The Regime in China (1976)

From the December 1976 issue of the Socialist Standard

Events have moved rapidly, and sometimes bewilderingly, in China since the death of Mao Tse-tung. However it can now be said that some degree of stability has been reached among the top echelons of the “Communist” Party and state apparatus, with the confirmation of Hua-Kuo-feng as the new Chairman and the arrest of the so-called radical “gang of four” including Mao’s widow Chiang Ch’ing. The personal in-fighting and struggle for power have had undeniably sordid aspects, with each side claiming to be the true successors to Mao’s line, but it seems that the "moderates” have won a conclusive victory.

The radicals, whose power base was China’s largest city Shanghai, had earlier this year been strong enough to achieve the dismissal of Teng Hsiao-p’ing, formerly purged during the Cultural Revolution but since restored to favour and indeed appointed Vice-Premier. Now the same fate has befallen the gang of four: they have been accused of having been over-ambitious and of making an attempt to seize power, of having been “ultra-rightists” who plotted to “restore capitalism”. It is reported that they are at present being closely questioned as to their “anti-party” activities, which allegedly stretch back over a great many years.

This is what always happens when a top Chinese politician falls from power: he or she is immediately depicted as a blackguard of the worst possible sort who has for years — undetected, apparently — been plotting counter-revolution, opposing Mao’s policies and trying to betray China’s interests abroad. Sometimes the charges are just plain ludicrous, such as that Chiang Ch’ing tried to have her husband moved as he lay desperately ill, against doctor’s orders. It has not yet been explained, though, how she managed to trick Mao into marrying her.

Right from the early days of the CCP, leaders have been removed and then calumniated. Ch’en Tu-hsiu, for instance, was the Party’s first General Secretary, in 1921. But in 1927 he was dismissed, as a scapegoat for the disastrous failures of Stalin’s policies, and is now stigmatized with perhaps the worst swearword of all, “Trotskyist”. His successor was Ch’u Ch’iu-pai, whose name is also anathema in China nowadays. Right down through the anti-Japanese war and since the conquest of power in 1949, Party and state leaders have been cast aside and denounced as "rightists” and “counter-revolutionaries”. Only a small number of top leaders, such as Mao and Chou En lai, survived unscathed. It is almost more secure to be a football manager than a top member of the Chinese ruling class!

What is the exact nature of the disagreements thus revealed? Has the CCP really been consistently unlucky in the men it has appointed to high office, that so many of them have been secret enemies of the Party line? Sometimes issues of policy genuinely are at stake, at others it is merely a matter of personal conflicts and opposing power-groups — though the victors will dress the latter cases up to look like the former. But the policy differences do not concern “left” versus “right”, “the mass line” versus “counter-revolution”, instead they represent different views on how best to develop capitalism in China. It is quite natural that within Chinese ruling circles there should be disagreements as to how much emphasis state plans should give to industry and agriculture and to the various sections of these, as to the importance of material incentives in the wages system, as to the role of literature and art, and as to how best to pursue China’s interests in foreign policy. In China these differences are argued out in vague references in newspapers and journals, and behind the closed doors of the Politburo and State Council. Normally the losers will submit, but sometimes they will fight and matters will be brought to a head. But all sides in the disputes are concerned with the development and planning of a modern capitalist system and with the most efficient exploitation possible of Chinese workers and peasants.

It is these very peasants and workers whose support for the new leadership is at present being sought — apparently with success, for even in Shanghai there have been demonstrations against the gang of four and less important “radicals” in the city’s administration. One significant indication of Hua Kuo-feng’s consolidation in power is that portraits of him are now being distributed throughout the country — it will be interesting to see if these replace or stand alongside the ubiquitous pictures of Chairman Mao. The leadership tussles having been decided over their heads, the workers are presented with the face of their new master.

It is high time that the workers of China and all other countries realized that whoever rules over them will continue to serve the interests of only one section of society, the capitalist class. In Socialism there will be no ruling class and no working class, just free and equal human beings who will run society’s affairs communally and democratically. Socialist society will serve the interests of all.

Paul Bennett

Chinese ‘Marxism’: Not Even Trying (2017)

From the November 2017 issue of the Socialist Standard

China has been run on supposedly Marxist lines for nearly seventy years, yet nowadays its rulers do little more than pay lip service to the idea that there is anything Marxist about the social system there. ‘Socialism with Chinese characteristics’ is the standard official description of the wages-prices-profits set-up that is really one form of capitalism.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) was founded in 1921. Last year at a conference held to mark its 95th anniversary, Xi Jinping, general secretary of the party’s Central Committee, gave a speech. Xi, who is also the country’s president, argued that Marxist principles had to be adapted to what was happening in China. ‘The changes in the times and the range and depth of China’s development are far beyond the imagination of classical Marxist writers,’ he said. Certainly Marx never envisaged socialism as a society with billionaires, or as one that protected the trademarks of multinational companies, but that is not what Xi had in mind.

According to the CCP’s constitution, the party is based on ‘Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the important thought of Three Represents and the Scientific Outlook on Development’. But as for what these actually mean, there is very little information. For instance, the Scientific Outlook on Development supposedly ‘puts people first and calls for comprehensive, balanced and sustainable development’, while ‘Mao Zedong Thought is Marxism-Leninism applied and developed in China’.

China’s constitution, adopted in 1982, states that there are no longer exploiting classes, but that class struggle will continue for some time.  According to Article 6 there is socialist public ownership of the means of production, and the principle of ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his work’ applies.

A 1988 amendment added that ‘The State permits the private sector of the economy to exist and develop within the limits prescribed by law.’ This was an official recognition of the growing influence of the non-state economy, with the establishment in effect of a mix of state and private capitalism (not stated in such terms, of course). In 1999 a further amendment accepted the existence of a variety of modes of distribution, so not just to each according to their work: again, no details, but perhaps an implicit acknowledgement that some people became very rich through exploiting others.

As for Deng Xiaoping Theory, this is the idea behind China opening up to the global economy and to the growth of private capitalism. Deng’s statement that ‘It doesn’t matter whether a cat is white or black, as long as it catches mice’ was a way of saying that economic success is more important than a politically correct policy. Xi Jinping is often seen as overseeing a return to ‘Communist orthodoxy’ compared to his predecessors as leader, but this does not go beyond platitudes such as ‘Marxism … does not end the truth, but opens the door and paves the way to reach the truth’.

In October 2015 a ‘World Marxist Congress’ took place in Beijing, intended to be the first in a series to be held every two years. Four hundred supposed Marxist scholars attended, many from outside China. Xin Xiangyang, described as ‘a research fellow on Marxism at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences’ stated that ‘China faces an increasing number of problems in the midst of its economic slowdown and deepening reform, such as corruption and the growing income gap, which require the country to use Marxism to explain and solve them.’ Presumably these are unlikely to be explained as being part and parcel of capitalism.

Not everyone in China was impressed by the gathering. According to the WashingtonTimes (15 October 2015), some people suggested that Marxism be used to study the murderous Great Leap Forward and Cultural Revolution.

‘Marxism’ is taught in schools at all levels, but presumably this is just a Chinese version of Bolshevism. The rulers of China hardly even pretend that there is anything Marxist about the exploitative and unequal society they lord it over. 

Paul Bennett

China — Hu departs (1987)

From the March 1987 issue of the Socialist Standard

The student demonstrations which began in various parts of China in December have culminated in the resignation (which means dismissal) of Hu Yaobang, General Secretary of the "Communist" Party. It is clear, though, that top political bosses are not sacked because of a few thousand demonstrators, and that there has been a power struggle behind the scenes in Beijing.

The students demonstrated under the banner of "freedom and democracy". For some this meant a proper system of elections to local political bodies, for others a multi-party political system, while for yet others it was just a slogan with no specific content. Wall posters went up at university campuses, attacking Party leaders. The government warned that sticking up such posters was illegal and banned all demonstrations that did not have official permission. On New Year's Day, several thousand students flouted this ban and demonstrated in the main square in the centre of Beijing; two dozen students were arrested. Later the same day, students returned to the square and obtained the release of those arrested earlier.

Despite this climb-down, the government tried to discredit the student movement by pointing out that only one per cent of the country's students had been involved and claiming that these had been misled by agitators who were not even students. A factory-worker from Shanghai was arrested for founding a new political party. Academics who had supposedly encouraged the protests were attacked in the press, especially Fang Lizhi, deputy head of a college in Hefei. Despite the evidence of some more general support — Beijing bus passengers cheered the marching student demonstrators — it clearly was very much a minority movement. confined to a few big cities and with vague and sometimes contradictory aims.

It is hardly likely, then, that Party leaders really had anything concrete to fear from the student movement. It was on a much smaller scale than previous activities along such lines, like the Democracy Wall events of 1978-9. One Shanghai poster harked back to the late seventies and showed that the memory of past dissent and struggle lingers on: "If you want to know what freedom is, just go and ask Wei Jingsheng." (Wei was jailed in 1979 for writing a long wall-poster attacking the Communist Party). What seems to have happened is that the demonstrations were seized on by some members of the top leadership as a pretext for attacking their opponents.

Since 1978, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping, the Chinese economy has undergone major changes. Main reforms have included setting up a large number of joint ventures with other capitalist countries, greater powers for factory managers to fix their own prices and products, and opening the way for individuals to make large private fortunes. Generally, there has been a rejection of the old Maoist emphasis on centralisation, national self-sufficiency and narrow political dogma. The fundamental nature of Chinese capitalism has not altered at all — society remains divided into haves and have-nots — but some members of the ruling class have long objected to the new policies, on the grounds that they opened doors to such dangerous notions as freedom of speech, democracy and decentralisation.

It was these "conservative'' leaders who used the student demonstrations to attack the economic reforms as being responsible for the unacceptable demands for democracy to be extended. The government's giving way to the students on New Year's Day was seen as an unmistakeable sign of weakness. Although Deng had apparently at first encouraged — or at least supported — Fang Lizhi's remarks, he was able to deflect the attacks onto Hu Yaobang. Though very much Deng's man, Hu has never really presented himself as an outspoken advocate of reform. He turned out, however, to be primarily a Deng loyalist with no independent power-base of his own. So he was forced to resign, making abject confession of, and apology for, his own past mistakes.

All the things the conservatives dislike about the last decade's policies have been lumped together under the label "bourgeois liberalisation". It is only people like Fang (now sacked from his job and expelled from the Party) who have been accused of supporting this deviation. Hu has simply been charged with being soft on repressing it. It is also being revealed now that he has for years been in disagreement with Deng — part of a time-honoured ritual when Chinese leaders are kicked out.

The Chinese press is now full of attacks on bourgeois liberalisation and how and why to combat it. It is defined as "an idea negating the socialist system in favour of capitalism'. Its advocates do not just want economic reform, they want to "take the capitalist road". Rather than political reform, they want to copy capitalist practices. A particular manifestation of bourgeois liberalism is the theory of "complete Westernisation", taking over the features of Western capitalism lock, stock and barrel; this is what Fang is accused of. This is all to be combatted by strengthening the Party's control.

In the writings of the newly-ascendant clique, the policy of opening the country to the outside world is endorsed, but with limits. Certainly China is undergoing economic difficulties, with rising inflation and a decrease in overseas investment. The reforms have not delivered all that was promised and have produced problems of their own. Trying to administer capitalism — whether state or private or a mixture of the two — without encountering ups and downs is just impossible. But it should not be forgotten that the real victims of the vicissitudes of Chinese capitalism are not Hu and Fang but the working people.

Paul Bennett

Enter the Dragon: The impact of China (2005)

From the August 2005 issue of the Socialist Standard

In 1978 the Chinese Communist Party under Deng Xiaping embarked on reforms that would steer China’s economy toward transition from state-run to free market capitalism.

Since then China’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) has grown by an average of 9.5 percent per year, faster than any other country. China joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in December 2001 and now accounts for 13 percent of world output with a GDP likely to overtake Japan by 2016 and America by 2020, making China the world’s largest economy.

Economic “openness”

This prodigious growth is attributable to foreign investment that has utilised the country’s remarkably ‘liberal’ business climate to exploit low wage labour as a platform for the manufacture of goods and then their export to world at cheap prices.   Put simply, manufacturing has been relocated to China to undercut competition and raise profits – attracted by the almost ‘inexhaustible’ supply of cheap labour, well-developed infrastructure, tax concessions and brutally repressive state.

China’s economic ‘openness’ makes it the world’s largest recipient of foreign investment, which increased 35 percent in the year to September 2004 alone. It is further exemplified by the country’s import tariffs, which “have, on average, fallen from 41 percent in 1992 to 6 percent after it joined the WTO in December 2001, giving it the lowest tariff protection of any developing country.” (The Economist, 2 October 2004, p.6)

Joint ventures between Chinese companies and foreign multinational corporations produce 27 percent of manufacturing output (there are 4,000 involving UK companies alone) and a flourishing private sector accounts for 50 percent of Chinese GDP.

Rich v poor

Although most of the population still exists at basic subsistence levels, the purchasing power of a minority of better paid workers (but still measured in tens of millions) and the development of an indigenous capitalist class have nurtured a sizeable domestic market.  China in fact has the world’s fastest growing consumer market and sales are soaring. If income distribution remains unaltered, “by 2020 the top 100 million households will have an average income equivalent to the current average in Western Europe. This will open up a vast market for consumer goods.” (The Economist, 2 October 2004, p.11) An increasing number of American and European corporations are now investing to sell directly to this growing market.

China’s market has also encouraged the emergence of a Chinese capitalist class, comprising many who already have close ties with foreign capital and political patronage from Beijing. Within this class a small number have amassed staggering levels of wealth. 

This picture looks set to continue. Though productivity is still low compared with the developed world, running at approximately one-eighth of that in America, economic ‘openness’ is encouraging the rapid transfer of manufacturing technology that will enable China to use the industrialised countries as a springboard to raise productivity. Production will also rapidly climb the “value added” chain, utilising the 10 million graduates who join the Chinese working class each year.

But more important is the abundant supply of the resource essential to profits – human labour power. China has a population of 1.3 billion or 20 percent of the world’s population and the political elite has worked hard to mobilise this labour power to create the conditions to fuel capitalism. 

State industry has rapidly shrunk and thousands of enterprises have been sold or bankrupted and their workers sacked. An estimated 40 million have been made jobless to join the countless millions made redundant from native private industry by relentless foreign competition.

Town v country

In rural regions, where over 60 percent of the population still live, the free market deregulation of agricultural prices has driven millions from the land. Here, over 150 million destitute people are waiting to migrate and seek work at any wage, while farmers are often compelled to take unskilled temporary work between harvests to supplement meagre earnings.

It will take 15-20 years to absorb this labour power, which means that, unlike some parts of South-East Asia, where labour scarcity could raise wages, Chinese based capitalism can probably hold down unskilled wages for many years. 

To most the transition from state-run capitalism to the free market variety means low wages, poor living conditions and repression. While a minority of higher paid workers has access to consumable goods, the free market has devastated the lower paid who do not have money to buy those goods. Services including education and medical care, formerly provided by the state, are now ‘fee based’, while housing is controlled by private landlords.    

The main manufacturing belt lies in the region of Guangdong and along the Pearl River Delta, where workers slave 15 hours a day, seven days a week with mandatory overtime enforced by coercive factory regulations. Migrant labour is estimated at over 100 million, more than half women from impoverished inland regions. Industrial disputes are not uncommon. 

Contradictions

Sometimes disputes erupt into riots as happened at the Taiwanese Stella International factory at Dongguan in the spring of 2004. The factory, employing 70,000 workers, makes shoes for Nike, Reebok, Clarks, Sears and Timberland. Factory property was allegedly damaged and ten workers were subsequently jailed for 3½  years but later freed when the company, fearful of repercussions, secured their release.

Long-term disregard for poverty and the impoverished plight of working people and peasantry may well pose a significant threat to government authority. The government has been compelled to ameliorate worker conditions and in some places unemployment insurance has improved and minimum wages increased, while cities have endeavoured to increase employment – generally by offering assistance to new enterprises to employ redundant workers. But funding is still minimal and official corruption widespread.

Nowhere is the contrast between rich and poor more stark than in Shanghai, a city of 17 million and the centre of Chinese capitalism. Here poor living conditions, overcrowding and poverty are “…a far cry from the empty streets of the gated communities in the east end of Pudong, where high walls and a plethora of guards provide a safe, insular heaven for those living within.” (China Daily, 28 April 2005)

One of China’s main weaknesses is electricity generation and the rapid increase in demand, exacerbated by household appliances and air-conditioning, has caused shortages, blackouts and power rationing.  China’s electricity generation is 70 percent dependent on coal and miners were forced to increase output by 54 percent in the four years to 2003. Rudimentary safety is ignored and a twelve-hour day, 28 days a month is the industry standard. “There were more than 6,000 deaths last year from explosions, floods, cave-ins and other accidents in China’s mining industry, accounting for 80 percent of the world’s total fatalities. Independent estimates, however, say up to 20,000 workers are killed every year as they toil underground in poor conditions for little money.” (http://www.chinalaborwatch.org)

The ‘All China Federation of Trade Unions,’ is the only legal trade union and controlled by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP). Independent trade unions are banned and workers agitating for better conditions are routinely jailed. But despite the lack of organisation, skill shortages have enabled some to make gains after strikes, as in Shenzen in October 2004 and Panyu in November 2004. 

Knock-on effect

The ‘Chinese miracle’ has had a detrimental effect on many workers outside China. While the international class who live by profits has benefited immeasurably by transferring operations to China, many workers in other countries have paid the price with the loss of their jobs. Worst hit have been workers who barely survive in undeveloped countries where imports and exports mirror those of China.  The abolition of import quotas on textiles in January 2005, for example, is set to decimate jobs in Bangladesh and Cambodia where companies will be unable to compete. Another casualty has been the Mexican working class where an estimated 225,000 jobs, originally transferred from America after the introduction of the North America Free Trade Association have moved to China since 2001. Likewise, production transferred to South Korean and Taiwanese based corporations is ‘out-sourced’ to China for labour intensive assembly and then re-export.

But China’s capitalism is also influencing the world’s working class in other ways. Worker conditions in developed countries are under attack. As The Economist euphemistically puts it: “Individual countries can maximise their gains from Chinese integration and minimise their losses by making their own economies more flexible, increasing mobility between sectors and improving education.” (2 October 2004, p.12).

Political control

The development of capitalism in China looks set to remain firmly under the political dictatorship of the Communist Party. Although in practical operation for years, free market capitalism was officially reconciled with ‘communism’ at the 16th National Congress of the CCP in November 2002 when the Party’s constitution was amended to open membership to China’s ‘business elite’ to protect the “legitimate rights and interests” of business and property owners.  The CCP has become the instrument of multinational corporations and of this ‘business elite’ and seeks to perpetuate its rule with the support of those who benefit from the system of exploitation in the world’s largest sweatshop. The Party has warned it will make no concession to ‘democratic aspirations.’ At the Central Committee meeting in September 2004, Hu Jintao, China’s President and Party leader asserted that “China would never have its own Gorbachev,” or countenance erosion of the CCP’s ruling position. Denouncing those who “fly the banner of democracy and political reform,” he warned the Party would be “pre-emptive” and “strike when they rear their heads.” (Time 31 January 2005, p.45).

In practical terms the political elite is seeking to tighten control over local government to block independent legislatures and plans to “improve the political thinking of university students to elevate the Party’s ruling power” (People’s Daily, 19 January 2005). Websites exposing corruption have been shut without explanation. Newspapers are banned from publishing anything negative about the police, government or judiciary and journalists have been ordered to stop criticism.

In this way capitalism in China is an investors’ paradise and a workers’ prison camp. Enormous profits are attained at staggering human cost, and with the growing gap between rich and poor the class struggle is set to intensify.  The integration of China into world capitalism has also had profound effects. It has drained away jobs from other parts of the world, lowered global unskilled wage rates and eased pressure on wages in other countries by reducing prices of consumable goods. These world-wide reverberations will continue.

Steve Trott

Don't mourn Deng Xiaoping (1997)

From the April 1997 issue of the Socialist Standard

Deng Xiaoping, the behind-the-scenes boss of Chinese capitalism, died on 19 February at the ripe old age of 93. He had an eventful life, on a political roller-coaster that saw him ejected from government in disgrace more than once but enabled him to live out his last decade as a wielder of unofficial but still supreme power. He had long enjoyed all the benefits of ruling-class membership, such as access to the best health-care that he didn't need to buy, and flying his cronies in for games of bridge, a privilege unavailable to most workers in China or anywhere else.

Deng will be remembered as not just one of the most cunning of political survivors, but also as the architect of China's market reforms and as one of those behind the bloody suppression of the popular movements of 1989. His best-known remark, mercilessly lampooned by his opponents, was "It doesn't matter whether a cat is black or white as long as it catches mice." The implication was that political purity was less important than efficiency or effectiveness. This so-called pragmatism came to the fore after 1979, when Deng's government opened the Chinese economy to market forces and overseas investment. The new policy was, in effect, that the cat's colour didn't matter as long as it made a profit. This was not a result of Deng's own preferences as much as a question of fitting in with the needs of Chinese capitalism, which is well-placed to undercut wage costs in more developed countries and so make big money for Chinese capitalists (the new private owners as well as the state bureaucrats) and overseas shareholders. It is fitting that Deng's death should be marked by profiteering from tasteless mementoes of him.

This privatisation policy had disastrous effects on workers. Inflation, reduction of subsidies on food and travel costs, and an increase in unemployment and job insecurity meant a more anxious existence for millions. It was particularly galling that many people were obviously benefitting from the new policies, and that this was often due to nepotism and favouritism. Deng's own family prospered from his eminence and influence. Resentment at corruption and the lack of democratic politics led to the mass uprisings of 1989, when workers across China showed their opposition and demanded better treatment. Though media attention focused on the students in Tiananmen Square, this was only a small part of the resistance. The crackdown when it came, vicious and bloody as it was, was also not confined to Beijing and Tiananmen. Deng was one of the motive forces behind the repression, his earlier reputation for flexibility shattered by the guns and tanks of the Chinese army.

Deng's death will no doubt be followed by a power struggle, as those at the top of the "Communist" Party vie to maintain and improve their positions the policy of political dictatorship allied with greater appeal to market forces is likely to continue for a while at least, as the rich and powerful do very nicely from the present system; it may well be boosted by the imminent take-over of Hong King, with all its financial pickings. Workers in China will go on suffering, as before. No member of any ruling class deserves to be mourned by workers, least of all a tyrant such as Deng Xiaoping.

Paul Bennett