No Boycott of Beijing 2022! Hands off China!

The Qazihan Mosque in Turpan, Xinjiang. It was built in 1747. The Islamic religion is freely practiced in the far West of China.

18-10-2020: As if the anti-China Cold War hysteria was not already enough, a pair of reactionary Australian MPs are now calling for a boycott of the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics. Independent Senators Rex Patrick and Jacquie Lambie will move a motion in the Australian parliament next month which calls on the Australian Government – via the Australian Olympic Committee (AOC) – to ensure Australia boycotts the Beijing 2022 Winter games.[1] Long time AOC head John Coates, who is also a senior member of the International Olympic Committee (IOC) reacted angrily to the possibility that Australian athletes would be offered financial incentives to boycott the games, as it occurred the last time an Australian Olympic boycott was attempted.This was in 1980, when the Olympic Games in Moscow were boycotted by the USA over the “invasion” of Afghanistan.

What actually occurred at that time was that a pro-socialist movement came to power in Afghanistan in 1978, and proceeded to modernise the country, legalising Trade Unions for the first time in history, and opening up education for women, where only 12% of adults were literate. Horrified, extreme Islamic fundamentalists armed by the CIA began a counter-insurgency which aimed to overthrow the secular government. This lead to 30 years of war and the near total destruction of the country.[2] The boycott of the Moscow Olympics in 1980 by the US government, and partially echoed by the Australian government, was key to whitewashing the anti-Soviet and anti-socialist Cold War I drive of imperialism with rivers of lies, deception and false narratives.

False accusations against China

Now, as Cold War II dramatically ramps up, another imperialist sponsored mountain of lies appears. Cold War II is not only directed against the People’s Republic of China (PRC), but also Russia, Iran, Syria and any other country which does not bow far enough to the will of Washington. Yet the PRC’s stunning economic, scientific and technological advances have driven Western capitalists into a frenzy, as they rightly fear being overtaken while their own for-profit economies flounder in a never-ending recession. Hence the desperate attempts to whip up political subversion using any means necessary – beginning with blatant falsehoods about what is happening inside the PRC. Senator Patrick makes wild and unsubstantiated claims that one million Uyghurs have been forced into internment camps, and are being pressured to “relinquish their language, culture and religion”. He name drops UK Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and US Democratic Presidential nominee Joe Biden as warning against “human rights abuses” and “genocide” against Uyghurs. He also makes the grandiose claim that the National Security Law in Hong Kong will “crush democratic freedoms”.[3]

Senator Patrick is simply retailing Western corporate propaganda, and is perhaps unaware of the role of the US deep state in funding and in many cases organising the political unrest in both the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region (XUAR) in the PRC, as well as in Hong Kong. At the moment, he has not yet roped in the Australian government to this latest anti-China crusade. The Australian Sports Minister Richard Colbeck, when questioned in parliament, stated that he thought it best to keep sport and politics separate. However, the Minister then went on to publicly agree with the main reason for the proposed boycott! Colbeck stated that “Australia” remains deeply concerned “by reports of enforced disappearance, mass detention, forced labour and pervasive surveillance of Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities in Xinjiang.”[4] These nonsensical claims are risible, but the bigger the lie, and the more times it is repeated by those in “authority”, the greater likelihood that many will believe it.

Lurid claims of forced labour and mass detention of Uyghurs in the XUAR are little more than false slander. What is actually occurring is a tiny minority of Uyghur jihadists are being funded by the US state, via the National Endowment for Democracy (NED)[5], to wage a separatist war using any means up to and including violent terrorism against entirely innocent people. The World Uyghur Congress (WUC) is headquartered in Munich, Germany, and is more focused on fanatical anti-socialism than the rights of Uyghurs. Its founder, Isa Yusuf Aleptikin, directly appealed to then US President Richard Nixon for backing “East Turkestan” (their name for Xinjiang) against “Soviet and Chinese communism”, which they claimed was the greatest threat to Islamic peoples.[6] The former Soviet Union, like today’s PRC, does not suppress Muslims and in fact allows them to freely practice their religion. However, they do seek to prevent a tiny minority using Islam to wage separatist and/or terrorist insurgencies.

Even the Western media itself admits that Uyghur terrorism is a serious problem in the XUAR. There have been semi-regular attacks by Uyghur terrorists on innocent civilians in the XUAR over the last eight years, a bombing in Bangkok after the Thai government sent Uyghur militants back to the PRC rather than allow them passage to Turkey, and thousands went on to join ISIS and Al Qaeda in the West’s proxy war against Syria.[7] Obviously, the PRC government has to take precautions when these barbaric mercenaries return home. Any measures it takes to prevent Al Qaeda trained fighters from wreaking havoc inside the PRC can then easily be portrayed by the Western media as “repression”.

In fact, the PRC government has set up vocational training centres to give unemployed Uyghurs language and work skills so they can find work either in Xinjiang or other regions of the mainland. The PRC government has also built high-speed rail links and highways through the Taklamakan desert connecting Xinjiang to other regions, and has expanded big data internet services, which foster economic development.[8] Xinjiang is also a major hub of the PRC’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI or New Silk Road), which in this section connects China to Europe through Eurasia. The New Silk Road is arguably the primary reason why the US human rights industrial complex has targeted Xinjiang with fabricated tales about Uyghur “forced labour” and “mass detention”. The New Silk Road in all its dimensions, highlights the growing economic and political power of the PRC, and at the same time reveals the further economic and political decline of US and European imperialism. This is the real reason why US/EU imperialism and its “human rights” industry drums up fantastic lies[9] about “internment camps” in Xinjiang. The lies simultaneously obscure the role of the US/EU governments in funding Uyghur separatist terrorism as part of its regime change war efforts against both Syria and the PRC.

More US backed separatism in Hong Kong

Senator Patrick’s claims that “democratic freedoms” in Hong Kong will be crushed by the National Security Law likewise turn reality on its head. What occurred in Hong Kong during 2019 was not a “democracy” movement, but a US/UK government backed campaign of anti-socialist violence aimed at separating Hong Kong from mainland China. While the initial rally may have drawn in some Hong Kongers who had concerns about inequality, the actions quickly deteriorated into a dangerous Blackshirt minority who waved US[10] and British[11] flags while physically attacking Hong Kongers who did not agree with their violent actions[12], and wanted no part of it. In arguably the worst incident, one Blackshirt literally set fire[13] to a man who implored them to stop destroying the city. Such egregious violence repelled the majority of Hong Kongers and ensured the “democracy” movement would dwindle away into a tiny minority which could be easily dealt with.

In British colonial Hong Kong, which was ruled by the UK for 155 years, there were no elections, no minimum wage, no trade unions, no freedom of speech or basic democratic rights whatsoever. It is more than ironic that the Blackshirts and their backers now claim they stand for “democracy” against integration into the PRC. While Britain handed over Hong Kong to the PRC in 1997, both the UK and the US governments built and maintained a network of contacts, rather than genuinely vacate Hong Kong. The National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the public relations arm of the CIA, has two active branches in Hong Kong, and directly funds groups such as the Hong Kong Human Rights Monitor.[14] The Blackshirts in Hong Kong would not have been able to sustain months of violent anti-government anarchy unless they knew they had the backing of a major imperialist power.

The Blackshirt mobs have no chance of separating Hong Kong from mainland China. The PRC’s massive socialist state backed development has meant a vast expansion of high-speed rail, with one line now linking Hong Kong with Shenzhen and Guangzhou.[15] The Hong Kong-Zhuhai-Macau bridge is also now open[16], linking the Hong Kong island with mainland China via the world’s longest (55 klm) sea crossing road connection. With a constant interaction between Hong Kong and mainland China via streams of people through travel and commerce, in integration of Hong Kong into the PRC is permanent. The US Empire cannot reverse this by open warfare, and hence resorts to internal political subversion. For now though, Blackshirt street violence has been worn down and subdued.

PRC government reinforces Covid-19 lies

While workers internationally have a vital interest in countering the anti-socialist Cold War drive against the PRC, its government cannot be a political ally. Hidebound into the non-Marxist theory of “socialism in one country”, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has betrayed workers by lending legitimacy to the torrents of lies which buttress the Covid-19 deception. The CPC attempts to mirror the actions of the governments of the capitalist West in a vain attempt to ensure “peaceful coexistence” with imperialism. In the case of the fake pandemic, the CPC carried out their own lockdowns[17], and uttered not a word of protest when the Western governments did the same – but with the intention of inflicting political repression of working people never previously attempted. While the CPC did not use lockdowns to attack the economic position of Chinese workers necessarily, it did everything it could to augment and assist the imperialist governments assault their own working class. It played up to and fuelled the lies used to shutdown Western economies under the guise of “healthcare”. Despite the entirely dubious role of the WHO, President Xi Jinping called on it to lead the response[18] to the discovery of the SARS-CoV-2 virus. The WHO did just that, which encouraged capitalist governments to shutdown economies, throw millions of workers out of a job, suspend parliaments, virtually eliminate freedom of speech, freedom of assembly and the most elementary of basic democratic rights.

Here lies the sheer duplicity of the CPC as far as working people are concerned. In order to secure mutual co-operation with the capitalist governments of the West, the CPC is more than prepared to stand by and allow – and even assist – the ruling classes of the West install a form of domestic fascism. Lockdown fascism reached extremes in the US and Europe, but was arguably surpassed by the intolerable repression still being meted out in Melbourne, Australia.[19] It should be noted that the governments of other deformed workers’ states – in Vietnam, the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea (DPRK) and Cuba – likewise acquiesced with the very imperialist governments bent on their overthrow. They also locked their borders and took other measures which appeared to validate the open mendacity of the “Covid-19 as a biblical plague” narrative.

Despite the political perfidy of the leadership of the PRC, the working class has a vital interest in defending the PRC against imperialist efforts to undermine and eventually overthrow the state which emerged out of its 1949 socialist revolution. This means opposing the call for an Olympic boycott of Beijing 2020, and countering the lie factory which retails endless fabrications about “repression” in Xinjiang, Hong Kong and even in mainland China. The imperialist West is trying in vain to counter the incredible economic growth of the PRC, which is ultimately guaranteed by its gigantic state-owned industries, which are in turn guarded by the gains of 1949. Some of the state-owned and state subsidised firms on the US Fortune 500 list include large-scale oil, solar energy, telecommunications, engineering and construction companies, banks and automotive companies.[20] These firms in fact form the core of the Chinese workers’ state, which is nonetheless impaired by the essentially nationalist politics of the CPC. The forging of vanguard parties based on genuine Leninism remains the key task for workers internationally, part of a fightback against both lockdown terror and anti-socialist hysteria.

WORKERS LEAGUE

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@redfireonline.com

PO Box 66 NUNDAH QLD 4012

[1] https://www.insidethegames.biz/articles/1099360/coates-angry-over-beijing-boycott-call (15-10-2020)

[2] https://gowans.blog/category/peoples-democratic-party-of-afghanistan/ (15-10-2020)

[3] https://www.rexpatrick.com.au/australia_must_boycott_the_beijing_winter_olympic_games (15-10-2020)

[4] https://www.portnews.com.au/story/6958849/minister-cool-on-chinese-olympics-boycott/ (15-10-2020)

[5] https://stuartbramhall.wordpress.com/2020/09/16/inside-the-world-uyghur-congress-the-us-backed-right-wing-regime-seeking-the-fall-of-china/ (16-10-2020)

[6] https://consortiumnews.com/2020/03/09/inside-the-us-backed-world-uyghur-congress/ (16-10-2020)

[7] https://www.globalresearch.ca/us-fueling-terrorism-china/5657922 (16-10-2020)

[8] https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-09-01/Xinjiang-camps-more-fake-news-TqIrWBgF8s/index.html (16-10-2020)