CHINA has condemned the counter-revolutionaries who stormed and vandalised the Hong Kong parliament building on Monday and raised the flag of the former occupying power, the UK’s Union Jack, over the Assembly.
This action has shocked and angered millions of Chinese workers who point out that, not so long ago, when Britain held the whip hand over parts of China, parks in the British concession areas in cities like Shanghai displayed notices that ‘no dogs or Chinese’ were allowed, and that millions of Chinese workers lost their lives driving imperialism from the Chinese mainland. In Hong Kong on Monday thousands of riot police allowed the demonstrators to get off without a scratch!
Everybody knows that if the same type of assault was carried out against the French National Assembly by French workers and youth they would have been met with water cannon, showers of rubber bullets, poison gas and live rounds, and that the morgues would be full to overflowing.
There is no reason to think that such an assault on the British parliament would be met with any different response from the riot and anti terrorist police!
The Chinese government has now urged Hong Kong to investigate the ‘criminal responsibility of violent offenders’. Beijing’s response to the ransacking of parliament followed similar remarks by Hong Kong’s leader Carrie Lam, who condemned the ‘extreme use of violence’ by the protesters.
‘Nothing is more important than the rule of law in Hong Kong,’ she told a pre-dawn press conference yesterday, flanked by Police Commissioner Lo Wai-chung.
In fact, Monday was the anniversary of Hong Kong’s handover from British to Chinese rule in 1997 – so the raising of the Union flag in the Assemby building has a great counter-revolutionary political significance.
Before Monday’s protests erupted into violence, US President Donald Trump expressed his support for the protesters, saying they were ‘looking for democracy’ and ‘unfortunately, some governments don’t want democracy’.
UK Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt said Britain condemned ‘violence on all sides’ but called on the authorities to ‘understand the root causes of what happened, which is a deep seated concern by people in Hong Kong that their basic freedoms are under attack.’
Taiwanese Foreign Minister Joseph Wu said the people of Hong Kong were ‘seething with anger and frustration’ and the idea of ‘one country, two systems’ was ‘nothing but a lie’. In fact, the Hong Kong crisis is a direct result of the policy of the Chinese Stalinist bureaucracy that the way to reunite China is to bring back first Hong Kong and then Taiwan with a policy of ‘one state with two social systems’.
This policy is an extension of the right wing policy of the heirs of Mao, who held: ‘what does it matter whether a cat is red or not as long as it catches mice.’ This gave a new license to Chinese capitalism and capitalists, as long as they did not threaten to overthrow the state.
Under the rule of the Stalinist bureaucracy the Chinese deformed workers’ state balances with one foot on the working class and one foot on the developing bourgeoise. The system extended to Hong Kong guarantees capitalism until 2047, with Taiwan (Formosa) being made the same offer. It is now being said that the Hong Kong bourgeoisie are fearful that, come 2047, they will be expropriated.
In fact, the danger is that the Hong Kong bourgeoisie will ally itself with the new capitalist class that exists in China, and will find a corrupted section of the Stalinist bureaucracy willing to go further than even Yeltsin, and attempt a counter-revolutionary overthrow of the deformed workers state.
On October 14 last year, Bethy Tam, acting chair of the Hong Kong Association of Banks, publicly called on the Hong Kong government to address the issue of post 2047 ‘as soon as possible’. In the 1984 Sino-British Joint Declaration, China agreed that Hong Kong’s capitalist system would remain unchanged for 50 years after the region’s return to China.
The Chinese working class will not allow capitalist restoration. It will fight for rule though workers soviets and for the new bourgeoisie in China to be expropriated and for Hong Kong capitalism to be terminated.
We are livng in the period of the struggle for the victory of the world socialist revolution, to put an end to capitalism and imperialism worldwide. This is why the big issue is the building of sections of the Fourth International in every country, including China, to lead the struggle for the victory of the world socialist revolution to put an end to capitalism worldwide!
