Against the Right-Wing,
Western-backed Protests
in Hong Kong
Socialistic PRC Should Extradite Even More Tycoons to Face Justice on the Mainland and Have Their Ill-Gotten Assets Nationalised!
10 June 2019 – Australia’s big business and government-owned media have been lionising the recent, often violent, right-wing protests in Hong Kong. They report that driving the protests are businessmen, shopkeepers, lawyers and university students. This is a protest pushed by large sections of Hong Kong’s capitalist class, the upper middle-class and younger wannabe capitalists. They fear that the socialistic state ruling mainland China will gradually undermine their privileged position (see also this letter by a comrade written some five years ago which dissected similar anti-communist protests at the time: https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/greetings-for-the-october-1-anniversary-of-chinas-great-1949-revolution/).
The groups opposed to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) within Hong Kong are not only being encouraged by the mainstream Western media but are being funded by the U.S. government’s National Endowment for Democracy (here the National Endowment for Democracy’s own website lists some of the anti-PRC programs that they openly fund in Hong Kong – one of which they deviously portray as being for workers rights – https://www.ned.org/region/asia/hong-kong-china-2018/ , however their covert funding is many times larger). They are also being filled with cash by Hong Kong’s own capitalist class and by capitalists in mainland China. A particular reason that capitalists are up in arms over Hong Kong’s proposed new extradition law – the object of yesterday’s protests – is that it will make it easier for the PRC to continue cracking down on mainland capitalists hiding out in Hong Kong. Although, unfortunately, the compromising Beijing leadership has allowed some people to become capitalist tycoons within China, the great thing is that the PRC often comes down hard upon these capitalists. While in Australia, the likes of James Packer, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forest are above the law, the biggest tycoons in China are often nabbed for corruption. Moreover, if their rate of exploitation has become excessive, especially in a way that puts the broader economy at risk, the PRC authorities sometimes bow to public pressure and crackdown on these hated corporate bigwigs. Sometimes they even laudably confiscate the assets of these billionaires and bring them into public ownership – i.e. carry out the socialist program.
The particular incident that is driving Hong Kong’s capitalist elite and upper-middle class yuppies to oppose the planned new extradition law is the kidnapping two years ago of greedy Chinese billionaire Xiao Jianhua from a Hong Kong hotel by PRC authorities. That is why many of those involved in yesterday’s anti-PRC protests were carrying signs like: “no kidnapping to China.” PRC authorities ended up taking Xiao Jianhua to the mainland for questioning and detention. Xiao is now awaiting trial for corrupt activities. The PRC workers state has also taken over a bank that he owned, Baoshang Bank – one of the rare privately-owned banks in China – and given it over to state-owned banks to run. In other words, the bank has been effectively nationalised. This is fantastic! For more details on this nationalisation and the bringing down of Xiao Jianhua and other greedy billionaires in Hong Kong by Red China see the following mainstream media articles:
https://www.ft.com/content/a9430b20-7e15-11e9-81d2-f785092ab560
https://sg.news.yahoo.com/financier-xiao-jianhua-shed-holdings-084259428.html
More Chinese capitalists hiding out in Hong Kong should be extradited and have their assets nationalised. Any real socialist would want this!
Moreover the PRC should abandon its deal with the British imperialists who stole Hong Kong in 1842. Britain seized Hong Kong after winning the Opium War against China. In winning that predatory war Britain’s capitalist rulers not only stole Hong Kong but won the “right” to turn half of China into drug addicts for the sake of their profits, the “right” to “concessions” granting them and other imperialist powers control of key parts of China and the right to control and plunder China’s markets. In the 1997 deal between China and Britain that finally returned Hong Kong to China, the PRC (wrongly) agreed to maintain Hong Kong’s capitalist system for at least 50 years. The deal meant “one country – two systems.” The PRC should renege on this deal – imperialist powers should have no right to dictate what system exists in any part of China or any other country for that matter. No more one country – two systems! It should be one country – one socialist system! That means that the assets of the Hong Kong capitalists should be confiscated and brought into public ownership. In particular, Hong Kong’s huge and vital port should be confiscated from notorious billionaire Li Ka-shing and his son, Victor Li. Li Ka-shing and Victor Li control Hutchison Port Holdings, which as well as owning Hong Kong’s ports also controls a port terminal at Sydney’s Port Botany, where they are notorious for union-busting attacks on workers jobs and working conditions (see: http://www.mua.org.au/mua_takes_hutchison_to_court_over_wharfie_sackings_hutch).
If the PRC puts Hong Kong’s capitalist bigwigs out of business, the social base for the right-wing anti-PRC movement will be greatly weakened. More importantly, nationalising the businesses owned by the Hong Kong tycoons will allow the wages and working conditions of workers in Hong Kong’s ports and service sectors to be greatly improved and will provide the resources to finally improve the atrocious living conditions of the hundreds of thousands of working-class Hong Kong residents either living in cage-like “homes” or tiny slum-like apartments. In other words a move to bring the socialistic system to Hong Kong would be popular amongst the working class and poor of Hong Kong. It would also illuminate – for all to see – the clear class question involved in the issue of support or opposition of PRC influence. It would become clearer to the working class masses of Hong Kong that their interests lie in being ever more closely a part of Red China. Moreover, a blow against the capitalists of Hong Kong would give confidence to those within the mainland seeking to preserve socialistic rule there. That struggle is a difficult and fraught struggle as the PRC workers state is facing aggressive pro-capitalist demands from Chinese private business owners, Western-backed “dissidents,” the imperialist rulers of Australia and the U.S. (the latter with its fervent demands during the trade disputes that China stop supporting the socialistic, state-owned enterprises that dominate her economy) and soft-on-capitalist elements within the Chinese leadership and bureaucracy itself.
Therefore anyone who supports working class people’s interests and socialism should support increased PRC influence in Hong Kong, should unequivocally oppose all anti-PRC movements there and should call for the PRC to bring Hong Kong’s economy under socialist, public ownership.
One of the Trotskyist Platform (TP) placards at the 17th August 2019 demonstration where over 3,000 people marched through the streets of Sydney in opposition to the pro-colonial rioters in Hong Kong who have been seeking to undermine the region’s incorporation into the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The march was several times larger than even the biggest of the rallies held in Sydney supporting the right-wing, pro-colonial opposition in Hong Kong. This is despite those anti-PRC actions in Australia being massively supported and built up by the entire capitalist media.
Nearly all those participating in the 17th August march were international students from China or people from the local Chinese community. However, a multi-racial group of TP supporters also joined the pro-Red China march. As well as standing in solidarity with the action, our contingent opposed the Australian ruling class’ escalating Cold War repression of supporters of socialistic China as well as other socialistic states (such as the brave pro-North Korea political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi) and emphasised that defending the PRC workers state is in the very interests of the working class and oppressed of this country. We also distributed a leaflet at the demonstration that not only opposed the anti-communist opposition in Hong Kong but called for socialistic rule to be brought to Hong Kong so that all of China can be in one country under one socialistic system.