CHINA: DENG'S GUARANTEE
The bloody massacre of Tien An Men square was a spectacular demonstration to Western capital, as well as a means of quelling the spreading insurgence in China against poverty and emargination.
Three months have passed since the spectacular massacre of Tien An Men Square, and the images of Deng's bloody publicity stunt remain vivid in our memories. Blood lends itself readily to sensational journalism and the media exploited the situation to the full. Not a newspaper lost the occasion to decorate their pages with it, and many went further, bringing out gaudy colour supplements filled with page after page of young bodies lying in pools of blood.
"All they wanted was democracy" the press headings told us. Indispensable arm of capital, the media can suscitate shock, disgust, democratic indignation or catharsis, insinuating that the action of the soldiers was due to an anomaly, something due only to the age and stubbornness of the old guard. We instead know that the role of any army is precisely that carried out by the Chinese one with particular clarity. The Chinese army merely accomplished the specific task for which the British, American, Turkish or any other army of the world is trained for: to control, repress and, when necessary, massacre in the interests of capital. The great insistence on imagery concerning such savage butchery therefore is, underneath the crocodile tears, a subliminal warning to exploited everywhere.
In fact the seemingly inexplicable massacre of the Tien An Men Square "merely" struck the symbolic heart of a situation that was already spreading uncontrollably throughout the main cities of China and which had gone far beyond bicycle barriers and papier maché effigies. The contradictions unleashed by Chinese capitalism's opening to the world market and consequent reform of the economic structure without a parallel one in the political and social field, are the result of the breakdown of a rigid structure without the added softener of mass consumerism, a political infrastructure, sport, rock or circuses to fill in the new voids that were opening up. The elimination of collectivization in 1978 had given way to a polarization of the Chinese population. On the one hand the possibility to accumulate or aspire to wealth in new unprecedented capitalist ventures, and on the other, masses of people thrown off the land and into the factories. When these collapsed to the advance of world capitalist investment and the invasion of the multinationals, the workers were literally thrown onto the streets. Eighty-one thousand small industries closed down. Thirty thousand others sacked hundreds of thousands of workers, thereby creating a landless, jobless "lumpen-proletarianized" mass. Moreover there are over 200 million of the population [who belong to] ethnic minorities living in poverty-stricken conditions, who could explode in a way similar to what is happening in Tibet. Of course it is true that most of the students were asking for "democracy"; that the workers wanted their "Solidarnosc"; that the white collar workers aspired to greater appreciation, the intellectuals to more money. But these are all things that could have been resolved even after long struggles, both in the streets and at a political level, by the more astute elements of the power structure capable of foreseeing the social needs of a capitalist economy that cannot remain tied to old models.
But beyond all that there exists a social reality in China which is definitively excluded from the logic of bargaining: 180 million ex-peasants with no land, no work and no perspectives. Some of them -- at least 50 million -- went to the cities, attracted by the golden dream of the metropoli. Two million in Shanghai, one million in Peking, half a million in Canton. They get charged daily by police, put onto trains and sent back to their areas of origin. But the land has no place for them and they return, obliged to carry out the most menial tasks, or just to "get by" picking pockets in the cities or resorting to other means of survival. While the students were demonstrating in Tien An Men Square, riots and looting were taking place in many other Chinese cities.
In February, after the Chinese New Year, about three million people descended on Canton from the poorest areas of the country in the hope of finding work. This great human mass of proportions that defy the imagination was dispersed within two months: a small minority moving around the province to work in the mines, on road works, farms or factories. Most of them were pushed onto lorries and sent "home". Some managed to escape to become beggars or pickpockets. Social tension grew out of all measure in this city of Chinese capital. Fights would break out or passersby would beat up pickpockets. But with the deportation of the main part to other areas of China, and tight controls of train tickets, a kind of capitalist-style "social peace" had been established in Canton between rich and poverty-stricken before June 3.
In the period leading up to that day riots and looting were taking place in various Chinese cities. It was all very well for the students to say: "the use of violence is inadmissable", that "demonstrations and marches must take place in perfect order when the coordinating committees tell them, using the approved slogans", while waiting for the government to enter into dialogue with them. Students' cells organized in all the universities to direct the agitation and prevent things degenerating into "hooliganism". The clashes, actual riots, such as those in Xian and Chansha where dozens of police were wounded, buses burned, buildings set on fire, Party headquarters broken into by masses, were condemned as the work of an "outlaw" minority and other "anti-social elements" aimed at damaging the peaceful way demands were being made.
Nevertheless, not all the students were in the dimension of peaceful demonstrations to [put] pressure on the Party. A part of them wanted to open the struggle onto other social strata. At the same time not all the workers would have contented themselves with a perspective of bargaining of the trades union kind. They joined the analphabet emarginated masses in the direct clash. In this climate of spreading riots such an encounter could have turned them into conscious insurrection, which in turn could have sparked off a chain of ethnic revolts in various country regions.
The Chinese power structure therefore reacted according to the logic of all powers: that of self-conservation. And for this it wanted a bloodbath. This path had been carefully planned from the start of the demonstrations forty-nine days before the massacre. At no time was any attempt made to calm the students or to use police to establish order although China has a riot police force which has been trained in Poland. They also produce and export riot weapons and tear gas. At the beginning of June the Tien An Men Square was occupied by about a thousand students which the internal police force could easily have removed. Instead, the students were given the news that soldiers were approaching -- slowly -- giving the former time to put up barricades and call on the factory workers to join them as reinforcements.
The military recruits fled, leaving their machine guns and ammunition lying around; in this way the demonstrators were to arm themselves and justify the bloody repression that in fact followed.
The crazed massacre of the students and workers that followed served as a windscreen to a situation of uncontrollable mass struggle. In striking them the Chinese State carried out an exemplary action and cleared the way to having a new reign of terror and capillary control implanted. The executions that followed and that are still continuing today are a more selective elimination of the unemployed, students and workers who were most advanced in the struggle. Meanwhile capitalism carries on business as usual. After the flight of technicians and managers from China on the wave of the killings, and the great statements by all the western States who tend to use more subtle and less messy ways of getting rid of their opposers, there will now be a period of re-establishing an equilibrium. West Germany, for example, expert in "clean" methods of extermination, stated that they could avoid making future investments in China. Officially Germany has already signed over 400 contracts with the Chinese and there are 36 joint ventures. Volkswagen in Shanghai suspended production following the massacres, but for how long? Between 1985 and 1988 China received 730 million marks from West Germany, and a further 500 million marks that had been allocated as development aid have been blocked. Italian companies with huge interests in China include Fiat, Ferruzzi-Montedison, Tecnimont, Iri, Banco di Roma. Corso Marconi had/has many employees in Nanchin in the megaplant that produces 60,000 lorries a year under the Iveco licence. Most of these companies evacuated their employees in the wave of the bloodbath, no doubt waiting for a restabilization of internal relations before returning, although Iri decided to dismantle. Not so for Impexital, a company which has 5 of the 20 Italian joint ventures in China. A few days after June 3 two of their technicians left Hong Kong to fly to Chongquing to work at a tiles factory. All these, and the many more multinationals, the World Bank, and other investors and invaders of the Chinese territory, whether they decide now to "pull out" of China or not, are equally responsible for the situation of reducing literally millions of Chinese to a state of poverty of Third World dimensions; are equally guilty of the massacre of Tien An Men Square.
The young bodies strewn across the Tien An Men Square were therefore a guarantee to the investors, a bloody handshake to the multinationals, assuring them that they can safely continue to invest in China. And this is what is happening.
Jean Weir
DENG'S SLAVE TRADE
Having given a monstrous demonstration to the multinationals of what it is capable of doing in the interests of maintaining order in the face of mass revolt, Deng's China is now pushing ahead to seduce even more Western investment to boost their faltering economy. Aiming at their only sensitive spot, their pockets, Deng is now offering the European car industry an offer it will find hard to refuse. Through the mediation of the Belgian company Chinter, managed by a Belgian of Chinese origin, Charles Chi, the first approach was made to the Volvo motor company, offering them cheap labour from Chinese prisons to work in their factories if they set them up in Chinese territory. Volvo refused the offer we are told, which is no doubt being repeated to other aspiring slave drivers less concerned with their public image. The prisoners are being offered at 100 dollars, and are under guarantee to function efficiently under the guns of their prison guards.
Italy comes second to West Germany as European investors in China, and prospects are booming since Tien An Men. A new society, "Futurinsieme" (future together) has been founded. Its latest innovation is a ship organized as a congress centre and contains a floating exhibition of Italian industrial and scientific capabilities. The idea comes from Italian film producer Alfredo Bini who has just been to China to reinforce economic relations there. There are already 60 Italian industries involved in the project.
The Chinese are pushing for their collaboration in the primary sectors of transport, communications, services pollution and waste disposal. There are already 18,000 joint ventures in China with foreign companies, 3000 of which began last year. The USA comes first in line, followed by West Germany and Italy. There can clearly therefore be no problem in demonstrating concrete internationalist solidarity to the struggle in China.
Insurrectionary Anarchists of the Coast Salish Territories