THE US House of Representatives has hit out at what the US ruling class considers to be its major enemy, the People’s Republic of China, by approving new Hong Kong-related economic sanctions, after Beijing imposed a security law on Hong Kong, which is part of the People’s Republic of China.
The measure, which was passed unanimously, penalises banks that do business with Chinese officials. ‘The law is a brutal, sweeping crackdown against the people of Hong Kong, intended to destroy the freedoms they were promised,’ said House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
In fact, Hong Kong was never free under British rule. It became a British colony in 1843 as a result of a number of Opium Wars that were fought by the British imperialists to establish their right to sell opium into China and thus enslave the Chinese people.
The Chinese people were humiliated and super-exploited. In the British concession in Shanghai, the colonial park had a notice up stating: ‘No Dogs or Chinese allowed.’
Hong Kong, under the rule of the UK, suffered under colonial laws that gave Britain the right to super-exploit its people and to poison the mass of the Chinese people for profit.
The Chinese revolution and the declaration of the Chinese People’s Republic in 1949 by Chairman Mao, that ended imperialist overlordship in China, spelt the beginning of the end for the Crown colony.
After the working class took the power in China it had to fight a war in Korea to prevent the Anglo-American forces who, during their Korean war, advanced right up to the Yalu River border with China. The commander of the Anglo-American forces in Korea, General MacArthur, planned to cross the Yalu river and invade China. He also planned to atom bomb the country!
The Chinese People’s Liberation Army won that war and since that period the Chinese working class has made huge advances, and now economically rivals the USA.
The imperialists have turned their attention away from Russia and are now obsessed with the power of China. Even with the dead weight of a ruling Stalinist bureaucracy, the working class was able to build an economy stronger than the USA.
The power of China meant that the UK ruling class was compelled to leave its crown colony of Hong Kong and hand it back to China in 1997, but under conditions where it was allowed to become a capitalist enclave for number of years.
The Chinese Stalinist regime is not an exponent of world revolution. It believes that it is possible to have one country dominated by the working class and two social systems, such as a bourgeois enclave in Hong Kong, and even in Formosa. Hong Kong became an open bourgeois enclave after 1997 whereby it was able to become a home for big banks and billionaires.
The illusion was even created that Hong Kong would become the basis for a revival of the bourgeoisie throughout China, as big American companies moved to build factories in China and make huge profits.
The issue of the hour is that Hong Kong is Chinese. It must come under Chinese law. The Chinese workers have every right to establish what system they want to see operating in Hong Kong, while the new would-be Chinese bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie in Hong Kong wave US and UK flags and call for political, economic and even military intervention.
The UK ruling class has in its hysteria forgotten itself and has invited up to three million Hong Kong right wingers to live in the UK and help it exploit British workers. The UK has offered residency, and then citizenship, to the Hong Kong right wingers.
In the US, the new law, the Hong Kong Autonomy Act, imposes sanctions on banks that do business with Chinese officials who are involved in cracking down on pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. The Chinese government must now dump the one country two social systems policy completely.
Chinese workers must go forward to organise the running of the country through workers’ and peasants’ soviets, and put an end to this policy that has seen a new bourgeoisie seeking to rise in Hong Kong, Shanghai and other major cities.
What China requires is not a social revolution – the working class already holds the power – but a political revolution to end the role of the Stalinist bureaucracy in administrating the country on behalf of the working class.
The working class must take over the government, away from the Stalinist bureaucracy, as a vital part of the development and victory of the world socialist
revolution!