On 7 December, around 200,000 South Koreans braved freezing Seoul weather to demand the resignation and impeachment of right-wing President Yoon Suk Yeol after his failed coup attempt four days earlier. 
Yoon declared martial law, for the first time in 44 years, at 10.23pm on 3 December in a surprise national television broadcast, which was met with widespread shock and outrage across South Korea. During the broadcast, the South Korean president, who is from the People Power Party (PPP), justified the enactment of martial law by accusing the National Assembly, which is dominated by the opposition Democratic Party (DPK), of paralysing his administration and causing “political strife” by blocking the proposed national budget and “sabotaging the core functions of the state”, while also “turning Korea into a ‘drug paradise’ and causing panic over public security”. 
In the announcement, Yoon noted that since his government came to power in May 2002, opposition lawmakers in the DPK had brought 22 motions to impeach government officials, including the minister of the Interior and Safety, the minister for National Defence, the chair of the Korea Communications Commission and the president of the Board of Audit and Inspection.
Yoon also accused the National Assembly of being a “den of criminals” engaged in a “legislative dictatorship”, as well as being North Korean agents, going on to say that martial law was necessary “to protect the Republic of Korea from the threats of North Korean communist forces, to immediately eradicate the unscrupulous pro-Pyongyang anti-state forces that pillage the freedom and happiness of our people and to protect free constitutional order”. 
At 11pm, the full text of the martial law declaration was issued, repeating Yoon’s claim that “anti-state forces” were secretly operating in South Korea and that all political activities by the National Assembly, political parties and associations were now banned, along with all political rallies, protests, strikes and workplace slowdowns. The martial law decree also announced that all press and publications would now be under the control of the military, and that any workers currently engaged in workplace protests must “return to work within 48 hours or face punishment under the Martial Law Act”. The decree concluded by declaring that “violators of the decree may face arrest, detention, and warrantless search and seizure” and other punishment. 
Shocked and angered by Yoon’s declaration, thousands of Korean citizens defied the threat of arrest and flooded the streets outside the National Assembly in protest. The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) issued a statement condemning Yoon’s actions, saying, “the people will not forgive this,” as they remembered and had never forgiven the previous dictatorships that had “suppressed citizens and violated democracy”. Opposition lawmakers also raced to the National Assembly to vote to overturn the martial law declaration. Under South Korean law, martial law can be overturned by a two-thirds vote of the 300-strong National Assembly. 
Many of the politicians, including DPK leader Lee Jae-Myung—whose party holds 175 seats in the South Korean parliament—had to scale the walls of the building to enter, while other politicians and staff already inside barricaded the main entrances to stop the military from taking control of the building. 
Footage of Ahn Gwi-Ryeong, a former news anchor turned lawmaker, attempting to stop troops from storming the building also quickly went viral. Ahn, a deputy spokesperson for the DPK, was filmed grabbing the rifle of a soldier, saying: “Don’t you feel shame?” In an interview with Reuters on 6 December, Ahn downplayed her actions, saying that they were not “particularly special” and that “there were many people braver than me who stood up to the martial law troops”, including “people who even managed to stop armoured vehicles outside”, referring to the actions of ordinary citizens who had massed on the streets. 
Failure of the Coup
Despite Yoon’s office contacting the national police to “stand by” approximately four hours before his declaration of martial law, it appears that only a small number of Yoon loyalists within the military and his political party were aware of the coup plot. 
In testimony given on 6 December to the National Assembly’s Intelligence Committee, the first deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS), Hong Jang-Won, described how, minutes after the declaration of martial law, the president contacted both himself and the national director to demand they carry out a series of arrests of Yoon’s political opponents, which they refused to do. According to Hong, the Yoon had ordered him to “use this opportunity to round everyone up. Wipe everything clean”. 
Hong went on to state that Yoon’s arrest list included the head of the KCTU, the former chief justice of the Supreme Court and left-wing journalists, as well as the head of Yoon’s own People Power Party, Han Dong-Hoon, who had been critical of the presidential imposition of martial law. Yoon also sought to target for arrest key members of the opposition party, including the DPK’s national leader Lee Jae-Myung, National Assembly Speaker Woo Won-Shik, the DPK’s National Assembly floor leader Park Chan-Dae and DPK Supreme Council member Kim Min-Seok, who four months earlier had warned that Yoon was preparing a coup. 
According to a Korea Times article published on 3 September, Kim Min-Seok raised concerns about a possible coup during the confirmation hearing for Yoon’s newly appointed defence minister, Kim Yong-Hyun. The DPK lawmaker noted that the government was “suddenly replacing the minister of national defense with [former] Presidential Security Service chief Kim Yong-Hyun, a Cha Ji-Cheol-style suppressor of the opposition”, referring to the long-term political ally and security chief of military dictator Park Chung-Hee, who was assassinated along with Park in 1979. He argued that this, along with Yoon’s sudden use of the phrase “anti-state forces”, signalled “a strategic operation to prepare for martial law by stoking fear of North Korea under considerations of a regional war”. 
The DPK member has further noted that the newly appointed defence minister was also a member of the “Chungam faction,” which included Yoon contemporaries and loyalists who all attended Chungam High School with him. Other loyalists within Yoon’s faction included Park An-Su, the chief of the army, who would later enact the martial law decree following Yoon’s national broadcast, the Defence Counter-Intelligence Commander Yeo In-Hyung and Army Special Forces chief Kwak Jong-Geun and Special Forces Commander Lee Jin-woo.
According to a report on 5 December by Yonhap News Agency, it was Kim Yong-Hyun who recommended that Yoon implement martial law and was also responsible for ordering troops to “infiltrate the National Assembly and block lawmakers from entering the compound during martial law”. The former defence minister was subsequently arrested in the early hours of 7 December on charges of insurrection and abuse of power. On Sunday, 8 December, Yonhap reported that another of Yoon’s loyalists in the Chungam faction, Defence Counterintelligence Commander Yeo In-hung, in November had ordered the preparation of plans to implement martial law. Due to his role in the botched operation, Yeo has been suspended, while investigation into the plot continues. 
While evidence continues to emerge about the planning of the coup, the narrowness of the plot resulted in a lack of communication and confusion between military, police and intelligence commands. This delayed not only the dispatch of the special forces and other military, providing a 40-minute window for both opposition lawmakers and ordinary citizens to mass at the National Assembly to try to stop martial law.
According to a report on 6 December in the conservative Chosun Daily, one of Yoon's closest allies, Interior Minister Lee Sang-Min, lamented the failure of the plot, saying, “Frankly speaking, if we had successfully shut down the National Assembly, the vote on the lifting of martial law would not have happened at all. We could have held back the legislators with ease if we had chosen to”. 
Yoon’s lame duck presidency
Yoon has faced turmoil since becoming president in May 2022. A former prosecutor, Yoon only very narrowly defeated the DPK’s Lee Jae-Myung. During his presidential campaign, Yoon ran on an anti-labour and anti-union platform, threatening to cut the minimum wage, remove limits on working hours and enact policies that would allow corporations to operate free from “excessive” regulation. 
Yoon also sought to capitalise on the growing anti-feminist sentiment among many young male Korean voters impacted by rampant economic inequality caused by decades of neoliberal capitalism but who have blamed the modest gains made by Korean women for their plight. Courting the 20-30-year-old male vote, Yoon called for the abolition of the Ministry of Gender Equality and Family, claiming that systemic “structural discrimination based on gender” did not exist in South Korea. This is despite the economic and social indicators for women in South Korea being some of the worst in the developed world. 
After winning the presidency, the new president moved to crack down on South Korea’s union movement. Yoon’s anti-labour attacks, however, have sparked widespread opposition. On 24 November 2022, more than 25,000 truck drivers walked off the job for sixteen days to demand job security and for minimum pay rates to be extended to all truck drivers. Seoul subway workers joined the truck drivers on the streets, launching their first strike in six years after negotiations about worker redundancies had collapsed. Yoon’s response was aggressive, invoking a law not used for 18 years to issue a “back-to-work order” five days after the strike had begun. Under the order, workers who failed to comply faced jail terms of up to three years and/or fines of 30 million won (USD $22,400).
In January 2023, just weeks after the back-to-work decree was issued, the Korean Confederation of Trade Unions was surrounded by 1,000 riot police as 30 National Intelligence Service agents stormed the building, conducting a ten-hour raid. The NIS accused members of the KCTU and the KCTU-affiliated Korean Health and Medical Workers’ Union of being North Korean spies and charged union members with violating South Korea’s anti-communist laws. The KCTU, which has a membership of more than 1 million workers, denounced the raids. In a statement issued by the confederation’s Central Executive Committee, KCTU President Yang Kyeung-Soo accused the president of trampling on democracy, say the union would not stop its criticism of the government and would continue to fight again Yoon’s anti-democratic and anti-labour regime.
Yoon’s popularity has continued to plummet, dropping from 53 percent at the start of his presidency to just 17 percent in August 2024. Already unable to pass much of his legislative agenda, Yoon officially became a lame duck president after the DPK won a landslide victory in the April 2024 general elections. While the DPK increased their seats by 19 to give them 175 and a super-majority with other oppositionists in the National Assembly, Yoon’s PPP lost six seats, reducing their parliamentary number to 108. 
The DPK and opposition super-majority has meant that the National Assembly has been able to pass a range of opposition legislation, while actively stymieing Yoon’s legislative agenda, including his national budget. Yoon, however, has repeatedly used his presidential veto powers to stop opposition legislation moving forward. 
Public anger has continued to grow over Yoon’s abuse of the presidential veto, including his vetoing of a legislative investigation into allegations that his wife had been involved in stock manipulation and had interfered in the nomination process in a June by-election and subsequent local elections. In response to Yoon’s abuse of the presidential veto, the DPK and the KCTU have organised a series of mass rallies with between 100,000 and 300,000 workers and other anti-government protesters taking the street each time, the fifth such rally being held just three days before Yoon’s declaration of martial law. 
Candlelight Protests 
The fallout from Yoon’s failed coup has been swift. The morning after the botched coup, the KCTU announced that they would “commence an indefinite general strike until the Yoon Suk Yeol regime steps down” and that their members would stage ongoing public protests. Trade union members and workers have been joined by tens of thousands of ordinary Koreans each day on the streets. The public’s anger has been further fuelled by 105 of the 108 People Power Party lawmakers in the National Assembly boycotting the impeachment vote on Saturday. 
As word filtered out to the 200,000-strong candlelight protests outside the National Assembly on Saturday night that the vote to impeach Yoon had automatically terminated due to the failure to reach a quorum because of the PPP boycott, protesters demanded they “get back in the chamber” and vote. People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy, one of the many groups that helped to organise the Saturday rally, called the boycott of the vote “an act of sympathizing with insurrection that tramples on the will of the people, the true owners of the country”, going on to say that the public would “not tolerate the existence of the People Power Party”. 
 While the DPK has scheduled a motion on 11 December for another impeachment vote in the National Assembly to be held on 14 December, newspaper Hankyoreh, reporting live from the Saturday protest, noted the widespread determination from protesters, who vowed they would “not give up” despite the failure of the first impeachment vote. One student told the newspaper “our candles will only grow brighter” because of the PPP’s lack of action. True to their word, tens of thousands of KCTU workers and other protesters returned to the streets again on 9 December to demand both Yoon’s arrest and impeachment. As both Yoon and his party continue to try to cling to power, hoping to wait out the crisis, pressure from the streets will only continue to intensify as people vow to continue their protests until he is arrested and impeached.

Kim Bullimore

South Korean coup attempt provokes democratic uprising

“Step down, impeach, arrest!” chanted around one million protesters, according to rally organisers, in Yeoido, Seoul, on 7 December. They were demanding the impeachment of South Korean President Yoon Seok-yeol, who days earlier had declared martial law. In front of the National Assembly, people chanted, sang and waited tentatively in the cold for hours for the outcome of the impeachment vote.
Seven years earlier, the incumbent right-wing party, now rebranded to People Power Party (PPP), faced another one-million strong impeachment movement that successfully brought down the Park Geun-hye government. “This time it’s very fast”, Seon-gyeong, a socialist student organiser with Workers’ Solidarity told Red Flag during the demonstration. She explained how it took many months of patient work to grow the anti-Park movement. In the end, rail strikes were the lynch pin for its success.
Striking workers spoke from the main stage. Three days into their strike, Kang Jeong-nam, head of the Seoul branch of the railway union, apologised to the crowd for any inconvenience. “It’s okay! ... Keep going!” thousands shouted back. “But it’s okay to be uncomfortable right now, right?” Kang said, which was met with a loud supporting cheer.
People in the crowd flew satirical flags from the anti-Park movement. Some held repurposed signs, crossing out “Park” and adding “Yoon”. The lively block of university students reached around 100,000—many hoped that such large numbers would guarantee impeachment. “Impeach Yoon Seok-yeol! Arrest Yoon Seok-yeol!” the crowd chanted in unison. 
There’s a sense of déjà vu at the demonstration: a corrupt PPP, rail strikes and impeachment. However, Seon-gyeong isn’t sure that the result will be the same as 2016, when impeachment led to a heavy electoral defeat for the conservative party. 
When the vote was eventually held, all bar a few PPP members left the assembly, resulting in a failed vote. The crowd was incensed. “Come back you traitors!” people yelled as the main stage called out the names of each absent politician. As the sham became apparent, people streamed out of the rally, cursing the PPP. Organisers asked people to stay, but most knew it was over. There were neither tears nor rage, just disgust and a determination to keep coming back until the job is finished.
“Next week! Next week!” people chanted as they left the rally. The opposition vowed to reintroduce another impeachment bill in a few days, but “it’s not just about how big the next rally is” Seon-gyeong said, but whether it will be large and sustained enough to encourage more workers to join the strike.
The Korean Confederation of Trade Unions (KCTU) have promised an indefinite general strike until Yoon is impeached. Some of the key areas covered are the Hyundai manufacturing plants in Ulsan, the site of historic labour struggles in 1987 and 2006. “Yoon Seok-yeol is most afraid of the union between the KCTU and the citizens”, KCTU Chairman Yang Kyung-soo said from the main stage.
Yoon is determined to cling on to power. But millions of South Koreans are even more determined to oust him.

Jayden Trask

One million protest for Yoon Seok-yeol’s impeachment

At least 42,000 people flooded Pōneke (Wellington), Aotearoa (New Zealand), on 19 November, as the final act of the hīkoi mō te Tiriti (protest march for the Treaty).
The hīkoi began in Cape Reinga, the northernmost point of the North Island, and travelled more than 1000 kilometres over nine days, ending at the New Zealand parliament. Tens of thousands joined the march as it moved through the North Island, and Iwi (Māori tribes) from across the country participated. Many Tangata Titiriti (non-Māori New Zealanders) joined and supported the action.
The hīkoi marks the latest in a long and proud history of Māori resistance, bringing the population together in opposition to the racist right-wing government currently in power and the Association of Consumers and Taxpayers (ACT) party’s Treaty Principles Bill.
A notable moment was when the hīkoi crossed the Auckland Harbour Bridge and visited Ihumātao. Ihumātao is Māori land that has been an ongoing site of occupation and protest as the state (under both Labour and Nationals) attempts to sell it to private developers in flagrant breach of Te Tiriti O Waitangi (The Treaty of Waitangi).
The hīkoi finished its march at parliament, where crowds filled the grounds to capacity to hear from hīkoi leaders and Te Pāti Māori MPs. A petition to stop the Treaty Principles Bill with more than 281,150 signatures (a larger number than the total vote for the ACT party in the last election) was also delivered to parliament.
Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke (a Te Pāti Māori MP, and at 22 years old the youngest MP in parliament) gave an emotional recounting of the Haka she had performed in parliament the day before, describing how she received a 24-hour suspension as punishment but “the next day, showed up outside the steps with 100,000 of my people”. David Seymour, author of the Treaty Principles Bill and ACT leader, attempted to speak to the crowd, but was drowned out by chants of “Kill the bill” and retreated to sook on his social media.
The day finished with a celebration of the largest hīkoi in Aotearoa’s history at Waitangi Park. Those present described the mood as defiant and joyful, as Māori and non-Māori celebrated together. “What’s good for Māori is good for everyone, we come here in peace, we love everyone no matter who you are, where you come from” one protester told Radio New Zealand.
There were solidarity protests in London, New York, the Cook Islands and across Australia, with the hīkoi solidarity action in Melbourne drawing hundreds of people.
The bill
Tiriti O Waitangi enshrines Tino Rangatiratanga (self-determination or sovereignty) for Māori. However, there are two versions, one in English and one in Māori, and only the Māori one recognises Māori sovereignty. The Treaty Principles were established to resolve this contradiction as part of the 1975 Treaty of Waitangi Act. The principles are partnership, participation and the guarantee of rangatiratanga for Māori.
ACT’s Treaty Principles Bill, which would replace the current principles with “All New Zealanders are equal under the law, with the same rights and duties, The New Zealand Government has the right to govern New Zealand, The New Zealand Government will protect all New Zealanders’ authority over their land and other property”, is a racist attack on Māori sovereignty. Seymour argues the current principles give Māori “special privileges”, a recurring racist argument from the right. 
NZ First and the Nationals, the other two parties in the governing coalition, agreed to support the bill’s first reading in order to get ACT to join their coalition so they could cobble together a government. They have said they will not support the bill beyond its first reading, but their support up to now has emboldened the racist far right and provided it with significant air time. And the Nationals and NZ First have spent the last year attacking Māori rights in other ways, including destroying the Māori health authority and restricting the use of Te Reo Māori (Māori language) in government.
At the bill’s first parliamentary reading, instead of announcing Te Pāti Māori’s vote, Maipi-Clarke tore up the bill and began a haka. She was joined by the rest of Te Pāti Māori MPs, Māori Green MPs and members of the public in the gallery. Maipi-Clarke has become something of a hero for many on the left during her first year in parliament. She used her maiden speech to do a haka, and has repeatedly taken on right-wing politicians like Winston Peters (vice prime minister and leader of the NZ First Party).
Peters is a bastion of the conservative and reactionary right wing, and he regularly demeans and attacks Maipi-Clarke, although he is Māori himself. After he told her to “listen to her elders, hush up and learn some manners” and “stop showing off” in the parliamentary budget debate, Maipi-Clarke’s speech in response ended with her saying “moumou tō toto Māori” to Peters three times, which translates as “a waste of Māori blood”. The video of her response went viral and sparked a Tiktok trend involving young Māori women lip-syncing to the speech.
1960s radicalisation leads to new organised resistance
To understand what’s happening today, history is important. Māori were pushed into the capitalist workforce in the major cities to support the war effort in World War Two, while their land was increasingly stolen by the state. By 1975, Māori controlled only 2 million hectares of their land.
By 1966, 70 percent of Māori men worked in production, transport-equipment operation and labouring, centred in industrial zones. Māori were subject to racist discriminatory laws, forced into impoverished, over-policed city suburbs, denied opportunities and education, restricted to difficult and low-waged work, had their children removed and abused by the state, and were punished for practising their culture or speaking their language. In 1961, Māori life expectancy was 15 years less than Pākehā (white New Zealanders), and Māori were three times more likely to be unemployed. In 1960, only 25 percent of Māori could speak Te Reo (the Māori language), and by 1975, only 5 percent of children could. Resentment towards the system, especially among urban youth, was rising.
The radicalisation of the 1960s brought movements against the Vietnam War, for women’s rights, against Māori exclusion from the 1960 All Blacks rugby tour of South Africa and an increase in strikes. Many young Māori participated in these movements and emerged as political leaders, and an array of radical organisations sprung up in the cities.
The Māori Organisation on Human Rights (MOOHR) was founded in Wellington in 1967 by Tama Poata. Poata was a member of the New Zealand Communist Party and the Wellington Drivers Union and was labelled the country’s “leading Māori Communist” by ex-Prime Minister Robert Muldoon.
MOOHR was established when Poata organised mostly Māori and Pasifika drivers in his union to resist the Maori Affairs Amendment Act, a law designed to break up what was left of Māori communal land ownership. MOOHR campaigned for a cross-racial resistance to capitalism, which it saw as the cause of all oppression and inequality, and published a regular newsletter.
In 1970, Ngā Tamatoa (Young Warriors) was established at a young Māori leaders conference at Auckland university under the guidance of Ranginui Walker, a Māori academic. These Māori student leaders were inspired by the Black power movements in the US, and wanted an organised fight for Māori sovereignty, not a polite appeal. After the group was established, it was joined by Māori highschoolers and young workers in urban centres, like Tama Poata. Ngā Tamatoa was not explicitly anti-capitalist, and members had different political approaches, which would diverge more drastically as time went on. Although labelled “violent revolutionaries” by the mainstream press, only some members believed in armed uprising, and Ngā Tamatoa organised only peaceful resistance and community aid.
Ngā Tamatoa’s first action was to protest Waitangi Day celebrations, which it argued should be a day of mourning and reflection on the ongoing oppression of Māori people. In 1973, members of Ngā Tamatoa like Hana Te Hemara were arrested as they tried to burn the union jack and storm the stage on which Labour Prime Minister Norman Kirk was speaking. Kirk had recently changed the name to New Zealand Day in an attempt to obscure Aotearoa’s colonial history. Hana Te Hemara is Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke’s great aunty and her namesake. In 1972, Ngā Tamatoa, the New Zealand Māori Students’ Association and the Māori Language Society delivered a petition to parliament with 30,000 signatures to teach Te Reo Māori in schools, presented by Hana Te Hemara. It was signed by a significant number of Pākehā, and reflected a shift in mainstream Pākehā consciousness against Māori oppression. Another Ngā Tamatoa member, Tame Iti, set up the Māori tent embassy that same year, inspired by the Aboriginal Embassy in Canberra.
The Polynesian Panthers were formed in Auckland in 1971 by Will ’Ilolahia and five other Pasifika youth, with an average age of 20. They were a revolutionary socialist organisation formed to fight racism, inspired by the Black Panther Party in the US.
Many Pasifika people were brought to Aotearoa in the 1950s to do the hardest, lowest paid work, and they faced systemic racism. In the 1970s they were blamed for the economic crisis by the media and ruling class, who depicted them as job-stealing criminals. They were subjected to violent “dawn raids” brought in by Norman Kirk in 1973, in which police would break into homes while people slept and forcibly take them to the police station without any belongings to be deported, for apparently overstaying their visas. The Polynesian Panthers provided community support, set up a pig patrol and organised activism and occupations of homes whose families were being evicted. They also carried out dawn raid of minister’s houses, drawing widespread publicity to the depravity of the dawn raids.
Miriama Rauhihi Ness joined the Polynesian Panthers in 1971. After moving to Auckland when she was 18, she worked in a sewing factory with many Pasifika women. She became a union representative and within six months had organised a strike over unfair conditions for Pasifika workers. After joining the Panthers, she became a key organiser and held the culture portfolio, organising workshops educating members on sexism and chauvinism.
1975 land rights hikoi: not one more acre of Māori land!
In 1975, Ngā Tamatoa, the Polynesian Panthers, Whina Cooper and other left-wing groups took on the loss of Māori land together. Whina Cooper was a revered activist who fought both women’s and Māori oppression through her activism for Māori land rights, beginning in 1915 when she was only 19 years old. As a single mother in 1949, she moved to Auckland and worked with the Māori women’s welfare league. Her involvement in both the fight for Māori land rights in rural areas and against urban Māori impoverishment, demonstrated to her the connection between the two issues.
In 1975, at age 79, she organised Te Ropu o te Matakite (the people with foresight), an organising group for a hīkoi for Māori land rights. The group was made up of Ngā Tamatoa members, Polynesian Panthers and other left-wing activists. Deciding on the slogan “Not one more acre of Māori land”, they encouraged diversity in politics and tactics, and united the activism of the old and new generations. They also sought to consolidate support for Māori land rights amongst other oppressed demographics, writing; “We see no difference between the aspirations of Māori people and the desire of workers in their struggles. We seek the support of workers and organisations, as the only viable bodies which have sympathy and understanding of the Māori people and their desires. The people who are oppressing the workers are the same who are exploiting the Māori today”.
To journey down the entire North Island on foot was a decision made by organisers to draw attention to their struggle, and to connect with different Iwi. As they travelled, they stayed at different Marae (meeting houses), and Whina Cooper would spend the nights agitating for more people to join the hīkoi and sign their petition to end the sale of Māori land and for Māori control over Māori land. She was often successful.
After the hīkoi concluded, 60 protesters occupied parliament’s lawn. The pressure from this resistance led to the Treaty of Waitangi Act, which established the Waitangi Tribunal, a court that would examine the theft of Māori land and breaches of the Treaty of Waitangi, and bring the Treaty into law.
The act also established Treaty Principles, made necessary by the discrepancy between the English and Māori treaty documents, which enshrined Māori sovereignty in law. But the tribunal created to uphold the principles was not given power to enforce its decisions.
Members of Ngā Tamatoa and the Polynesian Panthers continued to organise resistance throughout the 1970s. Although they had dissolved by the 1980s, many continued to organise resistance and activism, becoming key organisers of the anti-apartheid action against the 1981 South African Springbok tour.
Ngā Tamatoa members also went on to be key figures in the Māori cultural renaissance. They worked in unions, the arts and community to revitalise Māori culture and pride. The renaissance brought Māori language back from near extinction, and led to the establishment of Kohanga reo and Kurakaupapa (Māori language schools) in the late 1970s, and later Māori radio, television and film.
A policy of “bi-culturalism” was adopted by the Labour Government in 1984, which included Māori personnel, Māori models of organisation and Māori social practices and cultural symbolism in institutions of the state. In 1987, the Māori Language Act was passed, making Te Reo Māori an official language of Aotearoa. Hana-Rāwhiti Maipi-Clarke attended Kohanga reo, and is seen as representative of a Kohanga reo generation, who have been raised with pride in Māori culture.
Some Ngā Tamatoa members moved towards the right. Donna Awatere Huata, who wrote the influential book Māori Sovereignty, later started a consulting business that provided Māori cultural education for government departments like the treasury and the police. In 1996 she joined ACT, the right-wing libertarian party, and became an MP.
2004 foreshore and seabed hikoi
In 2004, the Labour government under Helen Clarke announced the seizure of the foreshore and seabed around Aotearoa by the state. The Foreshore and Seabed Act would annex millions of hectares of marine land from Māori, the largest grab since the 1800s. The act was in response to appeals made by Māori to have their customary right to the foreshore and seabed recognised.
The Court of Appeals ruled that the Māori Land Court should determine whether the foreshore and seabed could be customary land. The Court of Appeal ruling (which didn’t give anything to Māori) was jumped on by the right. National party MP Nick Smith started a petition to “save our beaches” from Māori who were trying to “steal them”. The Nationals spread racist rhetoric that Māori had special privileges, and at a protest Nick Smith attended, many Pākehā brought placards with racist slogans, such as “Whites have rights too”.
The National party elected Don Brash as leader, who had previously led ACT. He doubled down on the vicious racist attack against Māori, and jumped 17 percent in the polls. Instead of condemning the racism of the right wing and supporting Māori customary rights, Clark lurched to the right herself with the Foreshore and Seabed Act.
Māori decided to replicate the 1975 hīkoi to resist the Foreshore and Seabed Act and the rampant racism being pushed from the top of society. Some of the key organisers were Ngā Tamatoa veterans like Hone Harawira. As in 1975, the hīkoi travelled from the top of the North Island to parliament, stopping at Marae along the way to gather support, under the slogan “Māori Seabed, For Shore”! Young Māori played an active role in the hīikoi, and many had learnt about the 1975 land march in Kurakaupapa. As the growing hīkoi advanced on the capital, Clark hardened her attacks, infamously saying, “What it is is the same old faces—the Ken Mairs, the Harawira families, the Annette Sykes—the haters and wreckers”.
Around 15,000 people arrived at parliament as the hīkoi concluded, filling the grounds. The Labour Party held most of the seven Māori seats (seats that are reserved for Māori MPs, which only Māori can vote for) in parliament. These MPs were facing expulsion from the party if they did not vote for the act. Only one Labour Māori MP, Tariana Turia, voted against and despite the massive protest, the act passed.
Organisers of the hīkoi began to look to different avenues for change. Hone Harawira and Tariana Turia decided to create the Māori Party (today Te Pati Māori), as a way to combat the two major parties’ anti-Māori politics and fight for Māori rights in parliament. The party went on to help National form a government in 2008, and the Foreshore and Seabed Act was overturned and replaced by the Marine and Coastal Area Act. This decision to join a National Party government led to Hone Harawira resigning and a plummet in the party’s public support.
Prior to the 2017 election, Raiwiri Waititi and Debbie Ngawera-Packer were elected leaders (and still are today). Under their leadership the party has moved to the left. In the 2023 election they won six seats, claiming five from Labour, reflecting a political polarisation and collapse in support for the centre. They have used their platform in parliament to build campaigns and movements on the ground, like Hīkoi mō te Tiriti. 
Hīkoi mō te Tiriti is the largest hīkoi ever. It is the latest chapter in this radical tradition, buoyed by the two preceding Hīkoi and Aotearo’s rich history of resistance. It is an escalation of a protest movement that is mobilising huge numbers of Māori and non-Māori in unity against the right, and is gathering momentum. There is much to learn and take inspiration from in the current movement, and the radical tradition on which it builds.

Elliott Shaw

Hīkoi mō te Tiriti! Protect the treaty!

September marked the 25th anniversary of Australia’s military intervention in East Timor (Timor-Leste). Official commemorations tell a story of Australian sacrifice in the service of peace and humanitarianism. The grubby details of how Australia deprived one of the world’s poorest countries of billions of dollars in revenue from oil and gas royalties are missing from this narrative. 
In 2002, East Timorese Prime Minister Mari Alkatiri sat down with Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer to renegotiate revenue-sharing arrangements previously agreed with Indonesia when it occupied East Timor. Keeping those prior agreements in place would leave the world’s newest nation with, as Alkatiri put it, “scrapings off a plate”. Securing a decent new deal was vital to the financial future of the world’s newest nation. However, <a href="https://www.theage.com.au/opinion/how-they-fooled-us-on-east-timor-20030311-gdvctw.html">as reported in the Age</a>, decency was not on Downer’s agenda. 
“We are not going to negotiate the Timor Sea Treaty—understand that”, he told Alkatiri. “It doesn’t matter what your Western advisers say ... There will be no new joint development area for [oil and gas field] Greater Sunrise ... We are very tough. We will not care if you give information to the media. Let me give you a tutorial in politics—not a chance.” 
Downer’s arrogance and bullying are typical of how Australian imperialism has treated East Timor over many years.
When Indonesia’s General Suharto established his dictatorship in 1965, up to a million Indonesian citizens were murdered due to their actual or alleged involvement in left-wing politics. Suharto also invaded East Timor in 1975, as it was on the brink of gaining independence from Portuguese colonial rule. An estimated 200,000 East Timorese were killed as a result of the invasion, around a third of the population. 
In 1998, Suharto was forced from power by a mass democracy movement. In East Timor, the liberation struggle gathered renewed strength, with strikes and demonstrations challenging Indonesian rule. With his government near bankruptcy following the 1997 Asian economic crisis and dependent on international aid, new Indonesian president B.J. Habibie viewed East Timor as a financial and political liability. So he agreed to hold a referendum in August 1999, offering a choice between regional autonomy within Indonesia and complete independence.
The vote was overwhelmingly for independence, despite a campaign of violent intimidation waged by armed militias organised by the Indonesian military. When their defeat was confirmed, the Indonesian forces went on a rampage as they withdrew from the territory. They killed as many as 1,200 East Timorese, looted whatever they could carry away and burned anything they could not. As many as 400,000 civilians, half the population, were displaced. Up to 250,000 were transported into West Timor, most forcibly. It was both brutal retribution and a warning to those favouring independence in other Indonesian provinces, such as Aceh and West Papua.
At this point, the Australian government sent in its military to restore order. This was not due to a deeply held concern for human rights. Despite its genocidal crimes, or rather because of them, the Suharto regime had no better friend internationally than Australia. Successive governments, both Liberal and Labor, had been happy to have the threat of communism or a “South-East Asian Cuba” removed from Australia’s doorstep. But East Timorese independence was now an unavoidable reality. The transition needed to be managed so that it went as smoothly as possible, preventing the “regional instability” that Australian governments have obsessed over for decades.
Naturally, the military intervention was spearheaded by elite soldiers of the Special Air Service (SAS). These units have since gained infamy due to alleged war crimes committed in Afghanistan. But ABC investigative journalist Mark Willacy argues that the pattern of SAS brutality and lawlessness actually began in East Timor.
Reporting for Four Corners in 2022, Willacy <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-04/ghosts-of-timor:-the-dark-stain-on-australias/13826106">uncovered allegations</a> from New Zealand SAS troops that their Australian counterparts had illegally killed members of a pro-Indonesian militia or, at the very least, desecrated the bodies of combatants after they were killed. This occurred after two Australian soldiers were wounded near the town of Suai in October 1999, the SAS reportedly keen on delivering payback.
The SAS is also alleged to have <a href="https://www.abc.net.au/news/2022-04-11/ghosts-of-timor/13836288">operated a clandestine interrogation facility</a> at Dili’s heliport. Here, detainees were tortured, including by beatings, the use of stress positions and food and water deprivation. Even the military’s own legal advisers were denied access to the facility. In one incident, Australian soldiers thought they had captured an Indonesian special forces operative—because he would not answer questions despite being tortured. In reality, he was an East Timorese civilian who suffered from hearing impairment. No Australian personnel were ever punished over these incidents, despite lengthy investigations by military police.
Beyond the actions of frontline soldiers, Australia’s whole approach was to treat East Timor as primarily a security problem, not a humanitarian crisis. Of the $3.9 billion Australia spent on the East Timor intervention between 1999 and 2004, only $225 million was spent on aid. Most of the remaining funds went towards Australia’s military and police deployment. 
Even aid spending was geared towards strengthening the East Timorese state, training for the local army and police force being prioritised above providing health services, clean water or education. East Timorese NGOs that questioned these priorities risked Australia cutting their funding. At least one organisation suffered this fate in 2004 after signing a statement criticising Australia’s stance on border negotiations.
It is, above all, the oil and gas revenues that have fuelled East Timorese anger towards Australia since its independence. In 2016, thousands of East Timorese <a href="https://redflag.org.au/article/big-protest-confronts-australian-embassy-dili">protested outside the Australian embassy in Dili</a>, chanting: “Long Live East Timor! Down with Australia!” Two years earlier, activists graffitied the embassy walls with an image of a kangaroo and an emu greedily sucking up a pot full of East Timor’s oil. It is a far cry from Australia’s self-image as liberators.
The border issue originated in a 1972 treaty in which Australia secured highly advantageous terms from Indonesia. Rather than drawing the border midway between the two countries’ land masses, it was placed at the edge of Australia’s sea-floor continental shelf, which extends far closer to the Indonesian side of the Timor Sea. This agreement left what was known as the “Timor Gap” along the stretch of coastline then controlled by Portugal.
After Indonesia’s invasion, the substantial oil and gas deposits in the Timor Sea were up for grabs. Australia and Indonesia agreed to divide these spoils without finalising a formal international border. Labor’s Gareth Evans and Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alitas famously signed the Timor Gap Treaty in 1989 while sipping champagne on a jet flying over the Timor Sea. Far below, out of sight and out of mind, the East Timorese continued to suffer under occupation.
This was the treaty Alkatiri wanted to renegotiate in 2002, based on the basic principle that the border, and hence division of revenues, should follow the median line between the two countries. This would put most, if not all, of the oil and gas on East Timor’s side of the border. It was a position backed up by international maritime law. So Australia simply withdrew from the international court that arbitrates maritime border disputes.
That left East Timor in a weak negotiating position, given its desperate need for finances to rebuild the country. Its government accepted treaties in 2002 and 2006 that, although granting some concessions, allowed Australia to continue extracting billions of dollars in revenue that rightfully belonged to East Timor. In particular, Australia kept hold of the bulk of future royalties expected from the unexploited Greater Sunrise gas field. 
But there was a further twist to come. In 2012, a former Australian spy, known only as “Witness K”, publicly revealed that he had been part of an operation to plant listening devices in offices of the East Timorese government during the negotiations, using the cover of an aid project. He was prompted to speak out when Alexander Downer was appointed to a lucrative position as adviser to Woodside Petroleum, which has a major stake in oil and gas developments in the Timor Sea. 
For revealing Australia’s crime, Witness K faced years of legal persecution and eventually pleaded guilty to national security offences. Even his lawyer, former ACT Attorney-General Bernard Collaery, was pursued through the courts for years before charges against him were eventually dropped. 
The spy operation gave Australia detailed information about East Timor’s negotiating position on the border dispute. It was clearly illegal and violated East Timor’s sovereignty. Yet Labor’s Julia Gillard, who was prime minister when the spying was revealed, refused to renegotiate the revenue-sharing agreement. When East Timor referred the matter to the Permanent Court of Arbitration, Australia prevented Witness K or Collaery from travelling overseas to give evidence.
The ongoing court cases and international attention were deeply embarrassing for Australia, which likes to lecture other countries about the importance of the “rule of law”, not least in relation to China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea. The legal uncertainties were also delaying the development of the Greater Sunrise field. So eventually, in 2018, a new border was agreed upon, which mostly follows the line of median distance between Australia and East Timor.
The catch? The oil and gas fields were already mostly exhausted. Only Greater Sunrise still contains major unexploited deposits, and Australia will continue to take a sizeable chunk of those royalties. Australia will not repay the billions of dollars in extra revenue that would have gone to East Timor had a fair border been established in 2002. And so the grotesque situation continues of one of the richest countries on earth draining resources from one of the poorest.
The East Timor intervention was Australia’s largest deployment of troops since the Vietnam War, heralding a new era of “regional interventionism”. Over the next decade, Australia sent military, police and government administrators to the Solomon Islands, Papua New Guinea, Vanuatu, Tonga, Nauru and once again East Timor. These neo-colonial adventures were used to justify major increases in Australia’s military budget. But they have done nothing to solve the underlying poverty and underdevelopment in Pacific island nations.
Today, Australia competes intensely with China for influence within the south-west Pacific region. Australian diplomacy makes much of China’s supposed threat to the sovereignty of smaller countries and its desire to exploit the region’s natural resources. Australia, in contrast, boasts of belonging to the “Pacific family” and is motivated only by a desire to help its neighbours. It’s hard to reconcile this rosy self-image with Australia’s history of bullying, espionage and greed in East Timor.

David Peterson

Guns, espionage and oil: the Australian intervention in East Timor 25 years on

The following is a joint statement and appeal issued by the Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation and the Revolutionary Students Front.
--------------------
There is an alarming development in Pakistan-administrated Jammu Kashmir (officially called Azad Jammu Kashmir or AJK), where two young activists have been framed with frivolous charges of blasphemy—a grave offence in Pakistan and its held territories. 
Deputy Chief Organiser of Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation (JKNSF) Arslan Shani and a female activist of the organisation, Asma Batool, are being victimised by accusations of blasphemy, with the former on the run and the latter already under police arrest. Both activists have played leading roles in the recent <a href="https://www.marxistreview.asia/victorious-movement-in-jammu-kashmir-a-prelude-to-revolutionary-tremors-in-the-south-asian-sub-continent-ajk/">People’s Rights Movement</a>, which won the right to affordable electricity for the 4.5 million inhabitants of Pakistan-held Kashmir. 
It should be noted that Jammu Kashmir is a disputed territory divided between regional imperialist powers, Pakistan and India, with China also controlling some parts. The oppressed masses of Kashmir have been waging a courageous and determined struggle for emancipation from national oppression and class exploitation for decades, with the youth leading the way and making countless sacrifices.
In recent months, the state authorities—who were previously compelled to accept the demands of the aforementioned movement—are retaliating against activists who were at the forefront of the movement, seeking to punish them. They have hired the services of religious fundamentalists and criminal elements to file these baseless police cases. It should also be kept in mind that the blasphemy laws, in their current form, were introduced by the draconian military regime of Zia-ul-Haq, a dictator backed by US imperialism in order to crush the struggles of working masses and students in Pakistan, and, more importantly, to fight the counter-revolutionary imperialist war (the so-called Afghan Jihad) against the revolutionary government in Afghanistan. 
Innumerable people, mostly from already oppressed minorities, have fallen victim to these laws since their introduction in 1980s. Religious fundamentalists and other reactionary elements exploit allegations of blasphemy for their political objectives or, in many cases, simply to blackmail and settle personal scores. In almost all cases, the courts are either complicit or succumbing to the pressure from religious extremists. Victims are often denied the right to a fair trial, with no lawyers willing to represent them. Additionally, there have been numerous instances where the accused and their lawyers were shot dead either in court or even after acquittal. As a result, the lives of the accused are always in grave danger.
The context of the current incident is that Arslan Shani shared a piece of protest poetry on social media in response to the recent gruesome gang rape and murder of a female doctor in Kolkata, India. This post was later shared by Asma Batool—a socialist feminist and a fearless advocate for women’s rights on social media and elsewhere—from Arslan Shani’s Facebook account. 
The horrific rape in the Kolkata hospital and the subsequent mass protests and strikes have profoundly shaken Indian society, with effects felt in Pakistan and beyond. The comrades were expressing their outrage against gender violence and exploitation in the crisis-ridden societies in this part of the world. Notably, the same poetic verses have been widely shared across social media in the region, including Pakistan. Using a viral social media post as grounds for charging and arresting political activists demonstrates that the state’s true intention is to intimidate revolutionary youth and suppress any dissenting voices.
In this context, a joint statement previously issued by Jammu Kashmir National Students Federation and Revolutionary Students Front said:
If this (act of repression) is not resisted and stopped here, many more activists could fall victim to this campaign of intimidation by the state. We warn both the imperialists and the local ruling elite to exercise prudence and refrain from inciting public outrage, as they will be held fully responsible for any escalation in the situation. We demand that the state’s support and sponsorship of religious fundamentalist elements must be withdrawn, and the series of retaliatory actions against the revolutionary youth should end immediately. 
Otherwise, we will exercise our constitutional and democratic right to protest across the entire country, from Jammu Kashmir to Karachi. We will raise the issue internationally in front of the youth, workers and human rights forums. In the spirit of the class slogan “an injury to one is an injury to all” we appeal to progressive organisations, trade unions and movements of resistance across the globe to express solidarity with the arrested comrades. Comrade Arslan Shani and others like him have already endured severe state repression and imprisonment during the recent movement, yet they remain steadfast in their revolutionary mission. The youth of the JKNSF and RSF will not be intimidated or coerced by such heinous tactics.
* Drop the false charges and police cases against Arslan Shani and Asma Batool
*Release Asma Batool 
*End state oppression
* Long live the class solidarity of the oppressed masses
* Down with capitalism and imperialism
Time is running out. Act now to condemn this vile act of oppression by the government of Azad Jammu Kashmir. Record your protest and express solidarity with the victims using the contact details of the authorities listed below, in order of importance:
Government of AJK
Email: info@ajk.gov.pk 
Website: <a href="https://ajk.gov.pk">https://ajk.gov.pk</a> 
Phone: +925822920136
Prime Minister AJK Anwar Ul Haq
Mobile: +923006292711
Prime Minister’s Office Islamabad, Pakistan
Email: info@pmo.gov.pk
Interior Minister Pakistan
Phone: +92519212026 
Phone: +92519215560
Public Information Officer Ministry of Interior Pakistan
Fax No: +92519204193 
Email: <a href="mailto:dslaw2@interior.gov.pk">dslaw2@interior.gov.pk</a>
Chief Secretary AJK
<a href="tel:+925822921034">Phone: +925822921034</a> 
<a href="mailto:csajkpk@hotmail.com">Email: csajkpk@hotmail.com</a>
<a href="tel:05822930810">Inspector General of Police</a>
<a href="tel:05822930810">Phone: +925822930810</a>
<a href="tel:05822930802">Additional Inspector General of Police</a>
<a href="tel:05822930802">Phone: +925822930802</a>
Station House Officer Abbaspur
Mobile: +923444488999
Registrar High Court Chaudhry Muhammad Fayyaz
Phone: +925822921068
Additional Registrar High Court Raja Muhammad Riaz Shafi
Phone: +925822924311 
Fax: +925822924312
<a href="tel:05824930000">Deputy Inspector General Police (Poonch Division)</a>
<a href="tel:05824930000">Phone: +925824930000</a>
Central Police Office AJK
Email: <a href="mailto:cpoajkmzd@ajk.gov.pk">cpoajkmzd@ajk.gov.pk</a>
Muhammad Sajjad Secretary Law
Phone: +925822921077 
Email: secretary@law.gok.pk
Home Department AJK
Phone: +925822921075
Additional Secretary Home AJK
Mobile: +923135736995
Ministry of Kashmir Affairs Pakistan
Fax: +92519201562 
Phone: +92519201563
Minister for Human Rights Pakistan Senator Azam Nazeer Tarar
Phone: +92519210563 
Fax: +92519214525

Activists under attack in Pakistani-administered Kashmir

The fight to defeat colonialism in Kanaky confronts not just the Macron government but the Australian government as well. Successive Australian governments have turned a blind eye to France’s defiance of UN General Assembly resolutions to end its colonial rule in Kanaky and French Polynesia, and the Albanese government will be very concerned by the riots in Nouméa.
France’s ability to maintain its colonies in the Pacific is crucial to its credibility as a world power. Military considerations are to the fore, but that these colonies give France exclusive economic zones of 7 million square kilometres in the Pacific, potentially rich in minerals, is also a factor. This is the context in which Macron’s attempt to rig the electoral system in Kanaky takes place.
Given Australia’s own neocolonial interests in Papua New Guinea, the Solomons, Nauru and Fiji, and its arrogance towards the Pacific Islands Forum, it is hardly surprising that Australia should regard those fighting French colonialism as a threat. Australia sees France as a partner in maintaining imperialist supremacy in the Pacific, and in recent times, great power competition has come to the fore in shaping relations between the two countries.
China’s attempt to extend its influence in the South Pacific, evident in a joint security agreement with the Solomons and new aid packages for a string of Pacific nations, has brought Australia and France closer together to resist Chinese advances. 
Successive defence white papers, and in particular Australia’s AUKUS agreement with the US and Britain, are concerned with pushing back against China. With the US tied up in Europe and the Middle East, Australia has an even more crucial role in reinforcing US power in the Pacific. Good relations with France can only help in this regard. In May 2018, while visiting Australia, Macron announced an India-Australia-France axis in the Indo-Pacific region.
Although the 2021 decision by the Morrison government to dump the contract to purchase French nuclear submarines in favour of US submarines caused a chill in the relationship between Australia and France, the Albanese government has done its best to put things back on an even keel. 
In a series of meetings and joint statements, Australia has made clear its desire for a strengthened French presence in the Pacific and for closer cooperation between the two countries.
Shortly after winning the 2022 election, the Albanese government settled the breach of the submarine contract with a payment of €555 million to the French Naval Group. Albanese told a press conference, “France is of course an Indo-Pacific nation, and we share a commitment to a global order based upon the rule of law and shared principles”. No mention was made of France’s obligations regarding decolonisation under the rule of law and UN principles of self-determination. 
In July 2022, the two governments got down to business, publishing a communique setting out plans for military cooperation, joint military exercises, reciprocal access to military facilities, industrial and technological defence partnerships and the development of space defence facilities. This was formalised in February last year as a “road map”, a “new agenda for bilateral cooperation”. One of the first fruits of this agreement was the involvement of French armed forces stationed in Kanaky in the Talisman Sabre military exercises in Queensland last July. 
In the same month, Australia joined France in abstaining on key provisions of the annual UN General Assembly decolonisation resolution, objecting to clauses requiring administering powers such as France to end military activities in their non-self-governing territories.
Foreign Minister Penny Wong regularly expresses her support for the “Pacific family” and in 2022 told the UN General Assembly, “As Foreign Minister, I am determined to see First Nations perspectives at the heart of Australian foreign policy”. However, Australian support for self-determination of Indigenous peoples of the Pacific, a prerequisite for any relationship between equals, is nowhere to be seen. Instead, Australia is deepening militarism and nuclear proliferation in a region that is still living with the health and environmental legacies of more than 315 US, British and French nuclear tests.
French colonialism in the Pacific has to go, but that will also require a fight against the Australian government since Australia is equally culpable in denying the people of the region their right to live in peace and to determine their own destinies.

Tom Bramble

Kanaky—The Australian connection

Ten days of demonstrations and riots in Kanaky (called New Caledonia by French colonists) have scored a tremendous victory against the Macron government and its attempt to entrench French domination over the colony it has ruled since the mid-nineteenth century.
The Macron government recently proposed a new law to expand the electoral body and allow tens of thousands of previously ineligible French settlers to vote in local elections. The Kanaks, who now make up just 41 percent of the population because of the continuing influx of French settlers, would thus have been reduced to a definite minority in all provinces.
In response, the Kanak parties—the CCAT (Coordination Unit for Land Actions) which brings together reformists (FLNKS [Kanak and Socialist Liberation Front[, Palika, UC [Caledonian Union]) and more radical organisations like the Labor Party and the USTKE (Union of Kanak and Exploited Workers)—called demonstrations. More than 80,000 Kanaks, one-quarter of the population, came out. The reformist parties called on Paris to withdraw the law, stating that they would be unable to “hold the young” if the law passed. The French National Assembly did not take their appeal into account and adopted the text.
It was this that brought a mass movement of Kanak youth onto the streets, looting stores owned by settlers, certain rich colonial houses and numerous businesses run by settlers, and blocking roads, closing the airport. The settlers, formed into armed militias, fought back to protect their property, killing three Kanaks, potentially opening a situation of insurrectional crisis and the beginning of civil war. 
The French state is using, as usual, brutal repression. It has declared a state of emergency, put independence leaders under house arrest and imprisoned hundreds of young Kanaks at the East Camp, a particularly barbaric prison where only Kanaks are incarcerated. The Macron government has rushed armoured trucks and 3,000 soldiers and gendarmes to the island to crush the riots. It has denounced the rioters as “terrorists” and “mafiosi” (which is the height of hypocrisy given the domination of the country by a handful of settler families). This vocabulary is reminiscent of the attitude of the French colonisers in Algeria. Tens of thousands of weapons are circulating in Kanaky, and the colonial police are working hand in hand with the armed settlers.
For years, and with the rise more recently of an extreme right that finds its roots in the organisations of the most violent and racist settlers of French Algeria, the dominant media and bourgeois or reformist politicians have refused to apologise or even reassess France’s long and bloody history of colonialism. Worse, the voices that glorify this colonisation now have a national audience with their own major TV news channels, radio channels and some of the most widely read dailies and weeklies. 
French colonisation in Kanaky stretches back nearly two centuries. 
When, in 1853, Emperor Napoleon III of France sent Rear Admiral Auguste Febvrier-Despointes to take possession of Kanaky, it was above all a question of countering the influence of the English, who already occupied Australia and New Zealand. The island, just 18,500 square kilometres, became the only French possession in this part of the Pacific.
France founded a city of administration and naval garrison in Nouméa, the current capital of Kanaky, where two-thirds of the population now live.
Napoleon III decided to make “New Caledonia” a French penal colony to hold common law prisoners, along with thousands of political opponents, including the republicans arrested following the defeated 1848 revolution and the emperor’s 1851 coup d’état, fighters from the 1871 Paris Commune, including one of its leaders, Louise Michel, and Algerian independence fighters. By 1877, New Caledonia held 11,000 convicts, two-thirds of the French population on the island. 
Convicts sent to the Pacific penal colony for lengthy terms of imprisonment were offered a reduced sentence on the condition that they cultivate the land once released. This was land the Kanaks were driven off. The Indigenous population was thrown into dire poverty, forced to scratch a living from uncultivable land.
In 1878, Chief Ataï led a revolt against colonisation and land dispossession. The authorities crushed it savagely. Ataï was decapitated and his head kept in Paris until 2014.
In 1894, France made New Caledonia a “free” settlement colony, offering French people who wanted to settle in the archipelago the best land. These first settlers, called the Caldoches, concentrated the wealth plundered from the indigenous population. 
The Kanak population, already robbed of land, were further pushed to the margins. By 1901, the Kanaks owned only 13 percent of the land.
In 1917, the Kanaks rose up against forced recruitment into the French army and dispossession. New bloody repression followed. The native code then became law in all French colonies, allowing the colonists to take justice into their own hands without trial and ensuring a subhuman status for the Kanaks. It was at this time that the idea was born among the French bourgeoisie of creating an assimilated Kanak elite.
During the 1931 colonial exhibition in Paris, undoubtedly the apogee of French colonisation, the Kanaks were placed in a human zoo, in the Bois de Vincennes, where the French from the “metropolis” (the “mother earth” which directs its “children”, the colonies) could come and admire a “reconstituted” Kanak tribe. The 12th arrondissement of Paris, host to this exhibition, has hardly changed—neither the names of the executioners given to the streets and boulevards, nor the statues and bas-reliefs to the glory of colonial expeditions or showing “the Savages”.
Until World War II, Nouméa was called “White Nouméa”; the Kanaks had no right to live there. It was an apartheid town. The presence during the war of a US base of more than 100,000 men brought African Americans to Nouméa, but also many Kanaks employed by the US army, so much so that after the war, it became impossible for white racists to continue to bar Kanaks from Nouméa. 
Nonetheless, this had little impact on the city. Even today, the south of Nouméa is dominated by the settler population and resembles a large French seaside city with its jet ski rentals, its French regional brasseries and the almost total absence of Kanaks, who are banned from the bars and clubs. As riots raged just kilometres away, Europeans continued to drink cocktails at the swanky beach bars in the south of the city.
North of Nouméa, behind a dangerous four-lane road, Kanak shanty towns dominate. Further away, the less precarious Kanak neighbourhoods are no less places of poverty and discrimination, at all levels. Even young Kanaks who have studied in France face high unemployment.
The Caldoches own the land, buildings, shops (products are 72 percent more expensive than in France), the nickel production and extraction apparatus, beautiful houses and swimming pools. Before World War II, a few trading houses controlled almost the entire economic fabric. These houses remain the foundation of the bourgeoisie of Nouméa today.
The Indigenous population are impoverished, despite the emergence of a small Kanak petty bourgeoisie.
In the 1960s, France organised a new wave of settlement following its loss of Algeria and the opening up of highly profitable nickel deposits on the island. In 1972, the French prime minister called for massive acceleration of colonisation of Kanaky. This pushed the Kanaks into a minority in their own land. These neo-colonists, often people who had fallen on hard times or been professionally disgraced, or simply young unemployed looking for adventure, moved to Kanaky to take advantage of the colonial privilege granted to settlers.
The riots that have broken out come 40 years after the last upsurge of Kanak resistance. In the years 1984 to 1988, a Kanak revolt was in full swing, involving roadblocks, riots and mass demonstrations. The Kanaks demanded independence, an end to exploitation and a socialist society. The FLNKS, founded in 1984, brought together most of the Kanak organisations of the time. 
Such was the scale of the revolt that the French and Caldoche bourgeoisie feared a loss of control of the territory. The repression was again terrible. It culminated in the assassination of 19 Kanak militants who had taken French gendarmes hostage and held them in a cave on the island of Ouvéa. The last independence activist taken by the French army was thrown alive into the ocean from a helicopter.
Repression was followed by so-called “common destiny”, an attempt by settlers and Kanak reformists to ensure the security and longevity of the colonial situation. The 1988 Matignon Agreement, followed in 1998 by the Nouméa Accord, sought to “rebalance” politics in the colony. The authorities extended access to water and electricity and built roads in Kanak areas. Modest political decentralisation allowed a degree of autonomy for the three provinces, that of the North, the South and the Loyalty Islands, which reduced the most visible forms of discrimination.
The North province, predominantly Kanak and the poorest of the provinces, is managed by a small fringe of a Kanak bourgeoisie that has become co-manager of the archipelago and takes shares in the North Nickel factory. The South province, with Nouméa, concentrates the majority of wealth, population and production, the Caldoches having also developed a nickel processing factory in direct competition with that of the North.
From a political point of view, the Nouméa Accords at the same time provided for a validation of the colonial situation with the idea of a “common destiny” bringing together dispossessed and discriminated indigenous people and settler owners, as well as the other communities present on the island: the Asians who have long served as labour for the settlers, and the Wallisians (from Wallis and Futuna) who served as police auxiliaries to the settlers. 
The agreement further provided for a process of “independence”, allowing “New Caledonia” to manage itself and establishing a special status for this French colony vis-à-vis others that are given less autonomy. 
The successful bet of the Caldoche bourgeoisie has been to count on the Kanaks becoming a minority, which they now are. The first two referendums provided for by the agreement gave a majority No to independence, while the third was boycotted by the separatists. Many Kanaks have been removed from the electoral lists while the loyalist government has authorised the purchase and possession of weapons in the territory.
Macron's aggressive move to marginalise the Kanak population by padding the electorate with additional settlers called into question this pseudo-assimilation, and put an end to the lie of “common destiny” with its promise of uniting “Caledonia” and bringing the settler owners together with their Kanak employees. 
The riots, however, have forced Macron into a humiliating retreat. Politicians in Paris who were set to endorse the bill in a joint sitting of parliament began to get cold feet in the face of the explosion of anger among young Kanaks and the burning of French property. Macron was forced to rush to Kanaky to consult loyalist and separatist leaders and to see for himself the effects of the riots. Macron has now abandoned efforts to get his electoral changes through immediately. 
While Macron stated that the state of emergency will not be lifted until “calm” has returned to Nouméa, it is clear that this is a magnificent victory for the separatists. It has been a real demonstration that fighting back works, contrary to the compromises of the Kanak reformist parties that disowned the rioters. And it is a signal for all those colonised by France, but also for all workers.
The Kanak separatists who courageously and forcefully promoted this struggle, by targeting economic interests directly, by permanently threatening the ability of the colonial power to make profits, by plunging the exploiting settlers into fear, showed the way.
Meanwhile, on the ground, settler militias continue with impunity to police their neighbourhoods with arms. But already, many newly arrived colonists have decided to return to France.
The struggle is not over. But the victories gained here mean that the situation will never be the same again.
Armand Zvenigorodsk is a French socialist who lived in Kanaky in the 2010s and supported the independence movement. Translated by Tom Bramble.

Armand Zvenigorodsk

Riots in Kanaky force Macron to back down

Ravibha Jeyanathan is a revolutionary socialist and Tamil refugee based in Tamil Nadu, India. She spoke to Red Flag’s Alicia Griffiths.
India is having an election. It’s looking like Narendra Modi and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) will retain power. What are some of the issues in the election?
It does seem like Modi and his alliance are going to hold on. But there has been another formation, the Indian National Developmental Inclusive Alliance, which has most of the regional parties aligned together as well as the Indian National Congress. So the fight is between these two groups. Unfortunately, both are capitalist, religious and casteist. 
The condition of the Indian working class is getting worse—the unemployment rate is 7 percent, and in a country that doesn’t provide welfare support, it’s quite hard to survive that. Even in health, India stands at 134 [of 193 nations] in the UN’s Human Development Index, which is worse than some very underdeveloped countries. On the other hand, the capitalist class holds four times the wealth of 70 percent of the population. So there is an economic crisis and people are also facing oppression in the name of caste and religion. 
People have been protesting, but this is swept aside, [with the opposition only willing] to call for removing fascism and bringing back the “good old days”. There is no sizeable revolutionary group to provide an alternative. 
Something that’s been in the news lately is the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA). Can you tell us a little about that? 
This bill has been in negotiation since 2019. The Modi government brought it in—it says that whoever seeks asylum here would be able to get citizenship only if they are Hindu or some types of Buddhist. It clearly rejects the Muslim minorities and therefore most of those who come from the neighbouring bordering countries—Bangladesh, Myanmar, Pakistan. 
The first people to fight back were the Muslim community because it was very clear that they’ve been targeted. 
These attacks are not new to India. It’s been the story for 76 years, even before the BJP took power, and particularly around elections. The attacks are used to grab the attention and, they hope, the support of the Hindu majority voters. 
Protests took place [in 2019] and people fought against it so it wasn’t implemented. But during this election, just a couple months before, they announced they are going to bring it back. They believe this kind of anti-Muslim propaganda will help them.
Before COVID-19, there were strong protests against the CAA. People were protesting for 100 days; mostly Muslim women led the protests. But when the announcement came during this electoral period, there was not much of a quarrel, unfortunately. 
What are some of the other issues the left are fighting around? 
There have been a lot of protests in the last decade, some historical protests since the BJP came into power in 2014. 
In February, there was a huge protest, involving millions of workers. It was electoral-focussed, the main motto was to vote out Modi and bring back the old days. People gathered and showed resistance, but because of the union bureaucracy, the struggle was confined within electoral limits. 
Even when people try to express that we’re not happy with the system—to say that we want free education, we want free schooling, we want a free healthcare system—the leading forces try to say just one single person is the problem, that is, it’s because of the Modi fascist regime. Unfortunately people can fall for that, and they think “Okay, so let’s replace [the BJP] with the other party”. When we criticise the opposition and argue we need an alternative, the leaders accuse us of helping the BJP in some way, or say “This isn’t the time to talk about this”. So even where struggle is happening, they stop it from going further. 
What is the situation for Tamil refugees today in India?
Tamil refugees in India have a history of 40 years without any identity. Most came by boat to India, so they’re not even treated as refugees but illegal immigrants. 
The Indian government has allowed refugees to come into the country and has put them into camps. There are around 107 refugee camps in India with 90,000 people in them.
From the 1980s, after Black July [a series of state-sponsored pogroms against Tamils in Sri Lanka in 1983], Tamil people started fleeing to India and gained some access to education and limited ability move outside the camps. But there is still systematic oppression. 
As a refugee myself in those days, I could not move outside the camp. We were treated as people who could harm society. We’d have to sign out to leave the camp, and we had very minimal support. Then some refugees got the chance to go outside and work, most in blue-collar jobs, because whatever qualification we have was not recognised because we were refugees. 
Still today, if refugees want to leave town to travel, they have to inform their authorities. Over 40 years, many refugees have accepted the situation and started living a life. On the other hand, the authorities have made two generations live without any identity—two generations denied their basic rights. 
Slowly, during the CAA protests [in 2019], Tamil refugees came out and asked for their rights. The CAA gives rights to Hindu minorities, but we are a Hindu minority being oppressed by a Buddhist nation like Sri Lanka. So why can’t we get accepted as refugees? This was the initial question. People protested, people organised for the first time in the camps. They didn’t have rights to join the protests so they organised through other means. During the 100 day protests they continuously made a Zoom meeting, because they couldn’t go outside the camps. There were more than 100 Zoom meetings all over the world. 
After these struggles the regional party DMK (Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam) came into power. They saw people questioning things and so they found ways to introduce some reforms. They built a couple of hundred houses for the camps, and now some people think the DMK will help them. 
But the Sri Lankan Tamil refugees have been facing ongoing, structural violence for more than 40 years. The changes on offer do not go nearly far enough. The situation is just a nightmare. 
Answers have been edited for length

Alicia Griffiths

Organising on the ground in India

The Indian national elections began on 19 April. With close to 1 billion people voting across 28 states and eight territories, polling is staggered and will be completed in early June. The far-right Indian People’s Party (Bharatiya Janata Party, BJP) is likely to win, giving incumbent Prime Minister Narendra Modi his third straight five-year term in office. 
Yet for all the talk about the country being “the world’s largest democracy”, the process is in some ways hollow and shambolic. The Modi government has used its control of the state to persecute opposition politicians. And a flood of corporate money backing Modi’s party makes the contest very one-sided.
The chief minister of Delhi, a major opposition politician, was arrested earlier in the year, hobbling his party’s campaign. Many other prominent opposition politicians have been arrested or harassed over the past couple of years on pretexts such as tax fraud or corruption. A couple dozen such politicians have switched parties to join the BJP and—to no-one’s surprise—their tax investigations went into hibernation once they jumped ship. 
The Congress party, the largest opposition party nationally, claims that its bank accounts have been frozen, disrupting election campaign spending. On the other hand, two months before the elections, the Supreme Court forced the government to disclose information about parties’ use of “electoral bonds” for financing. The BJP introduced this opaque mechanism in 2017 to allow big corporate donors to give money without public disclosure. It turns out that the BJP is getting by far the largest share of such shadow funding. 
Many of the donors turned out to be people and companies the BJP had been targeting through the tax agencies. If they coughed up enough money for BJP’s campaign coffers, the investigations magically stopped. Modi has also pushed the Electoral Commission to institute the unusually long election campaign knowing that other parties would run out of funds sooner than the BJP.
But the threat to democracy goes beyond fair elections. Since 2014, Modi has attacked the independence of the judiciary and the civil service through changes to legislation and norms of executive practice. And his party and government have harassed and arrested prominent activists and journalists in retaliation for anti-government protests or critical media reports. In fact, since Modi was first elected in 2014, many prominent critical journalists and social activists have been murdered by far-right organisations associated with but operating at arm’s length from the BJP.
What’s more, big media are pro-Modi and echo BJP talking points—operating as loyal propagandists and reflecting support for Modi among media magnates. 
The government has continually pushed anti-Muslim chauvinism. It revoked the autonomy of India’s only Muslim-majority state, Kashmir, and split it into two “union territories”, which are more closely administered by the central government. It introduced anti-Muslim laws such as the Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens. Under Modi, BJP politicians and Hindu religious leaders have repeatedly been filmed inciting crowds to violence against Muslims, spreading conspiracies about them and calling for their ethnic cleansing. 
In BJP strongholds, such as the northern states of Uttar Pradesh and Haryana, there has been a spate of beatings and lynchings of Muslims carried out by vigilante groups abetted by police and sometimes with their cooperation. In Gujarat, the state in which Modi’s political career was launched, Muslims are ghettoised, unable to buy property in Hindu neighbourhoods, afraid to venture out of their neighbourhoods for fear of harassment or lynching by vigilantes. 
How did India, which has the third-largest Muslim population in the world, get here? 
The story begins with the National Volunteers’ Organisation (Rashtriya Swayemsevak Sang, RSS), a fascist organisation established in 1925 with the ideology of Hindutva (literally “Hindu-ness”), a virulent form of Hindu nationalism. The RSS combined the conservatism of elite Hindu society with an attempt to imitate the ideologies and movements associated with Italy’s Benito Mussolini and Germany’s Adolf Hitler. 
Vinayak Savarkar, the founding ideologue of Hindutva in the early 1920s, pictured India as the land of the “Hindu race”. The Hindu nation, he wrote, could lead the world, but only once it became strong again and was purged of foreign ideas and domination. In particular, the target was Muslims, who were depicted as an internal enemy that weakened the Hindu race for a thousand years. In 1939, Savarkar enthused about Hitler purging Germany of Jews and wanted Hindus to show the same race pride against Muslims. 
B.S. Moonje, an influential early figure in Hindutva, toured Italy, met Mussolini and inspected the fascist youth and militia. Keshav Hedgewar, founder of the RSS, created the group’s organisational apparatus, including the branches in which members train in martial arts and are taught the doctrines of Hindutva. They develop full-time propagandists to build the organisation. By the time Hedgewar died in 1940, there were between 500 and 1,000 branches around the country, with 100,000 members. By 1973, when the group’s second supreme leader, M.S. Golwalkar, died, the RSS had 1 million members. Today it claims 5 million. 
From the beginning, RSS activists were predominantly urban middle-class people from an upper-caste background (the caste hierarchy, which is like a hereditary class system, is a mainstay of Hindu conservatism). They were lawyers, doctors, engineers, journalists, shopkeepers and merchants. From the beginning, they had supporters among rich and powerful people—big business owners, big landowners, Hindu princes, army officers and judges. These establishment supporters bankrolled the organisation and ensured that the activists’ violence was tolerated by the elites. 
Their vigilantism is no secret in India. When the British Raj ended in 1947 and the territory was partitioned into India and Pakistan, the RSS carried out pogroms against Muslims. An RSS activist assassinated Mahatma Gandhi in 1948. The RSS led “communal riots” in the 1960s, ’70s and ’80s. In India “communalism” means pitting religious or ethnic communities against one another—like Hindus against Muslims. That whole time, the fascists were tolerated by the elites and the upper middle classes and grew among them. 
Yet they mostly had very little influence in mass electoral politics. It was only in the late 1980s that they began to get a sizeable vote. 
An important factor in their burgeoning success in this field was the decline of the Congress party as an electoral force and as the dominant political vehicle of the capitalist class. Congress, led by a family dynasty for generations, dominated national elections for decades after independence, but it began losing electoral support from the late 1960s. 
Into the resulting vacuum advanced a range of smaller parties, each with a regional base. By the mid-1980s Congress was embroiled in corruption scandals and a crisis of leadership after the assassination of Indira Gandhi, the head of the family dynasty. It seemed a sinking ship, and sections of the big capitalists were looking for a party whose electoral star was rising. 
Enter the BJP, which is the main political front group of the RSS. The RSS networks among business, police, judges and lawyers create a bubble of impunity for Hindutva activists in a range of local strongholds. In that bubble, Hindutva vigilante groups (at arm’s length from the RSS and the BJP) use communal campaigns to gain a voter base far larger than their activist ranks. The RSS-BJP leverage the voter base to expand their influence among the top end of society. It has been a spiral of growing influence ever since the 1990s.
Narendra Modi has been intimately involved in the whole process. A creature of the RSS, Modi has been a member since he was a child and became a full-time organiser for the group. In the mid-1980s, the RSS moved Modi into the BJP, where he was an important figure in two communalist campaigns that were pivotal in creating and hardening a Hindutva pole in mass politics. 
First was the “birthplace of Ram” campaign of the late ’80s and early ’90s, which targeted a sixteenth-century mosque that was claimed to have been built on the exact birthplace of a Hindu god. Hindutva activists destroyed the mosque in 1992 and killed hundreds of Muslims in related clashes. At the time, Modi was a behind-the-scenes campaign organiser. This year, Modi inaugurated a Ram temple on the site of the destroyed mosque. It was an enormous media spectacle that functioned as the unofficial opening act of his electoral campaign. 
Second was the 2002 Gujarat pogrom, in which Hindutva activists killed 2,000 Muslims. This time, Modi was in front of the cameras as the state’s chief minister. Both campaigns mobilised support among a large layer of Hindu society. 
The fascist activists had to demonstrate that they spoke for “the people” in some way, that they had social licence to act above the law. But they also view themselves as the political right’s vanguard, who must lead much more extreme actions than the mass of Hindu society would demand or carry out on their own. 
They are two-faced about their political role and outlook. When speaking to the hard right, they boast of killing Muslims. When engaging more moderate voters, they deny their role in atrocities, and shift responsibility to “spontaneous Hindu rage” while adding that the rage is justified given the Muslim “threat”, even if they might condemn “excesses” committed by Hindus. This doublespeak is effective because of the RSS’s influence among “respectable people”—news presenters in big media, the police, judges and lawyers. When all the respectable people echo RSS (and Modi’s) talking points about “spontaneous Hindu rage” or “the Muslims started it”, when the judges conclude that Modi as chief minister was not responsible for the Gujarat pogroms—then it must be true!
While he was chief minister from 2001 to 2014, Modi surrounded himself with a growing layer of capitalists from Gujarat and its neighbouring states in western India. They included the relatively new big shots such as Gautam Adani and Mukesh Ambani, and old capitalist dynasties such as the Tatas and Birlas, big shots since the 1800s. Modi’s attraction was his ability to deliver for big business—to get away with things by hook or by crook—and to keep winning elections. And he greatly rewarded his corporate backers with profitable deals.
By the 2014 national elections, when Modi contended for the prime ministership, he had enough corporate backing to vastly outspend the Congress. With its huge pile of establishment funding, the hard right BJP has grown to dominate the mass media. Neither left-wing social movements nor mainstream liberal actors have been able to build an alternative political pole to rally progressives. 
That brings us back to the question of how the far right has pushed its agenda since Modi’s 2014 victory. Put simply, the small cog of fascist activists moves the bigger cog of a mass voter base to turn the allegiances of leading capitalists firmly to the BJP. Society moves in a far-right direction chosen by a minority of organised fascists and to the benefit of the capitalist class, under the ideological cover of “the Hindu majority”. 
Incidentally, its claim to speak for this “Hindu majority” is itself an electoral distortion. The BJP received 31 percent of the vote in 2014 and 37 percent in 2019. But given how these votes are geographically concentrated, the BJP nevertheless receives a large majority of seats in parliament, enabling it to rule with few coalition constraints. Regardless of these details, the political supremacy of the BJP cannot be minimised by fussing over voting percentages. 
India’s democracy and its non-Hindu populations are under threat from the Modi regime and the BJP. But the source of the threat is not simply the government. It is a mass fascist network of organisations, rooted in the RSS and deeply embedded in layers of the ruling class and upper middle classes through ties developed over decades. 
The networks, held together by a mix of ideological agreement and personal gain, exist among police, army officers, the civil service, judges, lawyers, business owners, the mass media, criminals and vigilantes. The networks are linked and cultivated by RSS activists, whose tasks are executed by Hindutva vigilante groups. 
These networks among people at the top of society must be broken and disorganised. The fascist organisations and vigilante groups of the RSS and its offspring cannot be allowed to exist. Anything short of that—like a mere electoral defeat for the BJP—will be just a temporary setback for Indian fascism.

Sagar Sanyal

Modi and the threat to Indian democracy

China’s boom is well and truly over. Through the 2000s, the economy enjoyed double-digit annual growth. Now, few expect it to hit the 5 percent target announced at this year’s National People’s Congress, the dictatorship’s rubber-stamp parliament. Previous pillars of growth, property and infrastructure are teetering on mountains of debt, and the United States is trying to block the country’s advance into high-tech manufacturing.
In anticipation of an economic slowdown, President Xi Jinping has long centralised political power. “The current leadership believes that it can survive an economic downturn by tightening its control over society, eradicating autonomous elite factions, and adopting a more assertive posture on the international stage amid rising geopolitical tension”, Ho-fung Hung writes in New Left Review.
That assertive posture involves directing investment into “new quality productive forces”. The first group of outputs in this category includes solar panels, electric vehicles and lithium batteries, areas it already dominates in terms of global production. China hopes to remain the pre-eminent manufacturer of such goods. 
The second group includes silicon chips, IT systems and artificial intelligence. Here it faces sanctions and other obstacles because such technologies are crucial for military hardware and are of supreme importance in the country’s rivalry with the United States. With growth slowing and foreign investors leaving, a single-minded focus on technological innovation means squeezing greater profits from Chinese workers.
Modern China’s meteoric rise involved two phases. Through the 1990s and 2000s, the country welcomed a flood of foreign direct investment into low-end manufacturing and assembly plants, attracted by seemingly inexhaustible reserves of cheap labour held down by the “Communist” dictatorship. Deeply dependent on exports and foreign investment, China narrowly avoided being dragged down with the West during the Global Financial Crisis of 2008. 
It shifted rapidly to a second, domestic phase of growth: infrastructure development. In his book Ghost Cities of China, Wayne Shepard described the country in the 2010s as like a giant construction site. “The old is being replaced with the new, and the new is being replaced with the newer, in a cyclical process of creation and destruction”, he wrote. Local governments were given free rein to sell land and build bridges, roads, airports, shopping centres and apartment blocks. Beginning in 2002, the government built a high-speed rail network from scratch. By 2015 there were 12,000 kilometres of tracks; today, the network stretches 45,000 kilometres.
While the United States and Europe stagnated through what Marxist economist Michael Roberts called “the long depression” (beginning with the financial crisis), China enjoyed another decade of strong growth. Yet this led to enormous government debts, the world’s largest property bubble, and significant excess industrial capacity. The government is now banning new highway and building projects in ten of China’s most indebted provinces, according to documents viewed by the Financial Times.
Many Western commentators anticipate China falling like a house of cards under this debt burden. But Kevin Lin, a researcher specialising in China and its labour movement, is sceptical of such prognoses. “There have been predictions of an imminent economic crisis going back twenty years now”, he tells Red Flag. “It’s not just a prediction, it’s almost like a hope.” 
The regime keeps a tight grip on national banks, allowing it to simply “roll over” what is owed by local government and state-owned enterprises. This is something Shepard also noted. “When considering domestic ‘debt’ in China, what we’re really discussing is the amount of money the Communist Party owes to the Communist Party”, he wrote.
That the debt might indeed be manageable is evident in the country’s property sector. Housing has been the number one investment for China’s burgeoning middle classes. And decades of untrammelled private investment in urbanisation resulted in skyrocketing valuations, which reached US$52 trillion combined, according to US investment bank Goldman Sachs. The speculative bubble centred on the world’s largest property company, Evergrande. Rather than let it burst, the government began a controlled demolition of the firm before it was finally liquidated. The process has lowered property prices and squeezed many households. But it also prevented a financial crisis.
“It hasn’t eliminated the risks—some of them are structural to capitalism, so they won’t just go away because of better economic management”, Lin says. “But if we take the longer view, instead of a crash, the economic crisis may be a continual slowdown for years to come.”
There are undoubtedly additional problems. Depressed consumer spending and falling prices have hurt economic growth. But President Xi Jinping has no plan to expand service industries or increase welfare. That would mean raising wages, increasing holiday leave and taxing the rich to fund higher pensions for a rapidly ageing population. Instead, spending is being directed towards the “new productive forces”. So bosses are suppressing wage growth and increasing the number of hours worked, while Xi tells young people that they must be prepared to “eat bitterness”.
Unemployment, like bitterness, is growing. Twenty-one percent of young people were unemployed by June 2023, before the government suddenly stopped publishing figures (then changed its calculation method). The solar panel giant Longi will sack more than 20,000 workers due to a supply glut, according to Bloomberg, one consequence of capitalist over-investment.
Why is the government doubling down on investment in manufacturing? Over 30 years, the world has relinquished its manufacturing capacity to China, profiting from low wages and economies of scale. It’s not just shoes or iPhone assembly. Last year, the United States built ten commercial shipping vessels. China built more than 1,000.
The focus on “new productive forces” is about pressing this advantage. The regime under Xi Jinping is building what he calls “national champions” to dominate global markets. The “old trio” of textiles, furniture and appliances has given way to the “new trio” of solar panels, electric vehicles and lithium batteries.
So far, it is steamrolling the competition. The New York Times reports that China installed more solar panels in 2023 than the United States has in its history. Its ultra-cheap exports drove European solar companies out of business long ago. Electric vehicle company Tesla has fallen to second place behind China’s BYD in terms of global sales. “In many sectors such as EVs, [Western countries] are—for the first time in modern history—in a technological catch-up mode vis-a-vis a more advanced competitor, which they also consider a key geopolitical rival”, Paolo Gerbaudo wrote in a recent article for political economy website Phenomenal World.
The West is retaliating with what Lin calls “open economic warfare”. The US Congress’s vote to ban Chinese-owned app TikTok is only the latest move towards IT “decoupling”. As Intel, Dell and IBM pull out of Chinese markets, the Communist Party has announced a plan to “Delete A” (“A” being America) and replace all foreign software systems in government computers by 2027. The European Union is poised to impose tariffs on electric vehicles it accuses China of “dumping” into its markets. All this has culminated in foreign direct investment falling to a 30-year low. 
Crucially, Chinese capitalism faces the prospect of being blocked from buying the most advanced silicon chips from the United States, Taiwan, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany and South Korea. In response, the government has invested heavily to try to develop its own. Although lagging a generation behind Taiwanese nanochips, China has just released a new Huawei phone series powered by domestically produced chips.
This economic warfare is not only, or even primarily, about short-term profits. “More than the economic benefit to the US, the underlying motivation is to maintain US global hegemony”, Lin says. High-tech manufacturing, especially of semiconductors, is the foundation of military “innovation”. Any country whose missile components are produced in enemy territory has a big problem. The key reason that US imperialism is preventing China from accessing foreign technology is to prevent its military expansion. Mass reserves of foreign exchange will furnish China with the capital to build its own, so the US is trying to block Chinese exports as well. 
Beijing is not, however, entirely left out in the cold. Russia and Iran have forged closer economic ties with it to recover from Western sanctions. The Economist magazine estimates that Russia has become the largest importer of Chinese cars: sales have tripled since the invasion of Ukraine, and Russian gas exports to China have spiked in return.
China remains the major trading partner of 120 countries. Despite complaints of Chinese steel dumping, most countries are unlikely to block super-cheap cars, phones and laptop computers. Some middle-ranking powers are exploiting the rivalry between Washington and Beijing, moving politically closer to one and economically closer to the other.
But if the aim of economic strategy is to build military power, China has a long way to go. Military spending has more than doubled since 2015, and its nuclear stockpile is set to quadruple by 2035. This still puts it far behind the United States, which is shoring up its comprehensive system of alliances.
China has rapidly developed its navy (by some measures now the world’s biggest) but can barely project power past its own coastline. Aggressive moves into waters to the east and south have angered its US-allied neighbours along the “first island chain” of the Pacific. Japan is negotiating its first new security pact with the United States in 60 years, while the Philippines has granted the US military access to more of its bases. Taiwan, which faces almost daily intimidation by China’s navy and air force, launched its first domestically built submarine in February. 
Chinese armed forces also suffer from corruption, inefficiency and inexperience. “China’s military has definitely achieved a major upgrade from twenty years ago, but I don’t think the government leadership has full confidence in their military”, Lin says. “They have not engaged in any conflict since the invasion of Vietnam in the late 1970s.”
China’s economy is slowing and vulnerable—but not weak. Its high-tech export plan is a strategy to maintain growth and build military power. That’s because, as tensions increase between powerful countries, everything from electric cars to media apps is treated as a potential weapon.

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