Here, we document the attempt of some individuals to give theoretical expression to the Hong Kong democracy movement. The authors are close to the exile movement and hope to support the struggle against the CCP regime. We wish their efforts comprehensive success. In principle, we agree with their theses developed within the following text.
In the defensive and offensive war for the bourgeois-democratic terrain on which the class struggle of the proletariat must ultimately be fought, the Hong Kong demonstrators have pushed their society, as the Hong Kong police has claimed, “to the brink of total collapse”. But in fact, the demonstrators have pushed Chinese despotism over Hong Kong to the brink of total collapse by fundamentally challenging the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) monopoly on political power. The uncompromising and autocratic rule of the CCP, which corresponds to a social order in which only orders and obeys are to be given, has been matched by the determined resistance of Hong Kong demonstrators. Since Hong Kong was handed over from British colonial rule to Chinese despotism, the population has been aware of the sword of Damocles hovering over it.
It was Hong Kong’s connection to the British Empire and the predominant economic function that Hong Kong played as a hub for money capital that resulted in a relatively liberal and democratic superstructure compared to the state-capitalist despotism of the CCP. Under the domination of a liberal-democratic, private-capitalist bourgeoisie, the metropolis developed into „Asia’s World City“. The CCP gained access to Hong Kong in 1997 under the contradictory condition that Hong Kong formed part of the People’s Republic („one country“) but was allowed to retain certain special economic and legal rights („two systems“). Since then, on the anniversary of the handover, July 1, massive demonstrations for democracy, universal suffrage and freedom of expression have been held every year. Indeed, because of the threat to their rule posed by Hong Kong’s special status, the Chinese leadership could not wait too long for exploiting the fundamental incompatibility of the „one country, two systems“ principle in favor of the national „unity of the empire“ which it propagated.
The revolutionary situation in Hong Kong
Still today, Hong Kong’s special status makes it attractive for Western capital investment. 70 percent of the capital traded on Hong Kong Stock Exchange – the fourth largest in the world – goes to China, which is why Hong Kong serves as a hub for capital. Although Hong Kong’s importance in this role for China has declined over the past few years and has been partially replaced by Shenzhen, the megacity is still economically and ideologically indispensable for China’s ruling class. However, since liberal democracy, which grants equality before the law in Hong Kong, is incompatible with its rule as the apparatchiks of a state-capitalist despotism, this class is constantly seeking to extend its power over Hong Kong’s private-capitalist-liberal bourgeoisie while the people of Hong Kong resist.[1]
As recently as 2003, demonstrations were still able to prevent a law on „national security“ and thus avert massive cuts in freedom of expression for the time being. The Chinese leadership then only exerted its influence more covertly and insidiously in everyday life, education and the media. The so-called „Umbrella Protests“, in which the people of Hong Kong opposed the appointment of candidates for the election of the head of administration by the CCP, defeated by the Chinese leadership without any concessions and by means of severe repression.
In accordance with the totalitarian nature of Chinese Communist Party rule, in Hong Kong, a struggle rages on all fronts. In addition to political and legal issues, Hong Kong’s relative cultural autonomy is to be undermined, for example by suppressing the Cantonese language in everyday life and by no longer teaching it in schools. Through its representative office, the CCP has also for some time now provided bonds to „patriotic“ companies and support for loyal candidates in politics and business leadership. At the beginning of August, the Chinese government ordered the Hong Kong airline „Cathay Pacific“ to no longer allow employees who took part in the demonstrations in Hong Kong to board on flights towards or across China. The airline had to give in because of its economic dependence on these routes, and has dismissed some of its on-board staff. The Hong Kong workers, in turn, are willingly risking jobs and income by participating in the demonstrations, the loss of which they see as part of the cost of the war against capital: „Some colleagues told him that the cause they were fighting for was more important than their jobs. „They say this is a war,“ says one airline pilot.[2] In such a war against Chinese state-capitalist despotism, in June 2019, segments of the working class have allied themselves with the private-capitalist liberal faction of the Hong Kong bourgeoisie to defend democracy and political independence – their common interests. The alliance was prompted by a so-called „extradition law“ that provided for the bypassing of parliament and independent scrutiny by Hong Kong’s courts in the extradition of „suspects“ wanted in China. Legal proceedings in Hong Kong were to be brought even further under the political control of the CCP and the deportation of prisoners to their labor camps and torture prisons was to be facilitated. After months of huge protests, this law was withdrawn, but the five demands[3] of the Hong Kong people were no longer directed only against the law as such, but rather towards the consolidation of the freedoms threatened by the CCP. Indeed, without the introduction of adequate mechanisms to block and curb the progress that the Chinese counterrevolution has already made in recent years, an end to the protests would mean defeat by now.
The liberal faction of the Hong Kong bourgeoisie knows Hong Kong’s internal independence as the basis of its own rule, while the working class needs it as the terrain of its own class struggle. Their situation is further aggravated as a ruled class. On average, Hong Kongers work 50 hours a week, a record among major cities around the world, and income inequality is the greatest in half a century.[4] In city public hospitals, people have to wait 29 months for a mammogram. Tens of thousands live in shacks and on cots, with an average per capita living space of 15.7 square meters (in Berlin, for comparison, the figure is 38.8). „7000 HK$ [= approx. 800€] for an apartment like a cage, and you really think we’re afraid of prison?“, one of the many graffiti that can be seen in Hong Kong at the moment says. For the proletariat, a defeat of the Hong Kong democracy movement would also mean the loss of democratic rights, which make independent political association significantly easier and offer protection from arbitrary persecution. In Hong Kong, it becomes particularly clear how counter-revolutionary and demagogic the slogan of „improving the material living conditions“ of the proletariat issued by the local nationalization apologists and movement heroes is. The CCP wants to lure the proletariat into total subjugation with precisely this „improvement of the material living conditions“. For a „lentil stew“, a „secure job“, „affordable rents“ and similar promises, the proletariat should sell its revolutionary ambitions for all eternity.
Those class contradictions are deliberately ignored by bourgeois critics of China. Conversely, they seek economic cooperation between the Chinese state-capitalists and certain national bourgeoisies of Western-style democratic liberal private capitalism, such as the conclusion of a trade agreement between the U.S. and China to prevent China from a possible military intervention. Otherwise, they lecture against all too much sensational violence; admonitions of peacefulness, from which the awareness that similar protests are „possible everywhere in the world“ speaks, which means that their own rule is therefore also palpable. They hush up the fact that both forms of capitalist production are based on the economic exploitation of the respective national working classes. The liberal bourgeoisie also shares a certain interest in the swindle with „communism“ – just like Stalinism, bourgeois anti-communism equates communism with its state capitalist perpetuation, only under the opposite sign. Because of its fundamental apology of Western-style capitalism, its political criticism ultimately remains narrow-minded, instead of understanding the despotic regime of the CCP as the political expression of Chinese state capitalism. In this respect, the left criticism of China is merely an ideological appendage of that bourgeois-liberal position, in that it is limited to denouncing human rights violations and legal and political repression in China.
The Chinese reaction
However, the Chinese leadership cannot allow democratic freedoms. Its power is based on the dictatorial bondage of the productive forces, so that they would not break the capitalist production relations. The People’s Republic of China is not a socialist society, albeit one with deficits. Rather, the separation of the direct producers from the means of production is most radically implemented in state capitalism, as it rules in China. Here, the direct producers are robbed of all forms of organization and expression – capital thus rules almost unconditionally. Free development of individuality, as it is relatively favored in the private capitalist type of bourgeois rule – since, among other things, the command of capital in the production process is less repressive, scope for individual consumption is opened up and tends to be expanded –, here stands in direct contrast to the attempt of the state and the party to exercise absolute control over all social movements and expressions.[5] Not only have the cadres of the party monopolized the power of command in the state and the economy, but they have also concentrated great wealth in their hands. The Prime Minister Wen Jiabao, for example, who was in office until 2013, was, by propaganda, always described as the humble and popular „Grandpa Wen“; at the end of his term in office it was revealed that he and his family had amassed a fortune of at least 2.7 billion dollars. The wealth of the CP cadres is well known among the Chinese population. Propaganda has reacted to this: In order to maintain the „communist“ appearance, individual cadres are repeatedly convicted of „enrichment“ and „corruption“. At the same time, the condemnation of individual scapegoats is a tool in the power struggles within the ruling class.
The CCP yielding to the protest movement would not only consolidate Hong Kong’s ties to the Western camp of liberal democratic private capitalism. It would also make it a model for class struggles at home, which are already erupting due to, among other things, rampant corruption, environmental degradation, dictatorship and surveillance, desolate working conditions and low wages. These class struggles start, as everywhere in despotism of Eastern character, at first as democratic struggles.
But the protests in Hong Kong are dangerous for Beijing for another reason, too. China’s economic growth, with which the CCP fundamentally legitimizes its dictatorship, has more than halved since 2007, and foreign countries are increasingly losing interest in investing in China.[6] The Chinese economy shows a blatant overcapacity in many areas: the surplus of produced steel over actually used steel, for example, is greater than the total steel production of the USA, Germany and Japan combined.[7] „The reduction of overcapacities in industry and the restructuring or even closure of inefficient state-owned enterprises are urgently needed, but the process would be accompanied by substantial job cuts. This could lead to protests and political instability. Beijing wants to avoid this at all costs.“[8] In order to partially absorb the overcapacity, the country is taking on debt, thus trying to finance the shrinking growth of gross domestic product, which itself is only an expression of the expansion of capital, not of its profitability. China’s debt has quadrupled in the last ten years and, corporate, household and government debt combined, amounts to 300 percent of the gross domestic product. No other developed country has ever incurred so much debt in such a short time in peace-time. Since the Chinese markets will not allow for further economic growth in the foreseeable future, the CCP is trying to export its solution to the crisis through further debt in the form of the so-called „New Silk Road“: it is financing large-scale debt-based infrastructure and other huge construction projects around the world.[9]
It is extremely doubtful that the solution to the crisis can, in the long term, be found in debt and global expansion. At the same time, China’s rise in the system of international division of labor has increased the average level of qualification of the Chinese proletariat. This has been accompanied by a growth in the layer of managing cadres and also in elements of a private capitalist bourgeoisie that does not want to give up its pre-eminent position in favor of centralized administration. Wherever the latter two cannot be integrated into the rule of the CCP, potential allies of the first stage of a proletarian revolution are emerging. Life of the CCP therefore depends on the ability to absolutely stifle any resistance in its sphere of rule. „Hong Kong therefore plays an important role in the fight against a totalitarian regime for the whole world,“ explains a Hong Kong demonstrator.[10]
This role is relativized or even denied by those leftists taking a stance of „political indifferentism“[11] in an ultra-left radicalism on a geopolitical level: „The two sides in this rivalry are going to make people choose ‚either Washington or Beijing‘. All progressive people, whether in Hong Kong or beyond, should refuse such choices. They are not real choices for working people in Hong Kong, China, or the United States. Workers have nothing to win in this rivalry.“[12] The economic as well as political-legal differences that are decisive for the respective working classes and the revolutionary perspective of their class struggles in the two qualitatively different forms of capitalist production are simply leveled out without any sense of own political liberties. Such an indifferent attitude can also be found among anarchists, who consider democratic rights to be „affirmative phantasms“,[13] and leftist communists, for whom „anti-capitalist mobilization“ is mainly important, and who „question“ the position of the „capitalist class that governs (and practically owns) Hong Kong and the rulers of the CCP“.[14]
Meanwhile, Chinese propaganda and censorship – referred to by demonstrators as „brainwashing“ – seeks to keep the Chinese population and international public in the dark or to deceive them about what is happening in Hong Kong. According to an unconfirmed secret document released in September, reporting in China should emphasize alleged rioting by protesters, while police violence is to be concealed.[15] In addition, the width of the protests is to understated and a „silent (pro-Chinese) majority“ circulated. In addition, the CCP, through the largest and most heavily funded state propaganda apparatus in the world, is producing conspiracy theories on a global scale, which try to blame hostile Western powers for every protest, force foreign companies to keep quiet about CCP crimes through economic pressure,[16] and infiltrate universities,[17] media and institutions.[18] Nowhere are their lies fully believed, though – even on the Chinese Internet, courageous renegades are spreading declarations of solidarity with Hong Kong.
Also, the varied apologia of Chinese state capitalism by leftist Beijing satellites in Germany already largely agrees with the orders of the Chinese propaganda machinery, as it is prototypically and servilely shown by Jörg Kronauer in konkret 8/19, where he is angered by antisocial perpetrators of violence and „spoiled middle-class kids“, who „poison“ the „political climate“. He also tries so spread the story of a „quite narrow majority“ to play the movement down. Kronauer thus proves to be a diligent lackey of Chinese propaganda, who always acts in the political interest of any despotism, as long as it is only against „the West“.[19] His disgraceful journal jumped to his side in the most disgusting and pathetic way, when it defamed the Hong Kong demonstrators as „The Pegida of Hong Kong“ on the front page of its 1/20 issue.[20] In the corresponding editorial, Christian Y. Schmidt, a classic German socialist, laments 800 destroyed ticket machines and tries to turn the protests into xenophobic and „militant excesses“. Because (!) in Hong Kong relative freedom (elections and freedom of the press are the author’s own examples) still prevails in comparison with the People’s Republic of China, the concern that this could soon change is „sheer nonsense“. It is funny that Schmidt cites the Constitutional Court’s ruling on the ban on masking, which has meanwhile been overturned by the CCP, as proof of the independence of the judiciary. Schmidt’s grandiose tip to his superior functionaries: to show Hong Kongers how little democracy will change their „desolate material situation and lack of prospects“ and let them choose freely, those democratic illusionaries.
Chief Executive Carrie Lam, who has wanted to throw in the towel, but will have to endure the protests in office, no longer has any authority on the crucial issues. There is disagreement among the Chinese leadership about the right course of action, which has so far been balanced out into a tactic of waiting and persevering. They hope to have the stamina to hold out longer than the demonstrators, but cannot under any circumstances allow themselves to be defeated or respond to their demands. The use of the party’s own paramilitary to suppress the protests, as is the norm in the mainland, would, in the Special Administrative Region, be extremely damaging to China’s ideological position in the world and its geopolitical position in Asia, where such action would drive neighboring countries more quickly into the protective arms of other nations, such as the United States. All other means must be exhausted first.
In recent months, the Chinese leadership has therefore reacted to initially largely peaceful mass protests with brutal police violence. „We would like to make clear to the very small group of unscrupulous and violent criminals and the dirty forces behind them: those who play with fire will perish by it,“ they declared at the beginning of August and unleashed Mafia thugs on demonstrators. Legislative Council member Dennis Kwok reports that the police no longer takes orders from the Hong Kong but the Chinese government. Presumably, Chinese soldiers, dressed as Hong Kong police officers in uniforms, have long been active in demonstrations. For the time being, the excessive use of tear gas and rubber bullets on the streets, the increased use of lethal weapons and covert violence, sexual abuse and rape in police custody and deportation to the torture chambers of mainland China are intended to wear down the demonstrators physically and mentally. Since June, there have been over 500 suicide attempts in Hong Kong and over 50 demonstrators are missing. In early November, 22-year-old Alex Chow Tsz-Lok, who had fallen from a parking garage under unsettled circumstances while fleeing from tear gas and police, died during protests. The escalation of violence is intended to drive a wedge between the ‚radical‘ and the ‚moderate‘ elements of the protest movement, to force one of them to increase violence, and the other to break away in order to take the wind out of the sails of the united movement. This political principle of „divide and rule“ has not yet come to fruition. Since it has become clear that peaceful mass demonstrations cannot force the government to make concessions, sharper tactics of the recent past, such as the use of Molotov cocktails and the demolition of CCP-affiliated business branches, have also gained popular support. In the recent past, demonstrators have also used economic means – such as blocking transport systems and important educational institutions or further general strikes – to increase pressure. Many of the demonstrators cannot afford to allow the movement to subside because they expect to become victims of a wave of repression that always follows such protests. They are threatened to share the fate of millions of Uighurs who are enslaved and „re-educated“ to death in the modern gulags of Xinjang.
After more than 1,000 demonstrators occupied the Hong Kong Polytechnic University for days with unprecedented courage, after the people gained a victory in the district council elections, the revolutionary movement in Hong Kong has come to its necessary climax. The unstable principle of „one country, two systems“ has long tipped in the Chinese leadership’s favor. Its apparent stability was based on a temporary balance of contracting forces and cannot be restored. For the time being, only tilting in the opposite direction remains; but because full independence for Hong Kong is impossible under CCP rule, the fulfilment of the five demands ultimately coincides with the current goal of revolution throughout China: overthrowing the Communist Party. In Hong Kong, not a „civil society“ is committed to „true democracy“ and „social equality“ against an abstract „authoritarian capitalism“. This is just the embellishing notion of Western organizers of charity.[21] In reality, Hong Kong and China are at war against modernized bourgeois terrorism, the most nefarious subjugation of all classes of society to the despotic violence of the CCP. Victory in this war is a prerequisite for the emancipation of the proletariat.
The ideological attitude in the “West”
In the „West“, there is widespread restraint on the part of political personnel in the face of democratic mass protests and struggles for political freedom. US President Trump speaks of the protests as a „riot“ and the „Hong Kong problem“, which is an internal Chinese affair, thus adopting Chinese propaganda.[22] He apparently regards the protests as a chip in the poker for a trade agreement. The US Congress passed the so-called „Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act“ with a veto-proof majority, which threatens to withdraw Hong Kong’s trade privileges on the basis of violations of democracy and human rights, and to deny visas and freeze the assets of those responsible for the suppression of democratic freedoms. This step, which represents only a minimum level of support from the Hong Kong people, has so far been taken by the US alone.[23] Most Western governments do not want to take any risks and behave „neutrally“. As political representatives of their respective national capital to the outside world, they cannot afford to see their interests violated too much. The business of the German automotive industry, for example, depends on the most profitable of its markets, the Chinese, and urgently needs the most advanced battery cell technology produced in China for its future. While the nations of Europe officially maintain Hong Kong’s formal independence and last year adopted a more confrontational strategy towards China, EU Foreign Affairs Commissioner Federica Mogherini is therefore only formally calling – as German politicians did in the case of the protests against the Iranian regime – for „both sides to renounce violence“ and „dialogue“. The national bourgeoisies of the West behave towards China and its handling of the protest movement, albeit to varying degrees, as opportunistically as they do towards Russia and its annexation of the Crimea; and in Russia, too, tens of thousands recently demonstrated for independent regional elections. But it is not only the interest in the Chinese market and Chinese investment that supports the respectability of those who rule there. Sympathizers with the CCP’s model of rule, like Kronauer, present the protests as illegitimate or exaggerated, if they do not, like the „anti-imperialist“ „Junge Welt“, simply print the press releases of the Chinese state newspaper „Global Times“. Stefan Liebich, who has been put forth by the Left Party for covert KP apology in the matter of Hong Kong, agrees with Xi Jinping that the principle of „one country, two systems“ should be upheld, but like the AfD, he is above all glad that British colonial rule has been replaced by that of Chinese despotism.[24] He considers the „blockade of international airports or local transport [!]“ to be an absolutely unacceptable form of resistance against a totalitarian dictatorship. His relativizations only mean the usual apologetics of the Chinese Communist Party regime by “Die Linke” in cheaply veiled form and the justification of its counterrevolutionary aspirations in Hong Kong.[25]
An organized communist movement does not exist. This does not mean, however, that the scope for action is limited to waving flags and posting declarations of solidarity online. In order to support the Hong Kong workers, to weaken the China-led economic geopolitical camp of global counterrevolution and strengthen the revolutionary camp, solidarity committees have been established in cities around the world in need of support. Where such committees do not yet exist, they can be formed. With publicity, they can put pressure on their respective national bourgeoisies.
A group of Hong Kong exiles published the following list of demands to the German government:
– all direct or indirect supplies, transfers or sales of equipment or weapons that could be used for the purpose of oppression, torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or other serious human rights violations in Hong Kong should be halted and the cessation maintained until all five demands of the demonstrators have been met
– all natural and legal persons responsible for torture, cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or other human rights abuses, including those who assist, facilitate, abet or otherwise facilitate the commission of such crimes should be investigated and prosecuted
– the above-mentioned persons and their close relatives should have all assets in the EU frozen and be refused entry
Donations can also be collected to support the fight in Hong Kong. The following pages collect funds to finance:
– First Aid: https://gogetfunding.com/fight-for-hong-kongs-freedom/
– Protective equipment: https://bit.ly/bigboystoysHK/
– Independent journalism: https://www.hongkongfp.com/support-hkfp/
Live information and worldwide networking can also be found at: https://guardiansofhk.com
[1] Indeed, the Hong Kong people have little opportunity to exercise democratic power through elections. In the Hong Kong Parliament elections, only half of all MPs are elected by universal suffrage and direct elections, the other half being chosen by representatives of various „professional groups“. These „professional groups“, a remnant from the time of British colonial rule, carry more weight in the election of the parliament and are largely under the influence of Beijing. This way, the majority of Hong Kong’s population is reliably excluded from the election and the office is kept under Beijing’s control. This gives rise to the ambivalent significance of recourse to the British colonial flag. On the one hand, it symbolizes the demand for individual freedoms as they were guaranteed to a considerable extent under British rule. On the other hand, however, the appeal to a perished world empire expresses the helpless attempt to secure an ally who could also today provide guarantees against Chinese imperialism.
[2] https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/ausland/proteste-in-hongkong-die-verschwoerung-der-usa-16329988.html
[3] Their five demands are: the full withdrawal of the extradition law (which has happened), an independent investigation of police brutality in recent months, an amnesty for all those arrested during the protests, the renunciation of the characterization of the protests as „riots“, and general and direct elections.
[4] https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/hong-kong-economy/article/3006116/long-working-hours-1-5-hong-kong-employees-are-job
[5] With the transformation of directly personal relationships into such that are mediated by things through the development of social productive forces, the isolated individuals no longer face their own living conditions through the medium of an eternal bond, tribe, corporation or family, but rather by chance and alienation. In other words, the individual’s characteristics do not appear to the individual as belonging to his tribe, corporation or family, but to his personality. The formal freedom of the individual in bourgeois society allows, with the increasing sociality of living conditions, also an increasing differentiation of people’s everyday life, within which the individual increasingly experiences his class-determined conditions of existence as the fetter of his personal development. The proletarian must therefore, if he is to assert himself individually, break these fetters. In state-capitalist despotism, an attempt is made to put this tendency to break bourgeois society in chains by replacing the rule mediated by things with the rule of cadres and patronage. Repressive norms are imposed on the individual so that he or she is to be completely absorbed by social determinations and is to suffocate definitively in his or her existence as a class individual.
[6] The share of foreign direct investment in Chinese GDP has been declining for almost three decades. In 1993 it was 6.2 percent; by 2017 it was only 1.4 percent. https://www.ft.com/content/0fb87bda-23c4-11e9-b329-c7e6ceb5ffdf
[7] https://www.economist.com/business/2016/02/27/the-march-of-the-zombies
[8] https://www.merics.org/sites/default/files/2018-05/MERICS_ChinaMonitor_35_Chinas_overrated_service_sector_web.pdf
[9] In Malaysia, for example, a new settlement for 700,000 people was to be built under the name „Forest City“ before the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad withdrew his support. According to Mahathir, China’s projects represented a „new version of colonialism“. https://www.swp-berlin.org/publikation/chinas-verschuldung-und-seine-aussenwirtschaftsbeziehungen/?fbclid=IwAR3URmUwoldF98ZmfUCxctiFeqOszW3SNEBP7NEVQ7Dnq_opcAUY889_DFY
[10] https://www.nzz.ch/international/hongkong-die-demonstranten-haben-nichts-zu-verlieren-ld.1502175
[11] https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1873/01/indifferentism.htm
[12] Jacobin, 01.08.2019. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/08/hong-kong-protest-china-carrie-lam-umbrella-movement-extradition-bill-xi-jinping
[13] https://www.akweb.de/ak_s/ak651/42.htm?fbclid=IwAR2qY9NN15eRi1tee7PuGnP2t-X24ZrItt7_QdFnvomPgE4EbtyFBJ01z5o
[14] https://naoqingchu.org/2019/09/09/ausser-kontrolle-hongkongs-aufstaendische-bewegung-und-die-linke/?fbclid=IwAR1_ClzA5AvozuO4psv-tY666iVaQ_ICilpsvjsTbmwbwklJwlKlVssXa9c
[15] https://www.reddit.com/r/HongKong/comments/csj4ca/chinas_propaganda_strategy_for_the_hong_kong/
[16] For example, the US professional basketball league NBA backed away hectically after the general manager of the Houston Rockets (the former team of Chinese star Yao Ming), Daryl Morey, expressed his solidarity with the protests in Hong Kong on Twitter. The in other cases proud advocates of social justice in the NBA assured, instead of backing Morey’s statements, that they loved China (James Harden), Morey had just been „misinformed“ (LeBron James), and also, that nobody in China had asked about automatic weapons in the U.S. (Steve Kerr); a comment for which he would probably have „disappeared“ in China.
[17] The most violent clashes between participants in solidarity rallies for Hong Kong and Chinese supporters of the Communist dictatorship took place in Australia. This is also a place to study the future the CCP is striving for. Chinese student organizations, led by Chinese diplomats, put pressure on university lecturers who contradicted CCP propaganda on issues such as Taiwan, Tibet or Tiananmen. Out of „consideration“ for „the feelings of Chinese fellow students“ and because of the large amount of money that Chinese students bring to universities every year, the organizations say, the curricula there should be changed.
[18] There was some concern from Hong Kong exiles about political activity even in Germany. They fear consequences not only for themselves, but especially for relatives in Hong Kong. China has long been hunting for Chinese living abroad who make use of their rights here and criticize the Chinese government. In this respect, the CCP is no different from the Erdogans, Bin Salmans, Putins, Kadyrows, etc. The CCP strives to politically organize as many Chinese living abroad as possible and make them instruments of Chinese foreign policy.
[19] Quite in the style of Jürgen Elsässer, who in 2009 described the protesters against the Islam-fascist regime of Iran as „hustlers of finance capital“ and hoped that „Ahmadinejad’s people […] have transported one or the other into a darkroom“. What the mass murderer and torture legitimizer Elsässer could only write after his departure as editor of „konkret“, Kronauer can now write in a moderate form. In the announcement of his new book „Der Rivale“ Kronauer is pleased that the dictatorship of the CCP might potentially break the „dominance“ of the „Western hegemonic powers“ „at all levels“. Although the honorable „People’s Republic“ is involved in an „anti-Chinese [soon to be: „sinophobic“] economic war“, he is striving to finally „dethrone the masters of the world“. Kronauer is thus already trying to apply for a mid-level ideological position in the hoped-for dictatorship by propagating, wherever he can, the agenda of state-capitalist despotism from Russia and China.
[20] The telling cover serves the Stalinist and neo-fascist image of the antisocial rioter and good-for-nothing with a beer bottle in his hand and clearly shows how these two forms of German bourgeois socialism overlap politically and ideologically.
[21] Among others, the partly economistic, partly indifferent, always apologetic statements of the „Jacobin Magazine“: https://jacobinmag.com/2019/06/hong-kong-extradition-bill-protest-movement and https://www.jacobinmag.com/2019/12/hong-kong-protests-leftists-international-support?fbclid=IwAR2OX9TKpXP3cU9wKP4Q47lXaBVbU2xwwUJDndfeEP2lwTP_Meg8DlJK44g
[22] Like Trump and “Die Linke”, the AfD, concerning other things a reliable partner of Russia, too, considers the democratic freedoms of the Hong Kong population to be an „internal affair“ of China, which the CCP government can appropriately handle without Germany needing to „interfere“. Their credo is: „Think globally – act nationally!“ (cf. the speech of the member of parliament Roland Hartwig before the Bundestag on 07.11.19)
[23] Trump hesitated with his signature because he didn’t want to complicate the trade contract unnecessarily and scare away his „friend“ Xi with unnecessary fuss. In the end, he only signed in order not to be outvoted by Congress. https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2019/11/22/trump-says-he-might-veto-legislation-that-aims-protect-human-rights-hong-kong-because-bill-would-impact-china-trade-talks/
[24] cf. his speech in front of the Bundestag on November 7, 2019 and footnote 25.
[25] https://www.facebook.com/berlinliebich/posts/hongkong-ist-teil-der-volksrepublik-china-und-ich-glaube-diplomatie-kann-man-nic/2369110399862440/
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