Spread Hong Kong revolution to China! Defeat the white terror of the CCP dictatorship and big business!
The ‘831’ ruling of the NPC Standing Committee ignited the Umbrella Movement five years ago, but today Hong Kong has entered an even larger mass uprising. The current anti-authoritarian movement has lasted longer than the Umbrella Movement.
As five years ago, now the CCP dictatorship and the puppet Hong Kong government refuse to make any concessions to the mass movement. They initiate fake negotiations to buy time, while at the same time escalating the police violence against protesters. The government has also threatened to use the Emergency Regulations Ordinance to establish a full-blown dictatorship in Hong Kong, but the masses show no fear of any legal repression. The Ordinance, if implemented, will radicalise wider layers of the masses and produce continuing resistance.
Prepare for a real general strike
In order to break the current stalemate and defeat the white terror (sackings, beatings and sweeping arrests), the movement needs a new direction, enabling the working class to fulfil its great potential. Hong Kong workers will launch a second general strike in less than one month. This is the right direction for the struggle.
In order to maximise its effect, the strike needs to be organised. The general strike called for September 2-3 should become a springboard for establishing new workers’ organisations. At the strike rally, if the CTU, the pro-democracy trade union confederation with 190,000 members, calls for workers to join or establish unions and strike committees and prepare for a real and more powerful general strike, it will get huge response. If the trade union leadership does not make such a call, grassroots workers need nevertheless to build new militant workers’ organisations on their own.
Big business, especially Cathay Pacific, threaten and sack workers who support the struggle, because the airline and airport workers’ strike last time frightened the CCP dictatorship. We need to mount a forceful fightback solidarity protests and strikes across all companies and sectors.
Workers’ organisations need to show unity and fighting will, to attract those who fear the bosses’ crackdown. Meanwhile, the movement should link to workers’ livelihood issues such as low wages, long working hours, lack of public housing and the insane wastefulness of white elephant infrastructure projects. Big business, which ruthlessly exploits workers, is also the loyal supporter of the authoritarian system.
The general strike and the entire mass struggle should demand the eight-hour working day, a minimum wage of HKD 60 per hour, substantial increases in public housing and public services, a universal pension system, and heavy taxes on the rich and big business to provide funds for the above policies.
Spread Hong Kong revolution to China
The movement must break its current isolation in a single city, spreading the struggle to mainland China. Both the current struggle and the ‘831’ ruling five years ago show that the CCP dictatorship will never allow any real democracy in Hong Kong. Therefore, in order to win, Hong Kong’s revolution must spread to mainland China and topple the CCP.
If we organise a real general strike against the whole system of authoritarian capitalism, we will be more able to attract mainland Chinese workers and youth who are like us suffering from poverty, unaffordable housing and authoritarian rule, for a united struggle against our common enemy.
Socialist Action calls for the founding of a new mass working class party to provide direction and leadership for the movement based on class struggle lines. A worker’s party could powerfully push forward the movement and attract workers and the oppressed in mainland China to fight together with us.
Socialist Action stands for:
- Organise militant trade unions and strike committees, prepare for a real general strike! Fight back against the violence of police and gangsters as well as corporate white terror!
- Change the mode of the movement, make workers’ struggle the main force – it is the only way to win!
- Spread the Hong Kong revolution to China, unite in struggle with the mainland Chinese masses, down with CCP dictatorial capitalism!
- Replace the undemocratic Legco with a genuine People’s Assembly, elected by free and universal suffrage, with the voting age lowered to 16, to immediately implement policies in the interests of the working class, by breaking the economic rule of the capitalist tycoons!
