The way the US and China are mustering their own strength and drawing in others to confrontations with the other power, worries people. 

 

On the one side US monopoly capitalism is working to muster European powers, hold and consolidate its dominance over other OECD countries, strengthen and consolidate the hold it has to one extent or another over countries in the developing world using its net of financial, military and diplomatic dependence. The momentum marks a heightened stage in the US preparations for war. In concert with those financial, diplomatic and military preparations, the stream of media bile against China has been being ramped up across the western world.  

 

On China’s leaders’ part, it has been expanding its net of financial and industrial dependence through massive exports of finance, purchasing resource, industrial, agricultural and logistics enterprises, creating new industrial enterprises and particularly developing new logistics infrastructure, much integrated into a Eurasian trading network. It has used its financial strength to prise open new sources of raw materials, workforces and markets to exploitation, expanding Chinese capital accumulation from foreign countries. (see our booklet Explaining China: ) It expands its military activity but at a small level compared to American activity. It has stepped up anti-US media output in concert with heavy handed repression in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. 

 

Looking at China from the West has difficulties attached. Western media has been swept up in a level of US anti-China hysteria. We all recall the notorious US ‘intelligence’ reports ‘confirming’ that Iraq harboured weapons of mass destruction in the lead up to the US invasion of that poor country. Formal presentations were made to the UN, and allies were briefed to ‘justify’ US aggression. It was all lies. It was used to justify racing to war with the US, despite UN inspectors correctly reporting there were no such weapons where the US said there were. 

 

This is not to say the reports of repression of people in China, Hong Kong and of Uyghurs have no substance. It is to say much caution has to be exercised over the barrage of propaganda from the US and various pro-US elements in Australian parliamentary parties, the media, academia, and their echoes wider in society. What is clear is that the Chinese state is strong and intrusive, imposes itself on its people, and exercises tyranny in defending and extending its dominance over society and peoples within China. 

 

 

The US-China rivalry involves a rising China in itself being a challenge to US imperialist dominance over the globe. China need do no more than continue to have a growing economy, technological advances, and expanding international trade to be a challenge to the incumbency of the US. China’s economy and society features a system of state monopoly capitalism, with its large state-owned and operated industrial and financial sector accompanied by heavy state macro-economic intervention providing the framework of Chinese capitalists’ accumulation of capital from exploitation of the Chinese working class. 

 

This has featured rapid growth in Chinese production, fuelling rapid expansion of Chinese capital accumulation by the Chinese state and Chinese capitalists, in turn needing continuously expanding fields for investment. 

 

The hoard of Chinese capital, having bubbled over the opportunities for lucrative investment in China, needs overseas fields for the purchase and development of resources, markets and for workforce exploitation internationally. It drives the Chinese state to open overseas markets, resources and workforces to Chinese capitalist exploitation. Where there is resistance the Chinese state and Chinese capitalists have proven quick to use inducements, corrupt local political figures and resort to bullying and abuse. It leads to rightful resistance. 

 

China is rising while the US has been stagnating or even declining. American imperial world domination is threatened just by Chinese capitalism's operations. Its capital accumulates, which seeks locations for lucrative investment both in and outside China. There are very limited regions outside the world capitalist domain open for Chinese investment. It leaves the two powers competing for raw materials, markets and workforces internationally, with its Chinese rival confronting American imperial world domination.

 

 

The American response has been growing more virulent as the process continues and imposes itself on American business, government and consciousness. Sanctions, tariff barriers, boycotts and bans aimed to constrain China’s economic growth and capital accumulation have been growing. 

 

The necessity for Chinese capital to find new fields overseas in which to produce even more value leads it to knock down barriers to Chinese capital intrusion. It leads China to bully countries raising barriers to protect their industries, markets and financial independence. China seeks to weave around American sanctions, tariffs, boycotts and the like, engaging in tit-for-tat actions. With smaller countries China’s actions are more openly abusive and bullying.  

 

Australia has been caught up in the American-China rivalry as an American dependency.

 

Australian leaders, after decades of submission to Chinese capital intrusion, have taken to struggling to purge elements in Australia which have been snared in a net of financial and industrial dependence on Chinese capital. That is good, but comes after much Chinese capitalist purchase and financial penetration of Australian industry, agriculture, commerce and finance that they previously bent over backwards to welcome. They are scrambling to reverse decades of their submission to Chinese economic penetration. It leads to Chinese reaction to tear down barriers erected. Chinese reactions have hit many industries, particularly agricultural industries, like grain, seafood and wine, in a wave of bullying and abuse.   

 

Australian leaders’ actions against Chinese capital stand in stark contrast to their embrace of the American net of financial, industrial and military domination of Australia. That hypocrisy seriously weakens struggle against China’s intrusions and against big power war preparations.  

 

Externally, Australian leaders have been acting as provocateurs for the US, picking fights with China like the go-it-alone demands for investigation of China’s involvement in the pandemic, rather than joining others to establish non-targeted scientific investigations normally conducted with every pandemic. The breadth and tone in which issues have been raised with Chinese leaders, including megaphone diplomacy in the media, has been strident and accusative rather than normal diplomatic, while forthright, exchanges. They have an air of performing for American plaudits.

 

Australia’s leaders have a fraught history of falling over themselves to get into American wars in the era of American pre-eminence in the western capitalist world. Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq stand out among a longer sorry sequence of failures to stand against aggression and invasion, and for peace and national independence. 

 

 

The question of how to avoid and put off any outbreak of war is in people’s minds. How people defend peace and look after themselves is crucial. 

In some ways it’s a simple matter of breaking big power dominance and war policies. Easy to say, what to do?

 

The internal situation in Australia has US imperialism predominant, backed by the bulk of political and business leaders, the top state administrators, the military forces and other machinery of state, and a wide coterie of academic agitators and media commentators among others. 

 

To alert people of the dangers of US-China war and how US domination contributes to the danger is the first step. Anti-China hysteria has raised concerns about the danger of war widely in the community.  

 

Wariness of American wars is widespread among Australians not caught up in the net of financial and political dependence on American imperialism. The enormous demonstrations against the invasion of Iraq is testament to that sentiment. 

 

There has been much agitation in parliamentary, media, academic and social circles to muster forces against China’s expansion and also to gather them for US imperialism’s dominance in Australia and internationally. That is a many-sided campaign to build walls between Australians and China, while also building an accommodation of Australians with US leaders. 

 

There is no place for being permissive, excusing or turning a blind eye to Chinese expansion, bullying, oppression and domination. That merely appeases bullying and oppression, and weakens the struggle against war between the superpowers, tending to strengthen one against the other, and energising their steps to war. It is a secondary issue in an Australia dominated by US imperialism, but wariness against the emergence of forces supportive of Chinese state capital is important. 

 

In wanting to stand up against the dangers of US aggression an opposite tendency is to join the round up behind the other antagonist. Either course tends to strengthen one antagonist.

 

Struggle in Australia against the current surge towards war relies on standing against both superpowers. Struggle to weaken Australia’s financial and military domination by US imperialism is the main task to weaken the momentum towards US-China war, and Australia’s entanglement in it.  

 

• Raise the alarm about the superpowers’ surge towards war.

• Stand against US domination of Australia, our main way to weaken the momentum towards war.

• Reject efforts to drag Australia into anti-China provocations for American war mobilisation.

• Oppose appeasement of Chinese state-capitalist expansionism while focussing on weakening the US hold over Australia to avoid war