- The Guardian
- Issue #2063
Australians have real problems, problems that can’t be wished away. Climate change is happening now, and our ALP government is making it worse. There is a housing crisis. Thousands of people are homeless. Thousands of others are living with rent stress, with rent taking up more than 30 per cent of incomes and the real possibility of homelessness staring them in the face. Workers still die at work. Disgracefully, Indigenous Australians have rates of incarceration, poverty, and suicide out of all proportion to their percentage of the population.
The cost of living is going up, and we have a government that isn’t doing enough about it.
One problem we do not have is China.
The People’s Republic of China is the second largest country in the world by population. The Communist Party of China has led the country during the greatest increase in literacy and prosperity in human history. China is our biggest trading partner. It’s also 7448 kilometres away from Australia. Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia, Thailand, and Papua New Guinea are all closer to Australia.
We are not at war with China. China doesn’t want to be at war with us. Yet Australia and the US are preparing for a war with China.
It seems incredible that these things need to be pointed out, but they do. The Australian government, the Liberal Party, and a large section of the Australian media are bent on demonising China. A nation with only one tiny military base outside its borders is being depicted as a ravenous aggressor, while a country with around 800 military bases around the world is seen as some sort of guardian of freedom.
The Australian state and media aren’t creating a fictional hostile China because they have nothing better to do. They’re manufacturing a phantom threatening China because doing this suits the US. If there’s one thing we know about the Australian government, it’s this; what the United States wants, it gets, sometimes before even asking.
All Australian governments support US imperialism. The ALP wants to keep the US confident that Australia’s answer to the command “Jump!” is “how high?” The government also wants to keep their business donors happy. So, in a very ALP way, they walk both sides of the street – a little sternness in the media, a few friendly meetings with Chinese officials, but pressing on with the disastrous attempt to turn this country into a base for US nuclear-powered submarines with Australian flags on them.
You are going to be showered with skewed and hostile stories about China, no matter how you get your news. The supposedly fair and impartial ABC quotes the arms industry-funded lobby group the Australian Strategic Policy Institute (ASPI) as though it’s the voice of objectivity.
China is a large and complex country which has made a lot of progress. It’s an independent country with a communist government. The US finds both things threatening, hence the demonisation.
We have an enemy, but it’s a lot closer than China. Our enemy is a system which leaves Australians homeless while showering subsidies on fossil fuel companies, which is giving billions to the well-off at the same time as keeping wages down and leaving job seekers below the poverty line. That enemy is the capitalist and imperialist system we live under. China is no threat to Australia. Capitalism and imperialism are a deadly threat right now.
Hiroshima and Nagasaki are a long time ago, but the path towards them was made of the kind of beat-ups being practiced on us right now. China is not our enemy. Join the Communist Party of Australia in fighting the real ones.
