Rebuilding the rich unity of Chinese and Black students

Wednesday Jin delivered these remarks at an October 1 event at DePauw University organized jointly by the DePuaw China Connection, Association of African American Students, and the Democratic Socialists of DePauw.

Rebuilding Afro-Asian unity

I want to thank everyone again for coming to our event, I am really grateful for that. It is really my honor to have this event with the Association of African American Students and the Democratic Socialists of DePauw. And it also my honor to speak, not really representing all the Chinese students on this campus but representing myself as a Chinese student.

One of the reasons why we wanted to work with AAAS for this kind of event is to rebuild solidarity between Chinese people and African-American people on this campus. There is a long-standing history of Afro-Asian solidarity that has manifested in this country, in my country, and throughout the continents of Africa, Asia, and Latin America. In the U.S., we can think about pioneering Black activists such as Claudia Jones, Shirley Graham Du Bois, W.E.B. Du Bois, Robert F. Williams, Huey P. Newton, and many others.

In fact, when the founding convention of the Republic of New Afrika appointed Robert F. Williams as the Inaugural President of the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, he was in China, halfway through a three-year period of forced exile. Huey P. Newton led a delegation of Black Panther Party members to China in 1971. Newton dedicated the second to last chapter of his memoir, Revolutionary Suicide, to his experience in China. The chapter starts like this:

“What is important is the effect that China and its society had on me, and that impression is unforgettable. While there, I achieved a psychological liberation I had never experienced before. It was not simply that I felt at home in China; the reaction was deeper than that. What I experienced was the sensation of freedom—as if a great weight had been lifted from my soul and I was able to be myself, without defense or pretense or the need for explanation. I felt absolutely free for the first time in my life—completely free among my fellow men. This experience of freedom had a profound effect on me, because it confirmed my belief that an oppressed people can be liberated if their leaders persevere in raising their consciousness and in struggling relentlessly against the oppressor” [1].

Chinese-African solidarity was forged before the Chinese overthrew colonialism. One example is the bridges built between Chinese Revolutionary fighter Liu Liangmo and Paul Robeson, the famous Black artist, actor, singer, professional football player, and activist. Between 1942-1945, Chinese Revolutionary fighter Liu Liangmo wrote a regular column called “China Speaks” for the U.S.’s largest circulating Black newspaper, the Pittsburgh Courier. The Chinese people listened to Robeson, who met with Liu 30 minutes after they made contact. They translated Chinese revolutionary anthems into English, and Robeson sang them in Chinese and English at rallies to raise funds for China. The next year, they released an album together, “Chee Lai” [2].

Today, China continues to stand with the Black/New Afrikan liberation struggle in word and deed. They provide them with “extensive coverage and support” through “official media and government statements” [3]. So, we really want to continue this legacy so that people are able to know that we stand on the same side. And we don’t want to join the other side.

National Day is Independence Day

As was previously said, the reason why we choose October 1 is because it is so called “national day;” but to my understanding it is really our independence day. On the same day in 1950 the whole of China celebrated the success of the people’s revolution, which won independence from the neocolonialism of Kuomintang that was highly supported by American imperialism. Besides that, what we are celebrating at the same time is that we finally get rid of a long time of being colonized by an imperial power. From 1830, when the British Empire started selling opium to China under the Qing dynasty (which they call “opening up the door to China”) through the Japanese invasion of 1930, we have a long history of being colonized and oppressed. We call this period the “Century of Humiliation.”

Like other colonization process around the world, the land was dispossessed, several genocides happened to our people, material capital like mineral resources and money was largely exploited, and slavery was forced on us in several provinces for men during the day and night. The Japanese kidnapped and enslaved 200,000 sexual slaves, which they refer to still as “comfort women,” establishing a network of sexual slave stations throughout Japanese military bases. The U.S. took over this system of sexual slavery after Japan’s defeat in World War II, by the way [4].

So the dehumanization of the Chinese people was very severe at that time, which makes me think about the same dehumanization pushed on minority peoples in America by the U.S. empire all the time.

The U.S. colonizes within its own borders

Similar to what the Japanese empire did to several province in the north of China, creating a new puppet country within China named Manchuria, when the first group of people from the British Empire arrived on the U.S., on the land where we are standing, they dispossessed people of that land while creating a new country named America. What followed was the ongoing genocide of the indigenous peoples here, a genocide that included the building of “residential boarding schools.” Children were kidnapped from their homes, subjected to brutal conditions including murder, and deprived of their right to their culture, language, history, and identity. This is a form of biopower that attempts to produce “the man” so that indigenous cultures—and, with them, people—disappear. The same situation also happened in China. The Japanese Empire built schools for Chinese children where they were forced to learn and speak only Japanese and were forced to use their “Japanese names” instead of their real Chines names.

The Chinese people had citizenship during colonialism but we were forced to follow all kinds of restrictions and laws determined by the colonial forces in China. After signing several unequal treaties with those empires, they are able to “legally” settle down on several provinces, and whenever the Chinese people try to go into the area that they occupy, we have to ask their permission. In general, they do not see the Chinese people as human beings. This is similar to what New Afrikans or Black people in the U.S. have and do experience. Despite building the country, you are still treated as second-class citizens, even after adding equal rights and treatment into the Constitution. Most of the time, colonizing powers use similar strategies, especially in how they try to legitimize what they have done to the land and the people.

Successful anti-colonial revolutions: An ongoing project

The Chinese people were lucky enough to lead executed a long, difficult, complicated, but successful revolution that started the process of decolonization on October 1, 1949. This is when Chairman Mao Tse-Tung stood in front of masses of people in Tienanmen Square and declared, with the full support of the Central People’s Government of China and the masses, the People’s Republic of China as an independent entity. The reactionary pro-U.S. forces were driven to Taiwan, where they still hold power.

However, in other countries around the world who do not have this “privilege” still suffer from the same thing that we experienced before. Except for the countries in Africa, Latin America, Asia, and for a period of time, Russia, many peoples today are still subjected to neocolonialism and imperialism.

African Americans are one group of people in U.S. that, in my opinion, are still under the same colonial situation: where your communities get bombed, deprived of resources and production, where you are jailed for no reason, and where you are not treated as a human being.

Clarifying China-African relations

Turn our head toward the present relationship that China is trying to build with various countries on the African continent and throughout the Global South right now. It is also obvious that the reason for these relationships is because we have experienced the same colonial history, so we know what the African people are facing and what they will encounter. Some people doubted China’s efforts to build equal relationships with countries in Africa and elsewhere, calling it “neocolonialism” or even “imperialism.” The facts do not support this in any way.

Unlike imperialist countries who apply neocolonialism around the world, China does not control any African country’s banking systems and, while it does have a one small military base in Djibouti, although China doesn’t control Djibouti’s state nor any African country’s state, financial, or political system.

Unlike neocolonial powers, China is not trying to “take” land or sovereignty from any peoples through economic partnerships. Business deals between China and African countries present remarkably favorable terms to the latter. The reason is not necessarily ideological nor is it an act of charity, because China understandably views accelerated African development and independence tied to its own strategic needs. There are no “debt traps” in China. During last month’s Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Summit, held every three years, China announced it was waving interest-free loan forgiveness to 33 African countries by the end of 2024, something it does at nearly every meeting of the kind. An article in the Financial Times, no friend of China, acknowledged that, when debts remained unpaid, the most common outcome was “total debt forgiveness” [5].

Chinese investment is, unlike colonial “investment,” concentrated in expansive technological development and infrastructure network expansions, building things like airports, hospitals, factories, schools, and more. Further,, as Carlos Martinez writes, “Chinese companies are investing in green development projects throughout the continent—and indeed the world” [6].

“Our common enemy”

The aim of this speech or this event is definitely not to turn our hatred toward the Japanese student or the white student around us. We should all help each other question why their governments do this to our countries. The point is to learn about this little bit of history, and to know that the people around the world are suffering from the same thing we have been 400 years ago.

We have to realize that our common enemy is the colonialist, imperialist, and capitalist system; it is not about the color or shade of skin but about what they have really done to our people, and “their” own people.

We can’t just sit here and do nothing. I mean, it would be stupid for me to think that I. as a Chinese student, have already achieved this sort of liberation and I do not need to care about other minorities in the world. I guess that is a usual mistake that people will encounter in the different movements, where they only consider their own liberation but do not realize that the other group of people are still being oppressed by the same system as they were. The system wants to see us fighting with each other so that no one will have the time or clarity to identify the system we need to resist. And we are definitely not the first generation to think about those things.

Whether in China or in the U.S., whether it is the Black Panther Party or the Chinese Communist Party, there are always revolutionary leaders and masses of people thinking and acting, trying their best to change the situation, the situation or the system killing their family, exploiting their labor, taking their personal property, and dehumanizing them. Even though many didn’t believe change was possible in the near future, they still acted and made strides toward changing their situations, because only by doing all those things can we not only prepare for the change, but also make the change. You never know when the revolution will come.

I am not asking people to become a communist or whatever you call it; but what I am calling for is for us to get organized whether is for your community, your family, your friend, your lover, and if we are doing it right now, the next generation will not need to experience the same awful experience that some of us has experienced. Furthermore, we are not doing this for the future, because the future never comes. Instead we do this for the present, because the world is changing and it will never change by itself!

Power to the people.

References

[1] Huey P. Newton, Revolutionary Suicide (New York: Penguin Books, 1973/2009), 348.
[2] Eugene Puryear, “Liu Liangmo: China’s Anti-Imperialist, Anti-Racist, Christian Revolutionary (Pt. 1),” Liberation School, 20 March 2023, available here.
[3] Joe Pateman, “Mao Zedong, China and Black Liberation,” International Critical Thought, 11, no. 3 (2021): 358.
[4] Stephen Gowans, Patriots Traitors and Empires: The Story of Korea’s Struggle for Freedom (Montreal: Baraka Books, 2018), 33.
[5] Deja Gaston, “2024 Forum on China-Africa Cooperation Concludes with Plan for ‘Shared Path of Modernization,” Liberation News, 09 September 2024, available here ; Tom Hancock, “China Renegotiated $50bn in Loans to Developing Countries,” Financial Times, 29 April 2019, available here.
[6] Carlos Martinez, The East is Still Red: Chinese Socialism in the 21st Century (Glasgow: Praxis Press, 2023).

About the author

Wednesday Jin

Wednesday Jin is a student at DePauw University, President of DePauw China Connection. He is also a volunteer for the Indianapolis Liberation Center and the Shaka Shakur Freedom Campaign.

Jin most recently worked on Shaka Shakur’s “Black August Series” translating his works into Chinese (Mandarin) for the first time.

Featured image; “坚决支持亚洲非洲拉丁美国人民的反帝斗争/ Vigorously support the anti-imperialist struggle of the peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America (1967). Credit: Zhou Ruizhuang (周瑞庄).

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