Vol. 71/No. 13      April 2, 2007

Chang and Lee, a writer and translator of books by Nobel prize-winning Chinese novelist Gao Xingjian, were among the panelists who addressed the 50 people present. Among them were members of the China Friendship Society, Chinese Australian Historical Society, Australia-Cuba Friendship Society, and a few students.

Also speaking were Adrian Hearn, a researcher on China-Latin America relations at the University of Technology in Sydney, where the event was held, and Martín Koppel, who participated in the interviews with the three Cuban generals upon which the book is based. The event was sponsored by the Chinese Australian Historical Society, the UTS Institute for International Studies, and Pathfinder Books.

James Flowers of the Australia-China Friendship Society welcomed the audience to the event, which was chaired by Rebecca Pinkstone of the Australia-Cuba Friendship Society.

Hearn said Our History Is Still Being Written was “an important step” in understanding the history behind today’s “relations between China, Cuba, and Latin America.” He pointed to the book’s description of the heroic role of Chinese immigrants in the Cuban wars of independence against Spanish colonialism.

Lee engaged Chang in an interview-style exchange on some of his experiences fighting discrimination against Chinese immigrants. Chang arrived in Australia in 1935 with his father, who he said was subjected to “bonded labor,” forced to work for a particular boss or face deportation. He could not become an Australian citizen until 1973, after the end of the government’s openly racist “White Australia” immigration policies.

During World War II, when many Chinese seamen were stranded in Sydney since they could not return to China under Japanese imperialist occupation, Chang joined the Chinese Youth League and became an interpreter and spokesman for the Chinese Seamen’s Union. He became involved in solidarity by Chinese and other workers with the national liberation struggle in China and the Indonesian struggle against Dutch colonial rule. After the war, Chang, now 85, joined legal and strike battles for “equality for Chinese workers in Australia.”

Koppel said the main difference between the Chinese community in Cuba and in other countries is the socialist revolution that uprooted racist discrimination and “eliminated the property relations that are the basis of oppression and exploitation under capitalism.”

In Cuba, he said, “workers and farmers are the motor force of the revolution” and have “a leadership that has never betrayed their interests.” For working-class fighters and revolutionary-minded youth around the world, the Cuban Revolution offers a “living example of how to fight and win.”

In the discussion period, Lee said the political equality enjoyed by Chinese-Cubans was “inconceivable” in Australia, where, she remarked, those of Chinese ancestry are still viewed as “guests.”

Other speakers took up questions such as the advances made by women in revolutionary Cuba, the role of Cuba in the liberation struggles in southern Africa, and Cuban relations with Beijing, especially after the Sino-Soviet split from the mid-1960s through the 1980s.

Members of the audience bought 12 copies of Our History Is Still Being Written as well as a few other Pathfinder titles.
 
 
Related articles:
Vancouver Asian Centre hosts meeting on book by Chinese-Cuban generals
Event held in Montreal on book on Chinese-Cubans in the Cuban Revolution  
 
 
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