Chinese Nationalism for Imperialism here ♦ Chinese Rulers Glorify Han Dynasty to Prepare for War here ♦
Chinese Nationalism is a Fascist Imperialist Creation (Part I)
China isn’t communist. It’s imperialist! Chinese nationalism lumps “the Chinese people” together, victimized by anti-Chinese violence and genocides. It is racist, xenophobic, anti-worker, and anti-communist. Like all nationalism, it is against the interests of the Chinese and international working class.
Workers in China rose against President Xi Jinping’s arbitrary “zero-COVID” policies in 2022. The Chinese imperialists and nationalists libeled them as part of the “foreign anti-China forces who sought to destabilize China.”
These protests were never reported by the Chinese rulers’ media. During November 2022, hundreds of migrant textile workers in Guangzhou broke through lockdown barriers. They breached checkpoints, marched through the streets, and fought with local health authorities.
Foxconn factory workers protested massively against strict measures that affected the wages and living conditions of newly hired workers.
Weeks later, a fire in the Xinjiang capital of Urumqi killed at least ten civilians. It sparked the main wave of protests across China. Many believed that the victims had been trapped by a COVID lockdown. Many protesters belonging to the majority Han Chinese ethnic group joined with people of other ethnic and religious groups against the authoritarian fascist regime.
Chinese nationalism argues that the Chinese people have suffered so much from imperial domination that they need a “great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation by defeating foreign anti-China forces and their backers.”
It exploits the memories of horrific tragedies, such as the 1937 Nanjing Holocaust and the era of European and Japanese imperialist domination of China from 1839 to 1949. That is meant to justify its own imperialist expansion, cultural repressions, and anti-worker, nationalist hate and violence.
Chinese nationalists paint all Chinese workers and Chinese capitalists as victims. It promotes the false beliefs that “the world is always against the Chinese, that there are anti-China insults and incidents everywhere, foreign anti-China forces are always seeking to destroy China.”
As everywhere, however, there are two classes. Chinese workers and Chinese capitalists have nothing in common. The so-called “national interests” are just the interests of the capitalist-imperialist ruling class, never the workers’ interests.
The Chinese and international capitalists have created nations, nationalism, and borders. This is to divide and control the working masses and to advance the imperialist ruling classes’ interests. The rulers use superficial differences such as races and ethnicities to make workers feel divided amongst each other.
Chinese workers have much more in common with the Japanese and Western workers and workers everywhere than with any capitalist-imperialist on earth. Our international working class, including Chinese workers, share a common interest: ending capitalist-imperialist terror everywhere.
Some left-leaning Chinese citizens are waking up to the realities of nationalism. One wrote online, “Nationalism is a state-sponsored ideology that is unique to capitalist societies. Nationalism serves to convince people to be loyal to a particular country or government. Nationalism makes people feel they belong to a particular country.
“The government needs nationalism to make people obey. They use nationalism to make people think that what they are doing is not just obeying the government. Instead, they try to convince people that they are doing something much more important. This important thing is called people’s ‘obligation’ to the country.”
This critic is right. However, opposing nationalism in words isn’t enough to end it. We must fight nationalism in practice, by uniting workers across national boundaries and from different ethnic groups and religions. The anti-nationalists can become revolutionary fighters for communism once they realize that communism is the only answer to capitalist-imperialism, and that all nationalist ideas are deadly to the international working class.
After the 1911 revolution, Sun Yat-sen proposed that China “follow the example of the United States of America” to unite China into “a single cultural and political whole.” That meant encouraging assimilation and discouraging indigenous culture.
Since the defeat of the Chinese Cultural Revolution, the Chinese imperialists have been putting Uyghurs and other ethnic minorities into concentration camps for such things as sending Islamic religious recordings to family members or downloading e-books in the Uyghur language.
The Chinese rulers fear a mass revolutionary communist movement. They know from Chinese history that the masses have the potential to fight for and implement communism. Nationalism, racism, and repression are their main tools to try to prevent the rise of a new communist movement. Such a movement would aim to end capitalism, the rule of money and the market, once and for all.
The Chinese imperialists are guilty of genocidal crimes against humanity, attacks on communists, enslavement of the masses, and imperialist wars. They will never acknowledge the true history of their crimes. The imperialist rulers know that once the truth enters mass consciousness, it becomes a threat to their interests.
We invite workers worldwide to join the fight against capitalism-imperialism. Workers of the world, unite! Fight for communism!
China’s Imperialist Rulers Glorify Han Dynasty Atrocities to Prepare for War
Even before China was a nation, its rulers engaged in genocides, massacres, segregationist discrimination, and other forms of repression of ethnic groups. That includes Uyghurs as well as “foreigners” residing in China. They often justified their conquests and cultural repression by blaming indigenous ethnic minorities for raids or attempted uprisings.
For instance, indigenous Xiongnu peoples frequently raided Han Dynasty frontiers. The Han emperor ceased peace relations with these groups. He launched a centuries-long war of conquest (133 BCE to 89 CE). It was one of many conquests against indigenous peoples.
During the war, the Han Dynasty army massacred between eighty and ninety thousand Xiongnu troops. It displaced the Northern Xiongnu population to the Ili River valley, and forcibly assimilated the Southern Xiongnu into Han Dynasty culture.
In 779 CE, Tang Dynasty rulers forced Uyghurs to wear their ethnic dress. They banned Uyghurs from marrying Han civilians or pretending to be Han. In 836 CE, Lu Chun was appointed as governor of Canton (Guangzhou). He enforced more racial separation, banned marriages between Han and “foreign” civilians, and made it illegal for “foreigners” to own property.
Tang Dynasty General Shi Xiong slaughtered 10,000 Uyghur Manichaeans at Shahu on February 13th, 843 CE. From 842-845 CE, the Tang empire slaughtered Manichaean priests and destroyed Buddhist temples and shrines. This is known as the Huichang persecution of Buddhism. From 878-879 CE, the rebel army of Huang Chao massacred tens of thousands of merchants from the Abbasid Caliphate, including Muslim Arabs, Persians, Zoroastrians, Jews, and Christians.
The Ming Dynasty rulers in the 14th century annexed what is now Guizhou Province. It was home to the indigenous Miao peoples. The Miao had lived without classes or exploitation for centuries until after the 3rd century CE. In response to the rulers’ occupation of the indigenous lands, the Miao people rebelled against the Han government in the 14th, 15th, 18th, and 19th centuries. Han and Manchu rulers responded by brutally repressing the Miao and terrorizing them into submission.
Today, the imperialist Chinese ruling class tries to equate “Han” with “China.” It glorifies this bloody past to build nationalism in preparation for war.