Since 1993 our party has held the position that the ruling Chinese bureaucracy has been presiding over the restoration of capitalism in China. However, our policy toward China has been ambiguous: while taking an oppositional stance in our public press toward the ruling bureaucracy’s restorationist course, we have left it unclear as to whether we continued to believe that China is still a bureaucratically ruled socialist state.

The second Asia Pacific International Solidarity Conference, held in Sydney March 28-April 1 was an outstanding success. Seven hundred and fifty people, including international participants from more than thirty countries, attended.

Exhausting but exhilarating, sometimes a bit chaotic, but always politically stimulating, it provided a unique opportunity for left activists in the Asia Pacific region to get together, exchange views, discuss politics and build closer collaboration and foster solidarity actions with each other’s struggles.

Capitalism is in crisis, and you’d have to be blind, or a particularly gross and stupid billionaire, not to know it. Just look around the world and you’re faced with the squalor of poverty, unemployment, homelessness, exploitation, and environmental devastation. And you also see the obscene wealth, the luxury for a few. In Indonesia the crisis is very visible, in your face.

Our party congress was held not much more than three months ago, and discussed thorough reports on perspectives for our work in Australia and for our international work. But some matters were left unresolved, with question marks over them. For example, we didn’t make firm projections for our election work. And we raised the question, “Let’s wait and see if the ISO here follows the line of the SWP in Britain.” We didn’t have long to wait. Certainly there’s been a rapid resolution on that front, with big developments in Australia.

Whose century was the 20th, and whose century will the 21st be? As the millennium draws to a close, we should reflect on this. Capitalism is still in power across most of the globe. Capitalists in the imperialist countries have accumulated unprecedented wealth. They have previously undreamt-of military power and weapons of mass destruction at their disposal. Some think they can act with complete impunity, slaughtering millions in Iraq with bombs and brutal blockades or raining destruction on Serbia from a great height, free from retaliation.

The Democratic Socialist Party has called on supporters of democracy in Australia to mobilise to demand that the UN and/or the Australian government immediately send troops to East Timor to help the East Timorese people resist and defeat the Indonesian occupying army’s genocidal campaign to physically extinguish the East Timorese people’s struggle for liberation from Indonesian rule.

Since 1993 our party has held the position that the ruling Chinese bureaucracy has been presiding over the restoration of capitalism in China. However, our policy toward China has been ambigious: while taking an oppositional stance in our public press toward the ruling bureaucracy’s restorationist course, we have left it unclear as to whether we continued to believe that China is still a bureaucratically ruled socialist state.

The Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference taking place in Sydney, April 9-13, will bring together nearly 70 international speakers and participants from parties and movements in Asia, the Pacific, Europe and the Americas, and hundreds of activists from around Australia. It has proved to be an extremely timely initiative, exceeding even the initial ambitious plans of the organisers.

The Communist Manifesto ushered in a new epoch in human history. It described and projected the process of change from capitalism to socialism, the coming to power of the working class. That’s a process still taking place.

The immensely successful Asia Pacific Solidarity Conference, held in Sydney on April 10-13, was an historic event for the left, both for Australia and the region.

More than 750 people participated. In addition to Australian activists, there were 67 representatives from Asian, Pacific, European, Latin American and United States left parties and other organisations.