On 1 December, 17 refugees from China who had managed to swim across to the British colony of Hong King were hunded back by the Gorernment. This marks a new phase of Chinese-British collaboration.
Over the past three years more than 70,000 young people have left the People's Republic of China. Even according to official Hong Kong estimates, the figure for 1974 alone was 30,000. Hong Kong is today the only place which escapers can reach, since Macao, formally a Portuguese colony, has agreed since 1966 to hand any escaper back to the Chinese authoritics.
WHY THEY LEAVE
Why do these people leave Chins, and why has the number of escapers, predominantly youth, shot up over the last five years? The answer bes in the political situation inside China itself.
According to the Maoist bureaucracy in Peking, all has been well since the Great Proletarian Cultutal Revolution definitively smashed "revisionism' But the bizarre campaign presently being conducted against Lin Piao and Confucius belies even this claim. It is obvious that there are currents in the Chinese masses which remain politicised despite the decision of the Maoists to end the cultural revolution'.
The other argument that is ned is that the youth leaving for Hong Kong are those who are attracted by capitalist society. However this is hardly credible since many of the prominent escapors - former Red Guards - are playing a prominent part in the movement against the Hong Kong Government The real reasons are pinpointed by a number of escapers lo whom I have spoken. They claim to have fled from China because the cultural reyolution failed to end the rule of the bureaucracy. Indeed, it was Lin Piao who was overthrown, and it was old iled to Hong Kong. burenucrats like Teng Hsiao-ping who reappeared up and down the country.
Prevented from participating in the the political life of the country, many Red Guards were imprisoned and others were sent to the countryside.
Even here they were prevented from having regular political discussions with the peasants. Confronted by an ese Government? immense bureaucratic machine, and with no real perspective or possibilities for struggle, these youth have were no accident. They simply demonstrute the present cosy relationship between China and Britain on the question of Hong Kong Another indication of Peking's pasaivity here has been the failure of the Maoist trade unions to provide any real leadership in the recent wave of workers' struggles in Нол ong. Those Marxists who did intervene in these struggles and gave them a political direction, such as the foil Combatting Bailerin com rades (sympathisers of the Fourth International) were slandered and sttacked by the Maoists.
For the first time the Macist papers. provocateurs, They themselves have in Hong Kong printed attacks on Trotsky and Trolskyism reminiscent of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, Slan der is the only weapon the Maoists can use, as they have no polizical anSHETS COULD BE ENDED Can anyone seriously doubt that if China wanted to end the colonial occupation of Hong King it could do so overnight? Surely no-one seriously believes that Harold Wilson or Ted Heath could send gunboats up the Yangtse river to intimidate the ChinMacao, the Portuguese colony Just up the coust, is an even better exampie. It could easily have been in- and the intest New Left Review for ar incorporaced into China long ago, Just as the Portuguese colony of Goa was incorporated into India in 1961. Certainly the new Portuguese Govern ment, which has accepted the independence of the African colonies. would be only too delighted to let Macao go.
But the Chinese prefer it as it is After all, the millionaire who owns the famous Casino in Macao is a leading member of the Chinese Communist Party, and no doubt a number of burcaucrats spend pleasant days on the island.
On Hong Kong the Macists dominate the unions and control several front organisations. There would be overwhelming mass support for a revolt against the colonial Government, But in recent months the Macists have denounced those struggling aminst the Government as no proposals whatsoever for getting rid of the British, except to say that 'the time is not yet right".
The Association of Radical East Asian Scholsts (AREAS) is in the process of orgunising a teach-in on Hong Kung where we bope to discuss some of these issues with British socialists and develop solidarity with those in the vanguard of the anti colonial struggle in Hong Kong.
Ha Yan is a member of the Daily Combatting Bulletin group. For further informition see the latest issue of Internatignal in which a former Red Guard is interviewed, Inprecor no. 10 on the Lin Pao-Confucius campaign, Account of British interests in Hong Kong