Vanguard - Communist Party of Australia Marxist Leninist

VANGUARD - Expressing the viewpoint of the Communist Party of Australia (Marxist-Leninist)
For National Independence and Socialism • www.cpaml.org

US Out! China Stay Out! We don’t want your rivalry or war!

US imperialism’s agents of influence in Australia are whipping up a new Cold War-style hysteria against their imperialist rival China. They are responsible for promoting anti-Chinese racism which threatens all Australians of East Asian and South East Asian origin.

They are creating an atmosphere in which it seems like we are already at war with China, and if we are not careful, we will be.

Since Mao’s death, the struggle inside China between those who wanted to continue to advance along Mao’s road of collectivization and reduction of social inequalities, and those who advocated a capitalist economy and capitalist development as a short-cut to great power and influence, intensified, with the latter group ultimately triumphing.

Since that time, we have had no relationship with the Communist Party of China. We have been critical of its embrace of capitalism and of the emergence of its social-imperialism (socialism in words, but imperialism in deeds). (2)

Central to our struggle for socialism and independence however, is our belief that US imperialism remains the dominant master of Australia’s destiny. It is by far the major investor in Australia and has enjoyed the loyalty of the dominant group within our ruling class since the end of World War 2. That loyalty even extends into the ranks of part of the working class thanks to years of false propaganda about the US being our protector and shield under the ANZUS Pact.

The rise of a financially and militarily powerful China has occurred at the same time as a weakening in the economic and military clout of the US. In every field of trade and investment, of access to the labour power of other countries and to their raw materials, the Chinese and US engage in pushing and shoving, one against the other, with an escalating tension particularly throughout our region.

The revival of an anti-China Cold War mentality in this country, specifically to serve US provocations aimed at halting China’s growing strength and influence, is leading Australia to harm its own interests – economically, politically and militarily.

In 2018 the Victorian Andrews Labor government signed a Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) Memorandum of Understanding (MOU). At the time of signing the MOU, a few murmurs of disapproval came from the direction of some members of the hard right in Liberal and National Parties and the right-wing think-tank, the Institute for Public Affairs. It all changed in May 2020 during Pompeo’s overnight visit to Australia. Pompeo voiced the US disapproval with the Victorian government signing the BRI and warned that closer economic ties with China threatened Australia’s up to now warm relationship with the US. He broadcast a warning that the US “could simply disconnect” from Australia. Immediately a loud chorus of Liberal and Labor politicians pounced on the Andrews government calling for cancellation of the BRI.

Morrison and his senior Ministers are out of their depth in trying to confront China on behalf of the US (3). Their clumsy provocation of calling for an investigation into the origins of the Coronavirus with China as the assumed source came to nothing when China co-sponsored a call for a genuinely independent investigation under the auspices of the World Health Organisation. Australia was quickly isolated and had merely set itself up for Chinese trade retaliation.

The June 2020 raids by ASIO and the federal police on NSW upper house Labor member Shaoquett Moselmane and a member of his staff, John Zhang were designed to investigate alleged Chinese foreign interference. Foreign interference is punishable by up to 20 years’ imprisonment.

What was not known at the time was that on June 26, four Chinese journalists' residences were raided by the Australian Federal Police coordinated by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation. Ten officers raided each journalist’s house, the raids lasting over four hours. Laptops and even children’s tablets were seized and taken away, and the journalists warned to keep quiet because the raids related to Australian national security.

Australians remained in the dark about this provocation when news broke of an Australian-Chinese journalist having been placed under detention in China, and then of two other journalists having been required for questioning. We do not endorse China’s tit-for-tat response but we do condemn the use of so-called “national security” becoming the go-to excuse for our government to withhold information from Australians.

In this atmosphere of anti-Chinese feelings, South Australian Liberal Legislative Councillor Jing Lee was prevented by hard right members of the State and federal governments from being elected as President of the Legislative Council. Born in Malaysia, she was attacked for having attended a function of the pro-Chinese Xinjiang Association of SA. The attack was led by federal Liberal senator Alex Antic, and MPs Nicole Flint and Tony Pasin. All are aligned with the hard right led by Peter Dutton. Jing Lee was the Premier’s choice. Mud-slinging by the Australian which alleged that Jing Lee was a threat to Australia on national security grounds proved to be more powerful than the State premier.

We do not support Chinese companies scraping social media to compile a data base on a reported 35,000 Australians (of a total of 2.4 million people around the world). But this pales into comparison with data scraping by the likes of Facebook and Google. Vietnamese-Australian entrepreneur Cam-Hoan Ton-That, now based in the US and associated with white power and neo-Nazi activists, established Clearview AI, a facial recognition database that has scraped more than three billion photos from social media and websites without anyone’s permission. Ton-That sells this data to security firms and police forces, as well as real estate agents wanting to block black and Hispanic applicants for rental housing. Data scraping should be illegal, but China is certainly not alone in using it.

The ultra-right clique that infests ASIO and the Australia Federal Police, and has its sworn supporters in the federal government, is backed by opinion makers in a number of so-called “independent” think-tanks. Chief amongst them is the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI – sometimes called Australians Serving Predatory Imperialism). ASPI’s finances come from its strategic sponsors, primarily the huge multinational armaments companies who have a vested interest in regional tension by way of lucrative Australian contracts for arms and equipment. Those sponsors are the Naval Group (France), Jacobs Engineering (US), Northrop Grumman (US), Lockheed Martin (US), MBDA Missile Systems (Fr-Br), SAAB (Sweden), Thales (France), Raytheon (US), and Austal (Australia). There are also a number of Gold, Silver and Bronze sponsors including the Australian government twice – (one is the spy agency the Australia Signals Directorate), Microsoft, Google and Facebook.

US imperialism has its agents of interference in the media, the think tanks, the government, the military and the security agencies. China has made some clumsy attempts to create its own. It is not in our interests to have either the US or China trying to interfere in the lives of Australian workers.

(1) The Five Principles of Peaceful Co-Existence, are mutual respect for each other's sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other's internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful co-existence.