Several readers have taken issue with the Militant's stance on the China-Taiwan crisis. In this week's letters column, Adam Wolfe agrees that China's national reunification is the heart of the conflict but says support to this fight should be qualified because of Beijing's antilabor policies.

Last week, James Robb of Auckland, New Zealand, questioned the Militant's assertion that "the Chinese people are trying to take back what is rightfully theirs - Taiwan," saying there is no evidence of a popular movement in China today over this question. The week before, Hsin-chih Chen of Rego Park, New York, expressed his opposition to U.S. intervention in the region but criticized the Militant for siding with China, citing the regime's repression against students and Tibetans.

The fundamental issue here, however, is the confrontation between the Chinese workers state and the Chinese people, on one hand, and Washington and the capitalist rulers of Taiwan, on the other. Working people should unconditionally take the side of China against U.S. imperialism. "Unconditionally" means regardless of Beijing's policies or the ups and downs of popular mobilizations. Taiwan is historically part of China, and the Chinese have the right to reunify their nation.

To win public support for its war drive against China, the U.S. government has launched a propaganda campaign -

echoed by liberal, conservative, and many leftist commentators - portraying China as an "imperialist" aggressor, and itself and its Taipei ally as "democratic." But the real aggressor is Washington, which arrogantly sent a massive naval armada into the western Pacific to threaten China and prop up the Taiwanese regime. China has a right to defend itself by any means necessary - including the recent military maneuvers off its own coast - against provocations like the latest U.S.-backed "independence" campaign by the Taipei government.

Taiwan: a dagger aimed at Chinese workers
Washington has used the capitalist regime in Taiwan as a dagger aimed at China since the 1949 revolutionary triumph there. The socialist revolution was, and is, a giant victory for working people. Chinese workers and peasants ended imperialist domination, abolished landlordism, forged a national unified state, and overturned capitalist property relations. They made big gains in land reform, literacy, health care, women's rights, and other social and democratic rights.

In 1949 the defeated capitalist forces of Chiang Kai- shek fled to Taiwan and imposed a ruthless dictatorship with U.S. aid. In 1958 Taipei moved troops onto the coastal islands of Quemoy and Matsu, blocking key mainland ports. Washington threatened nuclear war when China defended itself. Since then, the U.S. government has armed Taipei to the teeth. The call for "independence" by sections of the Taiwanese ruling class would only mean greater domination of that breakaway region by their imperialist masters.

Do socialists support every action by Beijing? No. But they don't make the defense of a workers state - its nationalized property relations, monopoly of foreign trade, and centralized planning - conditional on the nature of the government or on particular actions by that government.

The Stalinist regime in the Soviet Union committed brutalities as great as those carried out by Beijing, but class-conscious workers have always unreservedly supported the workers state there against "democratic" imperialism. As Leon Trotsky explains in his book In Defense of Marxism, this is because the Moscow regime, despite representing a privileged and parasitic petty-bourgeois layer, has been compelled to defend the social conquests of the 1917 revolution.

Furthermore, workers should stand with all oppressed peoples, regardless of their leadership, in confrontations with imperialism. In 1937, for instance, Trotsky backed China - under Chiang's capitalist dictatorship - in its war with Japanese imperialism. China's victory put workers and peasants in a more favorable position to win national sovereignty, oust Chiang, and overthrow capitalism.

National aspirations of Chinese people
The Chinese people's strong sentiment for national unity is more than "anecdotal," as Robb's letter termed it. It has been the driving force of China's century-long fight against imperialist domination, eventually becoming inseparably intertwined with the fight for socialism. Part of that history is the struggle in Taiwan, first against 50 years of Japanese colonial rule, and since then against U.S. domination.

Any action by the Chinese government in defense of the nation's sovereignty and the workers state puts working people, on both the mainland and Taiwan, on a stronger footing vis-a-vis their main enemy: imperialism. Yes, this should make capitalists in Taiwan and Hong Kong, as well as aspiring capitalists in southern China, nervous. Workers in Taiwan will gain from the weakening of the Taipei regime, as they have done since they helped end the decades-long dictatorship by Chiang and his son.

Despite Robb's suggestions otherwise, capitalists in Hong Kong and wannabe capitalists in China's "special economic zones" are not about to overthrow the workers state in that country's southern region. The exploitative conditions imposed by entrepreneurs there have sparked increased resistance by Chinese workers.

Just as in Yugoslavia, the Chinese workers state is much stronger than the ruling petty-bourgeois layers. Likewise, capitalists are far from being able to take over - they would first have to crush the workers and peasants in giant class battles, including direct military assaults. Because of that working-class strength, the return of capitalist Hong Kong to China - like the eventual unification of Korea - will not be a setback for working people but one more historic blow against world capitalism.

- MARTÍN KOPPEL  
 
 
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