tag:theconversation.com,2011:/uk/topics/communist-party-13761/articlesCommunist Party – The Conversation2023-07-13T07:47:46Ztag:theconversation.com,2011:article/2096792023-07-13T07:47:46Z2023-07-13T07:47:46ZMilan Kundera’s ‘remarkable’ work explored oppression, inhumanity – and the absurdity of being human<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/537244/original/file-20230713-17-xnb9nb.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C10%2C3568%2C2414&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">A youthful Milan Kundera</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Vacha Pavell/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Milan Kundera, that remarkable novelist, essayist, poet, philosopher and political critic, has died at the age of 94. It feels too soon, perhaps because in everything he wrote, he opened up new ways of thinking, writing and reading. In his literary presence, the world seemed tuned to a higher frequency. </p>
<p>Kundera was born with immaculate timing, on April 1 (1929): April Fool’s Day. From the start, he was exposed to, and immersed in, the absurdity of human culture. He grew up in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, then lived under Stalinist rule, where he was an active member of the Communist Party. </p>
<p>I have been reading him, quoting him and teaching from his writings for decades, after bumping into his work in 1988. I was living then on an isolated sheep station in the Western Australian outback, a world of bleak beauty. </p>
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<p>Someone visiting the property pressed on me a copy of <a href="https://literariness.org/2022/10/09/analysis-of-milan-kunderas-the-book-of-laughter-and-forgetting/">The Book of Laughter and Forgetting</a>, and I was immediately and utterly captivated. This, Kundera’s third novel, affirmed my own anxiety of the absence of a stable truth, and of my incapacity to resist the longing to belong, even to the most damaged society. </p>
<p>In one section of the novel, a group of the Communist faithful, dancing together in a circle, rise into the air and soar over the city. They laugh the laughter of angels while below them, the executioners are killing political prisoners. Says the narrator of this section, who necessarily cannot be part of that group:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I realized with anguish in my heart that they were flying like birds and I was falling like a stone, that they had wings and I would never have any.</p>
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<h2>Interrogating totalitarianism, with humour</h2>
<p>Kundera knew about oppression and inhumanity. His first collection of (not very good) poetry, Man, A Wide Garden (1953) – published when he was only 24 – was decidedly Soviet in tone and content. </p>
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<p>But when he wrote his first novel, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera,-translated-by-Michael-Henry-Heim-Joke-9780571166930/">The Joke</a> in 1967, then wrote <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera,-translated-by-Aaron-Asher-Life-is-Elsewhere-9780571197774/">Life is Elsewhere</a> in 1969 (published in 1973), both of them shot through with political satire, and he was expelled from the Communist Party and subsequently fled into exile. </p>
<p>In what is perhaps his best-known novel, <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera,-translated-by-Michael-Henry-Heim-Unbearable-Lightness-of-Being-9780571135394/">The Unbearable Lightness of Being</a> (1984) – adapted in 1988 as <a href="https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0096332/">a movie</a> starring Daniel Day-Lewis and Juliette Binoche – he continues his interrogation of totalitarian politics, exploring the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/event/Prague-Spring">Prague Spring</a> and the brutality of Soviet control of Czechoslavakia. </p>
<p>This theme sounds deeply earnest. But in each novel, Kundera offers some humour – often bitter, but capable of leavening the otherwise bleak, and densely reported, content. </p>
<p>In Unbearable Lightness, for example, the narrator discusses Nietszche’s <a href="https://philosophybreak.com/articles/eternal-recurrence-what-did-nietzsche-really-mean/#:%7E:text=Loeb%20argues%20that%20in,and%20history%20will%20repeat%20itself">doctrine of eternal recurrence</a> – the possibility we live the same life over and over. But he also develops an erotic narrative that seems to suggest lighthearted sex can allow us to live fully in the moment. We can exchange the weight of eternal recurrence for the lightness of being alive, here and now.</p>
<p>Weight and lightness, laughter and forgetting, repetition and change, politics and sex: his first four novels incorporate such dualities. Perhaps this capacity to hold contradictory thoughts can be explained by something <a href="http://www.kundera.de/english/Info-Point/Interview_Roth/interview_roth.html">he said</a> to Philip Roth:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Totalitarianism is not only hell, but also the dream of paradise – the age old drama of a world where everybody would live in harmony.</p>
</blockquote>
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<figcaption><span class="caption">Unbearable Lightness of Being.</span></figcaption>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-power-of-ordinary-people-facing-totalitarianism-73589">The power of ordinary people facing totalitarianism</a>
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<h2>Author in exile</h2>
<p>His dream of paradise was not realised, of course. In 1975, he fled his home for exile in France, and continued writing works of fiction that mostly followed the signature structure he first developed in The Joke: multi-part, multi-voiced novels, where the narrator interpolates critique, commentary and philosophical statements in the text. </p>
<p>This makes for a restless story, one that shifts to and fro across locations, times and contexts. Characters flicker in and out. The logic of beginning, middle and end is barely acknowledged. And the sorts of issues that appear so often in fiction – a quest for the self, the telling of a tale, the achievement of resolution – are set aside. </p>
<p>The focus of Kundera’s novels is their wrestle with questions of knowledge, the complexity of being and a constant uncertainty. This can be an unsettling style: a disruption, rather than a simple pleasure or an aesthetic experience. For a 21st-century woman, too, his tone and style in the writing of sex scenes – and the representation of women more generally – can present as outdated masculinity. </p>
<p>I vacillate between feeling offence at what feels like <a href="https://theconversation.com/cultural-misogyny-and-why-mens-aggression-to-women-is-so-often-expressed-through-sex-157680">misogyny</a>, and reading it as a searing critique of misogyny. And <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/may/22/milan-kundera-immortality-jonathan-coe-novels-women">I’m not alone</a> in this. </p>
<h2>‘Things are not as simple as you think’</h2>
<p>Where I uncomplicatedly follow Kundera’s lead is not in his novels, but in his essays. Here, his deep understanding of the background to what we now know as the novel, or the long traditions and changes that characterise artistic practice, genuinely illuminate the field. </p>
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<p>In <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera-Art-of-the-Novel-9780571227495/">The Art of the Novel</a> (1986), he outlines a history of how novelists unpacked various dimensions of existence. He starts with <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miguel_de_Cervantes">Miguel de Cervantes</a> and moves through the lists of generative fiction writers to fellow Czechs Franz Kafka and <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaroslav_Ha%C5%A1ek">Jaroslav Hasek</a> – who, he claims, show that a strength of fiction is that it tolerates uncertainty, in a way politics and religion cannot. For Kundera, what fiction does so well is say to the reader: “Things are not as simple as you think.” </p>
<p>For Kundera, the novel is a technological object that allows new ways of seeing, and of making meaning. And this seeing and meaning is embedded in its context. For example, in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/04/books/review/Banks.t.html">The Curtain: An Essay in Seven Parts</a> (2006), he points out what fiction can do that earlier forms could not. </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Homer never wondered whether, after all their many hand-to-hand battles, Achilles or Ajax still had all their teeth. But for Don Quixote and Sancho teeth are a perpetual concern – hurting teeth, missing teeth. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Writers like Cervantes (author of Don Quixote), Henry Fielding (<a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_History_of_Tom_Jones,_a_Foundling">Tom Jones</a>) and Laurence Sterne (<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/76527.The_Life_and_Opinions_of_Tristram_Shandy_Gentleman">The Life and Opinions of Tristam Shandy, Gentleman</a>) introduce the small things of everyday life, and illuminate the meaning and import they have on us, Kundera points out. </p>
<p>But, he hastens to observe, contemporary writers cannot and should not write as those giants did: rather, writing is a matter of continuity (in terms of form, voice and style in a particular period) and discontinuity (finding something new). </p>
<p>In these essays, too, he offers a workshop in how to write. How to manage voice, perspective, temporality. How to have fun with language and form – and let the imagination run wild. And how to deal with thought and concept, materiality and politics. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/ethics-and-writing-63399">Ethics and writing</a>
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</em>
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<h2>Teller of inconvenient truths</h2>
<p>A writer of such gravitas and such technical brilliance should, one might imagine, have won the Nobel Prize in Literature at some point in his long life. He won other prizes, after all, among them the Jerusalem Prize in 1985 and the Herder Prize in 2000. </p>
<p>Perhaps it was his writing style that meant the Nobel committee saw him nominated on a number of occasions, but never awarded him the prize. </p>
<p>After the last novel he wrote in Czech – <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera,-translated-by-Peter-Kussi-Immortality-9780571144563/">Immortality</a> (1991), which teases out questions of sexual and personal relationships – he wrote four more novels, which garnered less attention, less critical reception. So, in <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera-Slowness-9780571179435/">Slowness</a> (1995), <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera-Identity-9780571195671/">Identity: A Novel</a> (1999), <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera-Ignorance-9780571215515/">Ignorance</a> (2000) and finally <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera-Festival-of-Insignificance-9780571316496/">The Festival of Insignificance</a> (2014), you <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/12/world/europe/milan-kundera-dead.html">can see</a> his star begin to fade. </p>
<p>This is not because they are less “good” books. <a href="https://quillette.com/2023/07/11/milan-kundera-the-nobel-prize-for-literature-winner-we-never-had/">Robin Ashenden suggests</a> he “had become a teller of truths inconvenient to the modern age”, and maybe there is something in that. </p>
<p>He is terribly direct, very hard-hitting. And he refuses the consolations of sentimentality or morality, in favour of what <a href="https://www.allenandunwin.com/browse/book/Milan-Kundera-Art-of-the-Novel-9780571227495/">he describes</a> as the morality of knowledge: the imperative to see and say what previous writers did not/could not see, or say. And to build fresh understandings of the world.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/209679/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jen Webb receives funding from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>Milan Kundera, the celebrated Czech author best known for The Unbearable Lightness of Being, has died, aged 94. His work interrogated totalitarianism and explored ideas – leavened with bleak humour.Jen Webb, Dean, Graduate Research, University of CanberraLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1884692022-08-31T04:06:13Z2022-08-31T04:06:13ZProtests, ‘biznez’ and a failed coup: journalist Monica Attard on covering the empire Gorbachev allowed to collapse<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481961/original/file-20220831-26-ixc18l.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=107%2C4%2C2880%2C1911&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Mikhail Gorbachev addresses American business executives in 1990.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">David Longstreath/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s unlikely that in 1970, when I was 12, I could have imagined myself covering the collapse of an empire. Nor could I have dreamed that 51 years later, my passion for Russia would still be alive, if battered by its barbaric invasion of its neighbour, Ukraine, in February 2022.</p>
<p>But back then, when I was a young girl, I did dream of being a foreign correspondent; in particular, a foreign correspondent in what was then the Soviet Union. From that romantic notion to doom-scrolling social media for news on the latest atrocity in Ukraine is quite the narrative arc.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-is-fighting-three-undeclared-wars-its-fourth-an-internal-struggle-for-russia-itself-might-be-looming-189129">Russia is fighting three undeclared wars. Its fourth – an internal struggle for Russia itself – might be looming</a>
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<p>As far back into my childhood as I can recall, there were dinnertime conversations about how brutal capitalism could be, how <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-stalins-great-terror-can-tell-us-about-russia-today-56842">Joseph Stalin</a> had saved Europe from fascism – and my favourite story of all, how the brave Soviet experiment with socialism would reap the benefits of communism at some point, sometime, in the future. </p>
<p>A new world, in the nirvana of time and place, where all human beings would live as equals! My father was from war-torn Malta, and he was a “believer”, at least in a better world. He remained that way to the end. </p>
<p>And when he encouraged me to go the Soviet Union for the first time in 1983, I
was wearing his rose-coloured glasses. Everything seemed to be on the way to nirvana – even the empty shops, the long queues for offcuts of substandard meat, and the clothes shops that sold thousands of copies of just one item of clothing in the same size and the same colour. This, I reasoned, was a place sacrificing something – life – for something better. </p>
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<span class="caption">Monica Attard saw 1980s Moscow through ‘rose-coloured glasses’, as a place sacrificing life for something better.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Ceri C/Flickr</span>, <a class="license" href="http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/">CC BY</a></span>
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<h2>From nothing to something, to uncertainty again</h2>
<p>In 2022, after 30 years of Russia’s integration into the global economic and financial system, that long-lost world of deficits – the word Russians used for everything not available – was ancient history. </p>
<p>But by March 2022, the nirvana of nascent capitalism born in the 1990s had abruptly and eerily been shut down, thanks to the <a href="https://theconversation.com/just-short-of-nuclear-these-sanctions-will-cripple-russias-economy-178000">deep and wide sanctions</a> imposed by the West on an invading belligerent Russia. </p>
<p>It’s been a long road from nothing to something to uncertainty again. The world is yet to see whether Russians will again rise against a ruler whose voracious appetite for land and blood has returned them to an Orwellian nightmare.</p>
<p>In 1983, when I first travelled to Russia with a friend in the dead of winter, <a href="https://theconversation.com/guide-to-the-classics-orwells-1984-and-how-it-helps-us-understand-tyrannical-power-today-112066">Orwell</a> was hovering in my mind. Although nothing I saw could have been further from my own reality, I reasoned there was purpose. The driver sent to ferry us from the then only international airport in the capital was such a welcoming touch, I thought. The driver was of course associated with the UPDK, the Directorate for Service to the Diplomatic Corps, an agency of the Foreign Affairs Ministry charged with looking over the shoulder of any and all foreigners who dared then visit for leisure or work. </p>
<p>UPDK still does much the same job, if now under commercial auspices – although as Russia’s President <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-long-can-vladimir-putin-hold-on-to-power-181500">Vladimir Putin</a> tightens the noose around the freedoms won by his own people, the agency may well return to its darker days. But back in 1983 there was still, for me, romance to the Russian capital. The streets from Sheremetyevo Airport to the city centre were virtually empty, because cars were in deficit, and the trip took a brisk 15 minutes. Magic, I thought – no traffic.</p>
<p>Arriving at the decrepit and now demolished Intourist Hotel on what was then Gorky Street, it was like being in the twilight zone. These two young female foreigners couldn’t figure out what all the men and women hovering at the front of the hotel were up to. Maybe they were there to greet us? How friendly, I thought. It turns out they were awaiting tourists of the male variety and businessmen to proffer the
wares of what we discovered was a highly lucrative trade in sex work.</p>
<p>Inside, surly desk workers looked over our documents and briskly marched off with our passports, which was a momentarily discombobulating feeling. But when they returned minutes later with our passports in hand, I thought – how efficient! All foreigners, still to this day, need to have their passports registered with UPDK, as though our arrival at the airport and delivery to Intourist hadn’t already
been clocked.</p>
<p>A rickety lift took us to our floor, where a babushka sat on a chair in the hallway, arms comfortably perched over her bosom, scowling at us for reasons unclear. Still, I thought kindly of her; it was icy cold outside and this poor woman had to come to work. </p>
<p>Looking out our hotel window overlooking Gorky Street, we spied huge red banners with Lenin’s image fluttering in the wind. “That must be the Lenin Museum,” we decided. This place is going to be easy to navigate, I thought. The next day, we decided to put our lives on the line and make our way across Gorky Street through foot-high snow underpinned by ice.</p>
<p>Gorky Street was what in Australia we’d call a highway – six lanes wide and connecting the heart of the city centre, across from the Kremlin, to the outer reaches of the city. We hadn’t seen the underpass to allow foot traffic to avoid the car traffic, which led to our first brush with the law. In the end, taking pity on us, the militsiya, or local police, accompanied us to the underpass and across the road, from where we emerged – like magic – just below the fluttering Lenin banners.</p>
<p>Sadly, a near hour-long effort to cross the road didn’t get us to the Lenin Museum. As we looked up Gorky Street, there were Lenin banners fluttering everywhere. Most were worse for wear – much like the rest of the city as it turned out – but flutter they did, as if to say, “Welcome to the land where we all sing from the same song sheet.” </p>
<p>Only briefly in the scheme of time has this turned out to be untrue. The more than 30 years between 1991, when the old order collapsed, and 2022, when it threatens to rise again, was perhaps the nirvana.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/today-is-not-my-day-how-russias-journalists-writers-and-artists-are-turning-silence-into-speech-185120">'Today is not my day': how Russia's journalists, writers and artists are turning silence into speech</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Foreign correspondent</h2>
<p>When I was a child, being a foreign correspondent seemed like the best job in the world, particularly for a kid from the inner western Sydney suburbs at a time when travel was expensive and rare. I didn’t see the inside of an aeroplane until I was 17. </p>
<p>But as a child, I imagined the vest-wearing, bespectacled, notepad-carrying reporter in fields of war, penning stories for faraway Australia, hungry for news
from the world out there, far, far away from our marooned island nation. And so it came to pass for this dreaming migrant child, carrying the burden common to my socio-economic and racial class of low expectation. Just minus the vest. But it didn’t come easily.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Four people in warm coats in the back of a van" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481543/original/file-20220829-15-i60s6d.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Monica Attard (second from left) with friends, former foreign correspondent Debbie Whitmont, Maxim Raoutenfeld and young Xenya as he was known.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="license">Author provided</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>I had spent years in newsrooms, commercial and the ABC, spiriting myself over to the then Soviet Republic of Russia each year on my annual break to poke around and observe. I’d been travelling in and out of the USSR, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, since that first trip in 1983. Friends in Paris who, as young university students on exchange to Moscow’s State University, had met some like-minded Russians, led me to a woman who would become my lifelong friend.</p>
<p>Natasha Yakovleva was a film archivist with the state archives. She died recently, so trips to Moscow now feel empty. Back in 1985 when I met Natasha, she was as curious about me as I was about her, and surreptitiously she showed me the weird and wonderful underbelly of this intriguing city, about which, oddly, I felt I understood less and less with each visit.</p>
<p>By 1989, the ABC was ready to open a <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/correspondents/content/2013/s3772466.htm">Moscow bureau</a> and post its first correspondent. I was devastated when the job didn’t come my way, although when the second position did later that year, I was happy not to have been the first correspondent in. Establishing a physical bureau, navigating the vagaries of UPDK and hiring support staff while filing on a big story would have been a herculean effort for a then young, single female.</p>
<p>Soviet society was thought by its members to be matriarchal. And in the sense that women carried the major burdens of life, including family life, in a country of constant deficits, perhaps it was. But men, like everywhere else, in every significant aspect of life outside the home, held all the power. </p>
<p>Operating as a foreign correspondent in this environment was often confusing. My questions were always entertained, but I was invariably considered exotic for having asked. My desire to understand the place was always welcomed but my curiosity was considered, by some, a little unbecoming for a woman. </p>
<p>The one saving grace for me was that socialism had given the Soviet people a strong sense that everyone was in the same sinking boat – men, women and children. There was an affordance of empathy for hardships suffered and help when help was needed. That made a difference in reporting the place.</p>
<p>The demise of the Soviet Union was slow, burning with disappointment and rage and, of course, with anticipation. By the time I arrived as a correspondent, it was well and truly underway, though the end couldn’t have been imagined. </p>
<p>Politically and geo-strategically isolated, the Kremlin plastered over the long and obvious economic disasters while holding out the promise of better days to come. And coercion was the tool of choice to ensure people maintained the faith, much as now in 2022, even if the faith is no longer communism but nationalism.</p>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/reagan-and-gorbachev-offer-a-script-for-biden-putin-summit-162872">Mikhail Gorbachev</a> came along in the mid-1980s. <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-31733045">Perestroika</a> (political and economic reinvention) and glasnost (openness) gave people the right to think for themselves about how they wanted to live and work. </p>
<p>But it enraged the bureaucrats and the hard left of the Soviet Communist Party. As a result, it wasn’t a smooth, seamless transition from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diktat">diktat</a> to free thinking, and it brought societal schisms – some of which were entirely predictable, some of which were not. </p>
<p>There were those who feared freer thinking would let loose the hounds of capitalism, which would kill off the achievements of their forebears whose blood and hard work had built the Soviet industrial base and, of course, rip away the sureties on which their lives were built. There were those who thought just a little freedom would do the job of making people feel valued and hopeful of a better life, and give them the chance to do something for themselves, outside the regime’s boundaries, to make their lives better. And there were those who wanted the chains to be thrown off completely. </p>
<p>Add to that potent mix 14 largely resentful republics outside of Russia (the most politically and economically important republic of them all), and the result was years of social upheaval, from the Kremlin to the most far-flung corners of the Soviet empire. </p>
<p>The reverberation from that upheaval, the breaking apart of a 70-year-old federation of states built on dogma and held together by coercion and fate, is what the world now sees playing out in <a href="https://theconversation.com/ukraines-fight-for-its-identity-is-more-than-a-century-old-it-is-not-about-to-stop-179303">Ukraine</a>.</p>
<p>By 1989, when I arrived in Moscow as a correspondent, even the most fearful regularly took to the streets in <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-16107101">protests</a> for and against Gorbachev’s rule. There would be tens of thousands, sometimes even a million or more people, crushing into each other, carrying each other along with sheer body weight, overseen by scores of KGB and militsiya. </p>
<p>We saw this again on the streets of Russia’s big cities in 2022 as people protested Russia’s invasion of its neighbour, only this time the protests were smaller in number, people were instantly arrested, and they were entirely unified in what they wanted – no war. </p>
<p>Back in the late 1980s and early 1990s, the protests were almost confused; some wanted a break put on reform, others wanted more and faster reform. There were uprisings against rulers and parliaments across the 15 Soviet republics, the most frightening of them being when local Soviet officials defended their political fortresses with force, though relatively few were killed. As punishment, the food-producing republics and their subjects who wanted freedom from Moscow imposed food blockades on the capital. Deficits of cars, furniture and clothes produced by decades of a malfunctioning economy suddenly seemed quaint, even preferable.</p>
<p>Throughout it all, I had a group of Russian friends holding my hand, taking me to the edges of Soviet society, where I could see how people were experiencing the teetering of an empire. Some of them are still holding my hand to help me understand what rage and fury brought their country to invade its neighbour. </p>
<p>When the USSR finally collapsed in December 1991, I again felt as I had when I first travelled there in 1983: I was in the land of the brave. Their new world was
something neither they nor their forebears could ever have imagined. Now, in 2022, it all seems threatened.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/military-history-is-repeating-for-russia-under-putins-regime-of-thieves-181164">Military history is repeating for Russia under Putin's regime of thieves</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Russia and women</h2>
<p>The odd thing about Russia’s relationship with women was the strange contradiction at its heart. While women had and have no real power, they simultaneously had and have all the power. </p>
<p>They cleared those underground crossings of ice and snow in labour for which they were physically unsuited. They were prevalent among university graduates in medicine and engineering, even if that led to a downgrading in the salary and status of both professions. They rarely appeared on politician roll calls, yet their influence was evident in politics. And, most certainly, the influence of women’s thinking, needs and demands was evident in the manoeuvrings of local communities. There was a respect, and it was not secret. </p>
<p>When it came to journalism, some of the toughest were women. <a href="https://www.rferl.org/a/russia-politkovskaya-murder-putin/31496138.html">Anna Politkovskaya</a> is a name still recognised in the West. Her fearless reporting of the war Russia waged against the semi-autonomous republic of Chechnya as it tried to break away
from Moscow remains a high point of independent journalism in a country where that has never been easy, and where it now appears to have been snuffed out completely by a new law penalising journalists for telling the truth about the war with Ukraine.</p>
<p>When Politkovskaya was gunned down returning to her apartment in Moscow in 2006, the Russians I knew were sad but not shocked. They expected something to happen to her. Who writes about atrocities perpetrated by the Kremlin without consequence?</p>
<p>Politkovskaya’s murder – and the murder and harassment of dozens of journalists, activists and politicians since 2006 – put paid to any notion that media in Putin’s Russia was free in the sense we understand media freedom in the West. </p>
<p>But like all those killed or harassed, Politkovskaya was respected, heard. The Kremlin might wish to forget her and her reporting, but many haven’t. To this day, no one sits at her desk at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Novaya_Gazeta">Novaya Gazeta</a>. (In March 2022, following two warnings from the censor, the paper suspended its operations until, it said, the end of Moscow’s so-called “special military operation” in Ukraine.) </p>
<p>Still, the retort I hear most often about this assassination is – why didn’t she just stick to issues that were safe to cover, issues that women should cover? There’s that odd relationship with women, again.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/how-long-can-vladimir-putin-hold-on-to-power-181500">How long can Vladimir Putin hold on to power?</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>“Biznez” and the mafia era</h2>
<p>Into this I waded, in my early thirties, single, very excited to be on my first posting and covering what appeared to me then to be the most consequential story in the world. The USSR was in its death throes. </p>
<p>Gorbachev was <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-wild-decade-how-the-1990s-laid-the-foundations-for-vladimir-putins-russia-141098">tussling for authority</a> with Boris Yeltsin, and on the streets, Russians were rooting for both men. The hard left of the Communist Party was keeping a watchful, anxious eye on the new liberties granted: the ability to trade; the new television programs which questioned; the protests which, while overseen by a still operative KGB, gave the newest freedom of all – the right to protest. </p>
<p>Even though many in my circle thought that if communism was going to survive, it would need more than a little miracle, no one thought it would collapse. The system was corrupt and few showed any real loyalty to it. But the system did provide free health care, education and accommodation. Cradle-to-grave security was a big deal.</p>
<p>Russians also knew that the nirvana Lenin had promised, Stalin had corrupted and Brezhnev, Andropov and Chernenko had failed to revive was gone – as an idea as much as an achievable destination. But life without the Communist Party was still unthinkable.</p>
<p>The new buzzword was “biznez”. Making do in a nation of deficits was no longer cutting it. Even the class of people who proudly maintained “they pretend to pay us, we pretend to work” were looking to find ways to do their own thing. My local state cafe, which rarely had anything but diluted coffee to offer its customers, and from which its manager, Galia, made a paltry amount of money each month, suddenly changed. </p>
<p>Galia was an imposing figure: tall, graceful and gracious, and most of all, determined. She decided to offer the locals something new – real coffee, food and service. With her blonde beehive perched atop her strikingly Slavic face, Galia tapped into her contacts in the caviar industry, sourcing bucketloads of the stuff, red and black. When word spread, the customers came, queuing around the block to buy a slice or two of bread with caviar, and Turkish coffee that tasted real. She was in business for a good six months before the cafe was firebombed.</p>
<p>The <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/mar/23/how-organised-crime-took-over-russia-vory-super-mafia">era of mafia</a> had taken hold, with thugs whose only way of doing “biznez” was to extort. Galia refused to pay for protection and her business was annihilated. This was life as the Communist Party lost control.</p>
<p>While danger was everywhere for those Russians trying to make a go of the new trade freedoms, fear of it was abating among others. By 1990, just six months before Russians experienced their first dance with democracy with the election of President Yeltsin, young people were making their voices heard. They would gather on street corners to deride the “party mafia” that guarded its own turf and operated protection rackets to ensure only a new class of post-communist entrepreneurs could live well. People weren’t afraid to talk about the issues anymore. </p>
<p>On television, <a href="https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1991-01-11-mn-8283-story.html">Vzglyad</a>, or Outlook, was a talk show hosted by the immensely popular <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alexander_Lyubimov">Alexander Lyubimov</a>, the son of a well-known spy. Looking back now from Putin’s Russia, this was a high point of media freedom. Lyubimov openly discussed with guests the ills of Soviet communism, what people wanted from government, how they would get it, what Gorbachev was doing right and wrong, how the feud between Yeltsin, president of the Russian republic, and Gorbachev, the last leader of the Soviet Union, might hinder progress towards a capitalism-based nirvana. </p>
<p>In 1990, my friends could barely believe what they were watching. Now, in 2022, even using the word “war” to describe the Russian invasion of Ukraine is penalised. As I spend nights doomscrolling for information on the war with Ukraine, I wonder how Lyubimov feels about the gains he forged being squashed so comprehensively?</p>
<p>As a correspondent, I would often hit the streets back then to test the limits of the newfound intolerance of the regime, and the reactions, while mixed, had one idea in common. Living as they had was no longer possible; personal freedom couldn’t be the price for cradle-to-grave security. </p>
<p>Of course, few ordinary folk followed their desire for more freedom and a better life in a functioning economy to its logical conclusion. They thought the old structures could be reformed, renewed, revitalised. Certainly, no one I knew thought the old structures might actually collapse under the weight of the reforms. Not even Gorbachev.</p>
<p>And so, as 1990 ushered in a newly empowered Yeltsin, who held court at the Russian parliament, oddly named the White House, the demands for more grew louder and louder – led by the non-Russian republics. The Communist Party was becoming very tetchy indeed.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/a-former-journalist-recalls-ukraines-1991-vote-for-independence-and-how-its-resilience-endures-189266">A former journalist recalls Ukraine's 1991 vote for independence — and how its resilience endures</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>Putin is different</h2>
<p>On August 19 1991, Russia – and the world – woke to startling news. Gorbachev had been <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1991/08/21/world/the-soviet-crisis-gorbachev-reportedly-arrested-in-the-crimea.html">put under house arrest</a> while holidaying with his family in Crimea. In the dead of night, a group of 11 men (of course) had hastily put together a State Committee on the State of Emergency (GKChP) to return the USSR to its “natural” pre-Gorbachev state. </p>
<p>Led by the KGB chief, Vladimir Kryuchkov, the committee declared that the Soviet Union was falling apart. It said Gorbachev had refused to return order to the country and the protesters had eroded the authority of the state; extremism had taken hold. The GKChP encircled Moscow with tanks, and by morning, the capital had erupted in fury, fear and concern for Gorbachev, who was by then incommunicado.</p>
<p>On February 24 2022, <a href="https://theconversation.com/russia-invades-ukraine-5-essential-reads-from-experts-177815">when Putin sent Russian tanks</a> across the border into the Donbas region of Ukraine, proclaiming his intent to rid Russia’s neighbour of its extremists and Nazis, I thought of what Gorbachev had said about the Emergency Committee many years after the failed 1991 coup: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I said to them they must be mad if they think the country would simply follow another dictatorship. People are not that tired.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Russian shelling may yet break the Ukrainian resolve to fight. But it won’t be soon. Putin is now assessing how much fight the Ukrainians have in them and how many urban Russians still have memories of 1991 coursing through their veins. The difference: Gorbachev was largely unwilling to turn his military against his people. Putin is different.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/481559/original/file-20220829-1164-2ltj1a.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Russian tanks invaded the Donbas region of Ukraine in February 2022. They were still there in May, when this photo was taken.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Francisco Seco/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>When, in August 1991, the centre of Moscow was <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/aug/20/communist-hardliners-stage-coup-against-gorbachev-russia-1991">occupied by its own military</a>, with columns of tanks rumbling through its main streets and soldiers armed with assault rifles fending off angry citizens, Muscovites screamed for sanity to prevail. “Go home to your mother,” was the most frequent refrain. “Do you know what you are doing?” was another. While there was animosity towards Gorbachev for failing to deliver on his reforms, he was preferable to the putschists.</p>
<p>I felt safe, mostly. But never safer than when I scrambled onto a tank to speak with a group of soldiers in their early twenties. They looked terrified, like they wanted to jump off the vehicle and go home. Today in Ukraine, some young Russian conscripts have been doing just that – refusing to use force to overcome the Ukrainians who’ve stood in their path. Not enough of them have yet decided to defy their leaders to turn the tide, but the war is still young.</p>
<p>Through three days of heartache, confusion, mayhem, destruction, defiance, resilience and hope, Russians and the world were united – the GKChP must fail. Little did anyone know that its resolve to turn back the tide would be eroded by internal disorder. Defence minister Dmitry Yazov and KGB chief Kryuchkov were at odds while the other committee members, overwhelmed by their own anxieties, drank themselves into a stupor. They had all failed to understand how perestroika and glasnost had changed their own people. </p>
<p>By day three, their efforts to end the Gorbachev era looked shambolic. Their so-called “constitutional transfer of power” was over before it had begun. The grave errors the putschists had committed were evident – Yeltsin, the leader of the defiant, had not been arrested, the TV tower had not been captured, allowing media to broadcast the truth, mass arrests had not taken place. </p>
<p>Putin, a student of history, has no doubt studied the dying moments of the August 1991 putsch. He has not committed the same mistakes in Ukraine.</p>
<hr>
<p><em>This is an edited extract of Monica Attard’s essay in <a href="https://www.hardiegrant.com/au/publishing/bookfinder/book/through-her-eyes-by-trevor-watson/9781743798898">Through Her Eyes: Australia’s Women Correspondents from Hiroshima to Ukraine</a> by Trevor Watson and Melissa Roberts (Hardie Grant), published 6 September 2022.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/188469/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Monica Attard does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Monica Attard witnessed the death throes of the USSR – and the birth of a brave new world – as the ABC’s Russia foreign correspondent. In 2022, a return to an Orwellian regime looms.Monica Attard, Co-Director, Centre For Media Transition, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1840492022-05-31T04:00:31Z2022-05-31T04:00:31ZThe Greens’ election wins are not so surprising when you look at Queensland’s political history<p><em>Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are advised this article contains names and an image of deceased people.</em></p>
<hr>
<p>Victories of <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/greensland-shocked-the-nation-but-it-was-a-long-time-coming-20220523-p5anoo.html">three Greens candidates</a> in the federal election have thrown political certainties into doubt. </p>
<p>While the “teal wave” in Sydney and Melbourne blue-blood electorates resulted from the Liberal Party’s rightward drift, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-30/greens-celebrate-in-inner-city-brisbane/13905104">Green wins</a> in inner-city, youthful seats of Griffith, Brisbane and Ryan defy simple explanation. After all, isn’t Queensland the “deep north”, a bulwark that secures conservative hegemony?</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/good-timing-and-hard-work-behind-the-elections-greenslide-183719">Good timing and hard work: behind the election's 'Greenslide'</a>
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<p>While there is of course some truth here, Queensland historian Humphrey McQueen <a href="https://search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/INFORMIT.600659129283490">long ago</a> diagnosed this perspective as a “state of mind”. Queensland’s “<a href="https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/764253.The_Hillbilly_Dictator">hillbilly dictatorship</a>” excuses Southern critics, in McQueen’s interpretation, “from doing much about what is wrong in their own states”.</p>
<p>It also conveniently ignores the long history of Queensland left-wing radicalism, obscuring the continuities that underlay last Saturday’s result. </p>
<h2>The Red North</h2>
<p>Queensland was, of course, <a href="https://www.awe.gov.au/parks-heritage/heritage/places/national/tree">the birthplace</a> of the Australian Labor Party. The Australian Workers Union (AWU) that emerged from a wave of shearers’ strikes in the 1890s was the party’s backbone in Queensland, ensuring it stayed in office for 40 almost uninterrupted years (1915-57). </p>
<p>Racism was the AWU’s modus operandi. It <a href="http://www.multiculturalaustralia.edu.au/doc/mmaq01_moore_mackay.pdf">worked diligently</a> to expel South Sea Island labourers in the 1900s and then treated the southern European – and primarily Italian – migrants who replaced them <a href="https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/71153674">with contempt</a>. As historian Diane Menghetti explained, this racism was <a href="https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/1510957">fertile ground</a> for the Communist Party, which established one of its strongest branches in the nation among the multicultural sugar cane workers of the far north, many of whom were refugees from fascism. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465918/original/file-20220530-20-sx1h57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465918/original/file-20220530-20-sx1h57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465918/original/file-20220530-20-sx1h57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465918/original/file-20220530-20-sx1h57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=895&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465918/original/file-20220530-20-sx1h57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465918/original/file-20220530-20-sx1h57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465918/original/file-20220530-20-sx1h57.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1124&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">The Toiler, Publication of the Brisbane District Group of the Communist Party of Australia, 1924.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Library of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Their struggle, particularly for decent conditions in that dangerous industry, was depicted in <a href="https://www.austlit.edu.au/austlit/page/C242840">Jean Devanny’s</a> 1936 novel Sugar Heaven. It also saw Australia’s only Communist member of parliament – <a href="https://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/paterson-frederick-woolnough-fred-11349">Fred Paterson</a> – elected to the Queensland Legislative Assembly. Elected twice (in 1944 and 1947), Queensland Labor employed the gerrymander that premier Joh Bjelke-Peterson would later exercise with such aplomb to redistribute Paterson’s electorate.</p>
<h2>‘A community of the left’</h2>
<p>Seen as a millstone by the left today, Queensland’s resources sector has long been host to radicalism. </p>
<p>In 1964, an <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/national/rank-and-file-hero-who-led-mt-isa-miners-strike-20091204-kb1b.html">unprecedented 32-week strike</a> and lockout at the Mt Isa Mines was led by anarchist Pat Mackie. Soon expelled from the AWU and fired from his job at the mines, Mackie’s militant challenge saw a state of emergency declared in the regional town. Mackay’s leadership garnered national infamy, and an attempted deportation to his native New Zealand.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465915/original/file-20220530-12-njuz7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465915/original/file-20220530-12-njuz7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465915/original/file-20220530-12-njuz7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465915/original/file-20220530-12-njuz7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=410&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465915/original/file-20220530-12-njuz7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465915/original/file-20220530-12-njuz7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465915/original/file-20220530-12-njuz7u.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=515&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Eddie Koiki Mabo outside the Communist Party’s North Queensland Conference, 1965.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">National Archives of Australia</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>At the same time, Indigenous activists were forging links with white unionists that would fundamentally shape Australian history. The Cairns Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Advancement League, an Indigenous-led rights organisation, was founded in 1960 – a time when such organisations were led by well-meaning whites. The league flourished amid what historian Sue Taffe <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27740317">calls</a> a “community of the left” in that small Queensland town. </p>
<p>The Communist Party’s local branch, although much depleted since the 1930s, was still a substantial player in the local trade unions – particularly on the wharves. It also favoured self-determination for Indigenous peoples in line with decolonisation struggles in Asia and Africa. </p>
<p>Led by Joe McGuiness and Gladys O’Shane, the Cairns league forged a close working relationship with the Communists on the basis that, as O’Shane put it: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>Stirring up prejudices between the coloured people and the whites…cause[s] divisions among the workers thereby […] break[ing] down hard-won conditions. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Many activists, including <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/27740317">Eddie Koiki Mabo</a> – a member of the Communist-controlled Waterside Workers Federation – first became politically active in the Cairns League. It is also worth noting that in the 2022 election, O'Shane’s daughter Pat <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-05-28/pat-oshane-best-federal-election-result-for-socialist-alliance/101104612">outpolled</a> the United Australia Party in the far north seat of Leichhardt, as candidate for the tiny Socialist Alliance. </p>
<h2>Radical Brisbane?</h2>
<p>To understand the Greens’ successes in southeast Queensland, then, it is insufficient to say Brisbane is a city that has outgrown its state. If anything, Brisbane has long mirrored the broader state’s rebellious streak. </p>
<p>This is evident in the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-28/a-right-to-march-rally-in-brisbane-in-1977/13858908#:%7E:text=VIDEO%3A%20A%20%22right%20to%20march%22%20rally%20in%20Brisbane%20in%201977&text=Space%20to%20play%20or%20pause,and%20down%20arrows%20for%20volume.&text=A%20%22right%20to%20march%22%20rally%20in%20Brisbane's%20King%20George%20Square,1977%2C%20resulted%20in%20418%20arrests.">right to march</a> campaigns of the 1960s and 1970s, anti-uranium and nuclear weapons actions <a href="http://radicaltimes.info/HTML/popup205b.html">in the 1980s</a>, as well as climate marches and Indigenous rights protests today. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465913/original/file-20220530-22-5za9oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/465913/original/file-20220530-22-5za9oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465913/original/file-20220530-22-5za9oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465913/original/file-20220530-22-5za9oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=846&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465913/original/file-20220530-22-5za9oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465913/original/file-20220530-22-5za9oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/465913/original/file-20220530-22-5za9oj.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1064&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Poster debunking Queensland’s so-called ‘Conservatism’</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Copyright Sam Wallman 2021, Commissioned by Overland Journal. Used with permission</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>It is instead fruitful to pull out some continuities between then and now. The campaign waged by the Queensland Greens reflects two vital traditions. One was <a href="https://www.jonathansri.com/2022electionwin">pointed out</a> by Greens councillor Jonathon Sri:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Queensland is not a conservative state. It is an anti-establishment state where voters have a healthy scepticism of authority and of whoever they perceive as being ‘in charge’.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Furthermore, the campaigns in inner Brisbane were based not on speaking over people, but to them about the material issues that affect their lives. Rental prices, the unaffordability of dental care, and of course climate change, were these campaigns’ key talking points. </p>
<p>By seeking to mobilise as many people as possible around unifying, radical demands, these campaigns show the “Red North’s” continued legacy today.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/184049/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jon Piccini has campaigned for the Queensland Greens at previous elections</span></em></p>If anything, Brisbane has long-mirrored the broader Queensland rebellious streak when it comes to politics.Jon Piccini, Lecturer in History, Australian Catholic UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1767652022-05-24T12:46:37Z2022-05-24T12:46:37ZBiden on Taiwan: Did he really commit US forces to stopping any invasion by China? An expert explains why, on balance, probably not<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464882/original/file-20220523-25530-80lkyr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C41%2C7000%2C4610&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Pondering a shift in strategy on Taiwan? Possibly not.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/23/politics/biden-taiwan-china-japan-intl-hnk/index.html">Nicolas Datiche/Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The White House has been left scrambling a little after President Joe Biden suggested on May 23, 2022, that the U.S. <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2022/05/23/politics/biden-taiwan-china-japan-intl-hnk/index.html">would intervene militarily</a> should China attempt an invasion of Taiwan.</em></p>
<p><em>The comment, which Biden made during a trip to Japan, <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-61548531">was taken by</a> some observers <a href="https://abcnews.go.com/International/video/biden-signals-major-shift-warning-us-respond-militarily-84914670">as a deviation</a> from the official U.S. line on Taiwan, in place for decades. But officials in Washington <a href="https://nypost.com/2022/05/23/white-house-walks-back-biden-taiwan-defense-claim-again/">walked back that interpretation</a>, saying instead that it only referred to military assistance.</em></p>
<p><em>Meredith Oyen, an <a href="https://history.umbc.edu/facultystaff/full-time/meredith-oyen/">expert on U.S.-China relations</a> at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, helps explain the background to Biden’s recent comments and untangles what should be read into his remarks – and what shouldn’t.</em></p>
<h2>What did Biden say and why was it significant?</h2>
<p>Asked if the U.S. was willing to get involved “militarily” in the event of an invasion of Taiwan, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/05/23/biden-taiwan-china-defense/">Biden replied</a>, “yes.” A follow-up question saw the U.S. president add: “That’s the commitment we have made.”</p>
<p>By my count, this is the third time Biden has as president suggested that the U.S. will come to Taiwan’s aid militarily if the island is attacked. In 2021 he made similar remarks in an <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2021/08/20/us-position-on-taiwan-unchanged-despite-biden-comment-official-says.html">interview with ABC News</a> and then again <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/10/22/remarks-by-president-biden-in-a-cnn-town-hall-with-anderson-cooper-2/">while taking part in a CNN town hall event</a>.</p>
<p>But it is significant that this is the first time he has made the assertion while in Asia.</p>
<p>An important thing to note is that on each occasion he has made such a comment, it has been followed quite quickly by the White House walking back the remarks, by issuing statements along the lines of “what the president actually means is…” and stressing that this isn’t a shift away from the official U.S. policy on China or Taiwan. </p>
<p>However, the remarks and the clarifications have increased doubt over whether Biden is continuing the policy of “strategic ambiguity” on Taiwan.</p>
<h2>What does ‘strategic ambiguity’ mean?</h2>
<p><a href="https://rusi.org/explore-our-research/publications/commentary/why-strategic-ambiguity-trumps-strategic-clarity-taiwan/">Strategic ambiguity</a> has long been the U.S. policy toward Taiwan – really since the 1950s but certainly from 1979 onward. While it does not explicitly commit the U.S. to defending Taiwan in every circumstance, it does leaves open the option of American defensive support to Taiwan in the event of an unprovoked attack by China.</p>
<p><iframe id="NS3cP" class="tc-infographic-datawrapper" src="https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/NS3cP/1/" height="400px" width="100%" style="border: none" frameborder="0"></iframe></p>
<p>Crucially, the U.S. hasn’t really said what it will do – so does this support mean economic aid, supply of weapons or U.S. boots on the ground? China and Taiwan are left guessing if – and to what extent – the U.S. will be involved in any China-Taiwan conflict.</p>
<p>By leaving the answer to that question ambiguous, the U.S. holds a threat over China: Invade Taiwan and find out if you face the U.S. as well. </p>
<p>Traditionally, this has been a useful policy for the U.S., but things have changed since it was first rolled out. It was certainly effective when the U.S. was in a much stronger position militarily compared to China. But it might be less effective as a threat now that <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-22/china-is-catching-up-to-the-u-s-when-it-comes-to-military-power">China’s military is catching up</a> with the U.S.</p>
<p>Leading voices from U.S. allies in Asia, <a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Politics/U.S.-should-abandon-ambiguity-on-Taiwan-defense-Japan-s-Abe">such as Japan</a>, believe that “strategic clarity” might be a better option now – with the U.S. stating outright that it would defend Taiwan if the island is attacked.</p>
<h2>So Biden’s comments could hint at this shift?</h2>
<p>There does seem to be a pattern: Biden says something seemingly very clear on defending Taiwan, and that then gets walked back. If no one in Washington was walking back the comments then it would seem like an intentional shift in policy by the Biden administration.</p>
<p>But the fact that the White House has always been quick to clarify the comments suggests to me that it isn’t necessarily intentional. It seems like Biden is simply trying to signal more support for Taiwan, and perhaps reassure U.S. allies in Asia. </p>
<p>But I’m a historian, not a strategist. It could be that this is some advanced chess game that I can’t figure out.</p>
<h2>What is the history of US relations with Taiwan?</h2>
<p>After the <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/chinese-rev">victory of the Chinese Communist Party in 1949</a>, the defeated Republic of China government withdrew to the island of Taiwan, located just 100 miles off the shore of Fujian province. And until the 1970s, the U.S. recognized only this exiled Republic of China on Taiwan as the government of China.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="President Richard Nixon confers with Chinese Communist Party Chairman Mao Zedong as they sit in comfy chairs." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464888/original/file-20220523-16-bx4rvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/464888/original/file-20220523-16-bx4rvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=188&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464888/original/file-20220523-16-bx4rvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=188&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464888/original/file-20220523-16-bx4rvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=188&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464888/original/file-20220523-16-bx4rvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464888/original/file-20220523-16-bx4rvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/464888/original/file-20220523-16-bx4rvg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=237&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Nixon in China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/peking-china-president-richard-m-nixon-confers-with-chinese-news-photo/515401848?adppopup=true">Bettmann/Getty Images</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>But in 1971, the <a href="https://web-archive-2017.ait.org.tw/en/un-res-2758-voted-to-admit-communist-china.html">United Nations shifted recognition</a> to the People’s Republic of China on the mainland. In 1972, President Richard Nixon made a <a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/blog-post/nixons-1972-visit-china-50">now-famous trip to China</a> to announce a rapprochement and sign the Shanghai Communique, a joint statement from communist China and the U.S. signaling a commitment to pursue formal diplomatic relations. A <a href="https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/121325">critical section of that document</a> stated: “The United States acknowledges that all Chinese on either side of the Taiwan Strait maintain there is but one China and that Taiwan is a part of China. The United States Government does not challenge that position.”</p>
<p>The wording was crucial: the U.S. was not formally committing to a position on whether Taiwan was part of the China nation. Instead, it was acknowledging what the governments of either territory asserted – that there is “one China.” </p>
<h2>Where does US commitment of military support for Taiwan come from?</h2>
<p>After establishing formal diplomatic relations with China in 1979, the U.S. built an informal relationship with the ROC on Taiwan. In part to push back against President Jimmy Carter’s decision to recognize communist China, U.S. lawmakers passed the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/96th-congress/house-bill/2479#:%7E:text=Taiwan%20Relations%20Act%20%2D%20Declares%20it,other%20people%20of%20the%20Western">Taiwan Relations Act in 1979</a>. That act outlined a plan to maintain close ties between the U.S. and Taiwan and included provisions for the U.S. to sell military items to help the island maintain its defense – setting the path for the policy of strategic ambiguity. </p>
<h2>What has changed recently?</h2>
<p>China has long maintained its desire for an eventual <a href="https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2021/10/09/chinas-xi-jinping-calls-peaceful-reunification-taiwan/6072388001/">peaceful reunification</a> of its country with the island it considers a rogue province. But the commitment to the principle of “one China” has become increasingly one-sided. It is an absolute for Beijing. But in Taiwan, however, <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/blog/order-from-chaos/2022/02/07/why-is-unification-so-unpopular-in-taiwan-its-the-prc-political-system-not-just-culture/">resistance to the idea of reunification has grown</a> amid a <a href="https://esc.nccu.edu.tw/upload/44/doc/6963/Tondu202112.jpg">surge of support for moving the island toward independence</a>.</p>
<p>Beijing has become more aggressive of late in asserting that Taiwan must be “returned to China.” Domestic politics plays a role in this. At times of internal instability in China, Beijing has sounded a more belligerent tone on relations between the two entities separated by the Taiwan Strait. We have seen this over the last year with Beijing sending <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-taiwan-warplanes-fly-incursions-air-defense-zone/">military aircraft into Taiwan’s Air Defense Zone</a>. </p>
<p>Meanwhile, Chinese <a href="https://www.uscc.gov/sites/default/files/2021-11/Chapter_5--Hong_Kongs_Government_Embraces_Authoritarianism.pdf">assertion of increased authority over Hong Kong</a> has damaged the argument for “one country, two system” as a means of peaceful reunification with Taiwan.</p>
<h2>How has the US position shifted in the face of Beijing’s stance?</h2>
<p>Biden has definitely been more openly supportive of Taiwan than previous presidents. He <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-biden-taiwan/taiwan-biden-ties-off-to-strong-start-with-invite-for-top-diplomat-idUSKBN29Q01N">officially invited a representative from Taiwan to his inauguration</a> – a first for an incoming president – and has repeatedly made it clear that he views Taiwan as an ally.</p>
<p>He also didn’t overturn the <a href="https://www.congress.gov/bill/115th-congress/house-bill/535">Taiwan Travel Act</a> passed under the the previous administration of Donald Trump. This legislation allows U.S. officials to visit Taiwan in an official capacity.</p>
<p>So there has been a shift to a degree. But the White House is keen not to overstate any change. At heart, there is a desire by the U.S. to not stray from the Shanghai Communique. </p>
<h2>So is an invasion of Taiwan likely?</h2>
<p>I don’t think we are anywhere near that yet. Any invasion across the Taiwan Strait would be militarily complex. It also comes with risks of backlash from the international community. Taiwan would receive support from not only the U.S. – in an unclear capacity, given Biden’s remarks – but also Japan and likely other countries in the region.</p>
<p>Meanwhile, China maintains that it wants to see reintegration through peaceful means. As long as Taiwan doesn’t force the issue and declare independence unilaterally, I think there is tolerance in Beijing to wait it out. And despite <a href="https://thehill.com/opinion/international/3462914-russias-war-on-ukraine-makes-chinas-attack-on-taiwan-more-likely/">some commentary to the contrary</a>, I don’t think the invasion of Ukraine has raised the prospects of a similar move on Taiwan. In fact, given that Russia is now bogged down in a months-long conflict that has hit its military credibility and economy, the Ukraine invasion may actually serve as a warning to Beijing.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176765/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Meredith Oyen does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Biden’s suggestion that the US is prepared to intervene militarily if Taiwan was invaded was quickly walked back by White House officials.Meredith Oyen, Associate Professor of History and Asian Studies, University of Maryland, Baltimore CountyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1775802022-04-07T14:06:08Z2022-04-07T14:06:08ZWhat drives Chinese migrants to Ghana: it’s not just an economic decision<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/455511/original/file-20220331-23-v46ioh.jpeg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Ghana is a popular destination for Chinese migrants</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wikimedia Commons</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Over the past two decades, there have been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02589001.2011.555189">many debates</a> about China’s growing engagement in Africa. In these discussions, the more than <a href="https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0021909618776443">one million Chinese expatriates</a>, business people and labourers who come and work in Africa are often seen only as a byproduct of an overall <a href="https://www.proquest.com/docview/1675046298?accountid=14214&forcedol=true&parentSessionId=%2BEJwMuMR%2Bev0WixrpxBxAg%2BT9PXoypYojMmgg7UZ74I%3D&pq-origsite=summon&forcedol=true">“outbound”</a> China. And they are often studied as isolated sub-groups: expatriates of Chinese state-owned enterprises, traders, construction workers, and so forth. </p>
<p>As a result, there’s no holistic understanding of the mechanisms underpinning emigration from China to Africa. </p>
<p>What motivates these new migrants to come to Africa? Who is more inclined to make the move? How have the ongoing market and social changes within China influenced them?</p>
<p>These were questions I explored in my <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/1369183X.2021.2021868">ethnographic survey</a> of Chinese migrants, based on fieldwork in Ghana between 2016 and 2019. There is currently no fixed data on the number of Chinese in Ghana although some <a href="https://www.mideq.org/en/migration-corridors/china-ghana/">estimates </a>place it at about 30,000. They are involved predominantly in trade, infrastructure and mining.</p>
<p>China’s drastic political and economic changes in recent decades, coupled with its changing positioning in the global economy, have created a distinct social infrastructure for emigration. I found that opportunities for social mobility, rather than simply economic incentives, generated emigration flows to countries like Ghana. </p>
<p>This insight is useful for sociologists and policy makers to understand migration drivers, diaspora-homeland relations, and contemporary migration in the Global South.</p>
<h2>Chinese emigration to the world</h2>
<p>Political and economic changes in post-communist China have driven massive human movement both inside and outside the country. Since the late 1970s, institutional reforms and market evolution in China have created a new “<a href="https://www.iddri.org/sites/default/files/import/publications/id_0710_b.xiang_migration%26dvpt.pdf">mobility regime</a>”. Population movements have been deregulated and even encouraged in some regions for development needs. </p>
<p>China’s rapid integration into the global economy also opened the door for outward migration. In particular, since the 2000s, Chinese emigration to <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/00207659.2016.1163991">non-traditional destinations</a> in Africa, Eastern Europe, Latin America, the Caribbean, and other parts of the global south has grown significantly.</p>
<p>A prevailing <a href="https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X15301625">explanation</a> is that China’s economic development gives Chinese firms and entrepreneurs competitive advantages in overseas markets, which further fuels the demand for labour migrants.</p>
<p>This perspective points out the importance of the new migrants’ economic ties to their homeland but says little about who is most likely to leave China for Africa. It doesn’t consider the industries, localities, and personal characteristics that are linked to migrants and would-be migrants. Doing this requires looking inside contemporary China, at how migrants’ aspirations and motivations stem from China’s political-economic changes and social stratification order.</p>
<h2>‘Squeezed out’ to Africa</h2>
<p>China’s state-led and market-oriented reforms yielded many problematic consequences that drove emigration. At the macro-level, after three decades of sustained growth, “<a href="https://soc.ucla.edu/sites/default/files/u281/nlr_2014_no._89.pdf">the Chinese economy</a> is becoming choked by bottlenecks: overcapacity, falling profits, surplus capital, shrinking demand in traditional export markets and scarcity of raw materials” as precisely expressed by sociologist Chin Kwan Lee.</p>
<p>Many industries are facing market saturation and intensified competition. Companies are compelled to explore overseas markets, especially underdeveloped ones. In the last decade, China’s economic restructuring and declining competitiveness in manufacturing have forced many export-oriented firms to penetrate African markets where their products match local demand. The same logic applies to industries of infrastructure, telecommunications and construction. The flow of excess capital and labour to Africa is seen as a “<a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10220461.2020.1830165?journalCode=rsaj20">spatial fix</a>”. </p>
<p>At the micro-level, contemporary Chinese society is marked by <a href="https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022516">social inequalities</a> in the distribution of income, wealth and, more importantly, opportunity. The gradual closure of ways to move up the social ladder drives individuals, especially those who are marginalised in their microcosm, to migrate in the hope of achieving their dreams in a foreign land.</p>
<h2>Africa as a new ‘social ladder’</h2>
<p>As I found in my study, venturing to Africa gives migrants an opportunity for social “reshuffling”. It allows them to get around the social and institutional barriers to achieving a “class leap” in their motherland. </p>
<p>For instance, in China, people are labelled by the <a href="https://nhglobalpartners.com/the-chinese-hukou-system-explained/">“hukou”</a>, a residency registration system that classifies people as urban or rural. But in Ghana that doesn’t apply – they are not treated differently according to that classification. Their education or family background in China is not a major determinant of social capital in Ghana. Instead, human capital and entrepreneurship are better rewarded. </p>
<p>Social repositioning brings migrants more than simply linear upward mobility in terms of socio-economic status. It also allows flexible identity conversion. For instance, some Chinese start their own businesses in Ghana with a small investment and become independent entrepreneurs over time. The migrants regard the fairer opportunity structure and more flexible space for career and identity transitions as more important drivers than incentives like wage differentials or social benefits. </p>
<p>I would therefore argue that economic motives for migration have multiple layers. What Chinese migrants in Ghana hope for is a step up in social status.</p>
<h2>Where are their journeys leading?</h2>
<p>The migrants’ initial aspirations are undoubtedly embedded in China’s stratification dynamics. But their aspirations are constantly changing, and so are their ties to the homeland. </p>
<p>In the process of adaptation and integration, incentives such as self-esteem and social acceptance are important drivers for settling in the host society. I found that many new Chinese migrants felt that life in China was a “rat race”. The anxiety and frustration of competition and inequality were not the price of achieving a better life, but a meaningless drain. Hence, they gradually let go of the “<a href="https://www.area-studies.ox.ac.uk/research-project/the-mortgage-migration">Chinese dream</a>” of higher social status that motivated their departure.</p>
<p>Some Chinese migrants choose to stay on the “new ladder” rather than return to the old one. But it’s not certain that they will become permanent settlers in Africa. In fact, they exhibit a highly <a href="https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Living-in-Liminality%3A-Chinese-Migrancy-in-Ghana-Ho/b6fe7124417d58ad1a440bb8a270b5e9144f54bd">floating character</a>. Many of them become circular migrants between China and Ghana, stepwise migrants to the west, or, very commonly, sojourners bouncing between various places.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/177580/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Jinpu Wang does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Opportunities for social mobility, rather than simply economic incentives, have generated emigration from China to countries like Ghana.Jinpu Wang, Doctoral Researcher, Department of Sociology, Syracuse UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1761302022-02-01T19:13:16Z2022-02-01T19:13:16ZWhy the Winter Olympics are so vital to the Chinese Communist Party’s legitimacy<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443643/original/file-20220201-21-1i3gire.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=215%2C17%2C5452%2C4284&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Zhang Ling/Xinhua/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Aside from fake snow and COVID-19, the Beijing Winter Games are <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/explainers-59644043">controversial</a> for many reasons. </p>
<p>They are a potent political symbol of the Chinese state’s ambitions and authority. Held just a year after the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3139408/communist-party-centenary-key-points-xi-jinpings-tiananmen?module=inline&pgtype=article">triumphalist 100-year anniversary of the Communist Party’s founding</a>, General Secretary Xi Jinping is using the Olympics to showcase to the world that China is powerful and on track to fulfil its Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation. </p>
<p>How will the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) use the games domestically to push this narrative and how will it be viewed by the rest of the world? What does the party hope to gain by the games being perceived as a success? </p>
<h2>Competing narratives at home and abroad</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/how-china-is-remaking-the-world-in-its-vision-155377">Some observers</a> see China’s rise as generating a strategic power conflict and threatening the <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2019/02/FP_20190227_us_grand_strategy_chhabra.pdf">liberal world order</a>. </p>
<p>Others see China’s rise as <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09692290.2019.1709880">more benign</a>, even appropriate for a country possessing 4,000 years of history and having made astonishing economic progress in the past 50 years. </p>
<p>These contrasting interpretations have generated much debate internationally before the Olympics. Several western countries have declared a diplomatic boycott because of concerns over the <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-56487162">shocking human rights violations</a> of the Uyghur minority and deep repression in civil society, <a href="https://www.cfr.org/backgrounder/hong-kong-freedoms-democracy-protests-china-crackdown">particularly in Hong Kong</a>.</p>
<p>China’s reputation worsened after the <a href="https://theconversation.com/what-the-peng-shuai-saga-tells-us-about-beijings-grip-on-power-and-desire-to-crush-a-metoo-moment-172375">safety of tennis star Peng Shuai</a>, an alleged sexual assault victim, became a matter of international concern. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Supporters of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443642/original/file-20220201-27-13afxr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443642/original/file-20220201-27-13afxr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443642/original/file-20220201-27-13afxr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443642/original/file-20220201-27-13afxr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443642/original/file-20220201-27-13afxr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443642/original/file-20220201-27-13afxr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443642/original/file-20220201-27-13afxr4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Supporters of Chinese tennis player Peng Shuai hold up T-shirts at the Australian Open last month.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Tertius Pickard/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Domestically, however, the Olympics are portrayed as something that <a href="https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/ce/cein/eng/zgbd/t513960.htm">benefits the Chinese people</a> – a way for Chinese athletes to achieve glory and to showcase the Communist Party’s ability to execute a world-class sporting event. The underlying narrative glorifies the regime and legitimises the CCP’s institutions and practices. </p>
<h2>The party’s central role in the Chinese Dream</h2>
<p>Chinese media have struck back at the international criticism, saying the US is being <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202201/1250095.shtml">dumb and mean</a> for criticising China’s highly restrictive zero-COVID policies and the Americans <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/28/china-winter-olympics-2022-diplomatic-boycott/">weren’t invited</a> to the Olympics in the first place. </p>
<p>The domestic objective of these aggressive narratives is to reaffirm the primacy of the Communist Party as the best protector of China and its people against provocative elements in the international community. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1468218991038513155"}"></div></p>
<p>At the same time, the games represent an opportunity for Xi to reset the global rhetoric on China by welcoming the world to Beijing’s “<a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/page/202111/1238928.shtml">smart, environmentally friendly</a>” Olympics. </p>
<p>China’s so-called “<a href="https://theconversation.com/behind-chinas-newly-aggressive-diplomacy-wolf-warriors-ready-to-fight-back-139028">wolf-warrior diplomacy</a>” has hurt more than helped its interests abroad. As a result, <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/08/world/asia/china-diplomacy.html">Xi has pleaded with party members</a>, Chinese diplomats and the Chinese media to “set the tone right” by being more modest and humble, to promote a more “credible, lovable and respectable image of China,” a request with which they have grudgingly complied. </p>
<p>For Xi, he needs both the party’s compliance and acceptance. The party is at the core of everything he wants to do – primarily, to deliver his “Chinese Dream” to the people. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/xi-jinpings-grip-on-power-is-absolute-but-there-are-new-threats-to-his-chinese-dream-118921">Xi Jinping's grip on power is absolute, but there are new threats to his 'Chinese dream'</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>While the Chinese Dream has often been compared to the “American Dream”, it is most emphatically not an American Dream with Chinese characteristics. </p>
<p>The American Dream emphasises individual freedoms, social mobility and material success brought about by one’s own efforts. In the Chinese Dream, national well-being supersedes individual desires and achievements. As such, the CCP spins a narrative that <a href="http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/c23934/202005/1ea4ce6a31714887a17412cb8f9f30cc.shtml">only the party can achieve the Chinese Dream</a> for the Chinese people. </p>
<p>So, when someone or something is perceived as a threat to the party’s centrality, the regime launches into self-preservation mode. For example, when some in the west raised <a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01529-3">the prospect COVID may have been engineered in a Chinese lab</a>, the Chinese Foreign Ministry struck back hard by endorsing a conspiracy theory <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/13/world/asia/coronavirus-china-conspiracy-theory.html">the US Army introduced the virus to Wuhan</a>. </p>
<p>In <a href="http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/c23934/202107/6ff93d39da7548fbae37cbed01184c34.shtml">Xi’s speech</a> on the 100th annversary of the CCP’s founding last year, party members were reminded the CCP leadership, with Comrade Xi Jinping, at its core is</p>
<blockquote>
<p>the foundation and lifeblood of the Party and the country, and the crux upon which the interests and well-being of all Chinese people depend. </p>
</blockquote>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-communist-party-claims-to-have-brought-prosperity-and-equality-to-china-heres-the-real-impact-of-its-rule-163350">The Communist Party claims to have brought prosperity and equality to China. Here's the real impact of its rule</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<h2>The People’s Games?</h2>
<p>The presentation of the Beijing Winter Olympics to the Chinese people is crucial to this overarching narrative that Xi and the party are creating. They need the Chinese people to adhere to the Chinese Dream as <em>their</em> dream. </p>
<p>This need is evident in the language Xi uses in public statements. Xi uses a great deal of imagery to exhort the <a href="http://www.npc.gov.cn/englishnpc/c23934/202006/32191c5bbdb04cbab6df01e5077d1c60.shtml">Chinese people to march together with the party</a> on the same difficult path toward this shared vision of the future.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="The speed-skating oval in Beijing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443647/original/file-20220201-23-117y9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/443647/original/file-20220201-23-117y9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443647/original/file-20220201-23-117y9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443647/original/file-20220201-23-117y9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443647/original/file-20220201-23-117y9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443647/original/file-20220201-23-117y9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/443647/original/file-20220201-23-117y9k5.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">China is projecting the Beijing Olympics as a symbol of its strength.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shuhei Yokoyama/AP</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>As China continues to build its economy and burnish its great power status with high-profile events such as these Winter Olympics, it is also attempting to show the world that its model of governance is supreme. </p>
<p>These games are a giant advertisement for the Communist Party, exemplifying the kind of sharp efficiency that high-tech, authoritarian governments can bring to events of this magnitude. It can also demonstrate how successful the government has been in containing COVID, though this has involved <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2021/12/30/china-covid-lockdown-xian/">blockading people in their own homes</a> and the <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/05/05/china-covid-19-discrimination-against-africans">discriminatory treatment of Africans living in China</a>. </p>
<p>So, when global audiences cheer for their winter heroes, they will also be cheering for the CCP – whether they like that or not.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/176130/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Games are a potent political symbol of the Chinese state’s ambitions and authority.Yan Bennett, Assistant Director for the Paul and Marcia Wythes Center on Contemporary China, Princeton UniversityJohn Garrick, University Fellow in Law, Charles Darwin UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1560202021-03-05T13:13:04Z2021-03-05T13:13:04ZSupport for QAnon is hard to measure – and polls may overestimate it<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387066/original/file-20210301-17-1izk1qh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=7%2C0%2C5029%2C3353&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">It's not clear exactly how many people believe or follow QAnon.</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/FacebookQAnon/ab23d0c7f20047a3a9904b90ac258454/photo">AP Photo/Matt Rourke</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>It’s hard to know how many people actually believe the key tenets of <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html">QAnon’s claims</a>, including that devil-worshipping, cannibalistic pedophiles are somehow running the world. Its adherents have caused violence and insurrection, as happened at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, and had raised concerns about a second attack on March 4. Both the <a href="https://www.justsecurity.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/08/420379775-fbi-conspiracy-theories-domestic-extremism.pdf">FBI</a> and the <a href="https://www.dhs.gov/ntas/advisory/national-terrorism-advisory-system-bulletin-january-27-2021">Department of Homeland Security</a> have released bulletins warning of the possibility of future violence from domestic terrorists, potentially including QAnon followers.</p>
<p>If lots of people follow QAnon, is it the case that – as one pollster put it – a significant portion of the American electorate has gone “<a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/12/30/951095644/even-if-its-bonkers-poll-finds-many-believe-qanon-and-other-conspiracy-theories">bonkers</a>”?</p>
<p>As <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=CjtVXhEAAAAJ&hl=en&oi=ao">a researcher</a> who analyzes surveys and polls to learn about Americans’ thinking and behavior, I try to remember that surveys alone can’t necessarily provide the entire picture of public sentiment, especially about a potentially dangerous internal threat.</p>
<h2>How much support does QAnon have?</h2>
<p>There has been a lot of polling about QAnon, aimed at figuring out how much fear it is reasonable to have about the Americans who have <a href="https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/drumoorhouse/qanon-mass-collective-delusion-buzzfeed-news-copy-desk">abandoned themselves</a> to <a href="https://www.poynter.org/reporting-editing/2021/embedded-within-a-mass-delusion-the-challenge-of-reporting-on-qanon/">darkly fantastic</a> <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202009/the-allure-qanon-cult-conspiracy-and-role-playing-game">speculation</a> with a demonstrated potential for violence.</p>
<p>One such project is here at <a href="http://osome.iu.edu">Indiana University’s Observatory on Social Media</a>, where we have been studying how falsehoods and conspiracy-type ideas spread online and <a href="http://osome.iu.edu/research/survey/files/FinalSummary_UnsupportedNarratives_OSoMe.pdf">how much people say they believe them</a>. </p>
<p>We found wide support, sometimes over 50% and highly partisan-motivated, for many falsehoods such as unfounded concerns about Joe Biden’s cognitive abilities and unsupported fears about fraud during mail-in voting. But the spread of ideas online, and people’s endorsement of them in polls, doesn’t give the whole picture.</p>
<p>A September 2020 <a href="https://civiqs.com/reports/2020/9/2/report-americans-pessimistic-on-time-frame-for-coronavirus-recovery">poll by the left-leaning Daily Kos</a> and the online polling company Civiqs found that 56% of Republicans “believed” QAnon. Republicans are <a href="https://news.gallup.com/poll/15370/party-affiliation.aspx">roughly one-quarter of American adults</a>. Though Daily Kos may overstate positions it thinks would look bad for Republicans, the 56% of Republicans who “believed” QAnon could amount to about 14% of the country.</p>
<p>However, <a href="https://assets.documentcloud.org/documents/7214126/final200625-NBCWSJ-September-Poll.pdf">NBC News polls</a> that same month found that more than half of registered voters had no idea what QAnon was, and that only 3% of the respondents had a positive view of it.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.ipsos.com/en-us/news-polls/npr-misinformation-123020">December poll of Americans from the polling firm Ipsos</a> asked whether people thought specific QAnon teachings were true and found that 17% thought the core belief was true – that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”</p>
<p>By January, as QAnon was getting more attention in the media, a <a href="https://today.yougov.com/topics/politics/articles-reports/2020/10/20/half-trump-supporters-believe-qanon-theory-child-s">YouGov poll</a> found that 37% of registered voters in the U.S. had heard of QAnon. Yet of those, only 7% believed its allegations were true – or about 2.5% of American voters.</p>
<p>A late January <a href="https://assets.morningconsult.com/wp-uploads/2021/02/01222231/2101102_crosstabs_MC_TECH_QANON_Adults_v1.pdf">Morning Consult poll</a> found that QAnon believers were “<a href="https://morningconsult.com/2021/02/02/qanon-beliefs-polling">jumping ship</a>” after the Capitol riots, with 24% of Republicans saying they believed QAnon’s claims, a decrease from the October result of 38%.</p>
<p>So, a fair number of people have heard of QAnon – which is not a surprise, given the news coverage – but the number of people who thought its key claims were true may have peaked in December 2020 and may now be closer to smaller preelection levels of support. Even given that there can be large differences in how survey researchers ask questions, these variations are notable.</p>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="Romanian QAnon followers" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/387067/original/file-20210301-17-5eyies.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">QAnon has followers around the world, including these people in Romania.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://newsroom.ap.org/detail/VirusOutbreakRomaniaQAnon/1b20e511df034f428b889337166f8e9b/photo">AP Photo/Vadim Ghirda</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>What don’t surveys reveal?</h2>
<p>As useful as survey data is, it is difficult to go from that to more nuanced questions, like what portion of respondents are true believers, versus which of them might act on that belief – and which of them are giving quick answers that seem to fit with their current thoughts or beliefs. As a result, surveys cannot replace the real forensic work that is needed to know how many QAnon “members” there really are.</p>
<p>There isn’t a formal QAnon organization to ask for its membership numbers, the way there is for a political party or even a charity that tracks how many donors give money each year. In many ways, it is an online group from which people can come and go at any moment. Nevertheless, it’s possible to look at some indicators of how many people might closely associate themselves with QAnon.</p>
<p>A <a href="https://www.isdglobal.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/qanon-and-conspiracy-beliefs-full_toplines.pdf">September 2020 Tufts study</a> found that 3.4% of survey respondents self-identified as members of a QAnon Facebook group. At that time, Facebook was starting to <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/facebook-bans-qanon-across-its-platforms-n1242339">remove QAnon</a> profiles, eventually reaching 78,000 removals. <a href="https://www.joeuscinski.com/uploads/7/1/9/5/71957435/qanon_2-4-21.pdf">Other recent research</a> tells us that “support for QAnon is meager and stable,” revealing a “vast chasm between news coverage and polling data.”</p>
<p>So far the research hasn’t truly revealed a clear picture of how many QAnon followers there are. But important decisions are now being made about the perceived threats, such as whether there should be a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/02/22/no-we-do-not-need-new-law-against-domestic-terrorism/">domestic terrorism law</a>, whether the <a href="https://www.theverge.com/2021/1/27/22251093/section-230-civil-rights-groups-letter-biden-harris-congress-defense">Communications Decency Act should be changed</a> and larger questions about how <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-54901083">social media and the public sphere should be regulated</a>.</p>
<p>It’s not enough to use poll data to make these decisions. Americans need more information about the actual extent of the threats, as well as time to discuss whether proposed responses are proportional and likely to be both constitutional and effective. That information could come from police investigations, an independent investigative commission or other forensic work to evaluate the scope of the threat.</p>
<p>[<em>Deep knowledge, daily.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/the-daily-3?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=deepknowledge">Sign up for The Conversation’s newsletter</a>.]</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/156020/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>James Shanahan receives funding from the Knight Foundation. </span></em></p>How many Americans really have lost touch with reality?James Shanahan, Dean of the Media School, Indiana UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1527512021-01-13T19:11:55Z2021-01-13T19:11:55ZHow China is controlling the COVID origins narrative — silencing critics and locking up dissenters<p>Just over a year has gone by since the novel coronavirus <a href="https://www.who.int/csr/don/12-january-2020-novel-coronavirus-china/en/">first emerged</a> in the Chinese city of Wuhan and the world still has many questions about where and how it originated. </p>
<p>The World Health Organisation is <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2021-01-11/who-experts-arriving-in-china-for-coronavirus-origin-probe/13049100">sending a team to China</a> this week to investigate the origins of the virus — which has now claimed <a href="https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/coronavirus-death-toll/">nearly 2 million</a> lives globally — but one health expert warns expectations for the visit should be set “<a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/11/china-agrees-to-let-in-who-team-investigating-covid-origins">very low</a>”.</p>
<p>The Chinese government has greatly restrained any attempts to investigate the <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-s-top-secret-search-for-the-origins-of-coronavirus-20210102-p56rar.html">origins of COVID-19</a> — both internally and by foreign experts — while at the same time <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/06/world/asia/china-covid-origin-falsehoods.html">advocating alternate theories</a> that the pandemic originated elsewhere. </p>
<p>The top leadership sees <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3115886/coronavirus-tributes-pour-li-wenliang-chinese-doctor-who-first">control over this narrative</a> as vital to its hold over the Chinese population and the boosting of its international reputation. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/murky-origins-why-china-will-never-welcome-a-global-inquiry-into-the-source-of-covid-19-136713">Murky origins: why China will never welcome a global inquiry into the source of COVID-19</a>
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</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The stakes could not be higher because Beijing has <a href="https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3115555/chinas-coronavirus-success-boosts-confidence-its-system-best">presented</a> the Communist Party’s strong, centralised rule as the key to the country’s success at controlling the pandemic and reviving its economy. </p>
<p>This has been contrasted with disastrous efforts to control the disease in the US under the Trump administration. The state-run Global Times has called the US a “<a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1209123.shtml">living hell</a>”.</p>
<p>Against this backdrop, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-china-who/china-doubles-down-on-covid-narrative-as-who-investigation-looms-idUSKBN29A0LU">Yanzhong Huang</a>, a senior fellow with the Council on Foreign Relations, says the WHO investigation team </p>
<blockquote>
<p>will have to be politically savvy and draw conclusions that are acceptable to all the major parties.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Citizen journalists disappear after reporting the truth</h2>
<p>Part of controlling the Communist Party narrative has entailed the detention of many citizen journalists who sounded the alarm about the virus in its early days, exposed the government’s attempts to cover it up and criticised its early response to control it.</p>
<p>In late December, one of these independent journalists, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3115749/eu-demands-china-release-citizen-reporter-zhang-zhan-and-12">Zhang Zhan</a>, was sentenced to four years imprisonment for the crime of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble”. </p>
<p>A former lawyer, Zhang travelled to Wuhan in February to talk to people about how they were coping in lockdown. She shared videos and talked about what she observed, at one point <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/china-coronavirus-wuhan-citizen-journalist-zhang-zhan-detained-may-not-survive/">noting</a> the fear people felt toward the government was actually greater than their fear of the virus.</p>
<p>In an interview before her detention, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy/article/3115749/eu-demands-china-release-citizen-reporter-zhang-zhan-and-12">she said</a></p>
<blockquote>
<p>Maybe I have a rebellious soul … I’m just documenting the truth. Why can’t I show the truth? </p>
</blockquote>
<figure>
<iframe width="440" height="260" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/ccWjl0spgMs?wmode=transparent&start=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe>
<figcaption><span class="caption">Some of Zhang’s video reports from Wuhan.</span></figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Zhang is just one of many critics whom the government has attempted to silence. </p>
<p>Chinese law professor Xu Zhangrun was <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-rot-goes-right-up-to-beijing-why-detained-professor-xu-zhangrun-is-such-a-threat-to-chinas-leadership-142074">detained by police</a> for a week after writing articles critical of Chinese President Xi Jinping, and then fired from his position at a university. He remains under surveillance and has been banned from leaving Beijing, but he <a href="https://supchina.com/2020/12/17/cyclopes-on-my-doorstep/">continues to write</a>.</p>
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<p>Others have simply disappeared. The outspoken lawyer and citizen journalist <a href="https://www.voanews.com/press-freedom/dont-forget-chen-qiushi-friend-chinese-journalist-says?amp">Chen Qiushi</a> went missing in February after reporting from Wuhan and didn’t reappear until late September. He also remained under “<a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-54277439">strict supervision</a>” by the authorities. </p>
<p>And Wuhan businessman <a href="https://qz.com/1801361/wuhan-virus-citizen-journalists-fang-bin-chen-qiushi-go-missing/">Fang Bin</a>, who was detained in early February after <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cgMzy-5f-qw">posting videos purporting to show COVID victims</a> inside hospitals, <a href="https://www.hrw.org/news/2021/01/06/china-seekers-covid-19-redress-harassed">hasn’t been heard from since</a>.</p>
<h2>Using the security system and courts to target civil society</h2>
<p>Under Xi’s leadership, the Communist Party has become increasingly vigorous in guarding the <a href="https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3553049">official propaganda</a> around party ideology and Xi’s rule from any form of criticism. </p>
<p>While <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2013-08/20/c_117021464_3.htm">Xi emphasised in a 2013 speech</a> the importance of the propaganda and “ideological leadership” to the country, the pandemic has allowed China’s party-state to extend its ideological control over the courts, eliminating any pretence of judicial autonomy. </p>
<p>This manipulation of rule-of-law institutions can be seen in the prosecution of citizen journalists like Zhang Zhan and anyone else who questions or criticises the official party line. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/china-has-a-new-way-to-exert-political-pressure-weaponising-its-courts-against-foreigners-141195">China has a new way to exert political pressure: weaponising its courts against foreigners</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p><a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/14672715.2016.1263803">Marxist scholars</a> and <a href="http://www.chinahumanrights.org/html/2017/MAGAZINES_0307/7571.html">party propagandists</a> argue there are no contradictions between party ideology and “rule of law”. In China, they say, there is no need for a legal separation of powers to ensure justice because the party is the <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40803-015-0003-9">ultimate expression of the people’s will</a> when it comes to law and order. </p>
<p>In essence, the Communist Party <em>is</em> the rule of law, with Chinese characteristics.</p>
<p>The party has long used the security system and courts in this way to “kill chickens to scare monkeys” (a Chinese idiom meaning to punish an individual as an example to others). </p>
<p>In the past, the targets have typically been prominent political dissidents, such as <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liu_Xiaobo">Liu Xiaobo</a> and <a href="https://chinadigitaltimes.net/china/wei-jingsheng/">Wei Jingsheng</a>, and <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/23/world/asia/china-crackdown-human-rights-lawyers.html">human rights lawyers</a>.</p>
<p>What is new and disturbing is the use of this tactic to eradicate <em>all</em> dissent and perceived threats to the party’s rule from civil society. Those targeted in recent years include <a href="https://theconversation.com/why-democracy-peddler-yang-hengjun-has-been-detained-in-china-and-why-he-must-be-released-120751">Chinese-Australian writer Yang Hengjun</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/dec/31/hong-kong-activist-jimmy-lai-returned-to-jail-until-at-least-february">Hong Kong media mogul Jimmy Lai</a> and <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-australia-53980706">Chinese-Australian journalist Cheng Lei</a>, as well as many <a href="https://theconversation.com/china-has-a-new-way-to-exert-political-pressure-weaponising-its-courts-against-foreigners-141195">foreigners</a>.</p>
<h2>Forced silence does not mean public belief</h2>
<p>This domestic political context makes it unlikely the WHO researchers will be allowed to fully investigate all hypotheses as to the origins of the coronavirus, such as the claim it could have been caused by a leak at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. </p>
<p>Although China’s so-called “<a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-chinas-bat-woman-hunted-down-viruses-from-sars-to-the-new-coronavirus1/">Bat Woman</a>”, virologist Shi Zhengli, has said she’d <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-55364445">welcome a visit</a> by the WHO team to the lab, leaked government documents tell another story.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/re-creating-live-animal-markets-in-the-lab-lets-researchers-see-how-pathogens-like-coronavirus-jump-species-130773">Re-creating live-animal markets in the lab lets researchers see how pathogens like coronavirus jump species</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>According to the documents, <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/china-s-top-secret-search-for-the-origins-of-coronavirus-20210102-p56rar.html">published by the Associated Press</a> this month, the government is monitoring scientists’ findings and requiring any research to be approved by a new task force under Xi’s direct command before publication. </p>
<p>Zhang’s case reveals how challenges to official narratives are now being dealt with in China. It also shows that Chinese citizens do not always find official narratives convincing and propagandists cannot force them to believe in ideology. The forced silencing of critics does not equate to people believing in the official party line. </p>
<p>With the origins of COVID-19, China’s citizens — and the world — deserve truth, not politically convenient spin.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/152751/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The stakes are high for China as WHO teams arrive to investigate the origins of the coronavirus. Beijing has presented a success story to the world — and will not accept any criticism.John Garrick, University Fellow in Law, Charles Darwin UniversityYan Bennett, Assistant Director, Princeton UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1512732020-12-02T04:51:58Z2020-12-02T04:51:58ZWhat’s behind China’s bullying of Australia? It sees a soft target — and an essential one<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372448/original/file-20201202-13-auw0in.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mark Schiefelbein/AP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/dec/01/france-and-new-zealand-join-australias-criticism-of-chinese-government-tweet">diplomatic fallout continues</a> over the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2020/nov/30/australia-china-pm-scott-morrison-demands-apology-fake-chinese-tweet-adf-soldier">digitally altered war crimes tweet</a> sent by China’s Foreign Ministry spokesman, Zhao Lijian, earlier this week, it’s important to note this inflammatory and offensive post is not an isolated case. </p>
<p>Zhao and other Chinese officials and diplomats have made many outrageous attacks on Australia and the US in recent years. Zhao himself was probably best known before this week’s tweet for his <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/03/13/asia/china-coronavirus-us-lijian-zhao-intl-hnk/index.html">official promotion of a conspiracy theory</a> that the US military was responsible for bringing the coronavirus to China. </p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1238123542627201032"}"></div></p>
<p>Hu Xijin, the editor in chief of the Global Times, an official newspaper of the Chinese Communist Party, is another vocal critic of Australia. </p>
<p>Four years ago, the newspaper <a href="https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/997320.shtml">published</a> a scathing editorial directed at Australia after Canberra said China must abide by an international tribunal ruling on the South China Sea. It called Australia a “paper cat” with an “inglorious” history, and said, “If Australia steps into the South China Sea waters, it will be an ideal target for China to warn and strike.”</p>
<h2>Why nationalism is such a powerful force in China</h2>
<p>These unrestrained attacks and repeated humiliations of Australia look bizarre, but they are engineered to suit a couple of specific purposes for the totalitarian regime in China: one domestic, the other global. </p>
<p>Domestically, this more aggressive posturing toward the world, known as “<a href="https://theconversation.com/behind-chinas-newly-aggressive-diplomacy-wolf-warriors-ready-to-fight-back-139028">wolf warrior diplomacy</a>”, is a key function of President Xi Jinping’s dictatorship, which is based almost exclusively on Chinese nationalism cultivated by the Communist Party. </p>
<p>Just like former leader Mao Zedong, Xi has consolidated his power, in part, due to the <a href="https://apnews.com/article/d36465492d6b48e3bbf1ddc01cc56869">cult of personality</a> that has developed around his rule. Xi’s image is everywhere in China and he’s even promoted his own ideology called “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/24/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-communist-party.html">Xi Jinping Thought</a>” in a similar vein to “<a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137379498_7">Mao Zedong Thought</a>” (and his famous <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-34932800">Little Red Book</a>).</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1331504036441427968"}"></div></p>
<p>Mao’s power was built on the twin ideologies of communism and Chinese nationalism. Today, however, communism is a waning force in China. </p>
<p>And though Xi and his followers still use the ideals of Marxism and “Xi Jinping Thought” for political purposes — such as purging rivals and dissidents — they rely heavily on Chinese nationalism to maintain the legitimacy of their rule in the eyes of the public.</p>
<p>Nationalism is a powerful force in today’s China. It’s seen in everything from Xi’s persistent calls for the “<a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/05/what-china-wants/528561/">great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation</a>” to Beijing’s increasingly strident anti-American and anti-foreign sentiments.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Xi Jinping's image is ever-present in today's China." src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372454/original/file-20201202-23-9kge3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372454/original/file-20201202-23-9kge3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372454/original/file-20201202-23-9kge3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372454/original/file-20201202-23-9kge3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372454/original/file-20201202-23-9kge3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372454/original/file-20201202-23-9kge3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372454/original/file-20201202-23-9kge3o.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Xi Jinping’s image is ever-present in today’s China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Xi rose to the top with a mediocre career, but has been dressed up magically as a strongman with great talent and unyielding will — an image that has become indispensable for the stability and cohesion of the regime. </p>
<p>In order to develop Xi’s strongman image and impose submission on the entire nation, the Communist Party propaganda machine has even resumed the titles used by Mao and other great dictators, such as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/20/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-helmsman-congress.html">helmsman</a>” and “<a href="https://asia.nikkei.com/Editor-s-Picks/China-up-close/Xi-scores-coup-and-grabs-party-backing-to-be-people-s-leader">people’s leader</a>”. Loyalty to the country, the party and the leader has been made identical once again.</p>
<p>Still, there is rising resentment among some Chinese to Xi’s rule and the country faces enormous political, economic and social challenges. As such, Xi lives with a profound sense of insecurity. And his arbitrary rule and desire for absolute control make everyone else feel insecure.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/xi-jinpings-grip-on-power-is-absolute-but-there-are-new-threats-to-his-chinese-dream-118921">Xi Jinping's grip on power is absolute, but there are new threats to his 'Chinese dream'</a>
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<p>It’s against this backdrop that “wolf warrior diplomacy” has taken rise. Those who are seen as being tough against any real or potential enemies designated by the great leader are rewarded for their loyalty. </p>
<p>This is why Zhao Lijian isn’t punished for his inflammatory rhetoric against Australia, the US and other adversaries; rather, he’s <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/asia/east-asia/in-china-diplomat-zhao-lijian-rises-as-aggressive-foreign-policy-takes-root">become a star</a> because of it.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="Zhao Lijian at a daily press briefing" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372449/original/file-20201202-13-3klibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372449/original/file-20201202-13-3klibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372449/original/file-20201202-13-3klibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372449/original/file-20201202-13-3klibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372449/original/file-20201202-13-3klibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372449/original/file-20201202-13-3klibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372449/original/file-20201202-13-3klibr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Zhao Lijian has built his career on ‘wolf warrior’-style diplomacy.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Andy Wong/AP</span></span>
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<h2>Beijing sees an essential and soft target</h2>
<p>And on the global stage, China has long promoted its economic and political system as a <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/china-model-beijings-promotion-alternative-global-norms-and-standards">legitimate alternative</a> to the US-led, rules-based international order. </p>
<p>As such, it has increasingly expanded its influence diplomatically and militarily in recent years and set up the Belt and Road Initiative to <a href="https://www.beltandroad.news/2020/05/08/laying-the-foundations-for-new-world-order/">create a new global economic and infrastructure network</a> with China at the centre.</p>
<p>As part of this grand strategy, China has taken aim at countries like Australia that dare to challenge it to force their submission.</p>
<p>Australia is perceived by the Communist Party as both an essential target for its close alliance with the US and a soft target for its economic dependence on China. In short, Beijing can attack Canberra without facing many repercussions — and set an example for the rest of the world.</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/australia-can-repair-its-relationship-with-china-here-are-3-ways-to-start-150455">Australia can repair its relationship with China, here are 3 ways to start</a>
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<p>The “wolf warriors” in the party have made frequent references to Australia being nothing but a pawn or lapdog of the US — an obvious attempt to drive a wedge between the two countries.</p>
<p>With <a href="https://www.afr.com/policy/economy/despite-trade-threats-china-is-taking-increasing-share-of-exports-20200728-p55g57">nearly half of all Australian goods exports</a> now going to China, Beijing has also tried to use this economic reliance to its advantage to force Canberra to modify its tone and behaviour.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="China has recently targeted Australian wine" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372455/original/file-20201202-23-6dfk43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/372455/original/file-20201202-23-6dfk43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372455/original/file-20201202-23-6dfk43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372455/original/file-20201202-23-6dfk43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372455/original/file-20201202-23-6dfk43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372455/original/file-20201202-23-6dfk43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/372455/original/file-20201202-23-6dfk43.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">China slapped a huge tariff on Australian wine in recent weeks.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">ALEX PLAVEVSKI/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
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<p>Showing the determination of the Communist Party regime to rein Australia in, the Chinese embassy in Canberra last month handed over a dossier of “<a href="https://www.smh.com.au/world/asia/if-you-make-china-the-enemy-china-will-be-the-enemy-beijing-s-fresh-threat-to-australia-20201118-p56fqs.html?utm_medium=Social&utm_source=Twitter#Echobox=1605683701">14 grievances</a>” to several Australian news outlets and demanded the Morrison government reverse Australia’s position on key policies.</p>
<p>These included criticising human rights abuses in Hong Kong and Xinjiang, calling for an independent investigation into the origins of COVID-19 and banning Huawei from the country’s 5G network. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/behind-chinas-newly-aggressive-diplomacy-wolf-warriors-ready-to-fight-back-139028">Behind China's newly aggressive diplomacy: 'wolf warriors' ready to fight back</a>
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<hr>
<p>The Communist Party state will not recognise how its quest for regional domination and expansionist policies threaten its neighbours, nor will it understand how its oppressive policies against its own citizens are a cause of legitimate concern for the world. </p>
<p>It will also not accept the reality of a strong Australia fighting back against Chinese bullying and interference to safeguard its sovereignty, core values and institutional integrity. </p>
<p>Beijing is flexing its muscles to ensure the submission of Australia and break up an Australia-US alliance based on national interests and shared values. But this is a gross miscalculation that will likely bring about the opposite result.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/151273/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Chongyi Feng has received research grants from the Australian Research Council.</span></em></p>China’s attacks on Australia may seem over the top, but they are meant to achieve specific goals — playing to a nationalist domestic audience and making an example of Australia to the world.Chongyi Feng, Associate Professor in China Studies, University of Technology SydneyLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1436552020-08-11T20:58:03Z2020-08-11T20:58:03ZBefore Kamala Harris became Biden’s running mate, Shirley Chisholm and other Black women aimed for the White House<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352376/original/file-20200811-16-1988bqr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=0%2C0%2C3901%2C2592&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Kamala Harris, a U.S. senator from California, endorsed Joe Biden for president in March. Now she is his vice presidential nominee. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/california-senator-kamala-harris-endorses-democratic-news-photo/1206293550">Jeff Kowalsky/AFP via Getty Images</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>The next vice president of the United States, Sen. Kamala Harris, is the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/i-am-who-i-am-kamala-harris-daughter-of-indian-and-jamaican-immigrants-defines-herself-simply-as-american/2019/02/02/0b278536-24b7-11e9-ad53-824486280311_story.html">American daughter of Jamaican and Indian immigrants</a>. With Joe Biden’s presidential win, she break three centuries-old barriers to become the nation’s first female vice president, first Black vice president and first Black female vice president. </p>
<p>Geraldine Ferraro was the first female vice-presidential candidate on a major party ticket, in 1984. In 2008, Alaska’s then-governor Sarah Palin was Republican John McCain’s running mate.</p>
<p>Before Harris was picked as Biden’s running mate, she was his competitor for the Democratic presidential nomination. She is one of many Black American women who have <a href="https://www.thoughtco.com/black-women-who-have-run-for-president-4068508">aimed for the highest office in the land</a> despite great odds. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351166/original/file-20200804-16-zpao3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351166/original/file-20200804-16-zpao3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351166/original/file-20200804-16-zpao3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351166/original/file-20200804-16-zpao3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351166/original/file-20200804-16-zpao3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351166/original/file-20200804-16-zpao3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351166/original/file-20200804-16-zpao3.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Biden, himself a former vice president, understands the significance of the role.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/presumptive-democratic-presidential-nominee-former-vice-news-photo/1227818356?adppopup=true">Mark Makela/Getty Images</a></span>
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</figure>
<h2>Hands that once picked cotton</h2>
<p>African Americans have endured many hurdles to political power in the United States, among them slavery, Jim Crow and disenfranchisement. </p>
<p>Black women, in particular, have hit barrier upon barrier. <a href="https://www.nps.gov/articles/african-american-women-and-the-nineteenth-amendment.htm">Women didn’t gain the right to vote in the U.S. until 1920</a>, and even then Black people – women among them – still couldn’t vote in most of the South. In the 1960s, Black women helped <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hidden-history-of-black-nationalist-womens-political-activism-89695">organize the civil rights movement</a> but were kept out of leadership positions. </p>
<p>As a <a href="https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=V8VhlpAAAAAJ&hl=en">political science professor</a>, I address issues like these in my government and minority politics classes. But I also teach my students that Black women have a history of political ambition and achievement. As the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. said in 1984 about the progress <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1984/02/10/us/jackson-tells-alabama-it-will-never-be-the-same.html">Black voters made last century</a>, “Hands that once picked cotton will now pick a president.” </p>
<p>Today, <a href="https://theconversation.com/americas-black-female-mayors-face-dual-crises-of-covid-19-and-protests-but-these-women-are-used-to-uphill-battles-140415">Black female mayors</a> lead several of the United States’ biggest cities, including Atlanta, Chicago and San Francisco. Black women are <a href="https://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-seattle-portland-chiefs-20180816-story.html">police chiefs</a>, <a href="https://www.nbcwashington.com/news/local/virginia-democrat-runs-to-become-first-black-woman-governor-in-us/2336934/">gubernatorial candidates</a>, and, in growing numbers, <a href="https://www.cawp.rutgers.edu/women-color-elective-office-2019">congresswomen</a>.</p>
<p>Now, Black women, who once had no chance of even voting for president – much less being president – will see one of their own a step away from the Oval Office. </p>
<p>Biden allies have <a href="https://www.politico.com/news/2019/12/11/biden-single-term-082129">reportedly suggested</a> that he would only serve one term if elected because of his age – Biden would be 78 on Inauguration Day – but his <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/2020-election/biden-campaign-refutes-speculation-one-term-pledge-n1099766">campaign officially denies that possibility</a>. Either way, his vice president would be in a powerful position for the 2024 campaign.</p>
<p>Harris is also of Indian descent, making her place on the ticket a meaningful first for two communities of color. </p>
<h2>‘Unsuitable’ for the job?</h2>
<p>Kamala Harris is a registered Democrat who served as California’s attorney general and later one of the state’s U.S. senators. But, historically, most Black female presidential candidates have run as independents.</p>
<p>In 1968, 38-year-old Charlene Mitchell of Ohio became the first Black woman to run for president, as a communist. Like many other African Americans born in the 1930s, Mitchell joined the Communist Party because of <a href="https://www.thecrimson.com/article/1968/11/5/charlene-mitchell-pbtbhe-frederick-douglas-book/">its emphasis on racial and gender equality</a>. Black female communists fought Jim Crow, lynchings and unfair labor practices for <a href="https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/communists-and-the-long-struggle-for-african-american-equality/">men and women of all races</a>. </p>
<figure class="align-right zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="A portrait of Charlene Mitchell" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=818&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/352378/original/file-20200811-13-1chj8s8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1028&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
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<span class="caption">Charlene Mitchell, America’s first Black female presidential candidate.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4c/Charlene_Mitchell.jpg/176px-Charlene_Mitchell.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
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<p>Mitchell’s presidential campaign, which focused on <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/a-black-woman-communist-candidate-charlene-mitchells-1968-presidential-campaign/">civil rights and poverty</a>, was probably doomed from the start. In 1968, many states didn’t <a href="https://diva.sfsu.edu/collections/sfbatv/bundles/220770">allow communists on the ballot</a>. Media outlets from the <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/a-black-woman-communist-candidate-charlene-mitchells-1968-presidential-campaign/">Boston Globe to the Chicago Tribune</a> also discussed Mitchell’s “unsuitability” as a candidate <a href="https://www.aaihs.org/a-black-woman-communist-candidate-charlene-mitchells-1968-presidential-campaign/">because she was both Black and female</a>. Mitchell received <a href="https://www.jofreeman.com/politics/womprez.htm">just 1,075 votes</a>.</p>
<p>Other independent Black female presidential candidates include community organizer Margaret Wright, who <a href="https://nursingclio.org/2016/11/08/rosie-the-riveter-for-president-margaret-wright-the-peoples-party-and-black-feminism/">ran on the People’s Party ticket in 1976</a>; Isabell Masters, a teacher who created her own third party, <a href="https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/obituaries/politics-obituaries/8788002/Isabell-Masters.html">called Looking Back</a> and ran in 1984, 1992 and 2004; and teacher Monica Moorehead of the Workers World Party ticket, who ran in 1996, 2000 and 2016. </p>
<p>In 2008, the year Barack Obama was elected president, Cynthia McKinney, a former U.S. representative from Georgia, was a <a href="https://www.gp.org/">nominee of the Green Party</a>. And in 2012, Peta Lindsay ran to unseat President Obama from the left, on the <a href="https://www.pslweb.org/about">Party for Socialism and Liberation ticket</a>. </p>
<p>Only one Black woman has ever pursued the Republican nomination: Angel Joy Charvis, a religious conservative from Florida, who wanted to use her 1999 candidacy to “<a href="https://www.orlandosentinel.com/news/os-xpm-1999-03-24-9903240069-story.html">to recruit a new breed of Republican</a>.”</p>
<h2>Unbought and unbossed</h2>
<p>These Black female presidential candidates were little known. But as the first Black female member of Congress, Shirley Chisholm had years of experience in public office and a national reputation when she became the first Black American and the first woman to seek the Democratic presidential nomination in 1972. Chisholm’s campaign slogan: “<a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/shirley-chisholm-unbought-and-unbossed-presidential-campaign-poster-cover-stories/">Unbought and Unbossed</a>.” </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351167/original/file-20200804-20-1gcru4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/351167/original/file-20200804-20-1gcru4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351167/original/file-20200804-20-1gcru4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351167/original/file-20200804-20-1gcru4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351167/original/file-20200804-20-1gcru4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351167/original/file-20200804-20-1gcru4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/351167/original/file-20200804-20-1gcru4z.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=502&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Shirley Chisholm announces her entry for the Democratic nomination.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://www.gettyimages.com/detail/news-photo/representative-shirley-chisholm-of-brooklyn-announces-her-news-photo/3240579?adppopup=true">Don Hogan Charles/New York Times Co. via Getty Images</a></span>
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<p>Chisholm, who mostly paid for her campaign on her <a href="https://theundefeated.com/features/shirley-chisholm-unbought-and-unbossed-presidential-campaign-poster-cover-stories/">credit card</a>, focused on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/06/sunday-review/shirley-chisholm-monument-film.html">civil rights and poverty</a>. </p>
<p>She became the target of vehement sexism. One <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/1972/06/25/archives/the-short-unhappy-life-of-black-presidential-politics-1972-black.html">New York Times article from June 1972</a> described her appearance as, “[Not] beautiful. Her face is bony and angular, her nose wide and flat, her eyes small almost to beadiness, her neck and limbs scrawny. Her protruding teeth probably account in part for her noticeable lisp.” </p>
<p>[<em>Get the best of The Conversation, every weekend.</em> <a href="https://theconversation.com/us/newsletters/weekly-highlights-61?utm_source=TCUS&utm_medium=inline-link&utm_campaign=newsletter-text&utm_content=weeklybest">Sign up for our weekly newsletter</a>.]</p>
<p>Chisholm received little support from either Black or female voters and won <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20141111182057/http://www.uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/polhistory/chisholm.htm">not a single primary</a>. </p>
<p>The Black women who followed in Chisholm’s footsteps from Congress to the Democratic presidential primary, including <a href="https://www.haverford.edu/college-communications/news/carol-moseley-braun-presents-views-government-democratic-party">Illinois Sen. Carol Moseley Braun</a> and Harris herself, have seen little more success. Harris was among the <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/03/politics/kamala-harris-ends-presidential-bid/index.html">first 2020 Democratic primary candidates to drop out, in December 2019</a>.</p>
<h2>Challenges for Black women</h2>
<p>Why did these candidacies and those of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2020/08/12/bass-kamala-first-black-vp/">other Black women</a> who aimed for high office fail? </p>
<p>In most cases, my research finds, America’s Black female presidential candidates haven’t made the ballot. Those who did had trouble raising funds. </p>
<p>And because their candidacies <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2020/03/03/losing-primary-candidates-still-influence-race/">weren’t taken seriously</a> by the media, they had trouble getting their messages heard. Historically Black female presidential candidates have received <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/11/29/us/politics/kamala-harris-2020.html">no real support from any segment of American voters</a>, including African Americans and women. Generally, people – even those who might have been heartened by the idea that someone who looked like them could aspire to the White House – <a href="https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smithsonian-institution/unbought-and-unbossed-when-black-woman-ran-for-the-white-house-180958699/">thought they couldn’t win</a>.</p>
<p>As a vice president for two terms who had a major role in governing under Barack Obama, Joe Biden knows what the office entails. He has now selected a woman who he believes can not only help him win the election but also to govern if he is elected. It is a watershed moment for African Americans, Asian Americans and women who’ve so long been excluded from so many aspects of politics.</p>
<p><em>Editor’s note: This story has been updated to clarify that it is not an exhaustive list of all Black women who have ever run for president or vice president. An <a href="https://theconversation.com/before-kamala-harris-many-black-women-aimed-for-the-white-house-149729">updated version of this story</a> was published after the 2020 election.</em></p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/143655/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Sharon D. Wright Austin does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>Many African American women have run for president of the US, despite the enormous barriers facing both Black and female candidates. Biden’s pick puts a Black woman much closer to the Oval Office.Sharon D. Wright Austin, Professor of Political Science, University of FloridaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1317602020-02-19T19:02:07Z2020-02-19T19:02:07ZHow vulnerable is Xi Jinping over coronavirus? In today’s China, there are few to hold him to account<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316090/original/file-20200219-10976-4hf4dr.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">NOEL CELIS / POOL/ EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Brand “People’s Republic of China” is wobbling, as if the massive picture of Mao Zedong in Tiananmen Square was swaying with an earthquake tremor. But it can only actually fall if pushed from inside.</p>
<p>The handling of the coronavirus epidemic is undoubtedly sapping confidence in the Communist party and its formerly all-conquering general secretary, Xi Jinping.</p>
<p>Any country or ruling party would struggle if faced with a similarly massive challenge – exacerbated by the great annual domestic migration for Lunar New Year.</p>
<p>But the party and its leader shoulder especially great ambitions of entering a “new era” created by Xi to “<a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1fa302f6-b3b1-11e7-a398-73d59db9e399">realise the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation</a>.”</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-the-coronavirus-has-become-a-major-test-for-the-leadership-of-xi-jinping-and-the-communist-party-130788">Why the coronavirus has become a major test for the leadership of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party</a>
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<p>National elders selected Xi as leader in 2012 to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/in-china-investigations-and-purges-become-the-new-normal/2018/10/21/077fa736-d39c-11e8-a275-81c671a50422_story.html">purge corruption and purify the party</a>. He has replaced most senior officials, including in the People’s Liberation Army, with those who <a href="https://jamestown.org/program/xi-jinping-faction-dominates-regional-appointments-19th-party-congress/">supported his rise</a> through the provincial ranks in Fujian and Zhejiang.</p>
<p>Xi has restructured the party, <a href="https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/why-xi-jinpings-cult-of-personality-is-more-dangerous-than-it-looks/article38168122/">personalised and centralised power</a>. Leveraging the anti-corruption campaign, he has also built the central party’s <a href="https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2018/02/china-surveillance/552203/">vast surveillance and control powers</a>.</p>
<h2>Losing the ‘mandate of heaven’</h2>
<p>The big question now is how this renovated party structure is holding up against the appalling coronavirus epidemic. Particularly as it compounds an economic slowdown already <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-to-get-ready-as-the-us-china-trade-war-spills-over-to-other-countries-114361">exacerbated by the trade-and-tech war with the US</a> and Beijing’s struggles to subdue its troubled borderlands in <a href="https://theconversation.com/patriotic-songs-and-self-criticism-why-china-is-re-educating-muslims-in-mass-dHongetention-camps-99592">Xinjiang</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/beijing-is-moving-to-stamp-out-the-hong-kong-protests-but-it-may-have-already-lost-the-city-for-good-121815">Hong Kong</a>.</p>
<p>It would seem logical that since Xi claims all the glory for China’s economic rise and global influence, he would bear the responsibility for disasters, as well. </p>
<p>This would fit with the old imperial danger of losing the “<a href="https://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource/mandate-heaven-story-of-china/mandate-heaven-story-of-china/">mandate of heaven</a>” – the notion that only a righteous ruler would retain the approval of the gods.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316098/original/file-20200219-11040-1bmktg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316098/original/file-20200219-11040-1bmktg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316098/original/file-20200219-11040-1bmktg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316098/original/file-20200219-11040-1bmktg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316098/original/file-20200219-11040-1bmktg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316098/original/file-20200219-11040-1bmktg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316098/original/file-20200219-11040-1bmktg1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Medical staff at a makeshift hospital in Wuhan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Stringer/EPA</span></span>
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</figure>
<p>But there’s a long history in China of people blaming local officials for problems, while retaining a belief in the power of the emperor or general secretary to resolve them. Hundreds of thousands still <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-26462568">annually petition the central party leadership</a> about regional and personal wrongs.</p>
<p>Many are still assessing where to pin blame for the current crisis and are reluctant to accept what they are told officially. People are adroitly downloading and re-posting censored messages on social media, causing the “net police” constant whack-a-mole grief. </p>
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<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-coronavirus-and-chinese-social-media-finger-pointing-in-the-post-truth-era-130698">The coronavirus and Chinese social media: finger-pointing in the post-truth era</a>
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<p>This is why the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html">initial failings of the Wuhan authorities</a>, which likely enabled the virus to spread rapidly, have aroused widespread anger in China. And why many rightly dubbed the whistleblowing doctor Li Wenliang, who died from the disease after being hauled in by police, <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/society/article/3050733/li-wenliang-ordinary-hero-centre-coronavirus-storm">a martyr</a>. </p>
<p>In recent days, the central government has also blamed local authorities, <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/coronavirus-china-live-updates/2020/02/13/fce6e116-4dea-11ea-b721-9f4cdc90bc1c_story.html">replacing the party secretary in Hubei province</a>. However, public anger and distrust of the authorities still burns. </p>
<p>Crises like the <a href="https://qz.com/1323471/ten-years-after-chinas-melamine-laced-infant-milk-tragedy-deep-distrust-remains/">melamine-laced milk powder scandal</a> that sickened more than 300,000 babies in 2008 and now coronavirus underline a basic reality: for all the vast sums spent on security in China, it remains fundamentally elusive for most people.</p>
<p>Alistair Nicholas, a Sydney-based business consultant with extensive China experience, told me his contacts in China have said </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the poor initial handling of the crisis by the Chinese authorities has ‘left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Chinese.’ Trust with their own government has been broken and those who can will leave.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>With hundreds of millions still staying largely at home, staring at smartphones, such sentiments seep out everywhere.</p>
<h2>Reform remains unlikely</h2>
<p>Xi will, of course, be aware it was in Wuchang, a district of Wuhan, where a <a href="https://history.state.gov/milestones/1899-1913/chinese-rev">rebellion began in 1911 that triggered</a> the downfall of the Qing Dynasty.</p>
<p>Today, however, the extent of China’s online and offline controls almost rule out change – or even threat – coming from the “masses”. </p>
<p>They are not trusted to participate in their own governance. They are given no scope to organise. Since seizing power in 1949, the party has drawn a line under further revolutions.</p>
<p>In the last few days, two figures named Xu have challenged Xi, and suffered the consequences. </p>
<p><a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/17/chinese-activist-arrested-xi-jinping-clueless-coronavirus-xu-zhiyong">Xu Zhiyong</a>, a civil rights activist and academic who called on Xi to resign over the virus response, has been arrested by security officials in Guangzhou. </p>
<p>And <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/15/xi-critic-professor-this-may-be-last-piece-i-write-words-ring-true">Xu Zhangrun</a>, a famous law professor at Tsinghua University, has been placed under effective house arrest after posting <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/viral-alarm-when-fury-overcomes-fear">a lengthy critique</a> that said China’s political system </p>
<blockquote>
<p>turns every natural disaster into an even greater man-made catastrophe.</p>
</blockquote>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1228808735822213122"}"></div></p>
<p>There has also been sharp criticism of China’s response to the crisis overseas, but this, too, carries limited weight in Beijing. </p>
<p>Instead, China highlights and relishes the applause its governance receives, especially from agencies like the World Health Organisation. WHO Director-General Tedros Ghebreyesus recently thanked China for its “transparency” and <a href="https://www.statnews.com/2020/01/29/who-reconvene-expert-committee-coronavirus/">heaped particular praise on Xi</a> for his “detailed knowledge of the outbreak”.</p>
<p>There are, of course, <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/02/17/asia/china-coronavirus-xi-jinping-intl-hnk/index.html">questions</a> about when Xi’s knowledge of the outbreak actually began. </p>
<p>But rather than claiming ignorance of the severity of the outbreak at the outset, Xi has decided to take a different course. He’s persisting with his <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3050815/xi-jinping-put-chinas-top-echelon-notice-early-days-coronavirus">customary claim of omniscience and blaming local officials</a>, while insisting China’s “war” against the virus has been valiant, as attested by the WHO and other international voices. </p>
<p>Who is going to take credible issue with that?</p>
<p>In today’s China, it is not intellectuals or the general public, but the <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/201906/30/WS5d1825c6a3103dbf1432b08f.html">90 million party members</a> who will determine whether this epidemic demands substantial change. </p>
<p>And that will ultimately depend on the tiny circle of elite cadres surrounding Xi. Unless a convincing crack appears at the top, the crucial band of middle-ranking party managers will sit tight.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316100/original/file-20200219-11000-1t2wwtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/316100/original/file-20200219-11000-1t2wwtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316100/original/file-20200219-11000-1t2wwtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316100/original/file-20200219-11000-1t2wwtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316100/original/file-20200219-11000-1t2wwtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316100/original/file-20200219-11000-1t2wwtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/316100/original/file-20200219-11000-1t2wwtg.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus has urged the international community to focus on fighting the epidemic, not questioning China’s actions.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">SALVATORE DI NOLFI/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>‘Not just a problem for China, but for the world’</h2>
<p>The personalisation of the system, combined with Xi’s reluctance to groom a successor is, however, steadily raising party anxiety about the future.</p>
<p>Xi <a href="https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/3050210/china-struggles-balance-coronavirus-containment-economic-cost">said recently</a>, </p>
<blockquote>
<p>the long-term sound fundamentals of our economy haven’t changed … The impact of the outbreak will only be short-term.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>But the rippling effects of coronavirus threaten to derail Xi’s vision of “rejuvenation” - a Chinese century of power and affluence. Economists ponder whether China <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com.au/coronavirus-recovery-harder-sars-china-economy-challenge-nomura-richard-koo-2020-2?r=US&IR=T">will now spring the “middle income trap”</a> that has restrained the prosperity of other nations, risking a failure to “get rich before it grows old.”</p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/xi-jinpings-grip-on-power-is-absolute-but-there-are-new-threats-to-his-chinese-dream-118921">Xi Jinping's grip on power is absolute, but there are new threats to his 'Chinese dream'</a>
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<p>The <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/politics/article/3050966/china-postpones-years-biggest-political-gathering-amid">almost certain postponement</a> of next month’s National People’s Congress is a further mark of a government in crisis. Despite making good health sense, this move would create political risk by acknowledging that even pillar state events are now eluding Xi’s control. </p>
<p>Once eventually summoned, though, the NPC delegates will be expected to cheer to the red rafters Xi’s victory in the “People’s War” against coronavirus.</p>
<p>But what does it mean, <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2020/02/10/xi-jinping-may-lose-control-of-the-coronavirus-story/">asks Jude Blanchette</a>, who holds the Freeman Chair in China Studies at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies, for Xi to dominate a party and government</p>
<blockquote>
<p>that appear unable to confront, diagnose, and effectively overcome complex domestic and international challenges? That’s not just a problem for China, but for the world.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Or as the stood-down law professor <a href="http://www.chinafile.com/reporting-opinion/viewpoint/viral-alarm-when-fury-overcomes-fear">Xu Zhangrun asks</a>, can a regime that cannot treat its own people well, treat the world well?</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/131760/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Rowan Callick does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s leader is facing one of the greatest challenges of his presidency. But the extent of China’s controls almost rule out monumental change – or Xi taking accountability for his mistakes.Rowan Callick, Industry Fellow, Griffith UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1307882020-02-04T19:00:23Z2020-02-04T19:00:23ZWhy the coronavirus has become a major test for the leadership of Xi Jinping and the Communist Party<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313237/original/file-20200203-41527-pu9la4.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=367%2C22%2C2303%2C1587&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">
</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Wu Hong/EPA</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a global health emergency. In the <a href="https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/30-01-2020-statement-on-the-second-meeting-of-the-international-health-regulations-(2005)-emergency-committee-regarding-the-outbreak-of-novel-coronavirus-(2019-ncov)">same statement</a>, the agency said it</p>
<blockquote>
<p>welcomed the leadership and political commitment of the very highest levels of Chinese government, their commitment to transparency and the efforts made to investigate and contain the current outbreak.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Indeed, Chinese authorities have put in place unprecedented measures to slow the spread of coronavirus, <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/01/27/800158025/45-million-chinese-now-under-quarantine-as-officials-try-to-halt-coronavirus-spr">including quarantining Wuhan and surrounding cities</a>, home to over 45 million people. </p>
<p>While some have <a href="https://twitter.com/DrTedros/status/1222982869871669251">praised Chinese authorities</a> for these tough measures, others have criticised the local and central governments for cover-ups, a lack of transparency, being slow to react and mishandling the early stages of the outbreak. </p>
<p>For some, China’s authoritarian political system <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/01/world/asia/china-coronavirus.html">is to blame for making the situation worse</a> and delaying action until it was too late. </p>
<p>Now, the crisis is being seen as a <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/01/29/xi-jinping-better-red-than-expert-coronavirus-is-challenging-that/">key test of President Xi Jinping’s leadership</a> and the ability of the Communist Party to effectively respond to and manage a health emergency.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313459/original/file-20200204-41554-1eb3cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313459/original/file-20200204-41554-1eb3cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313459/original/file-20200204-41554-1eb3cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313459/original/file-20200204-41554-1eb3cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=392&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313459/original/file-20200204-41554-1eb3cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313459/original/file-20200204-41554-1eb3cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313459/original/file-20200204-41554-1eb3cs.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=493&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">There wasn’t national attention on the outbreak until late January, weeks after the government reported the first cases to the WHO.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Alex Plavevski/EPA</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>Too slow to react</h2>
<p>Suspicions of the new virus first emerged in early December. But it wasn’t until the end of the month that the Chinese government reported 27 cases of pneumonia to the WHO. The <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2019-12/31/c_138669240.htm">state media mentioned</a> this only briefly. </p>
<p>A day later, police in Wuhan <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/china-arrested-doctors-who-warned-about-coronavirus-outbreak-now-death-tolls-rising-stocks-are-plunging">detained eight doctors</a> for spreading “rumours” about a new outbreak of suspected SARS.</p>
<p>China <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/2020-01/11/c_1125448269.htm">reported the first death</a> from the outbreak on January 11, but without accompanying warnings to the public to take extra precautions. No new infections were reported until January 20, when <a href="http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2020-01/20/c_138721568.htm">Xi issued a directive</a> for party committees and governments at all levels to take effective measures to combat the outbreak. </p>
<hr>
<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/fear-spreads-easily-thats-what-gives-the-wuhan-coronavirus-economic-impact-130780">Fear spreads easily. That's what gives the Wuhan coronavirus economic impact</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>During this time, it was business as usual in Wuhan, with the government <a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/china-contends-with-questions-over-response-to-viral-outbreak-11579825832">organising a New Year banquet</a> for 40,000 families.</p>
<p>By the time Xi issued his directive, it had been seven weeks since the virus was first recorded and three weeks since it was reported to the WHO. </p>
<p>Crucially, it was also 10 days after the official start of the Spring Festival (Lunar New Year) travel period, the <a href="http://www.gov.cn/shuju/2019-03/01/content_5369667.htm">largest annual human migration in the world</a>.</p>
<p>At this point, the central government finally sprang into action, locking down Wuhan, shutting down public transport, building new hospitals and giving more leeway to the media to report on the unfolding crisis.</p>
<p>But it may have been too late. According to some estimates, <a href="https://news.cgtn.com/news/2020-01-27/5-million-people-left-Wuhan-before-the-lockdown-where-did-they-go--NACCu9wItW/index.html">five million people</a> had already left Wuhan before these measures took effect.</p>
<p><div data-react-class="Tweet" data-react-props="{"tweetId":"1221607450362728454"}"></div></p>
<h2>Silence, followed by censorship</h2>
<p>The initial reaction of the Chinese authorities to the outbreak was to rely on traditional forms of censorship rather than transparency. </p>
<p>This is clear from the initial suppression of whistleblowers – the detention of the eight doctors for spreading “rumours” – as well as the subdued reporting from the state media before January 20.</p>
<p>One possible reason for the silence is Beijing believed it could contain the outbreak without any extra measures, particularly at the start, when the nature of the virus was uncertain. The authorities may have believed mass panic would do more harm than the virus itself. </p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-fears-can-trigger-anti-chinese-prejudice-heres-how-schools-can-help-130945">Coronavirus fears can trigger anti-Chinese prejudice. Here's how schools can help</a>
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<p>But after containment appeared unlikely, the central government wasted crucial time deciding what to do. Without clear direction from Beijing, the authorities in Wuhan chose not to act, which allowed the infection to spread.</p>
<p>Media coverage of the outbreak finally exploded after Xi’s January 20 directive, including by non-state media. However, strict censorship returned after two weeks, ostensibly to combat misinformation.</p>
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<h2>Playing the blame game</h2>
<p>As anger deepens over how the crisis has been handled, the public will want to see <a href="https://www.yicaiglobal.com/news/2-officials-fired-over-dereliction-of-duty-in-anti-epidemic-effort">officials lose their jobs</a> and even be prosecuted. </p>
<p>The process of finding people to blame has started within the Communist Party. And already, we are seeing local government officials <a href="https://www.japantimes.co.jp/news/2020/02/03/asia-pacific/politics-diplomacy-asia-pacific/xi-jinping-china-coronavirus-2/#.Xji66lMzZBw">being sacked</a>.</p>
<p>But the central government’s role should also be scrutinised. Beijing must have known about the outbreak by December 31, when it reported the cases of pneumonia to the WHO. Serious questions need to be asked, then, about why the central government chose not to respond publicly for another three weeks.</p>
<p>When things go right in a dictatorship, the credit goes to the leader. But when things go wrong, the blame can also rise to the top.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/xi-jinpings-grip-on-power-is-absolute-but-there-are-new-threats-to-his-chinese-dream-118921">Xi Jinping's grip on power is absolute, but there are new threats to his 'Chinese dream'</a>
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<p>In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the party was able to push the blame for the Great Leap Forward and the subsequent Great Famine onto local cadres. However, Mao’s prestige within the party also suffered greatly as a result.</p>
<p>Xi has followed Mao’s leadership style in many aspects, not least the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/comment/letters/article/2158612/why-xi-jinping-personality-cult-china-brings-back-memories-mao">cult of personality</a> he has built around himself. He has also been <a href="https://theconversation.com/xi-jinpings-grip-on-power-is-absolute-but-there-are-new-threats-to-his-chinese-dream-118921">consolidating power</a> since he became party general-secretary in late 2012. </p>
<p>Sensing the potential political damage from the current crisis, the state media is now trying to shield Xi from direct criticism and blame. </p>
<p>Instead, it is focusing on the responses of other top leaders, particularly Premier Li Keqiang. In fact, for nearly a week from late January to early February, Xi did not appear on the front page of the party mouthpiece, People’s Daily, in stories related to the outbreak. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313236/original/file-20200203-41516-1kfykdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/313236/original/file-20200203-41516-1kfykdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313236/original/file-20200203-41516-1kfykdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313236/original/file-20200203-41516-1kfykdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=450&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313236/original/file-20200203-41516-1kfykdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313236/original/file-20200203-41516-1kfykdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/313236/original/file-20200203-41516-1kfykdh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=566&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
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<span class="caption">Premier Li Keqiang was mocked online for leading workers in a cheer when he visited Wuhan.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">Shepherd Zhou/EPA</span></span>
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<h2>Propaganda and trust</h2>
<p>All propaganda must have heroes and villains. The virus is the villain in this story, and the biggest heroes are the front-line doctors who are working long hours in dangerous conditions to fight it. The people, government and party have also been cast as heroes, united against a common threat.</p>
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<p>The party knows the public has low trust of authorities when it comes to transparency, as it has an extensive history of cover-ups of everything from <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/china/policies-politics/article/2083483/chinese-local-governments-admit-major-cover-2012-flood">natural disasters</a> to <a href="https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/aug/20/inside-china-tianjin-explosions-cover-up-exposes-b/">accidents</a> to outbreaks of <a href="https://edition.cnn.com/2020/01/24/asia/china-sars-coronavirus-intl-hnk/index.html">other diseases like SARS</a>.</p>
<p>It hopes the focus on unity and heroes, coupled with more timely updates, will restore people’s trust in the government’s handling of this outbreak. </p>
<p>However, this is unlikely given the scale of public anger at the moment. This, in turn, may explain the state media’s search for other villains, particularly the US and other western countries that are <a href="http://en.people.cn/n3/2020/0203/c90000-9653793.html">shutting their borders to China</a>.</p>
<h2>A key test for the party</h2>
<p>The party’s prestige and legitimacy are both on the line. Crises like this are a serious test of the party’s assertions about the inherent superiority of China’s political system.</p>
<p>Ultimately, the Chinese people are likely to judge the party harshly, despite its efforts at narrative control. </p>
<p>One thing is for certain: the unfolding crisis is a human catastrophe, and Beijing has much to answer for.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/130788/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The Chinese government is accused of reacting too slowly to the health crisis and silencing its critics. Now, the public is angry and wants party leaders to be held accountable.Yun Jiang, Senior Research Officer, Australian National UniversityAdam Ni, China researcher, Macquarie UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1233392019-09-11T02:16:24Z2019-09-11T02:16:24ZWhy Gladys Liu must answer to parliament about alleged links to the Chinese government<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/291872/original/file-20190911-190035-1sfl9yw.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Liu denies having ties to the Chinese Communist Party, but she is closely connected with a number of United Front organisations in Australia.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Lukas Coch/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Around 2005, the Chinese government <a href="https://www.thedailybeast.com/how-china-built-an-army-of-influence-agents-in-the-us?ref=scroll">began pushing its policy</a> of <em>huaren canzheng</em>, or “ethnic Chinese participation in politics overseas”. It was a new tactic in the Chinese Communist Party’s “united front” strategy to gain political influence abroad by helping trusted members of the Chinese diaspora gain political influence.</p>
<p>Since then, ethnic Chinese people supported by Beijing have begun joining political parties and running for office in <a href="https://nationalpost.com/news/mpps-ties-to-china-raise-questions-about-how-close-canadian-politicians-should-get-to-foreign-powers">Canada</a>, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/sep/13/china-born-new-zealand-mp-yang-jian-denies-being-a-spy">New Zealand</a>, Britain and <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/asio-identifies-political-candidates-with-links-to-china">Australia</a>. The strategy is most advanced in Canada, but it’s been building in Australia, too.</p>
<p>The baleful consequence of this new situation is that Chinese communities, already seriously under-represented in parliaments, now find themselves represented by people whose loyalties are in doubt. The CCP has poisoned the well.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/politics-with-michelle-grattan-clive-hamilton-and-richard-rigby-on-chinese-influence-in-australia-94973">Politics with Michelle Grattan: Clive Hamilton and Richard Rigby on Chinese influence in Australia</a>
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<h2>Liu’s links with various organisations</h2>
<p>It’s with these developments in mind that <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-10/gladys-liu-parliament-eligibility-in-question-amid-accusations/11493632">questions have been raised</a> about the alleged links of the newly elected Liberal member for Chisholm, Gladys Liu, to organisations associated with the Chinese Communist Party.</p>
<p>Investigations by the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-10/gladys-liu-parliament-eligibility-in-question-amid-accusations/11493632">ABC</a> and <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/china-s-activities-in-key-marginal-seat-affect-labor-liberal-candidates-20190510-p51lzf.html">Nine newspapers</a> have revealed that Liu has been closely connected with a number of organisations in Australia and China that are directed by or closely linked to the CCP’s powerful <a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-chinas-vast-influence-network-how-it-works-and-the-extent-of-its-reach-in-australia-119174">United Front Work Department</a>. </p>
<p>One of the department’s tasks is to co-opt and guide ethnic Chinese people living abroad so they act in the interests of the Communist Party. Its size and importance have increased sharply under President Xi Jinping, who has described United Front as one of the party’s “<a href="https://www.wilsoncenter.org/article/magic-weapons-chinas-political-influence-activities-under-xi-jinping">magic weapons</a>”.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/inside-chinas-vast-influence-network-how-it-works-and-the-extent-of-its-reach-in-australia-119174">Inside China's vast influence network – how it works, and the extent of its reach in Australia</a>
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<p>One prominent United Front organisation is the Guangdong provincial branch of the China Overseas Exchange Association, an <a href="https://foreignpolicyblogs.com/2016/06/09/beijing-hidden-influence-san-francisco/">overseas propaganda</a> and influence outfit headed by high-ranking party officials. Documents <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-10/gladys-liu-parliament-eligibility-in-question-amid-accusations/11493632">show</a> that Liu has been a council member of this organisation.</p>
<p>She has also <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/china-s-activities-in-key-marginal-seat-affect-labor-liberal-candidates-20190510-p51lzf.html">confirmed</a> she has been an honorary president of the United Chinese Commerce Association of Australia. </p>
<p>There is strong evidence that this body is part of the CCP’s United Front network for exerting political influence in Australia. For example, the current president, Huang Zhuang, has <a href="http://archive.fo/PRyLc">close links</a> with party organisations in China. And its permanent honorary president, Lo Man-tuen, is a <a href="https://uk.reuters.com/business/stocks/officer-profile/0412.HK/2879223">member of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference</a>, a <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20171119130320/http://www.china.org.cn/english/27750.htm">top-level patriotic advisory body</a>.</p>
<p>In September 2018, Liu was also <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/federal-election-2019/china-s-activities-in-key-marginal-seat-affect-labor-liberal-candidates-20190510-p51lzf.html">appointed</a> honorary president of the Australia Jiangmen General Commercial Association, an investment promotion body whose senior officers, including its president Wilson Cui, <a href="https://archive.fo/98gKX">hold positions in CCP United Front organisations</a>.</p>
<p>The Jiangmen association was one of the organisations that backed a <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/south-china-sea-protests-to-come-to-melbourne-20160721-gqaubb.html">protest on the streets of Melbourne</a> in 2016 against a ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration in The Hague, <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-12/china-no-legal-basis-south-china-sea-tribunal-finds/7622738">rejecting</a> China’s claims to much of the South China Sea.</p>
<p>Liu initially said she “<a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-11/gladys-liu-chinese-foreign-influence/11498424">cannot recall</a>” being a member of the China Overseas Exchange Association, but <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-09-11/gladys-liu-admits-to-association-with-guangdong-association/11501088">later released a statement</a> saying she had an honorary role with the group in 2011 but was no longer associated with it.</p>
<p>She has <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-14/liberal-gladys-liu-linked-to-secretive-chinese-influence-network/11288210">previously said</a> she is unaware of any Communist Party links with the other organisations that she participates in and that she has only joined them to promote trade and community activities.</p>
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<h2>Questionable donors</h2>
<p>Liu has been an energetic supporter of the Liberal cause. She has <a href="https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/after-16-years-persistence-pays-off-for-gladys-liu-20190722-p529le.html">run for office in Victoria a number of times</a> and was once employed as an adviser to Liberal leader Ted Baillieu. </p>
<p>But she is perhaps most admired in the Liberal Party for her fundraising ability. Her <a href="https://web.archive.org/web/20181221224449/https:/vic.liberal.org.au/GladysLiu">claim</a> to be “one of the most effective fundraisers in the Victorian division” of the party is almost certainly true.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-world-has-a-hard-time-trusting-china-but-does-it-really-care-119807">The world has a hard time trusting China. But does it really care?</a>
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<p>However, her fundraising came under a cloud last month when it was <a href="https://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/victoria/victorian-liberal-party-forced-to-return-300k-of-fundraising-bids/news-story/ed1c0b817dd52a88f6ad462b2ffb3c36">reported</a> by the Herald Sun that the Liberal Party had been forced to return A$300,000 to dodgy donors that she had brought to an event in 2015. (<a href="https://www.skynews.com.au/details/_6084886899001">Liu has denied that any funds were returned to donors</a>).</p>
<p>Then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull refused to have dinner with the donors because he had been warned off by our intelligence services due to “security concerns”. Foreign Minister Julie Bishop and opposition leader Matthew Guy did likewise.</p>
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<h2>Why Liu must answer to parliament</h2>
<p>Even though Liu has denied having links with the Chinese Communist Party, there are now serious questions swirling around her and legitimate doubts about whether she owes “<a href="https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/Publications_Archive/archive/Section44">allegiance, obedience, or adherence to a foreign power</a>”.</p>
<p>Those words are taken from section 44 of the Constitution. While many federal politicians have been disqualified from parliament because they have turned out to be citizens of another country, the question of allegiance to a foreign power is a far weightier reason for disqualification.</p>
<p>Parliament must now grapple with Liu’s case. If there is enough evidence to indicate she may owe allegiance to a foreign power, then parliament ought to refer her to the High Court, where the claims can be tested.</p>
<p>Otherwise, a dark cloud will hang over her as long as she sits in the House of Representatives. And a dark cloud will overshadow the Liberal Party, because more and more people will want to know why it stuck with Liu when it knew that intelligence agencies had concerns strong enough to deter the prime minister from meeting with her donors.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/123339/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Clive Hamilton has nothing to disclose.</span></em></p>With serious questions being raised about Liu’s possible links to United Front organisations in Australia, a dark cloud could continue to hang over both her and the Liberal Party.Clive Hamilton, Professor of Public Ethics, Centre for Public and Contextual Theology, Charles Sturt UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1191742019-08-14T02:18:45Z2019-08-14T02:18:45ZInside China’s vast influence network – how it works, and the extent of its reach in Australia<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/287941/original/file-20190814-9404-1sgzgzl.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">According to the ABC, newly elected MP Gladys Liu is tied to an organisation that's part of the Chinese Communist Party's United Front, which exerts influence among the Chinese diaspora.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Mick Tsikas/AAP</span></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>As China grows more powerful and influential, our New Superpower series looks at what this means for the world – how China maintains its power, how it wields its power and how its power might be threatened. Read the rest of the series <a href="https://theconversation.com/au/topics/the-new-superpower-73080">here</a>.</em></p>
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<p>The operations of the Chinese Communist Party are generally opaque, especially to outsiders. But in recent years, the party’s reach and influence with the Chinese diaspora has become much more obvious, particularly in Australia. </p>
<p>Most recently, Liberal MP Gladys Liu, the <a href="https://www.sbs.com.au/news/gladys-liu-becomes-first-chinese-australian-woman-to-enter-lower-house">first Chinese-Australian woman</a> to win a seat in the lower house, was <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-14/liberal-gladys-liu-linked-to-secretive-chinese-influence-network/11288210">revealed to have ties</a> to the World Trade United Foundation, a body whose officeholders are closely tied to pro-Beijing politicians in Hong Kong.</p>
<p>This follows the <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-12-12/sam-dastyari-resigns-from-parliament/9247390">resignation of former Senator Sam Dastyari</a> over his contacts with <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2019/feb/06/political-donor-huang-xiangmo-blocked-from-returning-to-australia">Chinese political donor Huang Xiangmo</a> in 2017, and last year’s passage of a <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/06/28/world/australia/australia-security-laws-foreign-interference.html">new foreign interference law</a>, which was sparked by concerns over Chinese influence.</p>
<p>What connects all these elements is the Communist Party’s little-known <a href="https://www.lowyinstitute.org/the-interpreter/long-reach-Chinas-united-front-work">United Front Work Department</a>. The successes of this department have been crucial to building the party’s legitimacy at home and, to a significant extent, abroad, especially with overseas Chinese communities.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/why-do-we-keep-turning-a-blind-eye-to-chinese-political-interference-94299">Why do we keep turning a blind eye to Chinese political interference?</a>
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<h2>What is the United Front?</h2>
<p>The United Front Work Department, or UFWD for short, is a special department of the Communist Party. It is responsible for organising outreach to key Chinese interest groups, including ethnic Chinese abroad, and representing and influencing them.</p>
<p>In its simplest terms, the UFWD is about uniting those who can help the party achieve its goals and neutralise its critics. Its work is often summed up as “making friends”, which sounds benign, and often is. But it can have other meanings, such as helping to stifle dissent at home and abroad. </p>
<p>Within China, the United Front system historically consisted of intellectuals, business people, religious believers, ethnic minorities, returned overseas Chinese and former members of the <a href="https://www.britannica.com/topic/Nationalist-Party-Chinese-political-party">Nationalist Party (known as the KMT or GMD)</a>. More recently, this group has expanded to include social media personalities, independent professionals (notably lawyers), managers in foreign-funded businesses, overseas Chinese, and young Chinese studying abroad. </p>
<p>Overseas Chinese, including those in Australia, have a special place in this system and are actively courted by dedicated UFWD representatives.</p>
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<h2>How its mission is changing under Xi Jinping</h2>
<p>The United Front has become much more prominent since <a href="https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-china-20338586">Xi Jinping became Communist Party general secretary in 2012</a>. Xi has been <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/10670564.2018.1433573?journalCode=cjcc20">instrumental</a> in raising its status in the Chinese political system and publicly supporting a dramatic expansion of its roles and target groups. </p>
<p>Under his watch, the UFWD’s work has become much more centred on promoting the party’s key ideals. These include the consolidation of Xi’s leadership and spread of his ideology (known as “<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/02/26/world/asia/xi-jinping-thought-explained-a-new-ideology-for-a-new-era.html">Xi Jinping Thought</a>”), and the broader goals of ensuring social stability and China’s national rejuvenation. </p>
<p>Importantly, the latter includes reinforcing China’s claims over the <a href="https://www.scmp.com/week-asia/article/2186449/explained-south-china-sea-dispute">South China Sea</a>, Hong Kong, Macau, and particularly Taiwan. </p>
<p>While China already has sovereignty over Hong Kong and Macau, the United Front has been crucial in helping the party exert influence over local politicians, trade unions, and business groups in both regions. However. the <a href="https://theconversation.com/the-hong-kong-protesters-have-turned-militant-and-more-strategic-and-this-unnerves-beijing-121106">current unrest</a> in Hong Kong shows this approach may have lost some of its effectiveness.</p>
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<p>United Front is also one of the ways the party stakes its claim to popular legitimacy and to representing all Chinese people throughout the world. </p>
<p>One way the department does this is by carefully vetting members of key social and occupational groups, such as doctors and lawyers, who provide the government with expert opinion on proposed laws and other issues during “consultative conferences.” </p>
<p>Those selected to take part in these conferences are assumed to have considerable influence and prestige. And they include a number of overseas Chinese, including some Australian-Chinese.</p>
<p>All members of these conferences are carefully screened by the UFWD for their political reliability and willingness to accept party leadership and its positions.</p>
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Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/academic-chongyi-feng-profits-freedom-and-chinas-soft-power-in-australia-78751">Academic Chongyi Feng: profits, freedom and China’s 'soft power' in Australia</a>
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<p>Many provocative ideas and issues that can’t be raised in the party itself or in the People’s Congresses are often floated in the consultative conferences.</p>
<p>This system of garnering expert advice and channelling it back to the party is central to its claims to be democratic. The party maintains that this system of consultation is superior to Western democracy because it is more representative and doesn’t suffer from the “chaotic” results of Western-style elections. </p>
<p>This system is even more important since the party has given up on its own longstanding experiments with <a href="https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/china/2015-10-14/country-lessons">village-level electoral democracy</a>. These elections failed to deliver on the initial promise of bringing greater efficiency and legitimacy to the party, and instead often became dominated by local special interests pushed by powerful families, clans or even gangs.</p>
<h2>How United Front is exerting its influence</h2>
<p>Under Xi, there has also been a dramatic shift in what the UFWD is expected to achieve. Much of its work since the 1980s has focused on incorporating new interest groups into the political system (such as entrepreneurs and professionals) to prevent the emergence of any organisations outside the party’s control. </p>
<p>Now, it is much more about assimilation – all members are expected to believe the party’s central ideology and promote Xi as China’s “core leader”.</p>
<p>In a sense, we are seeing a process similar to that of the 1950s, when United Front was first used to organise groups like intellectuals, religious believers, and business people and provide them with nominal political representation in the consultative conferences - in some cases as government ministers. </p>
<p>The next step was forcing them to accept the Communist Party takeover of their businesses, churches, or associations. The United Front also demanded they fully accept socialist ideology through campaigns of intense, and sometimes violent, “thought reform,” which left many dead.</p>
<p>Today, it is minorities such as the <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/13/world/asia/china-muslim-detainment-xinjang-camps.html">Uyghurs</a>, Tibetans, and Christians who are again under intense pressure to allow the party to take full control of their organisations. This often includes the demolition of property and the severing any links with foreign religious groups and NGOs. The UFWD is the organiser in the background.</p>
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<p>
<em>
<strong>
Read more:
<a href="https://theconversation.com/the-australia-china-relations-institute-doesnt-belong-at-uts-78743">The Australia-China Relations Institute doesn't belong at UTS</a>
</strong>
</em>
</p>
<hr>
<p>The flow-on effects of these changes in Australia is an intensification of the party’s efforts to unite with and influence the Chinese diaspora, and use them to promote the party’s causes and positions. Or at the very least, not to oppose them. </p>
<p>We have seen a dramatic proliferation of United Front-linked organisations in Australia, such as the <a href="http://www.acpprc.org.au/english/aboutus.asp">Australian Council for the Promotion of Peaceful Reunification of China</a>, as well as new religious bodies and industry and cultural associations. </p>
<p>The marginalisation of sensitive issues like Taiwan among Chinese-Australian communities, the lack of support for China’s Muslims and other persecuted religious minorities, and the very muted responses to the protests in Hong Kong, seems to indicate that these efforts are bearing fruit.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/119174/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Gerry Groot is Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies in the Department of Asian Studies, University of Adelaide and and Adjunct Researcher with the Australian Centre on China in the World at the Australian National University</span></em></p>United Front’s mission is to unite those who can help the Communist Party achieve its goals and neutralise its critics. This includes many influential members of the Chinese diaspora.Gerry Groot, Senior Lecturer in Chinese Studies, University of AdelaideLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/1072302019-04-08T14:07:25Z2019-04-08T14:07:25ZMaking sense of the world: why ‘Marxism and Freedom’ still resonates<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/267791/original/file-20190405-180020-neae93.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Raya Dunayevskaya believed "Marxism is a theory of liberation or it is nothing."</span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Dunayevskaya-raya.jpg">Wikimedia</a></span></figcaption></figure><p><em>The world’s a mess. How do thoughtful people make sense of it all? In this series we’ve asked a number of our authors to suggest a book, philosopher, work of art – or anything else, for that matter – that will help to make sense of it all.</em> </p>
<p>The world we live in is a dangerous and confusing place. In my quest to make sense of it, I’m returning to <a href="https://www.imhojournal.org/publications/marxism-and-freedom-from-1776-until-today/"><em>Marxism and Freedom</em></a> – 40 years after reading it for the first time.</p>
<p>It was written by the founder of the philosophy of Marxist-Humanism, <a href="https://newsandletters.org/raya-dunayevskaya/">Raya Dunayevskaya</a> (1910–1987). I read the book for the first time in 1979: the year <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/politics/margaretthatcher">Margaret Thatcher</a> was elected in Britain, and the formal beginning of the <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/07/david-harvey-neoliberalism-capitalism-labor-crisis-resistance/">neoliberal counter-revolution</a>. Dunayevskaya called it a “changed world”. At that point the book was already over 20 years old, but I found something refreshing about its engagement with Marxism as a living philosophy connected with daily life struggles. </p>
<p>My return to <em>Marxism and Freedom</em> here in 2019 has focused on some of its ideas that might help orient our thinking in the present. This, at a time when we’re facing the morbid stages of neoliberalism in its neo-fascist and authoritarian-nationalist forms: from Brazil’s Jair Bolsonaro to Donald Trump in the US, from Turkey’s Recep Erdoğan to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.</p>
<p>Dunayevskaya (who was born Raya Shpigel but took her mother’s maiden name) was not an academic but a revolutionary intellectual schooled by organisations and their struggles. She joined the revolutionary movement in the United States as a teenager in the early 1920s, and was kicked out of the Communist Party at age 18 after asking for a discussion about <a href="https://www.bl.uk/people/leon-trotsky">Leon Trotsky</a>. He was a leading Marxist revolutionary who was expelled from the USSR in 1929 after criticising Joseph Stalin.</p>
<p>Dunayevskaya joined the Trotskyist movement. She is probably best known as Trotsky’s Russian language secretary in Mexico, which is where he settled after his expulsion and where he was assassinated in 1940. By the time he died, Dunayevskaya had broken with Trotsky over his defence of the Soviet Union after the Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939. </p>
<p>She argued that Russia was a state-capitalist rather than a socialist society, and held that Marx’s theory of liberation had been transformed into its opposite by the Communist Party intelligentsia to justify a ruthless totalitarian system. </p>
<h2>New passions</h2>
<p>“Marxism is a theory of liberation or it is nothing” Dunayevskaya held in <em>Marxism and Freedom</em>. Concerned with the freedom of humanity and the destruction of human life under capitalism, one aim of <em>Marxism and Freedom</em> was to,</p>
<blockquote>
<p>reestablish Marxism in its original form, which Marx called ‘a thoroughgoing Naturalism, or Humanism’. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Prefiguring what is now called intersectionality, she highlighted “new passions and new forces” that emerged in freedom struggles. She argued that activists and intellectuals must keep their ears open to these new voices and new articulations of freedom that had often been silenced or ignored. </p>
<p>Dunayevskaya <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/1963/american-civilization.htm">considered</a> black liberation movements the vanguard of historical freedom struggles in the United States.</p>
<p>She also <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Nationalism-Communism-Afro-Asian-Revolutions-Dunayevskaya/dp/B001QYPAS6">declared</a> the African and Asian decolonisation movements that developed after the end of World War II epochal, as they <a href="https://archive.org/details/DunayevskayaNationalismCommunismMarxistHumanismTheAfroAsianRevolutions/page/n39">raised</a> the question of human relations as a “totality of devotion to the struggle for freedom”.</p>
<p>The brilliance of <em>Marxism and Freedom</em>, and its re-articulation of Marx’s Marxism as a theory of liberation, is that it was written in collaboration with miners, autoworkers and students who contributed to “a new understanding”. The point was not only that people think, but also that people in struggles develop new ways of knowing through experience, dialogue and self-reflection. </p>
<p>The question of freedom was intimately connected to the question that every struggle needs to ask itself: what happens the day after the struggle has seemingly been won? In short, Dunayevskaya continually challenged activists to think beyond activism: to think not only of tearing down the old society, but also about creating a new one. She believed in questioning everything, especially the division between intellectual and physical labour. </p>
<h2>A legacy of learning</h2>
<p>All this was exciting to me as a 21-year-old who had already become cynical about programmatic socialist groups that often viewed movements as fodder to be mobilised. I probably didn’t understand it fully at the time, but I remember meeting Dunayevskaya in 1985 just after the year-long British miners strike had suffered an <a href="https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/06/how-miners-strike-1984-85-changed-britain-ever">historic defeat</a>.</p>
<p>When we met she had just completed a book <a href="https://philpapers.org/rec/DUNRLW"><em>Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution</em></a>, the last part of her “trilogy of revolution” (her second book was the 1973 <a href="https://www.marxists.org/archive/dunayevskaya/works/phil-rev/index.htm"><em>Philosophy and Revolution: From Hegel to Sartre and from Marx</em></a>). Asked about love in an interview on International Women’s Day in 1984 she <a href="https://newsandletters.org/writings-raya-dunayevskaya-womens-liberation-experimentation-revolution-permanence/">remarked</a>:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I don’t think it’s correct for us to try and solve it for others. I think what we have to do is to create the conditions for everyone to be able to experiment with choices, in love. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>When we met she spoke to me about the importance of worker-intellectuals to Marxist-Humanism. Here she included the black auto worker from Detroit, Charles Denby, the author of <a href="https://newsandletters.org/charles-denbys-life-story-story-struggle-freedom/"><em>Indignant Heart: A Black Worker’s Journal</em></a>. They met in the late 1940s and remained colleagues until his death in 1983. </p>
<p>When Stalin died in 1953 Denby phoned her. He wanted to tell her what the workers in the plant were saying: </p>
<blockquote>
<p>I have just the man to fill Stalin’s shoes — my foreman.</p>
</blockquote>
<h2>Alive today</h2>
<p><em>Marxism and Freedom</em> remains alive to me in 2019. It’s not only because we live in an age of myriad crises that threaten humanity, but the book reminds humanity to keep our ears and minds open to new and often unthinkable revolts.</p>
<p>In this moment of violent suppression, new forms of struggle continuously emerge and reach for a future. It is here that the ideal and the real are revealed as being not far apart: where Marx’s humanism as a living body of ideas is enlivened by real movements for freedom.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/107230/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nigel Gibson does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The book, Marxism and Freedom was written in 1958. Yet, it remains relevant today.Nigel Gibson, Associate Professor of Interdisciplinary Studies, Emerson CollegeLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/863072017-10-25T04:55:53Z2017-10-25T04:55:53ZChina’s ambition burns bright – with Xi Jinping firmly in charge<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/191780/original/file-20171025-5863-5lsjjy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Xi Jinping affirmed that, within a few decades, China would become a prosperous modern socialist society and the world’s most important country.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Peter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The most important political event of 2017, the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress, has concluded. And while there was much to digest, one image above all stands out: Xi Jinping’s political dominance and his burning ambition for China.</p>
<p>The party congress is held every five years and has two main functions. The first is to lay out the policy program for the coming half-decade. The other is to confirm the people who will occupy the key leadership roles within the party. In short, it’s about <a href="http://www.nbr.org/downloads/pdfs/outreach/mccahill_commentary_102417.pdf">policy and people</a>.</p>
<p>The tone was set at the Xi’s <a href="http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/china/19thcpcnationalcongress/2017-10/18/content_33398037.htm">opening address</a>. Formally presenting the work report of the 18th Central Committee, he outlined the huge steps China has taken over the past five years and his vision for China over not just the next five years, but out to 2049 – the centenary of the People’s Republic of China’s foundation.</p>
<p>He affirmed that within a few decades, China would become a prosperous modern socialist society and the world’s most important country, both in terms of national power and international influence. </p>
<p>Gone is the old dictum that China has to bide its time and hide its power. Humility and caution have been replaced by confident and <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/18/be-in-no-doubt-xi-jinping-wants-to-make-china-great">assertive leadership</a>. </p>
<p>Xi also declared that China would remain economically open and provide leadership on climate change and other environmental concerns. The centrepiece of China’s international policy will be the <a href="http://supchina.com/2017/10/24/communist-party-just-enshrined-belt-road-indias-not-happy-chinas-latest-political-current-affairs-news/">Belt and Road Initiative</a> that is now part of the party’s constitution.</p>
<p>But Xi was equally stern about threats and challenges, whether from within or beyond – the country would use all means to defend its interests and sovereignty. This means China’s muscular approach to disputes in the East and South China Sea, with India and elsewhere, is certain to continue.</p>
<p>Hard work, ongoing reform and leadership will be needed to bring all this about. The only force capable of doing this, made clear at the congress, is the Chinese Communist Party.</p>
<p>While nods were made toward market forces playing a more important role in resource allocation, the congress’ message was unmistakable: the key player in the economy, indeed in all aspects of Chinese life, will be the party. This is Leninism for the 21st century.</p>
<p>And the party will be unified around an austere vision laid out by Xi. The anti-corruption program that has been such a significant part of his first five years in office will become a permanent campaign. </p>
<p>Xi had launched the anti-graft measures to root out the significant problem of corruption, but also to eliminate rival centres of power. That will be a core element of party business in the future.</p>
<p>In his first five years, Xi focused on consolidating his power base, unifying the party and presenting a more confident face to the world. The congress made clear that the next five are about paramount leader Xi driving China to its position atop the international totem pole. </p>
<p>At the very start of the congress, the opening address gave a clue as to what was coming the work program presented by Xi was “for a new era”. </p>
<p>Xi made clear that the People’s Republic of China’s history can be divided into three eras. The first was the creation of the republic, led by Mao. The reform period, led by Deng Xiaoping was its second. Now the third era, in which the “Chinese dream of national rejuvenation” to be realised by Xi, has begun. With the Leninism of party centrality has also come a disturbing <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/20/xi-jinping-china-president-leninist-quest-authority-control-carries-dangers">nascent cult of personality</a>. </p>
<p>To formalise this on the congress’ final day, delegates unanimously voted to incorporate “Xi Jinping thought on socialism with Chinese charactersitics” into the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/2017/10/24/asia/china-xi-jinping-thought/index.html">party constitution</a>. His is now a core purpose of the party and marks him out as the most powerful figure within the party for so long as he remains alive. </p>
<p>Prior to the congress there was much speculation about whether or not he would seek to break the party norm of two five-year terms as general secretary. By this move he has rendered such questions moot.</p>
<p>Whether he remains in office for more than five years or whether he formally stands down has become almost immaterial: he will be the dominant figure in the country.</p>
<p>To reinforce this, when the new seven-man standing committee of the politburo was announced the day after the congress’ conclusion there was no obvious successor as part of the grouping. All five of the new faces – Li Zhanshu, Wang Yang, Wang Huning, Zhao Leji and Han Zheng – will need to retire at the next congress. So while the leadership is new, it is entirely subordinate to the general secretary.</p>
<p>Xi now clearly sits atop the party and the party commands China. Over the coming three decades China will seek to become the world’s dominant country.</p>
<p>Notwithstanding Xi’s huge confidence there is a very considerable amount of work to be done to realise these ambitions. It is far from certain whether China’s economy be reformed in the ways necessary to drive the levels of growth needed to fuel this program. </p>
<p>Equally, the party will face continual challenges of unity and legitimacy. </p>
<p>Internationally, it is difficult to imagine the US acquiescing to China’s desire to supplant it at the centre of world affairs. </p>
<iframe width="100%" height="300" scrolling="no" frameborder="no" src="https://w.soundcloud.com/player/?url=https%3A//api.soundcloud.com/tracks/347575462&color=%23ff5500&auto_play=false&hide_related=false&show_comments=true&show_user=true&show_reposts=false&show_teaser=true&visual=true"></iframe><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/86307/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Bisley is Executive Director of La Trobe Asia, a member of the Australian Institute for International Affairs' National Executive and a Board member of China Matters. All of these entities have received funding from Australia's federal government.</span></em></p>The most important political event of 2017, the 19th Chinese Communist Party Congress, has concluded. And while there was much to digest, one image above all stands out: Xi Jinping’s political dominance…Nick Bisley, Executive Director of La Trobe Asia and Professor of International Relations, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/843412017-10-18T23:53:25Z2017-10-18T23:53:25ZHow China’s skewed sex ratio is making President Xi’s job a whole lot harder<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190924/original/file-20171018-32361-mgdwcu.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Chinese President Xi Jinping presides over the opening ceremony of the 19th Party Congress.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Ng Han Guan</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>As odd as it sounds, China’s economic policy is being held hostage by its heavily skewed sex ratio.</p>
<p>China’s excess of young, unmarriageable males poses an acute dilemma for <a href="http://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-11551399">President Xi Jinping</a> and other leaders as they set the country’s path for the next five years during the <a href="http://thediplomat.com/tag/19th-party-congress/">19th Chinese Communist Party Congress</a>, which opened on Oct. 18. </p>
<p>After years of heavy spending and investment to boost growth and employment, China is at risk of economic stagnation if it doesn’t restructure the economy. Yet there is peril that doing so will lead to dangerous levels of unrest among the millions of unmarried men – known as “bare branches” – who will be laid off from shuttered unneeded steel, coal and auto factories. </p>
<p>So far Xi has tempered reform and kept the money taps open in order to avoid political instability. As the costs of domestic economic imbalances rise and international pressures to cut excess industrial capacity grow, Xi will have to decide what to do about the bare branches strewn in his way. And that won’t be an easy task, as <a href="https://www.abebooks.com/9780030545894/International-Political-Economy-Struggle-Power-0030545897/plp">my research</a> on the intersection of economics and politics suggests.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190952/original/file-20171019-32378-1prm9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190952/original/file-20171019-32378-1prm9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190952/original/file-20171019-32378-1prm9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190952/original/file-20171019-32378-1prm9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190952/original/file-20171019-32378-1prm9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190952/original/file-20171019-32378-1prm9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190952/original/file-20171019-32378-1prm9j1.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chinese workers eat their lunch outside a construction site wall depicting the skyline of the Chinese capital at the Central Business District in Beijing.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Andy Wong</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>China’s spending spree</h2>
<p>This dilemma has been building for almost a decade, since Chinese leaders responded to the 2008 global financial crisis by channeling massive investments into infrastructure and heavy industry to sustain economic growth and prevent political unrest. </p>
<p>The proportion of China’s economy devoted to investment <a href="http://fromtone.com/what-is-happening-in-china/">shot up</a> from roughly a third to close to half – a level <a href="https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WP/Issues/2016/12/31/Is-China-Over-Investing-and-Does-it-Matter-40121">unprecedented</a> among modern economies (that compares with only <a href="http://www.theglobaleconomy.com/USA/Capital_investment/">20 percent</a> in the U.S. in 2015). Since 2008, for example, <a href="http://www.meti.go.jp/english/mobile/2016/20160727001en.html">China’s crude steel production capacity</a> has more than doubled, reaching close to half of the world total. </p>
<p>This investment has proven <a href="https://www.hindawi.com/journals/ecri/2011/492325/">remarkably successful</a>, at least in the short term, helping China avoid the economic downturn experienced by Western countries. China’s investment binge also created the world’s <a href="https://www.economist.com/news/china/21714383-and-theres-lot-more-come-it-waste-money-china-has-built-worlds-largest">largest bullet train network</a> and <a href="https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/why-china-is-dominating-the-solar-industry/">made it a global leader</a> in solar panel production. </p>
<p>The binge, however, has also left China with a morning-after hangover that threatens to become a “national financial and economic crisis” unless it implements reforms, <a href="https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1609/1609.00415.pdf">according to a group</a> of Oxford-based economists. The report suggests that China focus on fewer but higher-quality infrastructure projects while accelerating a shift in demand from investment to consumption.</p>
<p>Yet China <a href="https://www.ft.com/content/1fe4e1e8-88b0-11e7-bf50-e1c239b45787">continues to rely</a> heavily upon infrastructure investment to drive growth. Besides steel, the economy also remains plagued by industrial overcapacity in autos, cement, glass, solar cells, aluminum and coal. Recent <a href="https://thediplomat.com/2017/03/chinas-two-sessions-and-the-2017-economic-outlook/">efforts</a> to close old and inefficient factories have had little effect so far.</p>
<p>This has international consequences as well because all that excess steel, glass and aluminum must go somewhere and often ends up in other countries, hurting domestic markets. Steel exports to the U.S., for example, <a href="http://www.scmp.com/news/china/diplomacy-defence/article/2108732/trump-rejected-chinese-offer-cut-steel-overcapacity">surged 22 percent</a> from August 2016 to July 2017, <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/trump-seems-to-genuinely-want-a-trade-war-with-china.html">prompting retaliatory threats</a> from President Donald Trump. </p>
<p>So why did Chinese policymakers extend the investment spree so long? Why have they been reluctant to close down factories producing excess <a href="https://qz.com/699979/how-chinas-overproduction-of-steel-is-damaging-companies-and-countries-around-the-world/">steel</a>, <a href="http://www.europeanchamber.com.cn/en/publications-overcapacity-in-china">solar cells or glass</a> or stop funding the development of uninhabited “<a href="http://www.wired.com/2016/02/kai-caemmerer-unborn-cities/">ghost cities</a>”? </p>
<p>While there are many factors at play, one deserves more attention than it has received: China’s leaders fear the consequences of high unemployment among “bare branches,” a term used in China for young, low-status men who, because they are typically unmarriageable, represent endpoints on the family tree.</p>
<h2>Growth of the ‘bare branches’</h2>
<p>Bare branches are a result of one of the most skewed sex ratios in the world. </p>
<p>China has <a href="https://esa.un.org/unpd/wpp/Download/Standard/Population/">106.3 males for every 100 females</a>, compared with a global ratio of 101.8 to 100. In coming years, the workforce imbalance will only worsen because there are <a href="https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/ch.html">117 boys under age 15 for every 100 girls</a>. This is a result of extreme gender discrimination favoring males, a tendency exacerbated by <a href="http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2015/11/151113-datapoints-china-one-child-policy/">China’s one-child policy</a>, which was in force from 1979 to 2015. Typically, unwanted female fetuses, identified through ultrasound, are <a href="https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3168620/">aborted</a>. </p>
<p>This has resulted in a surplus of young bare-branch males. Bare branches are typically low status, since better-educated and higher-income males have better odds of attracting marriage partners. Lacking either skills or the strong community ties brought on by family life, these young, unmarried men make up a large proportion of the internal migrant population that relocates from rural areas to cities in search of work.</p>
<p>Researchers <a href="https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/bare-branches">Valerie Hudson and Andrea den Boer</a> established that societies with large and growing numbers of bare branches are at risk of rising crime and civil unrest. This is especially true if inadequate employment opportunities are available for unmarried young men. The skewed sex ratio is accompanied by other worrisome trends, including <a href="https://www.forbes.com/sites/sarahsu/2016/11/18/high-income-inequality-still-festering-in-china/#5e33eaa21e50">high income inequality</a> and the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/datablog/2015/oct/29/impact-china-one-child-policy-four-graphs">rising number of elderly</a> that must be supported by each working-age person. </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190954/original/file-20171019-32370-s4rue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190954/original/file-20171019-32370-s4rue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190954/original/file-20171019-32370-s4rue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190954/original/file-20171019-32370-s4rue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=404&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190954/original/file-20171019-32370-s4rue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190954/original/file-20171019-32370-s4rue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190954/original/file-20171019-32370-s4rue8.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=507&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">A worker labors at a steel mill in a village of Jiangyin city, Jiangsu Province, China.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>A growing risk of unrest</h2>
<p>It’s this fear of rising unemployment and unrest that has caused China’s hesitation to carry out economic reform. </p>
<p>Some economists believe that China’s <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-economy-jobs/chinas-unemployment-rate-falls-below-4-percent-at-end-of-first-quarter-idUSKBN17R0JN">official unemployment rate</a> of 4 percent understates the <a href="http://www.nber.org/digest/oct15/w21460.html">reality</a>, which may be more than double that. The rate of unemployment is politically sensitive since unemployed workers are more likely to engage in civil unrest and other anti-regime activities. </p>
<p>And males are <a href="http://www.ilo.org/wcmsp5/groups/public/---asia/---ro-bangkok/documents/publication/wcms_371375.pdf">overrepresented</a> in the industries that would be hardest hit by reform like construction and heavy industry. On the other hand, females make up a disproportionate share of workers in the service sector, which must expand in order to sustain economic growth as spending on infrastructure and industry slows.</p>
<p>China’s growth model has actually exacerbated the unemployment problem because infrastructure, construction and heavy industry are relatively capital-intensive, meaning that a given level of investment produces fewer jobs than would be the case were the same investment devoted to service sectors (which are relatively labor-intensive). In other words, a greater emphasis on services would soak up more labor overall and reduce dangerous levels of unemployment.</p>
<p>If China shifts to sector-led growth, the risk of unrest will grow as women find more jobs <a href="http://www.scmp.com/business/companies/article/1975810/china-will-need-cut-35-million-jobs-across-six-core-industries">at the expense of men</a>, especially those bare branches. So even if China manages a “soft landing” that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/asia/china-premier-li-keqiang-economy.html?_r=0">increases employment overall</a>, <a href="http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-26/chinas-strikes-and-mass-unemployment-a-growing-worry/7649770">civil and political unrest</a> could rise as well if the proportion of bare branch males among those who remain unemployed also climbs. </p>
<p>This helps explain why Chinese authorities have directed massive amounts of investment into those male-dominated sectors following the global financial crisis. And why, in recent years, they have been slow to implement economic reforms that <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/17/world/asia/china-premier-li-keqiang-economy.html?_r=1">they themselves acknowledge</a> are needed for the overall health of the Chinese economy. </p>
<p>From the perspective of Beijing, better some inefficient investments than the political risks of tossing millions of unemployed young males into the streets of urban China.</p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190955/original/file-20171019-32355-1qeq9ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/190955/original/file-20171019-32355-1qeq9ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190955/original/file-20171019-32355-1qeq9ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190955/original/file-20171019-32355-1qeq9ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=400&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190955/original/file-20171019-32355-1qeq9ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190955/original/file-20171019-32355-1qeq9ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/190955/original/file-20171019-32355-1qeq9ys.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=503&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Chinese President Xi Jinping promised the usual economic reforms in his speech to the Party Congress.</span>
<span class="attribution"><span class="source">AP Photo/Mark Schiefelbein</span></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<h2>No good options</h2>
<p>In his opening address to the 19th Party Congress, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress/chinas-xi-lays-out-vision-for-new-era-led-by-still-stronger-communist-party-idUSKBN1CM35L?il=0">Xi made the usual promises</a> about deepening market reforms, reducing industrial overcapacity and shifting the economy from investment-led to consumption-led growth and focusing on fewer but higher-quality infrastructure projects. Given that these promises are not new, there is room for skepticism about implementation. </p>
<p>But even if reform is successful, it will mean large numbers of unemployed bare branches. That is why economic restructuring must be accompanied by generous unemployment benefits, job retraining programs and support for workers who need to relocate in order to find jobs. The gender composition of the service sector must also change in order to absorb unemployed males. </p>
<p>In short, Xi could forestall reform, thus keeping the bare branches busily employed at the risk of an economic crisis and <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/08/trump-seems-to-genuinely-want-a-trade-war-with-china.html">punitive tarriffs</a> from trading partners like the U.S. Or he could cut investment and close thousands of factories, creating a significant risk of <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2017/02/22/asia/china-labor-unrest-we-the-workers/index.html">domestic unrest</a> and potentially necessitating some combination of a strengthened social safety net and <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-china-congress/chinas-xi-lays-out-vision-for-new-era-led-by-still-stronger-communist-party-idUSKBN1CM35L?il=0">political repression</a> to contain it. </p>
<p>Whichever path Xi picks, bare branches will be part of the journey.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/84341/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>David Skidmore does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>China’s surplus of unmarriageable men poses a stark dilemma for Xi and other leaders as they set the country’s economic course for the next five years.David Skidmore, Professor of Political Science, Drake UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/854562017-10-10T04:24:38Z2017-10-10T04:24:38ZAs China prepares for its Communist Party Congress, what will it mean for the rest of the world?<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/189500/original/file-20171010-10908-16oo0eh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">This display of Chinese characters represents the Chinese leadership's 'Five Major Development Concepts' ahead of the 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.</span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Reuters/Thomas Peter</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>Of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s many achievements in his time in office – about which much will be made in the <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/09/five-years-all-conquering-xi-jinping-china-heralds-its-leader-in-ecstatic-beijing-exhibition">official propaganda</a> – one of the most surprising was the more confident and <a href="http://www.eastasiaforum.org/2016/02/20/why-has-chinese-foreign-policy-become-more-assertive/">assertive approach</a> to foreign policy that he brought about. </p>
<p>As the 19th <a href="http://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/BriefingBook45p/ChinaCongress">National Congress of the Communist Party of China</a> approaches, the five-yearly meeting of the party that signals leadership transition, what will the next five years mean for the outside world?</p>
<p>Intended to oversee leadership change at many levels of the party, the greatest interest is on the upper echelons of the hierarchy. Of particular interest is the make-up of seven-member Politburo Standing Committee, and the 25-member Politburo. </p>
<p>There is a great deal to watch out for: will Xi indicate a preferred successor? Will Li Keqiang, the current premier, be pushed out, demoted, or in some other way weakened? Will he allow Wang Qishan, his closest ally and head of the massive anti-corruption program, to stay on? Wang Qishan is now over 68, the age at which one is normally put out to pasture.</p>
<p>Beyond these obviously important details, the bigger question is whether Xi will adhere to the norms of the party or instead break them, potentially shattering the political system.</p>
<p>No one knows quite how things will play out, but <a href="https://macropolo.org/scenario-analysis">seasoned analysts</a> think it most likely Xi will bend the norms of the party to allow him to place enough supporters in key posts without completely upending the system. However events unfold, it is reasonable to expect that Xi will emerge from the NPC with his domestic hand strengthened.</p>
<p>Internationally, this will be the most closely watched Communist Party Congress yet. In part this is because China is now of huge importance to the <a href="http://edition.cnn.com/interactive/2017/05/world/chinas-new-world-order/">rest of the world</a>. China is the most important trading partner of more than 130 countries, it is the world’s biggest greenhouse gas emitter, and has massive and growing military capabilities.</p>
<p>But interest is also strong abroad because the newly confident and at time abrasive China is having a transformative effect on Asia and indeed the world.</p>
<p>In his first five years, Xi confounded expectation by breaking with the cautious approach to Chinese foreign policy that had been the norm since Deng’s time. Xi moved clearly away from the “bide your time and hide your strength” dictum of the past. </p>
<p>But China was not entirely revisionist in its behaviour. As the Brookings Institution’s Jeff Bader <a href="https://www.brookings.edu/wp-content/uploads/2016/07/xi_jinping_worldview_bader-1.pdf">rightly observes</a> Xi’s policy involved a mix of status quo adherence to international norms, grievance and a growing confidence and leadership. </p>
<p>Economic growth remains a priority, and interdependence has driven a pragmatic acceptance of existing rules and institutions. Whether at the WTO, the World Bank or the UN, much of China’s international policy operates within existing norms. Interestingly, it contributes more troops to UN peacekeeping operations than any other permanent member of the Security Council. </p>
<p>Other elements are strongly shaped by a strong sense of grievance about an international order that is perceived to constrain China’s potential. China’s behaviour in the East and South China Sea, and claim that this has been purely a reaction to the predatory forces provoking it, is redolent of the early years of the People’s Republic. </p>
<p>Xi has also set out to build new norms and institutions. The most notable of these are the <a href="https://www.aiib.org/en/index.html">Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/chinas-eurasian-gambit-needs-to-be-taken-seriously-77099">Belt and Road Initiative</a>, in which China sees itself as providing mutually beneficial international economic leadership.</p>
<p>After October 25, what mix of adherence to rules, grievance and leadership can we expect? Do not expect simple continuity with the past five years. The balance of probabilities is that China will take a more nationalistic path, with a strong party aiming to remake the international environment, where necessary, in ways that will help it achieve Xi’s stated desire to rejuvenate the Chinese nation. </p>
<p>This will not mean we can expect a concerted push for Chinese hegemony in the Western Pacific. Nor will Xi try to recreate the old Chinese tributary system. Rather, we can expect the odd combination of grievance and more confident leadership that produced the South China Sea policy and the Belt and Road Initiative to become more pronounced features of Chinese foreign policy.</p>
<p>While norm adherence will continue, there is likely to be a greater willingness to break with these norms if they conflict with the larger aims. </p>
<p>This Chinese posture, when combined with the trade, finance and strategic trends drawing Asia closer together, is likely to create a China-centred Asian <a href="http://sdsc.bellschool.anu.edu.au/sites/default/files/publications/attachments/2017-05/cog_integrated_asia-may_2017_0.pdf">regional order</a>, but one that will not be Sino-centric. Xi’s next five years will make contestation the main feature of Asia’s international politics.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/85456/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<h4 class="border">Disclosure</h4><p class="fine-print"><em><span>Nick Bisley is Executive Director of La Trobe Asia, a member of the Australian Institute for International Affairs' National Executive and a Board member of China Matters. All of these entities have received funding from Australia's federal government.</span></em></p>No-one knows quite how things will play out, but most likely Xi will bend the norms of the party to allow him to place enough supporters in key posts without completely upending the system.Nick Bisley, Executive Director of La Trobe Asia and Professor of International Relations, La Trobe UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/476402015-09-30T00:39:52Z2015-09-30T00:39:52ZBehind the coup that backfired: the demise of Indonesia’s Communist Party<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95820/original/image-20150923-32052-1xay1cy.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&rect=1%2C0%2C870%2C567&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">Indonesia's Communist Party had been part of the national political fabric since the 1920s and had contributed both major leaders and influential ideas to the nationalist movement. </span> <span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:PKI-1925-Commisariate_Batavia.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span></figcaption></figure><p>In 1965, at the height of the Cold War, a communist victory in Indonesia seemed plausible. At the time, the Indonesian Communist Party was the third-largest in the world with three million members.</p>
<p>In that year, however, the systematic destruction of Indonesia’s Communist Party (PKI) began. The Indonesian army destroyed the party after a group calling themselves the “30th September Movement” kidnapped six generals in a botched attempt to weaken the army.</p>
<p>The movement involved a handful of top PKI leaders, but it was used as a pretext not only to ban the party but to conduct a massacre of party members that claimed half-a-million lives.</p>
<p>To this day, half a century later, communism is banned in Indonesia. The murders, torture and imprisonment of party members and their associates have never been accounted for.</p>
<h2>Events of October 1</h2>
<p>On October 1, 1965, Indonesians awoke to hear a radio announcement telling them that a “30th September Movement” had taken action to prevent a military coup and to secure the Indonesian president Sukarno’s position. </p>
<p>The movement’s leader, Lieutenant Colonel Untung, was commander of the presidential guard. He assured listeners that the president was safe, that “a number of generals” had been arrested and that a “Revolutionary Council” would shortly take responsibility for government. </p>
<p>People roughly knew who those arrested generals were. The army’s high command, led by General Ahmad Yani, in alliance with the defence minister, General A.H. Nasution, was locked in a political stand-off with Sukarno and the PKI, led by D.N. Aidit. </p>
<h2>Who was behind the 30th September Movement?</h2>
<p>The events of October 1 became a pivotal moment in Indonesia’s history. For decades, Indonesia observers treated the events of that day as a whodunnit. They assembled a list of suspects, assessed the meagre evidence against each of them, sought to divine their potential motives and came to a conclusion. </p>
<p>Not only Aidit and Untung featured in the line-up, but also Sukarno and General Suharto, who crushed the movement and replaced Sukarno as president. Sundry other characters such as the air force commander and the Chinese intelligence agency were also mentioned in these conspiracy theories. </p>
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<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95822/original/image-20150923-32048-r39pgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=237&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95822/original/image-20150923-32048-r39pgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95822/original/image-20150923-32048-r39pgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95822/original/image-20150923-32048-r39pgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=905&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95822/original/image-20150923-32048-r39pgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95822/original/image-20150923-32048-r39pgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95822/original/image-20150923-32048-r39pgh.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=1137&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">PKI leader D.N. Aidit had outlined his pre-emptive strike plans to prevent a military coup to Chinese leader Mao Zedong.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File%3ADN_Aidit_speaking_at_PKI_election_meeting_1955.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>After years of uncertainty, <a href="http://www.history.ubc.ca/citation/pretext-mass-murder-september-30th-movement-and-suhartos-coup-detat-indonesia">recent findings</a> show the 30th September Movement was the product of months of planning by Untung, the PKI leader Aidit and a handful of others. </p>
<p>The movement aimed to throw the army high command off balance, discredit the generals as apparent enemies of Sukarno, and shift Indonesian politics to the left so that the PKI could come to power rapidly, though probably not immediately. </p>
<p>The movement happened at a precarious time in Indonesian politics. By 1965, the only significant powers at the centre of Indonesian politics were the president, the PKI and the army. Under Sukarno’s “Guided Democracy” presidential authority was supreme and all political players had to circle around him. But Sukarno’s failing health meant the system could not survive indefinitely. </p>
<p>The great uncertainty at the time was whether the party and the army would wait until Sukarno faltered before attempting to secure power, or whether either would seek an early advantage by launching a coup.</p>
<p>We may never know whether Yani, the army chief, had indeed planned a coup for later in October 1965, though we can be sure that the army high command had a range of contingency plans. </p>
<p>By presenting the movement as a defensive action by Sukarno loyalists, Aidit hoped to shelter the party from any rebuke for breaching the uneasy political stalemate. In August 1965, he outlined these plans to his friend, the Chinese leader Mao Zedong. </p>
<p>Untung’s desire to protect the president was sincere, but he became a stooge for Aidit. </p>
<h2>Enter defiant Suharto</h2>
<p>The disappearance of the generals did not throw the anti-communist forces in the army off balance. Instead, the relatively unknown General Suharto, commander of the army’s strategic reserve, took swift action. </p>
<p>Claiming military necessity, Suharto assumed army command. Within 24 hours, he cajoled and intimidated the movement’s troops in central Jakarta to surrender. He then seized the movement’s headquarters at Halim air force base, just south of the capital. There, a few days later, the bodies of the six kidnapped generals were found dumped in a narrow well.</p>
<p>Sukarno attempted to maintain political balance between the army and the party. On the afternoon of October 1, he appointed General Pranoto, one of the few senior generals not known to be anti-communist, as interim army commander. </p>
<p>Suharto, however, refused to give up his authority. In effect, the anti-communist Suharto replaced the anti-communist Yani, thwarting Aidit’s hope for a decisive shift to the left. </p>
<h2>Army propaganda against the PKI</h2>
<p>The murder of six generals was a shock to Indonesians. </p>
<p>There was little evidence of PKI involvement – the documents establishing Aidit’s role in the planning were discovered only decades later – but in the tense political environment people found the idea of a communist pre-emptive strike against its opponents plausible. </p>
<p>Suharto and his group quickly built on this shock. They falsely reported the generals were tortured and sexually mutilated by young communist women before being killed. </p>
<p>In the space of a few weeks, the military propaganda machine unfolded a story that the whole of the PKI was complicit in a massive conspiracy.</p>
<p>The propaganda claimed the murder of the generals was just the first step in a planned communist seizure of power that would include the murder of the party’s enemies on a far greater scale. Party members throughout the country were said to have been planning to murder their neighbours.</p>
<p>Rubbish pits were reinterpreted as makeshift graves, prepared in advance for the bodies of the PKI’s victims. Simple household utensils were reinterpreted as instruments of torture. These accusations underpinned the murder of perhaps half-a-million PKI members and associates over the course of six months.</p>
<h2>Persistent conspiracy theories</h2>
<p>Despite documents revealing Aidit’s role, some observers still support alternative theories for two reasons.</p>
<p>First, admitting Aidit’s role is sometimes seen as sailing perilously close to the Suharto regime’s justification of the massacres. However, there is a vast difference between acknowledging Aidit’s secret plans and subscribing to Suharto’s false claim that hundreds of thousands of communists were in on the plot. </p>
<p>Other theories also persist because there are niggling fragments of evidence that do not fit with a simple Aidit-Untung plot. For instance, Sukarno is reported to have warned a visiting Indian businessman to leave the country quickly because something was about to happen. </p>
<p>To understand these fragments we need to appreciate one of the cardinal laws of conspiracy: if there is one conspiracy, then there is probably more than one. </p>
<p>High stakes and tense circumstances typically push many political players to conspiratorial thinking. Sukarno, factions of the army, local and foreign intelligence bodies and perhaps even different factions in the PKI might all had their own plans, some of which have left us with perplexing evidence.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, there are two especially intriguing mysteries concerning the events of October 1 1965. </p>
<h2>Did Western intelligence dupe Aidit?</h2>
<p>First, did Aidit have real evidence of a planned generals’ coup later that month or was he deliberately deceived?</p>
<p>Western intelligence agencies deeply feared the PKI would come to power as Sukarno declined. They imagined a premature PKI grab for power would <a href="https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/06/indonesian-communist-party-suharto-massacre-purge/">provide the pretext to defeat the party</a>.</p>
<p>Did they find a channel to feed misleading information to Aidit that led him to plot the coup as a countermeasure? </p>
<p>We may discover the answer when Western intelligence files are finally opened – not likely to be in the lifetime of any of us. However, Jakarta was such a pungent stew of rumour and speculation in 1965 that it would be difficult to show that a Western intelligence intervention had decisively influenced PKI thinking.</p>
<h2>Did Suharto know?</h2>
<p>Second, did Suharto know more about the 30th September Movement plans than he ever admitted? </p>
<figure class="align-center ">
<img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95823/original/image-20150923-32068-fiwrap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/95823/original/image-20150923-32068-fiwrap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95823/original/image-20150923-32068-fiwrap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95823/original/image-20150923-32068-fiwrap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=424&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95823/original/image-20150923-32068-fiwrap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95823/original/image-20150923-32068-fiwrap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/95823/original/image-20150923-32068-fiwrap.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=533&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px">
<figcaption>
<span class="caption">Suharto as the commander of army’s strategic reserve.</span>
<span class="attribution"><a class="source" href="https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Suharto_as_the_commander_of_Kostrad.jpg">Wikimedia Commons</a></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>That Suharto was not among the generals who were kidnapped is not significant. He was generally considered non-political and would hardly have been involved in planning a coup.</p>
<p>We also need not take seriously the argument that Suharto’s highly effective seizing of the initiative after the disappearance of his commanding officers speaks to inside knowledge.</p>
<p>Military commanders are trained to react decisively, and a characteristic of conspiracies is that they often work to the advantage of those who react to them, rather than those who plot. Plotters typically find it hard to adapt their carefully laid plans to changing circumstances, whereas responders can improvise. </p>
<p>However, there is an important fact linking Suharto to the coup plotters. One of the movement’s leaders, Colonel Abdul Latief, was a close friend of Suharto. He spoke to Suharto on September 29 and again just hours before Untung’s forces set out to arrest the generals.</p>
<p>At his trial 13 years later, Latief claimed that at the first meeting, in Suharto’s home, he and Suharto briefly discussed the likelihood that senior generals were planning a coup. The second meeting took place in a Jakarta hospital, where Suharto was seeing to his son Hutomo, who had scalded himself with hot soup. </p>
<p>He claimed to inform Suharto that action was under way. “Having reported to him,” Latief testified:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>I obtained moral support because there wasn’t any reaction from him.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>Latief’s account of Suharto’s impassiveness rings true. Both before and after 1965, Suharto’s modus operandi was to keep his cards close to his chest and to move decisively at the last minute. </p>
<p>Latief’s information to Suharto may have been oblique and ambiguous, and it is uncertain what Suharto could or should have done at that moment. But Suharto was probably mentally prepared for action on the morning of October 1 in a way that none of his colleagues were.</p>
<h2>Tragic end</h2>
<p>The subsequent ease with which the communist party was destroyed showed how fragile it was in comparison with the army. A tattered economy along with old antagonisms between communism and Islamic groups, too, would have presented a PKI government with extraordinary difficulties.</p>
<p>A communist Indonesia was unlikely. That makes it all the more tragic then that the coup provided the pretext for the murder of half-a-million people.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/47640/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Robert Cribb receives funding from the Australian Research Council. </span></em></p>The killing of six army generals on October 1, 1965, became a pretext to destroy Indonesia’s communist party.Robert Cribb, Professor, School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National UniversityLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/450632015-08-04T04:41:58Z2015-08-04T04:41:58ZWhy communism appears to be gaining favour in South Africa<figure><img src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/90600/original/image-20150803-6008-8ltn2d.jpg?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=496&fit=clip" /><figcaption><span class="caption">South African Communist Party general secretary and South Africa's higher education minister Blade Nzimande addresses the party's 3rd special congress in Soweto in June. </span> <span class="attribution"><span class="source">Sowetan/Vathiswa Ruselo</span></span></figcaption></figure><p>The South African Communist Party reported an upsurge in membership at its recent <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/main.php?ID=4816">3rd special congress</a>. Its membership now stands at about 220 000. </p>
<p>Does this indicate that the Left is gaining momentum or is it only a cyclical spike? </p>
<p>The SACP’s membership has gone through cycles over the years reflecting important political developments (see table below). A comparison suggests that these figures are still relatively small weighed against those of its partners in South Africa’s governing alliance that brings together the communist party, the Congress of South African Trade Unions (Cosatu) and the African National Congress, which leads the alliance. </p>
<p>Cosatu had 1.9 million members before its biggest affiliate, the metals union Numsa, with 300 000 members, was expelled in 2014. The ANC passed the <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/opinion/columnists/2014/04/04/new-anc-membership-no-threat-to-zuma">one million</a> mark in 2012.</p>
<p>The SACP, formed in 1921, is the oldest communist party in Africa. It is one of only 20 parties which survived the anti-communist purge after independence. Many other parties, like the Popular Movement for the
Liberation of <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=5kfGGH5H3toC&pg=PA273&dq=MPLA++abandons+communism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CC0Q6AEwA2oVChMIi9uRltCMxwIVBrgUCh3smgsy#v=onepage&q=MPLA%20%20abandons%20communism&f=false">Angola</a> and <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=PwTWm-wMdqQC&pg=PA35&dq=Frelimo+abandons+communism&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CBwQ6AEwAGoVChMIsK_nzs-MxwIVSjs-Ch3_NAMW#v=onepage&q=Frelimo%20abandons%20communism&f=false">Mozambique Liberation Front</a>, officially changed their party ideologies in the 1990s from <a href="http://theredphoenixapl.org/2008/12/08/marxist-leninist-ideology/">Marxism-Leninism</a> to <a href="https://books.google.co.za/books?id=_00SKFEabywC&printsec=frontcover&dq=What+is+Social+democracy?&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0CDIQ6AEwBGoVChMInrb299qMxwIVBVw-Ch2Dugs1#v=onepage&q=What%20is%20Social%20democracy%3F&f=false">Social Democracy</a>. </p>
<p>But the SACP continued to be <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/10thcongress/marxism.pdf">Marxist-Leninist</a>. It is the only communist party on the continent which is part of a governing alliance, similar to those in Brazil, Venezuela and Nepal in recent years. </p>
<h2>Membership trends</h2>
<p>Changes in SACP membership figures after its unbanning in 1990 and its decision to become an open party went through at least four periods. </p>
<ul>
<li><p>The first was between 1990 and 1996 with an influx of new members, motivated by the SACP’s success with getting the ANC to adopt the Reconstruction and Development <a href="https://www.nelsonmandela.org/omalley/index.php/site/q/03lv02039/04lv02103/05lv02120/06lv02126.htm">Programme</a> (RDP), and its prominence in the first post-apartheid cabinet led by former President Nelson Mandela.</p></li>
<li><p>The second period was the demise of the RDP and appearance of Growth, Employment and Redistribution <a href="http://www.treasury.gov.za/publications/other/gear/chapters.pdf">(Gear)</a> as a neoliberal macro-economic policy. The ANC leadership regarded it as “non-negotiable” and in the process then South African Deputy President Thabo Mbeki started to marginalise the SACP and Cosatu. Arguably, its marginalisation within the alliance can explain the decline in membership between 1995 and 2002.</p></li>
<li><p>The third period was during President Mbeki’s last term when membership started to increase, presumably because his deputy, Jacob Zuma, solicited the SACP’s support against Mbeki. The expectation was that a Zuma government would restore the SACP’s prominence in government. Zuma’s victory at the ANC’s 52nd national conference in <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2007-12-18-zuma-is-new-anc-president">Polokwane in 2007</a> solidified it.</p></li>
</ul>
<figure class="align-center zoomable">
<a href="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=1000&fit=clip"><img alt="" src="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&fit=clip" srcset="https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=1 600w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=2 1200w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=600&h=485&fit=crop&dpr=3 1800w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=45&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=1 754w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=30&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=2 1508w, https://images.theconversation.com/files/89462/original/image-20150723-22821-yh8m2w.png?ixlib=rb-1.1.0&q=15&auto=format&w=754&h=609&fit=crop&dpr=3 2262w" sizes="(min-width: 1466px) 754px, (max-width: 599px) 100vw, (min-width: 600px) 600px, 237px"></a>
<figcaption>
<span class="caption"></span>
</figcaption>
</figure>
<p>Five years later the SACP entered the fourth period at the <a href="http://www.timeslive.co.za/politics/2012/12/20/anc-mangaung-conference-latest-news-day-5">ANC’s Mangaung</a> national conference. Arguably it reached the 150 000 mark partly because of the ANC’s perceived shift to the right with the adoption of its new long-term macro-economic plan, the <a href="http://www.poa.gov.za/news/Documents/NPC%20National%20Development%20Plan%20Vision%202030%20-lo-res.pdf">National Development Plan</a>. The SACP gained support by opposing the plan. This attracted those who had formerly been part of Zuma’s “Polokwane alliance” but were increasingly unhappy with the President.</p>
<p>Organisational problems in the ANC and corruption scandals diverted attention away from a policy turn to the left. Alternative leftist moves were made in 2012-2015 by the <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2014-05-15-is-the-eff-the-calm-before-a-real-leftist-storm">Economic Freedom Fighters</a> and the left in Cosatu. It is possible to argue that the same trend to the left is happening in the alliance in the form of a decline in ANC public support - evident in the <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2014/05/10/anc-wins-2014-election-with-reduced-majority">2014 elections</a> - and an increase in SACP membership.</p>
<p>Despite its recent difficulties with President Zuma, the SACP has had a resurgence of influence under his administration. At the moment <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/leaders/profile/7620">Senzeni Zokwana</a>, <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/leaders/profile/6935">Thulas Nxesi</a>, <a href="http://www.gov.za/about-government/leaders/profile/6396">Blade Nzimande</a>, <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=17477">Jeff Radebe</a> and <a href="https://www.thedti.gov.za/about_dti/minister.jsp">Rob Davies</a> are ministers while <a href="http://www.pa.org.za/person/jeremy-patrick-cronin/">Jeremy Cronin</a>, <a href="http://www.dmr.gov.za/about-us/the-ministry/deputy-minister.html">Godfrey Oliphant</a> and <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=17483">Buti Manamela</a> are deputies. They all serve as examples that the SACP is an access point to government.</p>
<p>The rise in membership could be attributed to the fact that it is seen as an alternative option for a political career.</p>
<h2>Official explanation</h2>
<p>SACP second deputy general secretary Solly Mapaila ascribed the growth to success with its campaigns, notably that aimed at <a href="http://www.politicsweb.co.za/news-and-analysis/17-ways-the-financial-sector-must-be-reformed--sol">restructuring</a> the country’s financial sector. </p>
<p>Also, he said, some new members felt more comfortable to express their activism and criticism of corruption in the SACP than in the ANC. Between the lines it suggests an anti-Zuma sentiment, albeit not shared by most national leaders.</p>
<p>Fault-lines and <a href="http://www.iol.co.za/news/politics/sacp-membership-growing-cronin-1.1881800#.VbC3nfmqqko">frustrations</a> between the SACP and the ANC are evident. There is open friction between it and the ANC in <a href="http://www.bdlive.co.za/national/politics/2015/01/27/anc-sacp-clash-in-mpumalanga">Mpumalanga province</a>. In addition, the <a href="http://www.ycl.org.za/">Young Communists League</a> has taken an openly critical stance towards the ANC.</p>
<p>The idea that the SACP should break away from the ANC and stand as an independent political entity has once again emerged. Some delegates at the special congress called on the SACP to contest elections separately from the ANC in 2016. The issue also surfaced in 2008 at its National Policy Conference.</p>
<p>Several motivations for such a call are possible: a perception that the SACP leadership have been co-opted by President Zuma and his government. There have also been accusations that the Zuma government is no longer pro-worker and pro-poor. This is especially so in the light of Marikana massacre in 2012 and government’s <a href="http://mg.co.za/article/2015-06-29-side-by-side-what-zuma-said-what-the-marikana-commission-wrote">minimalist response</a> to the findings of the <a href="http://www.thepresidency.gov.za/pebble.asp?relid=19997">Marikana Commission of Inquiry</a>. </p>
<p>The government has drawn flack for policies considered to be neo-liberal and that socio-economic inequality and poverty are increasing under the current government.</p>
<h2>The thinking wing of the party</h2>
<p>The party retains a cache. There is still prestige attached to it as the governing alliance’s “thought leader”. Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa <a href="http://www.sacp.org.za/docs/conf/2015/conf0709.html">referred</a> to it as such at the SACP’s latest special congress. He continued:</p>
<blockquote>
<p>Throughout the years, the SACP has played a critical role in the ideological development of the liberation movement. Its contribution to the revolutionary theory of two stages and their notion of apartheid as a “colonialism of a special type” are a few examples. </p>
</blockquote>
<p>Activists with a strong ideological inclination will be more attracted by the SACP than by the ANC. Being associated with it has its own pull factors, including the lure of intellectual sophistication.</p>
<p>The SACP’s growth is therefore symptomatic of several factors of which frustrations in the alliance are possibly the most important.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/45063/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Dirk Kotze does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>The SACP is the oldest communist party in Africa, formed in 1921. It is one of only 20 parties which survived the anti-communist purge post independence. Its membership went through cycles over years.Dirk Kotze, Professor in Political Science, University of South AfricaLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/405112015-04-22T17:54:43Z2015-04-22T17:54:43ZHere’s where Britain’s political parties stand (and fall down) on immigration<p>Immigration clearly ranks as <a href="https://www.ipsos-mori.com/researchpublications/researcharchive/3542/EconomistIpsos-MORI-March-2015-Issues-Index.aspx">one of the most important issues</a> for voters in the lead up to the UK’s election. But public opinion doesn’t always match up with the evidence, and political parties can be led in different directions by both. With this in mind, the following takes stock of the different policies about immigration, as outlined in the parties’ manifestos. </p>
<h2>Where do they stand?</h2>
<p><a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-on-immigration-ukip-offers-only-confusion-40274">UKIP</a> makes the strongest claims about immigration causing harm. The <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-conservatives-talk-tough-but-bring-nothing-new-on-immigration-40336">Conservative</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-labours-immigration-policies-are-led-by-public-opinion-not-evidence-40109">Labour</a> manifestos also tend to emphasise the negatives of immigration, real or perceived. </p>
<p><a href="http://b.3cdn.net/labouruk/e1d45da42456423b8c_vwm6brbvb.pdf#page=50">Labour says</a> the number of low-skilled immigrants is too high and points to no high-skilled categories where they’d welcome increase. Both the <a href="https://s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/manifesto2015/ConservativeManifesto2015.pdf#page=31">Conservatives</a> and <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/ukipdev/pages/1103/attachments/original/1429295050/UKIPManifesto2015.pdf#page=10">UKIP</a> want migration to be lower overall. In their <a href="https://www.conservatives.com/%7E/media/files/activist%20centre/press%20and%20policy/manifestos/manifesto2010#page=32">2010 manifesto</a>, the Conservatives proposed to reduce net migration to the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-13083781">tens of thousands</a> – a “goal” which the coalition government <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-31638174">dramatically missed</a>. This time around, the party refers only to an “ambition”. </p>
<p>In contrast, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-lib-dems-take-a-more-liberal-approach-to-immigration-40259">Liberal Democrats</a> and the <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-the-green-party-offers-a-new-take-on-immigration-40186">Green Party</a> stress the benefits of immigration. Both parties propose more open policies, such as the restoration of post-study work visas for students and – in the case of the Greens – the abolition of minimum income requirements for the entry of spouses. The Greens are the most thoughtful on the global context, but their openness toward immigration is tempered by some scepticism toward immigration for business reasons or by the more affluent, citing worries about impacts on small businesses and house prices. </p>
<p>Among parties standing only in some parts of the UK, the <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-snp-migration-plans-focus-on-international-students-40506">SNP</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/manifesto-check-plaid-cymru-wants-immigration-policy-to-address-welsh-needs-39589">Plaid Cymru</a> and the <a href="http://allianceparty.org/document/manifesto/alliance-2015-westminster-manifesto#document">Alliance Party</a> are all fairly liberal, and concerned with the regional suitability of immigration criteria. Of the Northern Irish parties, the <a href="http://uup.org/assets/images/uup%20ge%20manifesto.pdf#page=20">Ulster Unionist Party</a> and the <a href="http://dev.mydup.com/images/uploads/publications/DUP_Manifesto_2015_LR.pdf#page=9">Democratic Unionist Party</a> support immigration in moderation, while the nationalist <a href="http://www.sdlp.ie/site/assets/files/42192/westminster_manifesto.pdf#page=24">Social Democratic and Labour Party</a> and <a href="http://www.sinnfein.ie/files/2015/Westminster_Manifesto_2015_web.pdf">Sinn Féin</a> are more or less silent on the matter.</p>
<h2>An EU issue</h2>
<p>UKIP’s approach is the most innovative and the most restrictive. The party wants to make sharp cuts to levels of immigration; an approach which is tied to their core proposal of withdrawing from the EU. Instead, the party wants to establish a <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-29594642">points-based system</a> which treats Commonwealth migrants comparably to European ones. </p>
<p>The Conservatives tie the issue of migration to a renegotiation of the terms of EU membership, as do the UUP. These parties question whether free movement meets the needs of established EU members. On the other hand, the SDLP’s positive comments on “<a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/335088/SingleMarketFree_MovementPersons.pdf">free flow of people</a>” within the EU is as close as the party comes to discussing immigration.</p>
<p>EU withdrawal is advocated also by several parties outside the mainstream whose manifestos talk at length about immigration. The <a href="http://issuu.com/communist_party/docs/ge_manifesto">Communist Party</a> and <a href="http://www.socialist-labour-party.org.uk/SLP%20Manifesto%202015%20pdf.pdf#page=8">Socialist Labour Party</a> on the left, for example, regard the EU as an organisation promoting capitalist interests at workers’ expense. Both propose immigration policies outside the EU with humanitarian emphasis. The Socialist Labour Party propose a policy of zero net migration with priority for Commonwealth immigrants. For the <a href="http://www.englishdemocrats.org.uk/policies/full-manifesto.html#3.15">English Democrats</a> on the right, withdrawal not only from the EU but from a wide range of international agreements is regarded as essential to regaining full border control. </p>
<h2>Boon, or burden on benefits?</h2>
<p>For several parties, concerns about immigration from the EU focus on <a href="https://theconversation.com/hard-evidence-does-benefits-tourism-exist-22279">migrant benefit claims</a>. Yet evidence suggests there is <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/Preston-2014-The_Economic_Journal.pdf#page=5">little reason</a> to consider this a serious problem, and that restricting entitlements is unlikely therefore to discourage immigration. </p>
<p>The Conservatives, Labour, UKIP and DUP all want to delay receipt of benefits by migrants in various ways. The Conservative and Labour manifestos propose to rule out payment of <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/society/2012/oct/23/child-benefit-payments-outside-uk">child benefit</a> for children abroad. This will raise issues with <a href="http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/amending-eu-free-movement-law-what-are.html">EU law</a>, whether renegotiating terms of the UK’s EU membership or not.</p>
<p>Stresses on public services are a prominent theme in the Conservative, Labour and UKIP manifestos alike. The Conservatives propose a fund to alleviate such pressures, which bears similarities to a <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/uk/2010/aug/06/fund-impact-immigration-scrapped">fund scrapped early in the last parliament</a>. </p>
<p>The best evidence suggests that migrants <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/fiscal-effects-immigration-uk">pay taxes</a> which more than cover the cost of benefits received, <a href="http://www.cream-migration.org/files/Migration-FactSheet.pdf#page=9">in cash</a> or <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/immigration-and-public-finances">in kind</a>. The net contribution of migrants should alleviate the cost of providing public services. </p>
<h2>Where’s the evidence?</h2>
<p>Costs imposed by migrants on the <a href="http://www.cream-migration.org/files/Migration-FactSheet.pdf#page=13">NHS</a> are mentioned by the Conservatives, and are repeatedly emphasised in UKIP’s discussion of immigration. In fact, immigrants are <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/Preston-2014-The_Economic_Journal.pdf#page=9">typically healthier</a> than natives on arrival, becoming more like them the longer they stay, and make <a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-5890.2013.00177.x/epdf">similar use of health services</a>.</p>
<p>Nonetheless, UKIP would require that most migrants arrive with private insurance. Unsurprisingly, the issue is also prominent for the <a href="http://nhap.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/National-Health-Action-Party-Election-Manifesto-2015.pdf#page=37">National Health Action party</a>. It proposes that stronger efforts be made to <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/329789/NHS_Implentatation_Plan_Phase_3.PDF">recover the costs</a> of treating migrants, but <a href="http://www.irr.org.uk/pdf2/Access_to_Health_Care.pdf">opposes refusing treatment</a> to anyone on ethical, economic and medical grounds.</p>
<p>Crime is another issue raised by Conservatives, Labour and UKIP in relation to immigration. In fact, evidence suggests migration is <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/Preston-2014-The_Economic_Journal.pdf#page=9">unassociated</a> with <a href="http://www.cream-migration.org/files/Migration-FactSheet.pdf#page=19">changes in crime rates</a>.</p>
<p>Housing also figures in some manifestos. The Conservative party worry about use of social housing, and UKIP about housing shortages. The <a href="https://www.greenparty.org.uk/assets/files/manifesto/Green_Party_2015_General_Election_Manifesto.pdf#page=71">Greens</a>, on the other hand, worry about richer migrants pushing up house prices. Research on <a href="http://www.nuffield.ox.ac.uk/People/sites/Stephen.Nickell/Publication%20Files/Too%20Many%20People%20in%20Britain-May%202012.pdf">migration and housing</a> is still developing, but evidence does not point to strong upward pressure on <a href="http://www.cream-migration.org/files/Migration-FactSheet.pdf#page=17">house prices</a>.</p>
<h2>Revival of student opportunity</h2>
<p>UKIP alone discusses the burden which immigration imposes on schools. Such a burden might simply arise from growing numbers, or it might follow from the difficulty of educating children of mixed backgrounds together. The <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/impact-immigration-educational-attainment-natives">international evidence</a> on <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/how-immigrant-children-affect-academic-achievement-native-dutch-children">the latter</a> is <a href="http://www.ifs.org.uk/uploads/publications/Preston-2014-The_Economic_Journal.pdf#page=8">ambiguous</a>, but negative effects of high proportions of non-native speakers in the classroom on the performance of British-born children <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/language-barriers-impact-non-native-english-speakers-classroom">seems to be ruled out</a>. </p>
<p>Instead, the treatment of foreign university students is the biggest issue linking education and migration. Liberal Democrats, Conservatives and Labour promise crackdowns on <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/dec/02/students-private-higher-education-colleges-taxpayer-subsidy-benefits-nao-loans">bogus institutions</a>. </p>
<p>UKIP and the <a href="https://d3n8a8pro7vhmx.cloudfront.net/libdems/pages/8907/attachments/original/1429028133/Liberal_Democrat_General_Election_Manifesto_2015.pdf#page=124">Lib Dems</a> pledge to <a href="http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171778_396645.pdf#page=17">separate students</a> in official statistics. Since the Lib Dems are not proposing to base targets on such statistics, the point of this is unclear. For UKIP, who do want to keep immigration down, but are not so averse to students, it makes more sense to exclude students from the count. </p>
<p>The most significant proposal here is reintroduction of the <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/news/major-changes-to-student-visa-system">post-study work route</a>, abolished under the current government, whereby students are permitted to work for two years after completing study. The Greens promise unconditional restoration, Plaid and the SNP propose restoration for students in Wales or Scotland, and the Lib Dems propose a reintroduction specifically for STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) graduates. </p>
<p><a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/how-highly-educated-immigrants-raise-native-wages">STEM students</a> have been <a href="http://www.voxeu.org/article/international-graduate-students-are-critical-scientific-discovery">shown to be particularly associated</a>) with <a href="http://www.cream-migration.org/files/Migration-FactSheet.pdf#page=7">innovation, trade and entrepreneurship</a> – <a href="http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/mar/24/immigration-tax-skills-brilliance-quality-life">issues</a> which are largely absent from the discussion about migration in any manifesto.</p>
<h2>Little effect on labour</h2>
<p>A <a href="https://fullfact.org/immigration/migration_policy_since_election-41297">cap on skilled immigration</a> would be retained by Conservative, Labour and UKIP. Indeed, UKIP would put a five-year moratorium on any unskilled immigration whatsoever, and restrict skilled immigration to 50,000 visas per year. By way of comparison, about <a href="http://www.migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/reports/highly-skilled-migration-uk-2007-2013">221,000 highly skilled non-student migrants</a> are estimated to have entered the UK for work in the three years prior to 2013. </p>
<p>Evidence on how immigration affects <a href="http://cep.lse.ac.uk/pubs/download/ea019.pdf#page=8">average wages</a> and <a href="http://www.cream-migration.org/commentsarticle.php?blog=3">employment</a> finds no significant adverse effects. If there are labour market effects, then they hit <a href="http://blog.oup.com/2012/07/what-effect-does-immigration-have-on-wages/">workers on the lowest wages</a>. The Conservatives, Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens all propose crackdowns on <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/politics/2014/11/migrant-workers-are-being-exploited-uk-we-must-take-action">exploitation</a>, through new legislation or greater monitoring.</p>
<p>Questions of <a href="http://www.ucl.ac.uk/%7Euctpb21/Cpapers/languageproficiency.pdf">language proficiency</a> appear in the manifestos of Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and Greens. The emphasis shifts from <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/420506/20150406_immigration_rules_appendix_b_final.pdf">testing migrants’ English</a> to offering English lessons, as the tone of the manifesto becomes more liberal.</p>
<h2>Regional differences</h2>
<p>To the extent that labour market restrictions are set nationally, they may be inappropriate for the demands of <a href="http://niesr.ac.uk/blog/migration-growth-and-jobs-positive-agenda">particular regions</a>. <a href="https://www.partyof.wales/uploads/Plaid_Cymru_2015_Westminster_Manifesto.pdf#page=38">Plaid</a>, the <a href="http://votesnp.com/docs/manifesto.pdf#page=9">SNP</a> and the Alliance Party (in Northern Ireland) all call for greater regional sensitivity of policy in various respects, and complain about policies set to suit the south of England. But the unionist parties of Northern Ireland make no similar calls, and the nationalist parties of Northern Ireland say nothing on the issue.</p>
<p>One respect in which policy may be regionally discriminatory is nationally set <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/family-and-private-life-rule-changes-9-july-2012">income thresholds</a> for <a href="http://www.parliament.uk/Templates/BriefingPapers/Pages/BPPdfDownload.aspx?bp-id=sn06724">family union</a>, which may hurt families more in lower income regions. Some suggest such policies are <a href="https://www.freemovement.org.uk/one-rule-for-the-rich/">intrinsically unjust</a>. Plaid proposes a review; the Greens would drop the policy altogether. The Conservatives alone propose a toughening, while UKIP worries about <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/256257/Sham_Marriage_and_Civil_Partnerships.pdf">sham marriages</a>.</p>
<p><a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-32205970">Full exit checks</a>, <a href="https://fullfact.org/immigration/count_people_in_and_out_uk-37635">frequently promised</a> and already <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/exit-checks-on-passengers-leaving-the-uk/exit-checks-fact-sheet">partly delivered</a>, are proposed by Conservatives, Labour, Lib Dems and UKIP. Labour and UKIP both promise to expand border staff.</p>
<h2>Protecting the persecuted</h2>
<p>All main parties except the Conservatives reaffirm support for <a href="http://migrationobservatory.ox.ac.uk/briefings/migration-uk-asylum">protecting victims of persecution</a>. Labour, the Lib Dems and the Greens would end <a href="https://detentioninquiry.files.wordpress.com/2015/03/immigration-detention-inquiry-executive-summary.pdf">indefinite detention</a>. The Lib Dems and the Greens go further, advocating <a href="https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/299415/Permission_to_Work_Asy_v6_0.pdf">allowing asylum seekers to work</a>. </p>
<p>For those whose asylum claims fail, the Greens suggest a review of legal status, while the Lib Dems would abolish the <a href="http://www.redcross.org.uk/en/About-us/Advocacy/Refugees/Azure-payment-card">Azure card</a> system. The Greens want applicability of legal aid to immigration and asylum work extended.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/40511/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Ian Preston has been part of teams receiving funding from the Home Office, Migration Advisory Committee and Low Pay Commission for past research on migration.</span></em></p>Our immigration expert evaluates the manifestos of 16 political parties, to see how their policies on immigration stack up.Ian Preston, Professor in the Department of Economics, UCLLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.tag:theconversation.com,2011:article/346062014-11-28T02:37:35Z2014-11-28T02:37:35ZTo make sense of modern China, you simply can’t ignore Marxism<p>How does one come to understand China? Many wish to do so, especially in light of China’s growing global influence. </p>
<p>For some, language is the key that opens the door. With Chinese language, one is able to enter a people and their culture, opening up communication, literature, philosophy, belief and much more. Engaging and studying in translation always presents a barrier to understanding, but language is not enough.</p>
<p>For others, the Chinese classics provide the way to understand the place. You may focus on the traditional <a href="https://www.princeton.edu/%7Eachaney/tmve/wiki100k/docs/Chinese_classic_texts.html">“four books and five classics”</a> (四书五经), from before the unification under the Qin dynasty (221 BCE), or on the many texts gathered until the end of the last dynasty, the Qing, in 1912. Again, there is merit in this approach, especially in light of the way the classics are restudied and reinterpreted at every important turn in Chinese history – as is the case now.</p>
<p>For others, <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/132184/Confucius">Confucius</a> provides the way into China, if not each country deeply influenced by Confucianism. The “four books and five classics” are themselves from this tradition. Once again, such study is important, but does not provide the key to modern China.</p>
<p>Yet more possibilities are proposed, whether <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/582972/Daoism">Daoism</a>, or some mystical notion of the “East”, or kinship, or the metaphysics of <a href="http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/653297/yinyang">yin-yang</a> (阴-阳), which found its way into nearly every tradition or school of Chinese thought.</p>
<p>On a different note, some eschew language, culture, philosophy or belief and focus on economics. In this case, the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_Asian_Tigers">“Asian Tigers”</a> – Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and South Korea – provide the template for China. Here, export-focused economies, industrialisation and state intervention led to rapid growth, high incomes and now economic specialisation. </p>
<p>Or perhaps Japan provides the model, with its rise to economic pre-eminence under American patronage. This is perhaps the least persuasive option.</p>
<h2>Socialism still makes China tick</h2>
<p>The missing element in all this is Marxism. China remains a socialist country, with the Communist Party effectively operating a one-party state with <a href="http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/08/30/us-china-media-idUSKBN0GU05I20140830">Marxist values</a>. </p>
<p>Many continue to dismiss Marxism in China, whether in terms of a repressive and inadequate ideology or as empty words in which no one “believes” any longer. This is a great mistake and risks neglecting what is arguably one of the most important factors for understanding China.</p>
<p>Mao Zedong is the point at which one should begin, although it helps to understand Marx, Engels and Lenin, let alone the history of successful socialist revolutions from Russia onwards. Mao’s thought remains the focus of intense study and debate in China – so much so that President Xi Jinping frequently <a href="http://articles.economictimes.indiatimes.com/2013-06-30/news/40286860_1_president-xi-jinping-gdp-numbers-cpc">quotes Mao</a> in national and international contexts.</p>
<p>Xi has a PhD in Marxism and has directed even more resources to the study and <a href="http://marxistupdate.blogspot.com.au/2011/05/marxist-education-in-china.html">fostering of the Marxist tradition</a> and the work of Mao Zedong. Marxism is now a distinct discipline in China.</p>
<h2>Mao’s legacy is not dead and buried</h2>
<p>More controversially, Mao’s acts as a leader are also vital for understanding China. Most debate turns around the role of the <a href="http://www.history.com/topics/cultural-revolution">Cultural Revolution</a> (1966-1976), which he fostered over the last decade of his life. Was it an aberration, an outburst of revolutionary enthusiasm, or perhaps an effort to restore his sliding power?</p>
<p>The semi-official narrative is that the Cultural Revolution set China back in terms of economics, politics and society. The aberration was thus corrected after Mao’s death, when the path of reform was undertaken. </p>
<p>However, another and persuasive argument, made by <a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Battle-Chinas-Past-Revolution/dp/074532780X">Mobo Gao</a>, is that it was precisely the Cultural Revolution that set China on its current path. Thoroughly shaking up vested interests in society, from top to bottom, it cleared the ground for China’s rapid rise to becoming the leading global power. This was the shake-up needed to unsettle centuries, if not millennia, of social assumptions and cultural norms. </p>
<p>Against the orthodoxy that the economy came to a standstill during the Cultural Revolution, it has become clear that the economy actually forged ahead as though released from its shackles.</p>
<p>Unfortunately, I have yet to find a “mainstream” foreign commentator who is even partly aware of the nature of Chinese Marxism. Obviously it entails careful study and a feel for the subject matter. It requires some sense of the meaning of <a href="http://english.people.com.cn/90002/92169/92211/6275043.html">“socialism with Chinese characteristics”</a> in all its complexity and apparent paradoxes. And it needs to be understood that in China a “Marxist entrepreneur” is not a contradiction in terms.</p>
<p>Languages, the classics, Confucius: these and more are obviously important for understanding China. But to rely on these is to neglect the crucial factor of Marxism. Many may aspire to becoming a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/China_Hands">Zhongguotong</a> (中国通) – one who understands and senses at a much deeper level how China ticks. </p>
<p>Without Marxism, such an aspiration is mere pretence.</p><img src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/34606/count.gif" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" />
<p class="fine-print"><em><span>Roland Boer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.</span></em></p>How does one come to understand China? Many wish to do so, especially in light of China’s growing global influence. For some, language is the key that opens the door. With Chinese language, one is able…Roland Boer, Associate Professor, Religion, Marxism and Secularism, Faculty of Education and Arts, University of NewcastleLicensed as Creative Commons – attribution, no derivatives.