Conflict in London's Chinatown: A negative lesson in the fight against racism and state repression

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Political tensions between the overseas Chinese community have increased

"Solidarity and solidarity against the repression in China and Hong Kong"

At the end of November, two groups of demonstrators - one involving groups from mainland China, the other young Hong Kong immigrants - clashed in London's Chinatown. The event is a warning: nationalism and racism are worsening amid a new Cold War between US-China imperialism and Xi Jinping's brutal crackdown on Hong Kong. The events in London show that the Sino-American geopolitical struggle is combining and magnifying ethnic and political conflict.

On the other side of the world, the same process has recently occurred in another example. Chinatown in Honiara, the capital of the Solomon Islands, was set on fire and looted. In the impoverished former British colony, years of ethnic conflict have been compounded by a power struggle between the Chinese state and its capitalists on one side and the United States and Taiwan on the other.

"Say No to the New Cold War"

On November 27th, London's Sirloin Street held a rally with the words "Stop the hatred against Asians" and "Say no to the new Cold War", ostensibly against racism. While the slogan sounds commendable, the political makeup and nature of the rally is another world. Unfortunately, this rally involves many puppet organizations linked to the Chinese dictatorship, which support the suppression of Hong Kong and Xinjiang in response to the Chinese dictatorship's political propaganda. A number of British NGOs and "left-wing" issue groups also co-hosted the rally. Speakers include Fiona Edwards of the Armistice Coalition (StWC) and Kate Hudson of the Movement for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), who are members of the Conservative Party. According to reports, Labour's John McDonnell had also scheduled a speech, but it was cancelled due to lobbying by a Hong Kong-supported group that pointed out that the organizer's group was linked to the CCP.

These pro-CCP groups dominated the demonstrations in London that day. The Chinese message for the rally is very different from the English message. Delegates from British organisations appeared to see their pacifism and "apolitical anti-racism" as the rallying cry. But the Chinese regime, through its puppet organizations and supporters, has hijacked the rally, turning it into a glorification of CCP policies in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, and conflating any criticism of its dictatorship with "hatred against Asians." Similar to the approach adopted by the CCP, the Israeli government equates all criticism of the Israeli state's actions with "anti-Semitism." Likewise, all criticism of the Chinese regime has been described as "anti-China" and "hurting the feelings of the 1.4 billion Chinese people".

A group of Hong Kong protesters, mostly from the localist (right-wing Hong Kong nationalist) faction, staged a counter-demonstration. Fortunately, both the rally and the counter-rallies were small, with around 100 people participating in the pro-CCP demonstrations, while the pro-Hong Kong counter-rallies were less than 50. However, the two sides later started clashes with racist remarks insulting each other, resulting in violent fights and several injuries, which became a major event on social media and Chinese media.

Law Guan-cong, a former Hong Kong legislator who is now in exile in Britain, has called on British police to investigate the organizers of the "anti-racism" rally. The pro-CCP camp offered an anonymous reward of £10,000 on Weibo, encouraging netizens to provide the London addresses of Luo Guancong or another exiled Hong Kong activist, Zheng Wenjie. There are also posts on Weibo discussing the establishment of a "squad" to attack "Hong Kong independence people" in the UK. British police later announced that they would investigate threats against Luo Guancong and Zheng Wenjie. It is hereby emphasized that the liberal politicians Luo Guancong and Zheng Wenjie, who are allied with British and American capital, do not advocate Hong Kong independence, but the CCP labels all Hong Kong pro-democracy activists as "Hong Kong independence".

Hatred against Asians is growing

As in other Western countries, anti-Asian racism is on the rise in the UK, especially since the outbreak of the pandemic. Right-wing politicians and the media want to use Asians and Chinese as scapegoats to cover up capitalism's catastrophic inability to respond to the pandemic, thus fueling racism. Anti-China Cold War rhetoric from governments like Johnson in the UK is undoubtedly reinforcing anti-China and anti-Asian sentiment. To counter this situation, a real anti-racism struggle is needed, but this needs to be completely independent of government manipulation, not only to expose the Western capitalist system, but also to expose the racism and imperialism of the CCP.

A poll conducted by British media ITV (Independent Television Network) in October showed that the number of attacks on East and South-East Asians living in the UK rose by nearly 50% in the past two years. Six in 10 British police officers said racial hatred against people in East and South-East Asia had risen last year. So people in China, Hong Kong and East and South East Asia are experiencing more threatening racism.

Against this backdrop, there is a need for sincere initiatives to organize inter-ethnic communities to say no to racism and link this issue to expanding resources for health care, education, and other public services. But those British organizations that initiated or supported the Jue Lot Street rally, whether naive or absurd or deliberately endorsing themselves, let themselves be used by the CCP as a reactionary propaganda platform for nationalism and racism, they really need to examine their own practices.

Islamophobia and Racism in the CCP

The fact that no other East Asian or South-East Asian community was represented at the Jue Lok Street rally also revealed something was wrong with the demonstration. Another sign that something is wrong is that the organizers are ignoring Xinjiang issues - where the Chinese government's terrorist persecution of Muslim minorities, including overt racist and Islamophobic policies - also shows that the real purpose of the demonstration is not "anti-racism". ".

Statements from British organisers involved in the rally denying the event was "pro-Beijing" were dishonest. A series of participating organizations include the British Fujian Overseas Chinese Association, the All-British Chinese Association, the All-British Chinese Students and Scholars Association, and the London Chinatown Chamber of Commerce, all of which are linked to the Chinese government. The All-UK Chinese Students and Scholars Association is directly under the control of the Chinese Embassy in London and acts as an informal "police network" to monitor 140,000 mainland Chinese students to prevent them from participating in "subversive politics".

This bunch of pro-CCP puppet groups once launched a high-profile campaign in Chinese-language media among the British Chinese community to support Hong Kong's national security law and severe political repression. This year, for example, the Chinatown Chamber of Commerce in London and several other organizations sold advertisements in pro-CCP newspapers in support of Hong Kong's "patriots only" election farce. The election will be held on December 19, and only candidates permitted by the CCP will be able to participate.

Polls show that 44% of Hong Kongers would choose to leave Hong Kong if they could, while about 90,000 people have arrived in the UK this year. Concerned that the high concentration of immigrants in Hong Kong could become a base for anti-regime activities, the CCP has escalated threats and intimidation, as shown by the harassment of Luo Guancong and Zheng Wenjie. By inciting nationalism among overseas mainland Chinese communities, Beijing is polarizing communal relations and creating the conditions for “Chinese tribalism” to develop ethnic hatred.

Hong Kong's authoritarian crackdown since the 2020 national security law has resulted in the dissolution of 30 trade unions in the past 12 months, including the largest trade union, which has 200,000 members. All demonstrations and strikes have been banned. After the demonstration in London, one of the host groups, the Monitoring Group, issued a statement at the demonstration saying "we believe that every society should have the right to demonstrate and a broad range of human rights". Even generously, we can only describe this teaching as naive and absurd.

The counter-demonstrations of Hong Kong immigrants are not much better. The demonstrators' goal may be to debunk the hypocrisy of the CCP's propaganda and slogans "against the hatred against Asians" while concealing its crimes against Uyghurs, Tibetans, Hong Kongers, etc., but their ridiculous actions and The message had the opposite effect.

The actions of the Hong Kong demonstrators cannot win over those CCP supporters who have not been brainwashed (especially the public who paid attention to this incident through the media and social media), but fell into the CCP’s trap, allowing the CCP media to “prove it” "Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters are "anti-China". Anarchist-style conflicts do not carry a clear political message and only confuse local populations, making it more difficult to build international support at the grassroots level for anti-authoritarian struggles.

Unfortunately, this counter-demonstration amplifies the weakness of the Hong Kong movement in 2019, and even some of the reactionary nature of the movement. While recognizing the sacrifice and courage of young protesters after the defeat of the struggle in 2019, we need to learn from the political and organizational weaknesses and mistakes of the movement. Don't forget that at the height of the movement in July 2019, some of the movement's participants tried to show solidarity with the anti-government protests in mainland China, trying to build a common struggle, and some Hong Kong racist demonstrators were attacked by others when they tried to attack mainlanders. Protesters stop. These practices should all be learned and reinforced, but this time in London the action is going in the opposite direction.

There may have been sincere anti-racists at the event, too, but they couldn't deny that they were being hijacked by two opposing racist camps. Some mainland Chinese demonstrators have scolded Hong Kongers as "cockroaches" - a term used by CCP media and Hong Kong police during the 2019 struggle against Hong Kong protesters. Some counter-protesters in Hong Kong chanted "return to the mainland" and "China" - a racist word used by the Japanese army to refer to the Chinese during World War II.

Democracy in a dead end

For Hong Kong youth who are serious about rebuilding their anti-authoritarian democratic struggle, the most important lesson of 2019 is that the movement is isolated from Hong Kong and has not made a serious effort to engage with workers and youth in mainland China. The power of the CCP state apparatus - to build a united mass struggle and fail.

The London counter-demonstration farce, and the tit-for-tat insults by some Hong Kong activists against mainland Chinese or Chinese-looking protesters, will only further exacerbate ethnic divisions and reinforce the CCP's nationalist and anti-democratic propaganda, which portrays the mass protests in Hong Kong as American anti-democracy propaganda. in conspiracy.

Some of Hong Kong's bourgeois pro-democracy politicians, such as Luo Guancong and Cheng Wenjie, willingly supported the pro-Western Cold War camp on the premise that Western governments promoted democracy so wrongly, which is a further obstacle to the rebuilding of a genuine democratic movement. For the democratic movement to succeed, we must unite the working people of China, Hong Kong, and the entire Asia-Pacific region against all forms of capitalism and imperialism in all countries.

Socialists condemn racist rhetoric and politics on both sides. The protests on both sides are a textbook example of the struggle against racism, the imperialist Cold War and Chinese state repression. The London protests also serve as a warning to the international left that it can deal with issues such as anti-Asian racism and imperialist conflicts without complete independence from the bourgeoisie intervening in the movement and its governments (including Chinese capitalists and the ultra-nationalist CCP). fall into the wrong position.

We need a real fight against racism, chauvinism from all sides in the new cold war. The "Unity and Solidarity Against China-Hong Kong Repression" movement and the international socialist road are also organized in mainland China, Hong Kong and Taiwan. We advocate the establishment of such an anti-racism struggle based on solidarity with grassroots working people of all ethnic groups to oppose the rampant capitalist system. racism and nationalism.