Driving down to Canberra the night before, I could already tell that the pro-PRC demonstration was going to be huge. At a highway eatery that I stopped at somewhere between Mittagong and Goulburn, there were groups of Chinese people with red flags and banners who had also broke journey there. They were in good spirits, regularly breaking out into laughter. But at other times they were huddled together with everyone attentively listening in to what looked like serious discussions.

I overheard [white] people serving at the eatery commenting on the large number of Chinese people entering: "Look at 'em coming in." "Yeah, and there's more at the service station on their way." Their tone was a mixture of, on the one hand, prejudice and on the other glee that they were getting a whole lot of customers. Similar contradictions exist in the Australian ruling class' attitude to China.

The next morning when I went into the centre of Canberra it was easy to find where I had to be. I just followed the red flags. There were huge numbers of people carrying them. It was terrific! I ended up initially in a park across Lake Burley Griffin from where the War Memorial is. It was not far from the Aboriginal tent embassy.

I noticed that most of the people were young, overseas mainland Chinese students it turned out. Women made up a large proportion of the pro-China rally, including a big fraction of the slightly older Chinese people present. As well as the red five-star flags, people carried banners like "China: 56 ethnic groups, one family." There was also a big red banner carried by the pro-PRC demonstrators: "We Love Tibet." Meanwhile, a lot of youth were wearing a t-shirt with the PRC flag in the shape of a love heart with the slogans "We love China. We love peace. We love the Olympic spirit."

When the Chinese students realised that you were on their side they were overjoyed: "Thank you for your support." "Welcome to Beijing." I am normally very camera shy but I ended up being asked to pose for photos with pro-PRC students about 50 times. I could not refuse not only because it would be rude to but because it was important for it to be seen that there were non-Chinese leftists who were defending the Peoples Republic.

In discussing the Canberra trip beforehand with comrades, we were concerned to ensure that pro-PRC Chinese easily recognised me as on their side. So I made sure that I wore over my jumper a t-shirt that I have that has a big red Soviet flag on it. I also wrapped around my neck a red scarf. Furthermore, I knew that if people saw me holding out the latest TP pamphlet that would in itself help identify my stance. The two comrades responsible for editing and layout of TP literature had done such a good job on the last pamphlet that it had an unmistakable communist "finish" to it - a shiny red cover with a hammer and sickle logo.

All this surely helped because when I was in Canberra people quickly recognised which side I was on. There was, however, one exception early on in the morning. A student carrying a PRC flag that I gave the TP Open Letter to soon ran back towards me and returned the statement ... but ripped into several pieces! He said to me "sorry but I support China," and then walked away so quickly that I could not tell him that he had actually made a mistake and not realised which side the statement was on.

This was, fortunately, a singular exception. Much more significant were the seemingly endless positive responses. Some people who came up to get the TP statement proudly stated, "I am a communist too." You could really tell where the clots of staunch communists were because in certain circles of people almost everyone would grab a statement whereas in others, few would. On a couple of occasions, students said to me things like "we believe we must defend our party." Chinese mainlanders often refer to the Communist Party of China as "our party."

You do not have to be a rocket scientist to work out that it was supporters of China's Communist Youth League (the youth wing of the Communist Party of China) studying in Australia who had organised the demonstration. And on the organisational side they sure did do a terrific job. I was also impressed about how politically engaged and sophisticated some of the Chinese overseas students were. A couple of them talked about the PRC's new Labour Law. This law in substance goes in the opposite direction to John Howard's Workchoices and, for example, prevents long-term employees at a workplace who are within five years of retirement from ever being laid off. The students spoke of this law in terms of defending workers rights and of dealing with "class conflicts."

Most interestingly some of the students were quite animated about questions outside of China. A few spoke about police killings of Aboriginal people in custody in Australia and noted the presence of the Aboriginal protest tent embassy near by. The knowledge of the students on questions here pleasantly surprised me. I know that the Communist Party of China has a policy of attempting "peaceful coexistence" with the capitalist rulers of the imperialist world. According to this policy - which as we are seeing clearly today is a rather futile one - the Chinese masses are not to interfere in struggles outside of China in the hope that this would mean that the Western capitalists would in turn leave the PRC alone. I had expected that such a distorted way of looking at the world would obscure from the view of Chinese communists the extent of injustice in Western capitalist societies. But the experience of talking to people on April 24 showed to me that my thinking had been a bit mechanical. Outrage at the slanders against Red China by the Western media naturally makes Chinese students also question the other propaganda that these media outlets beam out. Growing anger at the Western leaders' anti-PRC stance pushes PRC supporters to confront what these Western governments are doing in their own countries.

Of course, like in any mass movement there were people at the pro-China actions with a broad range of political consciousness. There were conscious communists in the lead but also participating were people there wholly out of Chinese patriotism, out of a sense that the Chinese people are once again being stomped on and hence there is a need to stand for "One China." But one thing I found common about most of the PRC overseas students at the rally was their genuine politeness and affectionate disposition. I saw little evidence of the macho behaviour that you find here or of the individualistic egotism typical of any sort of mass gathering in Australia.

The culture of the PRC students was not only different to typical Aussie culture but was also different to that of Hong Kong, Taiwanese and Malaysian Chinese origin communities based here. It is a credit to the still dominant collective-type economic organisation in the PRC that it has brought up its young people to be so warm-hearted. I look forward to the time when the construction of a socialist society in Australia will generate such social norms here and enable people in this island to interact with the warmth that held together Aboriginal communities prior to colonial invasion.

Of course, just because the PRC students are very well mannered it does not mean that they are not tough when they need to be. I first witnessed that when I first saw the pro-PRC students encounter a significant clot of the anti-communist, so-called "Save Tibet" crowd. The Chinese students gave these anti-PRC people a well-deserved, verbal barraging. The feeling between the two sides was very heated as you would expect given the unbridgeable nature of the political differences. As the anti-communists marched past carrying pictures of the Dalai Lama and placards claiming to stand for "Free Tibet," some Chinese students flanked this anti-China march with big red PRC flags. They wanted to make their point clear.

From the determination of the PRC students, you felt that they were trying to stand on some of the traditions of the heroic Long March and of the 1949 anti-capitalist revolution. Those struggles are still dearly held in memory by the Chinese masses. And the selflessness and solidarity of those struggles are being honoured today too in the way that the Chinese masses and communists have responded to the catastrophic Sichuan Province earthquake. The way the Peoples Liberation Army's troops have risked their lives to heroically rescue hundreds of thousands of people from the rubble; the way that activists from far flung parts of the country formed volunteer rescue brigades; in the manner that students across the PRC have humbly queued for hours at blood banks to donate their blood.

How about the opposing side? Well, when I first encountered the anti-PRC demonstrators several things struck me. One was how few Tibetans there were in the "Free Tibet" movement - it was a mostly white crowd. Many of the anti-communists were carrying banners of the Greens or Amnesty International. The pro-PRC demonstrators yelled out to them: "Find out the real facts before you comment! You don't know anything about Tibet! You don't know anything about China!" That was, of course, spot on. But ignorance was not the only problem here. While uninformed, small l-liberal elements numerically made up the bulk of the anti-PRC lot, behind them stand some very well-informed, big C Capitalists and Conservatives. It is worth noting here that much of the recent spate of anti-China activities was coordinated by an "International Tibet Support Groups Conference" held in Brussels on May 11-14 last year. That conference was organised by the Friedrich Naumann Foundation, a group largely financed by the German government. The conference decided to make the Olympics the focus of their action plan. Among those attending the conference was the Undersecretary of State in the U.S. State Department, Paula Dobriansky, who is also a well-known Neocon.

There were to be sure some Asian people amongst the anti-PRC crowd at the torch relay. These were those elements connected to the overthrown landlord, feudal and capitalist classes in China, Tibet and Vietnam who still rage with hatred at the social revolutions that ejected them from power there. So, standing alongside the Greens and Amnesty types in Canberra were right-wing "Free China" groups like Falun Gong. I later also saw news footage of the anti-PRC people burning the hammer and sickle flag of the Communist Party of China.

There were a very small number of Tibetan people at the anti-China demonstration. There were some people dressed in priest (monk) clothing and some people wearing T-shirts of the Tibetan Youth Congress (TYC.) The TYC is a hard line anti-communist group long backed by Western intelligence organisations.

When the anti-PRC crowd marched past the pro-PRC supporters, one of these TYC people, seeing that I was a non-Chinese person supporting the PRC, double backed from his march and aggressively approached me demanding to know why I was supporting China. A heated exchange followed. The PRC students nearby told the TYC guy to go away. But then intervening into the argument was another type of person, a type I had expected to see more of in Canberra. This person, a Chinese man dressed in a smart suit, was kind of against the campaign against the Beijing Olympics but was definitely not sympathetic to the Peoples Republic of China. When I responded to the TYC guy, the well-dressed Chinese man said "No," there are many human rights abuses in China but we should not be attacking China with the Olympics and should support the Beijing Games. He also did not like it when I attacked the injustices in capitalist Australia. This anti-PRC guy definitely had a different purpose to the pro-Red China students. I noticed, for example, that while he was carrying a sizeable Australian flag he was not holding the red PRC flag at all. If he truly were in some way against the attacks on the Beijing Olympics it would be only for Chinese nationalist reasons. He was not at all pro-communist, likely quite the opposite. Such elements like him would hope that by making support for the Beijing Olympics rest in part on international support from anti-communist Chinese, they could make the Chinese government yield to their political agenda. They could, for example, bid for Beijing to allow further penetration of the mainland's economy by overseas Chinese capitalists or lobby for greater political operating space for bourgeois groups in China. Furthermore, anti-PRC exile forces may simply feel it necessary to be part of the pro-China movement to try and ensure that the burgeoning sentiment for actively defending China within overseas Chinese communities does not lead to greater support for communism.

I am sure that this anti-PRC but pro-Beijing Olympics guy was from a group like the Kuomintang. At other times he might be standing shoulder to shoulder with the other "Free China" anti-communist forces that had converged in Canberra. I had expected to see more of this type of person at the torch relay because I had read reports from the mainstream papers that in the U.S., some anti-PRC Chinese groups had also come out against the China-bashing over the Olympics. But fortunately this was the one encounter I had in the whole day with someone who was there ostensibly supporting the Beijing Olympics while being against the Red in Red China. I am sure that there were more such people there but they were not that visible. It was pro-Red China forces who were in the ascendancy on April 24.

Everyone was now moving North across the river to meet the torch on its return back down Northbourne Avenue. As I headed North too I saw heaps of cars with the red five star flags sticking out. It was an incredible sight - something that has surely not been seen in Australia's capital before.

I headed to an intersection towards the southern end of Northbourne Avenue where there was a big crowd gathered. Almost everywhere you looked the pro-PRC demonstrators heavily outnumbered the anti-communist crowd. The next day the mainstream media variously reported that the pro-China protesters outnumbered the "Free Tibet" forces by 5 to 1 or 10 to 1. But it seemed to be much more like 30 to 1.

Soon the chanting from the opposing sides was getting more and more boisterous. The atmosphere was close to ignition point. Anti-PRC types tried to jostle their way to be closest to the torch's path. They wanted to be in prime photo-op position knowing that the anti-PRC media were yearning for any anti-China stunt to publicise. But the anti-communists were hopelessly outnumbered. The students bearing the red, pro-communist flags outmanuoevred the "Free Tibet" types and successfully occupied the region closest to the torch path. An irate anti-communist, a tall white hippy-looking guy started bouncing into the PRC students. But they stood very firm. "How much are you being paid by Western governments," they asked rhetorically.

As isolated clots of anti-PRC protesters shouted out anti-China slogans they were thoroughly drowned out by the Red students. One Chinese student jibed: "Why are there no Tibetans here protesting against China [which was true of the part of the crowd that we were in], only Greens? All the Tibetans in China support China." The pro-PRC demonstrators sure did make some effective responses. To ignorant cries of "Human rights for Tibet" by the anti-communists, some pro-PRC students retorted, "What about human rights in Australia? What about what happened to the Indian doctor, Dr Haneef?" I joined in with the other pro-PRC demonstrators and tried to emphasise the difference in the class character between the Western countries and Red China: "It is not China's Peoples Liberation Army that is massacring the people of Iraq and Afghanistan? It is the Western capitalists' armies that are doing this." "Who is torturing people in Guantanamo Bay? Who is torturing people in Abu Ghraib?" "Which country's police bash black people to death in custody?" When some so-called "Free Tibet" protesters shouted "Save Tibet", I responded "Save Tibet from the Dalai Lama." "Just because capitalist Australia has a monarch as head of state you don't have to reimpose a monarchy on the Tibetan people." "No return to slavery and feudalism." I pointed out to some anti-PRC types that the pro-PRC regional government of the Tibetan Autonomous Region is mostly made up of ethnic Tibetan liberated slaves and serfs.

By this time the anti-PRC types were absolutely howling at me. The pro-PRC demonstrators meanwhile were cheering. And they felt encouraged to go on the offensive. "What about Australian police killing Aboriginal people," they queried the anti-China protesters. Now the anti-Beijing people were on the back foot. Look, we are concerned about human rights issues in Australia too, they pleaded. This was disingenuous. Most of these soft l-liberals and certainly most of the Greens party do not bother to organise themselves to participate in demonstrations against racist cop brutality in Australia. And supporting the Western capitalist rulers' propaganda offensive against communist-leaning China can only harm the struggle against exploitation and oppression in Australia. If the Western capitalists succeed in their project for China - and that project is to disintegrate the current PRC working class state and create a state there unquestionably loyal to capitalism - then they will be emboldened to be even more arrogant towards the working class and downtrodden in their own countries.

The claims of some "Free Tibet" protesters that they were also concerned about problems in this country were shown to be fake when they started saying to the PRC students: "You're lucky that you're in a free country here." But the PRC students were in no mood to be patronised. When one of the arrogant anti-communists jibed that Australia is a country that "guarantees peoples rights," a student carrying the red flag demolished the argument by responding that, "Australia just takes away the rights of peoples in other countries. What about what its doing in Iraq?" Then another student undercut the "free country" claims with the reminder that this is "stolen Aboriginal land."

Perhaps the comment that most infuriated pro-PRC protesters was when the anti-communists started yelling out "we want not only Tibet to be free but China to be free." Almost simultaneously the mainland Chinese students turned around and yelled back "we are free in China." I noticed that the women students were in the lead of this unrehearsed chorus: "We feel free in China, what are you talking about!"

Sometime around then was when I noticed one younger "Free Tibet, Free China" demonstrator on the verge of tears. But these were not tears of being physically bullied by red flag waving students as the Australian media later made out. No, it was the tears of being politically defeated. Of being, for starters, massively outnumbered by the reds. But also of having one's world view turned upside down. The anti-communist side had been willingly brain-washed by the capitalist media into thinking that almost everyone in China was yearning to be "freed" from "communist dictatorship" and craving for Western-style "liberal democracy." But when the anti-PRC "activists" came to Canberra these anti-communists were instead told by tens of thousands of young Chinese people - people who by the way happened to have lived in both the PRC and Australia - that they love China the way it is. And the "Free China" forces were even being told by some of these young Chinese people that the Western rulers' claims to be "democratic" are fake.

Of course, some of the small l-liberal, middle-class form of anti-PRC demonstrators have been misled by the Western capitalist establishment. And the Western capitalist establishment sure have been out to mislead! For the capitalist ruling classes in the U.S., Australia, Britain, Germany etc, the existence of pro-communist rule in China, as imperfect as that socialism may be, is understood as a threat to their "rights" to exploit the world's peoples. Murdoch's The Weekend Australian (12-13 April) has featured an article by conservative commentator, Gerard Baker, that was unashamedly titled, "Olympics become part of the battlefield as liberalism struggles against its enemies." The article worries that "for the past few years democracy has been in global retreat. The tide has turned. The most significant defeat has been in China..." The right-winger was, however, greatly encouraged by the anti-PRC, "Free Tibet" protests around the world: "For some time, the modern wisdom that brought young protesters on to the streets of London, Paris and San Francisco has held the US and its ally Britain to be the root of all evil. So it's a quaint departure for those same crowds, albeit in a much smaller numbers, to protest loudly against the actions of men for whom tyranny is a chosen method of governing."

But middle-class anti-communists are not simply being misled by right-wing conservatives - they are being willingly misled. To understand why we have to take a step back and consider what the middle classes are. What are broadly referred to as the middle class, or in Marxist terms, the petit-bourgeois, is that intermediate layer of the population which sits between, on the one hand, the capitalist exploiters and on the other the workers whose labour is exploited by the capitalists. Suffering to different degrees from capitalist decay, many in the middle class can be won to a pro-working class (and that ultimately means pro-communist) stance. But to the degree that middle-class people (even "progressive" ones) do not unswervingly adhere to a pro-working class standpoint, middle-class individuals are shaped by their ambition to become part of the capitalist upper class or at least to become one of the upper class' well-paid functionaries. The mid-ranking public servant who wants to become a top ranking department boss or possibly even a member of parliament. The trendy small cafe partners who dream of soon owning a huge restaurant employing lots of (inevitably exploited) cooks and waiters. The "broad minded" young law student who yearns to one day be called "your worship" but dares not tell his peers about this fantasy for fear of losing his "broad-minded" image. For such middle-class people who are also progressive because they know the injustices of capitalism feel guilty about their yearning to be part of the exploiting elite. So they console themselves by saying that "communism does not work" and so it is OK to in the future be part of the upper class here "as long as I act fairly when I get there." Thus opposition to communism becomes essential for the middle-class "progressive" to soothe his or her conscience. And a big part of that equation means convincing oneself that there is nothing progressive about the state structure in the most populous nation in the world. After all, if one cannot hate Red China, then one has to accept that there is a viable alternative to capitalism and if one accepts that, how can one in good conscience try to be part of the ruling elite here? This explains why the small-l liberal middle-class foot soldier for anti-communism can sometimes appear more hysterical in his opposition to Red China than the capitalist figures who are orchestrating the anti-China campaign. For the latter, hostility to the PRC is simply part of enforcing his class interests, but for the former it is a matter of upholding his tainted self worth.

While the anti-Red China groups were smarting, the much greater numbers of pro-PRC supporters were in a different mood. They were buoyant, yet at the same time still very angry - angry at all the lies against China. Then suddenly, all the red flags closest to the barricades went up and then all the other red flags too. The Olympic Torch was passing. I briefly got a glimpse of it. But this was not by itself the main issue. Just like in a revolution the building of government is not in itself the main prize being fought over but just a symbol of the greater battle for supremacy that is taking place. There is nothing per se sacred about the Olympics itself, as high quality a sporting event and diverse a cultural exchange that it is. During the Sydney 2000 Olympics there should have been massive protests against racist inequality in Australia. And it could be a smart idea to use the attention given by the London 2012 Olympics to protest against British imperialism, for example its participation in the murderous invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan. But the protests against the PRC over Beijing 2008 were of a pro-imperialist character - they were helping the imperialist agenda to destroy the proletarian state in China. And that is the whole point! Even though China's socialism is presently a deformed and rather unfinished socialism, the struggle over the Beijing 2008 torch relay was in many ways the front line in the political struggle between capitalism and communism.

After the torch passed, some of the pro-PRC supporters started to head back South over the river. On the way a group of mainly white anti-PRC people including many Amnesty International placard bearers marched the other way through the pro-China crowd. Suddenly one guy in this anti-PRC group recognized one Chinese woman in the pro-PRC crowd. They greeted each other - they probably know each other from university or something. The pro-PRC woman then realized that the guy was on the other side and demanded to know "what are you doing?" He kind of apologetically replied to the effect of "we agree to disagree" and that he "loves the Chinese people." But the way he went to water, melting like butter in the face of the strong stand taken by one of his peers emphasized to me that the mass mobilizations by pro-PRC Chinese must have a broader effect on the wider community. After all, even though Australia's racism leads to considerable social segregation of different ethnic communities, the tens of thousands of pro-PRC students do have non-Chinese classmates, friends, fellow sports team members etc that they would talk to. Of course, the political effect of these students will be most important not so much on anti-communist liberals like the guy who went to water but on leftists who are already half-suspicious of the media China-bashing.

After crossing Lake Burley Griffin we sat in a park nearby. Several students involved in organizing the pro-PRC demonstration came up and introduced themselves to me. Notably, when I was subsequently passed up the leadership structure of the student-based groups, it was women who were at the apex. This reminded me of how much women have gained from the 1949 Chinese Revolution. Before 1949 most women in China were brutally oppressed like serfs under their fathers, husbands and in-laws. But since the revolutionary foundation of the Peoples Republic in 1949 women's position in China has made great strides forward. There is still a very long way to go. But many young women realize how much they have gained from the existence of the Peoples Republic and now they are in the front lines of campaigning to defend the PRC.

Sadly the time came when I had to step out of the warm, red glow of the pro-PRC rally and dive back into the coldness of capitalist Australian society. I was still in a jubilant mood but as I began driving home, I began to feel nauseous. For I had turned on the radio and tuned into the talkback show on (the aptly named) 666 ABC Canberra. They were piling on the slanders against pro-China demonstrators: violent, intimidating. The talk show host was herself the main handle holder in whipping up the anti-communist sentiment. And there was more than a whiff of "yellow peril" White Australia fears in the comments by anti-China callers. Racism and anti-communism feed off each other. That is the way it has always been, especially in Australia, and especially after the Chinese Revolution. In the next morning's papers, a comment quoted from an Amnesty International anti-PRC activist typified the "liberal" version of such xenophobic attitudes: "It's pretty insulting that Australians in their own country need riot police to protect them from foreign nationals." (The Australian, 25 April.)

Of course, most of the anti-PRC comments like the one above could not but admit that the pro-China protesters vastly outnumbered the anti-China forces. In accepting this, the ABC 666 broadcaster could not hide her bitterness. She tried to save face by trying to focus on the supposedly "magnificent job" done by Australian Federal Police (AFP) and Australian organizers in ensuring a successful Olympic event. The truth is that the AFP were rather hostile to the pro-PRC side. It is notable that of the seven people arrested on the day, five were pro-PRC demonstrators even though they were obviously not the ones trying to disrupt the torch relay. Perhaps more galling was what I saw featured in the TV news reports that night: on several occasions the AFP had shoved and publicly scolded the tracksuit wearing Chinese flame attendants who accompanied the torch. All week in the lead up to April 24 there had been a diplomatic stand-off with the Australian government rudely saying that the Chinese flame attendants would not be able to be too near the torch. But the AFP's piggish behaviour topped it off. In diplomatic terms, their actions were somewhat unprecedented for authorities in dealing with visiting representatives of a country with which this country is not at war with and ostensibly has "normal" official relations with. China is Australia's biggest trading partner and mineral purchases by Chinese state-owned enterprises are holding up this country's economy. But still China's official guests here were treated with the very same contempt that the AFP treats the non-white people of Asia-Pacific countries when the AFP operates in East Timor, The Solomon Islands, PNG etc.

The obvious reason why there was no disruption to the Olympic torch relay had little to do with what was claimed by the broadcaster. The true reason was that pro-PRC students had succeeded in mobilising a "people's army" to protect the torch. However, the ABC radio broadcaster sought to undercut this fact by carrying on with the familiar refrain that people [meaning pro-communist supporters] should be thankful they are in a "great country" like ours that allows them to freely express their views. Spare me, please! In this "free country" right now 13 young Muslim men in Melbourne are facing a racist, frame-up trial that could see them jailed for life on "anti-terrorism" charges simply because they were spied on by ASIO while engaging in some anti-Western loose talk. Meanwhile, recently, 91 building workers in Western Australia were fined $10,000 each for participating in a union strike two years ago. The prosecutions of the workers were pushed by the government's Gestapo-like Australian Building and Construction Commission (ABCC.) As a union solidarity rally in Sydney on April 9 noted: "Since the ABCC was set up in 2006, building industry workers have been under surveillance by a task force of more than 100 police, secretly interrogated, compelled to answer, compelled to keep interrogations secret, all under threats of gaol and fines." Meanwhile, Palm Island Aboriginal hero Lex Wotton is facing over ten years jail for alleged involvement in an anti-racist resistance struggle that responded to yet another racist police bashing to death of an Aboriginal man in custody. So the "liberties" in capitalist Australia only apply to some and definitely do not apply to the exploited and oppressed when they fight for their class' liberation.

So I was not impressed at what I was hearing on the radio. But the frown on my face did not last long. In fact soon, I was smirking. For it was obvious that all the pro-Western, anti-communist mouthpieces were bitter for only one reason: they had lost. Big time. And that was the short and the long of the matter. On April 24 in Canberra the pro-Red China forces rolled the anti-communists.

Although victory was sweet there were still things that worried me about the events. One was the conspicuous shortage of non-Chinese socialists coming out to defend the PRC. To be sure I did see on a few occasions some other South Asian looking people carrying the red, PRC flag, which made me very pleased. But there were not that many white Australians there overtly supporting the PRC. So much so that Chinese students seeing that I was supporting the PRC but of dark-skinned, obviously non-European origin, immediately assumed that I must not be an Australian resident.

The main reason for the lack of non-Chinese support for the pro-PRC rally is the political weakness of the Australian left. But there is another reason too. And that is the fact that the political line that the pro-China rally had been built on did not appeal to the class interests of the working class. It was not emphasised that defending the PRC was a matter of defending a working class state and therefore an issue that all supporters of the toilers around the world had a stake in. Rather the question was simply made one of defending China against unfair attacks and biased media coverage without alluding to why these attacks are occurring.

Of course the pro-PRC rally was still overall progressive. And despite attempts to build it on an above-politics, mushy basis, inevitably the clash between the pro-PRC and anti-PRC sides tends to strip down to the clash between communism and capitalism (or as the other side would phrase it "democracy"). But an indication of the unclear politics of the pro-PRC movement was the presence in the rally of some Union Jack, Australian flags. To be sure there were far, far fewer Australian flags than there were red, PRC flags. As one horrified anti-PRC caller to the radio show mentioned above put it: when I looked back across the river from the war memorial all I could see was red, there wasn't too much blue from Australian flags. Still, the presence of some Australian flags at the pro-China rally was an indication of the attempt by some section of the organisers to send a message that: look we are not against the social order in Australia, we are just against attacks on the Chinese one. But such a message necessarily turns off the type of non-Chinese people here who could be won to supporting the PRC; people - militant trade unionists, leftists, anti-colonial campaigners, Aboriginal activists - who would defend Red China precisely because it has a different social system to the one they hate that rules Australia. The Union Jack Australian flag is a symbol of Western imperialism and Australian capitalism. It is true that embattled immigrant communities here sometimes feel that they need to show "loyalty to Australia" to protect themselves from baiting by white supremacist forces. But the Union Jack Australian flag means Australian colonialism in the South Pacific, anti-communist terror against the people of Korea and Vietnam and union-busting at home. The flag is offensive to most Aboriginal people as it is the symbol under which the continuing systematic genocide and dispossession has occurred and more recently the flag has come to be associated with the disgusting white supremacist riot in Cronulla Beach in 2005.

As a TP representative I tried my best, in modest ways, to clarify the connection between the defence of the PRC and the class war of the working class and its allies against imperialism. When Chinese students, seeing which side I was on, came up to me and said to me, "you love China too," I would reply politely "I love the Peoples Republic, I love that China is in some ways a state of the working class people." When they asked rhetorically, "I don't know why the Western media is so biased against China," I would point out that the Western mainstream media are either owned by big tycoons or by capitalist governments; all of whom are determined to ensure that the masses in the West don't look favourably upon China's socialist-leaning system as a model. Of course, for many PRC students, especially no doubt for those who are in China's Communist Youth League, I was not saying anything particularly new, just confirming and reinforcing what they had, in part, no doubt already been thinking.

During one of the group photo shoots, I also had a chance to stress class-struggle politics. In this one particular photo session, unlike in all the other ones, one of the people posing was carrying an Australian flag as well as a PRC flag. So I patiently explained to the group of students why I did not want to be in a photo where someone was carrying the Union Jack Australian flag. The students then discussed among themselves in Chinese and one of the people asked for the Australian flag to be removed. This happened and we had our happy snap with just the red flags.

The main vehicle which TP had to bring socialist political consciousness into the movement was through our Open Letter of Solidarity. The Open Letter connected opposition to attempts to undermine the Chinese workers state with opposition to capitalist rule at home. Once word got out about the Open Letter, people were grabbing the statement like hot cakes - at times I could not move my hands fast enough to give them out. We had printed hundreds and hundreds of copies but still I ran out.

Whether the pro-PRC movement takes on an unambiguously pro-socialist character and whether the movement continues in the weeks leading up to the Olympics and beyond will depend largely on the level of political clarity of the intelligent and capable young Chinese students that are leading the movement. But it also depends on the stance taken by non-Chinese socialists. If Chinese youth see that the pro-PRC movement is not getting much campaigning support from non-Chinese leftists then that is hardly going to encourage them to frame the movement in a way that appeals to non-Chinese workers and anti-capitalist activists.

Unfortunately, throughout the whole day I did not see within the pro-PRC rally a single representative that I knew of any other Australian left tendency. To be sure, I think it is likely that a couple of groups would have been represented. The Communist Party of Australia through its newspaper The Guardian has a taken a strong stand against the China-bashing (although some of its articles, unlike others, have posed the question in a classless sort of way.) And a representative of the Australia-China Friendship Society had in solidarity addressed an earlier thousands strong pro-PRC rally in Melbourne.

What I did see were socialists ... on the other side of the fence - in the anti-communist rally! I was horrified. I was horrified even though I had expected this. I had expected it because I had read in the Canberra Times that Socialist Alliance was actively building the anti-China rally. By the way, normally when the Murdoch press refer to a group like Socialist Alliance it is only to redbait or violence bait them. But on this issue Socialist Alliance was getting favourable coverage as they were on the same side as the bourgeois press owners.

Yet, even though I was ready for it, when I saw signed Socialist Alliance and Resistance placards intermingled with the die-hard anti-communists it still saddened me. I have spoken to a few people in the DSP (the main component of Socialist Alliance) and feel that in subjective terms the individuals are genuine in their hatred of capitalism. However, here on the biggest question of all, they are standing squarely on the side of the capitalists. The DSP/Resistance has done earnest work in solidarity with the Cuban Revolution but now they were marching shoulder to shoulder with the Chinese, Tibetan and Vietnamese equivalents of the hardline anti-Havana Cuban exiles. What capitulation to the enemy's propaganda! Two years ago the DSP was heavily involved in a good campaign against machinations by anti-communist Vietnamese exiles to have the defunct flag of the overthrown U.S.-puppet Saigon regime used in an official capacity in the Fairfield locality of Western Sydney. Yet on April 24, the DSP were together with the Saigon flag-bearing Vietnamese right-wingers as they railed against Chinese communism.

While a lot of the Australian left had trouble figuring out which side the working class had in the battle over the Beijing 2008 lead-up, capitalist ideologues had no such trouble. The day after April 24, the bourgeois press were screaming about the pro-Beijing rally. Murdoch's flagship The Australian deployed the lying headline "Chinese students bully torch crowds" and declared that, "Yesterday, Beijing suppressed freedom of expression in the heart of our democracy." Murdoch's Sydney tabloid, The Daily Telegraph, for its part headlined "Seeing Red" and complained that the "mass demonstration by thousands of Chinese students" had "turned Canberra into a sea of red." Another article in the paper was dramatically titled "Chinese overrun Australian capital."

One hundred and sixty years ago, the famous Communist Manifesto began with the line: "A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism." Today the spectre of Communist Party-run China is haunting the world's imperialist rulers. This capitalist fear and loathing of the Chinese workers state does not stop just because the Beijing leadership runs a policy that (wrongly) attempts conciliation with capitalist forces, both outside and within China. It is just like how capitalist opposition to a trade union does not stop even if the union happens to be run by compromising leaders who would rather do lunch with the boss than call a strike. Sure, the capitalist boss much prefers if the union is led by a conciliatory leadership than by a class-struggle one. But in the end the union represents potential workers' collective power and the capitalists are opposed to any workers organisation that can restrict their ability to exploit unhindered. The more so if that organisation is a state power that encompasses one-fifth of the world's population!

Lurking within imperialism's fear of Red China is the capitalists' most primordial fear: the fear that the working classes in their own countries will organise to take power too. I am confident that the capitals of world capitalism will eventually be overrun by the united toiling classes. Just like how on April 24 in Canberra, the anti-communists were engulfed by a "sea of red." ♦

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