STATEMENT OF PRINCIPLES

Who we are

Dove and Crane Collective is a group of progressive and radical members of directly impacted diasporas in the US working against US-China conflict. We share values that prioritize fighting global corporate power, expanding the power and status of the working class across borders, fighting poverty and inequality around the world, fighting the climate crisis, promoting global peace and demilitarization, and securing democratic, civil, and human rights for all.

Based on these values, and our position as members of impacted diasporas, we are united in opposition to the emerging US-China rivalry and the growth of nationalism and militarism in both countries. These trends are a threat to our safety, dignity, and civil rights, to our comrades and our neighbors, to people in our countries of origin, and to peace and justice globally.

Context

There has been a marked rise in tensions and competition between the US and China, as China continues to gain economic and political influence while the US fights to maintain global hegemonic dominance. This rivalry is an obstacle to urgently needed global cooperation to solve shared challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, and deep problems in the global economy, and it threatens to escalate into global conflict. 

The US-China rivalry is driven by trends towards authoritarian nationalist politics in both countries, and also feeds those trends. In the US, anti-Chinese nationalist narratives, including conspiracy theories, have become a key organizing principle of the most reactionary political tendencies, and the reverse is true in China. Nationalists in the two countries feed off of each other in a symbiotic relationship. In the US, this enables a rise in popular racism and racist policies targeting people who are perceived to be of Chinese descent. In China, it gives tacit allowance for the repression of dissidents in service of nationalism and global competitiveness. This is a threat to progressive forces and movements led by marginalized people in both countries.

These dynamics are the product of growing dysfunctions in the global capitalist system. Tensions between the US and China are particularly dangerous because of their great power, and potential to put billions of people at risk, particularly residents of the South China sea, ethnic minorities in China, Indigenous Pacific Islanders, and marginalized communities in each country such as migrant workers, Black people, and the working class and poor.

Our understanding of this rivalry is that:

1. The US retains global economic and military hegemony, although its power and legitimacy has been on a downward trajectory. The Chinese government is increasingly wielding economic and military power abroad, although this remains at a level far inferior to that of the US. Both countries pose potential threats to peace, justice, and democracy worldwide.

2. China is not socialist, but has a racial capitalist structure parallel to that of the US. Capitalists and political leaders in the US and China have been close collaborators with each other in shared exploitation and oppression of people in both countries and around the world.

3. Driven by authoritarian and nationalist politics, US-China rivalry feeds a rise in popular racism and racist policies in both countries, and is a threat to progressive forces and struggles for justice across borders. 

4. The growing US-China rivalry is an obstacle to urgently needed global cooperation to solve shared global challenges, and the current competition often exacerbates existing issues.

Our principles

BOTTOM-UP POLITICS: Our approach to the US-China rivalry is grounded in our perspective as members of diasporas and by the perspectives of others who are most impacted by the rivalry and the militarist, authoritarian, patriarchal, and nationalist policies of the two countries. We oppose the status quo approach to foreign policy run by out of touch elites who see the world as a chessboard and treat those who are directly impacted by their policies as pawns.

CONSISTENT VALUES: We apply the same standards of critique regarding militarism, authoritarianism, nationalism, inequality, oppression, sexism, and other forms of reactionary politics to both the US and China (and beyond) and seek to show how these are connected across borders. We do not assert any “moral equivalence” or any other moral ranking between the two countries, nor do we use criticism of one country to deflect criticism of another. We believe that a politics of working class solidarity will create greater opportunities to remedy these abuses than the current approach of nationalistic rivalry, which feeds authoritarian nationalist tendencies in both countries.

SOLIDARITY ACROSS MOVEMENTS: The US-China rivalry now impacts every part of US politics. It is at once a problem of racial justice, economic justice, gender justice, climate justice, and so on. We seek to connect these dots and work in solidarity with all movements for justice.

GLOBAL SOLIDARITY: We live under a system of unchecked global corporate power that has always been administered by unaccountable elites and is now being taken over by dangerous nationalist forces. The root causes of the US-China rivalry lie in this system. We believe that the people of the US, China, and all other countries have a shared stake in confronting this system and seek to build solidarity across borders on this basis.

COOPERATION OVER COMPETITION: We believe that all countries, and above all the US and China, must urgently cooperate to confront shared global challenges, including climate change, pandemics, and inequality. We oppose competition between the two countries over military and economic power in the world as a threat to this cooperation.

In the US we oppose corporate power; authoritarian crackdowns on activists and threats to democracy; mass incarceration and exploitation of prison labor; systemic racial profiling via the China Initiative; anti-communist “Red Scare” politics; anti-immigrant policies; the integration of the tech industry into law enforcement and the military; massive environmental impact of US militarism; and attempts to dominate the rest of the world through economic and military power.

Likewise, in Chinese society we oppose corporate power; authoritarian crackdowns on activists including labor organizers, feminist activists, and others; the Chinese government’s threats to civil rights and democracy and the crackdown on protesters in Hong Kong; the use of mass internment, forced labor, forced assimilation, high tech surveillance, and other forms of oppression targeting ethnic groups in Xinjiang, Tibet, and elsewhere; expansionist claims in the South China Sea and threats against Taiwan.

US-based diasporas & our approach

Our approach seeks to move past a binary choice of siding with either nation-state. Many current members of Dove and Crane are part of Chinese, Taiwanese, Hongkonger diaspora groups who are critical of US and Chinese states while hoping to create space for progressive solutions to the US-China conflict. 

There are major divisions within Asian American diaspora communities, including around the topic of US-China relations. We can acknowledge the contradictions in these communities, while listening to their voices in order to both uplift dissident movements in China’s sphere of influence and look beyond aggressive, militaristic U.S. policies. We recognize that there have been many attempts to co-opt dissident diaspora organizations into aggressive and anti-communist positions. Thus, we need an alternative to the long-standing bargain between right-wing ‘anti-China’ foreign policy establishment and CCP dissident diaspora communities in the US for genuine liberation for Asians and Asian Americans.

Only a progressive, nuanced approach to US-China relations contains the possibility for solutions to our shared crises that center the most marginalized and create the conditions for a future that is liberatory and just. We do not profess any easy answers, but look to empower our own communities and all people from the US, China, and other countries impacted by the US-China conflict to collectively fight for peace, justice, and human rights.