by Jared Phillips, member of Fightback. Reprinted from socialistvoice.org.nz.

In May the US government brought criminal charges against five Chinese military officials for hacking into the systems of US energy and steel companies. They stole trade secrets and conducted economic espionage.

The Chinese government retaliated by urging domestic banks to remove high-end servers made by IBM and replace them with locally-made servers. Technology companies operating in China are now being vetted and state-owned companies have been instructed to cut ties with US consulting firms. These developments are examples of increased tensions between the US and China.

US-China tensions dominate region
The Asia-Pacific region is one of the main arenas where US-China tensions play out. A new order is developing in East Asia after 40 years of relative stability. In many ways the world is moving from being ‘unipolar’ to ‘bipolar’ for the first time since the fall of the USSR in 1991.

China has seen huge economic growth over the past 30 years. It experienced 10% annual growth rates from 1985 to 2011. While China’s per capita GDP is far behind the US, its overall GDP is gaining ground. This gives China a significant amount of strategic and political weight on the world stage.

At the same time the position of the US in East Asia is in decline. Between 2000 and 2012 on the US’s share of trade to East Asia fell from 19.5% to 9.5%. China’s share rose from 10% to 20% in the same period. In 2009 Obama announced the US’s ‘Pivot to Asia’ foreign policy, an attempt to check China’s emergence as a challenger to US dominance in the region.

Increased US-New Zealand military cooperation
In mid-2012 the NZ and US governments signed the Washington Declaration which set out to achieve regular high-level dialogue and enhanced cooperation between the two nations. In 2013 there was a meeting of Pacific Army Chiefs which was co-chaired by New Zealand and the US. Following this meeting the NZ Defence Minister Jonathan Coleman and US Secretary of Defence Chuck Hagel made a joint-press release announcing further military cooperation.
Coleman said “Our defence relationship with the US is in great shape, and provides a strong platform for working closely together in the future”. In many ways US-NZ military relations are the strongest since the ANZUS relationship ended in 1984.

The closer cooperation is not merely a result of a set of National Party policies. The cooperation stems from the needs of New Zealand business interests. New Zealand plays the role of a mini-imperialist force in the region attached to the US.
The New Zealand government began patching up relations with the US in the early 2000s. The Labour Party sought to straddle the US-Franco tensions but ultimately sided with US imperialism by making commitments to the so-called ‘War on Terror’ in Afghanistan and Iraq. Labour’s election adverts in 2002 sought to promote this relationship with images imagery of then US Secretary of State Colin Powell with a voice over message saying that we are “very, very good friends”.

Up until this year National has civilianised military roles and cut military spending. However for 2014 National has allocated an increase of $100 million to military spending. This is part of an additional $535 million being allocated over the next four years. This has essentially been a restructure based on the needs of the US in the Asia-Pacific region.

NZ and China’s strong economic links
The world economic crisis has not had such a dramatic effect on New Zealand as it has on other regions. This is because New Zealand’s economic integration is strongest with Australia and China whose economies remained relatively stable for the first years of the crisis.

There are more New Zealand companies with overseas production engagements in China than any other country. In 2013 China became New Zealand’s biggest export destination. This was the first time in decades that the biggest destination was not Australia. New Zealand’s next strongest links are with Australia, and the Australian economy is also intimately linked with China.

The Chinese economy has grown by around 7.5% over the last year. This is a slowdown on the 10% growth China had experienced for decades before the crisis began to take effect. With the slowdown Chinese corporate debt has increased by up to 260% in the period between 2008 and 2013. Local government debt has also increased.

China is facing a crisis of over capacity and its main export markets are struggling with low growth. This further drives China’s need to conquer new markets and exploit cheap resources in the region.

TPPA an attempt to strengthen US influence
The Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) did not initially include the US but the US joined it and has sought to dominate the negotiations. From the US government’s perspective the agreement is an attempt to counter China’s emergence as a power in the region.

The agreement would serve the interests of big corporations and empower them against states. It would establish trade tribunals to regulate disputes between companies and states. This would equate to bringing neo-liberal economic policies into law. A corporation could sue a state for introducing laws that undermine profits and violate the TPPA. Such measures would hamper the ability of working people to fight for reforms.

In the negotiations the US have often used heavy handed tactics and this has caused other countries to hesitate to sign. The National government is currently trying to turn its own stalling to an advantage by saying it will not sign without the support of the population. However National has engaged undemocratically in the negotiations and the Labour Party have not opposed them. The truth is that National is currently recoiling because aspects of the US’s corporate agenda are at odds with aspects of New Zealand’s corporate agenda. This is just one of the dilemmas NZ big business faces.

Pacific Islands
While the capitalist class is collaborating in order to advance its interests the left and workers movement must also seek to build links between working people and the poor in the region. The Pacific Islands will be of particular importance.
The fight against climate change in New Zealand and other advanced economies must be intensified to help prevent further climate change displacement of the people on these islands. For those who have already been forced to flee we must fight for their rights as refugees.

In some Pacific nations up to half the population rely on money sent from family members in New Zealand, Australia, and elsewhere. It is imperative that socialists and the workers movement play a leading role supporting full equal rights for Pacific workers.

Future struggle
The situation in the Asia Pacific region is becoming more fraught. While the New Zealand ruling class has hedged its bets with US imperialism, the economy is also highly dependent the US’s main imperialist rival, China. On the face of it New Zealand’s domestic situation appears relatively stable. However, an analysis of the regional situation reveals that there is much scope for destabilisation in the years ahead.

It is clear that economic and political rivalries will continue to sharpen in this part of the world. The only way this can be resolved in a positive way is if working people throughout the region unite their struggles and fight for an alternative to the system that pits nations and people against each other.

While democracy struggles in places like Fiji and Tonga must be supported we should argue that only by transforming society along socialist lines will we really be able to address the issues ordinary people face. A socialist federation of the region would promote cooperation and the democratic sharing of resources. This is the alternative to oppression and imperialist aggression.

30,000 Chinese factory workers are on strike at Yue Yuen factory in Guangdong Province.

By Ian Anderson and Wenchan Cao (Fightback).

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is the largest political party in the world with a membership of 82.6 million. The CCP claims to run a system of ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics.’ In fact, it’s closer to a system of ‘capitalism with Chinese characteristics.’

Although China is ‘developing,’ this is development marked by increasing inequality. Private companies and their cronies have joined with international capitalists in exploiting the Chinese working class.

Hong Kong Marxist Au Loong Yu characterizes China as ‘bureaucratic capitalist.’ In the last 30 years collective state-owned enterprises were converted by the bureaucracy into profit-generating businesses. In practice there is little-to-no line between party bureaucrats and the capitalist class; one third of the millionaires in China are members of the communist party, and many more have family ties. Bureaucrats profited from turning China into a ‘sweatshop for the world.’

Although Mao’s era was harshly repressive in some respects, public management did have some benefits in terms of economic security. This security has been forcibly stripped away, in line with international attacks. State sector workers have come under attack, and many former peasants have become rural migrant workers.

This has not been a completely peaceful transition. Famously, the bureaucracy violently crushed student resistance in the 1989 Tiananmen Square Massacre. Less famously, workers played a key role in this struggle.

The Beijing Workers’ Autonomous Federation, a rare case in contemporary Chinese history of an independent workers’ organization, supported the student movement. The BWAF was politically diverse, with socialist currents and currents that later came to support capitalism. However, they were unified in opposing bureaucratic privilege, economic attacks, and in calling for greater democracy.

The BWAF threatened a general strike. On June 4^th, the CCP sent tanks into Tiananmen Square, crushing political resistance for at-least a generation. Workers were ultimately punished more harshly; while student leaders were imprisoned, workers were executed.

Au Loong Yu argues this was the last organized, independent, political opposition by workers within China. However other struggles have broken out, isolated but growing.

In the early part of the 21^st century, thousands of workers resisted the privatization of state-owned enterprises. More recently, in 2010 tens of thousands of workers at manufacturing plants (including electronics manufacturer Foxconn, and manufacturers for Honda and Toyota) went on strike, winning wage rises.

Official unions in China are part of the state bureaucracy. To carry out militant struggles, workers must either temporarily take over their union at a branch level, or form their own independent short-term organizations. This is not just an economic challenge, but a political and social challenge, a demand for free association.

Bureaucratic capitalism is a system of both economic and social control. Au Loong Yu argues:

The CCP can always make episodic economic concessions from time to time, but it never allows political concessions, even if it is as basic as the right to demonstrate.

Growing up in China, I personally experienced this social control. The material in the education system is highly limited. The ‘Marxism’ taught in schools, in contrast to the questioning and critical spirit of Marxism, teaches students never to question the party.

As in many Western schools, school uniforms also enforce social repression. One ridiculous rule from my previous high school was — students are not permitted to show their legs, regardless of how high the temperature is.

Sexuality is frowned upon. As a young queer woman, I could not publicly disclose my sexuality without fear of legal consequences.

Any individual challenging this repression could be arrested anytime. And the CCP would claim that they are doing the right thing and helping the Chinese people to have the ‘right mind’ and be ‘mentally healthy’.

However, collective resistance is growing. The current ongoing strike of 30,000 workers, at the world’s largest shoe-producing factory, is an inspiring example. Strikes disrupt the production necessary both to Chinese bureaucratic capitalism, and global capitalism. They show the power both of free association, and collective action.

There is not yet an organized, sustained and independent political opposition in China. Solidarity – between workers and students, between workers at different plants, across the globe – can build on these existing outbreaks to forge a political opposition. Only organized, popular democratic struggle can pave the way for real socialism.