Above photo: February 2017, a Chinese Australian woman named Lina who was bashed by a white racist man in broad daylight near the main shopping mall in the Sydney suburb of Burwood. The attacker, who is completely unknown to Lina, started screaming racist abuse at her, yelling at Lina to ‘Get out of my country’ before punching her in the face.

Chinese Community Marks
19th Century Anti-Chinese Riots
Amidst Growing Anti-Chinese
Racism in Today’s Australia

28 December 2018 – Two months ago, Trotskyist Platform comrades were invited by leaders of a working class Chinese group to participate in a community event marking the second anniversary of the erection of a monument to the victims of the anti-Chinese riots during the mid-1800s Gold Rush. The October 14 commemoration was held at Rookwood cemetery in Sydney’s Western suburbs. The anti-Chinese riots that the memorial event marked were truly horrendous. The most notorious of these was the June 1861 Lambing Flat riot (near the modern NSW town of Young) when a horde of thousands of white racists violently attacked hundreds of Chinese miners and their family members and destroyed their tents and other possessions. Despite the best efforts of official Australian history to whitewash this truth, it is widely known by the Chinese community that several Chinese people were actually murdered by the racist mobs. The response of the colonial governments to these riots was not to come to the aid of the Chinese community. It was, instead, the very opposite: they enacted special legislation to exclude and discriminate against Chinese people. This was followed the next century by the White Australia Policy which excluded Chinese people as well as Indians, Indonesians, Pacific Islanders, Africans and, indeed, all people of colour from entering Australia.

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Yet the significance of commemorating the 19th century anti-Chinese riots is not mainly about the past. It is about the present and the future. Whether and how we mark major events of the past is both a reflection of where we stand today and an important part of the struggle for the kind of society that we want tomorrow. Thus, it was rather concerning what a speaker from the Chinese Heritage Association of Australia pointed out at the October 14 commemoration: that study of the anti-Chinese riots has been dropped from being a mandated part of Australia’s High School intermediate years’ history syllabus. Instead, it has been relegated to an optional segment that may or may not be taught at the discretion of the teacher. The authorities’ aversion to telling the truth about anti-Chinese racism in the past can only be understood as a sign of their willingness to pander to – and even foster – anti-Chinese prejudice today. It is much like how when, four years ago, then prime minister Tony Abbott contemptuously dismissed the vibrant, pre-1788 Aboriginal societies – remarking that Sydney was “nothing but bush” prior to the arrival of the First Fleet – he was advancing the agenda of current Australian regimes to perpetuate their brutal dispossession of Aboriginal people.

The main reason why it is important to commemorate the 19th century anti-Chinese riots is because we are seeing an escalation of anti-Chinese racism in Australia today. In July last year, threatening posters appeared in the University of Melbourne and Monash University – Melbourne’s two most prestigious universities – warning Chinese students that if they entered they would be deported. Then this May, extreme racists unleashed a poster blitz in the multi-racial Sydney suburb of Ryde demanding, “No More Asians” and making a series of vile racist slurs [1]. However, most worrying are not the verbal insults and threats but the very real, racist physical violence that is being unleashed. In October last year, three Chinese high-school students were bashed by racists at a bus stop in Canberra. Two months before this, a white supremacist university student at Canberra’s ANU pulled out a baseball bat during his Statistics class and beat and tried to kill his tutor of Chinese origin and four other Chinese students. The situation has become so alarming that last December, the Chinese consulate in Melbourne felt it necessary to issue a warning to Chinese students of threats to their safety [2]. And it is certainly not only international students who are being targeted by violent racists. In May, a racist man went on a rampage in the Sydney suburb of Randwick specifically attacking any Asian looking person he could find – punching and kicking at least seven people including women and a 70 year-old man [3].

The response of the Chinese community to this reality has been varied. This was evident in the speeches made at the October event marking the 19th century anti-Chinese riots. A few community members bravely spoke of the racism that Chinese and other “ethnic” communities continue to face in Australia. However, others thought it best to ignore or downplay the reality of growing anti-Chinese racism in Australia today. They spoke of anti-Chinese violence as wholly an issue of the past. At most anti-Chinese racism was referred to as something that we need to be vigilant against the return of but not something that society is currently being threatened by. These community members hope that minimizing the extent of today’s racism in their speeches and only speaking of contemporary Australia as a “wonderful, multi-cultural society” will somehow diminish the problem. They no doubt feel that by expressing their love for the current Australian social structure this will bring the Chinese community greater acceptance. History has proven however that this approach does not work. In May 1901, many members of the Chinese community in Melbourne showed their loyalty to the ruling establishment by participating in commemoration events to mark the visit of the Duke and Duchess of York to open Australia’s first national parliament. Yet just seven months later, Australia’s ruling class turned around and kicked the Chinese community in the face when they brought into force the Immigration Restriction Act. That notorious act, which formalised the White Australia Policy, provided for the exclusion of all people of colour from entering Australia and was particularly aimed against Chinese would-be migrants. It also facilitated the deportation of Chinese and other non-white people already living in Australia.

The different responses of individuals in the Chinese community to the growing racism in contemporary Australia is shaped in good part by their own class position. Those who are wealthy business owners, affluent professionals or others who have been decorated by official Australian society are, in general, less willing to call out the intensifying racism. Although racism affects all classes within targeted groups, those doing well under the current social structure are more willing to grit their teeth and endure racist outrages because they are “grateful” to the current society for bringing them a privileged social position and don’t want to do anything to criticize or undermine a status quo that has served them very well. At the other end of the class spectrum, working class Chinese people suffering low wages and harsh working conditions in, say, the construction or retail sector or who are struggling to find any secure work at all don’t have much reason to be loyal to Australia’s current social structure. Consequently, they are, in general, less willing to absolve Australian society for any of the racist outrages that they are hit with. Meanwhile, their more vulnerable socio-economic position also makes them less able to mitigate the effects of racism. Thus, a working class Chinese person seeking to rent a home at the overcrowded low-end of the market is much more affected by the notorious discrimination in the housing market against people of Aboriginal, Asian, Middle Eastern and African heritage [4] than a wealthy Chinese person able to buy a high-end property. It is therefore telling that it was a working class Chinese organisation – having a membership policy that like our trade unions and most avowedly left-wing political parties excludes business owners using hired labour from membership – that took the initiative to spearhead the campaign for the erection of a monument to the victims of the 19th century anti-Chinese riots.

CONTEMPORARY VERSIONS OF THE LAMBING FLAT RIOTS

To underscore why events like the 19th century anti-Chinese riots sadly cannot be considered merely as incidents of Australia’s distant past, we only have to look back 13 years when the Sydney beachside suburb of Cronulla witnessed a mass racist riot in the style of the Lambing Flat riots. Thousands of racists savagely rampaged against people of Middle Eastern and South Asian backgrounds and, indeed, against anyone without white skin. An Aboriginal youth and many people of Afghan, Bangladeshi, Iranian and Lebanese background were amongst those brutally bashed. Indeed, anyone at the beach who did not appear White enough was attacked. Thus, among those physically attacked was at least one boy of Jewish heritage and one girl of Greek background.

Then, not much more than two years ago, a racist upsurge in the Western Australian town of Kalgoorlie-Boulder culminated in the killing of 14 year-old Aboriginal youth, Elijah Doughty. In that case, unlike at Lambing Flat and Cronulla Beach, the mass racist outpouring was not initially in the form of a physical mob but, rather, a social media lynch mob. The lynch mob masked their racist essence as opposition to the alleged theft of dirt bikes by Aboriginal youth. In the lead up to the murder of Elijah, two local community Facebook groups were not only infused with extreme racist bigotry towards Aboriginal people but included calls for violence. Just a week before Elijah’s murder, after a woman posted a claim that two Aboriginal youths had broken into a ute, a man replied, “Feel free to run the oxygen thieves off the road if you see them”, while another man wrote, “Everyone talks about hunting down these sub human mutts, but no one ever does.” Then, as racists on the social media pages continued to use derogatory terms to refer to Aboriginal people – such as “darkies” and “non-reflectives” – one user wrote: “How many human bodies would it take to fill the mineshafts around Kalgoorlie? A: We’re one theft closer to finding out!” Undoubtedly charged up by all this extreme racist bigotry, a 56 year-old white man driving in his 4WD ute, chased 14 year-old Elijah who was riding a small motorbike down a dirt track. The murderer then rammed into Elijah’s motorbike after having revved up to a speed so much faster than the child’s bike that he smashed it into three main pieces and split the Aboriginal child’s skull in two.

The Chinese community in Australia should not take any comfort that the direct targets of these contemporary versions of the Lambing Flat Riots were not people of Chinese heritage. This is not only because all attacks on people because of their race or religion are abhorrent acts. It is also because racist attacks against one targeted group inevitably inflames the white supremacist bigotry that leads to increased attacks on other victimized communities. It is worth focusing on a slightly smaller, copy-cat version of the Cronulla riot that took place just over three years after the “original” Cronulla pogrom when hundreds of white males at Manly Beach went on a rampage attacking any non-white person who was driving a car. On that 2009 “Australia Day” – which Aboriginal people and their supporters know as Invasion Day – the main targets of the racists were people of Asian appearance rather than people from the Middle East (who were the main victims of the Cronulla riot). Indeed, during the “Australia Day” Manly Beach riot, the violent racists assaulted an Asian woman so badly that she was sent to hospital in an ambulance.

WHITE SUPREMACY AND ANTI-CHINESE RACISM

In Australia, Aboriginal people continue to suffer the most all-sided racist discrimination and abuse. In the last decade alone, 147 indigenous people have died in state custody in Australia, many of whom were outright killed by racist police or prison guards. This extreme racism against Aboriginal people has a particular character because it stems, in part, from the truth that Aboriginal people are this country’s first peoples who were brutally dispossessed by murderous colonial forces. The powers that be continue to oppress and vilify the Aboriginal community in order to perpetuate and “justify” this historic dispossession. On top of all this, Aboriginal people also suffer racism simply because they are not white and such racism is also experienced by all people of colour in Australia.

Who the second most victimized ethnic community in Australia is – after Aboriginal people – seems to change almost like the whims of fashion for the racist rednecks committing the attacks. In the late 1980s and then less than a decade later, Asian origin people were especially targeted coinciding with John Howard’s push to curb Asian immigration and then Pauline Hanson’s rise to prominence. There was also a period when the Vietnamese community were singled out with hysterical media and politician hype about “Vietnamese crime gangs” making some suburbs “no go areas.” For much of the last two decades, the Muslim community have been in the cross-hairs of racist laws, police harassment, vilification from politicians and media and violent attacks on the streets. In the December 2005 Cronulla riot and the media incitement that preceded it, racists especially targeted Lebanese origin people in a lynch-mob upsurge directed, more broadly, at all non-white people. Then in the 2008 to 2010 period, there was a spate of racist assaults against Indian and other South Asian students and to a slightly lesser extent Chinese students. South Asian communities continue to be targeted by racist rednecks. Just two months ago, racist vandals set fire to the Barathiye Mandir Hindu temple in Sydney’s Regents Park. Scrolling the word “Jesus” on walls of the building, they destroyed the building’s interior [5]. Meanwhile, over the last few years, politicians, neo-Nazi gangs and the mainstream media have made hysterical claims about the supposed “threat” of Sudanese “gangs” in order to whip up racist hostility towards African origin people. This is after migrants from Africa and their children have been made to suffer decades of racist police harassment in Australia as well as blatant discrimination in employment and housing. In the last few years, racist forces have also, once again, lined up the Chinese community in their cross-hairs.

Looking back over the last 200 years as a whole – and thus including the riots against Chinese people during the Gold Rush, the 19th century anti-Chinese laws and then the 20th century White Australia Policy – it is arguable that people of Chinese background have been second only to Aboriginal people in copping racist attacks in Australia. This has a lot to do with the nature of racism: it is in good part based on irrational fear. Since Chinese people are the largest ethnic group in the Asian region that borders Australia – and indeed the largest ethnic group in the entire world – one of the darkest, White Australia racist fears is that Chinese immigrants will one day outnumber whites; and that this will lead to the tremendous natural wealth of this country having to be shared with a greater number of people which, according to the demented “logic” of xenophobia, will lead to the high standard of living in Australia being reduced to the levels of neighbouring Asia-Pacific lands.

THE TOXIC INGREDIENTS
FUELING ANTI-CHINESE RACISM IN TODAY’S AUSTRALIA

There are three components to the fuel that is powering the resurgent anti-Chinese racism in Australia. Firstly, there is the scapegoating of migrants and all non-white ethnic groups by mainstream politicians and media for the key problems facing the masses. Australia is a country of great inequality. The richest 200 people have a total wealth of more than $282 billion [6]. Yet this country, despite its tremendous resource wealth, has a much higher proportion of homeless people than the resource-poor, Peoples Republic of China. Faced with the possibility that the dispossessed will unite to rebel against such inequality and facing mass anger about job insecurity, stagnant wages, unaffordable rents and inadequate infrastructure, the politicians and media that serve the rich business tycoons seek to blame minorities for the problems that corporate greed and the capitalist system’s failings cause. Since Chinese background people are the biggest non-white ethnic group in Australia, it is inevitable that racist scapegoating of migrants and people of colour greatly impacts the Chinese community.

Extreme right-wing politicians like Pauline Hanson, David Leyonhjelm and Fraser Anning and media shock jocks like Alan Jones are spearheading the charge against migrants and coloured ethnic communities. Right now they are especially targeting this country’s African community. However, the Liberal/National government is not far behind the most rabid racist bigots in parliament. Last month, prime mister Scott Morrison blamed migration for traffic congestion, crowded public transport and a lack of school places when he pandered to open racist forces and flagged a cut to migration numbers. What the government does not want to tell people is that migrants, by working and paying taxes, provide resources to fund schools, infrastructure and public transport and that a larger population actually makes expanding public transport more viable. Morrison and Co. don’t want people to know this or else people may realise that inadequate funds for social services and infrastructure are actually caused by governments allowing a small class of ultra-rich tycoons to hoard so much of the wealth of this country. Yet the ALP opposition has barely opposed the Liberals’ move to cut the migration intake. Bill Shorten’s response to Morrison’s migration cut plan was to say that the focus should, instead, be on cutting the number of people arriving on temporary work visas. Meanwhile, ALP leaders occasionally try to outdo their right-wing rivals in racist scapegoating. In May, then NSW Labor leader, Luke Foley, inflamed hostility to non-white migrants by claiming that refugees are swamping Western Sydney leading to a “white flight” of Anglo families from these suburbs.

The second component of the fuel powering anti-Chinese racism is economic nationalism in its various forms. One of the economic nationalist refrains chanted in recent years by the mainstream media and many politicians is the claim that Australia is “being bought up” by China. This claim is completely false and serves to get the local, all Aussie billionaires who really own this country off the hook. The truth is that Australia is not being taken over by any foreign country. The lion’s share of its wealth has been snatched by local tycoons like Anthony Pratt, Gina Rinehart and her feuding family, Andrew Forrest, the Lowys, James Packer and their ilk. Moreover, as far as foreign ownership in Australia is concerned, China is only a small player. You wouldn’t think so given the media hype but China, the world’s most populous country, is only the ninth biggest foreign investor in Australia. China makes up only a tiny 2% of all foreign investment into Australia [7].

Another mantra recited by those promoting economic nationalist “solutions” to unemployment and tepid industrial development is the notion that schemes are needed to restrict imports and to favour locally produced items in infrastructure projects. The basis of this Donald Trump-like protectionist doctrine – which in Australia often targets Chinese steel imports – is the idea that imports “steal local jobs.” The reality however is that a protectionist program does not save local jobs. For just as one country can put barriers to imports from another country the other country or third countries can do the same to the country that originally placed the restrictions. Think what would happen if protectionists had their way and curbed imports from China and China naturally responded by doing the same? Australia currently exports nearly a whopping $50 billion more goods and services to China than it imports from her [8]. Therefore, mutual trade restrictions would lead to huge job losses here. It would also cause increased prices for the smartphones, computers, TVs, whitegoods, furniture, toys and other items currently imported from China.

The economic nationalist demand most frequently promoted in recent years in Australia has been the call to restrict temporary skilled migrant workers (formerly known as 457 Visa workers) who it is claimed are “taking Aussie jobs.” Yet these workers make up only a tiny 0.5% of the total Australian workforce. What is more, like other migrants they pay taxes and spend the money they earn – thus creating as many jobs as they supposedly “take.”

Economic nationalism is not always based on open racism. Indeed, whereas it is still a minority of Australia’s population that is rabidly racist – although unfortunately quite a sizable minority – the majority of this country’s population buy into economic nationalist slogans in one form or another. However, while economic nationalism is not the same as racism it certainly fuels racist prejudice. For any policy that calls for putting the interests of (mainly white) Australian workers over (overwhelmingly coloured) lower paid workers from “Third World” countries will inevitably appeal to and reinforce White Australia xenophobic attitudes as well as “First World” arrogance. This was most evident in an ALP video advertisement boasting that they would “Employ Australians First” that had visuals where nearly all the Australians shown were white Anglos. The advertisement, which was released in May last year, had an unmistakable racist message: white people had to be supposedly protected from having their jobs taken away by non-white people. Let us not forget too that the White Australia Policy itself – including the notorious 1901 Immigration Restriction Act – was motivated in good part on economic nationalist grounds: supposedly to stop the employment of Chinese, Indian and Pacific Islander workers from undercutting the pay and conditions of white workers. Given that China is, today, Australia’s largest source of imports, the third biggest source country for temporary skilled migrant workers and mythically the country that is investing a lot in Australia, economic nationalist appeals are doing much to fuel anti-Chinese racism – just as they did in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

The most fanatical in promoting economic nationalism are the far-right parties like Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party. However, all the current parliamentary parties promote one form of economic nationalism or another. Thus, although the ALP has, overall, not been as strident in promoting direct anti-immigrant racism as the Liberals and although the Greens have opposed some of the most blatant anti-refugee and racist policies and statements of both major parties, the ALP and Greens have actually been even more zealous in making economic nationalist appeals than the conservative Liberal-National Coalition.

Unfortunately, the leadership of many of our trade unions have also been making economic nationalist demands on the grounds that this will help protect local jobs and wages. However, protectionism does not actually protect workers jobs and conditions. In fact, it does the very opposite. Firstly, by dividing workers across national lines – and this also causes divisions within local workers on ethnic lines as Australian workers originating from the country targeted by protectionist appeals are inevitably looked on with suspicion – economic nationalist agendas weaken the workers movement and make it less able to stand up to greedy, job-slashing bosses. Secondly, calls to favour local businesses, by making out that local capitalists are somehow benevolent, undermine workers understanding that improvements in their working conditions and stopping job cuts can only come through struggle against these local exploiters.

It is true that profit-obsessed business owners will try to use insecure, guest workers with few rights – and the constant threat of deportation hanging over them – as a source of labour that they can super-exploit (like they already do to youth workers, apprentices and many casual workers). Our unions are right to be concerned about this. However, the way to undercut bosses’ attempts to undermine working conditions is not to pit local workers against guest workers with divisive slogans, like “Keep Out 457 Visa Workers!” which many of our current union leaders promote. What is needed, instead, is to fight to ensure that guest workers are paid the same rates as local workers and to win these workers the same rights as citizens so that they are able to stand up for their rights. There are many past examples of overseas workers employed in Australia fighting for their rights and cases when these struggles won important backing from local unions. In January 1942, left-wing Chinese activists in Australia, together with the Seamen’s Union of Australia, helped organise seafarers from China working on ships docking in Australian ports into the Chinese Seamen’s Union (CSU). The Chinese and other coloured seafarers were paid much lower rates and had worse conditions than their white counterparts. However, in the same month as the CSU was formed, 500 Chinese seafarers from six ships docked in Fremantle went on strike and occupied the ships demanding equal pay as white workers and improved working conditions. The strikers bravely faced off armed troops. The Australian troops attacked the Chinese workers and killed two of the heroic strikers. Nevertheless, the brave struggle of the Chinese strikers in Fremantle and in other subsequent battles helped to eventually win pay rises for all Chinese seafarers working in Australia. Later, after racist ALP immigration minister, Arthur Calwell introduced, in 1949, the War-time Refugees Removal Act to deport current and former Chinese seafarers who had remained in Australia after being stranded during the war, Australian unions supported the campaign of the CSU and pro-communist Australian-Chinese activists against their deportation. Eventually their struggle was won and the Menzies government had to abandon Calwell’s racist Act. Today, our unions sometimes do make laudable efforts to win justice for guest workers who are being severely mistreated. However, this is undermined by many union leaders’ divisive, nationalist calls to restrict the entry of these guest workers in order to “protect local jobs.” The pro-ALP leaders of our unions look to such protectionist “solutions” to unemployment and worsening working conditions in proportion to the degree with which they bow to anti-strike laws and turn away from what is actually needed to fight for workers’ jobs security and decent wages. It is militant industrial action that is needed to win higher wages, to secure permanency for casual workers and to prevent companies slashing jobs.

The third component of the toxic cocktail fueling anti-Chinese racism is anti-communist hostility to the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). The last few years have seen Australian politicians, mainstream media, think tanks and so-called “experts” increasingly making up hyped-up claims against China. They accuse the PRC of everything from cyber-hacking, to interfering in Australian political life, to sending in Chinese international students to spy in Australia, to supposed bullying behaviour in the South China Sea to giving too much aid to Australia’s Pacific neighbours. This propaganda campaign waged by the Australian ruling class serves to “justify” their hostile actions against Red China. These actions include a military build up targeted at China, the stationing of U.S. troops in Darwin aimed against China and North Korea, the deployment of Australian naval vessels and aircraft thousands of kilometres away from home in waters off China and Korea and the supporting of anti-PRC Chinese exile organisations. So why do Australia’s ruling elite want to do this given that China is by far Australia’s biggest export destination and given that these exports to China have been holding up the entire Australian economy? Well, the capitalist bigwigs who run this country calculate that as much profit as they are currently making from sending exports to China and as much as the conciliatory policies of the Chinese government already allow Australian investors to make a bit of profit from some degree of exploitation of workers within China, they could make even more if China’s socialistic system were to be overthrown and the country thus turned into a giant sweatshop for unrestrained exploitation of labour. Moreover, today, by providing infrastructure and development assistance to Australia’s Pacific and Asian neighbours in a mutually beneficial way, the existence of China as a socialistic power is undermining Australia’s neo-colonial stranglehold over countries like PNG, East Timor, Fiji and Vanuatu. Hence, for the Australian government, “containing” China is a matter of protecting the super-profits of unscrupulous Australian corporations operating in neighbouring Asia-Pacific countries.

The Australian regime’s anti-China propaganda blitz causes hostility to the Chinese community within Australia. For it leads to the Chinese community inevitably becoming seen by backward elements as a fifth column serving the PRC state. This is all the more so since the Australian media and mainstream politicians have made hysterical claims that a “large number” of Chinese people in Australia are acting as agents of the PRC. As much as relatively liberal stalwarts of the anti-communist, China-bashing campaign, like Political Editor of The Sydney Morning Herald, Peter Hartcher, try to draw a distinction between China and the Australian Chinese community, the reality is that ever since the triumph of China’s 1949 anti-capitalist revolution, anti-communist hostility to Red China and “Yellow Peril” xenophobic fear of East Asian-origin people have fed into each other. Racism and anti-communist hatred of Red China are tightly intertwined because both are irrational ideologies foisted on the masses by the ruling class in order to deceive and divide the toiling masses and keep them subdued. Thus, often the most rabid in attacking the PRC are also the same ones who most fervently push racist agendas. For example the most extreme anti-PRC federal government parliamentarian is hard-right, Christian fundamentalist Andrew Hastie. It was Hastie who on May 22 used parliamentary privilege to launch a hysterical tirade accusing the Chinese Communist Party of covertly seeking to influence Australia’s media, universities and politics. A month prior to this rant, this same Liberal MP was at the forefront of the white supremacist campaign for a special race-based visa to give white South African farmers refugee status on the ridiculous basis that they are being “persecuted.” Hastie is also notorious for criticising the Islamic community in Australia. He has become a hero amongst racist media commentators like Andrew Bolt and the 2GB sty of shock jocks for his militant opposition to Section 18C of the Racial Discrimination Act that makes it unlawful to insult someone on the basis of their race, colour, nationality or ethnic origin. Although, since it is overseen by a legal system that itself is racist, this law has done little to protect minorities against abuse, the charge against Section 18C has become a cause celebré of extreme racists who want their “right” to offend non-white people legally enshrined.

Meanwhile, anti-communist opponents of the PRC within the Australian Chinese community have chosen to make an alliance with white supremacists. Thus, supporters of the U.S. government-funded, ultra-right wing group, Falun Gong (sometimes known as Falun Dafa) and other anti-PRC Chinese organisations have been joining Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, despite anti-Asian racism being a foundation stone of that outfit. A Falun Gong activist, Shan Ju Lin, who likes to rant that Australia is being taken over by the Communist Party of China, was even selected as a Queensland state candidate for One Nation. She endorsed her leader Pauline Hanson’s attacks on the Asian community [9]. Presumably, this first ever Asian-origin candidate for this xenophobic, anti-Asian party believes that she is a “good Asian” because she is stridently opposed to the PRC and because she “understands” why people like Pauline Hanson attack Asian migrants. Shan Ju Lin was later dis-endorsed as a One Nation candidate only when she made a homophobic comment that was so fanatical that even Pauline Hanson found it an embarrassment to her party. Meanwhile, some Falun Gong members also joined the fascist Party for Freedom. Four years ago, Falun Gong representatives were even guest speakers at a China-bashing film night in Sydney put on by this white supremacist outfit! [10]. The practice of anti-PRC activists in the Chinese community promoting extreme white supremacists is happening, too, in other Western countries. In Germany, the German-language edition of Falun Gong’s newspaper, Epoch Times, specializes in running negative stories about refugees [11] and in promoting the racist Alternative for Germany (AfD) party [12] and the even more extreme, neo-Nazi NPD party [13].

Despite the fact that the Cold War-style campaign against Red China is avidly driven by hard-right racists and their allies, some nominally socialist groups in Australia, even though they are avowedly staunch opponents of racism, have joined the anti-PRC crusade. These groups such as Socialist Alternative, Solidarity, Socialist Alliance and the Melbourne-based Socialist Party are, in practice, not communists but left social-democrats. They recoil in horror at the stern measures that workers states – like the PRC – operating in a still capitalist-dominated world need to take in order to defend socialistic rule. Thus, they refuse to defend the PRC from hostile capitalist attack and invent a theory that the PRC is actually just another capitalist country (or “state capitalist”) to justify this stance. And their hostility to the PRC is so great that they are prepared to contribute to the hysteria against her even though this anti-PRC, anti-communist campaign is a part of what is fueling racist hostility to the Chinese community within Australia. Thus, they not only act in the same way as do right-wing Chinese exile groups like Falun Dafa but ally with some left-wing small-l liberal, anti-PRC elements within the Chinese community. The latter, while priding themselves on being “progressive” and “anti-colonial”, are quietly so comfortable with their upper-middle class social position that they share the same hostility to “Communist China” as the capitalist White Australia establishment that they claim to oppose. Moreover, many are hostile to the PRC for the same reasons as their more right-wing, anti-PRC allies within the Chinese community. That is, they are yuppy descendants of the former capitalist and landlord exploiting classes of China that were either kicked out of power by the 1949 anti-capitalist revolution or who fled to Taiwan to grab that island following the 1949 Communist victory on the mainland. Others descend from the criminal-infested, capitalist elite of Hong Kong – or the privileged upper middle-class layers around them – who were able to maintain their domination of that enclave through 155 years of servile collaboration with British imperialism. Although these left-liberal, ethnic Chinese opponents of the PRC have pretensions about being “progressive,” their whole outlook with respect to China is shaped by the feeling that it is still they and their ilk who have “inherited” the “right” to be the rulers of China and not the supposedly “uncouth” masses asserting “mob rule” through the Communist Party of China. If these people looked at themselves closely in the political mirror, the best, most sincerely “anti-colonial” of them would be horrified at how much their anti-PRC activism is lockstep with the agenda of Australia’s racist rulers and their far-right shock troops.

WE NEED TO BUILD AN INTERNATIONALIST WORKERS PARTY

When one is aware of what is inciting anti-Chinese racism then one is able to evaluate the political groups that claim to “support the Chinese community.” A few politicians eager for votes realise that they cannot simply ignore the concerns about racism from Chinese communities given that people of Chinese background make up over 5% of Australia’s population. Thus, at the October 14 commemoration of the 19th century anti-Chinese riots there were three politicians present from the ALP (and as far as we could tell no representatives from any other political party other than ourselves). These politicians spoke at the event and condemned the past anti-Chinese riots. One of the Labor politicians even spoke about the danger of anti-Chinese racism today. That is well and good. However, that’s what these politicians were saying to an audience entirely composed of the Chinese community and their supporters. It was easy to make those comments to such an audience. The question then is what are these same politicians saying to the broader Australian population about issues connected with anti-Chinese racism? The answer is that they are part of a political party that partakes in pouring into society all three ingredients of the fuel that is powering anti-Chinese racism. The Labor Party refuses to seriously challenge the right-wing Coalition’s scapegoating of immigrants for unemployment, poor services and inadequate infrastructure; and sometimes (as in the case of Luke Foley) even tries to outdo the conservatives on this. Secondly, the ALP is at the forefront of promoting economic nationalism: especially that which is aimed against guest workers and against Chinese steel imports. Thirdly, the ALP – and the anti-PRC, nominally socialist groups that tail after them – is just as committed as the right-wing government to pursuing a policy of political and military hostility to the PRC. At times they have even been more hawkish than the Liberals in pushing for the Australian Navy to provocatively sail through PRC-claimed waters off China’s coast.

So working class Chinese people should not put their trust in the ALP. Let us never forget that the ALP was founded on the basis of ardent support for the White Australia Policy and extreme economic nationalism. However, Chinese workers in Australia, like workers of all ethnicities, certainly do need a workers party. Just not one like the ALP that accepts the capitalist order and, thus, imbibes all the reactionary ideologies that go with it. What we need instead is a party thoroughly opposed to capitalist rule. Such a party would necessarily stand by those states created through the overturn of capitalist rule – like the Peoples Republic of China. A party committed to the struggle against the capitalist order would also value above all else the unity of the working class across race and national lines. It would be fiercely internationalist, standing actively against economic nationalism and campaigning energetically against all forms of racism.

THE THREAT OF A FUTURE TAKEOVER OF POWER
BY HITLER-STYLE EXTREME RACISTS

The growing number of racist attacks on the streets of Australia comes in the context of the frightening reality that racist, far-right groups have been growing throughout most of the world (China itself is actually a lone exception to this trend among large countries). In Australia, fascist groups under the banner of “Reclaim Australia” held large, race-hate rallies in 2015 and 2016. Although that movement’s main stated enemy was the Muslim community, their demonstrations were actually aimed against all non-white people. Meanwhile, the posters put up last year in Melbourne universities threatening Chinese students (referred to earlier in this article) was the work of a neo-Nazi group calling itself Antipodean Resistance. Now, in an especially worrying development, a violent white supremacist group linked to that outfit has established a paramilitary training centre in Ashfield (at 34 Thomas St), a centre of Sydney’s ethnic Chinese community [14]. This is a serious physical threat to the entire Chinese community in Sydney and, indeed, to all people of colour – especially to those living in the Inner West, Southwest and Western suburbs of Sydney.

Although people from ethnic minority groups in Australia are subject to a very large number of attacks from garden-variety, racist rednecks – that is, racists who do not necessarily consciously subscribe to a far-right political agenda – in other countries, actual far-right political movements have been growing even faster than here. In Austria, Switzerland, the U.S., Italy, Israel, Brazil, India and Hungary, hard-right forces are either in government or part of governing coalitions. Although actual fascism – which involves the violent dispersal of all independent trade unions and left-wing, pro-workers political parties and open systematic terror against minority communities – has not yet over-run these countries, the ascendancy of hard right forces there have emboldened fascists and rednecks to unleash ever more brazen racist attacks. In the U.S., for example, Trump’s rise has seen an increase in violent attacks and verbal abuse against Muslims, blacks, Asians and Hispanics. In August last year, the U.S. had a mass racist riot that could be considered a modern day, American version of Australia’s mid-19th century Lambing Flat riots. Hundreds of neo-Nazis and other extreme white racists, many armed with semi-automatic weapons, rampaged through the streets of Charlottesville, Virginia chanting racist slogans and violently assaulting anti-racist counter-protesters. One of the racists participating in the far-right event deliberately rammed his car at high speed into a crowd of counter-protesters murdering anti-racist activist, Heather Heyer, and injuring 40 other people. Then, just four months ago, the German city of Chemnitz had a horrific racist riot that even more closely resembled the Lambing Flat riots. Seizing on the death in Chemnitz of a man during an alleged fight with immigrants, thousands of fascists descended on the city chanting “foreigners out” and giving Nazi salutes. The neo-Nazis rampaged through the city bashing any person of colour they could find. Terrified immigrants stayed locked in their houses for days. Although the 1990 capitalist reunification of Germany triggered an increase in neo-Nazi violence, Germany has not seen a racist rampage of the type seen in Chemnitz since the days of Hitler’s Third Reich!

The strength of racist gangs in the Chemnitz and Charlottesville events shows that there is a real danger that in the future – likely during another serious economic crisis like the late-2000s Great Recession – we could be subject to not just more racist rampages but, in one or a number of countries, we could be hit with the actual takeover of political power by a violent racist movement; in other words the ascendancy to power of Hitler-style fascists! If far-right groups have, thus far, not grown as fast in Australia as they have in certain other countries it is only because Australia did not suffer a deep recession like much of the rest of the capitalist world during the late 2000s – early 2010s global economic crisis. Racist forces can grow quickly during such times because, if the working class movement fails to strongly put forward a program of class struggle resistance to job slashing by business owners, the far right’s false blaming of minorities for unemployment and economic insecurity can gain traction.

The sole reason that Australia did not suffer a major recession during the last global economic crisis is because of China. During that crisis, the PRC’s booming state-owned enterprises continued to purchase large amounts of Australian exports which in turn kept the whole Australian economy afloat. It is ironic, especially given the Australian ruling class’ hostility to Red China and her state-owned enterprises in particular, that it is the PRC’s socialistic public sector enterprises that are holding up Australia’s capitalist economy. Yet, this current reality will not last forever. The PRC government is deliberately moving the focus of the Chinese economy away from low-end manufacturing and fossil fuel-based power and towards services, renewable energy, high-tech industries, advanced manufacturing and information technology. Therefore, China will gradually have lower demand for Australian iron ore, coal and liquefied natural gas. Thus, should Australia remain under capitalist rule, eventually, even the PRC’s roaring socialistic economy will not be able to save it from the global economic crises that are inherent to the capitalist system – crises that are becoming noticeably deeper as the system increasingly decays. And when such a crisis hits this country, what then? Post-1788 Australia is already a country blighted by deep-seated racism and shaped by the genocidal dispossession of Aboriginal people and by last century’s official White Australia Policy. In the absence of a powerful mobilisation by the working class movement to defend workers’ jobs and rights, the onset of a major economic crisis in Australia could lead to the rapid growth of extreme racist, fascist forces and eventually (perhaps two major recessions from now) … their actual coming to political power! This may seem unthinkable. However, let us not forget that this is precisely what happened in Germany, Italy, Austria, Slovakia, Hungary, Romania, Croatia and Bulgaria at various times during the early-mid part of last century.

All the intended victims of fascists in Australia should be concerned about this possibility: Aboriginal people, people of Asian, African, Pacific Islander and Middle Eastern heritage, Muslims, Jews, LGBTI people, leftists, trade unionists, the disabled and the homeless. People of Asian background – and the Chinese community in particular – should be aware that they will likely be near the very front of the firing line (and this could be in the very literal sense!) if Hitler-style fascism were to gain the ascendancy in Australia. To know this one only has to see how much Asian-origin people – alongside Muslims and African youth – are at the centre of the hostile agitation of current Australian fascist groups.

It is worth analysing the different aspects of fascist rule and comparing how that relates to the Chinese community in today’s Australia with how it impacted on the main (but far from sole) ethnic community persecuted by Hitler’s Nazis, the Jewish people. There are four main agendas of fascist forces. Firstly, to smash all independent trade unions and all working class-based, or other left-wing, political organisations. Secondly, to use terror to drive out, if not completely exterminate, racial minorities. Thirdly, to implement extreme protectionist measures and other stern economic nationalist policies. Fourthly, to wage war to crush workers states. Let us first look at how these four aspects of the fascist program played out for the Jewish minority in Nazi Germany. The trade unions and left-wing parties crushed by Hitler were led by people of different ethnicity, mostly by ethnic Germans as they made up the overwhelming majority of the country but also by some Jewish people. So, this aspect of the Nazi program did not directly target Jewish people in particular. However, part of the Nazi’s stated reason for waging war against Jewish people was that they were considered to be prone to sympathy for the political Left. As for the second aspect of fascism, horrific terror against racial minorities, the Nazis, as is well known, particularly aimed this against the Jewish community who were the largest racial minority in the country as well as against Roma (who are commonly but inappropriately referred to as “Gypsies”), people of mixed African-German background and, later, Poles. As the Nazis and their allies took over more of Europe, they followed up their ghastly crimes within Germany with even larger-scale slaughter of Jews, Roma and Slavs throughout Europe. Now, the economic nationalist agenda of the Nazis was especially aimed against Germany’s French, British and other imperialist rivals. So this aspect of fascism did not directly fuel the war against the Jewish people. However, it did contribute to possessing a chunk of the German masses with the extreme nationalist spirit that helped push them into committing the most horrific crimes against non-German peoples. The fourth major aspect of Nazism, a fanatical drive to crush socialistic workers states, meant in practice waging war on the one workers’ state existing at the time: the Soviet Union. As Jewish people had been badly persecuted in Tsarist Russia, many Jews participated in the October 1917 Socialist Revolution in Russia that led to the creation of the Soviet workers state. The fascists thus linked communism to Jewish people. The Nazis described their war against the Soviet Union as a war against “Jew-Bolsheviks.”

Now, let us analyse how these four agendas of fascism would play out for the Chinese community here if fascist forces were to, in the future, gain the ascendancy in Australia. Firstly, as in Nazi Germany, all communist and social-democratic parties would be obliterated and all independent trade unions crushed. This would target worker and left-wing activists of all ethnicities. However, given that, even now, the Chinese community is labelled as being populated by a large number of supporters of Communist Party-run China, any war against Australian pro-communist movements would inevitably stir up particular hostility to people of Chinese ancestry. The second agenda of fascism – to drive out or exterminate racial minorities – would target Aboriginal people and all people of colour. Given that people of Chinese background make up the largest non-white ethnic minority in Australia, the fascist drive for racial “purity” would inevitably make Chinese people one of the main enemies of this crusade. The extreme protectionist agenda of fascism would hit all countries and peoples who Australia imported from, who invested in Australia or who worked here as guest workers. Given that China is the biggest source of Australian imports, is reputed to be (though this, as we have pointed out earlier, is actually far from true) the main country investing in Australia and is one of the bigger sources of temporary visa workers, the obsessive economic nationalist agenda of fascism, should it engulf Australia, would incite hatred against the Chinese community who would be linked to the “big, bad China” that will be hysterically accused of “taking away Australian jobs” and “buying up Australia.” Now, what about fascism’s compulsion to go to war to smash workers states? In today’s world, Hitler’s drive to destroy the Soviet Union, then the only workers state, would be replaced with a compulsion to destroy today’s largest socialistic state, the Peoples Republic of China. Even right now, the overwhelming majority of the capitalist ruling class in the U.S. and Australia want to see the downfall of socialistic rule in China. However, when the Western world again enters a period of deep economic crisis, precisely the period when it is possible for fascists to gain the ascendancy, the ruling class’ desperation to smash the PRC workers state would reach fever pitch. When their system is in such a crisis at home, the only way that their economy could survive is if they have access to a gigantic, new source of labour to exploit – which capitalist restoration in China would enable – and decisive control of the vast Chinese market that they thus far have not been able to dominate. Moreover, the deeper that capitalism lurches into economic crisis, the more the capitalist rulers cannot tolerate the existence of a successful socialistic model which they know would give their “own” working class masses “bad ideas” on what needs to be done to relieve the crisis. Indeed, part of the complex of circumstances that would facilitate the ascendancy of fascists would be that a section of the capitalist elite, in the midst of an economic crisis, should decide that they, albeit with many misgivings, entrust administration of their state to the fascists in order for the latter to use extreme nationalism and repression to herd the population towards military confrontation with Red China. And given that the ascendancy of fascists in Australia would likely be part of similar developments in at least a few other Western countries, including, most probably, the U.S. where it is plainly obvious that fascist forces have been gaining strength, then the alliance between the U.S. and Australia when both countries are under fascist rule would very likely lead to the ANZUS allies indeed attempting a war to destroy Red China. Such a war, or even the active preparation for one, will inevitably contribute to severe persecution of the Chinese community in Australia. Let us not forget that during World War II, the Australian government imprisoned in harsh conditions nearly all ethnic Japanese civilians living here – including many who worked in the pearl diving industry, people born in Australia and those of mixed Japanese-White Australian ancestry [15]. The Curtin Labor government imprisoned over 4,300 Japanese civilians in all, most of whom were forcibly deported to Japan after the war. And Australia was not even under fascist rule then! Given the agenda of fascists and the particular history of anti-Chinese racism in Australia, one would expect a possible future, fascist regime in Australia to persecute the Chinese community even more cruelly during the context of active preparations for a war against Red China.

There is, however, an important difference between the Jewish community in 1930s Germany and the Chinese community in today’s Australia. At the time of Hitler’s ascendancy, Jewish people only made up some 0.75% of the German population. By contrast over 5% of Australia’s residents have Chinese ancestry and nearly a quarter of Australia’s population are people of colour from various backgrounds. That naturally means that it would, theoretically, be more difficult for a future fascist regime in Australia to commit genocide against the Chinese community or other non-white communities in the way that the Nazis mass murdered the Jewish community. More difficult but, unfortunately, far from
impossible. Let us not forget that as well as murdering Jews, Roma, Afro-Germans and Poles, the Nazi regime brutally persecuted and smashed the German Communist Party, the Germany Social Democratic Party and the trade unions who together had some 15 million members and supporters when Hitler came to power. The Nazis were able to carry out this repression by first targeting one group and then relying on their other intended victims remaining passive and cowered or otherwise not showing solidarity with the immediately targeted group before moving onto their next target. If the nightmare scenario of a fascist takeover in Australia eventuates, we can expect that the new fascist regime would first go after a smaller and thus more vulnerable target – like, say, the African community who are being so viciously vilified even today – and in doing so hone their methods of repression and propaganda. Hoping that their future targets – like the Chinese community and the trade unions – remain passive and cowered and fail to show active solidarity with this first targeted group, the fascists will succeed in their initial repression, strike fear in the hearts of their other intended victims and gain momentum for the smashing of their next target. That is why when facing violent racists, passivity ends up being akin to suicide. Moreover, just as fascists in power rely on passivity, cowardice and a lack of active solidarity between their intended victims to carry out their murderous agenda, they also rely on all this to come to power in the first place. That is why in a world where violent far-right groups are gaining strength, all the intended victims of the fascists must show courage by coming together in active mobilisations to stamp out fascist threats. We need to stamp them out now before we have to face an enemy that has grown terrifyingly in momentum and numbers. A good start would be for the trade union movement, leftists, the Chinese community and other non-white communities present in Western Sydney to unite in action to sweep away the military training base that the extreme racists have established in Sydney’s Ashfield.

WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

In the face of intensifying oppression of Aboriginal people, growing anti-Chinese racism and vicious attacks against the African community, Muslims, South Asian origin people and all people of colour in Australia, we cannot leave it to the police, courts, governments or local councils to protect targeted communities. History has shown that these state bodies in Australia – no matter which party is holding government – invariably protect racist groups. We only have to look what happened today at Melbourne’s St Kilda Beach. A group of far-right extremists started threateningly videoing African youth kicking a soccer ball around and when they protested against the racists’ provocative actions, the police intervened. However, the person that the cops arrested was not one of the extreme racists but one of the African youths who was being harassed! The police, to the cheers of the far-right racists, pepper sprayed and held to the ground this African youth, causing the young man to vomit. The police had the same slant when anti-racist counter-demonstrators opposed the “Reclaim Australia” mobilisations held by extreme racists in 2015-16 when police protected the racists and violently attacked anti-racist protesters. Indeed, at the 18 July 2015 race-hate rally in Melbourne, a policeman even publicly high-fived a member of the extreme racist United Patriots Front.

The state enforcement institutions in capitalist Australia ultimately serve the ultra-rich, big end of town who need racism as it keeps the masses that they exploit divided and distracted. Moreover, as we know all too well, the government and state enforcement organs are themselves purveyors of racism. That is why it must be our multi-racial trade unions, drawing together all working class people and all the targeted communities that must act to oppose the racist attacks of today and retard the future threat of a fascist takeover. This is a matter of not only protecting communities targeted by racist violence but of defending the class interests of the working class. Racism is a mortal threat to the trade union movement and the struggle for workers’ rights. By dividing working class people racism undermines the unity which is so crucial to any working class people’s struggle for wages, improved working conditions, jobs and public housing. That is why it is in the very interests of the workers movement to be at the forefront of the struggle to oppose racist attacks and to resist the threat from violent far-right outfits.

The working class movement and racial minorities must come together with the following action program:

Mass mobilisations of trade unionists standing alongside people from Aboriginal, Chinese, other Asian, African, and Middle Eastern backgrounds as well as Muslims, Jews, LGBTIQ communities and leftists must stop the fascists when they try to mobilise in public. It is difficult to mobilise against the numerous, disparate acts of racist violence by garden-variety rednecks that occur every single day. However, by dealing severe blows in public to the politically racist elements, we can send a strong message to the unorganised racists that it is not in their interests to stick their ugly necks out and commit racist attacks. A priority right now is to get rid of the violence training base that the extreme racists have established at 34 Thomas St, Ashfield.

All racist attacks of any kind must be opposed no matter which community they target. Attacks on one community, when unopposed, give racists the taste of blood that will inevitably encourage them to target other racial minorities as well. That means there must be determined struggle against the state’s systematic oppression of Aboriginal people – oppression which leads to so many black people being killed in state custody by racist police and prison guards. We must also stand with the African communities that are being so viciously scapegoated today and with Muslim people who have been copping ongoing racist attacks over the last two decades. We must fight to free the refugees, stop all deportations and win the rights of citizenship for all refugees, guest workers and overseas students.

New, ever more repressive laws in Australia, which can be used to persecute minorities and thus further incite racist sentiments, must be opposed. These include the “foreign interference law” passed in June that aims to witch-hunt pro-PRC Chinese people, the various anti-terror laws that are so draconian that they often lead to Muslim people innocent of any crime being victimised (such as student of Sri Lankan Muslim background, Mohamed Kamer Nizamdeen, who was recently falsely imprisoned for four weeks in harsh conditions on blatantly false terrorism charges) and the myriad of measures associated with the government’s racist “Intervention” into Aboriginal communities.

We must counter the government and mainstream media’s propaganda blitz against socialistic China. This campaign of lies not only “rationalises” the ruling class’ measures against a workers state, the PRC, but inevitably ends up inciting hostility to the Chinese community in Australia as well. The anti-PRC propaganda blitz can only be effectively opposed by pointing to the class nature of the PRC as a state that, for all its deformities and harmful concessions to capitalists, serves the interests of working class people. Trotskyist Platform (TP) is proud to have built actions for public housing in Australia that have favourably pointed to the PRC’s spectacular building of public housing over the last decade as an example of what is needed here to ensure affordable rental accommodation for working class people [16]. We have promoted the slogan: “Massively Increase Public Housing – Just Like Socialistic China Is Doing!” TP has also initiated united-front eemonstrations supporting particular crackdowns by the PRC authorities on Australian capitalist exploiters operating within China. When executives – including greedy Australian bigwig Stern Hu – of part Australian-owned mining behemoth Rio Tinto were sentenced to lengthy jail terms in China in 2010 for ripping-off PRC public sector enterprises and when Aussie billionaire James Packer’s high-flying executives were prosecuted by Chinese authorities for corruption in 2017, we cheered these anti-capitalist actions [17] [18], saying “China is Cracking Down on Private Sector Corporate Greed. Working Class People: Let’s Do The Same Here!”

When the PRC succeeds in its campaign to pull all people out of extreme poverty in two years time – which it is on track to do – supporters of the PRC and opponents of anti-Chinese racism should organise demonstrations here to welcome this victory for working class people the world over. This will not only help to counter anti-PRC propaganda but, by pointing out how the PRC’s state-owned banks and state-owned enterprises and its public housing drive were key to the success of this poverty-alleviation campaign, we will help spur the badly needed struggles in Australia against privatisations, for the nationalisation of the banks and for a massive increase in public housing.

We must actively campaign against economic nationalist proposals. Protectionism does not save jobs but, instead, by pitting workers in one country against another, makes it harder for workers to unite to stop their bosses from slashing jobs. In opposition to economic nationalism we must advocate a program to save workers’ jobs that is based on class struggle actions to prevent profitable businesses retrenching workers.

There must be struggle against the conditions of unemployment, casualisation of labour and inadequacy of infrastructure that provide the climate for the growth of racist movements. To win secure, permanent jobs for all, we need to build a movement to force capitalist business owners to increase hiring of permanent employees at the expense of their fat profits. We also need to demand a massive increase in funding for public hospitals, public housing, public schools, childcare and public transport financed through confiscating the wealth of the big end of town.

All our struggles for a better life for working class people come up against the very essence of the capitalist system which operates not on what is needed by the masses but on what is most profitable for individual, wealthy business owners. Meanwhile, all struggles against racial oppression come up against state enforcement organs that were created to enforce the exploitation of the working class and to administer the racism that is needed to help ensure this. Therefore, in the course of all campaigns against racist attacks and for improvement of the conditions of working class people we need to popularise the need to replace the capitalist system with a system based on socialist, public ownership of the economy administered by a workers state.

In all these struggles, politically conscious working-class people – whether of Chinese, Aboriginal, African, Middle Eastern, Indian, Filipino, Vietnamese, Nepalese, other Asian, Pacific Islander, Latin American or White Australian background – must be the spearhead. However, we can only implement this agenda if we simultaneously struggle for a new program to gain the ascendancy in our trade union movement and the broader working class: a program that rejects economic nationalism and that refuses to buy into illusions that the parliamentary and enforcement institutions of the current, capitalist, state can help workers win a better life. We must also turn our back on the current leadership of the workers movement’s practice of supporting the Australian capitalist ruling class’ reactionary foreign policy agenda, which ranges from hostility to socialistic states like the PRC and DPRK to supporting Israel’s brutal oppression of Palestinian people. Our working class organisations need a program based on militant class struggle, on firm opposition to the racist ruling class and its domestic and international agendas and on the building of genuine unity between workers of all races: local, guest and international workers. This is what is needed to not only make our unions weapons in the fight against racism but to turn them into centres of militant class-struggle resistance against job cuts, casualisation of labour and low wages.

THE STRUGGLE FOR GENUINE INTERNATIONALISM
WITHIN THE WORKING CLASS MOVEMENT

The fight to drive out racist and economic nationalist influences from the workers movement and the Left will be a difficult struggle requiring hard work and persistence. For what needs to be opposed are not only the most overt forms of White Australia racism but it’s slightly more disguised, yet all the more pernicious, forms. To understand this better we should look back at the event that remains iconic to the current Australian union movement: the 1854 Eureka Rebellion by gold miners in Ballarat. The rebellion is seen as a powerful example of the oppressed standing up for their rights and thus as a struggle that the union movement bases itself on. Today, many unions carry the flag used in the Eureka Stockade. The Eureka Rebellion was, indeed, overall progressive as the miners were subjected to an unfair tax and heavy repression. Taking part in the struggle alongside Irish, Scottish, Welsh and English immigrants were people from various parts of continental Europe and North America. There were also a small number of non-white people involved and two of the thirteen people who faced sedition charges after the uprising included a black Jamaican man, James McFie Campbell, and a black American man, John Joseph. The latter was deservedly given a hero’s reception – even being carried around the streets of Melbourne in a chair – by those who supported the struggle. Yet, it is telling to reflect upon the two particular ethnic groups who were not part of the Eureka Rebellion. Firstly, Aboriginal people were not part of the rebellion as they were largely prevented from being gold miners in the first place. Aboriginal people were, instead, being subjected to murderous terror at the hands of the colonial authorities. Secondly, miners from China, by far the largest group of non-white people present on the goldfields, were not brought into the struggle. At the time, there was much racist/economic nationalist hostility to the Chinese miners from many of the white miners. Thus, the rebel mine prospectors made no effort to reach out to the Chinese miners. Instead, the Ballarat Reform League that organised the Eureka Rebellion was “open to men of all nations” except Chinese [19]. In the wake of the Eureka movement, a courageous Black American rebel was rightly féted as a hero, yet the rebellion excluded the largest non-white ethnic group present on the goldfields. Here was a striking example of the more hypocritical form of white supremacy: where all races are welcome except any group large enough to present a serious threat to what is seen as the “rightful”, dominant position of white people. This very serious flaw, in the overall still supportable Eureka Stockade struggle, is why the Eureka Rebellion is celebrated not only by many unions and left-wing groups but is also, so troublingly, claimed – albeit quite dishonestly – by most extreme white-supremacist outfits.

In the Eureka Rebellion and the mid-1800s goldfields more broadly, we see how racism is heavily inter-twined with economic nationalism. Minority communities that were not large enough to be seen as a danger to the interests of the white gold prospectors were tolerated by those who were not extreme racists but the largest non-white group – and one that had, what is more, developed efficient, co-operative mining techniques – was bitterly opposed by many as a threat to their livelihoods. Fast forward now to today. Today, there are some left-wing small-l liberals and social democrats who will proudly oppose racist persecution of most oppressed racial minority groups but they will do little to oppose attacks on the largest non-white racial groups present in Australia, Asians and in particular Chinese background people. At worst these people, while proudly wearing the badge of “anti-racism,” will even buy into economic nationalist opposition to supposedly “excessive Chinese investment in Australia” and “cheap” Asian labour entering as guest workers. Yet, at the same time, these left-wing small-l liberals and social democrats will, very correctly, state opposition to the terrible racist attacks being unleashed against the African and Muslim communities. They will also be most determined to show their opposition to the horrific ongoing persecution of Aboriginal people (although how much these soft-lefts actually contribute to the struggle for Aboriginal rights is a very different story). It is kind of a form of the “anyone but the Chinese” prejudice that afflicted many gold miners in 1850s Victoria being played out today – albeit in softer form. Today’s left-wing small-l liberals and social democrats do not feel “threatened” by small minority communities like Muslims and Africans and, thus, they do sincerely defend these persecuted communities – as they certainly should – just as supporters of the Eureka Rebellion at the time embraced the black American rebel hero, John Joseph. Similarly, some left-wing small-l liberals and social democrats are happy to join with staunch Aboriginal activists and committed socialists in proclaiming slogans supporting Aboriginal sovereignty and Aboriginal leadership. These radical proclamations are, however, made in the, for these small-l liberals and social democrats, comfortable knowledge that such laudable demands are not about to be realized in the short term because genocide and severe persecution have greatly diminished both the size and the current political-economic clout of this country’s First Peoples (for this reason even opposition leader Bill Shorten feels comfortable to regularly state that Australia “is, was and always will be Aboriginal land” even while fully backing the continued theft of this Aboriginal land by mining and pastoral capitalists). Would these same elements truly support the complete smashing of the racist White Australia status quo that will finally liberate Aboriginal people from the brutal oppression that they face when, in the future, united revolutionary struggle by the multi-racial working class and Aboriginal militants makes that actually immediately achievable? A good indication of the answer to this question can be seen by examining the extent to which these progressive small-l liberals and social democrats today oppose racist attacks on that group of racial minorities – Asians (and Chinese in particular) – large enough (and linked to hundreds-of-millions-strong populations in Australia’s Asia-Pacific neighbourhood and also to a powerful home country in the case of migrants from the PRC) to right now plausibly be seen as able to disturb the supreme position of the White Australia establishment in all economic, cultural and political matters. And here we find many left-wing small-l liberals and social democrats wanting. To be sure the inconsistencies and hypocrisies of their stances on issues of racism often reflect subconscious feelings rather than a fixed, thought-through perspective. Yet it is clear that they still have a way to go to truly break from a white supremacist mentality.

However, what makes it possible to win the best layers of the working class to a truly internationalist standpoint is the fact that such an outlook is what the workers movement actually needs to advance its very own interests. The working class needs genuine unity, based on equality across race and national lines, in order to ensure it is as strong a force as possible to fight for its jobs, working conditions and social services. It is this basic truth that is the lever that an internationalist workers party uses to lift the level of fighting inter-racial and cross-border unity of the workers movement.

We need to also stress that fighting to unify the working class in today’s Australia across racial lines should be far easier than it would have been to unify the miners during the mid-nineteenth century gold rush. Why? Because although the miners of the Eureka Stockade – and the gold rush more broadly – were oppressed by heavy taxes and police bullying, they were not actual wage workers toiling together for wages from common exploiting bosses. Rather, they were self-employed producers who kept for their own selves what they produced – after paying out taxes and expenses. In effect, they were each little small businessmen. And although they united with each other – but excluded Chinese miners – during the Eureka rebellion against cruel government policies, they often also had the individualistic, self-centred outlook of small businessmen. Indeed, their economic position as individual self-employed producers also formed the material basis for the anti-Chinese racism within their numbers. To the extent that the miners did not embrace collective gold prospecting, theoretically every other gold miner working in the area that a particular miner was searching for gold in was a rival. The more other gold prospectors there were, the less gold would be left over for the miner to collect himself. This meant that any large group of miners seen as outsiders would be felt as a threat to their livelihoods. This large group of “outsiders” were, of course, the Chinese. Moreover, the fact that the co-operative mining techniques of Chinese miners made them more efficient at finding gold than their white-skinned counterparts only enraged prejudiced, white miners even more. The despicable xenophobia of the many gold prospectors who were racist was rooted in the hard economic reality that the more gold found by outsiders – and specifically the Chinese miners – the less there was left for them. However, such an equation does not exist for wage workers. Indeed for wage workers, it is the very inverse equation that holds true. Workers’ income comes from selling their physical and/or mental labour power to the business-owning capitalists for wages. Thus, very unlike the relationship between individual small businessmen participating in the same industry, wage workers are not engaged in dog-eat-dog competition with their fellow workers. If less workers are to be employed in a particular sector this will not, in the least, lead automatically to increases in the standard of living of the remaining workers. What is needed to improve the income of workers is class struggle against their bosses to force the latter to hand over a greater share of the fruit of workers’ labour back to the workers themselves rather than being plundered as profits by the business owners. To wage this class struggle, workers’ unity is the most important factor. Racial prejudice and economic nationalism – whether it is directed against Aboriginal people, against smaller racial minorities or against larger minority groups – is simply poison to the struggle for working class peoples’ rights. Put simply, whereas for the gold prospectors in 19th century Australia racially excluding any particular group of miners – which turned out to be specifically the Chinese miners – could theoretically have led to higher income for miners from the majority racial group, for wage workers in today’s Australia it is building unity across races that is needed to win higher incomes and a more secure livelihood. To be sure, there is still much racism within the workers movement in today’s Australia. However, this is not primarily an internally generated racism like it was, to a large degree, with the mid-19th century gold prospectors. Rather, it is a racism largely impregnated by ruling class politicians and the big business-owned media who are eager to divide and divert the exploited masses.

The fact that combating racial divisions is in the very material interests of workers is the reason why it is possible, through the determined and conscious effort of the most far-sighted workers and leftist intellectuals, to eventually drive out racial prejudice from the workers movement; and thus make wage workers (who make up some 65% to 70% of Australia’s workforce) into a bulwark in the struggle against racism throughout broader society. It is this material interests that workers have in inter-racial unity which is also why, even during the middle of Australia’s official White Australia Policy period, proud members of the Seamen’s Union of Australia made laudable efforts to help Chinese workers on ships frequenting Australia to establish unions and fight for their rights. These communist-inspired Australian trade unionists did this wonderful work even while the Australian union movement, as a whole, was upholding the White Australia Policy and nominally Marxist, more left-wing union leaders were less than 100% in following through on their avowed opposition to the policy.

THE CRUCIAL ROLE THAT MIGRANTS FROM THE PRC
ARE DESTINED TO PLAY WITHIN THE AUSTRALIAN WORKERS MOVEMENT

The early-mid 20th century bonds of friendship built in struggle between Chinese seamen working on ships docking in Australian ports and the best of the Australian trade unionists who supported their brave efforts at union organising helped develop crucial links between sections of the white working class and the broader Chinese community. In the same way today, Australian trade unionists from Chinese, Indian, Filipino, Nepalese, Pakistani, Bangladeshi, Korean and Indonesian backgrounds can play an important role in bringing together white workers with Asian-based, migrant working class communities. These workers have much to contribute to the Australian workers movement in many other ways too. This is especially the case for workers in Australia originating from the Peoples Republic of China. Most working class immigrants from the PRC living in Australia tend to be, to a greater or lesser degree, sympathetic to Red China. Therefore, workers from a PRC background living in Australia can form an important link between the overall fight of the working class against the capitalist bosses and the badly needed struggles not only against anti-Chinese racism but against attacks on the socialistic PRC. A small example of this was seen in August 2016. It was then that ethnic Chinese workers who are members of the CFMEU construction workers union pushed for their union to take a stand against Channel 7’s blatantly anti-China bias in its coverage of the 2016 Olympics. This resulted in the CFMEU holding a small protest against Channel 7 in Sydney in which not only ethnic Chinese construction workers took part but also CFMEU officials and other construction workers. The rally did not openly state the class character of China as a socialistic workers state and identify this as the reason for the anti-China bias of Australia’s capitalist media. Nevertheless, by slamming the “ignorant and discriminatory” media coverage of China, the CFMEU’s action objectively took a stand with Red China. It was also welcome solidarity with discriminated against, Chinese-Australian workers who are being harassed by the anti-Chinese bigotry that is, in part, driven by the Australian capitalists’ hostility to the Peoples Republic of China. This was a rare example of our unions today taking an active stand against not only anti-Chinese racism but against anti-communist hostility to the PRC.

Although the August 2016 protest against Channel 7 over the Olympics was small, it showed the potential of PRC-origin workers in Australia to push the trade union movement here in the much needed, internationalist direction. Moreover, there is a particular characteristic of those who have previously been workers in the PRC, that is probably as yet unknown by most of their coworkers, which gives them the potential to influence the Australian workers movement in a really positive way. This is related to the reality that the Peoples Republic of China is a workers’ state – albeit one distorted by bureaucratic deformations and weakened by a level of capitalist intrusion. Since the toiling masses took over China in her 1949 anti-capitalist revolution, in China workers – and indeed everyone else – are taught that workers are the rulers of the country. As a result, workers in the PRC have a sense of entitlement – a justified feeling that political, economic and social affairs ought to be managed for their benefit. To be sure, wages are lower in China than they are in Australia. Yet that is only because China – due to its cruel neo-colonial subjugation by imperialist powers in its pre-1949 days – is still, per person, a much poorer country than Australia. For a country of its per capita income, wages in China are actually rather high, especially when the social wage that bosses are required to pay into Chinese workers’ accounts are taken into account (these include not only for China’s form of superannuation but funds for medical bills and housing expenses). Moreover, the PRC has had the fastest growing wages in the world over the last decade [20]. Now, as a huge and disparate country, there have been cases of bad sweatshop exploitation of workers in China’s private sector – especially in foreign-owned factories and in smaller workplaces. However, following the introduction in 2008 of a new pro-worker labour law, a further increase in an already very high rate of trade union membership, the wider penetration of Communist Party of China (CPC) cells into private businesses and spirited government “repression” against capitalist bosses who fail to follow labour laws or flout safety regulations, the workplace rights of private sector workers in China have considerably improved. Meanwhile, in socialistic state-owned enterprises, which dominate all the key sectors of the Chinese economy, working conditions, are in general, rather good. Workers in these enterprises have a high level of job security with retrenchments relatively rare. Certainly, the way bosses in Australia can often bully workers is unheard of in many of the PRC’s state-owned enterprises. Indeed, if Aussie capitalist bosses saw how relaxed at work many employees in China’s socialistic state-owned enterprises are, they would probably have a fit! To some degree the conditions that exist in China’s state-owned enterprises are replicated in China’s bigger private firms where CPC cells and the overall character of the state force the capitalist owners to maintain a decent work environment and dissuade them from carrying out mass layoffs. All this, combined with Chinese workers’ “sense of entitlement,” means that when workers in China are not happy with how their bosses are treating them they tend to not only go on strike but do so in a way quite different to most strikes in Australia. In Australia, strikes are disproportionately less likely in the private sector where the rate of trade union membership is much lower than amongst public sector workers. In contrast in the PRC, where the state-owned enterprises essentially belong to the people and hence have much better workplace conditions than in the private sector, a disproportionately high percentage of strikes occur in the private sector or in any public enterprises that are facing privatisation (although such attempted privatisations have been very rare in the last few years). However, the main difference in industrial action that occurs in China with the increasingly little that occurs here is in the types of action taken by striking workers. In Australia, a typical strike is associated with a stop-work meeting and in some cases a peaceful rally. In only a percentage of cases will a strike see a picket line established – usually if it is a longer running strike – which only in a portion of these instances will see the pickets actually physically stopping anyone trying to cross. In the PRC however, strike actions, from day one, typically involve workers asserting their domination over all the space surrounding the struck workplace. Here is where the sense of entitlement comes in. China’s striking workers not only picket work-site entrances but also block nearby roads and often occupy the workplace buildings. In some cases they even take their bosses hostage. In Australia, in the all too rare cases that workers engage in such China-style industrial action, rebelling workers always face denunciations by politicians, hysterical condemnation by the mainstream media and physical attack from police. Yet in China it is rare for the media and politicians to denounce striking workers. The PRC’s state-owned media are actually more likely to blame the bosses in any industrial dispute. As for the attitude of PRC courts to industrial action by workers, here is how a Western law firm advising bosses in China summarised it:

“There is a trend of an increasing number and scale of industrial actions, which is being used by the employees more and more often as a tool to assert its legal rights or negotiate better term of employment. Where the employees start a strike because of incompliance on the part of the company in relation to employee benefits and rights, PRC judicial bodies are usually protective of the employees and often uphold claims of termination without legal cause if the employer terminates the employees for organising or participating in the strike [21].”

In other words, completely opposite to the situation in Australia, PRC industrial courts are much more likely to favour striking workers than the bosses. Meanwhile, while on some occasions Chinese police and bureaucrats may attack militant action by workers during an industrial dispute, in other cases they may either turn a blind eye to such action or even support it! In some famous cases, Chinese police and government officials have even sided with private sector workers who have taken their bosses hostage and even tacitly joined in with workers in trying to pressure the seized capitalist to capitulate to the workers’ demands. This type of scenario was played out spectacularly in China’s most stormy dispute in the last decade, the July 2009 Tonghua steelworkers strike in northeastern China that opposed the privatisation of the enterprise. There, after thousands of workers not only occupied the plant but took the new private boss hostage and beat him to death, the government not only immediately reversed the privatisation but PRC state media mocked the greed of the killed capitalist boss while police chiefs involved made statements sympathetic to the rebelling workers! Needlessly to say, such responses by the state and their media to workers’ struggles has further amplified the sense of entitlement that workers in the PRC enjoy.

So what happens when some of these “entitled” workers from Red China go abroad. Well that was seen dramatically in Singapore in 2012. On 26 November of that year, nearly 180 bus drivers from China working for Singapore Mass Rapid Transit Corp (SMRT) went on strike over poor pay and living conditions. Many stayed out on strike the following day as well. The strike was especially daring given that these workers are constrained by the same conditions as guest workers in Australia – they can be sent home at any time if their bosses rip-up their employment contract. Moreover, the Chinese workers’ wild-cat action not only flouted Singapore’s harsh anti-strike laws but was done in defiance of Singapore’s National Trades Union Congress which pathetically condemned the strike. Five strike leaders ended up being jailed by the Singapore capitalist regime and 29 other strikers were sacked and deported [22]. The struggle did, however, force the bosses to make a few improvements to the housing conditions of the bus drivers. In a country with an extremely repressive capitalist regime, the daring strike by the Chinese workers had the political effect of an earthquake. This was the first strike in Singapore in nearly 27 years! Moreover, it seems to be the only major strike (there had been a “work to rule” industrial action by Singapore Airlines pilots in 1980) against a local Singapore-based company in the country’s entire 54-year post-independence history!

Potentially, the defiance shown by PRC bus drivers in Singapore can be brought to Australia too when people from the PRC migrate to Australia. This obviously applies mainly to those migrants who were workers when they lived in the PRC -rather than self-employed businesspeople or high-ranking professionals. The Chinese migrants who will be most imbued with a sense of entitlement as workers will be those who had worked in the PRC’s state-owned enterprises; and to a slighter lesser extent those who had worked in those larger private enterprises where the influence of Communist Party of China committees are greatest. In these state-owned enterprises and other enterprises where CPC influence is strong, the intervention of the PRC workers’ state to protect working conditions is greatest and China’s 2008 labour law, that gives workers a virtual veto over changes to workplace conditions, is most strictly enforced. These “entitled” workers, when they start working in Australia and are suddenly hit with a workplace environment where bosses often bully workers and where the courts, media, politicians and police are uniformly against them could well be prone to fighting back in outrage. Now that would inject a badly needed shot of militancy to the working class in this country! Here, anti-strike laws, increasing legal persecution of unions and a pro-ALP union leadership that for the most part is unwilling to defy the anti-union laws have all combined to cause the level of industrial action to fall to record low levels. This in turn has led to stagnant – and in many cases even falling – real wages, increasing heavy handedness by bosses and deteriorating working conditions.

One thing holding back many working-class PRC migrants from spearheading class struggle resistance in Australia are the restrictions on their rights that come from not holding citizenship. This make many of these migrants especially fearful of the consequences of being sacked or arrested by police (mind you none of this was enough to hold back the PRC bus drivers in Singapore!). Many recent migrants from the PRC are still permanent residents rather than citizens – held back from gaining citizenship by not only the four-year waiting period but by tough English language requirements – while a smaller number are guest workers. The other factor constraining working-class migrants from the PRC is the racist environment that they endure in this country. When coloured migrants cop racist abuse and hostility they feel intimidated, insecure and isolated. Such workers naturally then feel less confident to stand up for their rights at work. On the contrary, if migrants from the PRC see the Australian workers movement actively defending their rights and opposing racist attacks on them then they will feel emboldened to be at the forefront of militant struggles for workers’ rights. Our workers movement here desperately needs a big dose of the audacity and belligerence shown by PRC migrant workers in Singapore in 2012! So let’s help unleash that militancy by mobilising to defend Chinese communities against racist attacks.

Notes:

[1] Gavin Fernando, Anti-Asian racist signs have been discovered in Sydney’s northwest, published on news.com. au website, 13 May 2018, https://www.news.com.au/lifestyle/real-life/news-life/antiasian-racist-signs-have-beendiscovered-in-sydneys-northwest/news-story/11ace169f1f14416936e3008a72b5eb1

[2] Ryan General, Chinese Consulate in Australia Warns Chinese Students of Danger After Recent Racist Attacks, published in Nextshark website, 20 December 2017, https://nextshark.com/chinese-consulate-australia-warns-chinese-students-danger-recent-racist-attacks/

[3] Josh Dye, Man allegedly targeted Asian people in Randwick rampage, published in The Sydney Morning Herald website, 18 May 2018, https://www.smh.com.au/national/nsw/man-allegedly-targeted-asian-people-in-randomrandwick-rampage-20180518-p4zg0m.html

[4] Heather MacDonald, A white face can be a big help in a discriminatory housing market, published in The Conversation website, 1 February 2016, http://theconversation.com/a-white-face-can-be-a-big-help-in-a-discriminatory-housing-market-52962

[5] Natarsha Kallios and Charlotte Lam, ‘We never expected this to happen in Australia’: Vandals torch Hindu temple, published in SBS News website, 18 October 2018, https://www.sbs.com.au/news/we-never-expected-this-to-happen-in-australia-vandals-torch-hindu-temple?fbclid=IwAR3fzbDDxEIRA2XMmlnK89KOeJhxqZ4Ge65o 6uu06hcaXlrpTYZuK2U60Uo

[6] Simon Thomsen, Australia’s 200 wealthiest people just got richer at 10 times current wage growth, published in Business Insider website, 24 May 2018, https://www.businessinsider.com.au/rich-list-australia-2018-2018-5

[7] Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, Statistics on who invests in Australia, retrieved from DFAT website on 20 December 2018, https://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/investment-statistics/Pages/statistics-on-who-invests-in-australia.aspx

[8] Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade, China information sheet, retrieved from DFAT website on 20 December 2018, https://dfat.gov.au/trade/resources/Documents/chin.pdf

[9] Kristian Silva, One Nation’s Shan Ju Lin defends Pauline Hanson, says she fears Chinese Government will ‘take over’, published in ABC News website, 21 December 2016, https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-12-21/one-nationcandidate-shan-ju-lin-defends-pauline-hanson/8135684

[10] Film night on Chinese government harvesting organs, published in Party for Freedom website, 6 May 2014, https://www.partyforfreedom.org.au/2014/05/06/film-night-on-chinese-government-harvesting-organs/

[11] Stefan Winterbauer, Kopp, Sputnik, Epoch Times & Co: Nachrichten aus einem rechten Paralleluniversum, published in MEEDIA website, 18 March 2016, https://meedia.de/2016/03/18/kopp-sputnik-epoch-times-conachrichten-aus-einem-rechten-paralleluniversum/

[12] Von Gastautorin and Vera Lengsfeld, AfD-Wahlkampf in Sportkleidung – Ein kleiner Sieg über den Demokratieabbau, published in Epoch Times (Germany) website, 22 September 2017, https://www.epochtimes. de/politik/deutschland/afd-wahlkampf-in-sportkleidung-ein-kleiner-sieg-ueber-den-demokratieabbau-a2223340. html?meistgelesen=1

[13] Berlin: 13-Jährige 30 Stunden lang entführt und vergewaltigt, published in Epoch Times (Germany) website, 17 January 2016, updated 8 July 2016, https://www.epochtimes.de/politik/deutschland/berlin-13-jaehriges-maedchen30-stunden-lang-von-migranten-entfuehrt-und-vergewaltigt-a1299783.html

[14] Max Walden, Fears of growing far right in Australia amid ‘Deplorables’ tour, published in Aljazeera website, 13 December 2018, https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/12/fears-growing-australia-deplorables-tour-181212191213690.html

[15] Christine Piper, Japanese internment a dark chapter of Australian history, published in The Sydney Morning Herald website, 14 August 2014, https://www.smh.com.au/opinion/japanese-internment-a-dark-chapter-ofaustralian-history-20140813-103ldy.html

[16] Trotskyist Platform, Massively Increase Public Housing! Socialistic China is Doing That So Let’s Fight for the Same Here, 5 June 2012, published in Trotskyist Platform website, https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/massively-increase-public-housing-socialistic-china-is-doing-that-so-lets-fight-for-the-same-here/

[17] Trotskyist Platform, China Is Cracking Down on Corporate Greed & Corruption – When Will That Start to Happen Here?, 15 April 2010, published in Trotskyist Platform website, https://trotskyistplatform.com/Cracking. pdf

[18] Trotskyist Platform, Billionaire James Packer’s High Flying Executives Jailed by China for Corruption, 10 July 2017, published in Trotskyist Platform website, https://www.trotskyistplatform.com/billionaire-james-packers-high-flying-executives-jailed-by-china-for-corruption/

[19] Keir Reeves, Hargreaves discovers gold at Ophir: Australia’s ‘golden age’, from Turning points in Australian history (edited by Martin Crotty and David Andrew Roberts), University of New South Wales Press Ltd., 2009.

[20] International Labour Organization, Global Wage Report 2018/19, 2018, http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/ public/—dgreports/—dcomm/—publ/documents/publication/wcms_650553.pdf

[21] Global Legal Insights, Employment and Labour Law- China, Worker consultation, trade union and industrial action, 2019,
https://www.globallegalinsights.com/practice-areas/employment-and-labour-laws-and-regulations/china

[22] Kirsten Tatlow, Back in China, Bus Driver Doesn’t Regret Singapore Strike, published in New York Times (China edition) website, 2 April 2013, https://cn.nytimes.com/china/20130402/c02bus/en-us