Asia

We are happy to announce the launch of The Spark(火花), a website operated by the members of the International Marxist Tendency (IMT) in Taiwan who organise a group of the same name. The website will feature Marxist news, analysis and theoretical materials in traditional Chinese. It will also provide old and newly translated articles by Marxists such as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, as well as Ted Grant. This is an important step in building the forces of revolutionary Marxism in Taiwan and amongst Sinophone people!

Farmers in India launched a protest movement days after the government passed three reactionary agricultural bills in the parliament on 20 September 2020. This article will explore the Farm Bills, the struggle of Indian farmers, capitalist anarchy in agriculture and the revolutionary way forward.

We have received the following report of events taking place on Chinese internet fora and social media. It shows that, despite the CCP’s totalitarian regime, the crisis of capitalism is still radicalising Chinese youth, who express their discontent online in creative ways. We believe it is valuable to publish this for our international readers, showing a process which is not readily visible through official statistics and reporting.

Both the US and British governments have recently launched a barrage of criticism against China’s treatment of the Uyghurs. The US has gone as far as imposing sanctions on top Chinese state officials responsible for Xinjiang, and the oppression of the Uyghurs by the Chinese state is now regularly featured in the news in the West. According to reports by the capitalist press, hundreds of thousands of Uyghurs are being detained in prison camps, whilst others face extremely repressive conditions. But why only now have western imperialists hypocritically taken up the plight of the Uyghurs?

Mass protests and strikes exploded across Indonesia on 6-8 October following the passing of the controversial Omnibus Law: a major series of counter-reforms also known as the “Big Bang” Law. Tens of thousands of workers went on strike, and in dozens of cities, school students took to the streets and engaged in running battles with the police.

The conflict that has erupted between Armenia and Azerbaijan is the bloody legacy of the collapse of the Soviet Union and the restoration of capitalism. This is a barbaric war with reaction on all sides. All the powers intervening in the conflict claim to be victims, but the only real victims are the working people, on both sides, who are paying with their blood for the cynical and reactionary games of their leaders. Only internationalism and class struggle can direct the workers against their true enemies: their own ruling capitalist class. This statement by our Russian comrades

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The workers and poor of Bangladesh are crushed between the COVID-19 pandemic and a severe economic crisis, while the government throws money at big business and wades in a swamp of corruption. For millions of people, winning a better society is a matter of life or death.

A woman belonging to the lower-caste Dalits died in a Delhi hospital on Tuesday 29 September after being raped and tortured by four men in the Hathras district of Uttar Pradesh (UP). Public outrage is sweeping the nation. This gruesome and inhuman attack has once again highlighted the barbarity poor and lower-caste women face on a daily basis in India, which is rooted in the rotten capitalist system.

Note: We are republishing this article, written by Ji Han (吉汉) and published 28 May 2019 by Initium Media (Hong Kong) because we believe it provides some interesting insights into what happened in China in 1989. Of particular interest is what it describes taking place within the Chinese working class at the time. However, we do not agree with the pessimism about today’s situation expressed towards the end. 

This article provides an overview of the political situation in India, in which the reactionary BJP-led government of Narendra Modi has turned the COVID-19 crisis into an unprecedented disaster. The ruling class is tearing up labour protections and stoking sectarian violence, while rewarding its big business cronies. Hundreds of millions face destitution, violence and oppression. A revolutionary backlash is inevitable.

In the past week, university students all over China have been openly struggling against their school administrations for effectively confining them on campus in the name of complying with the government’s coronavirus safety instructions. These protests have been spreading like wildfire, from the capital Beijing to Fujian in the south, to Inner Mongolia in the north and beyond, engulfing thousands of campuses.

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the contradictions of capitalist society for everyone to see. It has brought to surface the glaring class divide in India. While the wealthy minority enjoy conditions of comfort and privilege, the poor are struggling for their survival.