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THE CHINA SYNDROME - OR, HOW TO HIJACK A MOVEMENT
by Jim Smith
April 2 - When tens of thousands converged on Seattle last November to
protest the unrestrained corporate power reflected in the World Trade
Organization, they had little idea that forces were at work to hijack
their new movement.
We were in Seattle to protest transnational corporations, including
Nike, The Gap, McDonalds and Starbucks and all the others, and the
oppressive economic order they have set up which is becoming commonly
known as neoliberal globalism. To borrow an analogy from the war on
drugs, in this economic arrangement, the corporations are the pushers
and the third world workers and their governments are the users, greedy
for an income they can wrest from the wealthy and the powerful. In
Seattle, we went after the pushers.
Yet only four months after Seattle, a powerful effort is underway to
shift the focus away from corporate power to a chauvinistic attack on
the Peoples Republic of China. Instead of a democratic discussion and
debate within the new movement, a few officials of the AFL-CIO and some
non-governmental organizations (NGOs) decided on their own to subvert
the growing internationalist movement with a China-bashing litany of
accusations of human rights violations and sweatshop conditions that
just as easily could have been laid against many of the 131 countries in
the WTO.
Not even the United States has clean hands. It has the largest prison
population in the world, the most state-sponsored executions of
prisoners, by far the largest military in the world, seemingly constant
murders and frame-ups of African-Americans and Latinos by police
officers, hundreds of thousands of homeless, millions without health
care and one of the worst income distributions in the world. Critics of
China would do well to look to their own backyard.
Why is the AFL-CIO attacking China?
The motivation of the AFL-CIO leaders to attack China is two-fold. Many
union leaders have pandered to protectionist sentiments of their members
instead of educating them on the need for international solidarity
against corporate rule. With a few notable exceptions, most union and
federation leaders do not base their policies and actions on furthering
class solidarity but instead follow the path of least resistance with
short-term goals that qualify them for dubious distinction as
"special interests." This failure of leadership not only makes
blaming China palatable but is opening the door to demagogues like
Patrick Buchanan and his "fortress American" siren song with
its anti-immigrant hysteria.
Their second motivation for moving the fight against China to the top of
the agenda is ideological. In 1995, John Sweeney and his "New
Voices" slate replaced Lane Kirkland, Tom Donahue and a dynasty
that could trace its roots back 100 years to Sam Gompers. Sweeney vowed
to shake up the federation's international department which for years
had worked hand-in-glove with the U.S. State Department and the CIA in
fighting the cold war.
In fact, Sweeney did eliminate most of the cold warriors and changed the
name of the international operation to the Solidarity Center. But there
was one exception - the Asia desk. It is from here, under the direction
of Kirkland holdover, Mark Hankin, that the barrage of anti-China
propaganda emanates. The unreconstructed cold warriors of the Asia desk
enthusiastically promote China dissidents in cooperation with the
National Endowment for Democracy (NED), the Hoover Institute, the CIA or
a combination of all of them.
Strange Bedfellows
The fight against granting China permanent most favored nation status
and entry into the WTO has created strange bedfellows. When Chiang
Kai-shek and the Nationalist Chinese were driven out of mainland China
in 1949 by the Peoples Liberation Army, the cry "Who lost
China?" went up in right-wing circles in the U.S. A rabidly
anti-union wing of the Republican Party led by Senators Robert Taft and
Joe McCarthy led the hue and cry which didn't abate until after two
bloody wars on China's borders - Korea and Vietnam. Meanwhile, they
passed the Taft-Hartley Act which still hobbles labor 50 years later.
Notwithstanding this new labor-far right alliance against China, liberal
opponents of the Chinese would argue that its bad human-rights record
speaks for itself. However, this argument breaks down when China is
compared to other developing countries, such as, Indonesia, Thailand,
Burma, Malaysia, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and other countries of Asia and
the Middle East.
In addition, many would argue that China is still based on a socialist
model and should not be evaluated only by criteria from advanced
capitalist societies. For example, it could be argued that in China the
multiplicity of local organizations and societies is more profoundly
democratic than the two-party political system in the U.S. In addition,
an argument could be made that economic rights, such as housing, health
care and education are more respected in China than in the U.S. The
relative value of these competing paradigms is largely in the eyes of
the beholder.
However, there can be no argument that with 100 million members, China
has the largest trade union organization in the world. The All China
Confederation of Trade Unions has approximately eight times as many
members as does the AFL-CIO. Yet, Sweeney and others refuse to deal with
it on the grounds that it is part of the state apparatus. The Chinese
political structure is modeled on the pattern developed after 1917
revolution in Russia where the Communist Party, the government, the
labor movement and agrarian organizations are closely linked and
interconnected. Cuba, which is a WTO member, also has this structure.
However, it is not just in Communist countries that such a structure is
found. The South African labor movement proudly proclaims its alliance
with the Communist Party and the African National Congress on its
website.
Is Sweeney planning to go on a tirade against South
Africa next? Not likely. Just south of the border, Mexico has
"enjoyed" a similar system since 1910. The labor movement, the
CTM, and the ruling party, the PRI, are like two peas in a pod, yet no
sanctions are demanded against Mexico.
Even the AFL-CIO is not immune from charges of governmental coziness.
Lane Kirkland graduated from the State Department to become George
Meany's understudy and successor (see "The Last Cold Warrior,"
Z Magazine, July 1995). AFL-CIO President Lane Kirkland did the bidding
of his former State Department - and some say, CIA - colleagues for many
years. It's taken a long time for the federation to live down its
nickname, AFL-CIA.
If Nixon could go to China, why not Sweeney
More than 30 years after Richard Nixon went to China to meet his
arch-enemy, Mao Zedong and more than two years after Pope John Paul II
met with Fidel Castro, John Sweeney has yet to meet with his opposite
number in the All China Confederation of Trade Unions, or even visit a
union hall in Shanghai. Perhaps he will find Chinese trade unionists to
be poor representatives of workers' rights, in spite of the strong labor
laws in the dominate public sector. But at least it would be worth the
trip before continuing with the jingoistic campaign against China.
We would do better to work for U.S. withdrawal from the WTO than to
fight China¹s admission. One more country, even one as large as China,
will not change the basic nature of the WTO. It is a tool of the rich
and powerful and should be dismantled.
In the final analysis, those who would turn our newly emerging movement
into an anti-China campaign are doing a disservice to workers and
consumers in this country. At the very moment when the first mass
movement since Vietnam is being born, any deviation from its focus on
corporate power and their international bodies, including the WTO, the
IMF and World Bank, can be deadly. It can lead to demoralization and
confusion about who is the real enemy of the vast majority of people in
the U.S. and around the world.
We must recognize that China is the most populous - and potentially most
powerful - country in the world. More than a billion Chinese want a
decent standard of living within their lifetimes. Instead of playing
into the hands of the right wing and the military we should welcome
their participation in a world based on mutual respect and
non-interference in each other affairs. We are all blessed or doomed to
live together on this planet. How we interact with China and other
emerging nations will determine if the world can avoid a fatal
"melt down" in which we destroy each other and the
environment.
Jim Smith is a Los Angeles labor activist and editor of L.A. Labor News,
This article may be forwarded without changes.
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