ASEAN’s Unstated Agenda: Target China

11-03-2024: The 2024 ASEAN-Australia “Special Summit” which took place in Melbourne from March 4 to 6 has been accompanied by political spin, as is to be expected from international diplomacy. Yet this particular “Special Summit” – special because Australia is not a member of ASEAN (Association of South-East Asian Nations) – has rhetoric and declarations which conceal one of the real aims of the Australian ruling class as a delegate of US (United States of America) led imperialism. This aim is to contain the gargantuan economic power of the People’s Republic of China (PRC), and its consequent rising political influence in world politics. Imperialism will use any and all means to achieve this aim, up to and including a catastrophic global war. The governments of the capitalist West will of course never declare this openly, and so working people need to read between the lines ushering in the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit which trumpet “dialogue” and “co-operation”.

Cold War creation

ASEAN was created in 1967 by the then governments of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand with the open admission of preventing the spread of “communism” in the region. Later, however, ASEAN admitted the “communist” led nations of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam (SRV) and the Laos People’s Democratic Republic (LPDR).[1] Brunei joined ASEAN in 1984, followed by Vietnam in 1995, Laos and Myanmar in 1997, and Cambodia in 1999.[2] For the governments of Vietnam and Laos, which both remain bureaucratically deformed workers’ states administering socialistic economies, to join a decisively anti-socialist bloc exposes the politics of the leaderships of these nations. Put simply, it is another example of the betrayals that are legion due to the twin Stalinist policies of “socialism in one country” and “peaceful co-existence with imperialism”. A genuine Marxist leadership of a workers’ state may well enter into diplomatic and trade agreements with surrounding capitalist states for its own development, but joining a political anti-socialist bloc of capitalist states is another thing entirely – especially one which is today ultimately aimed at the PRC.

The spin from Australian Labor Party (ALP) Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s official page is that the ASEAN-Australia Special Summit (marking 50 years of Australia as a Dialogue Partner of ASEAN) has the aims of: “boosting economic engagement, supporting an accelerated clean energy transition, increasing practical maritime co-operation and supporting the region’s current crop of emerging leaders”.[3] The phrase “increasing practical maritime co-operation” is a clear reference to the Western provocations of the PRC in the South China Sea. As The New Atlas points out,[4] the Western imperialist powers are not at all attempting to free trade routes from Chinese interference in waters in its region but is rather attempting to block trade from the PRC to its many trading partners in an effort to slow down or thwart the PRC’s economy. The PRC is the largest trading partner of almost all countries in South-East Asia, including Australia, yet the Australian government is prepared to jeopardise this by doing the bidding of Washington and its dangerous drive to confront the PRC.

Australian ALP Foreign Minister Penny Wong almost spelled out the anti-China agenda of Canberra by announcing $286.5 million in funding for ASEAN projects in areas including “maritime security”. Wong stated at the start of the summit: “We face destabilising, provocative and coercive actions including unsafe conduct at sea and in the air”[5] – without naming China! Nevertheless, these are clearly preparations for yet more imperialist provocations in the South China Sea squarely aimed at Beijing, even if military strikes and/or a war on the PRC over Taiwan or maritime disputes which would not otherwise lead to war – is not feasible or practical. ASEAN and Australia may well be involved in trade activity, climate change initiatives and other areas of co-operation – but these uncontroversial aspects cover the relentless drive towards military conflict with the People’s Liberation Army (PLA).

AUKUS

In the lead up to the ASEAN-Australia summit, there has been virtually no mention of AUKUS, the anti-China military alliance of Australia, the United Kingdom (UK) and the US. This is despite the recently elected New Zealand government indicating that it may abandon its previous relatively friendly stance towards the PRC by “co-operating” with AUKUS.[6] The PRC government responded to this development by warning New Zealand that it was heading down a “wrong path”. Chinese defence ministry spokesperson Zhang Xiaogang stated that AUKUS was established for “selfish geopolitical interests” and urged the Western AUKUS parties to “refrain from sabotaging international and regional peace and stability…”.[7] Alongside the repeated issuing of such warnings, the PRC has the right to take all measures necessary to ward off the aggressive and hostile AUKUS manoeuvres.

While not a part of AUKUS, the newly elected President of the Philippines, Ferdinand “Bong Bong” Marcos Jr, has reversed the former President Rodrigo Duterte’s position of not antagonising and avoiding conflict with the PRC. Despite not even mentioning his anti-China stance during his election campaign, Marcos Jr has allowed the US access to four new military bases in the Philippines,[8] which are a perfect launch pad for US strikes on the Chinese mainland. Egged on by the US government, the Philippines under Marcos Jr has been deliberately provoking China by ferrying supplies to a handful of soldiers camped out on the BRP Sierra Madre, a World War II era ship deliberately run aground in 1999 on the Ren’ai Reef.[9] The week before the ASEAN-Australia summit, Marcos Jr had addressed the Australian parliament, where he vowed not to yield an “inch” of territory to China.[10]

There is of course no indication whatsoever that the PRC has any intention of “taking” any territory from any country in the region or the world. The Philippines cannot hope to take on the giant PRC, and Marcos Jr could not be provoking the world’s largest nation without the backing behind the scenes of Washington. The Philippines under Marcos Jr is heading down a path which could well lead to its degradation and even destruction. By stepping forward as a proxy for the US in its ongoing war with China, the Philippines risks the current fate of Ukraine which allowed itself to be used by Washington for its war on the Russian Federation.[11] Thankfully, not all Ukrainians want to die in a proxy war against Russia to benefit Washington, and few Filipinos are willing to perish in a proxy war against China. It is vital that workers internationally seek to reach out to their brethren in nations being prepped as cannon fodder for proxy wars against Russia and China which bring a nuclear exchange closer to reality.

West Papua

There was a golden opportunity for left activists in Melbourne to protest ASEAN for the incredibly dangerous Australian government policy of actively aiding a US led war on China. Instead, some activists chose to protest ASEAN – over West Papua![12] Rather than denouncing Australian imperialism, West Papua Melbourne and Wage Peace – Disrupt War chose to target Indonesia, a nation which Australian port workers (“wharfies”) during the Second World War helped achieve independence from Dutch colonialism.[13] Today, much of the so-called left today construct a fantastic narrative which claims that the Indonesian government is “colonialist” in relation to West Papua (formerly known as Irian Jaya). Little could be further from the truth. The Indonesian government has bent over backwards in an attempt to integrate the provinces that make up West Papua into the Unitary State of the Republic of Indonesia (NKRI),[14] to the extent of legislating for Special Autonomy and their own regional parliaments. Rejecting this, a minority of armed Papuan separatists engage in violent attacks on not only soldiers and police, but innocent civilians and any Indonesian built infrastructure.

For example, in December 2018, armed Papuan separatists admitted to slaughtering at least 24 Indonesian construction workers in the Tolikara regency. This followed the actions of the so-called “Liberation Army” in October of that year who took 15 school teachers and medical workers hostage in Ndgua for two weeks.[15] The armed separatists – which go under various names – target both non-Melanesian and Melanesians in West Papua who they see as “collaborators” with the NKRI, including the staff of basic education and health programs, which are offered to all Papuans and all residents in West Papua. In February 2023, armed Papuan separatists threatened to kill all Indonesians working on the construction of a health care centre (!) in Nduga. They stormed and set fire to a plane carrying building supplies and other provisions and took the New Zealand pilot Philip Mehrtens hostage. They then announced that Mr Mehrtens “would be executed” if the Indonesian government refused to negotiate independence for West Papua or intervened to save the pilot.[16]

In announcing their protest, West Papua Melbourne and Wage Peace – Disrupt War repeat the old trope which claims that “500 000” Papuans have been killed by the Indonesian armed forces in 60 years of “colonisation”. This is a furphy. Even those sympathetic to West Papuan “independence” report the widely acknowledged demographic statistics which show that the Papuan population of West Papua has more than doubled in the period from 1971 to 2020, from approximately 900 000 in the early 70s to some 1.8 million today.[17] Hence a “genocide” of 500 000 Papuans during this period could not have occurred. There is no denying that the large numbers of Austronesian transmigrants from the heavily populated islands of Java, Sumatra and Sulawesi over the last 50 years has caused some problems where the consequent economic development has tended to benefit the transmigrants. However, as Indonesia cannot remotely be described as “imperialist”, this is an unintended consequence of the higher level of economic development achieved by Indonesia vis-à-vis the Papuan provinces. What is more, the Indonesian government is attempting to consciously redress this imbalance by spending trillions of rupiah (the Indonesian currency) constructing roads, schools and health care clinics in West Papua.[18]

Professor Damian Kingsbury, one of Australia’s most renowned academics in Indonesian studies, acknowledges that some of the economic development taking place in West Papua has a tendency to benefit non-Melanesians. At the same time, he indicates that the violent attacks by armed Papuan separatists are entirely counter-productive, and only result in a stronger Indonesian military presence in West Papua.[19] While workers internationally cannot extend political support to the Indonesian government, neither should they be drawn into the false and deceptive slogan of “Free West Papua”. Under no circumstances can socialists support any form of ethnic conflict, and certainly not any form of violence against those with differing political opinions. Due to the fact that the West Papuan working class is relatively underdeveloped for historical reasons, Papuans are far better off integrating with the Indonesian proletariat, rather than separating itself from it.

No to war on China

Moreover, Indonesia is one government in South-East Asia which prioritises friendly relations with the PRC. One result of this is the China built Jakarta to Bandung high speed rail link, as part of Beijing’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The rail link will cut down travel times by road from two and a half hours to just 40 minutes.[20] So Indonesia has no interest whatever in a mad US/AUS led war on China. And it exposes Australian capitalism, which is far wealthier than the entire Indonesian economy – but has not one metre of high-speed rail. Meanwhile, the PRC itself is surging even further ahead of the West with its high-speed rail technology. Currently the PRC is testing and is set to put into operation high-speed trains which can travel at speeds reaching 450 kilometres per hour.[21] The comparison between capitalist Australia and the socialistic PRC is like night and day. In the December quarter of 2023, Australia’s GDP “growth” was a miserable 0.2%,[22] while the PRC was galloping along at 5.2%.[23]

This is the reason why the West is careering towards a catastrophic war on China. It cannot hope to compete with public ownership of the major means of production, banks, infrastructure, heavy industry and much more in the PRC. As the anchor of the BRICS alliance (Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa – and now Iran, Egypt, Ethiopia, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates), the PRC is offering a non-imperialist alternative path of development to the former countries of the “Global South”. It is even assisting (and in the case of Australia, propping up), the faltering economies of the capitalist West. This does not stop the Australian ruling class attempting to use all platforms, including ASEAN, from exercising the only arrow they have left in the quiver – war. This is despite an almost universal revulsion amongst working people internationally for yet another global conflict.

To be sure, the PRC remains a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state, politically ruled by a conservative Stalinist bureaucratic caste. Thus the Communist Party of China (CPC) will never attempt to rally workers in South East Asia or elsewhere, to the cause of a class struggle against the depredations of capitalism and imperialism. Yet the PRC can only ultimately be protected by an expansion of the gains of its 1949 revolution internationally. This requires a proletarian political revolution on the Chinese mainland, combined with socialist revolutions in South-East Asia and especially in the imperialist centres of the West. While this sounds far off today, this could very well be on the immediate agenda if the US and its allies launch a hot war against the Chinese mainland. War, a cost-of-living crisis, a housing crisis, increasing political repression and censorship, fraudulent “pandemics”, a climate crisis and other horrors are part and parcel of the rapidly declining system of private production for private profit in the West. Marxist vanguard parties, linked internationally, must be built to lead workers away from the old world and towards a new era of workers’ power.

Workers League

www.redfireonline.com

E: workersleague@protonmail.com

[1] www.scmp.com/week-asia/explained/article/2186774/explained-asean? (06-03-2024)

[2] www.asean.org/about-asean/ (06-03-2024)

[3] www.pm.gov.au/media/2024-asean-australia-special-summit-celebrate-50-years-partnership (06-03-2024)

[4] www.youtube.com/watch?v=bZtKQRMDu5M (06-03-2024)

[5] www.scmp.com/news/asia/australasia/article/3254035/australia-earmarks-us42-million-asean-security-pact-we-face-destabilising-provocative-coercive (06-03-2024)

[6] https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/International-relations/Indo-Pacific/New-Zealand-signals-shift-in-China-stance-by-opening-door-to-AUKUS (06-03-2024)

[7] https://www.chinastrategy.org/2024/02/29/wrong-path-china-warns-new-zealand-over-aukus-security-cooperation/ (06-03-2024)

[8] www.redfireonline.com/2023/11/20/us-primes-the-philippines-for-war-on-the-peoples-republic-of-china/ (06-03-2024)

[9] www.redfireonline.com/2023/09/16/aggression-in-the-south-china-sea/ (06-03-2024)

[10] www.abc.net.au/news/2024-02-29/philippines-president-ferdinand-marcos-china-albanese-dutton-/103526654 (06-03-2024)

[11] www.journal-neo.su/2023/11/02/us-shapes-philippines-into-southeast-asias-ukraine/ (06-03-2024)