25 March 2008

to: Consulates of The Peoples Republic of China in Australia
cc: Leftist And Working Class Organisations; Media

Dear Sisters and Brothers,

Trotskyist Platform (TP), a pro-socialist group in Australia, extends its solidarity with the staff of the Australian consulates of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Staff have had to endure repeated abuse and threats from anti-communist forces gathered around consular buildings. This includes harassment from the right-wing, Washington-backed Falun Gong group. Most recently, anti-PRC forces in Australia have seized on events in Tibet. The weekend before last, the Chinese consulate in Melbourne was attacked with eggs and a man entering the compound had his car battered with flagpoles.

TP opposes the reactionary violence committed by the right-wing monks and other Washington-backed forces in the Tibetan Autonomous Region earlier this month. They, without provocation, rampaged through the streets of Lhasa, burning and hacking to death 18 civilians. Although clothing themselves in the dress of "separatism," the Dalai Lama incited forces are not mainly interested in "Tibetan independence" for its own sake. Their ultimate goal is to reverse the profound egalitarian changes that have taken place in Tibet since the overturn of capitalist rule throughout China from 1949; and especially since the former Lama rulers' CIA-directed uprising was defeated in 1959. The actions of the Dalai backed forces were notably targeted against working people. Among those burned or hacked to death by the mobs were two employees at a hotel and five female sales assistants at a shop. The anti-PRC thugs cannot stand the fact that in the Tibet Autonomous Region, employees are paid more than that of other wage-earners in the PRC and enjoy decent public medical care. They think that such privileges should only be for monks as in the old Lama-ruled Tibet.

The Dalai clique's supporters are dominated by unrepentant elements with links to the former feudal elite. The type that is furious that the Tibetan masses no longer treat him as a servant does a master. Who is upset that he is not able to terrorise herdsmen with devil superstitions as his forebears once did. Who longs for the days (that he has heard about) when the majority of Tibet's people worked as slaves or serfs or for his landowning priest class.

Like many forces who have aimed to recreate systems of exploitation, the so-called "Free Tibet" forces appeal to extreme nationalism. As well as attacking people who are also ethnic Tibetan, the mobs this month targeted people who are small minorities in the Tibetan Autonomous Region - not only ethnic Han Chinese but also people from the Hui Muslim minority. The anti-PRC forces set fire to the Grand Mosque of Tibet in addition to torching shops and schools. Their actions last week can be thought of as something that resembles a mix between the counterrevolutionary violence committed by anti-communist Cubans in the Havana waterfront in August 1994 and the December 2005 mob attack against non-white people by white supremacists at Sydney's Cronulla Beach.

The anti-communist Dalai forces are walking a well-worn path. Nationalism was a main weapon used by the forces of counterrevolution to destroy the former USSR and East European workers states during the 1989-1992 period. This included both the arrogant nationalism of capitalist restorationists from majority ethnic communities (like the Russians in the USSR and the Serbs in Yugoslavia) and the bogus "separatism" used by anti-communists based in minority nationalities.

Of course separatism is not per se reactionary. Far from it. Lenin always insisted on the right to national self-determination and that policy was key to the Bolsheviks being able to unite toilers from diverse backgrounds in the struggle to make the October 1917 Revolution. Today, many oppressed nationalities have genuine claims for self-determination, not least in India which is ironically where the Dalai clique bases its operations. But in the cases of Tibet and Taiwan, separatism is just used as an excuse for hostility to the proletarian state in China. The line of Dalai Lama god-kings were all happy to accept the backing of Chinese rulers ... until those rulers became communist!

There cannot be any "self-determination" of the Tibetan people if the former pre-revolutionary social order is restored. Under the rule of the Dalai Lama and his fellow landowners, the life of the Tibetan working person was not "self determined" but that of a serf or slave crushed in every aspect of his life. A herdsman would have his noses and ears cut off or his eyes gouged out if he dared to try and reduce the share of his produce taken by his lord. One who would have to hand over his wife to his master or risk having his hands broken off. He, and even more so she, were for the most part excluded from the means to participate in the best of culture. And if their luck ran out they would have their child taken by the monastery sometimes to openly be sex slaves for monks. Those children taken often went through the type of hell that Catholic priests and others put Aboriginal children from the Stolen Generation through here.

Since the overturn of the tyranny of the landlord/clergy rulers in Tibet, the proud Tibetan masses in alliance with their Chinese proletarian sisters and brothers have made enormous achievements. Through free education and literacy programs, the majority of Tibetan people are now able to read and write in their own language.

There were to be sure some setbacks during the Cultural Revolution period due to certain impatient policies. But today Tibet is administered by a Tibetan-dominated regional government and Tibetan (and other ethnic minority groups) are more and more highly represented in the PRC central government. In the last few years, the PRC's accelerating transfer of resources to Tibet for infrastructure, cultural, welfare and environmental protection projects, financed through higher taxation of wealthy people in richer parts of China, has helped to further enrich the lives of masses in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. It is notable that average life expectancy in Tibet has more than doubled to some 68 years since the time of liberation. This contrasts with racist capitalist Australia where racist discrimination is so intense that the average life expectancy for Aboriginal people is 59 years - nine years lower than in the Tibetan region of the PRC. This comparison is even more striking when one considers that Australia is an extremely resource rich country per head of population whereas per capita the PRC is resource poor.

Given the social gains that the Tibetan masses have made, you would expect that after a few generations following the overturn of the old order, those linked to the former exploiting class would simply resign themselves to the inevitability of the new fairer society and even begin to enthusiastically support it. But because the political descendants of the former elite see the active support of the powerful Western imperialists, some cling to dreams of restoring the old order.

It is absolutely clear that the rulers of the imperialist countries have been inciting the counterrevolutionary forces in Tibet. On October 17, the U.S. president George Bush and the U.S. Congress awarded the Dalai Lama the U.S.'s highest civilian honour: a Congressional Gold Medal. Leader after leader of U.S. imperialism - i.e. the people responsible for killing hundreds of thousands of Iraqi people and for secret torture prisons around the world - rushed to heap praise on the former feudal ruler of Tibet. George Bush stated: "I admire the Dalai Lama a lot." Indeed people on the same side of the fence do admire each other a lot! Earlier last year, both then Australian prime minister John Howard and current Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd made a point of meeting with the Dalai Lama during his visit to Australia. The leaders of Australian imperialism would not meet a non-government leader who stands for the interests of the oppressed. But such a leader is not what the Dalai Lama is - he wants to restore the rule of a brutal former exploiting class!

When the anti-PRC forces made their move in the last two weeks it is undoubted that they had the prior financial and technical backing of Western capitalist intelligence agencies. And as soon as the Dalai forces rampaged in Lhasa, Western political leaders from Condoleeza Rice to British PM Gordon Brown endorsed them. Meanwhile, those "objective" mouthpieces of imperialism, the Voice of America, CNN, BBC, the Murdoch and Fairfax owned papers here and others have been endlessly beaming in false claims about events in the Tibetan Autonomous Region. In a classic example, German newspaper Berliner Morgenpost published a photograph of PRC police helping along a young man and adorned it with the caption "insurrectionist taken away by police" when actually the man was a Han-Chinese person being rescued after being injured in the pro-Dalai Lama mob attacks. Some Western media websites meanwhile used pictures of baton-wielding Nepalese police in clashes with Tibetan protesters in Kathmandu and made out that the officers were Chinese police.

A lot of the activities of the anti-communist forces have been coordinated by Radio Free Asia broadcasts. Radio Free Asia operates under the U.S. government's Broadcasting Board of Governors (BBG) authority. BBG also runs Radio Marti, the notorious station that beams into Cuba incitements against the Cuban Revolution. In recent days, Radio Free Asia actually specially expanded its Tibetan language program hours to increase support for the right-wing monks.

Of course in all this the Canberra government and the Liberal/National opposition were right behind their U.S. and British allies. Most cynically, Australian foreign minister Stephen Smith called on China to allow "peaceful expression of dissent." This after the right-wing so-called "peaceful dissenters" had been rampaging around burning and hacking innocent people to death!

The capitalist ruling classes in the U.S., Britain, Germany, Australia etc have no interest in the well being of the Tibetan masses. They are using the Tibet issue to put pressure on the PRC. Their aim is to weaken the PRC workers state, so that they will be able to bring back capitalism to all of China. They want to return China to its pre-1949 neocolony status where Western "multinational" companies were unhindered in exploiting Chinese labour. Using the "Human Rights" stick to beat the PRC is one part of their strategy. Another part is to harass the PRC with military pressure. The U.S., Japan and Australia have a tripartite military axis that is aimed against the PRC and North Korea.

It is not only the Western and Japanese capitalists that seek to undermine the PRC workers state. So too do overseas Chinese capitalists. Alongside them stand that section of the descendants of the overthrown Chinese landlords and capitalists who want to lord over the Chinese masses like their ancestors did before 1949. These forces include the rulers of Taiwan and components of the capitalist elite in Southeast Asian countries. Others are active in anti-communist groups in the West like Falun Gong, Federation of Democratic China and "Free China", groups which not surprisingly champion the so-called "Free Tibet" agenda. But against them stand many overseas Chinese working people who know how much has been achieved in China since the 1949 Revolution.

With the Olympic Games in Beijing nearing, imperialist politicians and anti-communist Chinese see a chance to put further right-wing pressure on the PRC. They seek to use the prospect of an embarrassing and disruptive boycott to try and hold the PRC to ransom. On the one hand, the Western capitalist rulers encourage forces calling for an Olympics boycott. On the other, they sometimes say they do not actually want a boycott themselves while they use the implicit threat of switching to an openly pro-boycott position to wrench more concessions out of Beijing. Washington, London and co. want the PRC to allow "more rights" for the openly capitalist restorationist groups that they back. They constantly demand that the PRC accede to capitalist penetration of its financial system and privatisation of its state-owned banks. And they are trying to pressure the Chinese Communist Party government to make sure that its next generation of leaders are more acceptable to Western imperialism.

The threats to sabotage Beijing 2008 are not exclusively about putting counterrevolutionary pressure on China. They are also aimed at trying to obscure from the working class masses in the rest of the world the successes made by socialist construction in China. The PRC to be sure has a far from perfectly socialist system. But the fact that a proletarian state has lifted the majority of people in the world's largest country out of dire poverty is living refutation of the capitalist lie that "communism does not work." The Western imperialists are afraid that their own populations will see this during the Beijing Olympics. They are afraid that the toilers in their own countries will question why the Western economies are headed towards recession while in China, a country which only 58 years ago had been an impoverished neocolony of Western powers, the economy continues to power forward. Why in their countries the banks are repossessing working people's mortgaged homes while in the PRC they are devoting more resources to low rent public housing. Why education for their children gets more and more expensive while in the PRC they are moving more and more towards free public education and all students in the first nine years of schooling are from this year getting not only free tuition but free school uniforms and stationery.

The Western capitalist rulers know that their "own" masses are outraged that they have invaded Iraq and Afghanistan to control oil supplies. But they don't want these working class people in their own countries to also note, by contrast, that the biggest country in the world does not engage in sending in its army to grab the resources of oil-rich Middle Eastern countries. Similarly, the imperialist rulers are aware that egalitarian-minded people in their own countries are angry that their governments and institutions rape "Third World" nations and then offer token "aid" on the condition that these developing countries cut public services for the poor. What they fear is that in the period of the Olympics, these class-conscious masses may also become knowledgeable that Red China by contrast, while still not rich itself, actually grants aid to developing countries with no economic strings attached. And that the PRC is thereby actually helping to free "Third World" countries, like Angola, from the imperialist bullying of the IMF.

By contrast to the governments of the Western imperialist countries and Japan, several "Third World" nations, especially many African and Middle Eastern countries, have responded to recent events in Tibet by condemning the Dalai forces. And the Cuban government has shown socialist solidarity with its PRC counterparts. A statement by the Cuban government said of the disturbances in the Tibetan Autonomous Region that "it is evident that these disturbances have been prepared and promoted from abroad." The communique stressed that Cuba "expresses its recognition and total support to the efforts made by the Peoples Republic of China to guarantee success of the 2008 Olympic Games." The statement also condemned the aggressions against Chinese consulates and embassies in 16 countries.

While it is clear that the unrest in the Tibetan Autonomous Region was churned up by imperialism and fed by a doomed class of former exploiters both within and outside the country, it is also true that counterrevolutionary forces were able to play on real worries. These concerns are in many ways inevitable because Tibet, and the whole of China, is still locked in a difficult transition from an impoverished oppressive society to socialism. But problems are magnified by the inequalities caused by China's post-1978 market reforms. In some ways, high-level monks are beneficiaries of such inequalities because many of them lead a better life than other Tibetans but this has only spurred some of them on to seek to restore all their former ill-gotten privilege. Even though life has overall been rapidly improving for the Tibetan and other Chinese masses, inequalities and the degree of private competition that has been allowed into the PRC creates tensions. Anger that there are things in the shops that only some can afford. People's anger that their lives are still hard while some are making unearned yuan through speculation on the stock market. Anxieties that one's livelihood or income could fall victim to fluctuations in the market and competition from other producers. And such anxieties can break down ethnic solidarity especially when there are people of different ethnic groups competing in the market.

The warning sign must be heeded. The following measures are indicated throughout the PRC:

The government's recently stepped up price controls on basic items must be maintained to ensure that necessities are affordable to the poor. Demands by pro-market ideologues to "free" prices must be resisted.

Other policies to redistribute income to the poor must be unswervingly implemented. These include China's new pro-worker Labour Contract Law (which in many ways is the opposite of John Howard's 'Workchoices') and the recent big increases in welfare, public health and education spending funded through higher taxation of the rich.

Closely related to the above two points is the need to stop greedy private entrepreneurs from pushing their class interests at the expense of the masses. For example, at this month's meeting of China's top political advisory body, tycoon and committee member, Zhang Yin, advocated several pro-rich proposals including the watering down of the Labour Contract Law and the cutting of the tax rate for very high income earners. Such forces are more and more cheekily - encouraged by the Western finance media and by Chinese liberal intellectuals - demanding a greater say in politics under the guise of "democracy" and "equal rights to participate of all social strata." This must be unwaveringly resisted! As long as the world is dominated by rich capitalist powers and China itself has not yet reached socialism, any formal "equal political rights for all social strata" in China would inevitably allow a rich private boss to have much more political influence than an average worker. That is why the class bias towards workers in the Chinese political structure must be strengthened and intruding capitalist elements like Zhang Yin must be squeezed out of parliaments and advisory bodies. The Chinese workers and their allies must be mobilized to actively defend and participate in the administration of their state power.

The PRC's dominant state-owned enterprises should be more closely controlled by the working people's state to ensure that they better serve overall social goals including full employment, environmental protection, development of poorer areas and improved working conditions. State-enterprise executives who are pushing for their firms to operate more according to "market principles," i.e. a pure profit motive, must be brought firmly into line. Often pressure on these executives to be more profit-obsessed comes from minority capitalist shareholders who are just interested in making big yuan. That is why sell offs to private holders of minority stakes in state-owned enterprises must be reversed. No partial privatisation of the Agricultural Bank of China and the China Development Bank!

The part of the PRC government's plan to reduce unemployment through increasing the size of the public services workforce should be fully implemented. On the other hand, the other proposal to cut unemployment by encouraging jobless people to start their own business should be, in general, rejected. For if this was to happen on a big scale not only would it lead to inefficient use of resources but the competition between fledgling small producers could fuel ethnic tensions in certain regions.

Internationalism must be urgently promoted. Han Chinese chauvinism against non-Han people goes back a long time. Of course the 1949 Revolution struck a massive blow against this and the Communist Party of China has in recent years again stepped up efforts to punish government officials who show disrespect towards minority peoples. But to the extent that socialist transformation is far from complete in China and to the extent that "reform and opening up" policies have allowed some partial re-penetration of capitalism, Han chauvinism can seep out at every level. Furthermore, to maintain national unity in the face of the tensions caused by market reforms, the Chinese government has more and more appealed to pride in ancient Chinese prowess and has even partially rehabilitated Confucius. This can be offensive to ethnic minority peoples since in pre-revolutionary China non-Han people (as well as of course Han workers and peasants) were oppressed. And Confucianism meant not only the brutal subjugation of women, children and tenant farmers but the arrogance of the Han bureaucrat towards minority peoples. The unity of the PRC will only be maintained by reinforcing the pride of its toilers in the proletarian character of the state. There must be a return to the glorious internationalism that drove the Communist Party of China when it was first formed in 1921.

All emphasis should be placed on the progressive social transformation that has taken place in Tibet over the last half a century. When PRC media and politicians speak about the Tibet issue they do indeed sometimes rightly speak about this overthrow of feudalism. But they also mix this in with assertions about how Tibet has always been part of China. While in a historical sense this may be true this is not at all the point. Until capitalist/landlord domination of China was overturned in 1949 there was nothing per se progressive about Tibet being under the wing of China. Any talk about the historical justice of China's claim to Tibet, without reference to the question of social system, plays into the hands of the Dalai clique. It allows them to false portray disturbances as one of Tibetan versus Chinese. In reality the current clashes in Tibet are a manifestation of the class war: one between on the one hand, a cruelly oppressive, defunct class and its imperialist backers and on the other the Tibetan masses and the PRC workers state. The clearer this is made to working class people around the world, the more they will start to support the heroic anti-feudal advances made by the Tibetan masses and the PRC in the Autonomous Region.

The PRC has a foreign policy of seeking coexistence with the capitalist world based on "mutual non-interference in the internal affairs of each others countries." But this is not what is happening. While the PRC almost wholly refrains from "interfering in the internal affairs" of capitalist countries, the rulers of these countries are doing their best to interfere in China in order to promote anti-communist counterrevolution. The recent Western backing for the Dalai forces actions in Tibet is yet more proof of this. Workers states and capitalist states cannot in the long run coexist because systems based on collective and capitalist property are mutually hostile. As recent events have shown, even the approximately 1.5 trillion dollars debt that the West owes the PRC cannot change this dynamic! Nor can the fact that capitalist Australia's economy is being propped up by massive purchases, at inflated prices, of coal, gas, iron ore and other metals by socialistic, PRC state-owned firms.

The PRC workers state in the end can only be maintained and the transition to socialism can only be completed if the working class in the rest of the world triumphs in overturning capitalist rule there. PRC foreign policy should help to assist this process. A step in the right direction is the recently issued Human Rights Record of the United States in 2007 by the PRC government. The report helps those standing against imperialism by excellently detailing the oppression of the poor in the U.S., by outlining the vicious racist discrimination in that country and by exposing the extent to which "democratic elections" are shaped by those with money to finance campaigns. But in general the strong stand taken in this report is not consistently there. Indeed the most importance criticism over "Human Rights" that can be made of the PRC government is that it does not to do enough to help the struggle for rights of the working class and oppressed in the capitalist world.

Sister and brother Chinese workers, although your triumph over capitalism is still far from complete and not even assured, you have made big strides towards your liberation through the 1949 overturn. But here in the capitalist world we are still suffering! Take for example in India, a country that in 1949 was in a similar position to China. There, despite brave protests for justice by its worker and peasant masses, capitalist rule means that the female literacy rate is only half that of the PRC's, while it has over four times as many people under five who are malnourished. Even in the rich imperialist countries life is getting hard for the masses. While corporate profits surged here from the mining boom, workers are under intensely greater stress at work and have to endure deteriorating public services. Meanwhile racist persecution of Aboriginal people intensifies. Over 500 black people have "died" in state custody here in the last 25 years, many simply killed by racist police or guards. To put that in perspective, Australia has 65 times less people than China. If Australia had the same population as China this would be equivalent to over 32,000 black deaths in custody. To put it in even clearer perspective we must however also note that the indigenous population here forms just 2.4 % of the overall population. In proportionate terms therefore the number of deaths in custody of black people here would be equivalent to a death toll of over 1.3 million people in China!

Of course the need for the PRC to politically support struggles for justice within the capitalist world is not just a matter of moral compulsion. If capitalist rule is not ultimately defeated in the richest countries in the world in the long run it will succeed in undermining the conquests of the Chinese Revolution. That is why the PRC must politically support class struggles and strikes by workers in the West, must more strongly stand against the invasion of Iraq, needs to oppose imperialist intervention in Afghanistan, should further enhance its already important solidarity work with Cuba and should once again defend North Korea's right to acquire all means to defend itself from imperialist threats.

Of course it is cheap for leftists in the West to do nothing but advise on what policies the PRC should follow. But instead the main focus of socialists work in Australia with respect to China should be to oppose attempts from here to undermine the Chinese workers state. That means to oppose the Australian-supported, U.S. Anti-Missile Defence program that targets the PRC, to stand against imperialist demands on China to privatize its core state-owned enterprises and to politically expose counterrevolutionary "free China" forces. Trotskyist Platform vows to do all we can to help build united front actions with other genuine pro-communist and pro-working class forces to further this work and to resist imperialist efforts to use the threat of Olympics sabotage to impose right-wing pressure on the PRC.

We know that currently some workers in the West are sucked in by anti-PRC, anti-communist propaganda. But we also know that the masses in the capitalist world are angry at the exploitation and warmongering of the very same ruling elite that spit out this propaganda. From the big public sector workers strikes in France last year to anti-privatisation rallies in NSW to the impending May 1 stopwork action by West Coast U.S. dock workers in protest against the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions, there is much evidence of this pent up anger. Socialists in the West must connect these urgent struggles with the fight for workers rule and with the fight to preserve the rule that working people have already acquired elsewhere, in China, Cuba etc.

Long live the gains of the 1949 anti-capitalist revolution in China! Long live the Tibetan masses emancipation from the Dalai Lama's serfdom and slavery! Long live the struggle for the glorious goal of communism!

Fraternally,

Sarah Fitzenmeyer

for Trotskyist Platform

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