The
victory of the Red forces in China’s civil war in 1949 was a huge
setback for imperialism and especially for the leading imperialist
power, the USA. The USA had emerged from WW2 as pre-eminent among the
capitalist allies, aided immeasurably by the fact that it had not had
to endure invasion and associated fighting (and the accompanying
destruction) on its own territory that Britain and especially the
Soviet Union had experienced. The USSR lost a staggering 26 million
dead. It had met
and overcome the Axis’ best weapons and their best troops and won
most of the really significant battles (and done most of the
dying, let us never forget).
Attempts
by imperialism post WW2 to cow the USSR with nuclear blackmail failed
utterly and a revolutionary wave swept the former colonies in Asia
and Africa. The US tried to “roll back communism” in the Berlin
Airlift, then in an invasion of Albania by fascist remnants (thwarted
by Soviet intelligence agent Kim Philby). In 1949, the
revolutionaries won in China and the USSR revealed that it had broken
the USA’s monopoly on nuclear weapons. The US ferried an “invasion
force” of former Chiang Kai Shek soldiers from Taiwan to the
China-Burma border to “liberate” China from the evil Reds, but to
no avail: the “liberators” embraced the drug trade as easier and
more profitable than fighting for Washington. A panicked but still
super confident USA launched the Korean War the following year still
hoping to “roll back Communism”, only to find that it couldn’t.
Set-backs
for imperialism in China were doubly shocking because the
imperialists had enjoyed virtually a free hand there for the
preceding century. That bastion of virtue and nobility, the British
Empire, had introduced opium into China and then waited for the
profits to roll in. Attempts by the Chinese authorities to stop the
deadly trade did not go down well in Whitehall. In 1842, Britain sent
its navy to teach China to respect its betters. This was the First
Opium War. One result of that war was that Britain seized and kept
the port of Hong Kong.
Other
European imperialist powers seized outposts up and down the coast of
China. The USA, being ostentatiously opposed to European colonies in
the Americas, could not itself seize colonies in China. Instead, it
supported what it called an “open door” policy, which kept China
accessible to imperialist investment and exploitation without
technically claiming territory there. When the Boxer Rebellion tried
to expel the foreigners from China, the imperialists (including the
USA) combined forces to suppress it.
These
days, however, imperialism has had to learn how to maintain economic
control without actually owning
colonies. They have
become adept at using
all manner of financial levers and especially
innumerable front
oranisations. In Hong
Kong, for example, they rely on no less than a staggering 37,000
NGOs, with a staff in the tens of thousands. Many of these actually
receive funding from the US and Europe.(But
of course, the imperialists would be aghast if you were so
ill-mannered as to accused them of interfering in China’s internal
affairs.)
This
is only possible because China, to secure the return of its stolen
territory, has had to agree to permit Western
corporations and other capitalist entities to have access to that
territory. Even with a close watch and careful control, this has
provided openings for imperialism to exercise what is known as “soft
power” options.
In
Hong Kong, the USA’s
National Endowment For
Democracy (a
State Department/CIA front) provides
financial support to such
soft power outlets
as the innocuously-named Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource
Management, the Hong Kong Journalists’ Association, the Civic
Party, the Labor Party, the Democratic Party, even the Hong Kong
Confederation of Trade Unions. All of these took part in the recent
“anti-government” demonstrations
in Hong Kong.
The
clever folk employed by US imperialism to develop their soft-power
tactics have had plenty of practice in recent years in
fostering attempts at “regime change” in
places like Honduras, Nicaragua, Venezuela, Haiti, Ukraine, and Syria
and before that in the
break-up of Yugoslavia and other adventures. They have become adept
at prising countries away from progressive groupings so that they can
become outposts of finance capital and
tools of imperialism.
For
the first thirty years of its existence, People’s China had to
endure an embargo by the capitalist world that deliberately held back
its development. However, with
the help of the Soviet Union and by
skilfully managing its human resources, China was able to use the
greed of the imperialists to foster the development of China’s
economy and eventually to lift its people out of the poverty linked
to imperialism.
The
price of this development, however, was a strengthening of the
capitalist class in China. And imperialism is intent on furthering
that process by every possible means. The
protests in Hong Kong were focused on changes to the city’s
extradition laws. As an International Action Centre article points
out, these laws are a
relic of
British
colonialism. “Nowhere
else in the world does a city have independent extradition laws, with
authority above that of a sovereign country.”
“Despite
decades of multi-million dollar western funding Hong Kong has a
poverty rate of 20% (23.1% for children) compared to less than
1% in mainland China. In the past 20 years poverty in Hong Kong has
remained high while mainland China has lifted hundreds of millions of
people out of poverty.” Recent protests, much like the “Occupy
Central” protests in Hong Kong in 2014 have not raised this issue
(which they surely would have if they had genuinely been reflective
of the aspirations of the Chinese people.)
Instead,
the protests have been directed at leadership connected to mainland
China while ignoring the US-connected banks and ultra wealthy
capitalists based in Hong Kong who clearly show no interest in
addressing poverty or other real needs of the people.
The
US claims to be concerned with free speech in Hong Kong and with
preventing politically motivated extraditions. At the same time it
aggressively pursues the extradition of Julian Assange for exposing
the genuine crimes of US imperialism.
The
corporate media in the US, Europe and
Australia have
enthusiastically reported on the
Hong Kong protests, in
stark contrast to the meagre,
often critical coverage of mass protests in Gaza, Honduras, Sudan,
Yemen. Or even the
“Yellow “Vest”
protests France or the
recent general strike in Brazil. The difference in coverage exposes a
difference in the forces behind the protests, a difference in who
stands to benefit from them.
Imperialism
is only interested in promoting protest movements if those movements
can be used to destabilise the working class and can be misdirected
into anti popular channels.
For
over 200 years the working class has striven to achieve revolution,
preferably a socialist revolution, while the US has recruited an
enormous collection of specially selected college graduates to plot
how to “defend democracy”. Utterly
convinced as to the rightness of their cause, these willing tools of
big business use every conceivable technique of
advertising/propaganda to achieve regime change and to further “US
interests”.
For
all their resources of
finance, materiel, eager personnel and skilled application of the
techniques of persuasion, the objective conditions affecting the
working people push them towards the revolutionary path. And it is
the role of the Communists to explain and guide them along that path,
the path that will result in changing the social system from one of
exploitation to one that functions solely in the interests of working
people.
In
other words, it is the role of the Communists to “Change the
World”!
