For over two months, mass protests have made Hong Kong a new flashpoint in the escalating fight between U.S. market capitalism and Chinese state capitalism. Workers in Hong Kong and everywhere must refuse to be taken in by either set of imperialist exploiters. All bosses settle their disputes by shedding rivers of our class’s blood. The intensifying U.S.-versus-China trade war will inevitably give rise to armed conflict and an eventual third world war.
Images of masses of people attacking the cops and shutting down a center of global finance may seem inspiring. But in assessing any resistance movement, we need to look beyond appearances to its political essence. At their core, the Hong Kong protests are a reactionary, anti-worker movement. They serve the interests of local billionaires in a battle to resist control by the mainland Chinese capitalists and their organized crime syndicate, the once-revolutionary Chinese Communist Party (CCP).
Hong Kong, exploiters’ paradise
In 1842, after feudal China’s loss to British capitalist narco-traffickers in the First Opium War, the island of Hong Kong was absorbed into a rising British Empire. It soon became a headquarters for Western imperialists and their local henchmen bent on sucking worker-generated wealth out of Asia.
In 1949, after the once-revolutionary CCP defeated the U.S.-backed fascist Kuomintang in a bitter civil war, Hong Kong remained a British colony and a crucial outpost of finance capital. By the 1970s, the Chinese capitalist bosses—a new “red bourgeoisie”—smashed the Cultural Revolution, a mass movement to restore the fight for communism. In 1997, these fake-left rulers agreed to allow independent finance capitalism to persist in Hong Kong for at least another 50 years: the “one country, two systems” deal.  
On August 5, workers called for a general strike with chants of “Restore Hong Kong, Revolution of our times!” Elements of the Hong Kong ruling class are making a bid for permanent autonomy, which the mainland Chinese ruling class will never accept. For the “Wall Street of the East,” stakes are high. Hong Kong features “[r]elatively low taxes, a highly developed financial system, light regulation….Most of the world’s major banks and multinational firms maintain regional headquarters in the city….” (Council of Foreign Relations, 6/19). Hong Kong is the key hub for investment for Chinese companies, giving them “access to global capital markets for bond and loan financing” (Economist, 10/1/14).  
Even as Shanghai and Beijing emerge as new financial capitals, Hong Kong remains of huge importance for China’s rulers’ bid to dominate the global profit system. They plan to integrate Hong Kong and neighboring Guangdong Province into a Greater Bay Area project “that could rival the San Francisco Bay or Tokyo Bay areas, …Echoing the connectivity narrative of China’s Belt and Road Initiative, the Greater Bay would constitute a population of more than seventy million people and a $1.5 trillion economy” (CFR, 6/10). China’s absorption of Hong Kong would spell doom for independent capitalists who have flourished under “one country, two systems.” These are the forces behind this summer’s turmoil.
“Democracy,” exploiters’ tool
The average resident of Hong Kong has a living space the size of a parking spot; hundreds of thousands of poorer workers split such a space among three people (New York Times, 7/22). But instead of fighting the brutal inequalities of the capitalist system, protesters have been infected by anti-mainland racism. They target tourists with chants of “uncivilized” and “invaders,” and intimidate elderly mainland women at their morning outdoor exercises (NYT, 7/13).
From Xinjiang to Hong Kong to Taiwan, China’s ruling class faces growing internal challenges to its authority. The turmoil in Hong Kong today echoes the 1989 Tiananmen Square uprising, another “pro-democracy” movement that favored more liberal, entrepreneurial, Western-style capitalism. In a period of intensifying inter-imperialist rivalry and rising fascism, China’s ruling class can’t afford to allow “two systems” much longer. Hong Kong’s “leaderless” mass action, loudly hailed in the U.S. bosses’ media, is a mask for the direct involvement of U.S. imperialism.
 Among the 40-odd NGOs backing the Hong Kong protests is a thinly-veiled CIA operation, the National Endowment for Democracy (NED). As its founders openly admitted early on: “A lot of what we do today was done covertly by the CIA 25 years ago” (NYT, 6/1/86).Since then, NED has penetrated every “opposition” movement that aligns with the interests of U.S. finance capital, from Russia (1996) to Venezuela (2002) to Haiti (2004). Today it is active in Nicaragua, Ukraine, Xinjiang, and Hong Kong (thegrayzone.com, 6/18). Its influence is apparent in the English-language signage and American flags held by Hong Kong’s protesters.
Nationalism and war
As the trade and currency war between the U.S. and Chinese ruling classes escalates, each side is preparing its population for open conflict. The CCP has given its stamp of approval to Chinese nationalist Hu Xijin and his Global Times newspaper, with its 30 million online readers. Hu’s treatment of the U.S.-China rivalry: “There is a sense of crisis; America cannot prevent China’s rise.”  On the trade war: “We are willing to bear some pain to give the U.S. a lesson.”  On a future shooting war: “The possibility cannot be ruled out; the danger is greater than before”  (NYT, 7/31).  
But when it comes to exploitation and slaughter, China can’t compete with Western liberal democracy. From its origins in Greece to its enshrinement in the U.S. Constitution, democracy has been a cover for the rule of a tiny, propertied ruling class.  Democracy is the tool of enslavers—chattel slavery then, wage slavery today. Workers will suffer wage slavery and imperialist slaughter until we learn to see democracy for what it is: a dictatorship of the capitalist class. Our task is to replace capitalist democracy with proletarian dictatorship and a system that meets workers’ needs. That system is called communism.
Fight for communism!
Progressive Labor Party is building a revolutionary communist movement to pick up where the Red Guards of China’s Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution left off—and to finish the job of leading the working class forward to the victory of a classless society. The Red Guards were fighting not for democracy but for centralism, for the principle that the highest expression of “majority rule” is the uncompromising commitment to the interests of the international working class. Only a mass communist party can lead this fight. Communist centralism remains our most invaluable tool. Join us!