US president Donald Trump yesterday seized the opportunity for US imperialism to make a provocative intervention in the internal affairs of China by backing the Hong Kong demonstrators against the Chinese government.
Trump signed a law calling for sanctions on Chinese and Hong Kong officials who it accuses of being responsible for ‘human rights abuses’ along with the US state department deciding every year whether Hong Kong is autonomous enough from the rest of China.
If the US decides Hong Kong is not ‘autonomous’ enough then it will be economically sanctioned.
The Chinese ministry of foreign affairs issued a statement condemning this law saying:
‘This is a pure interference in China’s internal affairs. This bill, which has been denounced by all Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, is full of prejudice and arrogance. It treats Hong Kong with intimidation and threats,’ adding: ‘Such an act will make Chinese people, including Hong Kong compatriots, understand the sinister intentions and hegemonic nature of the US.’
China has promised that it would retaliate with ‘firm countermeasures’ if the US didn’t stop interfering in China’s internal affairs.
Since being handed back to China by the former British colonial power in 1997, Hong Kong has existed under the policy of the Chinese Communist Party leadership of ‘one state with two social systems’.
This gave a license to Chinese capitalism and capitalists to flourish as long as they didn’t threaten to overthrow the state.
But this is precisely what these self-styled ‘pro-democracy’ demonstrators are attempting – a counter-revolution in Hong Kong complete with demands for a return to colonialism.
In fact, the Chinese authorities have treated these protesters, who have resorted to the most extreme violence towards the police and anyone who disagrees with them, with extreme restraint.
Can you imagine what would happen in Paris if rioters bombarded the police with petrol bombs, shot at them with bows and arrows and in one case set on fire a man they suspected of being from the mainland, putting him in a coma for ten days? French riot police would have shot them down without hesitation while in Britain a state of emergency would have been declared and troops called in.
In the US, such riots would have immediately been dealt with, through martial law and the National Guard on the streets with orders to shoot to kill.
US imperialism certainly has ‘sinister intentions’ behind its intervention in China’s internal affairs behind the cloak of defending ‘human rights’ and democracy – a subterfuge that it has used across the world to justify military invasions to effect regime change in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya.
The intention is to encourage a counter-revolution amongst the Hong Kong bourgeoisie that will ally itself with the new capitalist class that has grown up in China as a result of the ‘one state two social systems’ policy and which the US hopes will form the basis for the overthrow of the deformed workers state.
Trump’s new law is designed to either achieve this or force the Stalinist leadership into a corner, whereby it has either to submit to the demands for complete autonomy for Hong Kong and allow counter-revolution to flourish or crush the demonstrators by force creating a storm of imperialist outrage that prepares the way for a military strike against China in the name of ‘humanitarianism’.
This US law, passed almost unanimously by the Senate and signed off by Trump, is nothing less than a declaration that US imperialism is out to destroy the deformed workers state of China through counter-revolution and war.
The Chinese working class will not sit back and allow counter-revolution and capitalist restoration – the fight will be to overthrow the Stalinist bureaucracy and put an end to the new emerging Chinese bourgeoisie and an end to capitalism in Hong Kong.
This will win the support of workers throughout the world who hate capitalism and imperialist wars.
Capitalism is in desperate crisis and preparing for a new war to re-conquer the world. The mission of the US and UK working class is to remove this threat of a new world war by carrying out socialist revolutions in the US and the UK to remove the warmongering but now decrepit capitalist classes to bring in world socialism!
