Readers are invited to submit letters to The Guardian.
Letters may be e-mailed to guardian@cpa.org.au.
Letters of 300-400 words are preferred.

Letters to the Editor:

A view on China

I have now had the opportunity of viewing the first part of 
China in the Red, previewed by Rob Gowland in issue 1157. Rob 
said it all in his opening sentence "The trials and tribulations 
of China's attempts to establish socialism in a hostile world via 
a socialist market and capitalist investment funds have obliged 
the Chinese Government and people to deal with such unwelcome 
phenomena as mass unemployment and entrepreneurial thinking." Rob 
chose to not mention the party in this regard.

The application of capitalist remedies to the problems besetting 
a socialist economy? Not only are mass unemployment and 
entrepreneurial thinking unwelcome phenomena, but they are 
capitalist phenomena, are they not?

Who amongst us did not have to fight back a tear or two when we 
saw those completely bewildered workers telling stories that they 
never expected in their most horrible dreams to have to relate? 
The factory meeting room when PARTY officials are trying to 
persuade fellow workers to throw themselves voluntarily on the 
scrap heap of hopelessness and a poverty stricken future.

Not surprisingly the officials themselves obviously felt very 
uncomfortable in their unfamiliar role. With the job, it was 
repeatedly emphasised, would go healthcare, pension and even 
funeral expenses.

The woman worker choking back tears as she told of her husband 
being laid off to suffer a stroke soon after, leaving her to look 
after him and to pay for their child's schooling while herself 
perilously near unemployment.

Or the peasant women with the thyroid condition "easy to control, 
but not to pay for". Her husband reduced to scratching around for 
odd jobs and with a mentally ill child needing "expensive" 
medical treatment. Many more were the examples.

I was recently in Beijing for a brief stopover and took advantage 
of an English language news and current affairs TV channel. Many 
items of interest but three stand out in my memory: "Forthcoming 
seminar in Beijing to investigate foreign capital investment in 
infrastructure including water, sewerage systems and rail 
transport". "China Travel Service now 75 percent German owned"; 
"Officially acknowledged alarm at escalating suicide rate".

Trials and tribulations indeed, but perhaps I am a little 
premature also. I certainly hope so, for the sake of those 
beautiful, confused and suffering workers.

Steve Gibson
Melbourne, Vic

Note: The above letter was received just before Steve Gibson's 
sudden death. We are, however, publishing it posthumously as a 
contribution to the debate on this important issue.

I have been somewhat bemused by the letters about the ALP by 
apparently intelligent, knowledgeable people — they must have 
been — they were Guardian readers!

They wrote in the belief, hope, prayer that the ALP would 
"return" and be rejuvenated and resurrected into the working 
class party of their imagination and hopes.

With all due respect to the sincerity of the founders — and the 
many of who have more working class thought and feeling in their 
little fingers than some of the present day representatives have 
in the whole of their bodies — these letter writers are 
whistling in the wind.

For my part I gave up believing in fairies at the bottom of the 
garden in my early teens and have had no occasion to change.

I will repeat what I have written before.

The ALP is the second string capitalist party — despite all the 
rhetoric and lip service — just like Howard's "concern" for the 
little Aussie battler — but underlying is the real core 
assumption that capitalism is really the peak — it only needs a 
few "reforms" to make it more acceptable.

The right-wing leaders of the ALP and the unions are capitalist 
saboteurs of the working class struggle. The majority of them 
have no faith in the workers. In fact, some leaders, Carr for 
example, are actually contemptuous of the workers.

The editorial (Guardian 1/10/03) was very apt and timely. 
In my humble opinion the ALP leaders do not want to win the next 
election because they would expose themselves as defenders of the 
capitalist system. It is much safer to have the smokescreen of 
opposition.

B Appleton
NSW

The clowns running the White House complain of "foreign 
nationals" who cause mayhem and chaos in Iraq.

If they were to examine the full narrative of this catastrophe, 
they would have to conclude, if only for a minute or so, that the 
"foreign nationals" who have created anarchy, misery, and mass 
destruction, in Iraq, and other countries, are Americans.

Denis Kevans
NSW