China

Kino Eye: One of China’s best films, Red Sorghum

Directed by Zhang Yimou, Red Sorghum is set in the thirties in Shandung province around the time of the second Chinese-Japanese war (1937-45). Jiu’er (Gong Li) is sold in an arranged marriage to Li Datou, a leper, who owns a distillery which brews Red Sorghum wine. Jiu’er falls in love with a distillery worker, “Grandpa” (Jiang Wen), who rescues her from bandits and later they have a child. Li Datou dies (possibly murdered); he has no heirs and Jiu’er becomes the owner of the distillery. Grandpa is the butt of a practical joke and peevishly urinates in the huge wine vats (don’t try this at...

Free Huang Xueqin and Wang Jianbing

In September Chinese investigative journalist and #Metoo activist Huang Xueqin (pictured) planned to fly to the UK to begin a postgraduate course at the University of Sussex. Her friend, labour and disability rights activist Wang Jianbing, planned to see her off to the airport. On 19 September they were both arrested at Wang’s home in Guangzhou – and are still detained. It has been confirmed that Wang Jianbing’s arrest was on charges of “inciting subversion of state power”. As Amnesty International put it : “As well as shining a light on the dire treatment of victims of sexual violence, [Huang...

Before Maoism: why we must reclaim the early history of the Chinese Communist Party

New Youth , journal of the Chinese revolutionary youth movement after the First World War, helped found the original, pre-Stalinist, revolutionary Chinese Communist Party • This is taken from a longer article about Chinese history and class struggle, 'China and independent working-class politics' , published in 2001 How did the independent working class movement develop? China in 1919 was ripe for revolution. For two thousand years it was ruled by successive dynasties organised around a state bureaucracy. Still overwhelmingly a peasant country, it had stagnated for centuries until its last...

Too shameful to be reported?

On Saturday 27 November, there was a rally in London’s Chinatown, supposedly against anti-Asian racism and, more specifically, anti-Chinese racism. There is, indeed, strong evidence of an increase in racism against Chinese people and those of “Chinese” appearance in the UK. It’s been fuelled at least in part by the Covid-19 pandemic and Trump’s description of it as the “China virus”. All socialists would, as a matter of course, support a genuine campaign against anti-Chinese racism, but there can be no doubt that this rally was, in reality, a propaganda front for the Chinese Communist Party...

The truth about 27 November in Chinatown

A 27 November rally in Chinatown, London, finished with a physical attack by some supporters of the Chinese state on Hong Kongers and others who had come to protest about repression of the Uyghurs and in HK. Since then, messages have been circulated on the instant-messaging app WeChat putting a bounty on two exile Hong Kong activists, Simon Cheng and Nathan Law, offering £10,000 for their UK addresses, and forcing them to move house. Over 50 Hong Konger and other groups have protested and called for support “to secure long-term protection and support for Hongkongers — and broader East and...

Asylum rights for Uyghur refugees

The vast majority of Uyghurs live in China, mainly in East Turkestan. Nearly a million Uyghurs live outside of China, mainly elsewhere in Central Asia, e.g. in Kazakhstan, or in Middle Eastern countries like Turkey. There is also a small community of about 2,000 to 3,000 Uyghurs in Afghanistan. All communities in Afghanistan face horrors with a collapse of food supplies, health care, and economic life since the Taliban took power. Many of the Uyghurs are especially afraid of how they will be treated by the Taliban because of its growing relationship with the Chinese government. The Uyghur...

The Stalinist history of Maoism

“The predominating type among the present ‘Communist’ bureaucrats is the political careerist, and in consequence the polar opposite of the revolutionist. Their ideal is to attain in their own country the same position that the Kremlin oligarchy gained in the USSR. They are not the revolutionary leaders of the proletariat but aspirants to totalitarian rule. They dream of gaining success with the aid of this same Soviet bureaucracy and its GPU. They view with admiration and envy the invasion of Poland, Finland, the Baltic states, Bessarabia by the Red Army because these invasions immediately...

Yang freed. Back his call to free Lee!

After 84 days in jail, Korean Confederation of Trade Unions president Yang Kyeung-soo has hailed the “spirit of international solidarity” which sustained him and helped win his release, and demanded “immediate release of brother Lee Cheuk-yan… and imprisoned workers around the world”. Lee Cheuk-yan was general secretary of the now-dissolved Hong Kong Confederation of Trade Unions. He is serving 18 months in prison for his role in a Tiananmen Square memorial demonstration and other pro-democracy protests, and faces new charges under the National Security Law. Yang was arrested on 2 September in...

From 1997: "Hong Kong on the auction block"

Editorial in Workers' Liberty magazine 39 , April 1997. At the time of republishing (December 2021), the Chinese government has just spent two years radically demolishing Hong Kong's freedoms. A century and half a go Britain was the great world power, the pioneer and bearer of a new type of production by steam-driven machinery; her navy ruled the world's seas. By contrast, China was an ancient civilisation, grown decrepit and spiralling into decay and disintegration. Britain fought a series of wars to force China to open its borders to opium from British-ruled India - the "opium wars". Britain...

Kino Eye: Chinese film after “socialist realism”

After 1949 Chinese filmmaking was trapped in a version of “socialist realism”. Eventually the filmmakers of the so-called “Fifth Generation” broke away from that deadening practice, starting with Chen Kaige’s Yellow Earth (1984), with brilliant cinematography by Zhang Yimou. The film follows the journey of Gu Qing (played by Xueqi Wang), a soldier in the People’s Liberation Army sent to a remote region to collect folk songs. He moves in with a family of poor peasants. Gu Qing struggles to convince the peasants of his aims. He impresses 14 year old Cuiqiao (Bai Xue), the daughter of the...

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