http://www.revaim.org/uploads/booklets/China%20-%20A%20Modern%20Social-Imperialist%20Power.pdf
Contents:
Translator’s Foreword
Introduction
The 1949-1976 Socialist Revolution
Revisionist China after the Restoration of Capitalism
- First Generation Consolidated Economic Reforms
- Single-Party Government Domination Continued
- Second Generation Reforms
- Reorganising State Industries
- The New Bourgeoisie
- Liberalisation of Trade – Joining the World Trade Organisation
China as a Primary Economic Power
- The Nature of Capitalism Never Changes
China’s Monopoly Enterprises
- More Profit Margins
Foreign Investment in China
- Labour Aristocrats
- Economic Anarchy in Capitalism
Capital Export leads to the Global Primacy of Finance Capital
- Export Investments in the Form of Bonds and Loans
- Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) as Export Capital
- China’s Investment in Asia and Latin America as a Neo-Colonial Style of Exploitation
- China’s Influence in South Asia
- China’s Imperialist Influence in Africa
- Chinese Investment in Latin America
Formation of Economic and Military Blocs: Increasing Grip of China’s Imperialists
- Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO)
- BRICS
- Chinese Military Power
- Chinese Imperial Military Operations
- Chinese Social-Imperialism
The History of Imperialist Tensions, Wars, Revolutions and Counter Revolutions
- Silk Road Free Trade Zone, or OBOR Project
Conclusion
Translator’s Foreword
In May of 2017, the Central Committee of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) initiated a study posing the question of whether China had or had not become a new imperialist power. The resulting report answers in the affirmative: In the view of the CPI(Maoist), the People’s Republic of China has become a social-imperialist power. Further, the Chinese Communist Party, and its ideology of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics deceives and misleads socialists the world over, rejecting internationalism and revolution for a suite of revisionist justifications upholding and furthering the bourgeois dictatorship in China. The CPI(Maoist) calls on the CCP to abandon its current capitalist-imperialist trajectory, and for progressive comrades within the party to initiate struggle against the imperialist and monopoly capitalist ruling clique.
Among the hallmarks of Chinese social-imperialism, the CPI(Maoist) identifies capital export, financialization, deployment of troops and advisors, rapid armament and weapon sales, interference in the affairs of small nations and national liberation struggles, big-power chauvinism, support for free trade and globalization, and inter-imperialist rivalry. This last threatens to bloom into all-out wars of redivision as the western imperialists attempt to retain their flagging positions and expand their spheres of domination.
We do not take this question lightly. On the one hand, China is a nation whose working class is oppressed and parasitized by western imperialism, and the western powers would give anything to reverse its development and neutralize the threat it poses to their current and former spheres of influence. However, we cannot ignore the principled criticism of long-established and inspirational parties like the CPP-NPA-NDF, or the CPI(Maoist) when they decry Chinese social-imperialism. We do not ignore revolts by Papuan villagers who storm Chinese-owned nickel-mines, or when Zambian workers rise up and murder their Chinese bosses, or when said bosses shoot and kill their striking Zambian workers. Nor can one easily ignore targeted killings in Balochistan by insurgents who purport to fight “the colonization of Balochistan” by Chinese corporations. No one could have missed the stunning turnaround experienced by the Sri Lankan government, from near-defeat to victory, in the war to suppress the Tamil national liberation movement. This turnaround was largely due to China’s military and financial aid. For the sake of its oil supply and future access to the Indian Ocean, the PRC joins the reactionary and expansionist Modi government in India in its support for former western puppet Aung San Suu Kyi and the Myanmar military’s ethnic cleansing of Rohingya.
Wars of redivision are just over the horizon, and at least in that regard the tasks of the small anti-imperialist movement based in the core countries has not and will not change. But as for the advent of rising imperialisms, we gain nothing by lying about the way the world truly is, and on that note, we thank the CPI(Maoist) for providing this report as a starting point for an investigation of the nature of Chinese social-imperialism, that a greater understanding of the balance of powers and the coming crisis might be reached.
We would also like to thank the comrades who translated the document, MIM comrades for giving feedback, and especially LOOP comrades for important edits. We hope the present piece is put to good use.
The Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement has undertaken this translation to better understand the position of one of the world’s foremost communist parties and to make it available to other comrades in English. It is unofficial and imperfect. Its quotations and data are, with a few very minor exceptions, checked against easily available sources. The footnotes in the original were for a non-western audience (clarifying what Wall Street is etc.) and were removed for brevity. All sums and statistics are rendered in western units from the Indian numbering system and may contain minor errors. Previously phonetically spelled names have been rendered in their common English variants, and the entire document has been edited for length while retaining the meaning of the text. We have been made aware of a purported English translation appearing in the days preceding publication of this version. We welcome many eyes on this question, and if the purported translation is official, we defer to it.
Revolutionary Anti-Imperialist Movement
September 2018
If you come across any spelling or translation errors, please contact us at
revolutionaryaim@yandex.com
Introduction
In its 9th Congress held in January 2017, the United Congress of the Communist Party of India (Maoist) (CPI-Maoist) decided to conduct a special study on emerging trends in social, economic, political, and cultural changes with regard to strategy toward capitalist-revisionist China. The Central Committee was authorised to execute this decision. As per the decision taken by the Central Committee during its 4th Conference, it considered mainly two things: the trends within China, and whether China has become a social-imperialist power. These were their two study points. After investigating, the Central Committee adopted the following thesis at its 5th Conference: “Today China has become a modern social-imperialist power, an integral part of the capitalist-imperialist world system, while also playing the role of antagonist towards the oppressed classes and people in general.”
The Marxist-Leninist-Maoist parties, groups and powers are in solidarity with the worker-peasant, suppressed, and other oppressed classes of society with the objective of world socialist revolution, marching toward a creative struggle to win over antagonistic imperialist China and end its conceptions of revisionism, social-imperialism, and obscurantism. Our two communist parties have two global responsibilities: to support the working class and to support its revolution. To accomplish these tasks, the social-imperialist nature of China must be exposed thoroughly. We must understand the process by which China transformed into a major and competent imperialist state among the imperialist nations of the world. We must also succeed in the process of segregating global alliances and enmities in accordance with the principles of international class divisions. We must evaluate ever-changing structural variations and their specific conditions prevailing in the world. Unless we study these aspects, we cannot understand modern wars, the politics of modern revisionists, and the incidental variations in the imperialist system.
Leninism holds that imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism – it is war, it is moribund. Imperialism affirms the rise of the socialist movement, and the 20th century has proven this. The Leninist theory of imperialism applies even today. War is the supreme tool by which imperialism divides and reorganises the world for its vested interests. Imperialism indulges in war for the sake of its monopoly on the world. It principally gains through war. Wars are inevitable so long as imperialism exists in the world. It penetrates into underdeveloped nations in the guise of neo-colonialism to continue its obsessive compulsion for loot. It sucks the blood of the common people and the oppressed, and it is the cause of their extreme misery and distress. “Modern wars are the result of imperialism,” said Lenin, time and time again. The two world wars in first half of the 20th century broke out among the imperialist countries as a contest to gain supremacy over the world by dividing and reorganising it. “The attempt to escape the new political and economic crises of the imperialist countries led to the last two world wars,” said Mao.
America has plundered the wealth of the world through imperialist war. It acquired windfall gains by selling weapons in abundance to countries who have engaged in war. In this way, America has become the imperialist superpower of the capitalist world. When America’s imperialist economic system incorporated a war economy, it focused only on wars. Hence, it orchestrated aggression and war. We can see this trend from Korea, Vietnam to Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria. War will continue so long as imperialism prevails. If we want to abolish war, we must eradicate the capitalist-imperialist system.
The cold war between the then superpowers of the US and the USSR had an impact on the developed and underdeveloped countries. This gave rise to wars directly or indirectly among them. From 1945- 1990, at the least 125 regional wars, civil wars, and armed conflicts led to the deaths of more than 40 million people, while millions more were victimized and displaced. The economic crisis that resulted in these countries because of imperialist war is greater than that of the crisis that caused the World War II.
Wars continued to break out during the 1990s. American forces waged treacherous wars in Honduras, Ukraine and in Egypt, and America fomented incessant armed riots. Military interventions by Britain and America’s other allies have led to the deaths of nearly 3.2 million Muslims. The wealthiest and the most secular country in Africa, Libya, was destroyed by America. Libya, which once warmly embraced migrants, is now being destroyed, displacing half its population. More than 1 billion people live in extreme poverty and suffer from malnutrition. Moreover, nearly 17 million people are dying due to poverty every year. Half of them are children. America is trying to cover the ever-increasing expansion and expenditure of Israel. Leaving aside the welfare of its own people, America is amassing more than 20 trillion-dollars in debts to pay the debts of Israel and massacre Muslims. America is directing trillions from its budget to do this, subjecting its own people to misery and thereby causing the deaths of more than 200,000 of its own people every year.
The imperialist riots unleashed in Syria with the intent to overthrow the government of Bashar Al Assad have led to the deaths of 500,000 people and another 2 million wounded or displaced. Moreover, millions of people were made homeless, migrating to neighbouring countries as well as some European countries. America destroyed many communities that had lived together amidst their shrines and holy places in brotherhood, peace, secularism and non-violence. The imperialist wars of aggression waged under the leadership of America on Afghanistan, Libya, Syria, Iraq and many other countries have caused countless deaths and injuries, destroyed countless homes, and forced countless people worldwide to migrate.
In order to secure the imperialist system and deceive the people of the world, imperialists and revisionists mislead the people in all possible ways with various fictions according to the changing scenery of the contemporary world. It is time to expose and mortify them. The contemporary political vengeance of imperialism is a predictable result of the capitalist economic system. Imperialism is extending its political machinery to suppress the people by implementing its fascist dictatorship far and wide. The stronger the repression, the stronger the resistance. The worker-peasant classes, the petty-bourgeoisie and other oppressed classes of society, even the endangered species, are relentlessly waging wars against Imperialism. Our party, the Communist Party of India (Maoist), is relentlessly striving to exterminate imperialism from the earth, to install communism, and to unite the oppressed classes and masses. Our party leads them and shoulders the responsibility to fight alongside them.
In light of China’s rise as a social-imperialist power, the present task is for all working-class parties around the world to develop manoeuvres to sustain themselves. Party leadership, on these principles, must gather the oppressed classes and people of their societies and lead them in the march towards socialism. This document was released by the Central Committee to elucidate how socialist China transformed into a capitalist and imperialist power and how to develop strategies to combat it. Let us study this document thoroughly. In the light of five inherent features and three special aspects of imperialism taught by the great Lenin, let us analyse and synthesise in the light of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism in order to build a correct scientific understanding of China’s social imperialist development.
Edited by pogfan1996 ()
Edited by trakfactri ()
After the advent of the New Democratic Revolution in 1949 in China, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), with the guidance of Mao, put forward the slogan “Three Years of Preparation, Ten Years of Planning.” As a result of this campaign, individual management in agriculture, crafts, capitalist industry, merchandise, and productive manufacture was basically wiped out by 1956. Collective agriculture came to predominate throughout the country. A new society took shape in China as a result of socialist construction. China’s New Democratic state became a socialist state. Progressive plans were focused mainly on consumer goods useful to the society rather than profitable products. Socialist China did not have any internal or external debts during this time. China was the centre of progressive socialist revolution at this time and was virtually the only country that remained free and independent from subordination under the spheres of influence of the then superpowers (the US and the USSR) and the capitalist-imperialist market system.
Relying on the policy of self-reliance, socialist China experienced a “Great Leap Forward.” Mass movements arose in socialist China under the slogan “Understand Revolution, Improve Production.” Socialist China brought forward and applied new slogans and concepts, such as developing agriculture and industry equally (“Walking on Two Legs”), class struggle with coordination, struggle for production, development of science and technology, development using native resources, and many more. Revolutionary changes occurred in industry, and standards of working-class and peasant living increased to a remarkable level. Unemployment was eradicated. Guaranteed work for all was introduced. For over a decade during the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution (GPCR), industrial production in China reached up to 13.5% per year. The speed of industrialisation in China at that time was more than remarkable. It surpassed the rates obtaining in Germany, Japan and the Soviet Union. Although there were a few disturbances by revisionists during the GPCR, growth in productivity continued. China saw an increase of 9.2% per year in coal, chemical and electrical production. Capitalist roaders including Liu Shaoqi, Lin Biao and Deng Xiaoping formed an anti-revolutionary trend, giving rise to internecine internal conflicts. Complex and sharp conflicts continued between revisionism and the theoretical perspective of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Modern socialist features matured in the GPCR, including in education, democracy, industry, agriculture, the struggle against patriarchal domination, in breaking down the inequality between men and women, healthcare, culture, and defence. In this way, the GPCR blasted the two bourgeois headquarters that belonged to Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao and prevented the restoration of capitalism.
Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the Chinese Communist Party built a substantial society through socialism without any social barriers among the people. Workers, peasants, women, students, intellectuals, and other oppressed groups in China laboured to transform their motherland into a modern industrial country, a country that could provide education and healthcare to all the people within the span of three decades. They transformed their country into the most progressive system from a social, political and economic perspective. The outstanding achievements of the people resulted in their country becoming the 6th largest industrial power in the world.
Yet there will continue to be opportunities for the bourgeoisie and other inhibitors of growth to arise and multiply, even in socialist society. The new bourgeoisie can arise in many places – production of essential commodities, money-exchange and distribution according to work, such as pay in 8 variable grades. Even with the bourgeoisie overthrown, means of production and money still exist; some peasants and petty-bourgeois classes retain properties. These become the foundation for small-scale production. Nascent capitalism can grow from these seeds by leaps and bounds. There remain under socialism basic differences between mental and physical work, agriculture and industry, working class and peasantry, towns and villages and different areas and communities. Backward factors such as hangers-on in culture, traditions, and practices then become bases for attacking the foundations of socialism, as all remain present in the superstructure. Resistors of socialist construction, revanchists and revisionists become a “holy coalition” with support from the external imperialist powers. Neo-bourgeois power-blocs arise due to growth in capitalist elements. To develop the productive
forces and superstructure in accordance with the economic base of socialist society, it is necessary to revolutionize the relations of production constantly. One of the prime duties of the dictatorship of
the proletariat is to create conditions unsuitable for the emergence of the neo-bourgeoisie to prevent it from gaining a foothold in the superstructure.
Exploiting these conditions, very few capitalist roaders who captured upper-level power in the CCP openly crafted schemes to restore capitalism in China. They implemented their revisionist “productive forces” policy both secretly and openly. The waging of internal struggles exposed capitalist conspiracies. Mao taught that revolution should continue until communism is reached. The great Chinese working class continued its cultural revolution in accordance with Mao’s call to “Break the Centres of Capitalism” for over ten years (1966-76) under the leadership of the CCP. However, after the demise of Comrade Mao followed by the leadership of Hua-Deng, the capitalist roaders in the state apparatus seized power by conspiracy and were successful in dismantling the GPCR. As previously mentioned, they were successful in installing capitalism in all spheres, be they theoretical, political, economic and cultural. They succeeded in their goal of changing the communist party into a revisionist party, working class dictatorship into bourgeois dictatorship, and it was an outstanding achievement on their part to install a capitalist state in place of a socialist state within the span of 3 years. In this way, the global proletariat met a formidable historical defeat by the restoration of capitalism in China.
Guyovich posted:They just kind of offhand dismiss the state-owned enterprises and assert they're indistinguishable from your standard profit-seeking private enterprises without any evidence.
this is why I'm also suspicious when people tell me that saudi arabia and qatar aren't socialist
Yet another front of the bourgeois war against the Chinese working class opened with the implementation of piece-rate wages. Piece-rate wages are the purest form of reactionary bourgeois self-discipline for the workers, who are now atomized into particular work units and individuals, and paid different wages for different outputs.
Piece-rate wages dominated production in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
88888 posted:this is why I'm also suspicious when people tell me that saudi arabia and qatar aren't socialist
Cute. As orthodox Marxist-Leninists we know all states are equal in action and character,
Guyovich posted:88888 posted:
this is why I'm also suspicious when people tell me that saudi arabia and qatar aren't socialist
Cute. As orthodox Marxist-Leninists we know all states are equal in action and character,
this reads to me like an offhand dismissal!
Guyovich posted:They just kind of offhand dismiss the state-owned enterprises and assert they're indistinguishable from your standard profit-seeking private enterprises without any evidence.
i mean they specifically talk about the consequences of reforms after the 15th national congress which specifically corporatised state-owned enterprises as joint-stock companies with asset restructuring for public offerings and managerial autonomy. you can argue against that but it's not an offhanded dismissal
Guyovich posted:Piece-rate wages dominated production in the Soviet Union under Stalin.
this was a progressive piece-rate system where compensation was specifically disproportionately higher than output, rather than straight piece-rate wages as i assume is being referred to. policy under khruschev transitioned away from progressive piece-rate to straight piece-rate
blinkandwheeze posted:this was a progressive piece-rate system where compensation was specifically disproportionately higher than output, rather than straight piece-rate wages as i assume is being referred to. policy under khruschev transitioned away from progressive piece-rate to straight piece-rate
Not sure if this is true. 1954 edition of Political Economy says a direct piece-rate system is the one most extensively used. It also says this:
In socialist society, the size of each worker’s earnings depends directly on the quantity and quality of his work. By securing increased earnings as output per unit of time increases, piece-rates encourage higher labour productivity. They stimulate full and rational utilisation of machinery, equipment, raw materials and working time, the introduction of technical improvements and the best organisation of work and production. Piece-rates also assist socialist emulation, since high labour productivity brings high earnings.
Marx's analysis holds true for piece-rate wages in capitalist society. But if we accept, for example, that the law of value operating in socialist society does not have the same characteristics as its operation under capitalism then I don't see why the same can't be true for other phenomena. This brings up another odd claim from the CPI-Maoist polemic: That the law of value was "reintroduced" as a consequence of reforms. Does that mean China from 1952 to 1976 did not engage in commodity production?
Guyovich posted:Not sure if this is true. 1954 edition of Political Economy says a direct piece-rate system is the one most extensively used.
as far as i understand it, progressive piece-rate wages were favoured in the 30s & during reconstruction immediately in the post-war period. i can't find any specific statistics but everything i've seen seems to claim that this was the norm throughout most of the stalin era. it seems that during the fifth five year plan in '51 direct piece-rate became more commonplace, but even in that period 35-40% of piece-rate wages were progressive, & a further proportion of the remainder would be piece-rate with bonuses. in any case i don't think this period can be generally understood as typical
your excerpt for the 1954 issue of political economy is a preamble to laying out the types of piece-rate wages including both progressive piece-rate & piece-rate with bonuses, so it's not just a defence of direct piece-rate over other forms
blinkandwheeze posted:your excerpt for the 1954 issue of political economy is a preamble to laying out the types of piece-rate wages including both progressive piece-rate & piece-rate with bonuses, so it's not just a defence of direct piece-rate over other forms
I didn't say it was. My point was just that piece-rate wages aren't per se the "purest form of reactionary bourgeois self-discipline."
it's pretty easy to conceive of an argument where an imagined Maoist could agree with such statements insofar as they refer to the progressive forms generally characteristic of the stalin era, while being critical of the later importation of taylorist direct-rate modes in soviet production
Guyovich posted:This brings up another odd claim from the CPI-Maoist polemic: That the law of value was "reintroduced" as a consequence of reforms. Does that mean China from 1952 to 1976 did not engage in commodity production?
also on this, i think you're missing a fairly fundamental point here -- if you read mao's commentary on stalin's economic problems, mao argues that commodity production exists under socialism without the determinative function of the law of value at all. this is one of the most significant points of mao's departure from stalin's perspective, which alleged that the law of value continues to carry a constitutive role under socialist productive relations.
obviously this is a contentious argument but it's not a weird or unclear one by any means
blinkandwheeze posted:this is one of the most significant points of mao's departure from stalin's perspective,
this is all going over my head a bit so if someone could just tell me which of mao and stalin to agree with about everything and which to cancel that would be great. thanks
blinkandwheeze posted:also on this, i think you're missing a fairly fundamental point here -- if you read mao's commentary on stalin's economic problems, mao argues that commodity production exists under socialism without the determinative function of the law of value at all. this is one of the most significant points of mao's departure from stalin's perspective, which alleged that the law of value continues to carry a constitutive role under socialist productive relations.
obviously this is a contentious argument but it's not a weird or unclear one by any means
I'm going sequentially through Economic Problems, Political Economy and A Critique of Soviet Economics so haven't reached that point in the debate. I'll amend my objection to a preliminary I Agree With Stalin and will reevaluate after finishing.
After the death of Mao, the revisionist, renegade Hua-Deng gang formulated a counter-revolution, deceptively strengthening their position in the party while waving the red flag. The Hua-Deng strategy was the continuation of the Liu Shaoqi-Lin Biao counter-revolutionary line. In this way they proved themselves devoted and covert followers of capitalism. Comrade Mao Zedong said: “The rise to power of revisionism means the rise to power of the bourgeoisie.” Indeed, in his time, the Soviet Union was “under a dictatorship of the big bourgeoisie, a dictatorship of the German fascist type.” Addressing these renegades during the period of GPCR, Mao identified representatives of the bourgeois class “who have snuck into the party, the government, the army, and various cultural circles” as “a bunch of counter-revolutionary revisionists. Once conditions are ripe, they will seize political power and turn the dictatorship of the proletariat into a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie.”
At first these revisionists cloaked their counterrevolutionary ideology in red to mislead the people theoretically and ideologically. They set about ideologically converting followers towards a restoration of capitalism. They used the services of the Deng gang’s capitalists, the Soviet capitalists, and both native and foreign anti-progressive elements. The Deng revisionist gang – theoretically, ideologically and politically bankrupt – published articles blaming the revolutionary values the people during for the GPCR for any and all misfortunes. The capitalist roaders claimed that the GPCR was an ultra-left error and repudiated it, denying its revolutionary character. All its values were repudiated, its gains reversed, which effectively ending the dictatorship of the proletariat in China. These traitors made many false accusations on the person of Mao Zedong. The Deng clique substituted pragmatism for Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought. Deng’s capitalist roaders resorted to atrocities, such as defaming Mao’s followers, scheming to prosecute them criminally, suppressing them, and even killing them. In this way the Maoists were unable to regroup and launch a counter-attack. The Deng clique published a number of articles and launched a campaign of reform whose technocratic watchwords were political stability, discipline, economic growth, incentives, skills, foreign technology, and unrestricted foreign investment. These were the bases on which the restoration of capitalism rested.
The capitalist roaders restored the bourgeois dictatorship by defending the rights of the bourgeoisie over all relations of production. In the words of Deng: “We must continue to combine economic planning with regulation by market forces. This should never be changed… The combination of planning and market regulation will be continued. The important thing is that we must never turn China back into a country that keeps its doors closed… And on no account must we go back to the old practice of keeping the economy under rigid control.” Conflicts inevitably arise in issues like socialisation of the product and the scale of private production. This becomes the prime conflict and gives rise to the following changes:
Unhealthy competition and conflict among the private producers leads to the poor becoming poorer and the rich becoming richer. This leads to disintegration of society and reintroduction of antagonisms between the people. The rich become capitalists who gain profits by the exploitation of labour. The poor sink to the state of workers, who must sell their labour. In this way, the “market system” was the means by which capitalism disseminated through the whole of society.
To develop capitalism, the means of production and labour power must be purchasable. Markets in means of production and labour power must be established. Means of production must be purchased by lines of credit and investment. In this way, a “socialist market economy” is a fiction. Hence, when the Chinese revisionists state that we need “reforms” to build a market economy, what is in mind are “reforms” to develop capitalism. The objective of these “reforms” is nothing but developing “capitalism with Chinese characteristics.” China implanted a phase of reforms from 1978-1989 known as the 1st Generation Consolidated Economic Reform. The reforms of the 1990s are referred to as the 2nd Generation Simplified Economic Reforms.
First Generation Consolidated Economic Reforms
Agricultural reforms began in 1979. Urban reforms were introduced in 1984 with the “Open Door Policy” for foreign capital. China joined the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank in 1980. Thus, the revisionists became partners in the world capitalist-imperialist system. China’s state-capitalist economy transformed into a monopoly-capitalist one by phases. As a result of immense privatisation and massive lay-offs, independent private capital sprouted like mushrooms after a rainstorm. Revisionist China re-introduced the rule of the law of value, that is, the economy became dependent on the market value of labour required to produce a good or service. These reforms gave way to exploitation and accumulation of capital which has had numerous effects on Chinese society. Multinational corporations (MNCs) entered China without restrictions. In 1982 there were 26,000,000 private companies in China, which grew to 58,000,000 by 1983. At this time, the World Bank approved a 20-year loan of 220 million dollars for the extension of railway lines.
The commune system in China was very strong. From the beginning, the revisionists in China used every means at their disposal to break the commune system at the grassroots level. The breakup of the communes became a boon to growing capitalism in China. With the excuse of “agricultural reform,” they uprooted the most equal sector of the socialist economy. To achieve this, collective management of land, agriculture, animals and agricultural tools were all banned and the contract system was introduced. Communal land was slowly transformed into private property, solidifying capitalism in agriculture. Industry, trade, mining, education, health, children and elderly welfare, entertainment and more were under collective management by the communes in socialist China. Capitalist policies were implemented in these sectors. The following reforms were declared in agriculture.
1. Agricultural communes and agricultural co-operative societies were liquidated. The state only upheld contracts to buy agricultural products from every farming family. Individual farming was re-introduced, which placed the responsibility for success or failure on individual producers instead of wards/villages.
2. Farming families were allowed to sell their additional produce, beyond that agreed upon via contract, on the local market. When the government began the campaign for free trade in food grains, there emerged private traders of food grains.
3. The duties of communes were revoked, including providing voluntary labour for government services and other related duties. They changed the name of the ward/village authority. In order to increase productivity and provide incentives, they increased prices on agricultural produce by 20%. Due to all these factors, inequalities in consuming village land, domesticating animals, management and means of production arose. Land use can be transferred as per the Constitution’s Amendment Act of 1988. Farmers were left at the mercy of market fluctuations. These left hundreds of thousands of farmers homeless. Hence, many farmers became “free” labour. According to one estimate, there were more than 150 million “free” labourers created in the immediate aftermath of the first generation reforms. These measures were used extensively to develop rural industry, private companies, and joint ventures between state and foreign capital. Local bodies imposed taxes on the peasantry to raise capital.
The “urban reforms” encapsulated three core features:
1. The monopolists of the coastal cities were empowered with the creation of the Special Economic Zones (SEZs). Existing restrictions were removed on small and middle-scale private business, foreign trade, and commerce operating in these zones.
2. A state-planned, consolidated economic policy ceased to exist. The main objective of running Revisionist China after the Restoration of Capitalism companies became profit for its own sake, orchestrated vaguely by indicative planning. Relations between firms and government policy were consolidated, forced into a framework of mutual support and co-ordination in socialist China, but now they could engage in virtually unrestricted competition in free markets.
3. Most importantly, finance and planning were reorganised to reflect and facilitate the new bourgeois dictatorship.
The revisionist Deng clique did not gradually phase in competition and phase out state control of consumer goods manufacturing. They destroyed the industries which played the most constructive role in state management. Qualified managers were selected through competition and not subjected to oversight. The government gave them rewards, increased or decreased their assets, and even awarded compensation depending on their ability. The management of enterprises by workers was unthinkable. Small companies under state management were sold to conglomerates and individuals. Some were even given back to their old owners.
As Deng said, “A market is not only for consumer goods or for policy, but also for elements necessary for production; for example, funds, workers, technology, information and real estate.” Revisionists implemented the following distribution forms right from the time of their first reforms (1979-89). They reintroduced the idea of interest on bonds, dividends to shareholders, bonuses for managers
who take risks, and incentives to firms that hire certain numbers of workers, and the concomitant state guarantee of such through violence.
The “Open Door” policy and the 1st generation reforms allowed the imperialists to plunder the labour of the Chinese people. Multinational corporations received the facilities they wanted. The state’s overall control over foreign trade was cancelled. The Chinese state granted permission to companies to manage foreign trade independently. China thus became an inseparable entity in the imperialist world market by transforming itself into a market for imperialist goods and by opening doors to their investment. Special rights were given to foreign companies to increase their profits. For example, the right to fix wages and salaries as they desired, the right to cut compensation and benefits to workers at will, and so on. They allowed nearly 1,860,000 companies to receive foreign investments totalling 150 billion by 1994.
These “Profit Partnership Agreements” began a trend local government officials and factory managers hunting for profits. This was commonplace in the Special Economic Zones. Chinese enterprises located in Taiwan, Hong Kong and other East Asian countries repatriated small investments, which led to a speedy development of small-scale business and industry in the country. The demand for labour in the private sector was fulfilled by the farmers from the peasantry who were betrayed by the agricultural reforms, and also by workers who became jobless due to layoffs and privatisation, thereby creating a large, exploitable reserve army of labour. Capitalist enterprises grew apace as the immense new fields of labour and investment opened to them. As a result, Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs) were developed on a large scale, which in turn caused the capitalist economy to grow by leaps and bounds, and market anarchy multiplied accordingly.
The central government ran massive deficits because of the Profit Partnership Agreements and the extraordinary giveaways to private industry. When deficits increased, loans were granted easily by the banks, which were not reformed to restrict increased inflation and resulting shortfalls in foreign trade. In response to increasing inflation, the government started paring back its investments in the state sector and tried to balance the situation. This was not only to save government investment, but also to help reduce the budget deficit. Because of this, there was a great fall in planned product quotas in the state enterprises. The government moved to approve the sale of a major part of their product on the open market. The market price for heavy industry products for the private sector were reduced. In order to rectify these imbalances, they introduced even more liberal reforms.
First, more “reforms” were introduced to make state owned enterprises (SOEs) even more profit-driven than they already were. Even more powers were granted to directors and managers to run their enterprises as they saw fit. They minimised the interference of party secretaries and the influence of politics in running the industries, ensuring that only bourgeois politics were in command. By introducing Profit Partnership Agreements, they increased the decision-making of management over investment and production. The government introduced a Product Based Pay Structure, relegating the existing National Pay Scale Structure to some select SOE managers. Time-based contract employment was introduced in the place of guaranteed lifetime work. Secondly, they tried to reduce control over government funds. A standardised taxation scheme was introduced. Taxation was fixed as a percentage of profits instead of fixed quota amount. And, finally, the banking sector was reorganised on the basis of centralisation.
Socialist China, under the dictatorship of the proletariat, confined compensation in its commodity economy to the eight pay grades. The differences in the eight pay grades were not great, but the
socialist state slowly reduced the differences in the pay scales. Though there were pay variations, there were many benefits, such as labour protections for workers, low rent residences, free health care, financial assistance for pregnant and postpartum women, compensation to workers in case of loss, different types insurances, pensions, entertainment facilities, schools and more. Begging, slums,
and unemployment were eradicated between 1949 and 1976. Later, the revisionists introduced many fraudulent reforms which resulted in the re-emergence of capitalism, and many of capitalism’s attendant maladies penetrated the lives of the people. The restoration of capitalism coincided with the dismantling of working class support structures. Harmful factors like poverty, unemployment, illegal hording of commodities, corruption, smuggling, prostitution, female infanticide, drug trafficking, human trafficking, robbery, rape, murder, grotesque beauty contests, and so on, were at their peak. The efforts to raise subsidies in order to motivate an increase in agricultural production within the country had aggravated the problems of inflation in the cities. If the government subsidises the food
supply, the budget deficit is increased. Otherwise, if there is a hike in food price, unrest in the cities rises, as the urban working class is already pressed between the high prices of consumer goods, the cost of living, and low wages. By the late 1980s, the increasing political and financial problems in the country led to a drag on enthusiasm for liberal reforms.
Along with the development of capitalist production relations in China, there emerged a small private capitalist class. There were 98,000 small private enterprises in China in 1990. Their total investment
was 4.5 billion yuan. This private capitalist class was not a part of the government and had no political power. It earned profits by exploiting workers the old-fashioned way. There are nevertheless conflicts between the autocratic state-capitalist class and the private capitalist class. The latter, in order to achieve a “free market economy” for all and to gain some political momentum, took up the slogan for bourgeois democracy. To achieve this free market economy, it needed a stable legal system, protection from the autocratic government, clear rights on private property, and pluralistic politics. The autocratic governing capitalist class amassed hundreds of billions of yuan in private property. It had full control over government property as a ruling class sanctioned by the Chinese Communist Party. The new ruling class used its political power to gain monopoly over profits and controlled the privileges of the private capitalist class. Hence, the private capitalist class demanded “democracy.” A minority in revisionist China supported this movement. The majority of Dengist leadership opposed this movement and sought to repress it. The consequence was the Tiananmen Square incident. Zhao Ziyang, who played a major role in liberal reforms, was toppled, and the reform process became more cautious.
Under the revisionist Deng clique, industry remained under state management, even after the thorough restoration of capitalism. Rather than impeding the restoration of capitalism, state ownership merely saw the transformation of all state enterprises into monopoly capitalist ones. As a part of the reforms in China, the state monopoly capitalist policy transformed into an old-style private monopoly capitalist policy. Thus, when China transformed partially into a regime of private monopoly capital, the capitalist-imperialist state eventually began to resemble to some extent that of imperialism in America, Europe and Japan. Similarly, when capitalist restoration took hold in the Soviet Union, it implemented state monopoly capitalist policy, and did not survive to transition to private monopoly
capital.
After the Khrushchev-Brezhnev wrecking crew conspired in the Soviet Union to seize the party and therefore state power, the Russian bourgeois privileged stratum expanded its political and economic authority on an ever-greater scale. This privileged class strengthened its status in the party, government, army, economy and the cultural sphere. This privileged class formed into a bureaucratic monopoly capitalist class and exercised its sole authority over social wealth and state machinery. It used its power to transform socialist management into capitalist roader management, the socialist economy into a capitalist economy, and a politics-first party-state into a state monopoly capitalist one.
Important internal factors, such as the integration and uniqueness of China’s “red” monopoly capitalist class, played a central role in repressing the Tiananmen Square incident in 1989. These incidents
proved that capitalism by its very nature is anti-democratic and oppressive. A capitalist-fascist system of control can only be imposed upon the working class by the repression of popular uprisings,
brutal violence, and the use of state power. The single-party state was still useful to Chinese monopoly capitalism, and repression paved the way for its solidification.
Second Generation Reforms
The Tiananmen Square incident and the disintegration of the Eastern Bloc – namely, Boris Yeltsin’s reforms were implemented to open the free market for the East European bourgeoisie, in league with the imperialist bourgeoisies of Europe and America – were a great shock to the revisionist Chinese Communist Party. It consequently began reorganising central control over the party and government, which had lost its grip on administration as a result of the first generation reforms. CCP leadership regained its control over the budget and re-inculcated financial stability under the aegis of the state. Deng introduced the second generation of reforms after visiting SEZs in South China in the summer of 1992. The expansion of SEZs to many more cities and provinces was the prime issue of these reforms. The ruling clique were now certain that capitalist reforms could be implemented without succumbing to the fate of the Eastern Bloc.
Foreign investment stood to reap a massive windfall on China’s cheap labour power and infrastructure. Multinationals were salivating to acquire state industries, while China began to outpace the economies of East Asia, due in part to the first generation reforms and greater labour productivity, but also because of the infrastructure and coordination built during the socialist period. China was able to provide local inputs and services as a result of an already strong industrial base, supplemented by its fully developed social and financial infrastructure.
Whether capital adhered to the rules or not, it was closely partnered to the party and state in the second generation reforms. Opportunities were relatively poor for foreign capital. If foreign investment wished to gain massive profits, they had to make agreements with the government. Since the economy was very strong, China was in a position to make a hard bargain with MNCs. China allowed only a few foreign companies, and even in those cases under certain conditions, to directly invest in productive forces such as heavy industry. Joint venture arrangements arose between state-held corporations and multi-nationals when the investments were large enough in scale. The state sought to use MNCs to benefit the Chinese economy, trading access to Chinese labour power for real infrastructure and productive forces. MNCs built modern plants with cutting-edge technology and provided the state capitalists access to western capitalist methods of organization and technical knowledge. Multinationals could even foot the bill for the required marketing, sales, and distribution networks to sell the products produced in such joint venture companies. Naturally, the capitalist state offered cheap and efficient labour power, labour residences, roads, communication networks and other economic infrastructure. The profits gained through these joint ventures were shared by the government and MNCs.
Foreign investment in China was initially small-to-middle grade, usually from Hong Kong, Taiwan and Japan. During the second generation reforms, the government, with a new accommodating attitude, gave provision to allow large-scale investment in more than one sector. As a result, Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in 1992 was a little more than 1 billion USD, whereas by 1994 it had increased to 50 billion USD. Export-oriented manufacturing industries grew rapidly due to the flood of FDI into the country.
This FDI flood brought many immediate benefits to the government and the state-capitalists. Firstly, the government was able to fill the deficit in its budget with massive new revenue flows from the profits of joint ventures. Secondly, as a result of FDI, exports increased slowly and transformed China’s trade deficit into a surplus. Thirdly, high-level positions in the state sector were opened in the joint venture companies. The diminishing industries run and owned by the state were soon reorganised to create an atmosphere more amenable to the capitalists.
Reorganising State Industries
The first generation reforms of the 1980s focused on small and middle-scale industries as well as agriculture. Central public sector industries were plagued by a lack of investment and thereby a decline in progress due the government’s focus on the expansion of town cooperatives, town-village enterprises, private business, expansion of industries, and so on. The government focused on the important state enterprises during the second generation reforms. The CCP in its 15th Congress of 1997 declared that it would reorganise the entire state sector. The main objective was to transform the popular State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) into profit-oriented corporations.
The first step in this reorganisation was the privatisation of small state-owned enterprises, mainly through the management or the trading of labour power in the form of privatisation. The second step was transforming the remaining state-owned enterprises into western-style joint stock companies. Some shares were sold to private investors on the newly-minted Chinese stock exchange, but most of them remained non-tradable shares. Generally, those shares were owned by various government bodies. As a result of this, in all the large-scale industries, the majority of shares were transformed into shares under state-owned enterprises. By separating ownership from management, as is the case in the West, these institutional reforms made it easy to start joint ventures with foreign investment. There was now a chance to modernise the companies and update technology, paving the way to the third step, “Corporatisation.” All state enterprises went over to a profit-oriented system, and the gains of the working class were all but reversed. The rights and privileges acquired by revolution and socialism were betrayed and forfeited to the needs of international capital by the bourgeois state. This phase represented the most intense stage in the capitalists’ war on the broad masses of China to date.
Private investment, massive layoffs and the upsurge of privatisation were the object of this reform. Layoffs were ruthlessly imposed as the law of value retook the entire public sector. According to CCP statistics, between 1998 and 2002 more than 25 million workers were terminated from public sector companies and cooperatives. In order to compete in the world market and boost exports, enterprises had to be “modernised.” This led to a tremendous increase in construction, while simultaneously laying off multitudes of workers. Another attack on the Chinese working class was affected by the replacement of the lifetime employment system by the contract system, wherein workers were expected to renew their contract every year on their own accord. In spite of workers’ long-time protest against this policy, government monopoly administration, fascist repression, and division amongst the workers all ensured the implementation of the policy. Yet another front of the bourgeois war against the Chinese working class opened with the implementation of piece-rate wages. Piece-rate wages are the purest form of reactionary bourgeois self-discipline for the workers, who are now atomized into particular work units and individuals, and paid different wages for different outputs.
The reorganisation drastically transformed the state sector. Most production moved to the private sector, which came to occupy 70% of GDP. The government share in the industrial assets of the public sector enterprises dropped from 68.8% to 42.4% between 1998 and 2010. At this time, employees were also reduced to 19.4% from 60.5%. The export share of the public sector industries was reduced from 57% in 1997 to 15% by 2010. The size of public sector industrial units was reduced by consolidations and lockout. Hence, thousands of industrial units were reduced to a minimum during 1990s. The World Bank encouraged this, commenting that: “Most entities have been corporatised and are run as for-profit enterprises. Budget allocations have been phased out and subsidies eliminated.” The World Bank congratulated the Chinese bourgeoisie on their profit rates and worker productivity.
Although the state-capitalist sector is relatively small, it plays a prominent role nonetheless. Fixed asset investments by China’s private enterprises in public sector enterprises are as high as 35%. It is interesting to note that 2/3rds of the top 500 companies in the world are public sector companies of China. All banks and insurance companies, including the shares of major public sector units and state-owned assets, are under a single commission authority: the State-Owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission (SASAC).
The revisionist ruling class continued to depend on oppressing and robbing the worker class, and this only intensified with the development of capitalist production relations in China. This public authoritarian sector changed slowly into a state-monopoly capitalist sector and finally into private monopoly. It was not always compulsory private assets or public assets (the people’s property) that needed to transform into private assets to develop capitalist relations. For in the process of capitalist development, members of the ruling class procured their private assets by the most dishonest means. The most important ways the bourgeoisie used to illicitly procure private assets from public assets (that is, under people’s management) in revisionist China during the 2nd Generation Reforms are as follows:
1. Buying and selling with monopoly power: According to experts’ statistics, 400 billion yuan per year in profits accrued to the bourgeoisie as a result of exploiting differentials in price, interest and exchange rates.
2. Illegal trade with monopoly power: They bought and sold shares in real estate and stocks instead of goods or services. Shares on the stock exchange are akin to speculative investments. They have values many times greater than that which they actually produce. Naturally, land has no value unless it is changed into a commodity, but once it is subject to the transactions of real estate markets, its value can skyrocket into the millions or billions of yuan. In this way, amassing wealth by illicit means and monopoly power is preferable to accumulating through sales and purchases.
3. Trade run by monopoly power: The number of private firms in China in 1992 increased to 420,000. This was 88.9% more than the previous year. All the new companies were run by public enterprises, while more than 60% of trade was run through the public sector. The Peoples Liberation Army (PLA) opened luxurious hotels, and factories under PLA management were used to produce refrigerators, pianos, TV sets, passenger aircraft, etc., on a large scale. There were sales offices in Shenzhen for more than 400 factories. The businesses that ran by absolute monopoly power were far more profitable than legitimate, private businesses.
4. Foreign investment: The Chinese state helped foreign investors to rob the people. The state monopolists gained super-profits through foreign investment, and foreign investors found many ways and means to avoid taxes, regulations, and trade restrictions. They tried to procure land at cheap rates, or even at no cost utilizing other privileges. To achieve this, they needed friends in the ruling class, and what better way as a foreign investor than to make individual state monopolists the beneficiary of your foreign investment? It just so happened that the top positions in the public sector were in the control of the sons and daughters of famous leaders in CCP. These individuals conspired with American and Japanese banks, and many other multinational corporations. Party, government and public sector enterprises were hand-in-glove relations without any differences among them. Government revenue and wealth was robbed on an enormous large scale by the ruling class. As a result, state revenues were met with serious losses. This was one of the prime reasons for the increased rates of inflation. To overcome inflation, revenues had to be increased and expenditures reduced. How did they increase revenues? By increasing the price of consumer goods. And in order to decrease expenditures, there is no other way besides cutting social welfare structures. A very small number of people amassed a very large amount of wealth at the expense of public property. That means, in the final analysis, the wealth built by the working class was robbed by the state monopolists and their new bourgeois allies.
Liberalisation of Trade – Joining the World Trade Organisation
The East Asian Crisis rocked Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand during the reorganisation of government enterprises in the 1990s. This represented the imposition of a new kind of capitalist policy, introduced by imperialist forces like America, Europe and Japan. These became known as the Asian Tigers. The imperialists tried to build a great wall against communism while reshaping the region in their own image. The Asian Tigers liberalised rules and regulations to those countries interested in investing in the form of loans. Western banks and investment funds ran to buy shares in Asian ventures and get their share of the Asian Miracle. At first, foreign investment led to a predictable boom. The rate of accumulation started slowing down with successive slumps in the demand for labour power. The miracle investment soon became a speculative bubble. Expected profits are not achieved through these speculative investments, so foreign investment found eventually came to its senses and moved to other countries. When they rushed to take back their investments and change them into US dollars, the currencies of the Asian Tigers collapsed in the face of the dollar. The Asian Crisis spread over the whole globe from 1997 to 1998. Global capital was afraid to invest in this kind of economy. With Latin America and Russia also in severe crisis, where to turn?
Though China had close relations with the Asian Tigers, it was able to emerge from this economic slump without much difficulty. The main reason for this was extensive government regulation of the economy. China was able to funnel foreign capital into true productive capital and avoid speculative bubbles. The state also strictly controlled capital flows in and out of the country, minimizing the risk of capital flight. There was no chance for foreign investors to take back their investments, that is, they could not recoup their capital from China even if there was a severe financial crisis. In this way, China was able to mitigate the financial crisis resulting from the collapse of the Asian Tigers.
But there was a steady decrease in foreign investment coming into China, particularly export-oriented investment. When China began the “Go Global” policy, it spurred FDI. For this reason, CCP leadership approved certain loss-oriented conditions in December 2001 and joined the WTO. As a result, the import tariff was reduced from 40% to 34%, lower than other important developing countries. At the same time, export subsidies were also cancelled. Backwards agriculture in China faced many problems as a result of the new liberal policy. WTO partnership limited the number of tools available to the Americans to isolate China. China implemented almost all the directions and recommendations of the WTO with regard to trade, the liberalisation of industry, and issues related to de-regulation. In a way, China determined the new global economic policy of America by becoming a member in the WTO. After the dot.com bubble burst, foreign investment entered China, which further solidified and reinforced its export-led economy. Hence, in 2004 China raked in unprecedented amounts of foreign direct investment. The Chinese ruling class achieved this position with the intention of dominating America and the other imperialist countries. China accepted the rules and regulations of the game and moved forward. China became an economic superpower. This transformation is only a conditional phase in a much larger process. This transformation will only increase the power of the Chinese government. China merged its huge stores of manpower with global investment, becoming a critical spoke in the wheel of global capital accumulation.
China’s economy grew quickly by intensifying capitalist policies, as per the second generation reforms of the early 1990s. Authority and control over state assets is the key in the development of the modern Chinese economy. Profits from public enterprises and increasing FDI made the state capitalist bourgeoisie comfortable enough to provide subsidies and incentives to exporters. Public investment, FDI and exports have become the three pillars of the successful export-led economy. China’s share in global GDP on the basis of FDI and exports increased by leaps and bounds. For example, China’s production was 4.1% of the world total in 1991, and this was increased to 14.3% by 2011. This made China the second largest economy in the world. At the same time, the US share by 2011 was 24.1%, which then dropped to 19.1%. The manufacturing sector had the strongest rise in the value of capital. China has now reached its zenith in terms of an economic sector of the world. The position of the US as the world’s main manufacturer, which it held for 110 years, is being challenged and replaced by that of China. One-fifth of world productivity came from China – 19.8% by 2011, whereas 19.4% came from the US. China has become the largest exporter in the world. It produces 50% of all cameras, 30% of air conditioners and TVs, 25% of washing machines and almost 20% of refrigerators. It also produces cars 20% above market demand. It reached up to 33% of its GDP in exports by 2003, at a value of 438.87 billion dollars. That same share was just 18% in 1996. Foreign investment funds exported a value of 240.34 billion dollars, representing 62.4% of the total exports of all companies.
The export value of manufacturing goods is at present 403.56 billion dollars. This is 92% of total exports. Of this, the value of high technology products is more than 110 billion dollars. Processing trade value is 241.85 billion dollars. This is 60% of total exports. The magnitude of China’s financial and export power is matched only by its lack of debt. China’s foreign debt was only 9.3%. Debts and services occupy only 2.5% of the Gross National Income of the country. At the same time, the other capitalist countries rely on China to purchase bonds and finance their debt and deficit spending. Hence, China is no longer dependant on any capitalist country. China, which had never robbed other nations to sustain itself, had by 2014 unquestionably transformed into a new social-imperialist power. As a result of super-exploitation, China has evolved into an imperialist power. The evolution of China as a global factory is not only strengthening global economic reorganisation, but also changing the dynamics of supply and demand chains in the global economy. It has become a hungry dragon for resources, from iron ore to natural rubber and other raw materials.
The Nature of Capitalism Never Changes
Though imperialism had been somewhat weakened by the drastic changes in the world after World War II, the epoch of imperialism has not ended. Mao said repeatedly: “We are still in a phase of imperialism and working class revolution.” The scientific analysis of Lenin, based on the fundamental principles of imperialism, is wholly valid and not outdated. The principles taught by comrades Lenin and Mao is the basis for our theory and practice. Marxism-Leninism-Maoism knows that imperialism is moribund. At the dawn of the world revolution, when imperialism is at its parasitic height, even then it will not go willingly out of this world. Imperialism can be eradicated permanently from the earth only when the oppressed classes and people of the world unite and make socialist revolution. But imperialism fights fiercely, crossing its own purported limits to survive, even when it is at the end of its life. That is the nature of imperialism.
We are now in the 21st century and living in the global revolutionary era. Our present world has been subject to many changes since the deaths of Lenin and Mao. The history of development unquestionably proved Lenin’s revolutionary principles correct and Marxism-Leninism-Maoism immortal. But history has its own twists and turns. The birth of Bernsteinian and Kautskyite revisionism after the death of Engels, the emergence of Khrushchev-Brezhnev revisionism after the death of Stalin, and similarly, Hua-Deng revisionism arose after the death of Mao. By 1956, under the leadership of Khrushchev, capitalism was restored in the USSR under revisionist Brezhnevite leadership, the Soviet Union transformed thoroughly into a social-imperialist power. Under the leadership of the revisionist Hua-Deng clique in China, capitalism was restored and the foundation of social-imperialist power was laid.
The present world scenario reminds us of the importance of implementing the following responsibilities:
Revisionism must be exposed and wiped out globally. The nature of the social-imperialist ruling class of revisionist China must be unfolded, we must centre the historical-materialist method, and if this is done then capitalist-imperialism and social-imperialism will fall. We should fight against imperialists, revisionists, and all kinds of resistors to progress to carry forward the movements led by the world’s workers, peasants, and oppressed masses.
For a decade, Marxists have struggled with the question of whether revisionist China has become a social-imperialist power, and for the answer to this question we must look to Lenin’s theory of imperialism. So, let us briefly, analyse Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Lenin explained thoroughly what imperialism is. Imperialism is a distinct phase in the development of capitalist.
Its nature is threefold: Imperialism means
1. Monopoly.
2. Parasitism and general decay.
3. Moribund capitalism.
The economic aspects of imperialism are fivefold:
1. The general victory of monopoly.
2. The formation of financial oligarchies that unite industrial and bank investment.
3. The primacy of capital export over goods export.
4. Formation of monopolies which split the world among themselves.
5. Accomplishing the division of the entire world among the different major capitalistic states.
This is the macro- and microscopic view of Lenin’s theory of imperialism. Now let us analyse in lightof Lenin’s principles.
pogfan1996 posted:The magnitude of China’s financial and export power is matched only by its lack of debt. China’s foreign debt was only 9.3%. Debts and services occupy only 2.5% of the Gross National Income of the country. At the same time, the other capitalist countries rely on China to purchase bonds and finance their debt and deficit spending. Hence, China is no longer dependant on any capitalist country. China, which had never robbed other nations to sustain itself, had by 2014 unquestionably transformed into a new social-imperialist power. As a result of super-exploitation, China has evolved into an imperialist power.
This feels like a superficial economic analysis and then a couple of statements that don't logically follow. Interested to see what the next section says.
So, big Mexico. Imperialism carves up the whole world between a core and the rest, with the core extracting superprofits and using that to develop and monopolize the most advanced technologies and enforcing an international division of labor by force. If you list the Chinese corporations that can compete on a global scale with those companies, the most advanced companies, then you have Huawei, but that's one company and then singled out and sanctioned to stop it from competing with the big U.S. tech firms.
Edited by sovnarkoman ()
https://cpp.ph/2019/08/25/to-the-filipino-people-unite-and-defend-the-country-build-a-national-patriotic-front-against-chinese-economic-encroachment-and-military-incursion/ posted:To the Filipino people: Unite and defend the country! Build a national patriotic front against Chinese economic encroachment and military incursion
Statement of the Communist Party of the Philippines
August 25, 2019
Over the past several years, Philippine sovereignty has been greatly eroded as a result of the sustained and systematic economic encroachment and military intrusion by superpower China. Since 2016, China has heightened efforts to strengthen its position and foothold in the country. It is accelerating its plunder of Philippine marine and mineral resources and is rapidly increasing its military presence within the country’s marine territory. China has succeeded in doing so through the collaboration of the Philippine government under Rodrigo Duterte.
The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) calls on all patriotic and freedom-loving Filipinos to unite, stand firmly and act with a deep sense of patriotism to defend the country’s sovereignty and national freedom against China’s intrusion and intervention. This call is of great urgency in the face of China’s high-handedness and outright disregard of the country’s territory, exclusive economic zone, environment, food security and people’s livelihood.
Economic encroachment and plunder
China has been conducting large-scale encroachment on Philippine marine and other mineral resources within the country’s exclusive economic zone (EEZ) and extended continental shelf (ECS). China has expressed outright contempt for the 2016 final ruling of the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA) which dismissed as baseless China’s claim of historic rights over the South China Sea and which recognized the Philippine’s EEZ and ECS under the UN Convention on the Law of the Seas (UNCLOS).
In disregard of the Philippine EEZ, China has stepped-up fishing activities in the West Philippine Sea. This is part of China’s state-funded distant water fleet operations across the world to serve its domestic demand and its export of fish and other sea food. Large-scale fishing operations by China is resulting in overfishing and a decline in fish stocks, specifically of high-value fish such as tuna and groupers. Chinese fishing vessels are, moreover, notorious for harvesting corals, sea turtles, giant clams and other endangered marine wildlife.
In April, it was reported that around 200 Chinese sea vessels were swarming around Thitu island in the Spratlys. Since February, at least 85 vessels have been seen anchored around Pag-asa island. Chinese vessels have also been swarming Kota and Panata islands. The presence of large numbers of Chinese vessels, reported to be carrying naval militias, intimidate and prevent Filipino fishermen from venturing out in these waters, thus, denying them of their source of livelihood. Widespread anger of Filipinos over the presence and encroachment of Chinese fishing boats in Philippine seas was sparked recently by the Recto Bank incident last June 9 when a Chinese fishing boat rammed a Filipino fishing vessel and left its 22 crew floating at sea.
Chinese fishing activities as well as land reclamation have caused widespread destruction of the marine environment, including corals which serve as feeding and breeding grounds for fish resources. In its 2016 ruling, the PCA found China guilty of destroying around 124 square kilometers of corals in the West Philippine Sea.
China has openly coveted the vast oil resources in the West Philippine Sea which it estimates to be worth as much as $60 trillion in reserves. It has put forward a 60-40 deal to share oil resources in the area west of Recto Bank, within the country’s EEZ. Duterte has quickly expressed willingness to approve such a deal. Considering the fact that the country has all rights over the area, such a deal is anomalous and utterly lopsided. The country can freely choose when, how and with whom to carry out the drilling of oil in the area ensuring that it serves primarily the country’s interests.
Without permission from Philippine authorities, Chinese sea exploration vessels were recently spotted within Philippine territorial seas, in all likelihood, searching for more resources to plunder.
Large areas and islands are being overwhelmed and practically taken over by China. This includes the 32-hectare island off Cavite which is planned to be developed as “POGO island” (Philippine Online Gaming Operations, where Chinese capitalists run gambling operations which are illegal in China and employ tens of thousands of Chinese workers who suffer from oppressive and exploitative conditions). It is also planning to “develop” the Grande and Chiquita islands off Zambales with $298 million worth of projects including 80 high rise buildings. A large Chinese company, meanwhile, is planning to transform the 70-square kilometer Fuga island in the Babuyan group of islands into a $2-billion “smart city.”
Earlier this year, the Duterte government granted a telecommunication franchise to a consortium including the state-owned China Telco, which would give the Chinese government access to Philippine communication facilities, a nationally strategic infrastructure. Another strategic infrastructure, the country’s electricity grid, is already partially controlled by the Chinese government through the State Grid Corporation of China.
Military incursion
Since 2015, China has built several military facilities in the West Philippine Sea in violation of Philippine sovereignty and the UNCLOS. The act of building and militarizing these artificial islands constitutes imperialist aggression. The military facilities occupy the Panganiban reef which was recognized by the 2016 arbitral ruling as part of the Philippine EEZ, as well as the Kagitingan (Fiery Cross) and Zamora reefs, which were adjudged part of international waters which no country can lay claim to.
China’s military facilities in the Spratly islands are described as “the most advanced of China’s bases” in the South China Sea. They include runways capable of landing Chinese bomber planes, hangars for at least 24 combat aircraft and four large planes, radars, high-frequency antennas and other communication facilities, missile shelters and launchers, lighthouses, multistory buildings and so on.
China has repeatedly displayed aggressive behavior over the military facilities issuing radio warnings and threatening consequences against Philippine and other vessels which have flown or sailed near these facilities.
China continues to maintain two Chinese Coast Guard ships around the Scarborrough Shoal (Panatag or Bajo de Masinloc) preventing Filipino fishermen from entering the lagoon to fish. There have been several incidents of Filipino vessels being driven away or boarded and their catch taken away by armed Chinese police. Panatag is within the Philippine EEZ albeit considered by the PCA as a traditional fishing ground of Filipino and Chinese fishermen. Duterte claims he had an agreement with Xi Jinping that Filipino fishermen will be “allowed” to fish in the area but has failed to demand the withdrawal of the Chinese coast guard nor has he acted decisively against Chinese violations.
Over the past few months, at least eight Chinese war ships, including aircraft carrier Liaoning , have sailed without due notification through the Sibutu Strait, an international sea lane that is within Philippine territorial waters. This clearly undermines Philippine territorial rights. In violation of international sea protocol and display of disrespect for Philippine territorial waters, Chinese war vessels have turned off its lights and automatic identification system in order to avoid detection which typically indicate non-friendly intent.
Collaborator
China has been able to strengthen its economic and military power in the Philippines with the collaboration of the Duterte government since 2016. Duterte has openly declared his fealty to China in exchange for $19 billion secret loans to fund large-scale infrastructure projects which absorb surplus steel and cement from China. Duterte has repeatedly proved himself a traitor to the Filipino people.
In 2016, kowtowing to Chinese powers, Duterte set aside the final ruling of the PCA which dismissed China’s “nine-dash line” claim. Duterte raised no protest against China’s building of military facilities in the Spratly islands. He has practically surrendered to China’s control and “possession” of the Panatag Shoal. He has raised the spectre of a losing war to justify his refusal to undertake political, diplomatic and judicial courses of action to more firmly and vigorously assert Philippine sovereignty and sovereign rights.
Officially, the Duterte government has merely issued tame and sham diplomatic protests which have been largely ignored by China. Invariably, Duterte has toed the Chinese line to exonerate China of incidents of intrusions which violate Philippine sovereignty. He has failed to castigate China for having its war vessels and survey ships non-innocently pass through Philippine waters.
In just two years, Duterte has visited China four times. Each time, Duterte and his large retinue of big business friends, politicians and family members have received imperial treatment. Business deals and state agreements have been forged. Most of these deals have been kept secret. Duterte is set on going to China a fifth time this month where he is set to commit ever greater acts of treachery. He has announced plans to raise Philippine rights as recognized by the PCA. The mendicant Duterte, however, is merely putting up a purposeless drama to overstate his importance as he has already prejudicially declared he could do nothing if China insists on refusing to recognize the ruling.
Among the loan agreements which have been exposed indicate onerous terms of payments with interest rates set at 2-3 percent (as opposed to 0.25% to 0.75% interest rates of Japanese official development assistance). The absence of transparency in the forging of these deals strongly suggests high-level and large-scale bribery similar to that received by Arroyo in the 2007 NBN-ZTE deal by big Chinese monopoly bureaucrat capitalists.
Duterte and his cohorts have strong ties with the Chinese Triad drug syndicates. While Duterte mounted the so-called “drug war,” the supply of shabu from China in the country continues to rise. Smuggling is handled by Duterte’s military appointees in the Bureau of Customs whom he has praised for “knowing to follow my orders.”
Duterte’s mendicant and doormat policy has emboldened China to carry out more aggressive encroachments and intrusions in the country.
Duterte’s security and defense officials have been increasingly vocal in raising concerns over China’s military build-up and how its military posture, though described by China as defensive, can easily be turned offensive. They have denounced China’s bullying. They are also wary of China’s encroachments in the surrounding islands which can be used as an offensive springboard. The rising number of Chinese nationals (last year numbering 1.2 million tourists and 200,000 with work permits) has also been described as a national security concern.
The country’s national security is also set to be undermined by the entry of state-owned China Telco and Huawei Technologies Co. which plan to dominate and control the country’s communication infrastructure through its dummies (Dennis Uy and others).
Security concerns raised by the AFP are mostly reflective of increasing US wariness over rising Chinese influence in the Philippines and South China Sea. Although subservient to the US, dependent on the US military and serving its hegemonic aims, Philippine defense officials invoke questions of sovereignty in the hope of winning the support of the people.
To the Filipino people
It is the patriotic duty of every Filipino to fight for the country’s national sovereignty and territorial integrity as long as the Philippines remains a semicolonial country, whether under US overall imperialist dominance, or whether China displaces the US by any degree or whether these two imperialist powers collaborate to keep the Philippines a nominally independent country.
In the face of heightening Chinese economic and military expansionism, the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) calls on the Filipino people to unite and valiantly resist China’s intrusion and encroachment on the Philippines. This forms part of their overall struggle to achieve genuine national freedom and social justice.
This is of great urgency as the country’s sovereignty is further being eroded by China as it challenges US imperialism for dominance in the Philippines and the rest of Asia-Pacific.
This struggle must aim to regain full sovereign control of the West Philippine Sea and all the resources within the country’s EEZ. Demand China to withdraw its Coast Guard vessels from the Panatag Shoal so that Filipino fishermen can freely fish in the area, together with Chinese fishermen.
The Party urges the people to call for the dismantling of all Chinese military facilities in the Spratly islands and demand the withdrawal of all Chinese forces from these artificial islands.
The Filipinos can demand China to pay a $105 billion remuneration for the 124 square kilometers of damaged corals caused by their land reclamation (in the same way that the US was made to pay $1.97 million for damage caused by the USS Guardian to 1,000 square meters in Tubbataha Reef in 2013) and at least $70 billion in back rent for the years of illegal occupation of sea features in the Philippine maritime territory and EEZ (in the same way that the Philippines demanded the US in 1988 to pay rent for the US military bases). They can demand China to be subjected to the pertinent UN bodies and have its assets in the US seized in favor of Philippine demands. China’s liabilities of more than $175 billion owed the Philippines are indeed far greater than the onerous loans it has extended to the Duterte regime.
Furthermore, the Filipino people can demand China accountability for the Recto Bank incident and push for the removal of all Chinese fishing vessels from the country’s EEZ. Seek a stop to China overfishing and an end to the large-scale catching of endangered marine wildlife. Demand a stop to the display of force by Chinese war vessels in Philippine seas. Demand a stop to China’s exploration activities within the country’s territorial waters and EEZ.
Demand that the terms of all loan agreements with China be made public and call for the cancellation of those deals that are detrimental to the interests and welfare of the Filipino people. Call for a revocation of the franchise granting state-owned China Telco license to operate a telecommunication company in the Philippines. Demand a stop to the environmentally destructive infrastructure projects such as the Chico River and Kaliwa dam projects, as well as to large-scale mining of black sand and other minerals.
Unite to raise the country’s flag as a symbol of the national struggle and isolate Duterte’s government of national treachery. Duterte’s betrayal of the national interests will cause his further isolation. Call on all patriotic forces in the government, including those in the military and police, to act in consonance with the people’s cause.
The struggle to wrest back control of our seas–the country’s territorial waters and EEZ, is currently one of the crucial battlegrounds. Thus, the Party exhorts all Filipino fisherfolk and fishing boat operators to unite and act in large numbers and be at the forefront of this struggle. The collective actions of the Filipino fisherfolk must be supported by every Filipino patriot.
The Filipino people must draw international support for their cause. They must call on the Chinese people to support the Filipino people’s resistance to defend sovereignty against affronts by their repressive and expansionist regime. They must encourage all peoples and their governments to give all forms of support–diplomatic, political, legal, moral and material, to the struggle of the Filipino people to get back their seas from China. However, they must declare firmly and clearly, that this is primarily a fight of the Filipino people. They must forewarn any country against military interference. China’s military power, no matter how big, will prove ineffectual in the face of a united Filipino people.
The Party challenges the Filipino young intellectuals to serve as the beacon of Filipino patriotism and be the force of nationalist rebellion against foreign intervention. Study and popularize the writings of the stalwarts of Filipino nationalism and help unite the Filipino people. Go among the millions of people to inspire and militate them to act and rise up as one.
The Party must be at the vanguard and core of the Filipino people’s struggle wrest back their seas and resist Chinese violations of the country’s sovereignty. The Party must take lead in uniting the entire people into a broad national patriotic front.
The Party must expose the Chinese government as an imperialist government. The thin veil of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” can no longer conceal the brazen acts undisguised imperialism including outright grabbing of features in the EEZ of the West Philippine Sea and building of military facilities in the artificial islands.
The Party must expose and denounce China’s drive to control spheres of investments and influence, as well as trade routes, sources of raw materials and cheap labor which result in national oppression and violations of sovereign countries. It must expose China’s aggressive export of surplus capital in the form of loans and foreign investments which overwhelm and dominate underdeveloped countries such as the Philippines. The Party must expose the global crisis of capitalism and the rising economic and military conflict among imperialist powers which is rapidly accelerating onto open conflict and wars.
The Party must link the struggle against China’s incursions and encroachment to the Filipino people’s struggle for national and social liberation. The prevailing semicolonial and semifeudal system in the Philippines has made it vulnerable to Chinese expansionist policy. Under several decades of US neocolonial rule, the Philippines remains backward economically and dependent militarily. US domination in the Philippines has made the country vulnerable and susceptible to Chinese drive for imperialist domination.
The Party must rouse the Filipino people to fight as a single-minded patriotic force against China’s drive to dominate the Philippines. A united Filipino people will serve as a strong force to defend and uphold national sovereignty. The Chinese giant will prove no match to the resilience and correctness of the Filipino people’s patriotic cause.
Bureaucratic monopoly capitalism and private monopoly capitalism are in power in China. The ruling class of China regulated the authority of foreign monopoly enterprises on its economy even though the investments came mostly from the imperialist Western nations and Japan. The ruling class of China developed government and private monopoly enterprises, and State Owned Enterprises (SOEs) were officially under government management, but they functioned like private corporations in national and international markets. That means they were like ordinary MNCs and TNCs. The state and the Communist Party of China have more impact on private corporations than that of other imperialist countries in the world because most of the managers and owners of these private corporations are themselves members of the CCP. Similarly, the bureaucratic class and private bourgeois class were inseparably associated together. One-fifth of private industrialists were CCP members by 2002. Two-thirds of them are “Red Investors.” The biggest “Red Investors” of China are now on the Forbes billionaire’s list.
The foremost private monopoly enterprises in China have become global players, and if we analyse the progression of monopoly enterprises in China when compared with the largest corporations in the world, we find that China occupied the 3rd rank among the largest and the most powerful companies in Forbes’ Global List in 2000. China has 121 companies on the list whereas 524 companies belonged to the US. The average profit of these 121 companies was 168 billion dollars, which is 7% of the Gross Profit Margin of the 2000 largest companies in the world.
The Fortune Global 500 is yet another index, and it utilizes different standards for assessing the biggest corporations. We can find China’s share continuously increase with the same dynamic on this list as well. Three of the ten largest corporations (super monopolies) in the world belonged to China. These are Sinopec Petroleum Corporation, China National Petroleum and the energy giant State Grid Corporation. China has already surpassed Japan if we merely observe the top 500 corporations in the world in 2000. Today, Japan ranks behind China. Among these top 500 world corporations, America has 132, China has 73, and Japan has 68, whereas France and Germany both have 32. China’s share in exports in the world’s premier production is increasing at a fast pace. The top position of America as an imperialist nation is steadily weakening. Out of 500 companies in the Fortune Global Index in 2000, the 197 companies that belong to America dropped to 132 by the year 2012.
Many corporations in China are run by foreign capital. Some doubt that China’s exports are under the control of MNCs. In fact, the export percentages of the enterprises run by foreign capital are slowly limping towards bankruptcy. According to 2012 statistics, the export percentage dropped down to more than 50%. The exports of the companies which were under private ownership were increased to a maximum of 21.1%. So now in China the private companies that are locally owned occupy a larger share in the export market.
In fact, according to China’s statistics, the enterprises regarded as being run by foreign capital are not really run by foreign capital at all. Companies catered by Hong Kong – part of China since 1997 – are also considered in these appraisals of “foreign” capital. Hong Kong is the single largest entry point for Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in China. For example, FDI that entered China from Hong Kong deposited 456.2 billion dollars (41% of the total) by 2010. Compare the FDI deposited by America by 2010 was only 78.7 billion dollars (7.1% of the total).
There is a myth that powerful countries like the US, Britain and Germany dominate the economy of China. This is false. The accumulated FDI that is added from all the countries like America, Britain, Germany, France and Japan was only 197.4 billion dollars in 2010, not even equal to half the FDI from Hong Kong. Similarly, some investment (as per the statistics) coming from Taiwan, South Korea, Singapore and even from tax havens such as Macau also make up a substantial portion. But we cannot consider that these sums “dominate” the Chinese economy in any way. Thus the claim that the Chinese economy is primarily invested in and controlled by the Western powers is totally wrong. For the first time in Chinese history, the number of millionaires reached two million in 2013. Among these 251 tycoons are dollar billionaires. There were only 15 billionaires six years ago. Among these, half of them are shareholders in different companies, investors in real estate, or high-level executives. Most of China’s super-rich are private businessmen.
China is home to fewer wealthy persons than its other imperial rivals. According to Cap Gemini in 2012, China is the fourth wealthiest country behind the US, Japan and Germany. Yet China’s monopolies are the most powerful, with unquestionable direct control in their sectors. Thus, China has not only grown into a social-imperialist power – it has much more room to further develop than the West.
More Profit Margins
Exploitation and super-exploitation are the motive forces of the Chinese imperialist system. The presence of organised, centralised, fascistic and bureaucratic state enterprises enabled China to exploit working people mercilessly and oppress revolts against exploitation. Its imperial capability arose as an outgrowth of super-profits accrued by the exploitation of Chinese labourers, as well as aiding in the super-exploitation of the Chinese people by foreign capital. This is the mystery behind the “Chinese miracle.” China’s monopoly capitalists have become more merciless. The government of China has successfully transformed the power of its working class, once the predominant political power in the state, into a commodity by maintaining a reserve army of labour via layoffs, reorganising and minimising the government sector, and nurturing the private sector parallel to the government sector. The policies of the socialist period under Mao Zedong, based on slogans including self-reliance, discipline, undeterred sacrifice, overcome pains to serve to people and the country, also played a major role in paving the way for the monopolists and making the super-exploitation of the working class achievable.
The extreme poverty in rural regions, coupled with available sources of employment in the towns, drove the young peasantry to migrate to the cities. The ex-farmers or peasant youth who moved to the towns are called migrants. “Migrant” is a word mostly used for people who migrate from one country to another country, but in China the term refers to people who have moved from the countryside to the cities. The workers who moved to towns from villages did not gain secure residences, education, health services, any recognised jobs, or even social security. Their living conditions were miserable. They used to take shelter in dilapidated houses, tents, tunnels, under the bridges and even in the trunks of cars. Very soon they became an important resource for super-exploitation by capitalists. According to China Bulletin, some 200-300 million workers migrated from the countryside to the city. Among them, more than 140 million used to work in towns. More than 40% of the population of Beijing were migrant workers at one point. These migrant workers were and are usually thrown into dangerous or low-wage jobs. Migrant workers make up 58% of the industrial workforce and 52% of the service workforce. The huge numbers of migrants, their uncertain legal and social position, and their vulnerable economic situation gave rise to a large, unorganized working class susceptible to super-exploitation. According to official statistics, in the towns 30-37% of workers are unionized in the first decade of 21st century.
The real source of the wealth of the Chinese monopolists is the super-exploitation of the working class, the paying of wages below the value of labour power. Foreign companies also ruthlessly exploit the Chinese workers. The declining situation of Chinese workers is shown by their falling share of the national income. The industrial worker’s wage share in 1983 was 57%, whereas in 2002 it was 52.3%. In 2005 it continued to drop to 37%, and by 2008 it was only 26.2%.
Dong Tao, a banker and analyst, published statistics of the rate of exploitation of manpower in China for the last two decades. The total share of remuneration in the industrial sector was less than 10%, whereas at the same time this was more than 50% in developed countries. It is very interesting to note that not only did labour remuneration fall, the profit rate dropped as well from 240% to 43% in the government sector and mega-industries in China from 1993 to 2004. It became mandatory to exploit the working class in order for China to sustain itself as an imperialist power. If China wishes to compete with other imperialist powers such as America and Japan, it has to move its factories to backward countries. It must exploit the labourers of the world as well.
tears posted:i thought to put this here as a companion to what the op is posting
how did they manage to write all this without a single mention of the US 🤔