Stop escalating war drive between China and US!

 

 

The reviving of Trump’s ‘China Virus’ scare by Biden with no conclusive evidence is a political ruse to escalate the cold war with ‘communist’ China. ‘China Virus’ is cold war 2.0 code for ‘Red Menace’ the global threat to democracy and human rights. Every aspect of global politics is determined ultimately by the growing contest between the two main imperialist blocs - the US/EU and China/Russia over hegemonic control of the global economy. The main driver of this heightened competition is the global struggle between the rise of China and the decline of the US measured in economic growth and political and military power. To win each bloc must mobilise its proxies and rally its working masses to arms and victory over its rival. 

Every hotspot, or regime change in the world, is underwritten by this inter-imperialist rivalry. In Palestine, Israel wants US backing to smash Hamas, the tool of Iran, the regional ally of China/Russia. In Burma (renamed Myanmar by the military), the military coup leaders are puppets of China. In India, the US is pressuring the fascist Modi regime to break relations with China. In Ukraine there is a stalemate between the US/EU backed regime and the Russian annexed Crimea and Russian backed breakaway Donbass region. In Venezuela, Brazil, and South Africa, all members of the BRICS, the ruling class is divided in its subservience to the two blocs. In Australia, New Zealand and Samoa, Chinese interests are being resisted by US backed political forces. The list goes on as the two main blocs are vying for control of as many countries as they can to defend or extend their sphere of influence.

China Virus 2.0

In reviving the “China Virus” of Trump, Biden seeks two objectives. First, to rally support for his drive to stop China from overtaking the US as the hegemonic global power.  Second, to blind workers to the fundamental causes of SARS Covid 2, the climate change emergency that is disrupting habitats and causing viruses to jump species.  Even if the virus escaped the lab, its origins are outside the lab in the breakdown of the natural environment. Moreover, if workers question the real causes, they will end up blaming the Capitalocene – the epoch of the rise and decline of capitalism destroying nature. That would open the road to mutinies against imperialist wars and fuel the socialist revolution. Therefore, to avoid another ‘weapons of mass destruction” farrago, expect Biden to double down with his 90-day report to produce the ‘proof’ that China deliberately released the Virus to destroy the West and become the new hegemonic power. 

Meanwhile, 90 days gives the intelligence and research apparatus of the US the time to build a clinching case to justify war. It also creates the opportunity to push the other issues to build a ring of military support around China. Netanyahu has engineered US backing for isolating the Arab state rulers from the Palestinian masses, and advancing his cause to destroy Iran’s influence in the region. Free vaccines to India would push Modi and the Quad into a military build-up against China in South Asia. Myanmar will become a human rights cause celebre in search of a candidate for a colour revolution. Australia, deputy dog for the US in the region, will foam at the mouth to put its ships into the South China Sea to agitate for democracy and freedom of movement. Japan and DRK are already tied to their US bases in readiness. In Samoa the standoff between the longstanding Government which has negotiated a major new port with China, against a newly created opposition demanding power to cancel the deal, feigns to be a fight over democracy and the constitution, and not over which imperialist power will call the shots. 

Uyghurs, democracy and human rights

Regarding China itself, the surveillance sources of US imperialism, its ability to dictate the ‘news’ agenda, and its ability to rely on subservient, chauvinist, neo-Stalinist left hackery, are mobilised to brand China as a Red dictatorship and an abuser of the human rights of the Uyghurs. Of course, as a capitalist and rising imperialist power, it would be strange if China was not anti-democracy and anti-human rights. China is no worse, maybe better, than every other imperialist power in history, most certainly the USA. Not only that, most of these powers had a hand in oppressing China since the 19th century, tried to smash the peasant-based national revolution, and then isolated it to force an opening of its borders. Finally, failing to subjugate it once more as a colony, when China rose again as an imperialist power, these former oppressors have the hypocrisy to claim the moral high ground on democracy and human rights. 

As revolutionary Marxists we oppose all abuses of bourgeois democracy and human rights, including those of China. We are for the self-determination of Hong Kong, but we oppose the role of the US in dividing Hong Kong workers from mainland Chinese workers. We are for the self-determination of the Taiwanese indigenous peoples, pushed aside by the retreating KMT following the 1949 revolution. China asserts its territorial rights to both Hong Kong, formerly occupied by Britain, and Taiwan, now an armed outpost of the US.  We also fight for the right to self-determination of the Uyghurs, Tibetans and all other oppressed minorities. But self-determination from Hong Kong to Tibet will fail, short of a Chinese socialist revolution to overthrow the Red Bourgeoisie and to create a Workers’ and Farmers’ Government. That in turn would not be possible short of the victory of the world revolution that overthrows all the imperialist powers and their lackeys and replaces them with a world federation of socialist republics.

For the World Revolution!

To be clear we oppose any war between imperialist powers as we do all their proxy wars. This would be a world war in which the allies on all sides are dragged into the war. A war between the US and its allies, and China and its allies, would end human civilisation much more abruptly than global warming. To avoid a real holocaust, workers in every country must build an international united front to intervene with its armed forces in support of all anti-imperialist struggles, against both the imperialist enemy and the national bourgeois enemy. Such United Fronts exist in a rudimentary form, as in workers' blockades of arms and munitions to Israel, armed solidarity with the Syrian Revolution, and the international XR movement when and if it goes beyond civil disobedience to organised workers’ actions. This level is a step towards the internationalism required for a global workers united front. But that can only come out of a new world leadership composed of a revolutionary party and program that does not capitulate to either the US/EU bloc or the China/Russia bloc.

The new leadership that is lacking is that of a Trotskyist International rebuilt on the theory and program of the defunct 4th International. For Trotsky, like Marx and Lenin, since the mid-19th century the only progressive way forward for humanity was for the Permanent Revolution led by the Party of class- conscious workers. Today this means a world party with branches in every country with a program to defeat imperialism, its crises and wars, and its national bourgeois comprador allies. To win workers to this program we fight for transitional demands for elementary economic and political rights that capitalism cannot deliver and which can only be won by workers themselves. This drives workers to fight for workers control which brings them up against the state apparatuses, and in defence to form armed communes or councils as a base for a Workers’ and Farmers’ Government. By uniting these struggles internationally as one fight for one revolution, workers can realise the power they have to smash capitalism and open the road to socialism.