China

Until recently the Morning Star would occasionally criticise Vladimir Putin. The Russian Communist Party is the largest opposition group in the Duma and makes criticisms of Putin’s domestic policy. But when it comes to Ukraine, the Russian CP is a very loyal opposition and differs with Putin only by being more belligerent — for instance calling for formal recognition of the self-proclaimed republics of Donetsk and Luhansk. The Morning Star ’s coverage of China (which the paper unhesitatingly describes as “socialist”) has long been no more than Chinese Communist Party (i.e. regime) propaganda...

As we continue to prepare for our national consultative ballot (14 February to 21 March) for action on the cost of living crisis, PCS members are also fighting local disputes. Two groups of members employed by private sector employers who hold civil service contracts are balloting for industrial action over pay, at Atos and Fujitsu. Our members at the British Council are also balloting for action to resist staffing cuts. The British Council’s income collapsed during the pandemic and it is seeking to recoup its budgetary deficit by cutting jobs. It has refused to rule out compulsory...

Tang Mingfang, a former worker at Foxconn’s factory in the south Chinese city of Hengyang, has appealed to Amazon and Foxconn to speak out against his jailing and torture by Chinese police after he exposed the situation there. In addition to more “normal” abuse of workers’ rights such as illegally extensive use of precarious agency workers, 16-18 year-olds were being compelled to work 60 hours a week, and sometimes beaten if they didn’t work hard enough. Tang’s revelations three years ago forced Amazon to investigate. He himself was jailed and tortured — after Foxconn called in the police. Now...

The Chinese government has been carefully preparing its propaganda in the run-up to the 2022 Winter Olympic Games, opening in Beijing on 4 February. Every Games is an occasion for self-promotion by the host state, and grubby cash-in opportunities for big business. This year, too: the Chinese government hopes to showcase a tightly managed image and launder its reputation abroad. These Games have faced an especially intense backlash in connection to Chinese state repression, particularly the abuses in Hong Kong and against the Uyghurs. Beijing will be attempting to counter this. And, given the...

The Morning Star divides the world into two camps, labelled “progressive” and “imperialist”. From that all else flows. In any international dispute or crisis, the paper’s stance is determined by which camp the participants fall into. Usually, this is easy: China, Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua are all “progressive” and in the case of the first two, “socialist”. Despite the tremendous anti-imperialist opportunities opened up by Brexit (so the MS thinks), the UK has yet to break free and establish an independent foreign policy. Until recently, Russia was a bit of a problem, especially as the Russian...

The media is awash with stories about the fact that lawyer Christine Lee, who has links with many politicians and has donated almost £600,000 to the office of Labour MP Barry Gardiner, has been revealed as an operative of the Chinese state’s “United Front Work Department”. (The donations to Gardiner became public two years ago; there is no suggestion he has broken any law or rule.) The "United Front" organisation exists to strengthen and spread Chinese political influence in other countries. Contrary to some claims in the media, Lee seems to be more like a lobbyist than a spy. (Of course China...

Click on to the website of the Socialist Action group and the banner at the top of the Home page tells you what to expect. There is no place here for Marx, Trotsky, or Lenin. But enough space for pictures of Malcolm X, Chavez, Castro and Guevara. That certainly sets the scene nicely. Socialist Action was one of the splinters that emerged in the mid-1980s from the break-up of International Marxist Group (from 1982 renamed Socialist League). Inside the IMG the faction that eventually became the current Socialist Action group had traditionally been led by John Ross. Socialist Action was launched...

Workers' Liberty will be discussing the political crackdown in Hong Kong at our online meeting on Sunday 16 January at 6.30pm. More details here. Hong Kong authorities renewed their legal attacks on dissent at the end of December 2021. That followed a couple of months when the authorities had refrained from arrests in the hope of getting credible votes for their candidates for the part-elected Legislative Council (LegCo). The office of the recently-established bilingual Stand News , which had extensively covered the democracy revolt, was raided on 29 December. Senior staff and board members...

Paul Mason’s reply to John Ross of Socialist Action on Xi Jinping’s China annihilates Ross’ apologism and makes many valuable points. Mason sets himself the task of defending Marxism against its traducement by the Chinese elite. But his own comments about Marxism are confused. “Stalin faced no significant alternative form of Marxism”, claims Mason. “Even his opponents within the Soviet bureaucracy, from Leon Trotsky to Nikolai Bukharin, adhered to the same rigid historical method that was killing them. They knew nothing of Marx the humanist, Marx the philosopher of alienation, Marx the eco...

Revanchism, from the French revanche or “revenge”, is the will to reverse territorial losses following war or social upheaval. The term originated in the 1870s, after the Franco Prussian War, for nationalists who wanted to revenge the defeat and the reparations extracted by Germany, and to reclaim the lost territories of Alsace-Lorraine. Revanchism is also linked to irredentism — the drive to expand nation-state territory to claim fragments of the cultural and ethnic nation outside the borders of the core. When Mao Zedong took power in 1949, he set an immediate goal of re-establishing the...