Zhang Shaoyan | Chinese Solidarity Group with the DPRK
Respected representatives of workers, peasants, and laborers from all countries, dear comrades in the anti-imperialist struggle:
Greetings!
I come from China and am a migrant worker who has spent many years working at construction sites and factories. Today, on behalf of hundreds of millions of Chinese migrant laborers working away from their hometowns, I stand at the founding conference of the World Anti-Imperialist Workers’ Platform and extend the most sincere workers’ salute to all proletarian brothers and sisters across the five continents who are oppressed and exploited.
Our generation of migrant workers forms the most fundamental labor force behind China’s industrialization and urbanization. Hundreds of millions of peasants have left their native villages and entered urban construction sites, manufacturing assembly lines, mining workshops, and frontline service industries. Skyscrapers, high-speed railways, bridges, and export commodities have all been built through our labor—brick by brick, stitch by stitch, and second by second.
Separated from our families for years at a time, we endure intense workloads, harsh working conditions, occupational disease risks, wage arrears, and difficulties regarding our children’s education. These hardships are shared by countless fellow workers. Yet from a global perspective, the suffering of working people at the bottom of society cannot be separated from the global system of capitalist exploitation dominated by imperialism.
Over the past century, imperialism forced open China’s gates through military aggression, plundered our mineral and agricultural resources, exploited workers and poor peasants in old China, and created endless poverty and warfare.
Today, imperialism has merely changed its appearance. Through multinational monopoly capital, unequal international trade rules, financial hegemony, military alliances, and neo-colonial methods, it continues to harvest the fruits of labor from working people throughout the world.
First, imperialist capital uses the international division of labor within global supply chains to transfer highly polluting, labor-intensive, and low-profit production processes to developing countries. Workers throughout the Third World, including China, bear the heaviest labor burden, while the overwhelming majority of profits are seized by Western multinational corporations and capitalist conglomerates.
For every commodity produced on an assembly line, workers receive only a tiny fraction of the value they create, while monopoly capital and foreign brand owners take away most of the profits. This is a new form of labor exploitation concealed beneath the banner of globalization.
Second, imperialism continuously provokes geopolitical conflicts and arms races, allowing military-industrial capital to reap enormous profits from war.
Wars destroy the industries and agriculture of developing countries, causing countless workers and peasants to lose their livelihoods and become displaced. Expansionist policies and sanctions imposed by major powers drive up global energy and food prices, and it is workers and peasants at the bottom of society who suffer first from inflation, while the purchasing power of wages steadily declines.
Third, imperialism exports systems of capitalist exploitation across the world, buying off reformist trade unions and agents of capital in various countries, dividing workers’ forces, promoting the illusion of “labor-capital cooperation,” weakening workers’ consciousness of resistance, and dismantling the united front of the global proletariat.
As a result, workers in different countries are left to fight separately, unable to unite against their common enemy.
In China, we witness firsthand the long-standing existence of excessive overtime, depressed wages, and disregard for workplace safety in foreign-invested enterprises and multinational subcontracting factories. International capital manipulates commodity markets through financial speculation, raising the costs of agricultural inputs and construction materials while squeezing the living space of migrant workers and rural laborers.
Imperialist plunder recognizes no national boundaries. Workers at the bottom of society in Asia, Africa, Latin America, Europe, and North America all suffer from oppression originating from the same source. On one side stand a small class of monopoly capitalists living in luxury and extravagance; on the other stand hundreds of millions of laborers who work day and night yet still struggle to secure a stable life.
Today, the official establishment of the World Anti-Imperialist Workers’ Platform is a historic event long awaited by proletarians throughout the world.
As an important component of the working class, migrant workers firmly support the entire program of the Platform.
In this spirit, I present three appeals and proposals.
First, workers throughout the world, regardless of nationality, industry, or race, must establish a firm anti-imperialist labor united front.Chinese migrant workers are willing to actively connect with industrial workers across Asia, mining and agricultural laborers throughout Africa, and worker-peasant masses in Latin America. We must exchange experiences in defending workers’ rights, support strikes and labor struggles in all countries, and break the schemes of capital designed to divide workers.
Economic struggle and anti-imperialist political struggle are inseparable. The fight for full wages, labor protection, the eight-hour working day, and social security is, in essence, a struggle against imperialist capitalist exploitation.
Second, we must jointly expose the dual exploitation imposed by neo-colonialism and transnational capital.
We must conduct joint investigations into labor abuses by multinational corporations, resist the unequal trade order imposed by imperialism, oppose the plundering of resources from developing countries through hegemonic means, and reject the practice of selling industrial products at inflated prices while extracting raw materials cheaply.
We must support the working masses of all countries suffering under sanctions and war, oppose the expansion of imperialist military blocs such as NATO, and refuse to allow workers’ sweat and blood to be sacrificed for wars fought in the interests of capital.
Third, we must uphold the great alliance of workers and peasants.
Migrant workers themselves possess the dual identity of both peasants and workers. We understand clearly that imperialism exploits workers and peasants simultaneously.
Workers’ movements in every country must actively unite with rural laborers. Only through worker-peasant unity can the foundations of imperialist exploitation be completely destroyed.
At the same time, we should coordinate with the World Anti-Imperialist Women’s Platform and Youth Platform, uniting women workers and young workers to create a comprehensive anti-imperialist popular force.
Here, I would also like to explain to workers around the world that China has consistently adhered to a path of independence, self-reliance, and peaceful development. Our country has continuously introduced policies aimed at eliminating wage arrears, improving labor safety protections, expanding social security for migrant workers, and guaranteeing education for the children of migrant laborers, thereby steadily improving workers’ rights and conditions.
However, we clearly recognize that improvements in labor conditions within a single country cannot fundamentally confront the global imperialist capitalist system. Only through the unity of workers worldwide can the roots of exploitation be completely eradicated.
Comrades!
Labor creates all wealth. Imperialism produces nothing; it survives solely through plunder and oppression.
For the past century, Chinese workers and peasants have never ceased their anti-imperialist struggle—from the workers who rose up against the massacres committed by foreign powers during the May Thirtieth Movement to generations of laborers who built the nation through self-reliance.
Today we step beyond our borders and stand shoulder to shoulder with workers around the globe, taking up the baton of the anti-imperialist struggle.
We firmly believe that the World Anti-Imperialist Workers’ Platform will become the central arena for communication, cooperation, and common struggle among working people in every country.
I pledge to participate actively in all the Platform’s activities, to amplify the genuine voices of working people, and to devote my full efforts to advancing the great anti-imperialist unity of workers and peasants throughout the world.
Let us proclaim:
Workers of the world, unite!
Down with all imperialism and transnational monopoly capital!
Long live the liberation of labor!
Long live the World Anti-Imperialist Workers’ Platform!
That concludes my speech.
Thank you, comrades.
