We received this letter from China. It gives an interesting insight into the real state of the Chinese Communist Party. It shows how far this organisation has degenerated. Faced with the growing social polarisation between the enriched bureaucracy and the ordinary working masses, the Chinese workers need to return to the revolutionary ideas that the early Chinese Communists based themselves on, the ideas of Lenin.

We have received this article from a Chinese sympathizer who gives a very good insight to the real situation facing millions of workers in China. In spite of all the gloss about the economic development of China in the past few years thanks to the introductions of “market economy” methods, there is another side to the situation. The closure of state-run industries is creating millions of unemployed and to these further millions are added from the rural areas drifting to the cities in desperate search of work.

In less than two weeks Hong Kong has been shaken to the foundations by three mass rallies demanding democratic change. Over 500,000 protested against the passage of "anti-subversion" laws; over 50,000 demonstrated outside of the Legislative Council halls July 9 to appeal for democratic reforms, and on Sunday, over 20,000 participated in a rally for universal suffrage.

Ho Jun-bo sends us this update on the situation in China. The massive protests of the oil and steel workers are continuing in the face of provocation by the state. The state claims it has arrested six leaders, and is enforcing a media blackout.

Across north-east China there have been massive protests of oil workers, particularly in Diqing where an estimated 50,000 workers are on strike. And in Liaoyang where steel, textile and poor farmers are also striking. Not since the struggles of the workers, youth and students of the 1987-9 period has China witnessed this level of worker, youth, poor farmer and poor peasant and migrant worker unrest. The recent struggles have demonstrated the enormous potential existing amongst the Chinese working class to resist capitalist restoration and carry through the political revolution against the parasitic bureaucracy to establish genuine workers' democracy in China. In a significant development the workers of north-east China have begun to generalise their struggle with the formation of independent organisations and trade unions.

In January Wang Fanxi died in Leeds, England. He was one of the few remaining links to the early Chinese Trotskyist movement. It was after the defeat of the 1926 Chinese revolution that, together with hundreds of other members of the Chinese Communist Party, he began to question the policies of the leadership and joined Trotsky’s Left Opposition.