February 2008: During last September’s APEC summit, thousands of anti-war youth and leftists participated in demonstrations. The actions centred on opposition to the invasion of Iraq and, to a much lesser extent, Afghanistan. The protesters were a diverse bunch but many saw themselves as anti-capitalist. But while these actions were occurring there were also other rallies taking place in Sydney with a quite different purpose. Right-wing forces had seized on the APEC visits of the leaders of China and Vietnam to hold a series of anti-communist events.

These anti-communist actions mainly consisted of people from the right-wing portions of the Chinese and Vietnamese communities. They held a rally at Sydney’s Belmore Park on September 8 around the same time that the anti-war APEC protest was marching from Town Hall to Hyde Park. The main Vietnamese group involved is called the Vietnamese Community of Australia. This organisation is dominated by those who were directly involved in, or supported, the blood-soaked former U.S. puppet regime of South Vietnam and who fled when the Vietnamese masses liberated the country from imperialism and capitalism. They long to reverse the result of the Vietnamese Revolution and campaign here in Australia to have the defunct flag of the former South Vietnamese regime flown at official events. Similarly, the Chinese groups involved in the anti-communist actions represent the interests of those descendants of the pre-1949 Chinese exploiting classes that still want to be able to rule China like their ancestors once did. Also central to the whole project are privileged elements within the Chinese community that have ties to the big business ruling elites in the likes of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. These forces know that, while Beijing has allowed capitalism to make significant inroads into China, capitalists do not have a free hand there as they are constrained by a workers state that is based on the still existing communal ownership of the majority of China’s key industries, banks, infrastructure and land.

The Chinese political groups that have been orchestrating the local campaign against the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) include “Free China,” Falun Gong and the Federation of Democratic China. These organizations are despised by the pro-Peoples Republic and working class sections of the Australian Chinese community. Particularly hated is the Falun Gong, the most active anti-China, anti-communist force. “All bullshit,” angrily says a Chinese man passing a Falun Gong poster. Indeed! Falun Gong specialize in making lurid claims that their members are being killed in China to “harvest organs.”

So what is this Falun Gong. They pose as a spiritual group that is supposedly being persecuted in the PRC because of its harmless religious views. But they are no more a simple religious group than are the actively right-wing Christian political forces in America. To get a sense of what these and other anti-PRC organizations are about you only need to look at who their backers are in the West. One of the most active supporters of the “rights” of Falun Gong is one David Kilgour. Kilgour is a right-wing ex-member of the Canadian parliament and the former Canadian Secretary for the Asia-Pacific. He is the co-author of the “Report into allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China,” a work which follows in the long tradition of “disinformation” practiced by North American imperialism.

Kilgour was the featured “honourable” speaker at the anti-PRC, anti-Vietnam events that were held in Sydney by Falun Gong and co. during APEC week. Let’s take a look more closely at who this David Kilgour is. One of Kilgour’s main agendas is to promote the imperialist intervention in Afghanistan in the face of widespread opposition to it in Canada. “Canada Should Stay in Afghanistan, Despite the Costs,” was the headline of an article he wrote in the Embassy Magazine (Ottawa) on July 4 last year. He is also a staunch opponent of the rights of gay and lesbian people. Indeed, Kilgour even left the Canadian Liberal party in 2005 because he was too bigoted to stomach a bill that they introduced giving certain rights to same-sex couples. In his explanation “Why I Left the Party” (National Post, 19 April 2005), Kilgour concludes that “the government’s same-sex marriage bill (C-38) represents a clear departure from the Liberal’s successful tradition of moderate liberalism …. “

Kilgour’s political positions bring him into a natural alliance with Falun Gong. From its main book of “law,” Zhuan Falun, onwards Falun Gong too promotes bigoted “values.” The group raves that the Communist Party government in China has been soft on homosexuality. In the Zhuan Falun Fajie (1997), Falun Gong founder and leader Li Hongzhi who the group claims has supernatural powers writes that: “All varieties of messed up and depraved things are taking place in China and abroad: homosexuality, ‘sexual liberation,’ drugs, gangs – everything.” Li Hongzhi also advocates inflammatory ideas on racial “purity.” He describes children born of mixed-race relationships as “defective persons” and when he toured Australia in 1996 he even claimed in a speech in Sydney that heaven itself is segregated: “the yellow people, the white people, and the black people have the corresponding races in heaven. Anybody who does not belong to his race will not be cared for. This is the truth, and it is not that I’m making up something here. What I am telling everyone are heavenly secrets.”

Like Kilgour, Falun Gong also champions the invasion of Afghanistan. For example, when Australian troops departed for Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province last March, the Falun Gong newspaper Epoch Times reverberated the lying imperialist pronouncements that the military’s role would be to “aid in rebuilding war-torn settlements.” It declared that “Australian soldiers have been part of an international coalition against terrorism in Afghanistan since October 2001” (Epoch Timeswebsite, 6 March 2007, by Epoch Times Sydney staff). Similarly, the editorial line of Falun Gong publications has been to support the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. Following the second anniversary of the Iraq takeover, a featured Special to the Epoch Times (website, 4 May 2005) piece titled, “Taking Stock Two Years After Iraq’s Liberation” [!] expressed the hope that the occupation forces “will finally win the central front of the global war against the terrorists.”

Not surprisingly, then, Falun Gong has won solidarity from the U.S. Congress and from none other than the chief imperialist “human rights” advocate himself, George Bush. The group is also known to get support from U.S. intelligence agencies. The organisation is certainly well supplied financially – putting out free newspapers and masses of glossy colour posters, hosting flashy entertainment shows and even sponsoring major Chinese New Year events in Sydney.

It is not, however, simply the ultra-conservative social “values” of Falun Gong that attract support from U.S. and Canadian ruling class politicians. Mostly, it is the fact that the group is politically committed to the destruction of Communist power, in any form, in China. For the purposes of fostering capitalist counterrevolution in the likes of China and Cuba the Western powers utilize a range of forces. Earlier, in order to undermine the USSR and the (deformed) workers states in Eastern Europe, the imperialists had supported a range of “dissident” forces in those countries from monarchists and fascists to liberal “democrats” to bogus “labour rights” advocates and social democrats. Today, Washington and co. do not seriously think that right-wing crackpots like Falun Gong could take power in China. But they do know that the campaigns that this group wages can injure the Peoples Republic. Falun Gong’s incessant slanders against the PRC gives those Western middle class elements looking for a rationale to hate Red China some “valid reasons” for doing so and furthermore deters would-be leftist supporters of the PRC from following through on their political impulses.

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The U.S. and its allies hope that the weight of anti-PRC sentiments in the West will have a bearing on the outcome of factional struggles within China itself where the situation is precariously balanced between forces seeking to maintain the PRC’s socialist-type foundations and elements pushing towards capitalist restoration. Backing anti-Red China groups is, of course, just one aspect of a multi-faceted strategy that the imperialist ruling classes are using to try and weaken Chinese pro-socialist forces. So what are some of the other aspects? Well, for one there is the constant demand by U.S. government officials and visiting businessmen for the PRC to “liberalise” and privatise its majority state-owned banking system. Then there is the behind-the-scenes support that Western capitalist politicians are giving to campaigns to boycott the Beijing Olympics. And then there are the brazen efforts (mostly unsuccessful) by Western corporate organisations like the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai to scuttle China’s new pro-worker labour law, a law that cracks down on abuses of workers rights, especially in the private sector.Don’t Buy the Bush/Cheney/Falun Gong Right-Wing Agenda Against Red China!It is hardly just U.S. and Canadian conservative forces that are supporting the anti-communist crusade against the PRC. Australian politicians like former Victorian Liberal Party parliamentarian Victor Perton have also been very active in supporting the likes of Falun Gong. But it is not just right-wing politicians who are involved. Some Labor Party figures, the Democrats and the Greens Kerry Nettle and Bob Brown are also hard-core supporters of anti-communist Chinese exile groups. The China policies of the latter group of politicians reflect the prejudices of pseudo-progressive layers of the Aussie middle class. They are comfortable layers living in a feel-good environment where people are at pains to flaunt how broad-minded they are but in practice are reluctant to challenge the essential features of the current Australian political system. The people in these social strata hate China because they hate to acknowledge that workers states actually exist. No, to accept that would rob these “socially conscious” people of their favourite excuse for refusing to break out of their cosy political habitat:  that “there is no other choice” but to “very grudgingly” accept Australia’s capitalist order.

Regrettably, some of the far-left here have also lined up behind the anti-PRC, anti-communist agenda. The Solidarity and Socialist Alternative groups in particular were supportive of the anti-PRC campaigns during APEC and tried to meld them in with the main, leftist anti-war APEC protests. Why did they do this? Why would leftists who have been building demonstrations against the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and who are actively against homophobia and racism end up being staunch defenders of a group like Falun Gong that supports the imperialist occupations, that equates homosexuality with murder and whose leader advocates racial segregation? Of course, these anti-PRC leftists would claim that they are merely standing up for “human rights” and “democracy.” But these same socialist groups correctly expose imperialist-backed “pro-democracy” forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so why line up behind such forces in China – especially when these Chinese pro-Western organisations have an agenda so heavily focussed against communism? The unfortunate answer to that question is that “socialist” hostility to the PRC is a form of capitulation to middle class, small-l liberal views. You see, socialists who are overly worried that their less radical friends and potential recruits think them too left-wing can say: “Look, we are not only against capitalism here but we are against the Communist Party dictatorship in China too.”

The all too convenient “theoretical justification” that some leftists use for an anti-PRC stance is that China is simply “another capitalist country.” One of the harmful effects of this false analysis is that it paints a very demoralising picture of the world to anti-capitalist activists. It makes out that in no country in the world have the toiling masses been sufficiently effective to retain state power. All the leaders of the APEC countries are the same, capitalism is all powerful. Now, if that were actually true then of course we would have to face that reality squarely. But why write off 20% of the world’s population (ie. in China) as being under capitalist rule when the imperialists themselves realise that this is a major part of the world that they do not actually have under their thumb? Indeed, the fact that China is not part of the imperialist fold gives the oppressed of the world a breathing space in which to organise resistance. It is, for example, a key reason why, to date, Iran has not been massively bombed. For in contrast to other powers like Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada, China has to some degree obstructed the U.S. and Israel’s war drive against Iran. Indeed, one of the demands that U.S. officials were making around APEC is that the PRC be more aggressive towards Iran (Associated Press, 6 September 2007.)

In fact, if you look behind all the diplomatic niceties of the APEC conference, you will see that the events actually showed that APEC is not simply one seamless bloc of 21 leaders with all the same agenda. Right on the very Saturday morning of APEC, Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Australian PM John Howard made a swipe against China. The three government heads held a meeting to strengthen their countries’ trilateral security arrangements – arrangements that are widely known to be directed against the PRC and North Korea. The Australian government’s participation in that provocative trilateral summit showed its true agenda with respect to the PRC. Aware that China’s massive mineral purchases are holding up this country’s economy, Canberra is careful to maintain the appearance of friendly relations with Beijing. But the Murdoch media and some members of the Australian foreign policy bureaucracy have been pushing to adopt a more openly hard line against the PRC. So has the U.S. government. When Dick Cheney visited Australia last February his main aim was not only to reconfirm Howard’s support for the Iraq occupation but to also strengthen U.S./Australia cooperation against China. Washington’s policy continued through APEC as well. On the Wednesday before APEC, Bush arrogantly berated the PRC over its financial policy and over “dissidents.” Washington was determined to pursue this anti-PRC agenda no matter how much the Chinese leadership adhered to its (ultimately futile) policy of building friendly relations with capitalist governments. Bush continued with his anti-PRC attacks on the Thursday before APEC when he held a Sydney meeting with Chinese leader Hu Jintao. The Commander in Chief of the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis – and of the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp – criticised the PRC over “human rights.”  

Those who oppose imperialism ought to stand against the imperialists’ hounding of the Chinese workers state – no matter how far China may currently be from a “model socialist” society. Fortunately, there are already sections of the Australian left that do in some way stand against the anti-PRC, anti-communist crusade. For example, in an article written soon after APEC by its General Secretary, Peter Symon, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) correctly stated that:

“Many [Australian people] have been brought up on the White Australia policy and respond to the anti-China media campaigns and the policy of excluding refugees which clearly has a racist basis. 
Some of the left echo the media hype and keep on stoking the campaigns of Tibetan and Taiwanese independence. These are already lost causes and have no basis in historical fact. Then there is the religious Falun Gong campaign which is quite active in Australia. It is promoted by the political right-wing in a number of countries and is nothing more than an anti-communist campaign parading in a religious garb. 
There are quite a few on the left who are also caught up in the media campaign  which asserts that China is ‘going back to capitalism’. They don’t even ask themselves the question: why should the media object to China going back to capitalism if that were really true?”

Guardian, 12 September 2007

At the big September 8 anti-war APEC rally itself, Trotskyist Platform (TP) carried a placard that appealed: “Fellow Anti-Capitalists: Do NOT buy the Dick Cheney/Bush/Falun Gong Right-Wing Agenda Against Red China – Defend the World’s Largest Workers State!”

Of course, among the groups that do oppose anti-communist attacks against the PRC there are many differences in viewpoint. For example, TP does not subscribe to the CPA’s beliefs that it is possible that the foreign policies in the world could ever be guided by the classless doctrine of “non-interference in the affairs of another country.” The reality in this globalised world is that all countries necessarily affect what happens in other countries. The actual question is not interference or “non interference” but this: will the imperialist countries be able to get away with subjugating poorer countries and fostering counterrevolution in the non-capitalist states or will it be the workers movements of different countries and the workers states that are able to gain the supremacy in the global class struggle by effectively giving solidarity to the toilers’ struggles in other lands. In other words, the question is not “interference” or “non-interference” but capitalism or socialism.

Nevertheless, despite these different stances amongst the communist left, there exists a basis here for building a united-front campaign to solidarise with China against capitalist threats. Such a campaign should include the CPA, Trotskyist Platform and pro-communist immigrant groups and would seek to broaden out to win a section of the Cuba solidarity movement as well as Marxist activists within the union movement. To build the movement will take much patient and persistent work. But the need for such a campaign is critical. As a TP leaflet distributed at the APEC anti-war protests stressed: “We must never allow the allies of imperialism to destroy the anti-capitalist revolutions in China and Vietnam! ♦