JACK SHAPIRO LIVES FOREVER IN OUR HEARTS!

Statement from the CPGB-ML, honouring Jack Shapiro, a great supporter of China.

It is with the deepest grief that the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) announces that our beloved Comrade Jack Shapiro, Honorary President of our Party and of Hands off China!, passed away from illness in the early morning of Friday 29 January 2010 at the age of 93.

Comrade Jack was a staunch Marxist-Leninist, a proletarian revolutionary, a long-tested communist fighter and an implacable foe of revisionism and opportunism.

Born into the working class Jewish community in east London, he served a full eight decades in the communist movement, decades that took him from a young teenage militant in the ranks of the Young Communist League to Britain’s most cherished veteran communist fighter. From the moment he took his place in the ranks of the proletarian army, he stood in his place, fighting for the liberation of mankind. He never once looked back but always forward to humanity’s brilliant communist future. He never once regretted the choice he made. Whilst every victory inspired him, no difficulty or setback could ever daunt him. To paraphrase the words of Ostrovsky in ‘How the steel was tempered’, our Comrade Jack can have no regrets for a cowardly and trivial past. In dying, he can truly say that all his life and all his strength were given to the finest cause on earth, the liberation of mankind.

Comrade Jack’s early political life was marked by intense class struggle against rapacious sweat shop employers, slum landlords, bigotry, anti-Semitism and the rise of fascism; in defence of the Soviet Union of Joseph Stalin, the Spanish Republic and the Chinese people’s war of resistance against Japanese aggression.

Throughout his eight decades of political life, Comrade Jack was as firm as a rock in his defence of the principles of Marxism-Leninism. He defended the Marxist-Leninist theory of the state and the dictatorship of the proletariat. He knew that without revolutionary theory there could be no revolutionary movement and he studied hard throughout his life up to his final days. He knew that labour in the white skin could never be free if in the black it was branded and that the movement of the proletariat in the advanced nations would be a fraud and a humbug if it was not most closely united with the struggle of hundreds of millions of colonial and neo-colonial slaves for their national liberation. The struggle against zionism was no exception. The Palestinian, Lebanese and other Arab peoples had no better friend and comrade-in-arms than Jack. One of his very last political acts was to generously donate to the Viva Palestina! convoy that has just returned from carrying much needed relief to the people of Gaza. He knew that “women hold up half the sky” and his own long marriage, friendship and comradeship with Comrade Marie was a true example of how human beings should live.

To Comrade Jack, the socialist countries, especially the Soviet Union of Lenin and Stalin, the first country in which his own Jewish people knew freedom, and the People’s Republic of China, were the apple of his eye and no task was greater than their unyielding defence. For him, every step taken by the socialist countries in the building of a free, prosperous and happy life was but a harbinger of the future new world where every child would know oppression and exploitation only as a topic taught in history classes.

With such bedrock principles, from the first, Comrade Jack opposed the revisionist ‘British road to socialism’, both for its parliamentary cretinism and abandonment of the dictatorship of the proletariat as well as its betrayal of the peoples fighting British imperialism for their complete freedom. He strongly supported the leadership of the Communist Party of China, and its great leader Comrade Mao Zedong, in the international fight against modern revisionism.

Comrade Jack’s relationship with the Chinese revolution was a special one indeed, ever since his much loved brother and comrade Michael Shapiro took up work with the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing in 1949 at the request of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China, and stayed in China till he breathed his last. Comrades Jack and Michael and their wives Comrade Marie and Comrade Liu Jinghe formed a single proletarian fighting unit, uniting the communists of Britain and China across continents and oceans. Senior Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping described Michael Shapiro, who accompanied the Chinese People’s Volunteers in Korea during the most bitter days of war, as a “staunch international soldier and sincere friend of the Chinese people”. These fitting words equally describe his dear brother Jack. It is indeed appropriate that his final speech should have been given from his wheelchair last 3rd October at our Party’s celebration of the 60th anniversary of the victory of the Chinese revolution.

Having staunchly fought against revisionism for more than half a century, going through many twists and turns, Comrade Jack greeted the foundation of our Party with almost youthful enthusiasm. He joined our ranks, accepted the post of Honorary President, gave us wise advice and counsel, and generously supported us in every way. To us, he was truly a star shining in our sky, a living link to the October Revolution and to the Third Communist International. He was also a friend and a man whose impish sense of humour made light of every difficulty, whether political or personal.

Jack’s passing is a sad and irreparable loss to our young Party. But we take courage from, and will never forget, the rich legacy he has left us.

Comrade Jack, with our heads bowed but our fists raised, we offer you our reddest of red salutes. You have earned the right to take rest. You will live forever in our hearts.

ETERNAL GLORY TO COMRADE JACK SHAPIRO!

Central Committee
Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist)

London
29 January 2010

China set for global lead in scientific research

Via Financial Times

China has experienced the strongest growth in scientific research over the past three decades of any country, according to figures compiled for the Financial Times, and the pace shows no sign of slowing.

Jonathan Adams, re-search evaluation director at Thomson Reuters, said China’s “awe-inspiring” growth meant it was now the second-largest producer of scientific knowledge and was on course to overtake the US by 2020 if it continued on its trajectory.

Thomson Reuters , which indexes scientific papers from 10,500 journals, analysed the performance of four emerging markets countries - Brazil, Russia, India and China - over the past 30 years.

China far outperformed every other nation, with a 64-fold increase in peerreviewed scientific papers since 1981, with particular strength in chemistry and materials science.

“China is out on its own, far ahead of the pack,” said James Wilsdon, science policy director at the Royal Society in London .

“If anything, China’s recent research performance has exceeded even the high expectations of four or five years ago, while India has not moved as fast as expected and may have missed an opportunity.”

Although its quality remains mixed, Chinese research has also become more collaborative, with almost 9 per cent of papers originating in China having at least one US-based co-author.

“We are seeing more than the growth of a strong domestic research base,” said Mr Adams. “Regional networks of scientific collaboration are developing fast, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region.”

Brazil has also been building up a formidable research effort, particularly in agricultural and life sciences. In 1981 its output of scientific papers was one-seventh that of India; by 2008 it had almost caught up with India.

Russia, which has previously been seen as a leader in scientific research, produced fewer papers than Brazil or India in 2008.

Just 20 years ago, on the eve of the Soviet Union’s disintegration, Russia was a scientific superpower, carrying out more research than China, India and Brazil combined.

Since then it has been left behind not only by the world-beating growth of Chinese science but also by India and Brazil.

Huge changes in the world’s scientific landscape are revealed in the analysis of the output of the four Bric countries since 1981.

According to Mr Wilsdon, three main factors are driving Chinese research. First is the government’s enormous investment, with funding increases far above the rate of inflation, at all levels of the system from schools to postgraduate research.

Second is the organised flow of knowledge from basic science to commercial applications. Third is the efficient and flexible way in which China is tapping the expertise of its extensive scientific diaspora in north America and Europe, tempting back mid-career scientists with deals that allow them to spend part of the year working in the west and part in China.

Although the statistics measure papers in peerreviewed journals that pass a threshold of respectability, “the quality [in China] is still rather mixed”, said Mr Adams. But it was improving: “They have some pretty good incentives to produce higher quality research in future.”

Like China, India has a large diaspora - and many scientifically trained NRIs (non-resident Indians) are returning, but they go mainly into business rather research. “In India there is a very poor connection between high-tech companies and the local research base,” said Mr Wilsdon. “Even the Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs), the highest level institutions in the system, find it difficult to recruit top faculty.”

A symptom of this is the poor performance of India in international comparisons of university standards. The 2009 Asian University Rankings, prepared by the higher education consultancy QS , shows the top Indian institution to be IIT Bombay at number 30; 10 universities in China and Hong Kong are higher.

Part of India’s academic problem might be the way red tape tied up its universities, said Ben Sowter, head of the QS intelligence unit. Another issue was that the best institutions were so overwhelmed with applications from would-be students and faculty within India that they do not cultivate the international outlook essential for world-class universities.

This looks set to change as India’s human resource minister has stepped up efforts to build links with US and UK institutions.

In contrast to China, India and Russia, whose research strengths tend to be in the physical sciences, chemistry and engineering, Brazil stands out in health, life sciences, agriculture and environmental research.

Of Russia, Mr Adams said: “The issue is the huge reduction in funding for research and development in Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union.”

“Although there has been an exodus of many of the rising stars of research, there is still a great pool of talent there.

“It is not in the interests of the rest of the world for the exodus to continue, and we need more co-funding arrangements to help Russian research get back up to speed.”

Comment: Internet - New shot in the arm for US hegemony (China Daily)

The Internet originated on American soil. In 1969, the Advanced Research Projects Agency of the US Defense Department established the world’s first testing packet-switched network (PSN) to connect four universities on US soil. The world saw a remarkable expansion of the scale and number of Internet users from the late 1970s to the early 1980s. In September 1989, the Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) was founded with a grant from the US Department of Commence to administer the Internet terminal server. Over the past 40 years, the US has been dominating the world Internet as the core technique holder with an inherent advantage of being the cradle of the Internet.

There are 13 terminal servers in the world to keep the Internet running, with a master server and nine of the 12 secondary servers stationed in the US. In terms of technique, the network of a country will disappear from the world Internet if its domain name registry is blocked or deleted from the terminal server. This kind of conduct is not legally binding with the law of any country except ICANN. In April 2004, Libya was unseen on the Internet for three days after the collapse of the domain name registry of the country “LY” caused by a domain administration dispute.

Concerns about the US monopoly of the domain name server (DNS) system grew among other nations as much as their reliance on the Internet for issues ranging from politics and the economy to defense and the general society. Years ago, there was a proposal that the Internet be administered by the United Nations or under international cooperation. The European Union insisted that the World Wide Web is an international resource that should be jointly managed by all nations. Some developing countries pointed out that at the early stage of Internet development, developed countries seized large amounts of domain names, leaving a limited few for them, and demanded a share with the US over Internet administration. American officials opposed the suggestion.

The US Defense Strategy Review in March 2005 stated that Internet space should have the same priority as continental, marine, aerial and outer space jurisdictions for the US to maintain a decisive superiority. A statement from Washington on June 30, 2005, made it clear that the US government would maintain its control over the DNS indefinitely; stating that a transfer of its management to UN or international cooperative models would impede the free flow of information, lead to easy manipulation of the Internet and make global supervision more difficult.

In an attempt to thwart the World Summit on the Information Society held in Tunis in November 2005, then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice wrote to then European Union president and British foreign minister that her government in Washington backed Internet administration and coordination by ICANN (an alleged NGO which is actually a quasi-government organization with the US Department of Commerce). Rice said management by private corporations would guarantee the safety and stability of the Internet, while the alternative choice of an inter-government mechanism would be an obstacle to Internet development. At the same time, the US Congress passed a bill by a vote of 423 to zero urging a manifesto by the White House that American control over Internet is inviolable. US Rep. John Taylor Doolittle, a Republican from California, said the United States invented the Internet and described it as a gift to the world based on American taxpayers’ money. He said he opposed any move to transfer the country’s control to the UN.

The control of the Internet plays a strategic role for US. Using the internet, the US can intercept information via the net, export US values and opinions, support a “Color Revolution”, feed the opposition powers and rebels against anti-US governments, interfere with other countries’ internal affairs and make proactive attacks on enemy’s communication and directing networks. James-Adams, a famous military forecaster, wrote in his book, The Next World War, these words: “The computer is the weapon for the future war and there is no virtual front line, as the traditional battle and the byte will take the bullet’s role to grab control of the air.”

US companies intend to make preparations for future global information control and sanctions during the progress of research and manufacture under the direction of the US government. As early as 2002, a CIA Internet spying plot was disclosed by the British media, saying the CIA sought to collect information by breaking into giant companies, banks and governmental organs and organizations across the world. Under the cover of a high-tech civil company, the CIA took cooperated with a software development company in the Silicon Valley to design software “bugs” to collect information via the Internet. The spying software binding with normal software would install automatically once a netizen started to use the normal software.

The New York Times reported in December, 2005 that the CIA cooperated with the country’s telecom enterprises to invent a computer program capable of intercepting Internet communications. The Columbia Broadcasting System (CBS TV) claimed on Jan 11, 2006, that the CIA had established a special institution for the interception of information from other countries by using high-tech means. The institution’s person in charge said in an interview with CBS that the CIA had obtained a great amount of information of great importance. Although Iran had been trying to hide its nuclear research and development work, the CIA found ways to get first-hand information and photos of its nuclear weapons work. The adoption of the interception technology helped the CIA get into the door of Iran’s secret nuclear experiment after the execution of a CIA informant. He added that the CIA had never stopped its supervisory control over Iran since the wide adoption of the Internet and had built three tape libraries to store the information collected.

In the New York Times’ words, social networking sites, as a new Internet favorite in the 21st century, have played a big role in protests in Georgia, Egypt and Iceland. The unsuccessful “Color Revolution” in Moldova in April 2009 was also called the “Twitter Revolution” because of the involvement of Twitter, a popular US-based Internet social networking site. There are people at the US-based Soros Open Society Institute who are in charge of boosting so-called “Democratic movement” in a “closed society” in the US. Iran had been in a turbulent situation after its election in June 2009, as the opposition party was spreading false messages, venting their discontent and holding protests on social networking sites such as Twitter and YouTube. The US government thought it such an effective tool to use against Iran that it even asked Twitter to postpone its regular maintenance date on June 15, saying, “Iran is in a defining moment, and Twitter is playing such a vital part in it, can you let it just work as usual?” The founder of Twitter felt excited to see that its site had become the “political tool” of the US government.

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates said Twitter and other social networking sites are “strategic assets of great importance” because “these new technologies make it harder for the ‘dictator regimes’ to control information”. A former intelligence official said the channeling of US ideology via the Internet is much easier than sending spies to target countries or training local agents in target countries who identify with US ideology. The move the US government made in June 2009 — when it dissented over the Chinese government’s order to install the filtering software Green Dam and pressured China’s government for interfering in the freedom on the ‘Net and the freedom of information flow — is probably related to its intention to infiltrate China.

According to a Hong Kong media agency, the CIA invests tens of millions of US dollars every year to aid “Chinese net traitors” to infiltrate Chinese net users with US ideology. They haunt major Chinese forums and portals. A website called “Wazhe Online” (Chinese Pinyin) is a secret mission with the cooperation of US government institutions and overseas “Tibetan splittist organizations” with the tasks of agitating, deluding, infiltrating and instigating Chinese net users, making up rumors to initiate riots and collecting information via the Internet. A Tibetan youth who once worked with one organization said it is an online spy agency which is supported by the US financially, controlled by the Americans and serves the Americans. A commentary on Hong Kong-based Ta Kung Pao said those who publish stories sensitive to China’s policies on the net have complex backgrounds and are hired by US and Japanese spy agencies.

US State Secretary Hillary Clinton has also attached importance to the Internet after taking office. She claimed that it’s necessary to deal with the countries that roll back US media with the force of the Internet, especially making use of Facebook, YouTube, Flicker and Twitter to send voices from the US.

Former US President George W. Bush issued National Security Presidential Directive 16 (NSPD-16) to set up the first hacker force in American history, as well as of world history, in 2002. With the technology advantages, the US Department of Defense (DoD) advanced the idea of cyber warfare in 2004. In the summer of the same year, Bush signed a secret document which agreed to allow the DoD to launch a “hacker-style” devastation attacking enemies’ computers. At the beginning of 2008, Bush again allowed the US forces to launch the cyber-attacks initially with the regard to giving the DoD a greater counter-power on the network. He demanded the forces to have the capability of accessing any open or closed long-distance computer network, and then maintain “complete concealment” and “quietly steal information” to destroy enemies’ computer systems, destroy their command system, and even control their business and government affairs networks. The Air Force Cyber Command was founded on Sept 18, 2008, with the mission of defending their own network security and also attacking others.

US President Barack Obama repeatedly stressed the importance of the Internet during his campaign. He asked the relevant departments to assess the security of the American network, and to prepare for the implementation of information hegemony to continue the work of controlling the new generation of Internet Root Servers. The assessment report released by the US government on May 29, 2009, said that cyberspace threats have become one of the most serious economic and military threats facing the United States. The report emphasized that the US must show the world they were seriously responding to the challenge.. Against this background, Microsoft announced the closure of MSN services for Cuba, Iran, Syria, Sudan and the DPRK. But the world opinion considers this as information sanction instead of meeting a challenge.

A report from the New York Times on May.31, 2009, claims that almost all large military enterprises — including Northrop Grumman Corp, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon Co — have network contracts with the intelligence agencies of the US military. The first two enterprises engage in “offensive cyber war”, which includes stealing other countries’ sensitive information or paralyzing their networks by developing software tools after finding vulnerabilities in their computer systems.

The US Department of Defense announced a plan to establish the “United States Cyber Command” on June 23, 2009, in order to gain advantage in the field. Pentagon spokesman Whitman said the new command is going to “focus on protection”. Only they themselves believe such a word. It is clear that the aim of founding the new command is to integrate the high-tech military units in different parts of the country and to strengthen defense. More importantly, it aims to improve the offensive ability and launch a preemptive cyber attack against “enemy countries” if necessary. For a long time in the past, the Pentagon has stressed that Internet is part of war and is a “military front”. Before the first Gulf War, the CIA had planted a “virus chip” in the printers purchased by Iraq. They activated the virus using remote control technology before launching the strategic bombing. Then the air defense control system of Iraq suffered a failure. According to the estimation of defense expert Joel Harker, who has been studying the hacker program of the US military for 13 years, the US now has about 80,000 personnel engaging in cyber warfare. In terms of the “weapons” for cyber warfare, they have developed more than 2,000 computer viruses which could be used in cyber attacks such as Worms, Trojans, Logic Bombs and trap door viruses.

Statement of the Chinese Embassy on the Case of Akmal Shaikh

Akmal Shaikh was convicted for serious drug trafficking. The amount of heroin he brought into China was 4030g, enough to cause 26800 deaths, threatening numerous families. According to the Chinese law, 50g of heroin is the threshold for death penalty. It is important that the independence of the Chinese judiciary be respected.

During the legal process, Mr. Shaikh’s rights and interests were properly respected and guaranteed and the concerns of the British side were duly noted and taken into consideration by the Chinese judicial authorities. Out of humanitarian consideration, visas were granted to the two cousins of Mr. Shaikh on Boxing Day, and they were given access to meeting Mr. Shaikh in China.

As for his possible mental illness which has been much talked about, there apparently has been no previous medical record.

Drug trafficking is a grave crime worldwide. In China, given the bitter memory of history and the current situations, the public has a particular and strong resentment towards it. In a recent web survey, 99% of the public support the decision of the Court.

In China the conditions are not there for abolishing the death penalty. But it is applied in a cautious manner and limited number, all such cases are reviewed by the Supreme Court.

The legal structures of China and UK may be different, but it should not stand in the way of enhancing our bilateral relations on the basis of mutual respect.

FT: America is losing the free world

Ever since 1945, the US has regarded itself as the leader of the “free world”. But the Obama administration is facing an unexpected and unwelcome development in global politics. Four of the biggest and most strategically important democracies in the developing world – Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey – are increasingly at odds with American foreign policy. Rather than siding with the US on the big international issues, they are just as likely to line up with authoritarian powers such as China and Iran.

The US has been slow to pick up on this development, perhaps because it seems so surprising and unnatural. Most Americans assume that fellow democracies will share their values and opinions on international affairs. During the last presidential election campaign, John McCain, the Republican candidate, called for the formation of a global alliance of democracies to push back against authoritarian powers. Some of President Barack Obama’s senior advisers have also written enthusiastically about an international league of democracies.

But the assumption that the world’s democracies will naturally stick together is proving unfounded. The latest example came during the Copenhagen climate summit. On the last day of the talks, the Americans tried to fix up one-to-one meetings between Mr Obama and the leaders of South Africa, Brazil and India – but failed each time. The Indians even said that their prime minister, Manmohan Singh, had already left for the airport.

So Mr Obama must have felt something of a chump when he arrived for a last-minute meeting with Wen Jiabao, the Chinese prime minister, only to find him already deep in negotiations with the leaders of none other than Brazil, South Africa and India. Symbolically, the leaders had to squeeze up to make space for the American president around the table.

There was more than symbolism at work. In Copenhagen, Brazil, South Africa and India decided that their status as developing nations was more important than their status as democracies. Like the Chinese, they argued that it is fundamentally unjust to cap the greenhouse gas emissions of poor countries at a lower level than the emissions of the US or the European Union; all the more so since the industrialised west is responsible for the great bulk of the carbon dioxide already in the atmosphere.
Revealingly, both Brazilian and Chinese leaders have made the same pointed joke – likening the US to a rich man who, after gorging himself at a banquet, then invites the neighbours in for coffee and asks them to split the bill.

If climate change were an isolated example, it might be dismissed as an important but anomalous issue that is almost designed to split countries along rich-poor lines. But, in fact, if you look at Brazil, South Africa, India and Turkey – the four most important democracies in Latin America, Africa, Asia and the greater Middle East – it is clear that none of them can be counted as a reliable ally of the US, or of a broader “community of democracies”.

In the past year, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil has cut a lucrative oil deal with China, spoken warmly of Hugo Chávez, president of Venezuela, and congratulated Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on his “victory” in the Iranian presidential election, while welcoming him on a state visit to Brazil.
During a two-year stint on the United Nations Security Council from 2006, the South Africans routinely joined China and Russia in blocking resolutions on human rights and protecting authoritarian regimes such as Zimbabwe, Uzbekistan and Iran.

Turkey, once regarded as a crucial American ally in the cold war and then trumpeted as the only example of a secular, pro-western, Muslim democracy, is also no longer a reliable partner for the west. Ever since the US-led invasion of Iraq, opinion polls there have shown very high levels of anti-Americanism. The mildly Islamist AKP government has engaged with America’s regional enemies – including Hamas, Hizbollah and Iran – and alarmed the Americans by taking an increasingly hostile attitude to Israel.

India’s leaders do seem to cherish the idea that they have a “special relationship” with the US. But even the Indians regularly line up against the Americans on a range of international issues, from climate change to the Doha round of trade negotiations and the pursuit of sanctions against Iran or Burma.
So what is going on? The answer is that Brazil, South Africa, Turkey and India are all countries whose identities as democracies are now being balanced – or even trumped – by their identities as developing nations that are not part of the white, rich, western world. All four countries have ruling parties that see themselves as champions of social justice at home and a more equitable global order overseas. Brazil’s Workers’ party, India’s Congress party, Turkey’s AKP and South Africa’s African National Congress have all adapted to globalisation – but they all retain traces of the old suspicions of global capitalism and of the US.

Mr Obama is seen as a huge improvement on George W. Bush – but he is still an American president. As emerging global powers and developing nations, Brazil, India, South Africa and Turkey may often feel they have more in common with a rising China than with the democratic US.

Morning Star letter on Copenhagen

The liberal media and the irksome Ed Miliband are accusing China of acting as a wrecking ball at the Copenhagen summit on climate change.

As Hugo Chavez emphasised in his brilliant speech at the summit - sadly unreported in the Star - the US with a population of 500 million “consumes 20 million barrels of oil a day.”

China with a population nearly treble that “consumes five to six million barrels a day.”

Unlike the US, China still has over 150 million people living below the poverty line.

Premier Wen Jiabao said in Copenhagen that China “has the arduous task of developing the economy and improving people’s livelihoods.”

He added that between 1990 and 2005 China had reduced its carbon emissions per unit of GDP by 46 per cent. Can the US claim the same?

Wen added that China has set the target of reducing carbon emissions per GDP a further 45 per cent by 2020 on 2005 levels. We see no such targets from the major industrialised countries.

He acknowledged the difficulties China faces with its reliance on using coal in its energy mix, but it is investing heavily in alternative energy and has embarked on one of the world’s largest reforestation programmes.

China does take climate change seriously, but it correctly rejects accusations from some of the world’s largest contributors to global warming that it is “holding the world to ransom.”

Dick Maunders
Axminster

Statement: The case of drug trafficker Akmal Shaikh and the just stance of the People’s Republic of China

[Issued jointly by Hands off China and the CPGB-ML]

Akmal Shaikh, a British citizen, was found guilty by the highest Chinese Court, the Supreme People’s Court, of smuggling just over 4 kilograms of heroin into China. It is generally well known that this offence carries the death penalty in China. In its crackdown on drug-related crimes, China treats criminals of all nationalities exactly the same. In the case of Mr Shaikh, China’s Criminal Code and court procedures were immaculately followed – in word and in spirit. Following his failed appeal, Mr Shaikh was executed by a lethal injection.

In response to this, the imperialist media and the political spokesmen of imperialism went into overdrive denouncing the execution of Mr Shaikh as inhuman and a violation of human rights. The British Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, condemned the execution “in the strongest terms”, stating that he was “appalled and disappointed that our persistent requests for clemency have not been granted”.

The British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband, too, expressed “deep regret” over “the fact that our specific concerns about the individual in this case were not taken into consideration,” adding that there had been “inadequate professional interpretation” provided to Mr Shaikh during the trial.

It has even been suggested by the imperialist media and imperialism’s political representatives that Mr Shaikh was somehow mentally impaired, without any substantial evidence to back this claim. The Chinese state media have refuted this assertion, quoting China’s Supreme People’s Court as saying that although officials from the British Embassy and Reprieve, a human rights group, had asked for a mental health examination of Mr Shaikh, “the documents they provided could not prove he had a mental health disorder nor did members of his family have a history of mental disease”. The Supreme People’s Court stated: “There is no reason to cast doubt on Akmal Shaikh’s mental status”. There is no evidence whatsoever of Mr Shaikh consulting any doctor concerning his mental health during his 53 years of life.

In the light of this, the Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Jiang Yu, quite correctly said: “We express our strong dissatisfaction and opposition to the British accusation”. She advised “the British side” to face this case squarely and not create new obstacles for China-Britain relations.

Ms Jiang was absolutely right, for the response to Mr Shaikh’s execution is yet another example of the continuing anti-China activities undertaken by imperialism to undermine the People’s Republic of China and its efforts to build a powerful and prosperous China which does not tolerate any foreign interference in its internal affairs. Imperialism is out to create trouble for China, be it on the question of Tibet, the environment, the Beijing Olympics, or Xinjiang.

Mr Shaikh took his unwanted wares to the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region where Muslims account for over 40% of the population. Over the past few years, there have been disturbances in this region fanned by counter-revolutionary agents of imperialism. It is not entirely out of the question, although there is no proof at the moment, that Mr Shaikh went to Xinjiang on a mission directly or indirectly organised by an imperialist agency. History knows only too well that the smuggling of drugs and literature inciting religious hatred is among the tools of imperialist penetration. This method was well practised by various imperialist countries against the erstwhile Soviet Union and the former socialist countries. It is now being practised against the People’s Republic of China. Imperialism leaves no stone unturned in inciting religious and ethnic divisions – all for the purpose of destabilising the People’s Republic of China. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that this methodology is resorted to.

The Chinese people are naturally very sensitive to such dirty tricks. Before liberation in 1949, when, in the words of Comrade Mao Zedong, “the Chinese people stood up”, China had been subjected to national humiliation and oppression through colonialist and imperialist brigandage. Britain waged three Opium Wars to force the trade in, and addiction to, opium on the Chinese people. Hong Kong was occupied by Britain as a station for smuggling narcotics into China. Quite rightly the Chinese people do not wish to return to those days and treat with the utmost of severity those who, whatever their religion, nationality or race, want to purvey the scourge of drug addiction.

Britain’s record the world over, including in China, is shameful. There is very little in it that decent working people could be proud of. One must thus marvel at the suggestion in 2005 by Gordon Brown that it was time that “we” stopped apologising for the British empire and started celebrating a past which had generated values of tolerance, liberty and civic duty. This is not the view of the hundreds upon hundreds of millions of people in Asia, Africa, the Caribbean and Ireland, all of whom were subjected to massacres, torture, genocide, arbitrary executions, dispossession, super-exploitation and domination. This is not a view shared by the Chinese people, who underwent tortures, large-scale massacres, expropriation, deprivation of liberty and forced drug addiction at the hands of imperialism. Instead of lecturing China about human rights and the value of human life, the present-day representatives of imperialism should offer profuse apologies for their crimes against the Chinese as well as other peoples. At the very least they should stop interfering in their internal affairs.

The imperialists’ pretended concern for human rights, those of Mr Shaikh included, is particularly inappropriate when the United States and Britain, along with their satellites, have killed over a million innocent Iraqi men, women and children and forced 5 million Iraqis to become refugees in their own country or abroad and are well on their way to achieving the same effect in Afghanistan – all in pursuit of predatory imperialist wars aimed at domination and the extraction of maximum profit.

If the British and American governments are really concerned about human rights of individuals, specially those who belong to the Muslim faith, they should stop torturing detainees in Guantanamo, Abu Ghraib and dozens of other rendition centres to which illegally abducted individuals are routinely sent to be tortured. The British government should stop its persecution of the Muslim community in Britain and put an end to the arbitrary incarceration of hundreds of Muslim youth. The US and Britain, if they are truly concerned about human rights, democracy and the rule of law, should immediately withdraw their aggressor troops from Iraq and Afghanistan, and they should stop supporting the continuing Zionist genocide against the Palestinian people, 1.5 million of whom, living in the Gaza Strip, are subject to a vicious and fascistic siege designed ethnically to cleanse the region of its population.

In the light of the foregoing, the Communist Party of Great Britain (Marxist-Leninist) and Hands Off China! issue this Joint Statement to condemn in the strongest terms the attempts of the British and US governments, as well as these countries’ media, to portray China in the darkest of colours over the case of Mr Shaikh. At the same time, we express our full support for, and solidarity with, the Chinese people, their government, their legal system, as well as the Communist Party of China, for correctly handling the case of Mr Shaikh and standing up to the bullying attempts of imperialism to make China bend its legal system to unreasonable demands made on them by those who are historically used to interfering in other people’s affairs and to obtain obedience by force.