Vietnamese workers riot against Chinese bosses; Sino-Vietnamese clashes in rocky islands: What is the connection?

by Michael Karadjis

(from June 2014; posted now due to similar disturbances four years later)

A number of key points need to be understood about recent Sino-Vietnamese clashes in the East Sea (also known as the "South China Sea") and the mass reactions of Vietnamese workers.

First, the "disputed " islands that China has placed its oil rig near - the Paracels - were not "disputed" before being seized by China from Vietnam in an act of armed aggression in 1974. At the time, China carried out this action in agreement with Kissinger. In 1988, in further naked armed aggression, China seized about a quarter of the Spratly Islands, which are much further south (and thus much further from China), which had also, till then, been simply Vietnamese sovereign territory.

I certainly don't support war, ie, I don't think any Vietnamese worker in uniform should have to get killed just to defend uninhabited islands. However, that is different to being "neutral" in low-level conflict that inevitably does occur. If leftists want to call the Paracel Islands "disputed", then they should call the Golan Heights, which Israel similarly seized from Syria via armed aggression during that era, "disputed." If they want to call the Paracels "Chinese" because after all, Americans/Australians etc speaking on behalf of the Vietnamese don't want to be "nationalists", then kindly be consistent and declare the Golan "Israeli."

The bigger picture, of course, is that China has claimed the entire East Sea as its own, with the famous "dotted line" going right up to the borders of neighbouring countries, including Vietnam, the new Monroe Doctrine of the new imperial colossus.

Second, regardless of the Paracels - for argument's sake let's call them (and the Golan) "disputed" - the oil rig has been placed in what is indisputably Vietnam's Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ), based on what is indisputably Vietnamese territory on the mainland.

Third, the mass reaction against Chinese aggression by thousands of Vietnamese workers cannot be written off either as a chauvinist outburst (though it certainly has elements of that), as a government-orchestrated provocation, or as an act of mass ignorance (since so many attacked factories were Taiwanese rather than from the PRC). Rather we need to look at it in all its complexity.

Mass revulsion against the Chinese regime in Vietnam is widespread (and an obvious problem for "anti-imperialist" analysts). It has a historical aspect (not just 1000 years of Chinese rule, but the 1979 invasion, being knifed by Mao in late Vietnam war, including the seizure of the Paracels); it has economic aspects, with Chinese companies operating a gigantic environmentally destructive bauxite-aluminium operation in VN's Central Highlands, and seizing the lion's share of contracts for projects of similar size and of similar strategic importance; it has an aspect of moral revulsion and solidarity, as the Chinese navy regularly kidnaps large numbers of Vietnamese dirt-poor fisher-folk from around the two "disputed" island archipelagos, and holds them for massive ransoms for months at a time.

To blame the VCP government for "provoking nationalism" is a statement of ideology (whether Trotskyist or otherwise), based on the idea that as a Stalinist-turned capitalist regime it "must be" doing so. It is also a statement of breathtaking ignorance about the actual facts. The VCP government of course vigorously defends its own view of the islands. However, it also holds the view that only diplomatic means can be used, that war is out of the question. However, most of the Vietnamese dissident opposition (whether genuinely democratic, right-wing, Buddhist, Catholic etc) have found the idea of anti-China nationalism a good horse to ride on, *precisely because the VCP government is seen to have a "too moderate" strategy and opinion*. So they denounce the VCP government as being "communists betraying the nation to China" (which, while they don't often say so openly, can mean little more than advocating war, since the VCP does everything but this). In fact, anti-China, defend the islands, actions have become the most prominent issue in anti-VCP regime dissidence for some 5 years now.

The way the dissident movement pushes the issue is wrong, of course; but it cannot be denied that there is justice to the side overall which is resisting a new mega-capitalist superpower (whether one wants to call it imperialist or not at this stage is frankly besides the point in this instance).

Does this mean the nationalistic dissidents have secretly orchestrated the workers? Again, I think that is unlikely. Most of these dissidents are rabid supporters of foreign capital (curiously, they think there isn't enough in Vietnam!), and are horrified by the effects these riots will have on investors’ confidence; but more generally, workers are quite capable of leading themselves, both in good class struggle activities and also in making bad chauvinistic errors - no need to romanticise raw class struggle by having to explain its negative aspects by orchestration by the government, the opposition, or China itself (another theory floating around).

The simple facts of the matter are:

Workers have acted due to a mixture of mass revulsion against China's bullying actions and raw class hatred of bosses - Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean and even Vietnamese factories have been attacked and burnt.

More have been Taiwanese than Chinese, because more Taiwanese investors invest in these sweatshops than Chinese. The Taiwanese, Chinese (often Hong Kongese) and Korean bosses are famous, not only in Vietnam, for running brutal capitalist regimes in their factories, which openly violate Vietnam's labour laws, and are generally much harsher than what is tolerated by workers from Vietnamese bosses (let alone Vietnamese state industries, where workers' conditions are far superior). Unleashing their class hatred against all these bosses, due to a pretext, is not difficult to understand at all.

But to understand the particular revulsion against the Taiwanese bosses, two things need to be considered.

First, China's claims to the Paracels and Spratleys were only made by the Kuomintang regime that ruled China in the late 1940s before the 1949 revolution (at the time both island groups were part of France's Vietnam colony and were thus handed over to Vietnam at the 1954 Geneva Accords, where *China* and the USSR betrayed Vietnam by agreeing to partition). The CCP simply inherited these chauvinistic claims against its smaller and weaker "brother" nation from the Kuomintang. The Kuomintang still rules in Taiwan, still supports these claims to the islands (like China, it claims all of them), and in practice has been supporting the PRC in the island issues (so far has the capitalist integration of Taiwan and the PRC gone).

Second, even more surprising (for "anti-imperialists", and those who see China as some kind of "socialist" state): As explained by Taiwanese researcher Wang Hongzen: "Almost all Taiwanese factories hire PRC people as "cadres” [Yes, that is also how Taiwanese call their supervisors: “cadres”]; inside the factories, there is a glass ceiling that blocks Vietnamese from being promoted. There is also everyday confrontation between Chinese supervisors with Vietnamese workers under the so-called suppressive management style with “Chinese characteristics” (Hongzen's article, "Beating up Taiwanese is not a Misunderstanding," for anyone who reads Chinese, is at http://www.appledaily.com.tw/realtimenews/article/new/20140516/398528/).

One needs to take this into account when we read reports of Vietnamese workers beating up Chinese workers, in some cases killing them. From where I am, I cannot tell how targeted these attacks are: are they specifically targeting these repressive Chinese supervisors and "cadres", or are these simply ugly chauvinist attacks on Chinese workers as a whole? I don't know, but I suspect there is probably a bit of both. However, to explain it as simply some kind of latent mindless chauvinism in Vietnamese workers coming out, rather than in the class terms as explained by Hongzen, is just plain wrong. That of course should not be read to mean any justification to the real chauvinist acts that may be occurring.

Of course, more generally, regarding labour, some have written that workers all around the world often attack foreign workers for "taking their jobs" etc. In my opinion, this again is too narrow. This usually refers to immigrants from poorer countries trying to get jobs in richer countries, being opposed by more privileged local workers. But here it is reversed, and I don't only mean the "joint-venture" CCP/KMT "cadres"; more generally, China tends to bring in masses of Chinese workers with its investments in Vietnam, as in Cambodia, Papua-NG, African countries etc. Bringing your workforce is not "immigration"; what it normally means is 2 things.

First, since the capitalist regime inside the factory is significantly harsher in China than in Vietnam, Chinese investors bring a workforce so as to not have to put up with too much "trouble;" they are well-known to see Vietnamese workers as more strike-prone and "lazy," ie, refusing to take as much shit. In any case, the Chinese workers often have no work visas; their jobs there are completely tied to their bosses.

Second, the Chinese investors use Chinese workers for better-skilled and higher paid positions (ie not only the supervisors), leaving Vietnamese with the least skilled and lowest paid positions. Just how different this is from the position of immigrant workers vis-a-vis locals in imperialist countries is rather obvious.

So all this also adds to the antipathy to Chinese workers.

Naturally, that does not mean that the attacks on Chinese workers are in any way justified, except perhaps in cases when there is an issue of clear class revulsion against slave-driving "cadres"; even in these cases, mob violence, up to and including lynching, will have the tendency to spread an atmosphere of terror among ordinary Chinese workers, even if they are not the target. Clearly, masses of Chinese workers see themselves as in danger, and have fled; the VCP has been able to use the outbreaks as a cover to crack down on other peaceful forms of protest and has made hundreds of arrests; the riots have allowed the opposition to claim that the chaos is an inevitable result of the VCP not being hard enough on China, of “abandoning the nation”; China has scored some propaganda points by pointing these events as Vietnamese anti-China aggression. Vietnamese and Chinese workers need to see each other as allies against intensified capitalism in both countries.

However, when Marxists analyse what causes events like this, it is also important to understand who is the oppressor, both the national oppressor in the big picture, and the class oppressor - including its "cadre" agents and screws - in the factories.