Good News: China’s Arrest of Crown Executives Endangers Packer’s Barangaroo Project
Above Left, Australia, 2016: Police harass a homeless Aboriginal family in Sydney’s Belmore Park. In Australia, the legal system targets the working class and people on the lowest income. Aboriginal people are hit with severe racist, anti-working class repression with many Aboriginal people being killed in state custody. By contrast, in socialistic China, where the overall rate of imprisonment is much lower than Australia, the system is toughest on rich capitalists and corrupt government officials. Above Right: Xu Ming, one of many billionaires jailed in China. In December 2015, this capitalist exploiter, who was once one of China’s richest people, died in state custody at age 44. James Packer is used to Australia’s system where his exorbitant wealth and economic power buys great political influence. However, his assumption that things would be the same in the Peoples Republic of China have started to bring him a rude shock.
18 November 2016 – Greedy billionaire, James Packer, has been riding high. He was expecting to make an absolute fortune from his Crown Resorts casino and luxury hotel complex which will be built in the Sydney CBD’s, Barangaroo site. However, he was brought back down to earth a bit last month when authorities of the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) detained 18 of his wealthy executives. Among the high-flying Crown executives that the PRC has arrested are at least three Australian ones including Crown’s boss of VIP operations, Jason O’Connor. Those arrested are alleged to have been involved in organising the very activities that Packer’s high rollers’ casino will in good part depend on: luring high rollers from China to gamble at his casinos and other wealthier Chinese to hold their money in overseas casino accounts. Luring Chinese people to do this is illegal under PRC law. Packer and his executives knew all this. But they were so greedy that they could not help themselves and thought they would get away with it anyway. After all, in capitalist Australia, Packer and his ilk always get away with whatever they want! However, China is a very different story. In socialistic China, the “right” of business tycoons and other rich individuals to ride roughshod over everyone else and make a mockery of state laws is severely “repressed.” The PRC, understandably, does not want wealthy individuals depositing money in overseas casino accounts as that could be used to circumvent its strict capital controls which restrict the “rights” of the rich to freely move money about internationally. China also does not want corrupt businessmen and officials to use overseas casinos to launder dirty money or avoid taxes.
If Crown’s efforts to lure Chinese high rollers and wealthy individuals are severely curtailed, it could spell doom for Packer’s Barangaroo complex. Although the proportion of high rollers in China is tiny, China has such a huge population (60 times that of Australia) that these high rollers are, numerically, a big number. Furthermore, since gambling is outright banned in mainland China and PRC authorities have been cracking down on wealthy mainlanders travelling to Macao to gamble, Chinese high rollers now need to travel abroad to gamble. Similarly, other wealthy Chinese individuals need to deal with casinos located overseas in order to secretly move or launder money. That is why Packer was counting on luring Chinese high rollers to Barangaroo as a main income source for his casino.
One of the many positive aspects of the China arrests for working class people in Australia is that it could help the struggle to save public housing in Sydney’s Millers Point area which is right adjacent to the waterside Barangaroo site. Several of the Millers Point tenants who have been staunchest in resisting the NSW government’s drive to sell off public housing in the area are convinced that part of what is driving the government’s moves is Packer’s, very nearby, casino/hotel project. Their suspicions sound more than plausible. Certainly, it is beyond question that mainstream politicians of all stripes and states are servile to Packer. As the The Saturday Paper (12 April 2014) put it when describing the way that Packer received official backing for his Barangaroo plan:
State and federal laws and regulations have flexed or melted away in the project’s path. Ordinary rules don’t seem to apply to James Packer.
Thus, after the cabinet of corrupt then premier Barry O’Farrell openly announced its backing of the Packer plan, it appointed to head the “independent” detailed assessment of the project, David Murray, an ex-banker and a Liberal party supporter who has such close ties to Packer that he attended Packer’s first wedding! This “assessment” ended up being even more farcical than expected. The “independent” panel chose to seek their commercial advice about Crown’s proposal from Deloitte which has had a financial relationship with Crown. Meanwhile, it was uncovered that even before the “independent” panel had made its “assessment,” the NSW Premier’s department prepared it with statements to help it defend the Crown proposal from any negative media questioning! After bowing to a notably low tax rate for the planned casino, the state government then further facilitated Packer’s interests by ramming through a 2013 amendment to the Casino Control Act specifically to support Packer’s Barangaroo project. This special change to the Act had the support of not just the governing conservative Coalition but also the ALP and the Shooters Party. Even Fred Nile, supposedly a vehement opponent of gambling, campaigned strongly in favour of it. These amendments to the Act are so slavish to Packer that they ensure that Crown must be paid compensation if any future regulatory changes – like tax increases – hurt its profits. The Act even stipulates that the Independent Licensing and Gaming Authority (ILGA) cannot make any changes’s to a Barangaroo casino license without approval from Packer’s Crown! Not that the ILGA is prepared to stand up to Packer anyway. When, the following year, this “independent” authority conducted its probity check on Crown’s suitability to hold a casino license, the ILGA took only three months to pass Crown which, in the own words of the ILGA chief Micheil Brodie, “probably rates as one of the fastest assessments of a casino applicant in history”. Meanwhile, not only has Packer’s complex been infamously excluded from Sydney’s controversial lockout laws, it was granted a special exemption from workplace health and safety laws restricting smoking in indoor workplaces. As Australian Institute of Architects NSW president, Shaun Carter, put it after Crown’s casino/luxury hotel complex was granted final planning approval this June:
James Packer’s massive, $105 million luxury yacht and his $66 million private jet. Like other capitalist tycoons, Packer uses his immense wealth and economic power to gain political influence. Packer is great mates with former prime minister Tony Abbott [Above Right], current prime minister Malcolm Turnbull and most other top politicians.
In this capitalist society money buys influence. Filthy rich tycoons are able to swing political and bureaucratic decision making through giving hefty donations to political parties, through buying expensive newspaper advertisements (such as the full page ones that Packer’s Crown made promoting its Barangaroo plans) and by having membership in business lobby groups. It is well known that some of the ultra-rich also openly buy out politicians and government officials through open bribery or through purchasing them other favours – like liaisons with high-priced prostitutes. More common, however, are the softer – and yet more insidious – forms of buying influence that almost all capitalist bigwigs engage in. These include inviting politicians and bureaucrats to corporate boxes to watch the cricket or inviting them to exclusive parties and cruises on their luxury yachts. The ultra-rich capitalists also buy political influence through more subtle means – for example, through funding the arts. On 12 November 2013, the very eve of the day that the NSW parliament voted on amendments to facilitate his Barangaroo project, Packer ostentatiously announced a $60 million donation to various Sydney arts, theatre, opera and orchestra institutions by both his Crown Group and himself personally. This was intended to put pressure on any politicians who may have been considering voting down the amendment with the prospect of gaining the opprobrium of the arts community. Meanwhile, any politicians concerned that open support for Packer’s unpopular Baranagroo project could damage their image would now be re-assured that Packer’s donation would make him be seen by the public in better light. Furthermore, although $60 million is barely pocket money for a person who has a $5 billion fortune (“earned” by his and famous late father and grandfather’s ripping off of the labour of workers), it represents a lot of money to underfunded arts institutions. Imagine a talented young artist asking to get funding from a head of one these Packer-donated institutions for a project satirising the Banagaroo complex. It’s a sure bet that they won’t get very far!
We cannot, of course, forget the lobbyists – a big factor in modern-day capitalist “democracies.” It is only the super-rich who can afford to hire skilled lobbyists. Packer, for example, employed former ALP heavies Mark Arbib and Karl Bitar to use their connections to ensure that the ALP backed the casino. In general, business bosses like to employ former – and, if they can get away with it, even current – politicians and high-level bureaucrats to be on their boards in order to use the connections of these individuals to gain them extra influence in the machinery of state. Thus, amongst the board of directors of Packer’s Crown is former Minister of Communications in the Howard government, Helen Coonan. For his part, Crown CEO Rowen Craigie was a General Manager for Gaming at the Victorian TAB and held senior economic policy positions in Treasury and the Department of Industry in Victoria. Another Crown director, former Qantas boss, Geoff Dixon, was head of the Australian government’s main tourism authority, Tourism Australia, from 2009-2015: that is, throughout the crucial period when Packer was seeking government backing for his Barangaroo project. Big-time capitalists use a similar method to help ensure media support. Thus, the executive deputy chairman of Crown, John Alexander, is a director of Seven West Media – the owner of Channel 7 and its offshoots as well as Yahoo7. He is also a former editor in chief of both The Sydney Morning Herald and The Australian Financial Review. Even more effective in ensuring media support is simple, direct ownership. Packer, himself, directly owns a $28 million stake in the entity that owns Channel 10. So, don’t expect this broadcaster to run any hard-hitting documentaries against Crown’s Barangaroo project anytime soon! Very helpful, too, for capitalist billionaires are the “mates” connections that they develop with media moguls and media high-fliers. James Packer is very close friends with influential, right-wing 2GB shock-jock, Alan Jones, with the 45% owner of Macquarie Media Limited (which owns both 2GB and 2UE) John Singleton and with Lachlan Murdoch, a director of News Corporation (owner of The Australian and The Daily Telegraph newspapers, a host of regional and interstate papers and 50% of Foxtel) who is, of course, the son of its chairman and controlling shareholder, Rupert Murdoch. Then there are the myriad of connections arising from Packer and his father’s former ownership of Channel 9.
Such “mates” connections also cement ties between capitalist bigwigs and the politicians that administer their state. James Packer, for instance, is such close friends with former Liberal prime minister, John Howard, and ex-treasurer, Peter Costello, that they both, once again, attended his first wedding. Packer also played golf with Stephen Conroy when the latter was Communications Minister in the last ALP federal government. Packer is good mates too with Bob Katter and former Victorian premier, Jeff Kennett. Meanwhile, recent ex-Trade Minister, Andrew Robb, had worked for Packer’s PBL company from 1997-2001. What gives individual big capitalists political clout is not only their personal wealth and connections but their control of large chunks of the economy. Capitalist politicians and high-level bureaucrats are always on the lookout for lucrative positions in the private sector to move into once their careers in government or the public service are over. Thus, big business owners can lure these politicians and bureaucrats into doing their bidding precisely because these schmucks hope that this would open up a future career for them hired either directly as executives of or as consultants for their corporations (the way that former Labor powerbrokers Graham Richardson, Karl Bitar and Mark Arbib and prominent Liberal socialite, Ann Peacock, did in getting positions in Packer companies) or by other companies looking to establish links with these corporations. Even less cynical government politicians who actually believe (wrongly!) that they are to some degree representing the people are pulled into the orbit of those with considerable weight in the economy. For in an economic system dominated by private “enterprise,” they are reliant on these firms for providing jobs and for paying taxes into state coffers. The threat of big corporate bosses to withdraw from a major project can be enough to pull government politicians into line.
For those politicians and bureaucrats that still refuse to bow down to a big capitalist’s interests, the latter have nastier means at their disposal. Just as tycoons can build up a loyal politician’s or bureaucrat’s career, the way that the Pratt family industrial capitalists – who are currently second on Australia’s rich list – were the benefactors ensuring ALP Opposition Leader Bill Shorten’s rise (the late Richard Pratt used to let Shorten use his extravagant mansion for fundraising events when Shorten first campaigned for a parliamentary seat and even made his private jet available for Shorten’s use), they can also leverage their wealth to topple the careers of those who are not loyal enough. Look, for instance, at what happened to former ALP prime minister Kevin Rudd in mid-2010. Now, Rudd was an ardent supporter of the capitalist order and, thus, hardly one to make a strong stand against capitalist bigwigs. However, in 2010 he was planning to implement a Resources Super Profits Tax that would have mildly increased the amounts of tax that big mining bosses pay. That was too much for mining tycoons like Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest and Clive Palmer who are not prepared to share even a fraction of their fortunes with anyone. They – and other mining capitalists – went on a massive advertising campaign against the tax that saw them spend $22 million in just six weeks. Meanwhile, their friends in the Murdoch and other media outlets backed the campaign against the new tax. All this contributed to a steep fall in popularity for Rudd and enabled his internal ALP rivals to replace him as prime minister. Dancing completely to the tune of Australia’s mining billionaires, the new Gillard government then immediately watered down the tax to such a great degree that it hardly collected any money at all! Of course, the mining tycoons’ opposition to the Resource Super Profits Tax was not the only reason that Rudd was toppled. Rudd is an arrogant individual and was not liked much by his fellow ALP politicians. However, the decisive factor in his demise then was the slump in his opinion poll numbers caused by the massive advertising and media campaign against the Resources Super Profits Tax – a campaign conducted at the behest of the filthy rich mining bosses. The Packers, too, are well aware of the power that they have to bring down politicians or top-level public servants who, even in the slightest, get in their way. And they’re quite prepared to use it! In 1993 when James Packer and his late father, Kerry, first put in a bid for a Sydney casino, James Packer famously rang a Minister in the then NSW Liberal government and said: “the old man told me to ring… this is the message: If we don’t win the casino, you guys are f_cked”.
The truth is that in capitalist “democracies” the much vaunted principle of “one person, one vote” is a farce. For it is the small number of ultra-rich capitalists who have the wealth, control of the economy and connections to influence decision making and shape mainstream public opinion. James Packer with his $5 billion fortune seems to have more influence than at least half of the 5 million or so registered voters in NSW combined. So $5 billion is equal to at least 2.5 million votes. On average that means: two billion dollars = one million votes. Now that’s much more like the true equation describing capitalist “democracy.”
To be sure, the capitalist state does not serve one particular bourgeois capitalist. Rather, in the words of the Communist Manifesto: “the executive of the modern state is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” However, the relative weight of a handful of tycoons in Australia is so great that the state almost always backs their particular interests.
Save Millers Point Public Housing!
Defend China’s Crackdown on Packer’s Greedy Executives!
Sydney, 19 March 2016: Opponents of the sell-off of public housing in the inner-city Millers Point area, including members of the MUA, CFMEU and ETU trade unions, march in protest. China’s arrest of 18 wealthy executives of James Packer’s Crown empire, including three Australian high-fliers, could undermine Packer’s Barangaroo Casino plan – thus aiding the campaign to save public housing in the Millers Point and Rocks area.
So Packer certainly had more than enough influence to instigate a sell-off of public housing in Millers Point if he wanted to. Would he want to? Yes would be a very good bet on the right answer to that question. Clearing out Miller’s Point public housing would allow the area to be turned into luxury dwellings that can be used by his casino patrons looking for longer-stay, nearby accommodation outside the hotel and for his executives overseeing the casino/hotel complex. All that would help with Packer’s project. Furthermore, even if a re-developed Millers Point site ends up not being directly used, in its majority, by patrons and executives of Crown’s Barangaroo complex, the planned complex is nevertheless driving wealthy speculators to try and grab hold of this land. Such speculators have no doubt been lobbying the government for the sell-off of public housing in the area too. The boost in property prices driven by Packer’s Barangaroo project also gives the NSW government itself more incentive to sell-off the Millers Point public housing as it means they can get higher prices at auctions than they otherwise would.
However, if the Peoples Republic of China follows through with its crackdown on Crown’s efforts to lure high rollers and other wealthy Chinese to deposit money in Crown casinos then the whole game would change. Packer’s Barangaroo project could be pushed into deep water. And if part of the economic forces that are driving the government’s sell-off of Millers Point public housing are stopped then the government will be more prepared to back down if faced with significant opposition from our side. That is why it is in the interest of the fight for public housing that we stand by the PRC’s crackdown. Furthermore, although we do not favour bans on gambling in Australia, it can only be a good thing more generally if Packer’s Barangaroo project goes splat. The whole philosophy behind the project is offensive to us egalitarians: that is, that scenic, beautiful-looking public space could be turned into a members only, high-rollers casino that only the very wealthy can afford to join and a six-star hotel that only the rich can afford to stay in.
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Whether the PRC follows through and prosecutes the rich Crown executives is still a live bet. You can certainly bet that James Packer would be using his economic and political muscle to push the Australian government into pressuring the PRC state as relentlessly as possible. However, the determination of PRC authorities to crack down on Crown’s activities was shown when the suspects were first detained. They were detained in meticulously planned and coordinated overnight raids in several cities. PRC authorities also carefully waited for a time when Crown’s Australian-based VIP international boss, Jason O’Connor, was on a trip to China to launch the raids. Under China’s legal system, suspects are first detained and questioned and then only after lengthy investigation formally arrested if police believe that there is strong evidence of wrong-doing. The fact that the three Australian crown executives were formally arrested today – five weeks after being initially detained – show that Chinese authorities believe that there is clear evidence that they have committed illegal acts.
In standing by the PRC’s crackdown on Packer’s seemingly illegal actions in China, we should be ready for a barrage of condemnation of the crackdown from the big business-owned Australian media and ruling class politicians. That’s what happened the last time the PRC prosecuted corruption from a major Australia-owned multinational. In 2009, China arrested several high-flying executives from part-Australian owned, mining giant Rio Tinto for corrupt activities. Some of these corrupt activities involved making bribes to get PRC state-owned steel companies to pay higher prices for Rio’s iron ore than they would otherwise have paid. Especially as the trial of the Rio Tinto executives took place, then Australian prime minister Kevin Rudd, National Party heavy and now deputy PM Barnaby Joyce and the mainstream media hysterically denounced the PRC’s legal procedures. It did little good. The PRC ended up handing the senior Rio executives lengthy jail sentences – including ten years for Australian Stern Hu. Rio Tinto like BHP, Packer’s Crown, Gina Rinehart and Andrew Forrest’s Fortescue may be above the law here. However, in Red China, where enterprises under socialistic state ownership play the dominant role in the economy rather than corporations owned by tycoons, the state does not in general kowtow to the demands of capitalist bigwigs.
One of the things that the Australian mainstream media and politicians may throw out to defend Packer’s arrested henchmen is the claim that the arrests are arbitrary and over the top. However, it has now emerged that PRC authorities actually issued a stern warning to Crown last year that it was engaging in illegal activities. Australian Crown bosses then responded by trying to fly under the radar of PRC authorities by making short business trips to China instead of spending long stays there. They also started formally marketing their casinos to Chinese people as trips to “resorts” rather than casinos as a way to try and deceive PRC authorities.
Another bit of propaganda that Australian media and politicians may assert in support of Packer is the notion that Crown and Australians have been unfairly singled out by Chinese authorities. However, the PRC has already targeted other overseas casino operators. Last year, thirteen executives of two South Korean casino operators, Paradise and Grand Korea, were jailed for similar crimes to what the arrested Crown executives are apparently alleged to be involved in. Meanwhile, in a massive raid a few months ago, police in the south east Chinese province of Guangdong arrested almost 800 local people for economic crimes including “organizing illegal gambling activities overseas.” Furthermore, in the actual Crown arrests, alongside the three Australian nationals, one Malaysian national and 14 local Chinese nationals were also arrested. Furthermore, eight other Chinese people not working for Crown, some of them likely high rollers, were also detained in the October raids.
If the Australian mainstream media try to give the impression that only overseas businesses and their employees have been targeted in China that too can be easily re-butted. These Crown arrests are, in fact, part of a massive anti-corruption campaign that has been running in China for over two years. Although in some cases there is suspicion that Chinese president Xi Jinping has used the campaign to undermine factional rivals within the Communist Party of China, the campaign has truly clamped down on corruption. Hundreds of high-ranking politicians and businessmen have been prosecuted. Furthermore, perhaps the best aspect of the anti-corruption campaign is that it has to some, albeit small, degree also drifted into a campaign against the opulence of the rich. Thus, in early 2014, Communist Party of China authorities in major Chinese cities ordered the closure of high-end clubs and expensive restaurants near public parks, scenic spots and cultural sites because these venues could not be accessible and affordable to the masses. It is worth noting here that Sydney’s Barangaroo area is definitely such a scenic spot. In other words, if PRC law were applied here, there would be no Crown Barangroo project (even without the casino)! By the way, in the PRC’s anti-opulence drive, those formerly high-end clubs and restaurants located near public spots that were allowed to stay open were ordered to lower their prices and change their menus to turn them into places affordable to the masses. So, if the PRC law were applied here, Packer at best would see his Barangaroo project being turned into a centre with free entry nightclubs serving cheap drinks, affordable buffet restaurants for the masses enjoying the waterside parks and a three-star hotel providing clean and cheap accommodation for working class tourists from Australia, China and other Asian and overseas countries looking for an affordable place to stay in the heart of the city.
Perhaps the most likely argument that the Australian ruling class and its media will use to oppose any PRC prosecution of Packer’s henchmen is to claim that the PRC’s legal system is “cruel” and “harsh.” However, actually, Australia’s rate of imprisonment is nearly 30% higher than China’s. What is true is that the PRC does jail business tycoons at a much higher rate than Australia. So the difference between Australia’s current legal system and the PRC’s is a matter of who is targeted by the state. In Australia, the state jails disproportionately target Aboriginal people, people from Middle Eastern and Asian derived ethnic communities and the poor. In contrast, in the PRC workers state – despite suffering from plenty of bureaucratic deformations and the distortions caused by capitalist intrusion – it is wealthy private sector businessmen and the corrupt politicians and bureaucrats who are bribed by them who are disproportionately jailed. Australia’s capitalist ruling class, of course, finds such a system “harsh” and “cruel.” However, from the point of view of the working classes of both China and Australia such a system is exactly what is needed. We should defend it! And we should defend the crackdown on Packer’s and his executives’ illegal activities in China. Let’s weaken the economic forces driving the push out of public housing tenants from Millers Point! Stop the social cleansing of working class people from Sydney CBD! It is rail workers, bus drivers, ferry drivers and their ground staff, cleaners, warehouse workers, chefs, liquor and hospitality workers, construction workers, maintenance workers, fire brigade employees, ambulance staff, sales assistants, IT support staff and other workers who together make the Sydney CBD run. Yet the overwhelming majority of these workers cannot afford to live in the area. Let’s turn this around! Let’s turn the public space that was seized for Packer’s Barangaroo project into a big public housing block for working class people! Let’s fight for a massive increase in public housing throughout Australia! Fittingly, that is exactly what the PRC is doing – having provided around 40 million new public housing dwellings over the last six years.
China’s crackdown on Crown is not only good for the Millers Point public housing struggle, it is also more broadly in the interests of the working class. James Packer is such a powerful – and in Australia seemingly untouchable – capitalist that many here are resigned to him getting his way on everything. The fact that his executives could be called to account in the Peoples Republic of China should be used to give Australian workers confidence that the filthy rich bosses of this and other corporate giants are not invincible. Every fighter against oppression and every Australian trade union activist worth their salt ought to be seizing on this setback for Packer’s Crown to challenge, right here, the greedy exploitation by all the billionaires and the corporations that they own: including the likes of Crown, BHP, Rio Tinto, Visy, Seven West, Westfarmers, Woolworths and the banks. They should be saying to their proud and strong working class base: China is cracking down on corporate greed and corruption – we need to start to do that here too!
Australian Rulers’ Union Busting Drive against the CFMEU Union Threatens Construction Workers’ Lives
22 November 2016: Remember the days when hardly a fortnight would go by without the Australian media reporting a major work accident in China that killed dozens of workers? To be sure, China is the world’s most populous country – with about 60 times the population of Australia – so everything both bad and good necessarily happens on a huge scale. Furthermore, the mainstream Western media have always been looking for any means to paint a bad picture of the socialistic Peoples Republic of China (PRC). Nevertheless, it is true that China did have poor workplace safety. The country is industrialising and developing so fast that there was a period when the technological level and safety systems simply did not keep up – leading to dangerous workplace environments. Furthermore, the late 1980s, 1990s and first couple of years of this century was a period when China’s private sector expanded in influence relative to the state-owned sector which, nevertheless, to this day still dominates the pillars of the PRC’s economy. But it is in the private sector where workplace safety is at its worst including in the foreign-invested industries owned by Hong Kong, Taiwanese, American, Singaporean, Japanese and Australian bosses.
Despite technological improvements that improve workplace safety and despite the shift in employment in Australia from heavy industry and manufacturing to less hazardous jobs in the service and IT/digital sectors, reduction in workplace deaths have been relatively modest here. In contrast, socialistic China has dramatically improved workplace safety over the last fifteen years.
Thankfully, all this is becoming in significant part old news. Through a combination of nationalisation of formerly privately owned mines, the closure of smaller, unsafe private-sector mines, a 2008 pro-worker industrial relations law, increased government emphasis on workplace safety and spirited repression of greedy bosses responsible for workplace accidents, the Peoples Republic of China has dramatically reduced deaths from workplace accidents over the last 15 years. China’s workplace safety issue is still serious and, as a gigantic country with often large-size operations, when China does have work accidents they are often on a huge scale. Yet, the PRC’s achievements in improving workplace safety are so dramatic and the failure of greedy Aussie bosses to provide a safe workplace here so harmful that it is now safer to be a worker in China than it is to be one in Australia.
So what are the hard facts on this comparison of workplace safety in Australia and the PRC. There are some complications in comparing statistics because each country lists workplace deaths in different ways. In particular, in China, a death in a traffic accident has long been listed as a ‘workplace death.’ The inclusion of traffic accidents Continue reading Workplace Safety Now Better in China than in Australia→
PROTECT THE GREAT BENEFITS FOR WORKERS & THE RURAL MASSES WON THROUGH THE REVOLUTION:
STOP IMPERIALIST FUNDING FOR THOSE NGOs THAT SEEK TO OVERTHROW SOCIALISTIC RULE IN CHINA
6th September 2016: Determined supporters of socialistic rule in China rallied this evening on the steps at the entrance to Sydney Town Hall. In this demonstration called at short notice, participants hailed the gains of China’s 1949 anticapitalist revolution and opposed the U.S. and Australian-backed anti-communist Chinese exile groups seeking to promote capitalist restoration in China.
The 1949 Chinese Revolution was one of the most momentous events in humanity’s entire history. The long-suffering Chinese masses overthrew their exploiters and took power. Tens of millions of downtrodden people participated in this heroic struggle. They achieved victory after a bitter three year civil war. On one side of the war stood the oppressed tenant farmers, workers, working-class women and idealistic students. They were organized by the Communist Party of China (CPC) which was led by Mao Ze Dong. On the other side were the brutal landlords and capitalists. These oppressor classes were served by the Kuomintang (KMT) government of Chiang Kai-Shek. The KMT was heavily armed, trained and advised by the U.S. regime. But still they lost to the Communist-led revolutionaries.
The 1949 anti-capitalist revolution freed the peasants from the tyranny of the landlords, made headway in liberating workers from capitalist exploitation and freed the Chinese people from humiliating subjugation by imperial powers. The revolution greatly uplifted women’s status from the horrific reality they faced under the previous Kuomintang regime – when many women were subjected to forced marriage and the barbaric practice of Continue reading Long Live China’s 1949 Anticapitalist Revolution!→
Above: China, May 2013: Prospective tenants visit a new public rental housing complex in Shanghai. In the first nine and a half months of 2015, socialistic China had started construction of almost 7 million public housing units. The Chinese government has planned for 18 million public housing dwellings to be built or rebuilt between 2015 and 2017.
STOP THE SELL-OFF OF PUBLIC HOUSING!
MASSIVELY INCREASE PUBLIC HOUSING JUST LIKE SOCIALISTIC CHINA IS DOING!
On 16 July 2015, a speakout rally was held in the multi-racial working class Sydney suburb of Auburn to oppose the cuts by governments of all stripes to public services. The protest was held under the slogans, Smash the Cuts to Services Working Class People Need the Most! Stop the Sell-Off Public Housing. Massively Increase Public Housing – Just Like China is Doing. No to Abbott’s Squeezing of Public Hospitals and Schools. Rollback the Former ALP Government’s Cut to the Sole Parent Payment.
The demonstration was held because the capitalist big-end of town and the governments that serve them are waging all-sided attacks on the services that working class people need the most. These attacks, alongside bosses’ cuts to workers’ conditions, are making life harder and harder for working class people. Whether we are employed workers, unemployed workers, single mothers, pensioners or students, we are all feeling the pinch.
One of the crucial public services that are under attack is public housing. We need public housing because the greedy private sector developers who determine what is built in the private sector know that they can make a lot more money building expensive homes for the wealthy rather than affordable homes for the masses.
Bulli, 11 October 2014: Members of the Illawara-based Public Housing Union and pro-public housing activists from Sydney – including Millers Point residents and Trotskyist Platform supporters – protest the sell-off of yet another public housing dwelling as yuppy real estate agents conducting the sale look on.
So we need low-rent public housing to alleviate this situation. But what are governments doing? The very opposite! From Millers Point and the Rocks in the inner city to Auburn, Bonyrigg and Claymore in western and south-western Sydney to Bellambi and Wollongong in the Illawara, the authorities are selling off or demolishing public Continue reading SMASH THE CUTS TO SERVICES WORKING CLASS PEOPLE NEED THE MOST!→
Down with Capitalist Australia’s Military Build Up!
U.S., Australian Militaries: Stay Out of the South China Sea!
26 February 2016 – In October 2015, the U.S. warship, the USS Lassen destroyer (pictured above) sailed through waters, not far from mainland China, that are claimed by the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) as its territorial waters. This provocative action in the South China Sea was fully backed by the right-wing Australian government and the ALP Opposition. Moreover, yesterday’s Defence White Paper released by the Turnbull government announced a massive military buildup for the Australian Defence Forces (ADF) which the White Paper could not hide was squarely targeted at China. The government “defence” plan announced that the ADF would have its troop numbers boosted to 62,400 in five years. That means that the Australian military as a percentage of the population will be over 60% larger than the PRC’s military which, in contrast, is in the process of reducing troop numbers by 15%.
The White Paper also announced the ADF’s massive expansion of military hardware including the acquisition of 12 new submarines, 9 warships, 12 patrol vessels, 75 joint strike fighters, two fleets of drones and additional helicopters for special forces troops. Excited by this announcement, racist former defence minister in the Abbott government, Kevin Andrews called for Australia to join the U.S. in sending warships into China’s claimed territorial waters in the South China Sea. Yet it is not only hardline right-wingers like Kevin Andrews who are demanding such aggressive actions. Months earlier, Labor shadow defence minister Stephen Conroy started demanding the same thing(5). Meanwhile, Liberal defence minister, Marise Payne yesterday refused to rule out the possibility that the Australian Navy may take such incendiary action in the future. Continue reading Defend Socialistic China Against Military Intimidation By Capitalist Powers→
17 August pro-PRC rally in Hong Kong was attended by over 110,000 people.
GREETINGS FOR THE OCTOBER 1 ANNIVERSARY OF CHINA’S GREAT 1949 REVOLUTION DOWN WITH YUPPY, ANTI-COMMUNIST HONG KONG PROTESTS
1 October 2014: Today in Hong Kong, the Western media are playing up the anti-PRC, anti-communist protests. The protests are indeed large but the Western media ignored a huge pro-PRC rally in Hong Kong just weeks ago. The main trade union federation, the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions, is pro-PRC. The parliamentary party with the biggest vote in Hong Kong is the pro-PRC, Democratic Alliance for the Betterment of Hong Kong. It was formed by pro-communist people and leaders of the Hong Kong Federation of Trade Unions.
Hong Kong was stolen from China by the British in the 1840s as part of the Treaty of Nanking. That followed China’s defeat in the Opium War. The humiliating treaty for China allowed Westerners in China to have “extraterritoriality” meaning that they were not subject to Chinese laws.
Rents are rising. Wages are too low. And bosses are sacking workers. With rents so high, millions are struggling to make ends meet. The working poor and especially their children are suffering! People try to get lower rents by joining the public housing waiting list. But governments are selling off public housing! People are driven into ruin paying high rents while waiting up to twenty years on the public housing list! And it’s gotten so hard now to even get on this list that even full-time workers on the minimum wage aren’t eligible for it.
Yet while all this is happening, governments are letting big business owners like Gina Rinehart, Andrew Forrest, Frank Lowy and Richard Pratt get away with making billions by doing nothing other than exploiting other people’s labour. We need to fight to ensure that the wealth of this country is used to fund the public housing that we so badly need (and for properly funded public hospitals and schools). So we must rally to demand:
One of China’s many new public housing complexes. Last year China started construction of over ten million new public housing dwellings.
MASSIVELY INCREASE PUBLIC HOUSING! SOCIALISTIC CHINA IS DOING THAT
SO LET’S FIGHT FOR THE SAME HERE!
5 June 2012 – More and more of Australia’s poor are skipping meals because they can’t afford to pay for the food. In an annual survey by the Salvation Army of those who have sought its help, more than half the respondents admitted to skipping meals in order to pay for other necessities (ABC News Website, 16 May.) Other startling findings were that a third of those surveyed could not afford heating and a third could not afford medicine prescribed by their doctor.
Charities are reporting that an increasing number of people are seeking their help. Low-income people are being crippled by punishing rents and utility charges. And job slashing by business bosses are hitting working class people hard. The official spin about the supposedly low unemployment rate masks the reality that about 600,000 people are officially unemployed in this country. However, perhaps an even greater number of people are not recorded in official unemployment figures only because long-term lack of success in finding a job has discouraged them from looking for work or because they are a single parent unable to find affordable childcare. Meanwhile, one and a half million people are not able to get as many hours of work as they want to. They are not counted in the deceitful, official unemployment figures as those figures will not classify a person as unemployed if they obtain as little as one hour of work in a week. The drive of the business owners to maximize profits is forcing more and more workers into tenuous, low-wage casual jobs. That is why charities are reporting that an increasing proportion of those seeking help are not unemployed people but the working poor. These are typically people with young children who just can’t get enough hours in part-time jobs to get by or can’t make ends meet on the paltry minimum wage. Continue reading MASSIVELY INCREASE PUBLIC HOUSING! SOCIALISTIC CHINA IS DOING THAT SO LET’S FIGHT FOR THE SAME HERE!→
Part of a massive oil refinery complex in Kwinana, Western Australia. The refinery is owned by a foreign corporation. Chinese owned? Wrong! The refinery is owned by British-based BP. Latest available figures show that Britain’s total stock of foreign investment in Australia is more than 25 times that from Mainland China.
What Attitude Should Marxists Take to Proposals for Chinese Investment in Australia?
Takeovers, mergers and acquisitions of minority stakes are all normal parts of the corporate scene in capitalist Australia. Except, that is, when the companies investing happen to be state-owned enterprises from the Peoples Republic of China – in which case all hell breaks out. Proposals by PRC state firms to invest in Australian companies have caused a furore. Right-wing politicians, media commentators and some sections of the corporate elite have rabidly opposed such moves. As a result some major PRC investment plans have been stymied. Continue reading What Attitude Should Marxists Take to Proposals for Chinese Investment in Australia?→
February 2008: During last September’s APEC summit, thousands of anti-war youth and leftists participated in demonstrations. The actions centred on opposition to the invasion of Iraq and, to a much lesser extent, Afghanistan. The protesters were a diverse bunch but many saw themselves as anti-capitalist. But while these actions were occurring there were also other rallies taking place in Sydney with a quite different purpose. Right-wing forces had seized on the APEC visits of the leaders of China and Vietnam to hold a series of anti-communist events.
These anti-communist actions mainly consisted of people from the right-wing portions of the Chinese and Vietnamese communities. They held a rally at Sydney’s Belmore Park on September 8 around the same time that the anti-war APEC protest was marching from Town Hall to Hyde Park. The main Vietnamese group involved is called the Vietnamese Community of Australia. This organisation is dominated by those who were directly involved in, or supported, the blood-soaked former U.S. puppet regime of South Vietnam and who fled when the Vietnamese masses liberated the country from imperialism and capitalism. They long to reverse the result of the Vietnamese Revolution and campaign here in Australia to have the defunct flag of the former South Vietnamese regime flown at official events. Similarly, the Chinese groups involved in the anti-communist actions represent the interests of those descendants of the pre-1949 Chinese exploiting classes that still want to be able to rule China like their ancestors once did. Also central to the whole project are privileged elements within the Chinese community that have ties to the big business ruling elites in the likes of Taiwan, Hong Kong and Singapore. These forces know that, while Beijing has allowed capitalism to make significant inroads into China, capitalists do not have a free hand there as they are constrained by a workers state that is based on the still existing communal ownership of the majority of China’s key industries, banks, infrastructure and land.
The Chinese political groups that have been orchestrating the local campaign against the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) include “Free China,” Falun Gong and the Federation of Democratic China. These organizations are despised by the pro-Peoples Republic and working class sections of the Australian Chinese community. Particularly hated is the Falun Gong, the most active anti-China, anti-communist force. “All bullshit,” angrily says a Chinese man passing a Falun Gong poster. Indeed! Falun Gong specialize in making lurid claims that their members are being killed in China to “harvest organs.”
So what is this Falun Gong. They pose as a spiritual group that is supposedly being persecuted in the PRC because of its harmless religious views. But they are no more a simple religious group than are the actively right-wing Christian political forces in America. To get a sense of what these and other anti-PRC organizations are about you only need to look at who their backers are in the West. One of the most active supporters of the “rights” of Falun Gong is one David Kilgour. Kilgour is a right-wing ex-member of the Canadian parliament and the former Canadian Secretary for the Asia-Pacific. He is the co-author of the “Report into allegations of organ harvesting of Falun Gong practitioners in China,” a work which follows in the long tradition of “disinformation” practiced by North American imperialism.
Kilgour was the featured “honourable” speaker at the anti-PRC, anti-Vietnam events that were held in Sydney by Falun Gong and co. during APEC week. Let’s take a look more closely at who this David Kilgour is. One of Kilgour’s main agendas is to promote the imperialist intervention in Afghanistan in the face of widespread opposition to it in Canada. “Canada Should Stay in Afghanistan, Despite the Costs,” was the headline of an article he wrote in the Embassy Magazine (Ottawa) on July 4 last year. He is also a staunch opponent of the rights of gay and lesbian people. Indeed, Kilgour even left the Canadian Liberal party in 2005 because he was too bigoted to stomach a bill that they introduced giving certain rights to same-sex couples. In his explanation “Why I Left the Party” (National Post, 19 April 2005), Kilgour concludes that “the government’s same-sex marriage bill (C-38) represents a clear departure from the Liberal’s successful tradition of moderate liberalism …. “
Kilgour’s political positions bring him into a natural alliance with Falun Gong. From its main book of “law,” Zhuan Falun, onwards Falun Gong too promotes bigoted “values.” The group raves that the Communist Party government in China has been soft on homosexuality. In the Zhuan Falun Fajie (1997), Falun Gong founder and leader Li Hongzhi who the group claims has supernatural powers writes that: “All varieties of messed up and depraved things are taking place in China and abroad: homosexuality, ‘sexual liberation,’ drugs, gangs – everything.” Li Hongzhi also advocates inflammatory ideas on racial “purity.” He describes children born of mixed-race relationships as “defective persons” and when he toured Australia in 1996 he even claimed in a speech in Sydney that heaven itself is segregated: “the yellow people, the white people, and the black people have the corresponding races in heaven. Anybody who does not belong to his race will not be cared for. This is the truth, and it is not that I’m making up something here. What I am telling everyone are heavenly secrets.”
Like Kilgour, Falun Gong also champions the invasion of Afghanistan. For example, when Australian troops departed for Afghanistan’s Oruzgan Province last March, the Falun Gong newspaper Epoch Times reverberated the lying imperialist pronouncements that the military’s role would be to “aid in rebuilding war-torn settlements.” It declared that “Australian soldiers have been part of an international coalition against terrorism in Afghanistan since October 2001” (Epoch Timeswebsite, 6 March 2007, by Epoch Times Sydney staff). Similarly, the editorial line of Falun Gong publications has been to support the U.S.-led occupation forces in Iraq. Following the second anniversary of the Iraq takeover, a featured Special to the Epoch Times (website, 4 May 2005) piece titled, “Taking Stock Two Years After Iraq’s Liberation” [!] expressed the hope that the occupation forces “will finally win the central front of the global war against the terrorists.”
Not surprisingly, then, Falun Gong has won solidarity from the U.S. Congress and from none other than the chief imperialist “human rights” advocate himself, George Bush. The group is also known to get support from U.S. intelligence agencies. The organisation is certainly well supplied financially – putting out free newspapers and masses of glossy colour posters, hosting flashy entertainment shows and even sponsoring major Chinese New Year events in Sydney.
It is not, however, simply the ultra-conservative social “values” of Falun Gong that attract support from U.S. and Canadian ruling class politicians. Mostly, it is the fact that the group is politically committed to the destruction of Communist power, in any form, in China. For the purposes of fostering capitalist counterrevolution in the likes of China and Cuba the Western powers utilize a range of forces. Earlier, in order to undermine the USSR and the (deformed) workers states in Eastern Europe, the imperialists had supported a range of “dissident” forces in those countries from monarchists and fascists to liberal “democrats” to bogus “labour rights” advocates and social democrats. Today, Washington and co. do not seriously think that right-wing crackpots like Falun Gong could take power in China. But they do know that the campaigns that this group wages can injure the Peoples Republic. Falun Gong’s incessant slanders against the PRC gives those Western middle class elements looking for a rationale to hate Red China some “valid reasons” for doing so and furthermore deters would-be leftist supporters of the PRC from following through on their political impulses.
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The U.S. and its allies hope that the weight of anti-PRC sentiments in the West will have a bearing on the outcome of factional struggles within China itself where the situation is precariously balanced between forces seeking to maintain the PRC’s socialist-type foundations and elements pushing towards capitalist restoration. Backing anti-Red China groups is, of course, just one aspect of a multi-faceted strategy that the imperialist ruling classes are using to try and weaken Chinese pro-socialist forces. So what are some of the other aspects? Well, for one there is the constant demand by U.S. government officials and visiting businessmen for the PRC to “liberalise” and privatise its majority state-owned banking system. Then there is the behind-the-scenes support that Western capitalist politicians are giving to campaigns to boycott the Beijing Olympics. And then there are the brazen efforts (mostly unsuccessful) by Western corporate organisations like the American Chamber of Commerce in Shanghai to scuttle China’s new pro-worker labour law, a law that cracks down on abuses of workers rights, especially in the private sector.Don’t Buy the Bush/Cheney/Falun Gong Right-Wing Agenda Against Red China!It is hardly just U.S. and Canadian conservative forces that are supporting the anti-communist crusade against the PRC. Australian politicians like former Victorian Liberal Party parliamentarian Victor Perton have also been very active in supporting the likes of Falun Gong. But it is not just right-wing politicians who are involved. Some Labor Party figures, the Democrats and the Greens Kerry Nettle and Bob Brown are also hard-core supporters of anti-communist Chinese exile groups. The China policies of the latter group of politicians reflect the prejudices of pseudo-progressive layers of the Aussie middle class. They are comfortable layers living in a feel-good environment where people are at pains to flaunt how broad-minded they are but in practice are reluctant to challenge the essential features of the current Australian political system. The people in these social strata hate China because they hate to acknowledge that workers states actually exist. No, to accept that would rob these “socially conscious” people of their favourite excuse for refusing to break out of their cosy political habitat: that “there is no other choice” but to “very grudgingly” accept Australia’s capitalist order.
Regrettably, some of the far-left here have also lined up behind the anti-PRC, anti-communist agenda. The Solidarity and Socialist Alternative groups in particular were supportive of the anti-PRC campaigns during APEC and tried to meld them in with the main, leftist anti-war APEC protests. Why did they do this? Why would leftists who have been building demonstrations against the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions and who are actively against homophobia and racism end up being staunch defenders of a group like Falun Gong that supports the imperialist occupations, that equates homosexuality with murder and whose leader advocates racial segregation? Of course, these anti-PRC leftists would claim that they are merely standing up for “human rights” and “democracy.” But these same socialist groups correctly expose imperialist-backed “pro-democracy” forces in Iraq and Afghanistan so why line up behind such forces in China – especially when these Chinese pro-Western organisations have an agenda so heavily focussed against communism? The unfortunate answer to that question is that “socialist” hostility to the PRC is a form of capitulation to middle class, small-l liberal views. You see, socialists who are overly worried that their less radical friends and potential recruits think them too left-wing can say: “Look, we are not only against capitalism here but we are against the Communist Party dictatorship in China too.”
The all too convenient “theoretical justification” that some leftists use for an anti-PRC stance is that China is simply “another capitalist country.” One of the harmful effects of this false analysis is that it paints a very demoralising picture of the world to anti-capitalist activists. It makes out that in no country in the world have the toiling masses been sufficiently effective to retain state power. All the leaders of the APEC countries are the same, capitalism is all powerful. Now, if that were actually true then of course we would have to face that reality squarely. But why write off 20% of the world’s population (ie. in China) as being under capitalist rule when the imperialists themselves realise that this is a major part of the world that they do not actually have under their thumb? Indeed, the fact that China is not part of the imperialist fold gives the oppressed of the world a breathing space in which to organise resistance. It is, for example, a key reason why, to date, Iran has not been massively bombed. For in contrast to other powers like Britain, Germany, Japan and Canada, China has to some degree obstructed the U.S. and Israel’s war drive against Iran. Indeed, one of the demands that U.S. officials were making around APEC is that the PRC be more aggressive towards Iran (Associated Press, 6 September 2007.)
In fact, if you look behind all the diplomatic niceties of the APEC conference, you will see that the events actually showed that APEC is not simply one seamless bloc of 21 leaders with all the same agenda. Right on the very Saturday morning of APEC, Bush, Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and former Australian PM John Howard made a swipe against China. The three government heads held a meeting to strengthen their countries’ trilateral security arrangements – arrangements that are widely known to be directed against the PRC and North Korea. The Australian government’s participation in that provocative trilateral summit showed its true agenda with respect to the PRC. Aware that China’s massive mineral purchases are holding up this country’s economy, Canberra is careful to maintain the appearance of friendly relations with Beijing. But the Murdoch media and some members of the Australian foreign policy bureaucracy have been pushing to adopt a more openly hard line against the PRC. So has the U.S. government. When Dick Cheney visited Australia last February his main aim was not only to reconfirm Howard’s support for the Iraq occupation but to also strengthen U.S./Australia cooperation against China. Washington’s policy continued through APEC as well. On the Wednesday before APEC, Bush arrogantly berated the PRC over its financial policy and over “dissidents.” Washington was determined to pursue this anti-PRC agenda no matter how much the Chinese leadership adhered to its (ultimately futile) policy of building friendly relations with capitalist governments. Bush continued with his anti-PRC attacks on the Thursday before APEC when he held a Sydney meeting with Chinese leader Hu Jintao. The Commander in Chief of the killing of tens of thousands of Iraqis – and of the Guantanamo Bay concentration camp – criticised the PRC over “human rights.”
Those who oppose imperialism ought to stand against the imperialists’ hounding of the Chinese workers state – no matter how far China may currently be from a “model socialist” society. Fortunately, there are already sections of the Australian left that do in some way stand against the anti-PRC, anti-communist crusade. For example, in an article written soon after APEC by its General Secretary, Peter Symon, the Communist Party of Australia (CPA) correctly stated that:
“Many [Australian people] have been brought up on the White Australia policy and respond to the anti-China media campaigns and the policy of excluding refugees which clearly has a racist basis. Some of the left echo the media hype and keep on stoking the campaigns of Tibetan and Taiwanese independence. These are already lost causes and have no basis in historical fact. Then there is the religious Falun Gong campaign which is quite active in Australia. It is promoted by the political right-wing in a number of countries and is nothing more than an anti-communist campaign parading in a religious garb. There are quite a few on the left who are also caught up in the media campaign which asserts that China is ‘going back to capitalism’. They don’t even ask themselves the question: why should the media object to China going back to capitalism if that were really true?”
Guardian, 12 September 2007
At the big September 8 anti-war APEC rally itself, Trotskyist Platform (TP) carried a placard that appealed: “Fellow Anti-Capitalists: Do NOT buy the Dick Cheney/Bush/Falun Gong Right-Wing Agenda Against Red China – Defend the World’s Largest Workers State!”
Of course, among the groups that do oppose anti-communist attacks against the PRC there are many differences in viewpoint. For example, TP does not subscribe to the CPA’s beliefs that it is possible that the foreign policies in the world could ever be guided by the classless doctrine of “non-interference in the affairs of another country.” The reality in this globalised world is that all countries necessarily affect what happens in other countries. The actual question is not interference or “non interference” but this: will the imperialist countries be able to get away with subjugating poorer countries and fostering counterrevolution in the non-capitalist states or will it be the workers movements of different countries and the workers states that are able to gain the supremacy in the global class struggle by effectively giving solidarity to the toilers’ struggles in other lands. In other words, the question is not “interference” or “non-interference” but capitalism or socialism.
Nevertheless, despite these different stances amongst the communist left, there exists a basis here for building a united-front campaign to solidarise with China against capitalist threats. Such a campaign should include the CPA, Trotskyist Platform and pro-communist immigrant groups and would seek to broaden out to win a section of the Cuba solidarity movement as well as Marxist activists within the union movement. To build the movement will take much patient and persistent work. But the need for such a campaign is critical. As a TP leaflet distributed at the APEC anti-war protests stressed: “We must never allow the allies of imperialism to destroy the anti-capitalist revolutions in China and Vietnam! ♦
