Chinese Solidarity?

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Chinese workers in Wuhan, on the Yangtse River, have t ried to form Polish-style independent trade unions according to reports in the city's Changjiang Daily.

This is the first indication ol the response, at grass tools level, of the Chinese masses to the developments in Poland, which have been widely reported throughout China, since last summer's confrontations and the subsequent formation of Solidarity.

According to the Changjiang Daily:

"A small number of people who wish to throw the nation into chaos are attempting • to break away from the leadership of the party and form so-called 'free trade unions and 'independent student unions'. These people either have ulterior motives or are extremely ignorant."

The real extent of such moves amongst the Chinese workers is perhaps best indicated, however, by the fact that the Peking People's Daily' felt it necessary to devote an editorial to the matter.

In a stern warning to trade unionists the bureaucracy announced, "trade unions are workers organisations under the leadership of the Communist Party". It called on all workers organisations to accept the party's leadership 'on their own initiative' Such developments clearly reflect the problems facing the Chinese Stalinist leadership. Against a background of the show trials of the 'Gang of 4' and the attempt of the present leadership to heap the blame for China's appallingly low productivity onto ultra leftists, the crisis of Chinese Stalinism now stands as a mirror image of the crisis of the Soviet bureaucracy in Eastern Europe.

Yet it was precisely the anti-Soviet manoeuvres of the Chinese bureaucracy and their determination to exploit the developments in Poland for propaganda purposes which opened the door to anti-bureaucratic developments amongst their own working class.

Having gone as far as initiating the demolition of the Mao cult in order to legitimate their 'new road' the Chinese Stalinists find themselves caught in the web of their own re-examination of history.

They are driven to publicly admit that the existing trade unions have become so closely identified with the party over the past few years that they have actually begun to alienate large numbers of their members.

But this indicates the extent to which the Chinese masses are also now questioning the history of Chinese Stalinism.

Similarly, the Stalinists' urgent plea that "workers and staff members should resist the tendency to adore capitalism and advocate bourgeois liberalisation" can only have a hollow ring for the multi-millioned Chinese masses who have seen their bureaucratic leaders feting reactionary anti-Communist dregs like Nixon, Heath and Thatcher.

For the workers and peasants of China there remains the backlog of 32 years of unfinished business since the victory of Mao's forces in 1949.

The death of Mao in a period of massive world imperialist crisis placed on the agenda the task of establishing a healthy workers' state rid of its Stalinist bureaucratic deformities.

But, as in Poland, Chinese workers will need to develop a new, revolutionary leadership if their challenges to bureaucratic dictatorship are to culminate in the political overthrow of the bureaucracy and the establishment of the power of workers councils.

Deng with Japanese leader Fukuda