China

Spratly Conflict: Workers of the Philippines and China, Unite!

"Workers of the world, unite!" This is the truth and reality under a capitalist system. We, the workers have no national interest, or nationality to side with and defend as an internationalist class. Where ever and part of the world we may be, we are exploited and oppressed by the capital and the local state.

Class Struggle in China

On April 14, what's being called the biggest strike in recent memory in China began at one of the Yue Yuen factories in Dongguan, southern China. Depending on what reports one reads, the numbers on strike went from thirty to forty thousand, with  the South China Morning Post of April 18 reporting the number as 50,000.

Imperialist conflict between China and Japan

Recent clashes in 2012 and 2013 over the Senkaku/Diaoyu/Tiaoyus islands (the archipelago is located roughly 200 km northeast of Taiwan, 400 km southwest of the Japanese Okinawa island, and almost 400 km east of China)  have brutally brought to the fore the ambitions and tensions of the two biggest regional rivals in the Far East. Both China, the most populated country and second most important economic power in the world, and Japan, the third biggest economic power, have escalated tensions around the islands and regularly mobilise troops which have been engaged in shows of force. Taiwan has also clashed with Japan over the island. This must be of great concern not only to the population in Japan and China and the region, but the whole world.

The 1900 Boxer rising: an excuse for foreign intervention

The crushing of the Taiping revolt led to a drastic worsening of the situation of the peasants. In the context of an increased burden of taxation, the destruction of the livelihood for millions of peasants and artisans, who went down under the weight of the import of foreign goods, forcing them to come to the cities where there was only a very weak industrial development – these economic fetters contributed to the outbreak of what was later to become known as the Boxer uprising.

China: a decomposing society prised open by opium and war

When being opened up by capitalism, both Japan and China were ruled by declining dynasties. As in Japan, the local mode of production in China was also unable to compete with capitalism. Neither on a commercial, nor above all on a military level was the ruling Manchu dynasty able to resist foreign capitalist penetration. As in Japan, the triumphant march of capitalism did not come through the imposition of a trading capitalist class from within the country, but capitalism was mainly imposed from outside.

China: the intensification of workers' struggles

Over the last decade or so, the proletariat in China, and the rest of East Asia  have all been involved in a wave of strikes and protests against capitalist exploitation. It's China we want to concentrate on here and to do so we will largely use the information given by the China Labour Bulletin (CLB), the publication of a non-governmental organisation based in Hong Kong which promotes the idea of a “fairer” Chinese state,  advocating its adoption of “Free Trade Unions”. Ideas which we do not support.

No immunity from economic crisis or class struggle

The pundits of the bourgeoisie include China in their collection of economic ‘powerhouses’ known as the “BRICs”. This also includes Brazil, Russia and India, which are all supposedly going to be the salvation of crisis-ridden capitalism. In an ominous development for the Chinese economy – and for capitalism more generally – there is a massive building boom/bubble swelling up which, like those in the USA, Ireland, Spain and elsewhere, can only burst, with dire consequences. Alongside this there are thousands and thousands of reported “incidents” of strikes and protests in the cities, along with unrest in the countryside which are growing in number and intensity.

Protests in China come up against state repression

The Xintang area of Zengcheng, in China’s southern Guangzhou province, annually produces 260 million pairs of jeans, 60% of China’s and a third of the world’s output for more than 60 international brands. Known as the ‘jeans capital of the world’ it is in some ways symbolic of Chinese economic development over the last thirty years. In June, demonstrations and clashes with the police in angry protests by thousands of workers against the treatment of a pregnant 20-year-old, hint at the reality experienced by workers in the heart of an ‘economical miracle’.

Chinese workers: The new prey for ‘independent’ unionism

The Chinese proletariat is showing signs of militancy and combativity on its own class terrain, against the Communist Party of China and the state unions. Unfortunately, the Western trade unionists and leftist activists are taking notice. Similar to the Polish workers struggles' of 1980-1981, the Chinese workers erupted into self-organized strikes and protests against the company

The Chinese question (1920-40): The communist left against the treason degenerated Communist International

We have already published in our Review a series of articles on so-called Communist China, in which we showed the counter-revolutionary nature of Maoism. If we return here to the fight waged by the Chinese proletariat during the 1920s, up until the terrible defeat it suffered in Shanghai and Canton, it is not only because this was a significant expression of the balance of forces between bourgeois and proletariat at the international level, but also because it played an important role in the revolutionary movement itself, owing to the decisive political battles which it engendered.

Strike wave across China

The Chinese economy is supposed to be the exception to the global crisis of capitalism. Tell that to the thousands of Chinese workers who have been involved in a wave of strikes in recent weeks in many parts of the country.

Violence in China: Workers must fight for their own interests

On Monday 2 July, following news of the deaths of at least 2 Uighur workers in Guangdong in fighting a couple of weeks earlier, Uighur protestors in the capital of Xinjiang, Urumqi, demonstrated and marched, peacefully at first, to protest against the deaths. It appears that the security forces responded and then Uighur young men went on the rampage, killing and wounding many Han and Hui Chinese that make up half the population of the town.

Massive struggles in Bangladesh and China

All over the planet, the working class is being subjected to increasingly unbearable levels of exploitation and poverty. And in the countries which the bourgeoisie hypocritically calls ‘developing economies' the workers are treated as no more than cattle. For several years, these wage slaves have been resisting more and more.

Democratic powers still doing business with Tiananmen killers

Twenty years ago, seven weeks of demonstrations that took place in more than 400 Chinese towns and cities met with brutal repression from the Chinese state. The repression in Tiananmen Square on the night of 3-4 June 1989, in which hundreds (or possibly thousands) of people were killed was condemned internationally.

The sources, contradictions and limitations of the growth in Eastern Asia

Up to now capitalism has shown a conspicuous inability to develop the countries where two-thirds of humanity live. Now, with the incredible economic growth in India and China - and throughout East Asia generally - we hear it shouted from the roof tops that from henceforth it will be able to develop more than half the world and that it would be able to go even further if only all the constraints imposed on it were to be eliminated. If wages and working conditions were to be levelled down to those obtaining in China, it is claimed, then growth in the West would also rise to 10% a year.

This raises theoretical and ideological questions of great importance: does the development in East Asia represent a renewal of capitalism or is it no more than a stray occurrence in its on-going crisis? To answer this question we will consider the phenomenon throughout the whole of the sub-continent, though we will examine China more closely as it is the most publicised and the most representative example.

The ‘peaceful’ rise of Chinese imperialism

Just a couple of years ago, China's President Hu Jintao promised a "peaceful rise" of his country onto the international arena. Many international observers and commentators were taken in by the Stalinist doublespeak from the military dictatorship of the People's Liberation Army and argued that China's economic ascension would make it a more reliable, responsible power for good in the world.

Chinese imperialism in Africa

On the weekend of 3-5 November Beijing hosted a China-Africa forum that top-level delegations from 48 (out of 53) African countries planned to attend. The way that the Chinese media sold the jamboree, along with loyal African cheerleaders, gave the impression that China is a great force for progress in Africa - such a contrast to the colonialists and imperialists of the US, Europe and Japan.

China 1928-1949: A link in the chain of imperialist war

In the first part of this article (International Review No.81) we endeavoured to reclaim the real historical revolutionary experience of the working class in China. The Shanghai proletariat’s heroic attempted insurrection of 21st March 1927 was both the culmination of the spontaneous movement  of the working class begun in 1919 in China, and the last glimmer of the international revolutionary wave that had shaken the capitalist world since 1917.

China's "revolution" of 1949: a link in the chain of imperialist war

According to official history, in 1949 a “popular revolution” triumphed in China. This idea, defended as much by the democratic West as by the Maoists, forms part of a monstrous mystification produced by the Stalinist counter-revolution about the supposed creation of “Socialist states”. It is certain that in the period between 1919 and 1927 China lived through an important working class movement, which was fully integrated into the international revolutionary wave that shook the capitalist world in that epoch, but this movement was ended by a massacre of the working class. What the bourgeoisie’s ideologues present on the other hand, as the “triumph of the Chinese Revolution”, was only the installation of a state capitalist régime in its Maoist variant, the culmination of a period of imperialist struggles on the terrain of China that began in 1928, after the defeat of the proletarian revolution.

Maoism: a monstrous offspring of decadent capitalism

In this article, we focus on the central aspects of this mystification: Mao Zedong himself as a “revolutionary leader”, and Maoism as a revolutionary theory, and one which claims to be a “development” of marxism to boot. We intend to demonstrate that Maoism has never been anything but a bourgeois ideological and political current, born from the guts of decadent capitalism.

Catastrophes in China: The reality of the 'economic miracle'

In China explosions and mine collapses follow one another in a frightening rhythm. Last August, in Guangdong province, 101 miners were trapped in the mine and drowned in millions of cubic metres of water. At the same time an explosion in Guizhou province killed 14 miners. Recently, a new explosion at a mine in Dong province in northern China cost the lives of another 134 miners. In the autumn accidents struck this sector on an almost daily basis. These accidents, one after the other, make the mines in China the most dangerous in the world

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