------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the April 26, 2001 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- THE ANTI-GLOBALIZATION MOVEMENT AND CHINA: WHY WE MUST FIGHT BUSH'S WAR MOVES By Fred Goldstein Whatever the immediate outcome of the Beijing talks between the governments of the United States and the People's Republic of China on the spy-plane incident, Washington is demonstrating its aggressive aims that underlie its policy towards Asia. As the Bush administration engages in anti-China saber rattling while escalating its plans for U.S. militarization of the Pacific, the struggle against globalization must be expanded to oppose this growing anti-China campaign. The Bush administration has made known its intent to follow up on plans laid during the Clinton administration to build a Theater Missile Defense system in Asia. Directed at the People's Republic of China and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, it would include military coordination between the U.S., Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. Huge military contracts are in store for Lockheed, Raytheon, Boeing, United Technologies and the merchants of death who profit from war and war preparations. The Pentagon will be able to press China to spend precious national resources on military preparations instead of economic development. The long-term political/military goal is to strengthen U.S. domination, weaken the PRC and DPRK, and eventually destroy both of them as socialist countries. To accomplish this, the administration is increasing military tensions in the region and whipping up an anti- China campaign, just as the Clinton administration whipped up an anti-DPRK campaign. Poisoning the mind of the population here against China is how Washington justifies the Pentagon's belligerence; it is the way to get the masses to accept spending hundreds of billions on weapons systems when the social and economic needs of millions for housing, health care, pensions, education, and food are coming under severe pressure. This anti-China campaign must be understood as part of the globalization process that has been proceeding at an accelerated rate in the last decade. Globalization under capitalism means spreading capitalist exploitation around the globe. But not just capitalism. It means spreading the rapacious, super-exploitative capitalism of the giant monopolies and transnational banks and corporations. It means subordinating entire economies to the profit interests of these giant corporations. That is the dirty work that the IMF and the World Bank do on behalf of these transnationals. Their austerity and restructuring programs that demand privatization, opening up of markets, devaluing of currencies, setting aside of national regulations and economic protection, all lay the basis for the transnationals to come marching in. They buy up privatized resources for a song. They destroy local agriculture. They set up factories and super-exploit cheap labor before exporting the goods. They loan money and collect usurious interest payments on the debt, thus bankrupting national treasuries. The IMF and the World Bank reserve the right to monitor government finances, to intrusively examine a country's most intimate economic and financial workings and pass this information on to the transnationals so they can better exploit the country. But none of this can be done until they destroy the sovereignty of the country-its ability to resist. U.S. GOAL:DESTROY SOCIALISM In the wake of the collapse of the USSR the transnational corporations reaped a bonanza in their ability to expand imperialist globalization. With the collapse of the socialist bloc in the USSR and Eastern Europe, the governments of close to 400 million people fell. Within a few years European and U.S. multinationals were all over the region swallowing up state enterprises, setting up factories, plundering their resources, and turning them into financial vassals. The planned economies were destroyed. Production for social use was a thing of the past. All consideration of the condition of the working class and the peasants was cast aside. The well being of the entire population was subordinated to the interests of capital. The profit motive became the beginning point of all production. Wealth started flowing quickly out of Russia and Eastern Europe into the vaults of the globalizers. The social index of living conditions--life expectancy, infant mortality, rate of mental illness, poverty, suicide, prostitution, homelessness, etc., deteriorated faster in that region than in any other region at any time since the United Nations began recording such statistics. Many of the oppressed countries around the world, particularly in Africa and the Middle East, which had relied on the USSR and Eastern European socialist camp for political, economic and military support to balance the pressure of international imperialism, were left without any progressive allies in the world. In the absence of such support, the IMF, the World Bank and the transnational corporations went into these countries completely unopposed. In the 10 years beginning with 1991 there was an unprecedented surge of Wall Street wealth as measured in stock prices and profits, and an unbroken expansion of capitalism worldwide. This is an undeniable historical fact. Thus the destruction of the sovereignty and the ability to resist of the socialist countries was the beginning point for an unprecedented wave of the global expansion of corporate rule. To be sure, the advance of telecommunications, computerization, transport and other technological developments greatly enhanced this process. But it could not have proceeded at all, despite all the technological innovations, without the destruction of the socialist bloc in the USSR and Eastern Europe. This is why they want to destroy the governments of Cuba, the DPRK, and Vietnam, and it is why they bombed the government of Yugoslavia. CHINA AND GLOBALIZATION Behind all the anti-China demagogy of the U.S. big business media, the White House, the Pentagon and all the ruling- class institutions is the deep-seated goal of doing to China what they did to the USSR. Only this time the goal is to recolonize one fifth of the human race. Much is made of the fact that U.S. big business has a great deal of trade and investment tied up in the PRC. Many in the anti-globalization movement have pointed out that as part of "globalization," U.S. and other transnational corporations have set up factories or subcontractors in China that exploit workers and pay them very low wages. Unfortunately this is true, although some of the negative claims are wildly exaggerated. This is an evil that the Chinese leadership decided to accept in order to gain access to modern production methods and advanced technology. But what must be kept in mind is that this process is limited and controlled by the sovereign government of China. It has the power to impose limits or even throw the imperialists out at any moment, as well as to expropriate the domestic capitalists who are emerging. The fundamental socialist institutions in China have been considerably eroded by market reforms and imperialist corporations have a foothold in China. But Chinese society as a whole is under protection from being reconquered and reenslaved by imperialism because of the existence of the Chinese Communist Party and the People's Liberation Army. The concessions made by the PRC to the multinationals are dangerous. But they are insignificant compared to the global setback that would descend upon the entire working class of the world if the U.S. ruling class, the Pentagon and the CIA were to overthrow the PRC and reconquer all of China for the unchecked exploitation of the multinational corporations. This would subject the vast population of China to the same brutal dictates of the World Bank and IMF that have gutted the rest of the oppressed world. The current anti-China campaign must be understood in this light. The great Chinese Revolution of 1949, which liberated a quarter of humanity from 160 years of colonial humiliation, has lost its revolutionary momentum and is now in a dangerous class compromise with domestic and international capitalist forces. But despite that, the central conquest of the revolution, the establishment of a state power that can resist internal full-scale counter- revolution and imperialist military intervention, is still intact. It stands in the way of the IMF, the World Bank, the transnationals and all the forces of imperialist globalization. This is why the Bush administration became so enraged when it suddenly was confronted with the refusal of the PRC to return its spy crew. The fact that a heroic Chinese pilot challenged the mighty U.S. Navy in the service of defending China's national security has angered the Pentagon. And no less than the head of the National Association of Manufacturers warned the Chinese government to give back the spy crew. The U.S. government and the multinational corporations, all their trade and investment with China notwithstanding, harbor the deepest class drive to destroy that central conquest. It stands in the way of a new historic wave of imperialist globalization, a new wave of plunder of the workers and oppressed. No greater international task faces the anti-globalization movement than to gain clarity on this question, which has been so distorted, so it can forcefully oppose the U.S. government's anti-China campaign. - END - (Copyright 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 by Workers World News Service. 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