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Mass demonstrations in China

The Western media is full of reports of anti-Japanese demonstrations in China. But these are not the only signs of mass mobilisation in the last weeks. While nationalist marches have been tolerated by police, marches by workers and peasants are brutally repressed.

The anti-Japanese demonstrations started in Beijing. They were sparked, we are told, by outrage at the publication in Japan of new school history books which gloss over the barbaric reality of Japan’s wartime occupation of China.

A group of several hundred people marched to demonstrate outside the Japanese embassy and, despite the presence of armed police, succeeded in breaking its windows as they vented their anger with sticks and stones. More recently, protests have spread to other major cities including Shenzhen, the heart of the Special Economic Zone neighbouring Hong Kong.

Meanwhile, a very different protest was unfolding in the town of Huankantou. There, elderly women protesting at plans to build a second chemical plant were forcibly moved on by police, and in the ensuing scuffles two protesters were reportedly killed. As local anger mounted, demonstrators filled the streets demanding a public meeting with the authorities, but this was refused. Instead, according to local reports, at four o’clock on Sunday morning the village was stormed by up to 3000 riot police. The villagers proved to be more than their match. Using barricades and makeshift weaponry, they repelled the riot police leaving many injured. Some reports speak of several deaths and 30 police buses burnt out.

Despite their differences, both these incidents are related to China’s rapid economic development over the last 20 years and the resulting changes within the country and in relations with foreign powers. The anti-Japanese demonstrations must have had the tacit approval of the authorities. Other attempts to demonstrate, for example, to commemorate the 1989 massacre at Tiananmen Square or by the banned religious movement Falun Gong, have been rapidly broken up by the police. The fact that anyone in China even knows about the content of Japanese school books is a result of publicity in the government controlled media.

On the face of it, what the government hopes to gain from these demonstrations is increased bargaining strength in its diplomatic wrangles with Tokyo. The immediate issue concerns territorial rights in the China Sea where both China and Japan are already drilling for oil and gas. In the longer term, there is also the question of Japan’s efforts to become a permanent member of the UN Security Council, representing “Asia”. The recent decline in diplomatic relations, described by Premier Wen Jiabao as “the worst for three decades", reflects China’s increasing assertion of itself as the principal power in the region.

On the other hand, the ferocity of the clashes in Huankantou reveals the usually hidden side of China’s recent economic growth. The scramble for industrial expansion has seen growth rates in double figures for much of the last decade. Nothing has been allowed to stand in the way of China’s new rich who have had the backing, and usually the active involvement, of the Chinese Communist Party at all levels. In Huankantou, the existing chemical plant was built on land expropriated from the villagers and brought with it environmental damage, illness and an increased number of birth deformities.

The authorities’ decision to allow the building of a second plant, despite local opposition, has been repeated hundreds and thousands of times throughout China, especially in the coastal provinces. Huankantou’s refusal to accept the authorities’ decision is being repeated across the country. Beijing itself recently admitted that there were 58,000 incidents of popular discontent last year, an increase of 15% on the previous year. Although this includes everything from local petitions and disputes to major confrontations such as that in Huankantou, what happened there shows that violent clashes are far from exceptional.

Look at the figures. A force of 3000 riot police is a force approximately one third the size of the British army of occupation in Iraq. Obviously this was not just a matter of crowd control. Even more significant is the fact that they were defeated by the local people. That would be impossible without large numbers of people willing to fight and an impressive degree of organisation. In the aftermath of the clash with the police, it is reported that a committee has been elected to oversee local administration. In other words, the local people were expecting an attack, were well enough organised to repel it and have now taken control for themselves. There is no reason to think that Huankantou is unique.

On the contrary, what happened there points to a nationwide wave of militant opposition to the effects of capitalist restoration in China. That is the other reason for Beijing’s encouragement of nationalist, anti-Japanese demonstrations. It is a calculated attempt to divert popular discontent away from the government, the party and the capitalists. Beijing is playing a dangerous game. Not because of any real threat of a serious conflict with Japan, but because official support for public demonstrations could provide the opportunity for the widespread unrest to gain national coherence and organisation. Crucial to this development will be the involvement of the working class of the major urban centres including both the old industrial areas, such as the northeast, and the main cities of the coastal provinces which have seen the bulk of recent industrial growth.

After the Tiananmen massacre in 1989, the wave of strikes and demonstrations in all the major cities confirmed the existence of a nationwide working class movement. The coordinated strikes in the petrochemical industries in 2001 showed that this movement had not only survived but strengthened itself. We can confidently predict that there are organisations and leaders who are not only too experienced to fall for the government’s reactionary nationalist diversion but will know how to make use of the present situation to advance their own organisation and demands.

Top of the list of any such demands will be democratic rights. Of course the Japanese people should know the truth about Japanese imperialism’s crimes, but what do Chinese schoolbooks say about the Great Leap Forward, the People’s Communes, the Cultural Revolution and the suppression of the democracy movement in Tiananmen? Freedom of the press and other media and the removal of state controls on the Internet are all essential for the growth and development of a nationwide working class movement that would also demand full political rights and the fall of the dictatorship of the Chinese Communist Party.

China’s workers will know of the mass movements that have toppled governments in several of the states of the former Soviet Union. They will know this largely from the Western media and Western organisations active in China who have every interest in using widespread discontent and demands for democracy in their own interests. Although China’s own capitalists have been happy to make their millions behind the protection of the Communist Party and the state security services, as their wealth and economic strength increase they also will have a vested interest in political change in China.

The workers’ movement needs to be politically absolutely independent of these false friends. Workers’ democracy demands not only free speech and a free press but also the right to inspect the books and accounts of all enterprises, Chinese and foreign-owned, and the Communist Party to reveal not only the true scale of profits but also the scale of corruption and collusion that allowed it. Workers’ democracy must also mean freedom to organise. The existing underground trade unions must be legalised and the bureaucrats and party officials who control the official trade unions must be kicked out so that the entire labour movement can be reorganised and rejuvenated. Moreover, the workers need to be able to defend their organisations and their rights. Like the villagers of Huankantou, they will need to organise themselves to repel attack.

Most important of all, however, the still developing Chinese workers’ movement needs a political leadership, a new workers’ party, committed to the dual task of reversing the privatisation and capitalisation of the Chinese economy and overthrowing the rule of the Chinese Communist Party. As the villagers of Huankantou showed on a small-scale, fighting the state needs not only preparation and organisation. Above all it means fighting to replace the party’s dictatorship with a new form of political power based on the organisations of the workers and poor peasants themselves.

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