July 1 — The U.S. Congress has often been billed as the greatest deliberative body in the world, whose practices and procedures are so democratic and so well calculated to reflect public opinion that it should be the model for all other countries.
Where was this deliberation when the House passed the anti-China sanctions bill? What happened was not a parliamentary session but a cattle stampede, in which the U.S. ruling class, led by the most powerful monopolies and the Pentagon, rammed through a drastic piece of legislation which no member of Congress could even have had time to read, let alone deliberate on.
It was one of the crudest attempts to corral the legislators under the whiplash of a capitalist media blitz the likes of which is rarely seen except during wartime. When this sort of thing was done in the Reichstag during Hitler's regime, it was derisively called a "ja" vote over here.
Normally any piece of legislation requires at least the selection of a committee to hold a public hearing. Even before this, an interval of time is usually allotted between the reading of the bill and the public hearing so as to give the legislators an opportunity to consult with each other and above all with the constituencies they are supposed to represent. But here the media blitz did it all. No one in Congress gave any sign whatever of polling their constituents.
After a hearing, which usually takes a considerable time, most bills slowly make their way to the calendar for a vote in the House. From there on it can take anywhere from several days to several years to reach the Senate. If there are discrepancies in the House and Senate bills, they must go to a conference committee which irons things out. The final version of the bill then must go to the White House for the president's signature.
Compare the sanctions bill with the one on the minimum wage. Before that bill was introduced, the measure was supported in hundreds of meetings of unions and community organizations. Hundreds of thousands of signatures were gathered on petitions just to get it before Congress. Then years passed before it was voted on by both houses. Finally, when the most recent bill went before Bush, he vetoed it.
Even progressive legislation that finally becomes law, like those on civil rights and plant closings, takes forever. And of course Congress has never passed the Equal Rights Amendment.
Finally, one can scarcely fail to mention the long years it took for the U.S. Congress to even approach the question of sanctions against South Africa, which are mostly toothless anyway.
But the sanctions against China passed in this wild stampede are both drastic and extraordinary. First, the bill not only prohibits the expenditure of funds for trade and development but also halts funds already in the pipeline for various projects. This is like breaking a contract long after an agreement has been made and is being executed. It's a crippling act of sabotage born out of the hysteria created to promote the counterrevolutionary developments in China.
Furthermore, the bill suspends financial support to a little-known organization called the Overseas Private Investment Corporation in China. The U.S. government has channeled funds through this agency to encourage private corporations here to invest in projects with the Chinese government.
After many years of negotiation between the PRC and the U.S. government, the U.S. had begun lifting some of the export control regulations pertaining to China which come under the laws restricting trade with socialist countries. Under the new law, this so-called liberalization is now halted. Also halted is the export of any nuclear equipment to China. This means that any kind of civilian nuclear equipment which China had bartered or contracted for with the U.S. is now to be halted on the ground that it could be used for military purposes.
It is a fair assumption that almost anything pertaining to trade and commerce with China that is carried on "voluntarily" by U.S. commercial and trade interests will be discontinued, unless the Bush administration reconsiders some aspects of its new "containment " of China. The pressure on these so-called independent companies will be so great as to compel them to conform.
As of now, the Bush administration, acting in feverish haste, has lined up the European Economic Community, forcing it to vote sanctions, along with the parliaments of Britain and West Germany.
Thus, the legislation passed is a most serious blow leveled against the PRC and falls just short of breaking diplomatic relations.
What is most interesting about this bill, which is supposed to deal mostly with economic matters, is that it also contains a provision for the creation of a special "Task Force on Students from the People's Republic of China in the U.S." This group's ostensible purpose is to assess the needs and status of Chinese citizens now in the U.S. under nonimmigrant visas, and to coordinate public and private sources of financial aid and information for Chinese students.
Actually, this is an old CIA instrumentality to deal with this most sensitive issue — the cultural exchanges between China and the U.S. as they pertain to students. Most significantly, the bill does not create a fund or allocate money for the project, usually the most important element under consideration. It leaves this up to the administration — which then can turn it over to the CIA without Congress having any say on the amount of money spent. It's a deliberate way to avoid congressional oversight.
The term "to coordinate public and private sources of financial aid and information" is a typical CIA stratagem. The agency oversees lists of thousands of families, many headed by officers of the armed services and the State Department, who are willing to take in exchange students. These families are regarded as safe and secure and willing to cooperate and take advice from the government on how to influence the students.
This is not an altogether new idea with respect to foreign students or scholars. The history of the U.S. brain drain of Europe right after the Second World War and more recently of the oppressed countries shows how it is done. The U.S. skims the cream off the top of those students who study here and are supposed to then return to their homelands. Even right-wing anti-communists have long realized the dangers in this, as shown in the significant pamphlet The Asian Brain Drain, a Factual and Causal Analysis by Tai K. Oh (R&E Research Associates, San Francisco, 1977).
In one swoop, the ruling monopolies have mobilized the three arms of the capitalist government in a frenzied campaign of vilification against the Chinese government.
But most importantly, the press and media have again proven to be the most effective and the vanguard in doing yeoman's service for the cause of imperialist monopoly. This reinforces the Marxist view that in every important crisis the capitalist press and media prove to be the fourth arm of the government.
It seems that few, if any, prominent figures in the liberal and progressive capitalist establishment had given any thought to what these deliberately provocative acts outlined in the sanctions bill would entail for China and for the world. To this day, there hasn't been a single word of dissent from any of them.
It is reminiscent of the total unanimity in the press and media at the time of the incident involving the shooting down of the KAL spy plane. Only the Pentagon was heard from and public discussion was completely stifled. Matters came to such a pass that the liberal Democratic governor of New York and the conservative Republican governor of New Jersey, who are usually at odds over local matters, quickly found common ground in violating the specific provisions of the UN Charter concerning the rights of member nations when they prevented the Soviet Foreign Minister (who was coming to New York for a UN session) from landing at any of the commercial airports in the area. His plane had to be rerouted to a military field.
Now both of these governors are competing to roll out the red carpet for Soviet delegations. The incident of the KAL, which has now been exposed for what it was, a spy plane, has long been cast into the dustbin of history.
Of course, one should not be surprised at what capitalist politicians from the Democratic and Republican parties do, because most are captives of the vested interests. But what about the progressive movement, especially the smaller groups who claimed to be passionate supporters of the Chinese Revolution some years ago?
It is sad to say but their support for the PRC, like the fair weather support of petty-bourgeois currents for the Soviet Union, is hardly based on a class approach, or on an understanding of the ruthless character of monopoly capitalism with its monstrous exploitation and oppression. They have chosen to attack China and join with the bourgeoisie in singing paeans of praise to imperialist democracy at the very moment when the imperialist bourgeoisie is raking in billions and billions in super-profits garnered from the sweat and blood of the oppressed masses all over the world.
At best, as Lenin explained, capitalist democracy thrives only in periods of relative capitalist stability. As soon as the class struggle asserts itself, democracy proves to be no more than a mask for the monstrous repressive machine that is the essence of the capitalist state, no matter what its form.
Thus, as soon as the capitalist media, which monopolizes all avenues of communication, began its initial attack, the so-called radical groupings were swept along with the tide and never remembered so much as a word of what they used to say about China. Is Lenin's teaching on the meaning of the collapse of Social-Democracy at the time of the First World War altogether forgotten? How the whole German Social-Democratic Party, with the exception of the brave Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxembourg, was taken in tow? Did this not happen in all the bourgeois parliaments?
Yet all this should not be taken gloomily. These groups today are not really significant in the working class movement.
The U.S. Congress, in whisking through this belligerent bill against China on behalf of the ruling monopolies, shows if anything its indifference to the people here it is supposed to represent. Even with all the agitation in the media, there is no enthusiasm among the people to return to the days of the Cold War. The popular sentiment is for peace and cooperation in the international arena so that the ever more urgent social problems here at home can be addressed. Every time Congress jumps through hoops to accommodate some new aggressive move in the interest of the monopolies, this only accentuates how lethargic, how leaden-footed, how mired in molasses it is when forced to take up the critical problems facing the masses.
Last updated: 23 March 2018