-------------------------
Via Workers World News Service
Reprinted from the June 1, 2000
issue of Workers World newspaper
-------------------------
CHINA & NORMALIZED TRADE: WHERE TO WORKERS'
INTERESTS LIE?
By Fred Goldstein
Confusion, deception, and reaction reign in the public
debate over the vote in the U.S. Congress to grant
Permanent Normal Trade Relations to the People's Republic
of China.
It is difficult for any worker or progressive person to
find an independent class orientation. Both sides of the
debate consider the Chinese government as an opponent. They
differ only on whether China has to be punished by
withholding PNTR, or be politically and economically
transformed through forced concessions granted to
imperialism in return for PNTR.
It is the height of chauvinism that nowhere in the debate
is the sovereignty of the government of China even
considered. It represents one fifth of the human race,
liberated from centuries of oppression, invasion, and
occupation only 50 years ago by a socialist revolution.
Whatever happened to the right of self-determination for
1.2 billion people trying to overcome poverty and
underdevelopment? China's onerous legacy comes from the
very colonial interventionist powers--Europe, the United
States and Japan--who rule the World Trade Organization.
WHY BILLIONAIRES PUSH FOR PNTR
The corporate CEOs and the billionaires they work for
support PNTR because they don't want their European and
Japanese corporate rivals to gain any advantage in a
developing market that has twice the population of the U.S.
and Europe combined. They are palpitating over the prospect
of sales, particularly as the rest of the world's markets
grow more and more saturated with overproduction and the
capitalist expansion is perpetually in danger.
President Bill Clinton and all the politicians promoting
PNTR and pushing for China to enter the WTO in return for
economic concessions say this is the way to strengthen
"economic reform" and "human rights" in China. The
translation of these catch words is that they want to
strengthen and deepen capitalist penetration of China,
subvert the political rule of the Chinese Communist Party,
and ultimately re-colonize China.
All the more shameful is it that the leadership of the
AFL-CIO has spent over a million dollars of the workers'
money on a deeply chauvinist campaign of "no blank check
for China." It has frightened the workers into fighting
China as a way of protecting their jobs. But the
capitalists are forever taking away high-paying jobs for
low-paying jobs as well as eliminating jobs altogether.
This is the nature of capital.
The way to protect jobs and wages in the present situation
is for the unions to fight against layoffs and plant
closings at home. The class struggle must be waged here.
The bosses have no right to lay off workers. If they want
to open up a plant in China, Indonesia, or Haiti, they
still have no right to lay off the workers who made them
rich and who built up the capital that created the plant in
the first place. The fighting slogan of "a job is a right"
should be made as fundamental as the slogan for a living
wage in the labor movement.
AFL-CIO SHOULD ESTABLISH RELATIONS WITH CHINA'S
UNIONS
But equally important, the unions should begin by
establishing relations with the 103-million-member All-
China Federation of Trade Unions, and discuss the situation
in the spirit of class solidarity. So far the Sweeney
leadership has not even publicly considered such a course,
even though it was suggested by the general secretary of
the Congress of South African Trade Unions.
In this regard it is very important to note that the
International Longshore and Warehouse Union on the West
Coast recently shone a ray of light in the labor movement
by passing an important resolution at its convention in
Portland, Ore., at the beginning of May. While expressing
opposition to PNTR and so-called "human rights" violations
in China, the emphasis of the resolution was to combat the
campaign of China-bashing. The resolution denounced
"racially tinged pronouncements" spoken at labor rallies as
" and causing "distress among all people of Chinese
descent."
The resolution concluded "that the ILWU will prioritize
and prepare for a delegation of rank and file members to
travel to China to make contact with trade unionists from
China, including government-sanctioned unions as well as
opposition leaders, and report to the ILWU on
recommendations for enhancing worker conditions and human
rights in our two nations.
It is to be hoped that this break with the official policy
of total hostility to China will reverberate through the
progressive ranks of the labor movement and the leadership
will be forced to pull back from Cold War style anti-China
and anti-communist baiting.
In fact, the "human rights" argument being mouthed by the
Sweeney leadership was originated by the bosses and their
propaganda machine as a way of trying to undermine the
socialist camp. The unions and the workers must know that
"human rights" is a vague slogan concealing class aims.
The capitalist class understands the "human rights" of
pro-imperialist intellectuals and religious leaders who
want to overthrow socialism in China, but they have a hard
time understanding the "human rights" of striking workers
here on picket lines who fight cops, scabs, and attempts by
employers to starve them into submission. They seem
unconcerned about the "human rights" of the two million
people, mainly Black and Latino, suffering from
incarceration in the U.S. prison-industrial complex.
In fact, the bosses, although they are inconvenienced by
having to spend a lot of money and energy getting PNTR
passed over the objections of the AFL-CIO leadership,
really do not mind one bit seeing the minds of the workers
poisoned against socialist China. In fact, both sides are
condemning China in the same way. The difference is that
the bosses want the business and the profits.
It is false for the labor leadership to compare the
struggle over PNTR for China with the NAFTA struggle. The
struggle over NAFTA was about deepening the exploitation of
a long-standing neocolony of the U.S. corporations-Mexico.
The struggle over PNTR for China is over the right of China
to enter the WTO, a right it should enjoy without having to
give any concessions whatsoever to the transnational
exploiters.
DANGEROUS CONCESSIONS
China's policy of concessions to U.S. and European
monopolies is complicating the entire question. Ever since
the ascension of Deng Xiaoping to leadership in 1976, the
government of the PRC has thoroughly retreated from its
earlier revolutionary road. The pragmatic use of the market
has now given rise to widespread unemployment, growing
discontent among the workers and peasants, and a dangerous
new layer of capitalists and bourgeois intellectuals, with
all the corruption and subversion that they purvey. The
dangers to socialism are all too apparent and are of the
deepest concern to all partisans of the Chinese Revolution.
To make matters worse, the giant U.S. transnational
corporations, which have worked overtime to get Congress to
pass PNTR, have extracted concessions that, on paper,
further weaken the grip of the Chinese government over its
economy.
Indeed, the agreement crafted by Premier Zhu Rongji in
April of 1999 and renegotiated in November seems to come
dangerously close to crossing the line that has been
followed up to now. From mutual concessions made by both
sides, in which China has gained much in national
development, the new agreement appears to have moved
heavily to one-sided concessions by China, in accord with
Zhu's line of "integration" into the world capitalist
economy. Such "integration" will surely end in disaster
when the world capitalist expansion inevitably ends in
collapse.
Specific concessions in the new agreement include, among
others, giving up the demand that foreign auto companies
turn over blueprints of plant construction; allowing
corporations to bypass state distribution networks and set
up their own; letting imperialist banks make consumer loans
in Chinese currency; and a phase-in period of opening up to
U.S. agribusinss.
Of course, this is all still on paper. China has a
powerful apparatus capable of finding ways to protect its
interests within the framework of any agreement. Only the
actual struggle will show what the real effects of the
agreement will be, should it be implemented.
SOCIALIST FOUNDATIONS STILL STAND
All this does not change the fact that China is still a
socialist country. The state still owns the commanding
heights of industry, although in diminishing proportions.
It still owns transportation, communications, finance, and
the land. All this was established by the revolutionary
transformation flowing out of the 1949 socialist
revolution, when the bosses, landlords, and imperialists
were expropriated and the masses took over under the
leadership of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's
Liberation Army.
The pillars of socialism--state ownership, the planned
economy, and the monopoly on foreign trade--have been
considerably eroded. But the Chinese Communist Party, which
has presided over this situation, is nevertheless the
inheritor of the socialist foundations and is trying to
hold on to them, while at the same time promoting economic
market reforms that seem to further undermine them.
This contradiction must sooner or later be resolved.
The worst thing that could happen to the world working
class and oppressed people, already impacted by the
collapse of the USSR, would be the overthrow of socialism
in China and its recolonization by imperialism. The
complete subjugation of 1.2 billion people by world
capitalism would have a truly devastating effect on the
wages, working conditions, and all other aspects of life of
all the workers, including the U.S. working class. Anyone
here who disregards this fact and adopts slogans that help
imperialism undermine the Chinese government is objectively
aiding reaction.
Although there are clearly forces both inside and outside
the CCP that are moving in the direction of imperialism,
the true sentiments of the masses were reflected after the
U.S. bombing of the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade during
Washington's war of aggression against Yugoslavia. This
sentiment will ultimately be reflected in the party. In
fact, in spite of rightist elements, the CCP and the
People's Liberation Army are the only real barriers to
counter-revolution in China.
Profound hatred of colonial and imperialist domination
lies beneath the surface of Chinese society. But in the
long run the only way to secure China from recolonization
is to march firmly back onto the road of socialist planning
and put the material security and morale of the workers and
peasants back on the highest priority, along with national
development. This is the surest antidote to capitalist
subversion and the best way to fortify the revolution
against imperialist hostility.
- END -
(Copyleft Workers World Service. Everyone is permitted to
copy and distribute verbatim copies of this document, but
changing it is not allowed. For more information contact
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail:
[EMAIL PROTECTED] For subscription info send message
to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.workers.org)
------------------
This message is sent to you because you are subscribed to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>.
To unsubscribe, E-mail to: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To switch to the DIGEST mode, E-mail to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Send administrative queries to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
