China faces rural revolts

[For more discussion on China's economic and political development, click HERE.]

By Kevin Lin

March 11, 2012 -- Green Left Weekly/Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal -- Rural protests make up a large part of overall social unrest in China. But such protests had not received prominent international attention until the siege of Wukan, a village of 12,000 in Guangdong province, late last year.

Just like the strikes in Honda plants in 2010, Wukan brought to light the deep-seated grievances of villagers in a dramatic way. The revolt featured the eviction of party officials and the police, the self-management of the village by villagers, and the stand-off against armed police in a siege for more than a week.

The Wukan protest was triggered by the local government's land expropriation without adequate compensation to the affected villagers. It was escalated by the death of a protest leader in police custody.

The villagers showed remarkable courage in occupying their own village against predictable state repression.

The class nature of the Chinese state

By Doug Lorimer

[The general line of this report was adopted by the 18th DSP Congress, January 5-10, 1999. This text is taken from The Activist, volume 9, number 1, 1999.]

The purpose of this report is to motivate the adoption by the party of the "Theses on the Class Nature of the People's Republic of China" approved by the National Committee at its October plenum last year.

Since 1993 our party has held the position that the ruling Chinese bureaucracy has been presiding over the restoration of capitalism in China. However, our policy toward China has been ambigious: while taking an oppositional stance in our public press toward the ruling bureaucracy's restorationist course, we have left it unclear as to whether we continued to believe that China is still a bureaucratically ruled socialist state.

Syria: Against the Syrian National Council

Members of the self-proclaimed, US-backed Syrian National Council.

By As‘ad Abukhalil

Malaysian socialists on IWD: For women's liberation, equality and freedom

By Nazreen Nizam, PSM women's desk coordinator

Australia: Socialists release 'A Charter for Women's Rights' on IWD

March 8, 2012 –

International Women’s Day 2012: Women march against US military expansion in the Philippines and the Pacific

Unity statement by women in the Philippines

International Women’s Day: the struggle for equality continues

By Socialist Alliance (Australia)

Paul Le Blanc: Why Occupy activists should read the greats of revolutionary socialism

[Read more from Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal on Lenin, Trotsky and

Syria and the Palestinians: 'Almost no other Arab state has as much Palestinian blood on its hands'

Arab Spring, Syria and the left: 'No support for authoritarian regimes, no support for imperialism'

China: 'A sixteen-point proposal on China's reform'

By Martin Hart-Landsberg

An exchange on Marx and Engels and 'small is beautiful'

[Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal urges its readers to consider taking out a subscription to Monthly Review, where this article first appeared.] 

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