On the anniversary of the end of World War II, the Chinese capitalist ruling class flaunted a barrage of new high-tech weapons—hypersonic missiles and underwater drones, robot dogs and lasers (BBCm 9/3). Leading the nationalist spectacle was China’s Gangster-in-Chief, Xi Jinping, along with Russia’s own top imperialist thug, Vladimir Putin. Their aim was to project unity and military might as the global crisis of capitalism heads closer to world war.
The Chinese Revolution and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution that followed were the greatest advances in human history. They taught the international working class what it means to smash fascism, to seize state power, and to fight against the return of rotten capitalist ideas. But the state capitalists who run China today are spurred by nothing but profit. They build their wealth by brutally exploiting workers throughout the world, from Uighur and other Muslim agricultural workers in Xinjiang to auto workers in “slavery-like conditions” in Brazil (aljazeera.com, 2/11/22; BBC.com, 12/24/24).
Two days before the “Victory Day Parade,” China hosted a summit of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO). Xi and aligned capitalists from Russia, Iran, India, and Pakistan promised to prioritize the “Global South.” But make no mistake: Not a single policy was proposed to benefit the workers of the world. These vile misleaders see workers as nothing more than disposable labor and cannon fodder. One contradiction of capitalism is that workers create everything of value—and that only the working class has the power to end the rulers and their imperialist wars for all time.
Unstable U.S. bosses lose ground
The intensifying struggle between the two factions of U.S. bosses, the Big Fascists of finance capital and the isolationist, “Fortress America” Small Fascists behind President Donald Trump, has left U.S. imperialism increasingly unstable. At stake are trillions in foreign investments, in particular in Middle East oil. Meanwhile, unconstrained by the liberal myths of a “free press” or “fair” elections, China’s bosses have gained an advantage by moving toward open fascism more swiftly than their U.S. rivals. The Chinese ruling class imposes rigid discipline on both workers and its own ranks. It is ready and willing to arrest any billionaire who threatens the interests of Chinese capital as a whole (bbc.com, 8/19/22).
Trump’s erratic behavior and the general unreliability of U.S. imperialism has led a number of national capitalists to move toward China’s bloc, a dynamic on full display at the SCO summit. Case in point: The U.S. slammed India with a 50 percent tariff for buying discounted Russian oil (Reuters 8/26). (For more on Trump’s tariff crusade, see the 9/3 editorial in CHALLENGE.)
In his ham-fisted efforts to isolate Russia, Trump acknowledged that he’s pushed both India and Russia away “to deepest, darkest China” (New York Times, 9/5). The Chinese bosses couldn't be more delighted. Despite their recent history of bloody border clashes with India, both China’s Xi and India Prime Minister Narendra Modi signaled closer economic coordination at the summit (BBC, 8/31).
India is not unique. Bosses in Brazil and South Africa view the SCO/BRICS alliance as a chance to get out from under the thumb of the U.S., which for decades has squeezed them ruthlessly under threat of military intervention. Others, like Saudi Arabia (Reuters, 5/13) and Israel (Haaretz, 7/7), have used China’s outstretched hand to extract concessions from their U.S. masters, whether in the form of arms sales or support for the Zionist genocide in Gaza. Workers have nothing to gain by backing either of these imperialist death machines.
Atrocities of Chinese imperialism
Since 2013, China has used their Belt and Road Initiative to broaden their global influence by undercutting the U.S.-controlled World Bank and International Monetary Fund. Regional powers in India or Brazil are handsomely rewarded for jumping the sinking U.S. ship, in no small part through bribes and graft. In exchange, they enforce Beijing’s bottom line by breaking unions, violently putting down strikes, cutting social benefits for workers, and handing over natural resources to China.
Racism has guided much of Chinese imperialism, with workers in Africa being targeted for especially fierce exploitation. Angola borrowed $45 billion and became the top exporter of African oil to China (Eurasia Review, 3/1) as well as a Chinese customer for arms (Further Africa, 3/5).
When global oil prices dipped, Angola could no longer make its loan payments, sending the economy into austerity and chaos. After workers rebelled against Chinese-owned companies (adf-magazine.com, 9/9) , the Angolan bosses responded with violent attacks against protestors, arbitrary detention, and extrajudicial executions (Human Rights Watch).
The Democratic Republic of Congo produces 70 percent of the world’s cobalt, a mineral in high demand for the manufacture of electric vehicle batteries. Chinese billionaires control 80 percent of cobalt mining operations in the DRC, paying poverty wages to millions of miners, including tens of thousands of children (Think Global Health, 2/10). And in Zambia, Chinese loans have led directly to default and mass unemployment (Wilson Center, 1/16/24).
When China’s rulers talk about their “focus” on the Global South, this is what they have in mind. In so doing, they are creating a powder keg of working class fightback.
Turn the guns around!
As the British Empire declined, many workers welcomed U.S. imperialism with open arms. They believed its lies about spreading prosperity and “democracy.” But it wasn’t long before the U.S. capitalist rulers showed their true colors as the world’s leading exporters of state terror, mass murder, and working class suffering.
Now China’s vicious ruling class is trying to deceive workers with promises of "multilateralism" and "modernization." The horrific reality of Chinese imperialism will only get worse as the global economic crisis deepens. China is staring at a major housing market bubble, slowing growth, and rising unemployment, (Reuters 9/15). These crises are opening the door for working class fightback in China.
On September 6, just days after the SCO Summit, Canadian and Australian warships sailed through the Strait of Taiwan (Reuters, 9/6)— a desperate attempt by U.S. proxies to signal strength in an era of U.S. imperial decline. It is only a matter of time before such provocations trigger a full-blown conflict. We know the imperialist bosses are planning to force the international working class to do the fighting, suffering, and dying.
That is why workers must start organizing now, under the banner of the revolutionary communist Progressive Labor Party, to build the mass movement we need to turn the guns around. We must replace capitalism with a society run by and for the international working class: communism.
