In October Xi Jinping cleared the inner circle of the ruling Communist Party of all but lackeys. In November his lifetime rule became much more precarious as protests broke out across the country over his draconian zero-COVID policies.
Chinese Communist Party
Xi Jinping’s precarious hold on China
November 11, 2022The coup that Xi Jinping had long planned to cement his control of the Communist Party of China went according to script: Xi was re-elected to a third five-year term as leader at the Party Congress that ended on Oct. 23.
World in View: Iron fist at Olympics
March 16, 2022It is no accident that Olympic gold medal winner Nils van der Poel felt compelled to wait until he was out of the grasp of China before he gave away his Olympic gold medal to the daughter of a political prisoner jailed in China: Gui Minhai.
Chinese youth, labor and Marxism
July 4, 2021A U.S. youth looks at the “lying flat” movement in China seeing it as a revolt against the capitalist mode of production and the alienation, sexism, racism and depression that it brings….Soon the Chinese Communist Party will see the Subject is not the Party or capital but human beings.”
China out of Burma, support revolution!
June 29, 2021China’s dictatorship insists we stay out of other countries’ affairs, yet they are the main backers of the coup regime in Myanmar and of other authoritarian states. Today there is no such thing as non-interventionism—the only question is whether intervention will take the form of solidarity with the oppressed or support for the oppressors.
China’s deadly role in Myanmar must stop!
June 16, 2021China’s dictatorship insists we stay out of other countries’ affairs, yet they are the main backers of the coup regime in Myanmar and of other authoritarian states. Today there is no such thing as non-interventionism—the only question is whether intervention will take the form of solidarity with the oppressed or support for the oppressors.
‘Liberate Hong Kong’
August 28, 2020China is imposing harsh new repressive measures on Hong Kong, blocking protests that nevertheless have not stopped.
‘Leftover Women’
March 17, 2020Review of ‘Leftover Women: The Resurgence of Gender Inequality in China’ by Leta Hong Fincher, which debunks the Chinese government’s propaganda that the status of women has been soaring since the introduction of corporate capitalism.
News and Letters Committees Call for Convention 2020
March 2, 2020POSTPONED: Official Call for national gathering of News and Letters Committees to work out Marxist-Humanist perspectives for 2020-2021
Hong Kong defiance
November 4, 2019Bob McGuire describes the ongoing protests in Hong Kong, triggered five months ago against a colonialist extradition bill to mainland China.
Hong Kong masses fight rulers’ grab for power
August 31, 2019An account of the development of the Hong Kong protests to block a proposed extradition bill, which could send residents of Hong Kong to face pre-determined injustice before Beijing courts, tracing them back to the 1989 Tiannamen Square Massacre.
Jasik workers organize in China
September 26, 2018This generation of Chinese workers, going on strike repeatedly to demand wages and benefits they are owed or fighting to control their own jobs, together with young intellectuals reclaiming Marx’s work, may be a threat to today’s Chinese rulers.
Workers’ revolts threaten Xi Jinping
November 15, 2017Xi Jinping was not merely elected to a second term as Party Secretary, he got his name and his thought into the Constitution. .
Fascism rising from Russia to India, from the U.S. to the Philippines
September 7, 2016An expansive look at the rise of fascism worldwide beginning in the U.S. with Donald Trump and the U.S. election, and taking in European fascism, and the situations in India, the Philippines, China, Japan and the opposition by rulers worldwide to those fighting for a free existence and new human relations.
Wukan defies China’s state-capitalist rulers
July 4, 2016Five years later, residents of China’s Wukan village continue to protest the stealing of their land by developers who are paid by village officials and the Chinese Communist Party.
III. Chinese labor in revolt
May 7, 2016Part III of the Draft Perspectives 2016: Strikes and workers’ uprisings in China have forced industrial wages up, not pausing even during the global Great Recession, as a window on capitalism and its crises.
Workshop Talks: Alive in struggle
April 27, 2016Chinese university students’ struggle at Tiananmen Square for better living conditions; Kaiser workers’ fight against two-tier wages and the continuous miner; and today’s Hong Kong Youth’s Umbrella Revolution, Occupy Movement and Black Lives Matter all show that workers are alive in struggle.
Forced labor in China
February 19, 2013In January, as Xi Jinping’s term as head of the Communist Party of China was beginning, the head of the Political and Legal Committee kinda sorta promised the end of “re-education through labor.” Local police have been able send at their discretion those “disrupting public order” to labor camps since the 1957 crackdown on the [=>]
Shifang protest
September 19, 2012Chinese officials in Sichuan province bowed quickly to mass protests and withdrew plans on July 3 for construction of a $1.6 billion molybdenum copper processing plant in Shifang town. Thousands of demonstrators faced tear gas and police batons beginning on July 1, surrounding government buildings and installations in Shifang to stop the project and the [=>]
Strikers in China demand own unions, defy capitalism
September 16, 2010The new September-October 2010 issue of News & Letters is online. Here’s the lead article:
Strikers in China demand own unions, defy capitalism
by Bob McGuire
A wave of strikes in China that began in mid-May in auto and continued through the summer is challenging the foundations of China’s world-leading production system. Workers striking key [=>]