Energetic Protest Opposes
the Australian Rulers’
Cold War Witch-Hunt
26 September 2023: Two days ago, about forty people participated in a determined protest against the stigmatisation and marginalisation of Australia’s Chinese community that has accompanied the ruling class’ Cold War drive against socialistic China. Witch-hunting in Australia associated with the U.S. and Australian rulers’ new Cold War has specifically targeted that majority section of the Chinese community that has a friendly attitude towards the Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Sunday’s action also opposed the broader Cold War repression in Australia. This repression is increasingly targeting even non-Chinese people who continue to maintain pragmatic relations with the PRC and her institutions. Even people with no particular political sympathy for China are being persecuted.
Sunday’s protest in the Sydney suburb of Eastwood has special importance. Since the Australian ruling class began aggressively persecuting the PRC-friendly section of the Chinese community nearly six years ago and started targeting others in this witch-hunt too, this was the very first action whose main focus was pushing back at this Cold War repression. And it was the first demonstration to in any way call-out such Cold War witch-hunting since the campaign to free pro-North Korea, then political prisoner in Australia, Chan Han Choi, culminated nearly two and a half years ago when Choi was freed from the clutches of capitalist Australia’s “justice” system.
The September 24 rally and march was reported on by the popular Chinese-language Australian news site, Sydney Today and picked up by many other Chinese-language news sites. Reflecting the deep concerns of Australia’s Chinese community, the article about the rally had one of the highest number of readers’ comments of any article published by Sydney Today on the day that the report was issued.
The main banner of the demonstration called to “RESIST THE COLD WAR WITCH-HUNT!” The other banner slogans included, “Free the People of Many Ethnicities That the Australian Regime is Cruelly Prosecuting for Merely Engaging with China’s Institutions!”, “Stop the Marginalisation of the Chinese Community!”, “Resist the Attacks on Social Organisations Friendly to China!” and “Stop the New McCarthyist Witch-hunt! `Free Speech’ Must Include the Right to Express Positive Views about Socialistic China!”
The September 24 rally was proudly multiracial in composition bringing people of white Australian background together with people from Chinese, Korean and other Asian and Middle Eastern ethnicities. It was endorsed by the Australian Chinese Workers Association (ACWA), ourselves in Trotskyist Platform, Anti-War West Sydney and, in an individual capacity, by well-known peace activist Nick Deane who is both the convenor of the Marrickville Peace Group and a member of the Independent and Peaceful Australian Network (IPAN). For the ACWA, it took particular courage to participate in this action. Since the Cold War witch-hunt threatens all Chinese community organisations that have either a friendly or neutral attitude towards Red China – that is all Australian-Chinese groups that refuse to enlist in the capitalist rulers’ PRC-bashing campaign – the ACWA is itself one of the groups in the firing line.
Each of the endorsing entities had representatives speak at Sunday’s rally. The formal part of the demonstration began with an address by one of the two co-chairs of the event, ACWA chairman, David Chen. Introducing the action David stated:
“Thank you everyone who has come here to support this important action to oppose the marginalisation of the Chinese community in Australia and to stand up against the new Cold War witch-hunt.
“I want to start by acknowledging that we are gathering here on the land of the Wallumettagal clan of the Eora First Nations people.
“My name is David Chen and I am the chairman of the Australian Chinese Workers Association. I will be co-chairing this event together with my friend Sarah Fitzenmeyer who is the chairwoman of Trotskyist Platform, the Australian-Chinese Workers Association’s partners in initiating this event.
“My remarks will be focussed on one important symptom of the marginalisation of the Chinese community. That is Ryde City Council’s decision to name a big chunk of Eastwood without properly consulting the Chinese community or the broader community at all [Editor’s note: According to the latest census, people of Chinese ethnicity are by far the biggest ethnic group in Eastwood and make up 49% of the suburb. However, recently the local council that covers Eastwood has decided to rename a big chunk of the suburb as `Koreatown’ without consulting the Chinese community. This has provoked outrage among some who see it as a symptom of how marginalised the Chinese community in Australia has become]. Sarah and other speakers will then talk about the many other aspects of Cold War repression in Australia which has seen Chinese social organisations slandered, people of various ethnicities jailed or charged for having connections to China and violent racist forces being encouraged on the streets.”
In calling to “suspend the construction of the Koreatown project” until a proper consultation has taken place, the ACWA chairman stressed that his group’s stance has nothing to do whatsoever with rivalry with the Korean community or even disapproval of the existence of a “Koreatown” within Eastwood per se but is based on opposition to the Ryde City Council’s lack of consultation with the Chinese community and lack of openness around the Eastwood naming issue. He concluded by calling for Ryde to become “a model multicultural community where all ethnic groups live together in peace, friendship and equality.” Indeed, it was notable that several people of Korean ancestry joined the September 24 protest.
“For All Working-Class People and
Nearly All Middle-Class People Too,
the Cold War Witch-hunting is
Completely Against Our Interests”
Next to speak, was the other rally co-chair, our Trotskyist Platform chairwoman Sarah Fitzenmeyer. Sarah began her speech by stating:
“We are gathering here today on the stolen land of the Wallumettagal clan of the Eora First Nations people. This country’s current political order is built on the brutal dispossession of Aboriginal people. Alongside this, the regime here has often engaged in persecuting Asian people – especially Chinese people. This started from the mid-19th century gold rush and then continued on into the White Australian Policy after Federation.
“Anti-Chinese racism has come back with a vengeance over the last few years – driven not only by the long-standing racist xenophobia but also the jingoism surrounding the Australian rulers’ participation in the Western regimes’ Cold War drive to destroy and ultimately annihilate socialistic rule in China. To justify their Cold War, the Australian ruling class have created a fear of China. They have been slandering sections of the Chinese community as supposed “agents” of “foreign interference” from Red China. Such propaganda inevitably creates hostility towards the Chinese community.
“To stifle any opposition to their Cold War drive, Australia’s capitalist rulers use repression to silence people – both within the Chinese community and the broader community – anyone who dares to express a positive view on the Peoples Republic of China.
“In the face of this increasing stigmatisation, we say that the Chinese community should not have to stand alone. It is the duty of Australians of other ethnicities, especially white Australians, to strongly oppose the attacks on the Chinese community and – in particular – the attacks on that large section of the Chinese community that has positive views about the Peoples Republic of China. Taking such a stance is a big part of what today’s demonstration is all about.”
Sarah then listed some of the “examples of how the Australia’s rulers’ Cold War, China-bashing campaign has caused great harm to both the Chinese and the broader community” and recalled the 1950s McCarthyist witch-hunt in the U.S. and Australia (that saw many communists and others deemed sympathetic to then most powerful socialistic state – the Soviet Union – being sacked from their jobs and in many cases imprisoned):
“Five years ago, all of Australia’s parliamentarians from all political parties voted to introduce repressive, so-called Foreign Interference laws. The true purpose of these authoritarian laws is to prevent certain groups of people from expressing views that are positive about socialistic China.
“The following year, the then NSW Liberal state government, pressured by the Greens, banned the China-connected Confucius Institutes from teaching Chinese language in NSW schools. The politicians ludicrously claimed that this language teaching would be used by China to conduct foreign interference.
“Around the same time, Australia’s ASIO secret police unleashed threatening interrogations against Chinese international students who had become involved in political activity. In August 2019, the students had organised a large pro-China rally against the pro-colonial, anti-China rioters in Hong Kong. While the Australian ruling class were overtly backing the anti-communist, anti-China forces holding rallies here, when pro-Peoples Republic of China activists did the same, they were hit with terrifying intimidation by Australia’s secret police….
“In November 2020, the leader of the Chinese community group, the Oceania Federation of Chinese Organisations, Di Sanh Duong, became the first person charged under Australia’s Foreign Interference laws. Ridiculously, the Australian regime claimed that the charity collection that he organised for a public hospital was an act of `Foreign Interference’. Can you believe it?
“The Cold War repression has reached such a level that many non-Chinese people are now also being targeted.
“The NSW state MP, Shaoquett Moselmane, in 2020, was subjected to an intense media attack after he made the manifestly true statement that China had responded effectively to the COVID pandemic. Both the AFP and ASIO unleashed a massive raid on Moselmane’s home to supposedly investigate `foreign interference’….
“The neo-McCarthyist witch-hunt has reached such proportions that even people without the slightest sympathy for China but who have had pragmatic relations with PRC entities are being persecuted….
“In one of the most outrageous persecutions of this entire neo-McCarthyist campaign, Australian citizen and former U.S. fighter pilot, Daniel Duggan, is facing extradition to the U.S. simply for training Chinese, most very likely civilian, pilots in South Africa …. For this Duggan has been languishing in harsh conditions in NSW prisons for the last ten months. The prosecution of the 54 year-old pilot has little to do with upholding the law. In the context of the crazed Cold War drive against socialistic China, Duggan is a convenient object for the U.S. and Australian rulers to create a show trial to hype up the supposed `Chinese military threat.’
“If we do not push back against this Cold War repression it’s going to get even more intense. Earlier this year, the Albanese government banned public sector employees from accessing the popular Chinese, short-video platform, TikTok, on government devices. Last month, a parliamentary committee further demanded that TikTok and WeChat be subjected to requirements that could provide the basis for completely banning these platforms in Australia.”
The rally co-chair stressed that “for all working-class people and nearly all middle-class people too, the Cold War witch-hunting is completely against our interests”:
“This Cold War witch-hunt is helping to foster an unhealthy, hysterical national security obsession. It is this climate that has enabled the Australian regime to persecute the courageous whistle blower, David McBride, the former Australian Army lawyer who exposed the Australian regime’s horrific war crimes in Afghanistan.
“The main aim Western rulers’ have for their new Cold War is of course to crush socialistic rule in China. This would be completely catastrophic for more than 90% of the people of Australia and the entire West. To ensure that this future does not come true what is most badly needed is for socialistic rule in China to succeed and flourish…. While people in Australia are ground down by unaffordable power, fuel and food prices because of the greed of the oil, gas and electricity company owners, we need to be able to point to the existence and reality of what public ownership is capable of [in the PRC], how China’s energy and power sectors are publicly owned and thus price gouging does not exist there.
“Sisters and brothers this is what we must do, we need to oppose in entirety the political, economic, propaganda and military campaign which is being waged against socialistic rule in China. And this means that we must oppose all Cold War witch-hunts that are being used to promote the war drive and to silence any opposition to it.”
Next to speak was anti-war activist Nick Deane. Recalling how he had campaigned against the Vietnam War and then against the U.S. invasion of Iraq, Nick Deane expressed his fear that the U.S. and its allies would actually unleash a war on China. He explained that China is no threat at all to any country and that Australia actually does not have any external threats whatsoever. Instead the real threat is the climate crisis. The peace activist emphasised the need to oppose Australia’s planned acquisition of nuclear submarines under the AUKUS pact.
Demonstrators at the September 24 action listen to a speech by anti-war activist Nick Deane.
“We Have to Resist the Coming New Fascism
by Resisting the New McCarthyist Repression Today!”
Samuel Kim then spoke on behalf of Trotskyist Platform. He began by skewering the persecution of Di Sanh Duong and the so-called “Foreign Interference” laws that Di Sanh Duong has been charged under: Take the case of Melbourne Vietnamese-Chinese community leader, Di Sanh Duong, known as Sunny Duong. Three and a half years ago, Sunny arranged for a community group to collect over $37,000 for a Melbourne Hospital to treat COVID patients …. You would think that this act of charity would win Sunny’s organisation praise. Instead he has been arrested and charged with foreign interference. The reason that Sunny is being targeted is because his group has a friendly attitude towards China. Donating money to a hospital could see Sunny Duong facing up to ten years in jail!
Sunny Duong was charged under Australia’s draconian, so-called, “Foreign Interference” laws brought in five years ago. Under the cover of these authoritarian laws, a very large number of office bearers of Chinese social organisations that have a friendly attitude towards Red China have been subjected to intimidating interrogations by Australia’s ASIO secret police. This Gestapo style secret police then threaten people not to talk about the interrogations. Therefore, it is not publicly known who had been interrogated! The combined ASIO intimidation, repressive laws, and media lies have pressured many Chinese social organisations to reduce their public activities.
Samuel warned of how the new McCarthyist witch-hunt is threatening to persecute ever more people: A couple of months ago, the likes of far-right Liberal MP James Patterson and Greens MP David Shoebridge even demanded that the police arrest people who make strong social media comments defending China against anti-communist, anti-China activists. If we are not careful, in the future even people here who criticise the Cold War and extremist Sinophobes, or who advocate for the public ownership of the banks and key sectors – may be accused of “foreign interference”…. Like a cancer, the Cold War witch-hunt in Australia is spreading. The whole parliament from parties that are neo-fascist like One Nation to the Liberals, Labor and the Greens join the Cold War as they all serve the ruling class. Many non-Chinese are now also being targeted.
During his speech, Samuel Kim briefly addressed the Eastwood naming issue noting that he is a person of Korean background: With Chinese voices silenced by the Cold War no wonder that the Council renamed part of Eastwood “Koreatown” without consulting the Chinese community. As a Korean person, I was shocked, because I knew Eastwood is overwhelmingly Chinese, and not Korean. If there should be a Koreatown, it should be in the southern part of Lidcombe where Koreans are the main ethnic group. But what has happened here in Eastwood is not about Koreans. This is a symptom of the growing attacks on the Chinese community.
The Trotskyist Platform spokesman not only re-asserted the basic point that the Cold War repression in Australia is aimed at ensuring the population’s subservience to the capitalist rulers’ drive to crush socialistic rule in China but explained why the capitalist rulers are hell-bent on this quest and why we must defend socialistic rule in China: Despite China’s transition to socialism being incomplete and bureaucratically deformed from hostile pressure, China is proving that socialism can greatly improve the lives of the masses …. This will encourage the struggle for socialism here…. Capitalist rule in Australia is leading to homelessness and unaffordable rents …. Meanwhile workers real wages are plummeting, all whilst corporate profits soar, the prices of food, fuel and electricity are surging and society is becoming more toxicly racist and cannibalistic due to capitalist individualistic savagery and brutality. So it is crucial that socialistic China succeeds and societies learn from her socialist-owned banks, property, and enterprises. Working-class people here must do whatever is possible to defend socialistic rule in China. We demand U.S. and Australian navies get out of the South China Sea! Down with the acquisition of long-range missiles and nuclear subs! Scrap Western support for the anti-working class Taiwanese regime! Challenge the propaganda against China – over COVID, Hong Kong or treatment of her Uyghur minority – for they are lies like the Iraq WMD allegations that lead to war, took lives, and wasted trillions of dollars!
In the context of the Cold War repression in Australia, Samuel responded to the demands by Australia’s capitalist media that prime minister Anthony Albanese attack the PRC “over human rights” when Albanese has his expected meeting with the PRC president in China later this year: When prime minister Albanese meets Chinese president Xi Jinping later this year he has absolutely no right to criticise China about “human rights”. In fact, we appeal to Chinese president Xi Jinping to ask Albanese to scrap Australia’s draconian, so-called, Foreign Interference laws and to stop the intimidating ASIO interrogations…. We also appeal to Xi to demand that the Australian regime drop the charges against those imprisoned here or facing jail on charges related to the Cold War witch-hunt.
The Trotskyist Platform representative concluded his speech by urging resistance to the new McCarthyist witch-hunt in Australia warning that it if this Cold War repression is not resisted it could become a springboard to something even more horrifying: As the capitalist order decays, there are far-right forces strengthening who want nothing less than to impose a Nazi-style or Mussolini-style fascist version of capitalism to maximise profits and quell dissent. In the U.S., Europe and to some degree Australia, these forces are growing. We have to resist the coming new fascism by resisting the new McCarthyist repression today …. Workers, students, out-of-work people of all ethnicities, religions, and background have to step up and struggle …. Let’s demand: Stop the attacks on Chinese social organisations friendly to China! Drop the charges against Di Sanh Duong! Free Daniel Duggan! Free Alexander Csergo! Stop the Cold War marginalisation of Australia‘s Chinese community! Stand with socialistic China!
Alongside the speeches of our spokespeople and the leaflets that we distributed, Trotskyist Platform supporters promoted a perspective of working-class based opposition to the Cold War repression through the placards that we carried at the rally. Among our many signs at the demonstration were ones that called to: “Resist the Push By Australian Politicians to Repress People Who Make Strong Social Media Comments Sympathetic to the People’s Republic of China!”, “Resist the Australian Regime’s Attempts to Silence Positive Opinions About Socialistic China! With Working-Class People Here Suffering Unaffordable Rents, Insecure Jobs and Plunging Real Wages We Badly Need to Hear About China’s Socialistic Alternative” and “A Strong Socialistic China is Good for Australian Working Class People. Australian Workers: Defend the PRC Workers State!” Additionally our ethnic Korean supporters carried bilingual English and Korean placards with messages such as: “Working-Class Korean-Australians Say: Stop Discrimination Against Australia’s Chinese Community!”
Sabotuers Rebuffed,
the Pro-PRC Chinese Community Given Confidence,
the Resistance is Energised
After several speeches in English, ACWA chairman David Chen addressed the Chinese-speaking people present at the rally by reiterating in Mandarin Chinese the points made in his initial introductory speech. The rally then marched west down Eastwood’s Rowe Street mall and then snaked through the shop-crowded streets of Eastwood in a loop that took us past the main entrance to the suburb’s railway station. Here is a video of a part of the march taken by the Australian-Chinese online newspaper, Sydney Today:
Immediately after the march, a message of solidarity to the action was read out from Wayne Sonter, the leader of activist group, Anti-War West Sydney. The messaged expressed “strong opposition to this governments attempts to intimidate and suppress all those who may have links with, or express views supportive of the PRC.” The solidarity statement stressed that:
“Anti-War West Sydney supports the concepts of a global community of nations, a global green new deal and aspirations for an ecological civilisation.
“We support and advocate a pathway to peace, progress and sustainability, not a road to endless war, destruction and catastrophe.
“We, or our governments cannot choose to do both. The Australian government, by these acts of intimidation and a host of associated commitments shows to the Australian people that it has chosen the wrong path and is on the wrong side of history”
During the march, participants loudly chanted “Resist, Resist, the Cold War Witch-hunt!” and “Di Sanh Duong, Drop His Charges Now!” Chinese-speakers on the march also chanted in Mandarin, calling to unite against the discrimination targeting the Chinese community. The march attracted a great deal of interest and sympathy from onlookers in the local Chinese community and from the broader Eastwood community. Indeed, throughout the whole event we met with few signs of hostility (aside from some drunken rednecks who chanted “We want nukes” as we marched past a pub that they were patronising).
However, in the days leading up to the demonstration, there was a concerted attempt by hostile forces to sabotage the action. A small number of representatives of two Chinese business bosses’ groups – the Eastwood Chinatown Chamber of Commerce and the Northwest Chinese Business Association – that had both hastily scrambled together their formation in the three weeks leading up to the rally, tried to bully the ACWA into pulling back from the September 24 action. Most harmfully, they spread disinformation within the Chinese community implying that Sunday’s demonstration would be deemed illegal by the police. We would not call these disgusting acts of sabotage a “betrayal”. Rather, it is a case of capitalists and their henchmen acting in their own class interests – the interests that is of a class that extracts its income from plundering the fruits of their workers’ labour. To be sure, as in every other political dispute, personal factors like ego come into the equation. However, at bottom, certain business bosses and their avaricious upper-middle class henchmen were acting against the September 24 rally because they feared that the explicitly pro-working class initiators of the action – the Australian Chinese Workers Association and Trotskyist Platform – could gain greater authority and that this could eventually lead to their own workers becoming more assertive of their rights and better connected with the broader Australian trade union movement. Or, to put it another way, a few of the local business bosses feared that the activism of the groups that spearheaded the September 24 rally could eventually threaten the level of profit that they can gain by exploiting their own workers. For in the end, a capitalist in Australia is a capitalist – regardless of whether they have white European, Chinese, Korean or any other ancestry! To be sure, even capitalist Chinese in Australia suffer discrimination as a result of the explosion of anti-Chinese sentiment incited by the Cold War witch-hunt. However, at the same time, the fact that this present socio-economic order upholds their very privileged economic and social position makes them zealously loyal to the current order and suspicious of any protest against the pro-capitalist authorities upholding it. Thus the particular capitalist elements within the Chinese community that attempted to undermine the September 24 rally objected to the “combative” approach to governments of the protest initiators. They counterposed to this their “positive” attitude to governments in dealing with both the Eastwood naming issue and the much more serious attacks faced by the Chinese community. Of course, these forces would be the first to grab for themselves any concessions to the Chinese community that the authorities make in a response to the activism of the likes of those of us who conducted the September 24 protest.
In many ways, the conduct of those upper-class elements within the Chinese community that sought to undermine the September 24 rally can be compared to the attitude that several Indian-Australian community groups took to protests in the late noughties against the wave of violent racist attacks on Indian students that were unleashed in Australia at that time. Although these Indian community groups included people in all classes within them (unlike those who sought to sabotage the September 24 action), it is upper-class and upper-middle class elements who – through their ability to make big donations and the often greater eloquence that flows from their greater opportunities to access high-quality education – have gained a stranglehold on many of these Indian-Australian community groups. As a result, even though the leaders of these groups’ own children may have been subjected to racist bullying at school – and on the streets – as part of the wave of anti-Indian violence, they downplayed the racist attacks on Indian, mainly international, students and condemned the spirited anti-racist protests of these students. They proved that they would rather accept, albeit with a heavy heart, racist attacks on Indian international students and even the threat of such attacks on their own children, than risk any damage to the authority of the social order that upholds their very privileged economic and social status. This attitude of the wealthy leaders of some Australian-Indian community groups provoked understandable outrage back in India. Today, certain of their class compatriots within the Australian-Chinese capitalist class are following in their footsteps with respect to the Cold War stigmatisation and marginalisation of the Chinese community today.
Those who sought to sabotage the September 24 action did have some success. With Australian-Chinese people who considered attending the rally only too aware that they are in the Cold War firing line of the authorities, fear of the likelihood of a police attack on the protest that was deviously spread by the saboteurs did indeed cause some Chinese people who were planning to join the action to decide to stay home. However, the saboteurs’ campaign against the 24 September action only made the core cadre in the ACWA more determined. As a result they, Trotskyist Platform and the other rally supporters were able to successfully conduct the action. The demonstration received much sympathy from onlookers who saw it and others who later heard about it, as well as important coverage in the Australian-Chinese media. Most importantly, the ethnic Chinese people who participated in the September 24 protest were invigorated by the action; as were the many non-Chinese people who took part. A huge step has been taken in conducting the very first action in Australia to directly oppose the Cold War marginalisation of the Australian-Chinese community and broader Cold War repression. Momentum for follow-up actions has inevitably been created. Those who hesitated in participating this time but heard of the successful conduct of the action, will be keen to join next time.
As rally co-chair Sarah Fitzenmeyer stressed in her concluding remarks:
“We must push back against this Cold War repression even though it is not going to be easy. The witch-hunting climate is intense and is accompanied by rabid propaganda by the mainstream media pushing the `China Threat’ and `Chinese Foreign Interference’ hoaxes. But history is made by the brave and not by the cowardly and today’s rally is an important step forward. It is indeed the very first action that has directly opposed the overall McCarthyist witch-hunt in Australia. So well done everyone who has come here to support this action….
“I hope the Chinese community, especially the section sympathetic to the People’s Republic of China, gets the message from today’s action that they are not alone. It is vitally important that those Chinese-Australians with a sympathetic view about socialistic China feel that they are not alone. Because we need you to be able to express your views …. We need you to tell other Australians about what the People’s Republic of China is really like and how much she has achieved in poverty alleviation and in improving the lives of her people. We need this because we know that this will help undercut support for the dangerous anti-China war drive that our rulers are hell-bent on pushing.
“So, with courage and perseverance, let us resist the Cold War repression in Australia and demand: End the Cold War witch-hunt! Free the Cold War political prisoners in Australia! Scrap the authoritarian foreign interference laws! Stop the ASIO raids! Stop the attempts to silence social media users sympathetic to socialistic China! Let’s resist our rulers’ political, military and propaganda campaign against socialistic China that is the root cause of this new Cold War repression!”