in terms of class. When you say China is a "viable challenger" what exactly is their "challenge"? Or do you simply mean they are challenging US-hegemony with a Chinese-hegemony and you think this is a good thing because of the lovely pro-worker regime of china?
They are challenging US imperialism by becoming a powerful worker state, which bodes well for the workers of the world.

But since you see things in terms of class, perhaps you can tell us which class would benefit from the breakup of the PRC...that thing you dream of the whole day through.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

They are challenging US imperialism by becoming a powerful worker state, which bodes well for the workers of the world..

But it's not a worker's state any more than the United States is; remember that one time that China made a press release telling Western Europe and the U.S. to adapt more austerity measures and that the workers of the west were having too generous off-time? Some workers state that.

[manic expression]

But it's not a worker's state any more than the United States is; remember that one time that China made a press release telling Western Europe and the U.S. to adapt more austerity measures and that the workers of the west were having too generous off-time? Some workers state that.
I don't analyze a state's class composition based on press releases...neither should you.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

I don't analyze a state's class composition based on press releases...neither should you.

That's true, too; but any simple glance at the Chinese economy will tell you that it is capitalist, and any fleeting glance at the Chinese Capitalist Party will tell you that it is not a working class party. What is the most important aspect of their policy? Social harmony. Why social harmony? For the same reason that the Western governments after the second world war gave concessions to working class movements to some extent: to pacify and thwart the threat to its own existence. Private schools are all around in the PRC these days; most health care has been privatised, stock exchanges, construction companies make a killing of an inflated real-estate market and fund the construction of endless fields of sprawling McMansions but are vary of the bubble going to burst; IMF-men as economic advisor's all since the 70's-- sounds almost like the United States, and the similarities between the two are quite considerable, far more than either would ever like to admit in their slanderous reports about one-another.

If the CCP claims to have any socialist aspirations, why is this? It is because it wants to garner legitimacy as born from the Chinese revolution. By claiming to be the logical extension, the natural following so to say, of the revolution, they establish a continuum without which their claim to power would be wholly ridiculous. Yet this claim is only a matter of words; their policies are reversed, the Chinese ruling class, like the Soviet before them, capitulated to capitalism and peaceful coexistence, for they realised that they would come up on top of the increased inequalities.

Why do you cling to the CCP and PRC as socialist? What is socialist about a country that has since the 1970's conducted a capitalist transition as sharp as that of the former Soviet Union the years after 1985? It is to take their nonsensical claims at face value. In other words, you take their press-releases seriously when they say that they are socialist. The CCP is communist in name only, kind of like the Communist Party of Moldova. There can be little hope for revolution from within the CCP, because the leadership has the real power. The presence of genuine socialists in its ranks is largely irrelevant, those will never be allowed any serious influence. The CCP opposed and seeks to quell all working class struggles, for it threatens their status as the manufacturing centre of the world; for if it were to pay its workers decently, there would be little purpose for foreign companies (and Chinese ones doing the production for foreign markets, likewise) to set up. China thus decidedly exists as a major player in the capitalist market; China lives and falls with the well-being of the markets, as we can see from their concern with the state of the western economies under the fraudulent so-called "debt-crisis".

China is cautious about its development. China tries to thwart class-antagonism here and there and patch up its own capitalist corruption; this is not a sign of socialism; this is the promotion of social-peace for the sake of maintaining CCP rule and the existing order.

I ask, what is socialist about China? Where's the worker's rule? I see stock-market and for-profit companies. During the 1980-1990's something like 87,000 state-owned enterprises were closed down because they were not profitable on a capitalist basis. The state-owned sector operates on exactly the same field as the private companies, so even compared to Soviet state-capitalism, it's a great step towards economic liberalism. Where's the socialist construction? There, expensive flats owned by private companies; over there, expensive office buildings, and what of that? A slum in the shadow of a gated community of tower blocks for the nouveau riches, nothing like gated communities to tell of the growing social antagonisms.

[Threetune]

It'd be interesting if it were true. I doubt a major capitalist state in the world wants to see the collapse of the Chinese government. It would wreck havoc on the economy. What makes you think that any of, say, the G8 want to see the Chinese state fall apart?

New defense strategy sets Obama's gaze on Asia
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/new-defense-strategy-sets-obamas-gaze-on-asia.aspx?pageID=238&nID=10881&NewsCatID=358 (http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/new-defense-strategy-sets-obamas-gaze-on-asia.aspx?pageID=238&nID=10881&NewsCatID=358)

Do you think the pentagon officials get out of bed every morning and celebrate the fact that China has an 80,000,000 strong communist party and three million strong red army? I don’t think they do. For all the idiocies of revisionism the Chinese state poses a major obstacle to U.S. imperialist control of the planet.

[Per Levy]

For all the idiocies of revisionism the Chinese state poses a major obstacle to U.S. imperialist control of the planet.

so communists then shall support a capitalist state because its imperialism is nicer and because its not us imperialism?


Do you think the pentagon officials get out of bed every morning and celebrate the fact that China has an 80,000,000 strong communist party and three million strong red army?

well they think better them fake commies then real commies, just like maniac. besides china is stable and stability is wanted. if china would become unstable in some way it could hurt the market and with that other impiralist nations would get hurt as well.

[manic expression]

Takayuki, let me ask you this: if not from the politicized rank-and-file working-class membership of the CPC...then from where do you look for progress in China? I think there is a chance that the New Left has the potential for great things, but this is partially because many New Left voices aren't isolated from the CPC membership. To me, it seems that the most likely move to the left will come from within the CPC because that's where the politically-minded workers are. Further, the PRC is structured in a manner that allows for such a thing to come to pass: the CPC has a central role in just about every matter, and even recently foreign investment was rolled back because the CPC decided it. That kind of place in the worker state (the product of a working-class revolution) cannot be underestimated.

So if you discount that potential...where do you look to?

[Renegade Saint]

They are challenging US imperialism by becoming a powerful worker state, which bodes well for the workers of the world.


By what definition is China a workers state?

How does China differ from a right wing one party state?

How does the Chinese government deal with strikes and other labor unrest?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Who said the terms were unjustified? If this is such a clear-cut case of "repression" then it should be easy to prove it...right?


On the contrary, you're the one saying his violation of the terms of parole show he's being legitimately repressed by the CCP, I don't know enough about the case myself but I'd like to know what the terms of his parole are before I judge his punishment under them as correct. I don't take the State position for granted.




So you think he's innocent just because the PRC wasn't nice to him (with such horrible "harassment" as letting him contribute to the design the National Stadium) before he was charged?
There were like 3 years in between the construction of the stadium and the tax charges. I remember a couple of odd events, like the party deciding to demolish his new studio.



To address the main points of this paragraph: you're right that it makes no sense for them to monitor a "fairly harmless artist" (harmless enough to appeal to the western media after getting busted for tax evasion) at the expense of the PRC's image abroad...so the logical answer is that it's because he's guilty and not because they don't like his personal views. Also, CPC bureaucrats get caught in corruption and are punished for it as well. The former vice-mayor of Beijing is just one example.
Unless the PRC has less concern that the artist's words would have a real effect abroad. The global elites don't care, his imprisonment just makes them feel better about their own bourgeois governments. All they care about is China's ability to be productive, which it is.



There's no such thing as a membership of the US Democrats. Labour tossed aside any mentions of socialism long ago.
Calling oneself "socialist" is not the heart of socialism. The UK Labor party base is called from the party-affiliated unions, so except for the name "communist" and references to socialism in the constitution, in practicality the party is no more "communist".




You forgot recognizing Pinochet's coup as legitimate.

Yes, I strongly object to all of that. And yet my disagreement does not make the PRC something other than what it is.
I'd say those things are good evidence that what it is not is a worker's state.




Non-state unions have a good track record of jumping to the right faster than anyone. Solidarity was already brought up and it's a perfect example, it's the cautionary tale here. Workers striking against a worker state is tantamount to workers striking against themselves.Yes, workers striking at foxconn and because state-capitalists are privatizing their firms or at the numerous other enterprises that exploit people are stiking against "themselves" and not the bourgeoisie? No offense this is the worst thing I've read you write. A strike by these workers is actually PROOF that the ruling class in China has become too alienated from the working class and is not fulfilling its duty. If the workers are striking, it's because they don't feel that the state is really fulfilling the material interests of the working class, and insofar as the state is banning those strikes by force it is merely trying to protect itself from collective action from the people it claims to represent.

I would rarely side with the state over the workers, and even when the state is in the right the worker's right to go on strike should still be protected as their main mode for collective action and speech. If socialism means building a state where a Taiwanese firm can pay you dollars a day to assemble $500 iPods and you can't go on strike, I'd rather be a Capitalist. Luckily my notion of socialism doesn't include that.


Takayuki, let me ask you this: if not from the politicized rank-and-file working-class membership of the CPC...then from where do you look for progress in China? I think there is a chance that the New Left has the potential for great things, but this is partially because many New Left voices aren't isolated from the CPC membership. To me, it seems that the most likely move to the left will come from within the CPC because that's where the politically-minded workers are. That is an arrogant and sweeping statement. Why are all Chinese politicized workers in the CP? That's a massive judgement of non-CP members who are workers which you are not qualified to make.


Further, the PRC is structured in a manner that allows for such a thing to come to pass: the CPC has a central role in just about every matter, and even recently foreign investment was rolled back because the CPC decided it. That kind of place in the worker state (the product of a working-class revolution) cannot be underestimated.That just shows the CP has absolute power, that doesn't show that their structure allows for a working class revolution at all, it just shows that China is a one-party state. It says nothing of the nature of the party or how workers would go about seizing it.


Hoxha noted in his diary that back in 1972 or so a Chinese official told an Albanian counterpart that the Chinese didn't really want to support Marxist-Leninist parties and wished that they stopped trying to visit China, etc. This was around the time that the Chinese were courting the Americans.

This is what Hoxha said about China's prospects in his 1978 work Imperialism and the Revolution, pp. 341-343, 382-383:

I'm no Hoxhaist but that was more or less an accurate prediction of what ultimately happened in China. However, there are still people who claim, apparently, that he is wrong and that the CP of China is not a bourgeois institution. Anyone who disagrees with them are "reactionaries" who want Capitalism to return to China, at least according to 3tune.

[manic expression]

On the contrary, you're the one saying his violation of the terms of parole show he's being legitimately repressed by the CCP, I don't know enough about the case myself but I'd like to know what the terms of his parole are before I judge his punishment under them as correct. I don't take the State position for granted.
And I don't take the capitalist media's position for granted. I'm only observing why he was arrested...until anyone proves otherwise it stands to reason that such a response can only be expected from the PRC or any worker state.


There were like 3 years in between the construction of the stadium and the tax charges. I remember a couple of odd events, like the party deciding to demolish his new studio.
Do you have proof of these "odd events"? Lots of buildings have been recently demolished in the PRC (it's a campaign to modernize housing), just because his studio was part of one of them means very little.


Unless the PRC has less concern that the artist's words would have a real effect abroad. The global elites don't care, his imprisonment just makes them feel better about their own bourgeois governments. All they care about is China's ability to be productive, which it is.
The artist's words do have a real effect abroad when he uses the imperialist media as a soapbox in his personal quest to evade taxes. The global elites care in that they can use it as a cheap ploy to engage in more China-bashing, which has been their favorite sport since the mid-19th Century.


Calling oneself "socialist" is not the heart of socialism. The UK Labor party base is called from the party-affiliated unions, so except for the name "communist" and references to socialism in the constitution, in practicality the party is no more "communist".
I refer you to my previous arguments...there are quantitative differences between the CPC and the capitalist parties you mentioned. The CPC isn't a capitalist party for those reasons...

...it has capitalist elements, sure, but that's not what your argument is. My entire argument is that those elements need to be confronted and exposed...class warfare within the CPC is what's needed now.


I'd say those things are good evidence that what it is not is a worker's state.
Why? Because we disagree with some portions of its foreign policy? People need to realize that their own views don't trump material reality. Just because we don't like PRC policy in some areas doesn't invalidate everything else.


Yes, workers striking at foxconn and because state-capitalists are privatizing their firms or at the numerous other enterprises that exploit people are stiking against "themselves" and not the bourgeoisie? No offense this is the worst thing I've read you write. A strike by these workers is actually PROOF that the ruling class in China has become too alienated from the working class and is not fulfilling its duty.
Wrong. The strikes in Poland against the worker state were only proof that anti-socialist, chauvinistic, reactionary ideas had been able to turn some layers of the working class against their own state.

A strike, in and of itself, does not signify progressive forces at work.

Now, if you want to bring up strikes at foxconn specifically, then that's another story. If we're talking about that in particular then cite something particular.


I would rarely side with the state over the workers, and even when the state is in the right the worker's right to go on strike should still be protected as their main mode for collective action and speech. If socialism means building a state where a Taiwanese firm can pay you dollars a day to assemble $500 iPods and you can't go on strike, I'd rather be a Capitalist. Luckily my notion of socialism doesn't include that.
The state, though, has the ability to kick that Taiwanese firm out of the country. It's a matter of working-class forces retaking full power of the state as they once did.

But since people refuse to learn from that past...if China followed your preferences and went fully capitalist, thousands would die in ethnic violence, living standards for the workers would plummet, workers' rights would be nonexistent (something you can't say now). Are you so stubborn as to not heed the cautionary tales of Yugoslavia, the USSR, Poland? I mean for crying out loud, if your dream comes true and the PRC falls apart you'll be sitting there wondering why life is getting 5,000x worse for the workers of China...and then you'll turn around, shrug your shoulders and commit the same error and call for the downfall of Cuba or Chavez' government or whatever other progressive force that you don't quite fully agree with.


That is an arrogant and sweeping statement. Why are all Chinese politicized workers in the CP? That's a massive judgement of non-CP members who are workers which you are not qualified to make.
Yeah, except I never said that non-CPC members weren't politicized as well. It wasn't an exclusive claim.


That just shows the CP has absolute power, that doesn't show that their structure allows for a working class revolution at all, it just shows that China is a one-party state. It says nothing of the nature of the party or how workers would go about seizing it.
They'd go about seizing it by voting out the pro-capitalist elites...and if they refused to budge then enlisting the aid of all working-class forces to carry through the will of the party.

[manic expression]

By what definition is China a workers state?

How does China differ from a right wing one party state?

How does the Chinese government deal with strikes and other labor unrest?
The PRC is a worker state as it is the product of a working-class revolution and the abolition of capitalist rule. It sees a vanguard party holding complete authority over all economic matters. It does not see a capitalist class formed as a ruling class on its own terms...only through infiltration of the party have pro-capitalists been able to roll back achievements of the Revolution, but this has not succeeded in overturning the underlying structure of the state itself...nor will it, if the working-class rank-and-file are able to retake control.

China differs from a right wing one party state in that it bears no resemblance to one: its policies, while having drifted rightward since the 1970's, are not right-wing. It is not expansionist.

That's a very general question, perhaps it would be more fruitful to narrow the discussion to something in specific.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

The PRC is a worker state as it is the product of a working-class revolution and the abolition of capitalist rule. It sees a vanguard party holding complete authority over all economic matters. It does not see a capitalist class formed as a ruling class on its own terms...only through infiltration of the party have pro-capitalists been able to roll back achievements of the Revolution, but this has not succeeded in overturning the underlying structure of the state itself...nor will it, if the working-class rank-and-file are able to retake control.
.

Apart from the fact that the original revolution was decidedly non-working class (Maoists and their mingling with the peasants and 'national bourgeois'), just a revolution doesn't mean that a party's class character is going to remain that way. Those things can change. The party is riddled with wealthy and corrupt careerists, indeed those probably make up a significant amount of the politically significant leadership (in terms of actual influence). The party is also riddled with nationalism and this has actually gotten worse and worse with the expansion of capitalism in China.

A declared politic is something that does nothing to alter the real character of the party. It is the party of the wealthy, of the capitalists. Indeed various political figures in the party have made open changes to what socialism is during the history of it; we have scumbags like Ziyang, Zemin, Deng and so on so forth who insist that far from being a deviation from socialism what has happened is actually a strengthening thereof; the mental gymnastics required to bring together the idea of free-market, liberalisations and crushing of the people's communes (for all their Maoists fault) and socialism are incredible. This is, as said before, to maintain a political historical continuum with the revolution, despite the overthrow and betrayal thereof.

I don't think that change can come from within the party. It would have to come from the outside, by a genuine worker's movement and party; it is, frankly, very utopian and naïve to fancy that the CCP, that is so utterly entrenched in the capitalism it has fostered like an only and much beloved child, would ever be possible to be taken over by what genuine socialists sadly within its mess are stuck. I personally do not care about some Ai Weiwei or whatever disgusting Charter 08-supporting character that Amnesty International wants to support, but from the oppression of true workers movement and the promotion of private investment (not only foreign, but from private capitalists within China), CCP is decidedly capitalists. To think that the CCP will be able to be changed from within is frankly as silly as thinking that somehow the Republicans or Democrats or the Tories or Labour could be changed from within to genuine workers mass parties. They will not. The real power, the capitalists within the state, party and private industry of China, would not allow such a thing to happen.

[Crux]

They are challenging US imperialism by becoming a powerful worker state, which bodes well for the workers of the world.

But since you see things in terms of class, perhaps you can tell us which class would benefit from the breakup of the PRC...that thing you dream of the whole day through.
I am not a nationalist or chavunist, therefore I support the national rights of all opressed nationalities in China. But I suppose you think class struggle too threatens your precious "national unity"? "Worker's state"? Don't kid yourself.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I refer you to my previous arguments...there are quantitative differences between the CPC and the capitalist parties you mentioned. The CPC isn't a capitalist party for those reasons...

...it has capitalist elements, sure, but that's not what your argument is. My entire argument is that those elements need to be confronted and exposed...class warfare within the CPC is what's needed now.
.

The reason you gave for how UK's labor is different from the CP of China is that it doesn't call itself socialist, but the reason you give for the CP being "working class" is that it has working class members.



Why? Because we disagree with some portions of its foreign policy? People need to realize that their own views don't trump material reality. Just because we don't like PRC policy in some areas doesn't invalidate everything else.
When those "some portions" include backing explicitly anti-working class governments, brutal dictatorships and exploitative elites around the world, the MATERIAL REALITY is that the government in question is not a "Worker's Democracy" but a one-party dictatorship which wanted to chummy up with and join the international Capitalist market. Those decisions were made because they were in the self-interest of the regime, not because the working class willed or desired such policies. That is the material reality.



Wrong. The strikes in Poland against the worker state were only proof that anti-socialist, chauvinistic, reactionary ideas had been able to turn some layers of the working class against their own state.

A strike, in and of itself, does not signify progressive forces at work.

Now, if you want to bring up strikes at foxconn specifically, then that's another story. If we're talking about that in particular then cite something particular.
No, what Solidarity proves is that when a so-called "vanguard party" becomes too alienated from the working class it claims to represent, the workers will look for other mediums to have their voices heard. Solidarity was such an organization. And based on the fact that these supposed "communists" in Poland became opportunistic liberals or social democrats as soon as the wall fell, the workers were not exactly in the wrong for feeling alienated from their country's regime.

As for Foxconn, let's cite the fact that the inability to form legal unions in China or have protection from vindictive businessmen has driven workers to commit suicide.




The state, though, has the ability to kick that Taiwanese firm out of the country. It's a matter of working-class forces retaking full power of the state as they once did.

But since people refuse to learn from that past...if China followed your preferences and went fully capitalist, thousands would die in ethnic violence, living standards for the workers would plummet, workers' rights would be nonexistent (something you can't say now). Are you so stubborn as to not heed the cautionary tales of Yugoslavia, the USSR, Poland? I mean for crying out loud, if your dream comes true and the PRC falls apart you'll be sitting there wondering why life is getting 5,000x worse for the workers of China...and then you'll turn around, shrug your shoulders and commit the same error and call for the downfall of Cuba or Chavez' government or whatever other progressive force that you don't quite fully agree with.
My preference is not that China become "fully Capitalist", my preference is that it adopt REAL socialism which respects the autonomy of the workers to act politically independently of an authoritarian party which completely fails to uphold their interests.

The American State has the ability to kick out any exploitative company, and it doesn't, for the exact same reason that the Chinese state doesn't. Both are concerned with the interests of the business class.



Yeah, except I never said that non-CPC members weren't politicized as well. It wasn't an exclusive claim.
It sure read that way. It also leaves no possibility for those, like the CWI, from organizing independently among the workers.



They'd go about seizing it by voting out the pro-capitalist elites...and if they refused to budge then enlisting the aid of all working-class forces to carry through the will of the partyThis seems like a pipe dream, no offense. How can the working class do this with the business elites controlling the mechanisms of the party and banning all organization independently of the party? Do you think the bourgeoisie would just hand these folks the keys to the party? What mechanisms do the workers have for organizing against bourgeois control of the party, when you have already justified the banning of strikes, independent union organizing and free media in the country by the so-called "worker's state"?

[manic expression]

Apart from the fact that the original revolution was decidedly non-working class (Maoists and their mingling with the peasants and 'national bourgeois'), just a revolution doesn't mean that a party's class character is going to remain that way. Those things can change. The party is riddled with wealthy and corrupt careerists, indeed those probably make up a significant amount of the politically significant leadership (in terms of actual influence). The party is also riddled with nationalism and this has actually gotten worse and worse with the expansion of capitalism in China.

A declared politic is something that does nothing to alter the real character of the party. It is the party of the wealthy, of the capitalists. Indeed various political figures in the party have made open changes to what socialism is during the history of it; we have scumbags like Ziyang, Zemin, Deng and so on so forth who insist that far from being a deviation from socialism what has happened is actually a strengthening thereof; the mental gymnastics required to bring together the idea of free-market, liberalisations and crushing of the people's communes (for all their Maoists fault) and socialism are incredible. This is, as said before, to maintain a political historical continuum with the revolution, despite the overthrow and betrayal thereof.

I don't think that change can come from within the party. It would have to come from the outside, by a genuine worker's movement and party; it is, frankly, very utopian and naïve to fancy that the CCP, that is so utterly entrenched in the capitalism it has fostered like an only and much beloved child, would ever be possible to be taken over by what genuine socialists sadly within its mess are stuck. I personally do not care about some Ai Weiwei or whatever disgusting Charter 08-supporting character that Amnesty International wants to support, but from the oppression of true workers movement and the promotion of private investment (not only foreign, but from private capitalists within China), CCP is decidedly capitalists. To think that the CCP will be able to be changed from within is frankly as silly as thinking that somehow the Republicans or Democrats or the Tories or Labour could be changed from within to genuine workers mass parties. They will not. The real power, the capitalists within the state, party and private industry of China, would not allow such a thing to happen.
It's not about declared politic, it's about the material foundation of the state. How did it come to be, and how has it changed? The PRC is built upon working-class revolution (your dismissal of the peasantry doesn't constitute evidence to the contrary), and to this day has not relinquished those foundational gains made by the workers. The state still legally controls the whole of the economy, something not seen in bourgeois society. The state is run fully by the vanguard party, yet another thing not seen in capitalist states.

So we have a state that is fundamentally a proletarian one, but has been taken by pro-capitalists...what is to be done? Well, getting rid of the whole state and trying to start from scratch just isn't practicable, especially since we've learned what that looks like in central/eastern Europe and Central Asia. What's needed is taking back that revolutionary state since it hasn't been fundamentally moved away from that basis. The workers can do this through the CPC, or perhaps they will do it through another formation, but it can be done and it must be done.

You say that capitalists are entrenched, but I say that the workers too are entrenched in the CPC. The rank-and-file is overwhelmingly working class, and by the laws of the party it is democratic discussion that wins the day. That process can be used to overturn the capitalist voices and restore the policies of pre-Deng China. Remember, there is no such thing as rank-and-file membership in the Democrats or Republicans, they aren't centralized parties. We're looking at something quite different here and that analogy does not carry very far.

I recognize that you're not supporting Ai Weiwei, and I note that with appreciation, but we would be amiss if we did not see the potential for greater working-class losses if the PRC were to be challenged as a whole. "Balkanization" is not out of the realm of possibility, and that would be nothing short of catastrophic on a scale the likes of which we haven't seen since the end of WWII; pro-market forces would have the breach they've been looking for since Chiang Kai-Shek was chased out of the mainland. The CPC, IMO, offers a direct route to working-class power that does not include these terrible possibilities. That is my biggest reason in holding my position.

[Threetune]

The ant-China State critics are a complete joke. They are proposing that China should be run without a state i.e. without armed bodies two enforce the law between contending classes. This is the only conclusion that can be reached from the arguments advanced.

OR The critics want a political/social revolution to break the power of the communist party and the state and replace it with a more “workers socialist state” they claim. Such a state would, of course, also have to exercise state authority to mitigate the contradictions between competing classes, while suppressing and ultimately annihilating all other classes, an epoch long task in anyone’s program.

The only other alternative is a revolution with external imperialist assistance.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

OR The critics want a political/social revolution to break the power of the communist party and the state and replace it with a more “workers socialist state” they claim. Such a state would, of course, also have to exercise state authority to mitigate the contradictions between competing classes, while suppressing and ultimately annihilating all other classes, an epoch long task in anyone’s program.

The eventual goal is the abolishment of all classes (class-less society, remember?), and until then, the rule of the proletariat, yes, excluding from power and influence the capitalists and bourgeois. You don't mitigate contradictions between competing classes, the others will be rendered powerless and without influence. Mitigation implies decreasing the tensions between classes, meaning suppressing the inevitable class struggle, which clearly is not desirable whatsoever; however, it is what China is doing, mitigating the justified reaction of the Chinese working classes against the authoritarian capitalism enforced by the modern Chinese state.

This goal does not need liberalisation, deregulation of markets, does not depend upon encouraging stock market formation, does not need an inflated housing bubble. Even compared to the Soviet Union, for all its flaws and problems, China is a massive failure.

Certain groups of ML's and so-called "Stalinists", or as I prefer to think of them, simply Stalin-kiddies, since I don't think they have such a clearly formulated politic at all, often defend, say Cuba and DPRK as socialist on grounds such as the existence of free healthcare, free housing, 8 hour days and other at least progressive things, and a planned economy. I certainly object that such things makes anything socialism on their own, but in the case of China, even those things are wholly absent.

[Threetune]

All wrong.

How delicately you put it “excluding from power and influence”. But how exactly would you “excluded from influence” an entire capitalist class and kulak peasant class that gives rise to them in China, not forgetting their cousins abroad and friends everywhere? Not without defeating imperialism, you don’t stand a fucking chance.

How is this entire class to be “rendered powerless”? Do you want to kill them all like some of your “Stalin-kiddies” fantasise? An entire class?

There is nothing “implied” about mitigating. It is stated clearly. The dictatorship of the proletariat correctly assumes the continued existence of class society. Why else would we need a “dictatorship” and a “state” if not to mitigate the historical and remerging class tensions due to a Billion and one inherited capitalist idiocies and the aftermath of war and civil war?

If you understand anything about revolution at all you will know that class inequality will continue to exist after the ‘victory’ of the proletariat in any single district, region, country or state. The dictatorship of the proletariat is not a weekend job with a bit of overtime on Monday. It is the defeat of imperialism. Can you even begin to think about what that really entails for the world?

[Per Levy]

@Threetune: im impressed, you write so much and yet so little of content. you ignore almost all points Takayuki raised and just brush them of with some slogans.

well then tell me exactly how the current chinese regime is a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? where is the power of the proletariat? why are capitalists allowed in the ccp? why have the capitalists more power then the workers in this "proletarian dictatorship"?

[Threetune]

@Threetune: im impressed, you write so much and yet so little of content. you ignore almost all points Takayuki raised and just brush them of with some slogans.

well then tell me exactly how the current chinese regime is a "dictatorship of the proletariat"? where is the power of the proletariat? why are capitalists allowed in the ccp? why have the capitalists more power then the workers in this "proletarian dictatorship"?

Let’s see how Takayuki answers first.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

Let’s see how Takayuki answers first.

I'm not going to reply to your rambling nonsense that does nothing to address the points and frankly is more or less off-topic.

China is imperialism. China is a part of world capitalism. China is not anti-imperialist. Do you understand? That it has squabbles and competes with the United States or other capitalist countries means nothing, such it is with nations competing on the world market. The Chinese revolution was not a working class one, and today, even that revolution has since long been betrayed and corrupted, and China is simply just like any other capitalist nation state that fights for its domination in the market place, which the working class of the country have to pay for.

And then you simply refuse to reply to what he said and defers to my answer. What a joke.

[Threetune]

Takayuki, You Said.
“The eventual goal is the abolishment of all classes (class-less society, remember?), and until then, the rule of the proletariat, yes, excluding from power and influence the capitalists and bourgeois.”

So how is this to be accomplished in china with its vast peasant population that (whether you or I like it or not) will continue to give rise to small scale capitalist economics and political outlook and ambitions.
What are you going to do, kill them all?
The proletarian state dictatorship will have to ‘manage’ this reality of unequal development of inequality for as long as it lasts.
I’m sorry your academic ‘left’ formulas don’t fit reality because they don’t explain how your fantasy “(class-less society,)” will suddenly spring into existence after your revolution.

[manic expression]

Certain groups of ML's and so-called "Stalinists", or as I prefer to think of them, simply Stalin-kiddies, since I don't think they have such a clearly formulated politic at all, often defend, say Cuba and DPRK as socialist on grounds such as the existence of free healthcare, free housing, 8 hour days and other at least progressive things, and a planned economy. I certainly object that such things makes anything socialism on their own, but in the case of China, even those things are wholly absent.
This basically sums up the futility of your argument. You condemn worker states that have abolished capitalist economic and social relations (as well as make snide little insults about those who defend them)...so of course you're going to oppose the PRC. If you hold an anti-Cuban position, as you apparently do, then you're going to inevitably oppose any and all worker states, blind to the facts. Further, you've already said you oppose the Chinese Revolution because peasants happened to be involved...you've clearly already made your mind up about the subject, don't try to pretend you care about healthcare, housing, work hours and the like, because you don't.

Talk about not having a clearly formulated politic... :rolleyes:


China is imperialism.
That's a lie, plain and simple.

[ijrjrnz]

Why are some people attacking socialist countries like the People's Republic of China? Leftists should like and defend socialist countries, instead of blindly attacking them. China is a glorious example of socialism in practice.

[Crux]

Why are some people attacking socialist countries like the People's Republic of China? Leftists should like and defend socialist countries, instead of blindly attacking them. China is a glorious example of socialism in practice.
Hilarious sarcasm, comrade.

[daft punk]

You need to start with the underlying class nature of the state. What property forms are the armed fist of the state defending? Although the CCP has allowed far too much encroachment by capital into the Chinese economy, they maintain a planned and collectivized economy in key sectors. Consider even the dominance in light manufacture, that the Chinese are now in a dominant world position, that was part of a plan (as is their development of huge desalination plants, green energy, etc.). Many of the comrades here get all caught up in the anti-democratic regimes, rather then the class nature of the state. And you do wind up lining up with US and world imperialism when you attack China in the way that you do. The biggest problem with the CCP' latter day Stalinists, is that all of these encroachments of capital will trend towards real counterrevolution.

Who gives a shit if there are a few capitalists in the CCP. It is horrible, but it doesn't change the class nature of the state. There are lots of workers in the fucking Democratic and Republican parties. Does this prove, Q.E.D. that they are workers' parties? Saint seems to think that ends the discussion. But he was convinced that either China has never been any kind of historically progressive state or that it ceased to be that sometime in the 1950s when their politics became "bad."

"Independent trade unions" has historically referred to anti-communist, pro-capitalist formations within the deformed worker's states (e.g., Solidarity). Frequently these formations are under the tutelage of the CIA. I don't know the details here, and I'm sure that saint will bust my balls about this.

A very rough measure of the gains of the Chinese revolution is to compare China to India. Still makes China look very good.

But to Manic I would say, that in order for the workers to have political power, the CCP will have to be fractured, not reformed. It is a horrible, sclerotic, Stalinist party that endangers the gains of the Chinese Revolution in so many different ways.

I deplore attacks on leftists by the Chinese regime. That is obviously a problem. But it is all too easy to wind up attacking the CCP from the right.
I don't think Solidarity was right wing when it started. There was certainly no desire by the masses to go over to capitalism in those countries in the initial unrest round about 1980.

Regarding China, I think lots of Chinese are actually oblivious to the bad stuff and believe they live in a socialist country. But there is also lots of unrest and among that how much wants capitalism vs democratic socialism I dunno.

The tragedy with Eastern Europe is that when the unrest started, the regimes just went over to capitalism to avoid facing real socialism.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Takayuki, You Said.
“The eventual goal is the abolishment of all classes (class-less society, remember?), and until then, the rule of the proletariat, yes, excluding from power and influence the capitalists and bourgeois.”

So how is this to be accomplished in china with its vast peasant population that (whether you or I like it or not) will continue to give rise to small scale capitalist economics and political outlook and ambitions.
What are you going to do, kill them all?


Do you really believe that there's such a thing as petit bourgeois peasant billionaires? the "small scale capitalist" economics don't require massive privately-owned corporations or Chinese behaving in an imperialist manner internationally.


This basically sums up the futility of your argument. You condemn worker states that have abolished capitalist economic and social relations (as well as make snide little insults about those who defend them)...so of course you're going to oppose the PRC. If you hold an anti-Cuban position, as you apparently do, then you're going to inevitably oppose any and all worker states, blind to the facts. Further, you've already said you oppose the Chinese Revolution because peasants happened to be involved...you've clearly already made your mind up about the subject, don't try to pretend you care about healthcare, housing, work hours and the like, because you don't.


Cuba's ruling classes are alienated from the working class, but even in that country there is an effective social safety net which indicates that the State does tend to the interests of the working classes. However, the PRC lacks even that fairly limited benefit. Working class people in China routinely die of lack of health care etc. That's a fair point to make.



That's a lie, plain and simple.How? What do you call it when Chinese Capital buys Ethiopian land and the Ethiopian state kicks the local peasants form their farmland? Or when Chinese businessmen buy off Cambodian bureaucrats to let them chop down the local forests? Or when the Chinese government sells arms to the Burmese government, which then uses remote areas inhabited by ethnic minorities to build hydroelectric dams?

[manic expression]

Cuba's ruling classes are alienated from the working class, but even in that country there is an effective social safety net which indicates that the State does tend to the interests of the working classes. However, the PRC lacks even that fairly limited benefit. Working class people in China routinely die of lack of health care etc. That's a fair point to make.
I think it's a bit misled to say "well I oppose both Cuba and the PRC, but why can't the PRC be more like Cuba?". It doesn't make much sense. If you object to the revolutionary worker state of Cuba then what difference does it make?


How? What do you call it when Chinese Capital buys Ethiopian land and the Ethiopian state kicks the local peasants form their farmland? Or when Chinese businessmen buy off Cambodian bureaucrats to let them chop down the local forests? Or when the Chinese government sells arms to the Burmese government, which then uses remote areas inhabited by ethnic minorities to build hydroelectric dams?
Assuming all those things happened, none of that constitutes imperialism. Imperialism is about more than just influence.

[Thirsty Crow]

Assuming all those things happened, none of that constitutes imperialism. Imperialism is about more than just influence.
Oh so practical enclosures are something other than imperialism. It's "influence" :laugh::laugh::laugh:

It'd be funny if it weren't really pathetic.

[manic expression]

Oh so practical enclosures are something other than imperialism. It's "influence" :laugh::laugh::laugh:

It'd be funny if it weren't really pathetic.
I'm ready for something funny, so I'll ask you...what's your definition of "imperialism"?

Brace yourself for more meaningless anti-materialist banter, everyone.

[Thirsty Crow]

I'm ready for something funny, so I'll ask you...what's your definition of "imperialism"?

Brace yourself for more meaningless anti-materialist banter, everyone.
Yeah, 'cause "idealism" and "materialism" are just buzzwords to be thrown at political opponents in hope of a good smear.

The example brought up by SCM is an excellent one.
I use the term "imperialism" to describe political and economic (and also military, that is, war, covert war and espionage "relationships") relationship between nation-states, whereas these relationships are characterized by:

1) uneven balance of power

2) roots in a nation's capital accumulation (which in fact highlights that no meaningful distinction can be made between "economic" and "political" imperialism)

Ethiopian state thus, in our example, functions as an agent of Chinese imperialism (I sure hope I don't need to draw out the rationale behind forcing peasants off their land).

How about you, in what way do you distinguish between "influence" and imperialism? Were it the case that, for instance, the French state was involved in exactly the same situation, would this constitute imperialism or simple "influence"?

[Crux]

I think it's a bit misled to say "well I oppose both Cuba and the PRC, but why can't the PRC be more like Cuba?". It doesn't make much sense. If you object to the revolutionary worker state of Cuba then what difference does it make?


Assuming all those things happened, none of that constitutes imperialism. Imperialism is about more than just influence.
There you go, pleading ignorance again and trying to mix the issues. Cuba is not what is being discussed here, the so called "People's Republic" of China is. You know the one you are defending except when you calim to know nothing about it.

[manic expression]

1) uneven balance of power

2) roots in a nation's capital accumulation (which in fact highlights that no meaningful distinction can be made between "economic" and "political" imperialism)
Uneven balance of power? So if the Commune had defeated its enemies militarily it would have met half of your requirements of imperialism?

What do you mean by "roots in a nation's capital accumulation"? Does this include colonialism? Does this include any type of conquest in the history of class society? Does this include any policy that has to do with economic assets?


How about you, in what way do you distinguish between "influence" and imperialism? Were it the case that, for instance, the French state was involved in exactly the same situation, would this constitute imperialism or simple "influence"?
The French state works under different laws of motion than does the Chinese state. Thus, it isn't possible for the French state to be "involved in exactly the same situation". But since you asked, imperialism has to do with what Lenin termed gargantuan usury, it has to do with centralized finance and speculation as the heart of the capitalist system and the interests of the capitalist state.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

I think it's a bit misled to say "well I oppose both Cuba and the PRC, but why can't the PRC be more like Cuba?". It doesn't make much sense. If you object to the revolutionary worker state of Cuba then what difference does it make?


It makes a world of difference. You might object to the lack of worker's control in Cuba while admitting that the workers still have more social influence or at least social protections there than in another state like China.



Assuming all those things happened, none of that constitutes imperialism. Imperialism is about more than just influence.No ... it qualifies as textbook "Imperialism", and if it isn't, then it is something which is more or less the same in terms of its mechanism, why it is done and its negative effects on the people of the area in question. Do you think that the Chinese are exporting their capital thousands of miles and kicking peasants off their land in Ethiopia for fun, or because it helps to reduce grain prices at home and gives large returns to the financial backers?


Uneven balance of power? So if the Commune had defeated its enemies militarily it would have met half of your requirements of imperialism?

Of course, but the fact that it has not met the other requirement means that it is not imperialist.


The French state works under different laws of motion than does the Chinese state. Thus, it isn't possible for the French state to be "involved in exactly the same situation". But since you asked, imperialism has to do with what Lenin termed gargantuan usury, it has to do with centralized finance and speculation as the heart of the capitalist system and the interests of the capitalist state.

The laws of value? The laws of capital accumulation? The laws of surplus value and labor value? What "laws of motion" are you talking about?

[manic expression]

There you go, pleading ignorance again and trying to mix the issues. Cuba is not what is being discussed here,
Speaking of ignorance...I responded to a comparison already made by your side of the issue. Go argue with your ideological friends if you don't like that Cuba was brought up, because I wasn't the one who did it.

[manic expression]

It makes a world of difference. You might object to the lack of worker's control in Cuba while admitting that the workers still have more social influence or at least social protections there than in another state like China.
Social influence? What does that even mean?

And no, it makes no difference because everyone here who opposes the PRC opposes Cuba as well.


No ... it qualifies as textbook "Imperialism", and if it isn't, then it is something which is more or less the same in terms of its mechanism, why it is done and its negative effects on the people of the area in question. Do you think that the Chinese are exporting their capital thousands of miles and kicking peasants off their land in Ethiopia for fun, or because it helps to reduce grain prices at home?Selling arms to a country that's building a hydroelectric dam isn't imperialism. It's selling arms.

Imperialism isn't "negative effects", and the mechanisms are not the same. The PRC isn't a capitalist state so we can start there.

If you want to talk about Ethiopia, cite something in specific, I won't respond to vague illustrations made by those who've already made up their minds about socialist states.


Of course, but the fact that it has not met the other requirement means that it is not imperialist.So all it has to do is do something that affects people across a border and the other requirement is met, no?


The laws of value? The laws of capital accumulation? The laws of surplus value and labor value? What "laws of motion" are you talking about?The PRC state is not a product of those laws you mentioned. It's a product of working-class revolution. Those laws exist in the PRC now, sure, but the state has ultimate control over their existence, not the other way around.

[Thirsty Crow]

Uneven balance of power? So if the Commune had defeated its enemies militarily it would have met half of your requirements of imperialism?I don't think exporting the social revolution represents a viable tactic, but nice try there to deflect the issue.
I was being fairly clear: what I wrote should be understood in the context of world capitalism.


What do you mean by "roots in a nation's capital accumulation"? Does this include colonialism? Does this include any type of conquest in the history of class society? Does this include any policy that has to do with economic assets?No, this does not include colonialism, or if you will, colonialism represents a historical manifestation of imperialism which was born with capitalist social relations. Up from national liberation struggles of the post-WWII era, colonialism ceases to function as a viable political and economic strategy.

No, it does not inlucde any type of conquest in the history of class society (which would be clear from point number two, as nation-states and capital as a dominant relation of production are not eternal, but fairly recent historical phenomena).

But then again, it's quite obvious that this is just a dishonest debating strategy, piling up questions which were answered without them even being asked (for instance, this question regarding the entirety of class history), with a poorly concealed aim at deflecting the debate.



The French state works under different laws of motion than does the Chinese state. Thus, it isn't possible for the French state to be "involved in exactly the same situation". But since you asked, imperialism has to do with what Lenin termed gargantuan usury, it has to do with centralized finance and speculation as the heart of the capitalist system and the interests of the capitalist state.This doesn't mean anything concrete, just vague, generalized rubbish masquuerading the underlying point: the workers' state cannot logically be considered as an imperialist state.

So, I see you're defining imperialism solely in financial term (giant usury, centralized finance and speculation), which is fairly interesting. How about answering the question: in what way exactly do you distinguish between mere "influence" and imperialism?

Or are you going to try to deflect this issue further?


I
The laws of value? The laws of capital accumulation? The laws of surplus value and labor value? What "laws of motion" are you talking about?
Our lawyerboy is not talking about anything, but merely using jargon to mask the underlying opinion.
You can even witness total abandonment of Marxism in the opinion on the precedence of politics over the imperatives of capital accumulation arising from the pressures of the world market.

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

Social influence? What does that even mean?

And no, it makes no difference because everyone here who opposes the PRC opposes Cuba as well.


Social influence ... political power ...

Who said anything about opposing Cuba? Cuba's not even up for discussion. And one can be critical of the level of power workers have in Cuba without "opposing" it



Selling arms to a country that's building a hydroelectric dam isn't imperialism. It's selling arms.
Considering Chinese businesses profit from the long-term victory of the Burmese state, and are the folks who are buying much of the power, it is Imperialism.



Imperialism isn't "negative effects", and the mechanisms are not the same. The PRC isn't a capitalist state so we can start there.
The PRC is a Capitalist state, the problem is you explain all the evidence that we show to prove that it is a Capitalist state away with the fact that it isn't a Capitalist state ... oh circular arguments.



If you want to talk about Ethiopia, cite something in specific, I won't respond to vague illustrations made by those who've already made up their minds about socialist states.Don't insult me by just because I don't believe China's claim that it is a legitimately socialist state

http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/01/18/Ethiopia-Thousands-driven-out-in-land-grab/UPI-60071326912191/


Ethiopia: Thousands driven out in land grab

Advertisement

ADDIS ABABA, Ethiopia, Jan. 18 (UPI) -- Human rights activists say tens of thousands of people in western Ethiopia are being driven off fertile ancestral lands so the government can lease or sell large tracts of farmland for commercial agriculture to investors, including foreign governments.
Since the 2008 global food crisis wealthy Middle Eastern states, such as Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and others, such as India and China, have been buying up vast areas of arable land across Africa to grow food to feed their burgeoning populations.
The United Nations (http://www.upi.com/topic/United%20Nations/)' Food and Agriculture Organization estimated in 2011 that over the last decade global food prices have risen an average 83 percent.
Human Rights Watch said this month in a report titled "Waiting for Death," that the Addis Ababa regime of Prime Minister Meles Zenawi (http://www.upi.com/topic/Meles_Zenawi/) is forcibly moving tens of thousands of villagers out of the remote Gambella region of western Ethiopia.
Human Rights Watch said the people received little compensation and were moved to villages elsewhere that have inadequate food and lack health and education facilities.
By 2013, Addis Ababa plans to resettle 1.5 million people from Gambella and the regions of Afar, Somali and Benishangul-Gumuz, Human Rights Watch said.
Gambella, the size of Belgium, has a population of 607,000. Its richly fertile soil has attracted foreign and domestic investors who have leased large tracts at "favorable prices."
Between 2008 and last January, Human Rights Watch said, Ethiopia had leased out at least 9.5 million acres of land.
The report says the government has repeatedly denied the clearances are linked to large-scale land-leasing for commercial agriculture. But Human Rights Watch said many villagers it interviewed claim they were told this was the reason.
These land grabs have been widely criticized as a new form of neo-colonialism that leaves large parts of Africa in the hands of foreign states and investors while displaced local populations are left to suffer and go hungry.
In 2010 up to 123.5 million acres of African land -- double the size of Britain -- have been snapped up or is being negotiated by governments or wealthy investors, various assessments conclude.
Ethiopia alone has approved 815 foreign-financed agricultural projects since 2007.
Last fall, Oxfam International reported that Asian and Middle East companies had bought up 560 million acres of farmland in developing countries, often at bargain prices, with some reportedly less than $1 a hectare.
Oxfam estimated Ethiopia now supports the export of fruit and vegetables worth $60 million annually, as well as flowers worth $160 million per year.
It noted that Ethiopia's per capita income is around $1,000 per year. That's less than Haiti, often listed as the world's poorest country at $1,200 per year.
Rich Arab states like Saudi Arabia have bought up huge tracts of land across Africa in recent years in a bid to combat global food shortages, water scarcity and desertification and to feed their swelling populations.
But now the scramble for Africa is intensifying, with investment banks, hedge funds, commodity traders, sovereign wealth funds, corporations and business tycoons out to grab some of the world's cheapest land -- for profit.
China has leased 6.91 million acres in the Democratic Republic of Congo for the world's largest oil palm plantation.
South Korea's Daewoo conglomerate planned to buy 2.9 million acres of Madagascar until the deal collapsed in 2009 when rioters toppled the Indian Ocean island's government.
"Foreign direct investment in agriculture is the boardroom euphemism for the new land grab and those promoting the grab spin it as a win-win situation," Le Monde Diplomatique reported recently.
As African leaders sign away their people's land to foreigners, the continent's people, among the poorest on the planet, face joining the estimated 1 billion people in the world who don't have enough food.
In the end, critics say the continent faces widespread conflict over resources in the not-too-distant future.
"Unchecked land-grabbing carries with it the seeds of conflict, environmental disaster, political and social change, and hunger on an unprecedented scale," Le Monde Diplomatique warned.
"There's a new scramble for land in Africa and it's growing at an incredible rate," says Alex Wijeratna of the U.K. development agency Action Aid.
"There's massive secrecy and poor communities can't get information and they're not being consulted."


Read more: http://www.upi.com/Business_News/Energy-Resources/2012/01/18/Ethiopia-Thousands-driven-out-in-land-grab/UPI-60071326912191/#ixzz1kUAIAn6Q
http://www.rfa.org/english/news/cambodia/cambodia_china-05232008092653.html


PHNOM PENH—China, hungry for strategic influence and natural resources, is fast asserting itself as a major investor in Cambodia, sparking concerns that a huge inflow of Chinese cash will fuel existing corruption and exploitation in one of the world's poorest countries.

The relationship between the two countries is long and mixed, given Maoist China’s unflagging support for the late supreme Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, whose Marxist faction is blamed for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians from 1975-79.

But in recent years, ethnic Chinese families close to Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen have played a key role in putting Chinese companies—often with the backing of the Chinese state—in touch with top Cambodian officials, economists and activists said.

“China needs Cambodia,” U.S.-based Cambodian economist Tith Naranhkiri said. “If a security problem occurs, for example, a war with Taiwan, China may need Cambodia…Secondly, for economic reasons, it needs gas and oil.”

According to the official China News Agency, China has become one of the biggest investors in Cambodia, with 3,016 Chinese companies making cumulative investments of U.S. $1.58 billion to the end of 2007. Bilateral trade last year rose by 30 percent from 2006, to U.S. $730 million.

Since the signing of an investment protection agreement in July 1996, a further U.S. $350 million has been pledged, mostly in the forestry sector, power, textiles, construction materials, and agricultural development.
Major role for China
“China now plays a crucial role in our economy. It is both an important donor and an investor, and it’s also a big market for Cambodian products,” Khmer Economists’ Association president Chan Sophal said.

“Our agricultural products are exported to China but through Thailand and Vietnam. We are also a market for Chinese products. China’s role in the Cambodian economy is growing,” he said.

Chinese Foreign Minister Yang Jiechi visited Cambodia in February, pledging a further U.S. $55 million in aid and investments of U.S. $1 billion in the country’s power industry. He also waived import tariffs on 400 Cambodian products.

Besides investment and assistance, China has also granted military assistance to Cambodia, providing the country’s dilapidated navy with nine patrol boats in November 2007 and five warships in 2005.

But rights activists and anti-corruption campaigners point to a huge increase in illegal logging, land-grabbing, and worker exploitation as a secondary consequence of Chinese money.

“The effect of lots of money coming in with few strings attached, going to a lot of people in the government, is generally exacerbating corruption,” Simon Taylor, director of the international anti-corruption group Global Witness, said.
Land grabs, illegal logging
“This manifests itself as land-grabbing, massive plantations and illegal logging, unregulated mining, the building of dams, and so on,” Taylor said.

Meanwhile, workers’ rights are often sidestepped in Chinese-invested factories, especially in the textile industry, activists said.

“The Chinese companies, especially garment factories, today have a lot of problems with Cambodian workers,” Chan Saveth, of the rights advocacy group Adhoc, said. “Today, we see that China dominates garment factories in Cambodia.”

“Workers suffer a lot, and the Chinese garment factories have mostly restricted workers’ freedom,” he said.

Hundreds of thousands of workers—the majority of whom are women—are employed in Cambodia’s textile industry, which generates annual revenue of more than U.S. $1 billion.
They have described an atmosphere in which they are constantly pressed into unpaid overtime, with too many financial worries and too little spare time to cause trouble for management. Unauthorized deductions from pay-packets are common, and paid sick leave is rare.
Protests in the forest
Chinese money has been tied up with massive agricultural and forestry exploitation projects, which are destroying traditional ways of life such as bamboo-harvesting and resin-tapping, activists said.

The Cambodian government granted a Mondulkiri forest concession of 200,000 hectares—20 times the legal limit—acquired secretly by Pheapimex, an ethnic-Chinese owned Cambodian conglomerate with close ties to Prime Minister Hun Sen.

Pheapimex formed a joint venture with China’s Wuzhishan plantation firm to exploit the region, displacing indigenous minority people who rely on the forests for their traditional livelihoods.

Global Witness said bigger deals involving Chinese state-backed companies were likely the least transparent and the most strongly defended by government security forces, who responded with military force to anti-logging protests by villagers in Mondulkiri.

“From the perspective of people in Cambodia who might want to ask questions about the process... it’s even more difficult with some of these recent deals that have totally been brokered behind closed doors,” Taylor said.

He said the outcome of such deals for people living in rural areas was disastrous. “They know nothing until the moment that the bulldozers turn up and start pushing down their houses.”
Loans, grants from Beijing
“If they protest, they get the full force of the state mechanism… suppressing their efforts to get their voices heard,” he added.

Hun Sen has banned illegal logging and called anarchic logging “the biggest mistake” of his political career, and his views have been backed up by anti-logging speeches by ministers, but with little apparent effect.

Chan Sophal said China’s interests in Cambodia were clear. “They help us, but they also look into the resources we have, such as mines, oil, gold, iron, and land.”

“They need land to grow agricultural and agro-industrial crops to meet the demands of the [China’s] population,” he added.

Difficult history
Sino-Khmer relations began in 1958. During the 1970s, Maoist China for Pol Pot gave steadfast support to Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, whose faction is blamed for deaths of more than a million people.

Closer ties developed after the fall of the Khmer Rouge in 1979 through former Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk, who maintained a second home in China and close ties with Beijing.

China wrote off significant loans to the Cambodian government six years ago, making new loans and grants worth U.S. $600 million during the visit to Cambodia of Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in April 2006.

While no conditions were attached, analysts say Beijing is keen to secure access to the southern port of Sihanoukville for strategic reasons, particularly as a delivery point for imported oil.http://www.burmariversnetwork.org/news/news-archives/345-china-consortium-starts-work-on-myanmar-hydroelectric-project.html

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/burma-pushes-back-over-chinese-hydro-power/2011/10/28/gIQAS53rwM_gallery.html#photo=12


So all it has to do is do something that affects people across a border and the other requirement is met, no?
No it has to do with the exploitation of labor and/or resources of an area due to the negation or corruption of an independent state authority for that area.


The PRC state is not a product of those laws you mentioned. It's a product of working-class revolution. Those laws exist in the PRC now, sure, but the state has ultimate control over their existence, not the other way around. How? Magic? Because they have a red flag? It doesn't matter how it was "produced", what matters is the economic relationships between the state, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The collapse of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc should prove to everyone that these "working class revolutions" often produce decaying dictatorships whose bureaucratic elites resort to Capitalism to preserve and even expand their political and economic influence.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

This basically sums up the futility of your argument. You condemn worker states that have abolished capitalist economic and social relations (as well as make snide little insults about those who defend them)...so of course you're going to oppose the PRC. If you hold an anti-Cuban position, as you apparently do, then you're going to inevitably oppose any and all worker states, blind to the facts. Further, you've already said you oppose the Chinese Revolution because peasants happened to be involved...you've clearly already made your mind up about the subject, don't try to pretend you care about healthcare, housing, work hours and the like, because you don't.

That's a lie, plain and simple.

I know you lack the ability to explain anything and constantly argue by going on tangents sprung from wilful misunderstandings, but what in the fuck about modern China represents "abolished capitalist economic and social relations"? Is it the stock-markets? The private for-profit hospitals that the majority of the Chinese population cannot afford to visit? The gated communities for the newly rich? The privatisations, liberalisation, the deregulations, the market-oriented policies? The bad working conditions, the terrible work hours, the slums? Is that the new socialist economic and social relations at work? If so, why are they so uncannily like capitalist relations?

Oppose the Chinese Revolution? The fact that it was peasant-based is part of the material reason for its corruption and inability to construct socialism and thus the eventual abandonment of the entire project by the early 70's. This does not mean that it was entirely without progressive aspects in its beginnings, and that it did not have a relatively positive impact for a while. It isn't a matter of supporting and opposing. However, the peasant-based revolution does mean that China cannot be a workers state - how can there be a workers state if the workers are not the ones with power? The industrial proletariat of China at the eve of the revolution was minuscule.

I don't see what Cubas has to do with it. I'm not "anti-Cuba"; I think that the party is corrupted and is working to imitate the Chinese transition to capitalism and I oppose this degeneration and attack on the working class of Cuba, as any Communist should.

[Tim Cornelis]

Manic Expression keeps on hammering about how there is working class involvement in the Communist Party. Again, this does not mean anything.

There is working class involvement in the Democratic Party, in the Republic Party, by extension of your logic we are able to "push these parties to the left" and revolutionize them from within. The working class an sich is not a revolutionary force, a revolutionary working class is a revolutionary force.

Six reasons why Sweden is a workers' state and China is not:

of course Sweden is not a workers' state, but in comparison to China...

1. Sweden has the lowest income inequality in the world; China has the income inequality equal to the United States and Mexico (source (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/34/Gini_Coefficient_World_CIA_Report_2009.png))

2. There is limited "proletarian democracy" in Sweden; one-tier works councils for co-determination by workers ("In systems with co-determination the employees are given seats in a board of directors in one-tier management systems or seats in a supervisory board and sometimes management board in two-tier management systems ... The typical one-tier system with co-determination is the Swedish system". (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Co-determination))

China has no co-determination, let alone self-management by workers.

3. Free healthcare for all in Sweden; no free healthcare in China

4. Free education for all; no free education in China

5. High working class salaries; very low wages for Chinese workers

6. In Sweden the state is legally allowed to confiscate private property; in China eminent domain is illegal. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nail_house) (that's right, private property is better defended in China).

-----------------------------

The workers' state according to Marx:

1. modeled after the Paris Commune, that is to say, workers' democracy from below--does not exist in China

2. Abolition of money, instead labour certificates--does not exist in China

3. Abolition of markets--they still exist in China

4. Equal salaries for recallable public officials--does not exist in China, nor are they recallable

Most important characteristic of a workers' state: it's transient form. In China it is permanent and it has recreated class society.

-------------------------

The preconditions of socialism:

1. Abolition of private property; instead collective ownership--does not exist in China

2. Abolition of wage labour; instead associated labour--does not exist in China

------------------------

How clear can it be that China is not even remotely close to being a workers' state/socialism?!

Every Western European country in the world is more a workers' state/socialist in comparison as they have more rights, better income, etc!

I cannot fathom the defense of such an excessively exploitative hyper-capitalist system as it exists in China, because some 40 years ago they were Maoist!

Especially a Marxist should recognise that it has every characteristic of capitalist society:

markets, commodity production, private property, excessive rate of exploitation (subtraction of surplus value), law of value persists as a consequence, etc.

What exactly is not capitalist about China? The fact that the leadership wave a red flag?!

[manic expression]

I don't think exporting the social revolution represents a viable tactic, but nice try there to deflect the issue.
I was being fairly clear: what I wrote should be understood in the context of world capitalism.
It's not a deflection when your view of "world capitalism" includes worker states who oppose precisely that. So I ask again, would this not apply to a worker state that militarily has to face capitalist countries and wins?


No, this does not include colonialism, or if you will, colonialism represents a historical manifestation of imperialism which was born with capitalist social relations. Up from national liberation struggles of the post-WWII era, colonialism ceases to function as a viable political and economic strategy.
Wait, so it doesn't include colonialism, but colonialism is a "historical manifestation" of the term that doesn't include it?


No, it does not inlucde any type of conquest in the history of class society (which would be clear from point number two, as nation-states and capital as a dominant relation of production are not eternal, but fairly recent historical phenomena).
How is the PRC a state based on capital? Just because there is capitalist production in the country doesn't determine the entire character of the state.


This doesn't mean anything concrete, just vague, generalized rubbish masquuerading the underlying point: the workers' state cannot logically be considered as an imperialist state.
However, as we might infer from the above criticisms, this is tautology. Your logic goes that a worker state isn't imperialist because imperialism doesn't include worker states.


So, I see you're defining imperialism solely in financial term (giant usury, centralized finance and speculation), which is fairly interesting. How about answering the question: in what way exactly do you distinguish between mere "influence" and imperialism?
That's exactly it...it's an economic development first and foremost that leads to a certain form of behavior as a result. Without the place of "gargantuan usury", imperialism cannot take place.


Our lawyerboy is not talking about anything, but merely using jargon to mask the underlying opinion.
You can even witness total abandonment of Marxism in the opinion on the precedence of politics over the imperatives of capital accumulation arising from the pressures of the world market.
You badmouth socialist countries and then accuse me of abandoning Marxism?

[manic expression]

Social influence ... political power ...
...which don't amount to imperialism in and of themselves. You can't call something imperialist just because it has some influence in a given country.


Who said anything about opposing Cuba? Cuba's not even up for discussion. And one can be critical of the level of power workers have in Cuba without "opposing" it
Take your concerns to Takayuki.


Considering Chinese businesses profit from the long-term victory of the Burmese state, and are the folks who are buying much of the power, it is Imperialism.
I have no idea what that means: "buying much of the power". Still, even if what you're saying is true, it's not imperialism just because some Chinese businessmen profit from the big picture.


The PRC is a Capitalist state, the problem is you explain all the evidence that we show to prove that it is a Capitalist state away with the fact that it isn't a Capitalist state ... oh circular arguments.
I explain away the evidence because it's inconclusive when it comes to the claims made here. The PRC isn't a capitalist state because it is neither the product nor the object of capitalist dynamics. It was created through working-class revolution and it maintains full authority over all economic matters. How can we call it capitalist in the face of these facts?


Don't insult me by just because I don't believe China's claim that it is a legitimately socialist state
That wasn't an insult, sorry if you thought it was.

On your links, the article on Ethiopia hardly discerns between the policies and consequences of the PRC and those of every other country mentioned. I admit that it's regrettable but I don't think we can draw too many conclusions from that link. I'll try to get to the other links in a few days, bear with me on that.


No it has to do with the exploitation of labor and/or resources of an area due to the negation or corruption of an independent state authority for that area.
By that standard classical Athens was imperialist.


How? Magic? Because they have a red flag? It doesn't matter how it was "produced", what matters is the economic relationships between the state, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The collapse of the USSR and the Eastern Bloc should prove to everyone that these "working class revolutions" often produce decaying dictatorships whose bureaucratic elites resort to Capitalism to preserve and even expand their political and economic influence.
The collapse of the USSR and socialist Europe/Central Asia should prove to everyone that socialism provides for a better society than capitalist governments ever can.

I still can't figure out why some leftists can't learn from the past. Three decades ago these same tendencies were denouncing the USSR from here to Friday, and then they celebrated when it fell...the only problem being that if fell along with working-class living standards and the hope of liberation for millions around the world. The same voices railed against the "dictatorship" and "capitalism" of Tito, but when his policies came unglued genocide followed, and the opponents of Yugoslavia had no answers. When will leftists learn that imperfect worker states are far better than the alternative?

[manic expression]

I know you lack the ability to explain anything and constantly argue by going on tangents sprung from wilful misunderstandings, but what in the fuck about modern China represents "abolished capitalist economic and social relations"? Is it the stock-markets? The private for-profit hospitals that the majority of the Chinese population cannot afford to visit? The gated communities for the newly rich? The privatisations, liberalisation, the deregulations, the market-oriented policies? The bad working conditions, the terrible work hours, the slums? Is that the new socialist economic and social relations at work? If so, why are they so uncannily like capitalist relations?
You're missing the point. If you oppose Cuba as you claimed, which has abolished capitalist economic and social relations, then of course you're also going to oppose the PRC. If your own standards of criticism on the PRC don't line up with your other positions then what's the point of this argument?


Oppose the Chinese Revolution? The fact that it was peasant-based is part of the material reason for its corruption and inability to construct socialism and thus the eventual abandonment of the entire project by the early 70's. This does not mean that it was entirely without progressive aspects in its beginnings, and that it did not have a relatively positive impact for a while. It isn't a matter of supporting and opposing. However, the peasant-based revolution does mean that China cannot be a workers state - how can there be a workers state if the workers are not the ones with power? The industrial proletariat of China at the eve of the revolution was minuscule.
I recognize that you don't oppose the Chinese Revolution. However, on the peasantry, the exact same can be said of the Paris Commune in the context of France, or Petrograd in the context of Russia.


I don't see what Cubas has to do with it. I'm not "anti-Cuba"; I think that the party is corrupted and is working to imitate the Chinese transition to capitalism and I oppose this degeneration and attack on the working class of Cuba, as any Communist should.
You said:

Certain groups of ML's and so-called "Stalinists", or as I prefer to think of them, simply Stalin-kiddies, since I don't think they have such a clearly formulated politic at all, often defend, say Cuba and DPRK as socialist on grounds such as the existence of free healthcare, free housing, 8 hour days and other at least progressive things, and a planned economy. I certainly object that such things makes anything socialism on their own, but in the case of China, even those things are wholly absent.

That's what Cuba has to do with it.

[Thirsty Crow]

Before proceeding to address this clown's ramblings, you might notice that s/he has been asked twice, but refused to answer the question of just how "influence" is distinguished from imperialism (you'll recall that buying off Ethiopian land, consequently forcing peasants off of it, does NOT amount to imperialism, but is an example of "influence").


It's not a deflection when your view of "world capitalism" includes worker states who oppose precisely that. So I ask again, would this not apply to a worker state that militarily has to face capitalist countries and wins?The PRC doesn't represent a workers' state.
Just for a historical clarification, would I think that early Bolshevik Russia's military advance towards Poland constitutes imperialism? No.
Does such tactics represent a huge danger, a failure waiting to happen? Most definitiely yes, because revolution cannot be exported by military means.



Wait, so it doesn't include colonialism, but colonialism is a "historical manifestation" of the term that doesn't include it?Yeah, I worded it wrong, it does include colonialism as an umbrella term (imperialism being an umbrella term; or it can be used purely histoically, designating an epoch of capitalist development starting with the scramble for Africa and culminating in two world wars; an epoch that is still with us).



How is the PRC a state based on capital? Just because there is capitalist production in the country doesn't determine the entire character of the state.Let me repeat: you're a clown.
How does a state, which draws revenue from taxes dependant on capital flows and profits, which itself owns, disposes of huge sums of capital, which orchestrates direct foreign investment, you ask me how is such a state based on capital?


However, as we might infer from the above criticisms, this is tautology. Your logic goes that a worker state isn't imperialist because imperialism doesn't include worker states.
You're having some problems with close reading? The logic you exposed is in fact yours: I explicitly attributed it to you.


That's exactly it...it's an economic development first and foremost that leads to a certain form of behavior as a result. Without the place of "gargantuan usury", imperialism cannot take place.Slavishly holding on to a flawed opinion and using it to defend what cannot be defended. That's cute.
Just to be clear, it's perfectly correct to state that it's economic development that leads to a certain relationship, certain actions, between nation-states (or nation-states and not-yet-nation-states if you know what I mean).
But generalizing historical trends, turning them into everpresent facts (as you do with Lenin's understanding of imperialism, which was based on exactly that, certain historical trends present during his lifetime), is faulty, is demgaogic as can be seen from your abuse of the theory of imperialism.


You badmouth socialist countries and then accuse me of abandoning Marxism?
Oh, so you don't wish to present arguments which would refute me? You do not wish to engage with facts, this nasty little things, which in your little mind become mere badmouthing?

So you don't, in fact, think that the state is able to master the imperatives of the world market? So you do not think that politics takes precedence over objective material conditions of capital accumulation and competition?

'Cause, you know, you stated exactly the opposite, which does in fact amount to an abandonment of Marxism.

[manic expression]

Before proceeding to address this clown's ramblings, you might notice that s/he has been asked twice, but refused to answer the question of just how "influence" is distinguished from imperialism (you'll recall that buying off Ethiopian land, consequently forcing peasants off of it, does NOT amount to imperialism, but is an example of "influence").
Once again you resort to cheap pejorative when attempts at argument fail you. I have specified what distinguishes imperialism from other species of influence, you responded to such differentiations in this very post.


The PRC doesn't represent a workers' state.
Just for a historical clarification, would I think that early Bolshevik Russia's military advance towards Poland constitutes imperialism? No.
Does such tactics represent a huge danger, a failure waiting to happen? Most definitiely yes, because revolution cannot be exported by military means.The PRC does represent a worker state, given its history and construction.

As for the campaign against the Polish state...we can leave that for another discussion.


Yeah, I worded it wrong, it does include colonialism as an umbrella term (imperialism being an umbrella term; or it can be used purely histoically, designating an epoch of capitalist development starting with the scramble for Africa and culminating in two world wars; an epoch that is still with us).Understood. So you think colonialism fits into the more colloquial definition of imperialism but not the materialist one...would you concede that the development of speculation as a central tenet of capitalism in the very end of the 19th Century had something to do with this? We cannot attribute it to a change in societal structure so well...colonial Britain became imperialist Britain without much of a change in its social relations.

What other change could we put this down to? Perhaps we could look at the proliferation of small-arms weapons throughout the world which gave colonized peoples the ability to more effectively counter colonialism through irregular warfare. Well, that's one idea, any others? Perhaps it was the modernization of colonized nations that allowed them to set up viable replacements for the colonial authorities. That's another idea. However, I do not think these entirely persuasive to the central shift we are discussing.


Let me repeat: you're a clown.
How does a state, which draws revenue from taxes dependant on capital flows and profits, which itself owns, disposes of huge sums of capital, which orchestrates direct foreign investment, you ask me how is such a state based on capital?Don't get frustrated, I think it's a legitimate statement. The orchestration of foreign investment (more like the dictating of all investment, and all economic matters) is precisely what is under discussion. In fully capitalist societies we do not see this attribute.


You're having some problems with close reading? The logic you exposed is in fact yours: I explicitly attributed it to you.And I feel you have attributed falsely. I think worker states cannot be imperialist because imperialism encompasses a certain form of capitalism and a state that rises to the necessities of that economic reality.


Slavishly holding on to a flawed opinion and using it to defend what cannot be defended. That's cute.
Just to be clear, it's perfectly correct to state that it's economic development that leads to a certain relationship, certain actions, between nation-states (or nation-states and not-yet-nation-states if you know what I mean).
But generalizing historical trends, turning them into everpresent facts (as you do with Lenin's understanding of imperialism, which was based on exactly that, certain historical trends present during his lifetime), is faulty, is demgaogic as can be seen from your abuse of the theory of imperialism.How am I abusing Lenin's theory of imperialism? I don't think imperialism has fundamentally changed from when Lenin was writing.


Oh, so you don't wish to present arguments which would refute me? You do not wish to engage with facts, this nasty little things, which in your little mind become mere badmouthing?

So you don't, in fact, think that the state is able to master the imperatives of the world market? So you do not think that politics takes precedence over objective material conditions of capital accumulation and competition?

'Cause, you know, you stated exactly the opposite, which does in fact amount to an abandonment of Marxism.I simply observe the reality that worker states can, shockingly, be established in a given country and defended. I recognize the fact that socialism can be maintained even without a world revolution. These are pieces of incontrovertible evidence tested upon the pages of history and in the moments of this very day.

You, of course, seem to deny this, and instead you hold that revolution is impossible unless it happens everywhere, at the same time. You would do well to read what Marx actually wrote of the peasant rebellions in his day. Evidently, he was not an adherent to the bean-counting nay-saying that we have seen on this thread. He felt that the rights of the masses must be pursued whenever possible, even when it's not what some leftist has imagined in his or her head.

[black magick hustla]

The ant-China State critics are a complete joke. They are proposing that China should be run without a state i.e. without armed bodies two enforce the law between contending classes. This is the only conclusion that can be reached from the arguments advanced.

OR The critics want a political/social revolution to break the power of the communist party and the state and replace it with a more “workers socialist state” they claim. Such a state would, of course, also have to exercise state authority to mitigate the contradictions between competing classes, while suppressing and ultimately annihilating all other classes, an epoch long task in anyone’s program.

The only other alternative is a revolution with external imperialist assistance.

anime is not real life

[black magick hustla]

if china is a "worker' state" then workers' states are enemies of the working class. which is a logic a lot of chinese workers understand, hence china being one of the biggest hub of riots, wildcat strikes, and general violent animosity against a state, right now.

[Crux]

if china is a "worker' state" then workers' states are enemies of the working class. which is a logic a lot of chinese workers understand, hence china being one of the biggest hub of riots, wildcat strikes, and general violent animosity against a state, right now.

and massincedents increase every year. But I think this is yet another thing manic expression is blissfully unaware of. Or perhaps he defends arresting worker's on stike and using the only legal TU as thughs for the company. Just to take one example. After all classconflict must run counter to his ideas of "keeping china united" and "defending the workers state".

[manic expression]

and massincedents increase every year. But I think this is yet another thing manic expression is blissfully unaware of.
I am aware of them, and I feel it is only more evidence that the direction of the CPC must be retaken by the working-class rank-and-file. To suggest that I am unaware or unconcerned with such conditions is explicitly dishonest.


After all classconflict must run counter to his ideas of "keeping china united" and "defending the workers state".
So I take it you wish for the division of China?

[Crux]

I am aware of them, and I feel it is only more evidence that the direction of the CPC must be retaken by the working-class rank-and-file. To suggest that I am unaware or unconcerned with such conditions is explicitly dishonest.


So I take it you wish for the division of China?
I support the rights of national minorities, including the right of independenc, yes. Why am I suprised you do not?
Why and how? Nothing you have said so far indicate any support for those under the heel of the regime.

Also a further update on the OP:

‘Long Hair’ to attend Stockholm hearing on state repression in China

Wednesday, 25 January 2012.
LSD legislator from Hong Kong to speak in support of young socialist Zhang Shujie, forced to flee China

chinaworker.info

Hong Kong legislator ‘Long Hair’ Leung Kwok-hung is in Sweden to attend a seminar in the Riksdag (parliament) on state repression in China. The seminar on Thursday 26 January is hosted by the Left Party, under the heading ‘Democratic rights in China – witness testimony on how the state is cracking down’.


http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1719&NrImage=7



In addition to ‘Long Hair’, other speakers include 24-year old CWI supporter Zhang Shujie, who writes for the chinaworker.info website, and was forced to flee China in 2011 due to political persecution. The Executive Secretary of the PEN Chinese Center, Yu Zhang, will also take part, as will a spokesperson for Amnesty International.

China is experiencing the most severe wave of repression against dissidents for more than a decade. This is driven by the one-party dictatorship’s fear of unrest, especially in the light of mass revolt against despotic regimes in the Arab world. Thousands have been swept up in this latest crackdown including bloggers, activists, journalists and rights lawyers. Savage prison sentences – a combined 29 year jail term – have been served on three well-known dissidents in the last few weeks: Chen Xi, Chen Wei and Li Tie. And 34 journalists were jailed last year according to US-based Human Rights Watch (HRW).

Zhang Shujie’s case has been widely reported in the Hong Kong press, due to the circumstances of his arrest in February last year, as part of the Chinese regime’s pre-emptive crackdown on dissent.

Zhang was threatened with up to ten years imprisonment unless he agreed to ‘cooperate’ with state security agents, who asked him to attend a political meeting in Hong Kong in order to gather information on left-wing activists, both locals and mainland visitors. Rather than do this, Zhang secretly contacted CWI comrades and made arrangements to escape via Hong Kong to Europe.

“Rather than become a spy for the dictatorship, I chose to leave China,” he told chinaworker.info. “This was the only way I could defend my right to speak out; not to be silenced as so many are being silenced by state repression.”

The main target of interest for the state security bureau seems to have been the CWI-linked group Socialist Action, but their interest extended to other activists including ‘Long Hair’ himself and his League of Social Democrats (LSD).

‘Longhair’ told Hong Kong’s Oriental Daily newspaper (22 January) that in the case of Zhang Shujie, the State Security Bureau in China were openly violating the "one country, two systems" formula under which Hong Kong is a separate legal and judicial authority from mainland China.
Supporters of Zhang Shujie will hold a protest against repression in Hong Kong on Thursday to coincide with the Stockholm hearing.

[manic expression]

I support the rights of national minorities, including the right of independenc, yes. Why am I suprised you do not?
Why and how? Nothing you have said so far indicate any support for those under the heel of the regime.
Ah, so you'll go with the Balkans solution then. Good good.

It is pretty funny how some leftists seem to never, ever learn from the past.

[Crux]

Ah, so you'll go with the Balkans solution then. Good good.

It is pretty funny how some leftists seem to never, ever learn from the past.

It's funny how some self-proclaimed revolutionaries haven't learned the first thing from actual revolutions but prefer to toe the line of whatever state they deem socialist today. With an, at best, reformist approach to said regimes. Besides, IMO, the counter-revolution has already occured in China, 1989 being highpoint. the difference is of course that the ruling party maintained power and as such it was a more outdrawn process.Would you also call Lenin's support for national rights in the Russian empire a "balkan" solution? You are again very lazy with your arguments. So tell me, why are opposed to national rights? Why is it that you defend the dominance of one national group over others?

[Sinister Cultural Marxist]

...which don't amount to imperialism in and of themselves. You can't call something imperialist just because it has some influence in a given country.


The key issue is that the influence gives them the opportunity to exploit labor and natural resources.



I have no idea what that means: "buying much of the power". Still, even if what you're saying is true, it's not imperialism just because some Chinese businessmen profit from the big picture.
What I mean is that China is buying a lot of the electricity produced by the dams, helping to deal with their terrible power shortfall. The Burmese government, which is hungry for foreign investment, is an open seller to all sorts of countries but mostly China.




I explain away the evidence because it's inconclusive when it comes to the claims made here. The PRC isn't a capitalist state because it is neither the product nor the object of capitalist dynamics. It was created through working-class revolution and it maintains full authority over all economic matters. How can we call it capitalist in the face of these facts?
It was a revolution borne with a large capitalist class. And the party may maintain "full authority" over all economic matters but the party includes a large Capitalist elite, so that authority in of itself is not proof that they are "socialist" and not "state capitalist"



On your links, the article on Ethiopia hardly discerns between the policies and consequences of the PRC and those of every other country mentioned. I admit that it's regrettable but I don't think we can draw too many conclusions from that link. I'll try to get to the other links in a few days, bear with me on that.
There are other examples. I think the expansion of logging is one of the most telling and worrying patterns because of its harmful effects to the environment and the communities.



By that standard classical Athens was imperialist.
If you asked the Spartans, I'm sure they'd agree, although they probably wouldn't fit with the precise description which various theorists like Lenin give for the Capitalist era.



The collapse of the USSR and socialist Europe/Central Asia should prove to everyone that socialism provides for a better society than capitalist governments ever can.

I still can't figure out why some leftists can't learn from the past. Three decades ago these same tendencies were denouncing the USSR from here to Friday, and then they celebrated when it fell...the only problem being that if fell along with working-class living standards and the hope of liberation for millions around the world. The same voices railed against the "dictatorship" and "capitalism" of Tito, but when his policies came unglued genocide followed, and the opponents of Yugoslavia had no answers. When will leftists learn that imperfect worker states are far better than the alternative?Well, I don't think that the PRC government provides protections nearly as many real social benefits as the Eastern Bloc countries did, like public healthcare, etc. So even though they weren't really fully "socialist" they were still preferable to the "Authoritarian Capitalism" of China.



So I take it you wish for the division of China?

I don't know about Maja, but I think insofar as national minorities are demanding independence, it is not necessarily because they are reactionary but because they feel that the revolution has failed to empower them politically and socially, even if it bettered them materially. It is paternalist to assume that a national group can't deal with themselves and need a People's Republic to be hoisted upon them by force. In the case of China it is particularly transparent because they justify their claims over these territories with nationalism-particularly, that they were all vassals or subjects of Qing China (which is a little like a socialist Britain retaking Ireland because it had been a part of the UK for centuries ... that should have no relevance). I'm not for or against these groups gaining independence, it largely depends on what they envision as an independent state or as increased local autonomy, but I am for them having the right to express their demands in a peaceful way and forcing the government to dialogue with them instead of ignore them or force them to stay in exile.

And not all of these "national independence" movements end up like the Balkans. There was a lot of arms and heated hyper-nationalist rhetoric, as well as a total failure of real anti-nationalist leadership on all sides for a long time. I don't see those conditions here.

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Ah, so you'll go with the Balkans solution then. Good good.

It is pretty funny how some leftists seem to never, ever learn from the past.

What happened in the Balkans?

[Crux]

What happened in the Balkans?

Long story for some other time I believe.

[manic expression]

It's funny how some self-proclaimed revolutionaries haven't learned the first thing from actual revolutions but prefer to toe the line of whatever state they deem socialist today. With an, at best, reformist approach to said regimes. Besides, IMO, the counter-revolution has already occured in China, 1989 being highpoint. the difference is of course that the ruling party maintained power and as such it was a more outdrawn process.Would you also call Lenin's support for national rights in the Russian empire a "balkan" solution? You are again very lazy with your arguments. So tell me, why are opposed to national rights? Why is it that you defend the dominance of one national group over others?
Lenin's pursuit of national rights in the former Russian Empire? You mean the same policy that made Georgia part of the USSR? Are you even paying attention here? The PRC has established autonomy and special privileges for the minority nationalities of China because non-Han Chinese work in high levels of government. Plainly, there is no "dominance of one national group", and yet you're still here blabbering about it like it's the Gelbe Gefahr.

Counterrevolution has not already occurred, but it's anti-socialists such as yourself who dream of it happening. You've already admitted you want a Balkans solution to China, setting nationalities against each other and letting imperialist conquer whomever survives.

But when you keep parroting the line of the social democrats, it's pretty clear you aren't standing for progress.

[black magick hustla]

I am aware of them, and I feel it is only more evidence that the direction of the CPC must be retaken by the working-class rank-and-file. To suggest that I am unaware or unconcerned with such conditions is explicitly dishonest.


pipedream. if the class struggle wins, cpc bureacrats will be hung from the intestines of the last capitalist

[Omsk]

And not all of these "national independence" movements end up like the Balkans. There was a lot of arms and heated hyper-nationalist rhetoric, as well as a total failure of real anti-nationalist leadership on all sides for a long time. I don't see those conditions here.

To add up on this: Aside from nationalism,a major factor in the Balkans was the influence of the foreign powers,and imperialists.
However,one of the main reasons was the economic collapse and the end of the badly planned Yugoslavia.

[Crux]

Lenin's pursuit of national rights in the former Russian Empire? You mean the same policy that made Georgia part of the USSR? Are you even paying attention here? The PRC has established autonomy and special privileges for the minority nationalities of China because non-Han Chinese work in high levels of government. Plainly, there is no "dominance of one national group", and yet you're still here blabbering about it like it's the Gelbe Gefahr.
Of course to you Lenin's USSR and Hu Jintao's PRC are basically the same so I can see why you would be confused. "special priviliges"? You mean like the use of internal immigrants to do sweatshoplabour? I could fo course find you articles on chinaworker.info but would you read them? After all the gloprious worker's state have banned that website and arrest our members? And you have already made clear where you stand vis a vis the regime. And yes of course they buy their quislings, all regimes do that.


Counterrevolution has not already occurred, but it's anti-socialists such as yourself who dream of it happening. I see you have run out of apologisms. How sad for you. Again I hope the regime is paying you.


You've already admitted you want a Balkans solution to China, setting nationalities against each other and letting imperialist conquer whomever survives.No I have not. Yet again you are caught lying.


But when you keep parroting the line of the social democrats, it's pretty clear you aren't standing for progress.You are parotting the line of the regime and has done so all the way through thios thread. Whenever anyone has punched a hole in your argument you've pleaded ignorance. That I can very much believe. While your way of trying to divert the argument is disingenuine I do very much believe your political confusion is genuine. What have you ever done to support this supposed "left turn" of the CPC that you, when you are not busy defending the regime, supposedly want to see happen? Oh or is that just a position out of convenience so as to not expose you for what you really are?

[TheGodlessUtopian]

Long story for some other time I believe.

Fair enough, anyone can PM me with information on it at their connivance if they so wish.Thanks in advance to those who do.

[o well this is ok I guess]

pipedream. if the class struggle wins, cpc bureacrats will be hung from the intestines of the last capitalist Shouldn't you have just said "their own intestines"

[manic expression]

The key issue is that the influence gives them the opportunity to exploit labor and natural resources.
That doesn't even specify it to capitalist production. How are you going to promote a view that includes the Roman Republic?


What I mean is that China is buying a lot of the electricity produced by the dams, helping to deal with their terrible power shortfall. The Burmese government, which is hungry for foreign investment, is an open seller to all sorts of countries but mostly China.
And that's imperialism how?


It was a revolution borne with a large capitalist class. And the party may maintain "full authority" over all economic matters but the party includes a large Capitalist elite, so that authority in of itself is not proof that they are "socialist" and not "state capitalist"
Yes, and that elite must be confronted and exposed. I've been saying that the whole time.


There are other examples.
Buying power from another country isn't imperialist...the other examples you cited are not persuasive in the slightest.


If you asked the Spartans, I'm sure they'd agree, although they probably wouldn't fit with the precise description which various theorists like Lenin give for the Capitalist era.
And the opinion of the helot-oppressing Spartans means absolutely and utterly nothing when it comes to a materialist view on the world.


Well, I don't think that the PRC government provides protections nearly as many real social benefits as the Eastern Bloc countries did, like public healthcare, etc. So even though they weren't really fully "socialist" they were still preferable to the "Authoritarian Capitalism" of China.
I don't disagree, actually.


I don't know about Maja, but I think insofar as national minorities are demanding independence, it is not necessarily because they are reactionary but because they feel that the revolution has failed to empower them politically and socially, even if it bettered them materially.
I don't think "they" feel that as one. I think the Revolution did empower them politically and socially. I think it's an indisputable fact that the PRC has established not only equal rights but privileges for minority nationalities.


And not all of these "national independence" movements end up like the Balkans. There was a lot of arms and heated hyper-nationalist rhetoric, as well as a total failure of real anti-nationalist leadership on all sides for a long time. I don't see those conditions here.
You could have said the exact same thing about Yugoslavia around 1979, or about the USSR at the same time. And yet give-or-take 11 years later they were all slaughtering each other or getting ready to. And it's not as if there isn't any "heated hyper-nationalist rhetoric" already, it's the big fad in exile communities, the moment CPC power fades the nationalist rhetoric would fill the power vacuum. You can bet on it.

[manic expression]

Of course to you Lenin's USSR and Hu Jintao's PRC are basically the same so I can see why you would be confused. "special priviliges"? You mean like the use of internal immigrants to do sweatshoplabour? I could fo course find you articles on chinaworker.info but would you read them? After all the gloprious worker's state have banned that website and arrest our members? And you have already made clear where you stand vis a vis the regime. And yes of course they buy their quislings, all regimes do that.
No, I mean like exemption from the "one-child policy". I mean like ambitious and effective policies (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19970826&slug=2556773) that put minority nationalities in better positions. I mean like high-ranking officials who aren't Han Chinese.

You know, facts...and not meaningless liberal banter.


I see you have run out of apologisms. How sad for you. Again I hope the regime is paying you.
Like I said, not everyone thinks like you do.


No I have not. Yet again you are caught lying.
Of course you have. You want China to be split up. Not even the Opium Wars were as viciously anti-China as you hope to be.


You are parotting the line of the regime and has done so all the way through thios thread. Whenever anyone has punched a hole in your argument you've pleaded ignorance. That I can very much believe. While your way of trying to divert the argument is disingenuine I do very much believe your political confusion is genuine. What have you ever done to support this supposed "left turn" of the CPC that you, when you are not busy defending the regime, supposedly want to see happen? Oh or is that just a position out of convenience so as to not expose you for what you really are?
Ah, the personal attacks begin, and just on time, too.

What have I done to support the left turn of the CPC? Well, for starters, I don't promote the destruction of the CPC and of China.

If only you and the social democrats you give ad-time to could accomplish that.

[Sperm-Doll Setsuna]

What have I done to support the left turn of the CPC? Well, for starters, I don't promote the destruction of the CPC and of China.


Well, if we are to follow that line of thought to its logical conclusion...

Long love capitalism! Long live the Democratic Party! Long live the Republican Party! Long Live the free market! Don't knock on the Democrats and Republicans, we can't advocate their destruction, we must encourage the left flanks of the parties to take control of the ship, no matter how hopeless, we mustn't offend their leaderships...

Your tangent on the national independence stuff is also frankly irrelevant, and probably not something everyone opposed to capitalism in China would agree upon (I'm principally opposed to all 'national independence' in the sense of new nations, because it do little to advance actual progress and all nations will be eventually agglomerated into one anyway). But you are the king of tangential diversion, I'll give you that.

But you still have not provided any answer of any worth to the essential question: what about China is not capitalist? You've said that because it grew out of a revolution, it is socialist. But China today is not the same state as it was after the revolution. Things can change. The Soviet Union was not the same in 1918 as it was in 1928 or as it was in 1956, or for that matter, in 1987. So what, concisely, is it that makes you defend the anti-worker state in China? Is it that absurd Marcyite policy of just arbitrarily accepting anyone who waves a red flag as socialist, and the passion felt for everyone that claims to be anti-imperialist, even when they, like China, are clearly not any different from the USA or Europe on the world arena?

[Crux]

No, I mean like exemption from the "one-child policy". I mean like ambitious and effective policies (http://community.seattletimes.nwsource.com/archive/?date=19970826&slug=2556773) that put minority nationalities in better positions. I mean like high-ranking officials who aren't Han Chinese.

You know, facts...and not meaningless liberal banter.
And as I said the regime does have to buy it's quislings, indeed the national issues worries the regime too. As does the working class and the peasants.
It's funny you should link an article that actually contradicts what you are trying to say.

"
Still, Ya is not optimistic.
"All of these privileges are just for effect," he said bitterly. "We still have no power."
His disillusionment reflects the problems China faces as it tries to address inequity and racism. Though Americans tend to see China as a sea of homogeneous black-haired people, the country is fairly diverse.
China is dominated by the Han Chinese. They make up 91 percent of the population, and they have ruled the country - with a few interruptions - for centuries. Mao Tse-tung, Deng Xiaoping, the actress Gong Li, the sage Confucius and pretty much any other Chinese person most Americans have ever heard of are Han.


55 minority nationalities


The Han are generally richer, better educated and live longer than the 55 minority nationalities, which are a mixture of exotic hill tribes, conquered kingdoms and immigrants.
Although those minorities make up only 9 percent of China's people, they have a disproportionate importance: They inhabit about 60 percent of China's land mass - particularly concentrated in China's north and west border areas rich in natural resources such as oil and timber.
For that reason, the government has sought to win their allegiance with a dizzying array of preferential policies.
"This issue is very, very crucial to the Chinese government," said Colby College professor Suisheng Zhao. "They are afraid of a rebellion. They need stability."


Policy not inclusive
But just as in the United States, China's affirmative-action policy is controversial, divisive and, some argue, unsuccessful.
It is also, to Western eyes, flawed. That is because the policy is not based on any philosophy of equality, or any desire to "celebrate differences."
Instead, the Chinese people, for the most part, remain completely at ease with racial stereotypes. Affirmative action here does not mean re-evaluating the Han belief that all minorities are "backward, primitive barbarians" who need the help of their "Han older brothers" - to quote some cliches.


China's policy is purely pragmatic. The idea is to give the minorities just enough power, education or economic success to keep them quiet. As opposed to empowering minorities, it is meant to encourage assimilation and the creation of a peaceful, unified and essentially Han country.
Indeed, treatment of minorities in the popular press, and for example, the creation of a "minority theme park" - a sideshow-like museum in Beijing, where curious Han can have their pictures taken with minorities like Ya - make continued Han chauvinism painfully apparent."

I could go on.
But maybe you just blanked out those parts when you read the article?


Like I said, not everyone thinks like you do.No shit. Your point being that you have no argument to back your interesting claims about the chinese regime?


Of course you have. You want China to be split up. Not even the Opium Wars were as viciously anti-China as you hope to be.You value "national unity" over the will of the masses. I, of course, support resistance in all of china and indeed an east asian socialist federation, as a goal. Youe goals however do not seem to go much further than defending the regime.



Ah, the personal attacks begin, and just on time, too.I made no personal attacks at all. You however hilariously has ascribed me positions like "anti-socialist" and whatnot when you have run out of arguments. When I say you might be confused I am being kind. But enough on this tangent.


What have I done to support the left turn of the CPC? Well, for starters, I don't promote the destruction of the CPC and of China.Glorious. So in other words you "promote" a "left turn" by being a mouthpiece of the regime as far as possible? How do these two thing's converge? Or is there a "left turn" going on right now that I am unaware of?


If only you and the social democrats you give ad-time to could accomplish that.Our comrades risk their lives for worker's rights in china, you sit comfortably behind your computer in the U.S cheering on the regime. Some might consider that political bankruptcy.

[manic expression]

Well, if we are to follow that line of thought to its logical conclusion...

Long love capitalism! Long live the Democratic Party! Long live the Republican Party! Long Live the free market! Don't knock on the Democrats and Republicans, we can't advocate their destruction, we must encourage the left flanks of the parties to take control of the ship, no matter how hopeless, we mustn't offend their leaderships...
Interesting.

Now I'd like to see you explain how exactly that is included in my line of thought. Go ahead, I'm all ears.


Your tangent on the national independence stuff is also frankly irrelevant, and probably not something everyone opposed to capitalism in China would agree upon (I'm principally opposed to all 'national independence' in the sense of new nations, because it do little to advance actual progress and all nations will be eventually agglomerated into one anyway). But you are the king of tangential diversion, I'll give you that.
I'm opposed to capitalism in China, but I am also aware of the inherent dangers in proclaiming that China should be carved up Yugoslavia-style. That the anti-China posters can't see this and actively promote it is not a tangent.

Your anti-materialist views on nationality make everything a tangent when it comes to the national question. Your obtuseness on this matter is hardly my concern, nor is it my fault.


But you still have not provided any answer of any worth to the essential question: what about China is not capitalist? You've said that because it grew out of a revolution, it is socialist. But China today is not the same state as it was after the revolution. Things can change. The Soviet Union was not the same in 1918 as it was in 1928 or as it was in 1956, or for that matter, in 1987. So what, concisely, is it that makes you defend the anti-worker state in China? Is it that absurd Marcyite policy of just arbitrarily accepting anyone who waves a red flag as socialist, and the passion felt for everyone that claims to be anti-imperialist, even when they, like China, are clearly not any different from the USA or Europe on the world arena?
I've provided many answers of worth. As I've said and as you've noted, I hold that the PRC is a worker state, and I point to the working-class revolution and the resulting construction as evidence of this. I do think that things have changed, and changed for the worse since Deng tragically reversed the Revolution, but the state has not fundamentally changed, neither has the position of the CPC. That is what I look to when it comes to the question of how to move forward.

Moreover, it is the position of the party that holds authority over capitalist production, and that is how capitalism can best be fought in China. If the rank-and-file of the CPC won control of the direction of the party tonight, capitalism would be booted out by lunchtime tomorrow. That, IMO, is the best course of action. So far, my opponents have called this a "pipe dream", but this is standard talk when it comes to promoting progressive change.

Funny you should mention red flags, because ironically enough, even if I accepted anyone who waved a red flag, I still wouldn't be able to accept much of the politics being waved around on this thread.

[Crux]

Moreover, it is the position of the party that holds authority over capitalist production, and that is how capitalism can best be fought in China. If the rank-and-file of the CPC won control of the direction of the party tonight, capitalism would be booted out by lunchtime tomorrow. That, IMO, is the best course of action. So far, my opponents have called this a "pipe dream", but this is standard talk when it comes to promoting progressive change.

Funny you should mention red flags, because ironically enough, even if I accepted anyone who waved a red flag, I still wouldn't be able to accept much of the politics being waved around on this thread.
I think it is a pipe-dream because you simply do not understand either the class nature or the repressive nature of the regime. And even so it is not as if this position is anything other than a fig leaf for you and the PSL. You support a "left turn" in words only. Something quite easy to do from the U.S

Of course you wouldn't, you defend the regime.

[manic expression]

And as I said the regime does have to buy it's quislings, indeed the national issues worries the regime too. As does the working class and the peasants.
It's funny you should link an article that actually contradicts what you are trying to say.
My position is that minority nationalities have won privileges in PRC law. That is backed up there. One interviewee chosen specifically by a western media outlet should hardly weigh heavy in our consideration of the matter. The rest of it is claiming that the PRC is ruled exclusively by Han, but when 90% of the population is Han that's not exactly beating the odds. What the article didn't mention are high-ranking officials (http://in.reuters.com/article/2008/04/23/idINIndia-33191620080423) who aren't Han (but who cares about them?). The article claims that PRC policy is "to Western eyes, flawed". And this is what you choose to cite? :laugh: They came right out and said it was imperialist bias, and you instinctively run to their side. It's hilarious how easy you expose yourself.


I could go on.
But maybe you just blanked out those parts when you read the article?Not exactly. Unlike you, I'm capable of forming a nuanced opinion on something that demands nuance.


No shit. Your point being that you have no argument to back your interesting claims about the chinese regime?My point being that not everyone thinks like you and your Amnesty International friends.


You value "national unity" over the will of the masses. I, of course, support resistance in all of china and indeed an east asian socialist federation, as a goal. Youe goals however do not seem to go much further than defending the regime.I value China. You support the Balkanization of the country to the common ruin of workers everywhere.


I made no personal attacks at all. You however hilariously has ascribed me positions like "anti-socialist" and whatnot when you have run out of arguments. When I say you might be confused I am being kind. But enough on this tangent.

Glorious. So in other words you "promote" a "left turn" by being a mouthpiece of the regime as far as possible? How do these two thing's converge? Or is there a "left turn" going on right now that I am unaware of?

Our comrades risk their lives for worker's rights in china, you sit comfortably behind your computer in the U.S cheering on the regime. Some might consider that political bankruptcy.
Of course it's a personal charge. I can't hold a position about a country unless I meet your own arbitrary standards of whatever it is you're trying to establish? I've always said I look to the CPC rank-and-file, I didn't say I was one of them. As for your comrades, they can meet up with as many social democrats as they like, that's their choice. Just don't get mad at the people of the PRC for making their own choices when they reject your politics of division, hatred and regression. Enjoy making your next post on how the Balkans solution is awesome from behind that computer.

Oh, and by the way:


http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/reputation/reputation_neg.gif CWI’s Zhang Shujie... (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2344216#post2344216) 26th January 2012 20:04 Majakovskij (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=17403) Perhaps you should consider moving to china. That might put thing's into perspective for you.

hahaha bu cuo bu cuo, keshi wo yao qu zai zhongguo, suoyi ni yinggai gaosu ni biede jiahua. :laugh:

[manic expression]

I think it is a pipe-dream because you simply do not understand either the class nature or the repressive nature of the regime. And even so it is not as if this position is anything other than a fig leaf for you and the PSL. You support a "left turn" in words only. Something quite easy to do from the U.S
Can you go one post without resorting to liberal banter? That's a serious question, by the way.

You support the destruction of China itself in words only, thankfully. Something that's quite easy to do when you hang out with social democrats all the time.

PS good luck with your oh-so-militant petition to the Swedish state. Running to the Riksdag is very revolutionary.

[Crux]

My position is that minority nationalities have won privileges in PRC law. That is backed up there. One interviewee chosen specifically by a western media outlet should hardly weigh heavy in our consideration of the matter. The rest of it is claiming that the PRC is ruled exclusively by Han, but when 90% of the population is Han that's not exactly beating the odds. What the article didn't mention are high-ranking officials (http://in.reuters.com/article/2008/04/23/idINIndia-33191620080423) who aren't Han (but who cares about them?). The article claims that PRC policy is "to Western eyes, flawed". And this is what you choose to cite? :laugh: They came right out and said it was imperialist bias, and you instinctively run to their side. It's hilarious how easy you expose yourself.
In the toy parliament. You cite an article that describes the opposite of what you claim it does and get suprised when this gets pointed out. Pray tell, do you also make excuses for other kinds of racism or is it just Han racism you approve of?



Not exactly. Unlike you, I'm capable of forming a nuanced opinion on something that demands nuance.Then do so, so far I have only heard regime apologisms from you.


My point being that not everyone thinks like you and your Amnesty International friends.Ah yes, because you, whetever you like to admit it or not approve of repression against socialists in China.


I value China. You support the Balkanization of the country to the common ruin of workers everywhere.So you take a nationalist standpoint? Those kind of positions have an even more sordid history in the socialist movement than your constant clutching for straws about "balkanization".



Of course it's a personal charge. I can't hold a position about a country unless I meet your own arbitrary standards of whatever it is you're trying to establish? I've always said I look to the CPC rank-and-file, I didn't say I was one of them. As for your comrades, they can meet up with as many social democrats as they like, that's their choice. Just don't get mad at the people of the PRC for making their own choices when they reject your politics of division, hatred and regression. Enjoy making your next post on how the Balkans solution is awesome from behind that computer.The people of PRC = the regime and it's agents? If you hadn't exposed yourself already you sure have now. As for your constant references to "social democrats", Leung Kwok Hung has a infinitely more socialist credentials than your friends in the regime. And of course, our members that are working underground in China whom you have also slandered do too.


Oh, and by the way:


http://www.revleft.com/vb/revleft/reputation/reputation_neg.gif CWI’s Zhang Shujie... (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2344216#post2344216) 26th January 2012 20:04 Majakovskij (http://www.revleft.com/vb/member.php?u=17403) Perhaps you should consider moving to china. That might put thing's into perspective for you.

hahaha bu cuo bu cuo, keshi wo yao qu zai zhongguo, suoyi ni yinggai gaosu ni biede jiahua. :laugh:That's not even pinyin. But alas I do not speak or read mandarin.


Can you go one post without resorting to liberal banter? That's a serious question, by the way.

You support the destruction of China itself in words only, thankfully. Something that's quite easy to do when you hang out with social democrats all the time.

PS good luck with your oh-so-militant petition to the Swedish state. Running to the Riksdag is very revolutionary.
Can you make a post with substance instead of resorting to sad namecalling about "socialdemocrats" and "liberals"? No, of course you can't. I understand why it upsets you, we want to publicize thing's you would rather be covered up. I support class struggle in china, you support the regime. But then again those who support class struggle have always been accused of being "divisionary" and threats to "national unity" by reactionaries.

[manic expression]

In the toy parliament. You cite an article that describes the opposite of what you claim it does and get suprised when this gets pointed out. Pray tell, do you also make excuses for other kinds of racism or is it just Han racism you approve of?
When I cite an article I do so because it says something important. That article told us that the PRC is pursuing progressive policies on the national question, and that "Western eyes" disapprove.


Then do so, so far I have only heard regime apologisms from you.I've already denounced Dengism and the direction he initiated, as well as expressed my opposition to all capitalist production in the country.


Ah yes, because you, whetever you like to admit it or not approve of repression against socialists in China.Ah, no, it's because I don't base my views on how much money I can get from it...that's what Amnesty International does.


So you take a nationalist standpoint? Those kind of positions have an even more sordid history in the socialist movement than your constant clutching for straws about "balkanization".China is a multi-national country, much like Yugoslavia was. That seems to be better for workers than the Tudman-Milosevic plan.


The people of PRC = the regime and it's agents? If you hadn't exposed yourself already you sure have now. As for your constant references to "social democrats", Leung Kwok Hung has a infinitely more socialist credentials than your friends in the regime. And of course, our members that are working underground in China.The people of the PRC = those who think it's not a good idea to finish the Eight-Nation Alliance's work = just about everyone in China


That's not even pinyin. But alas I do not speak or read mandarin.Without tone marks it's still pin1yin1.


Can you make a post with substance instead of resorting to sad namecalling about "socialdemocrats" and "liberals"? No, of course you can't. I understand why it upsets you, we want to publicize thing's you would rather be covered up. I support class struggle in china, you support the regime. But then again those who support class struggle have always been accused of being "divisionary" and threats to "national unity" by reactionaries.
Cool, just let us know how that ultra-militant Riksdag petition goes. You might want to try an ultra-militant petition to the king directly, too.

[Crux]

When I cite an article I do so because it says something important. That article told us that the PRC is pursuing progressive policies on the national question, and that "Western eyes" disapprove.
No what it said was is that the policy is not pursued for egalitarian reasons and that han racism remains a big issue. There is nothing tosuggests this is not true, "western eyes" or not.


I've already denounced Dengism and the direction he initiated, as well as expressed my opposition to all capitalist production in the country. So why do you claim to oppose dengism?


Ah, no, it's because I don't base my views on how much money I can get from it...that's what Amnesty International does.:rolleyes:


China is a multi-national country, much like Yugoslavia was. That seems to be better for workers than the Tudman-Milosevic plan.Nice diversion.


The people of the PRC = those who think it's not a good idea to finish the Eight-Nation Alliance's work = just about everyone in ChinaStrawman.


Without tone marks it's still pin1yin1.
Whatever


Cool, just let us know how that ultra-militant Riksdag petition goes. You might want to try an ultra-militant petition to the king directly, too.Strawman. Again we work underground in China. But with a likely informant and scab like yourself around that is also all I am going to say about that.

So you have nothing at all of substance to say? Well then perhaps you should refrain from posting.

[Red Commissar]

On topic regarding Mr. Zhang, he gives his statements to a small committee hosted by the Left Party, regarding why he left China:

http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1720/


CWI reporters in Stockholm “I was warned that I could get several years in prison for ‘contact with a banned organization’ and for ‘crimes related to national security.’ Zhang Shujie, a socialist from China, gave witness at a hearing at the Swedish parliament on Thursday. Repression in China increased sharply in 2011 due to the regime being frightened after revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia.

http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=9




The long distance guest “Long Hair”, Leung Kwok-hung, socialist and member of Hong Kong’s parliament, called on Sweden’s politicians and authorities that Zhang must be granted permit to stay in Sweden. “Long Hair” told the audience about a friend of him who in the 1980s was arrested in China and refused to work for the secret police as a spy and was sentenced to 10 years in prison.


The hearing on the struggle for democratic rights and the Chinese state repression was organised by the Left Party and its spokesperson on refugee policy, Christina Höj Larsen. Other speakers included representatives of the Independent Chinese Pen Club, Amnesty International and the experienced lawyer in many refugee cases, Sten De Geer.

http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=8


Zhang was the first speaker

“In early 2011, the Chinese dictatorship was terrified of the waves of global protest coming from Egypt and Tunisia. And almost exactly 11 months ago, I was arrested and accused of having links with a “banned organisation”, the CWI. I was taken secretly by police from State security Bureau to a hotel. Police performed a full body cavity search and took out my belt, mobile, keys and others things in my pockets.”

Nobody knew where he was and the police threatened that they could hold him indefinitely, he could “disappear”. He was interrogated for nearly 30 hours, often standing, without food and without his glasses.

The police demanded information about the CWI in China and Hong Kong, Socialist Action, but also the legislator “Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, in Hong Kong. They threatened Zhang with a long prison sentence.

“With no alternative, I agreed to the police demands at that time. However, I contacted my CWI friends secretly the day after the summons, and told them what happened. ”
http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=16




“Rather than become a spy for the dictatorship, I chose to leave China – to break from the chain the police had placed around my neck. This was the only way I could defend my right to speak out; not to be silenced as so many are being silenced by state repression.”

The opportunity arose when police pushed for him to go to a meeting in Hong Kong to spy on the participants. He was able to escape with the help of Joe Higgins, member of the Irish Parliament and “Long Hair”.

http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=12




Zhang also gave the political background to the regime in Beijing is afraid of socialists and workers' struggles:

“One reason why the Chinese government is able to exercise this degree of repression today is that most countries and governments are far more concerned about business than repression, torture, or dictatorial rule. So, the dictatorship is well supported outside China, by the big corporations. In return, these corporations have made China the world’s sweatshop.” Zhang has written articles and has co-authored a book on the workers' situation and struggles:

“The situation is so bad that workers have even threatened to commit mass suicide, as we saw in Hubei province at the start of this month.of This was at Foxconn – the Taiwan-owned company that makes iPhones for Apple. The boss of Foxconn last week told the press it was hard to manage ‘one million animals’ – he was talking about his 1 million employees in China!”

“Political change – real democracy – will not come from above, as a gift from so-called ‘reform-minded’ leaders. This is true in China and everywhere else – as we are seeing in Egypt. Democratic change has always come from below – it must be won through mass struggle.”
“This is why I am a socialist – an international socialist – and this is why I have been persecuted by the Chinese police state.”

Christina Höj Larsen, Left Party MP, thanked for his testimony:

“I want to thank especially Mr. Zhang Shujie for his very courageous and personal speech that gave a picture of what life is for many in China.”

http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=10




Zhang Yu from the Independent Chinese Pen Centre showed how the penalties for government critics have become harder in recent years. The most famous, Liu Xiaobo who received the Nobel Peace Prize in 2010, was sentenced in 2008 to 11 years in prison and his wife disappeared a year ago. It’s the same with several other convicted - such as Uighur Hailate Niyazi and Dokru Tsultrim who sounded the alarm after the earthquake in Yushu - nobody knows where they are. In the last month, three dissidents have been sentenced to between 9 and 10 years in prison, including for “contact with a Chinese organisation based abroad.”

http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=7



The severe sentences of many writers are well-known. If anything, the regime fear workers’ struggles even more and there are numerous worker activists that are victims of state repression.

“Long Hair” Leung Kwok-hung, compared with the two Swedish journalists who recently were sentenced to 11 years in prison in Ethiopia, Martin Schibbye and Johan Persson, and said that Sweden must demand freedom for them, but equally allow for Zhang Shujie right to stay in Sweden .

http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=14




“Zhang is one of the victims of the escalating repression in China. Domestic security in China this year for the first time has a budget larger than the military budget. 1.3 million websites were closed in 2011”, said “Long Hair”, who also told that he is forbidden to visit China since two decades.

Elisabeth Löfgren, press officer at Amnesty International in Sweden, gave examples of how major IT companies like Yahoo and Google are sitting in the lap of the regime in Beijing. “Money talks,” she said.

http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=11




“130 people were arrested after the call for a protest in February last year”, said Elisabeth Löfgren. Another example is Chen Wei, who recently was sentenced to 10 years in prison after publishing an article on the internet. Another activist, lawyer Chen Guangcheng, is surrounded by up to 100 security guards who beat any visitors to his residence.


The MPs and journalists who attended the hearing received extensive information about the increased repression in China. Zhang Shujie was able to receive strong support of his appeal:


“I intend to campaign to expose the true role of the state security forces and a dictatorial regime that has nothing in common with socialism or the interests of workers and the poor.”



http://www.chinaworker.info/get_img?NrArticle=1720&NrImage=15

(Don't mean to disrupt the flow of posts here... was just wondering whether Zhang had anything to say himself and went over to the site mentioned in the article. Speaking of Chinese, I miss sunfarstar's weird posts :( )

[Q]

Here's a video on the subject, made by "China Forbidden News" (not sure who they are?):

b81TFbjl388

[Crux]

An important fact which the newsreport omits is that Zhang managed to get word out after the secret police took him, so we were aware that he was being monitored, and indeed the planned meeting in Hong Kong was pre-planned as a way to get him out. So what he did in effect was, while admitting to being a member of the CWI and signing papers saying that he would spy for the regime, under threat of ten years in prison and being "dissapeared", was to refuse to become a spy. At the cost of becoming a political exile for as long as the regime in china stands.

[GoddessCleoLover]

Zhang Shujie is a real advocate for authentic socialism and working class rule. RevLefters ought to have no illusions about the realities of the Chinese society and economy, where imperialist corporations are encouraged to ruthlessly exploit Chinese workers and true Communists like comrade Zhang must flee the country. The "new class" CPC overlords are the enemy of the Chinese working class and they hang on to power through a combination of appeals to Chinese nationalism and the naked power of the State.

[Crux]

0XRsJI0cE5s
pBcJBLY-Yx8

NDTV report in French:
Uz6QKwjZCTE

[electro_fan]

fucking hell. cheering on the chinese communist party, the same communost party that is buying up privatised utilitys in Greece and carrying out imperialist policies in africa, that's torturing workers and locking up people for going on strike, just because you dont like the CWI. out of some pie in the sky position, that's completely divorced from reality. you people disgust me.

unlike the idiots on this thread the cwi in china are actually risking their lives because of involvements in workers' struggles.

at least the stalinists actually have the honesty to say that the reason why they support stalinism is because they agree with a strong state, the idiots on this thread don't so they hide behind "anti-imperialism"