Defeat US-China War Plans here ♦ Imperialism, Sexism and Soldiers here ♦
Workers on Strike in China
Twenty Years of US-China Imperialist Rivalry: Defeat Capitalists’ War Plans by Mobilizing Workers and Soldiers for Communism
China’s astronomical growth over the last twenty years has seriously restricted the ability of US imperialism to expand in a global market. This growth has come on the backs of the Chinese working class. It has both economic and military dimensions, and makes eventual world war inevitable.
In 1999, the US rulers’ Brookings Institute reported on “China’s Hollow Military.” Its realistic assessment was that China was unprepared to significantly challenge US capitalist interests. It called the Chinese army unprofessional, corrupt, and lacking the intention to oppose any US challenges.
Then, the Chinese air force consisted of a few dozen ‘fourth generation’ fighter aircraft, compared to over three thousand in the US arsenal. The Brookings report cited the Pentagon’s recent damning report on “the caliber of China’s military manpower.” In a US-China conflict over US ally Taiwan, the small island could initially survive a massive Chinese air attack. The surviving Taiwan planes would cause China’s “entire amphibious armada to sink in a single sortie.”
The Brookings report concluded that “The numerous defects of its military establishment notwithstanding, China is a rising power that could one day significantly challenge the United States and its allies in East Asia. But it will be at least twenty years before China can pose such a threat.”
Twenty years have come and gone. Meanwhile, China’s military expenditures are now almost 15 times greater while the US military budget grew only about 50%. Nearly a third of the US budget goes to the Veterans’ Administration – still paying for past wars. Further, the cost of producing military research and armament in China is only 20% of that in the US.
The Chinese capitalists’ Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has 138 countries investing in highways, airports, seaports, hydroelectric power plants, fiber optics, solar, and wind energy. Using this infrastructure, the Chinese bosses can transport goods at lightning speed. The Covid-19 crisis illustrated the efficiency of this highly efficient supply chain.
A 2020 US government agency report explained Beijing’s goal of creating a “world-class” (imperialist) military. BRI integrates movement of commodities with Air and Naval power. The US bosses fear that Chinese imperialism is overtaking US imperialism in key areas such as artificial intelligence (AI), robotics, core technology, satellites, outer space capabilities, and energy resources.
BRI has integrated almost all energy resources in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). This is setting off alarms in Washington as the Gulf countries’ strong link to China leads Iran and Syria to open new embassies. Even Israel has signed a long-term military pact with China.
Contradictions of Imperialism: Class Struggle in China
The Chinese capitalists’ growth and their wealth accumulation come from a tremendous assault on the Chinese working class. Workers typically labor from 9 am to 9 pm, six days a week, often until they collapse. High-rise sweatshops are putting up security nets to prevent workers from committing suicide. This super-exploitation of the masses has created a surplus to be invested in mega-projects around the world. BRI countries add to this super-exploitation as they rip enormous surpluses from long-term contracts.
Accumulation and borrowing work in tandem. China’s largest real estate development group, Evergrande, is about to default on a $300 billion debt. This could cause major financial reverberations around the world. This process of accumulation will not stop until industrial workers and soldiers lead masses to crush capitalism and build a classless society of communism.
World war is inevitable. Chinese imperialist expansion will have to break the foundation of the post- World War II order. That’s when the US imperialists established their financial and military clout through the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and military occupations of Japan, Germany, and much of Europe and the South Pacific.
With the US weakening, China is preparing for the next world war. It’s even beginning to penetrate Latin America, which the US has long regarded as its “back yard.”
The entire capitalist/imperialist system is based on a very weak foundation. The rulers fear the working class. A US general observed that in Afghanistan, “the Army is there for the next paycheck.” That’s true of most capitalist militaries! That’s why communists regard them as “paper tigers.”
We must organize soldiers, sailors and marines with communist ideas so they will no longer fight the bosses’ wars “for the next paycheck.” Instead, they will fight to emancipate the working class under the banners of the International Communist Workers’ Party.
Organize Men and Women in the Military for Communism
This is about a letter in the last Red Flag, “Women Workers Are Fighters for Our Class, Not Victims.”
It described a comrade’s interesting struggle with friends about whether the US army should have stayed in Afghanistan to protect women against the Taliban.
Discussions like this are a good opportunity to show that the US military has massively attacked the Afghan people: men, women and children. That the Taliban’s vicious attacks pale before those of US imperialism.
It’s an opportunity to show that 174,000 Afghan people were killed during the war with the US. Many were civilians. Thousands were killed in US drone attacks, including since the US troop withdrawal.
US rulers’ cynicism has no limits. Many of the 6300 US forces killed in Afghanistan were killed with US weapons given by the US to the Taliban via the Saudis. This was so the Saudis could influence the Taliban to negotiate with the US.
We can explain that imperialist war is inherent in capitalism’s competition for maximum profit. Communist revolution is only way to put an end to imperialist war.
We can show the need to do communist work in the bosses’ armed forces. The military brass puts women and men soldiers in harm’s way to protect the bosses’ profits. They push sexism and racism as part of training for their wars for control of the world.
Soldiers in the bosses’ militaries can be won to fight for communism, including taking on the rulers’ sexism and racism together. They are workers in uniform and could be won to see that their interests lie with their class. Then they would join ICWP to fight for communist workers’ power, not for the bosses’ profits.
Self critically, I have not tried to reach out to soldiers with our ideas. As a party, we need to reach out to those in the military, to build communist relations with them and win them to stand together with workers and youth against capitalism for communist revolution. That is only the way to put an end to capitalism’s sexism, racism, xenophobia and wars for profit.
A Comrade
