Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the August 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

United Nations (UN) Secretary-General António Guterres says that 800 million people around the world are living in extreme poverty… [He] had previously stated that nearly three billion people are living in inadequate housing conditions.

[8am media]

In Shanxi, the province that sits at the heart of China’s coal-mining industry, there’s long been a saying: ‘Only go down a coal pit when you have no other way out’. For decades, life in these pits was intertwined with tragedy. It became so common that it gave rise to other sayings: about how miners were ‘exchanging their lives for money’ or ‘staking their lives for tomorrow’ when they ventured into underground tunnels where they died from gas explosions, flooding and shaft collapses. Over the past decade, safety reforms steadily erased the industry’s deadly reputation, and those days were thought to be behind China – until 22 May, when a blast at the Liushenyu coal mine in Shanxi killed 82 people and injured more than 120 others.

[BBC]

A leading Nicaraguan indigenous leader has died after being detained by the ruling authoritarian regime for nearly three years. Brooklyn Rivera, who founded the central American nation’s indigenous movement Yatama, died due to ‘physical and neurological deterioration’ linked to a Covid-19 infection, the Nicaraguan Ministry of Health stated on Sunday. The government, headed by President Daniel Ortega, took 15 hours to confirm the death and are refusing to release the 73-year-old’s body to his family, opposition media report. The Nicaraguan government is routinely accused of political oppression, and Rivera is one of a growing number of dissidents to die in custody. 

[BBC]

Greta Thunberg… has said little publicly about the recent protests in Iran. Similar criticisms have been directed at a number of prominent left-wing intellectuals and activists in Europe and North America, including Tariq Ali, Naomi Klein, Alain Badiou, Richard Falk, and others. The pattern extends beyond silence. Judith Butler, the American philosopher and feminist theorist, has previously expressed support for Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas in Palestine, describing them as progressive social movements that form part of a broader anti-imperialist struggle.

[International Policy Digest]

An elderly man spent days on the floor of his HMO while maggots infested wounds in his legs before he was discovered and later died, a report has found. The 69-year-old from Oldham, named ‘John’ in a safeguarding review, was discharged from hospital just two weeks before the fall that led to his death … The recently published report found the local authority and medical professionals at Royal Oldham Hospital ‘missed opportunities’ to support John. Prior to his death, John was treated for severe malnourishment and an acute kidney injury. At the time, he shared with staff that he ‘did not feel safe in his home’, as he lived in a HMO with five other people, all of whom had serious alcohol and substance abuse issues.

[Oldham Evening Chronicle]

 

(These links are provided for information and don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Spotlights on Capitalism (1936)

From the July 1936 issue of the Socialist Standard

China—Scene of the Next War?

Now that the whole of Africa has been parcelled out, there remain very few areas of the world’s surface which are not subject to the political domination of advanced capitalist countries. China, however, is one of them, and so we find the birds of prey gathered around for the final picking. The one secure source of revenue in China is the Customs, and the Daily Telegraph mentions (May 14th, 1936), that they are the one point of economic security for Chinese loans, which are largely held by British capitalists. The Japs, however, have established a demilitarised zone in the north of China, where Chinese troops are not allowed to penetrate, and set up a local Government, known as the “ Independent East Hopei Anti-Communist Autonomous Council.” As a result of this, they are able to obstruct the Chinese Customs in such a way that goods can be brought across the Great Wall of China, or landed on the coast, either duty-free or on payment of only a quarter of the normal duties. This naturally diverts goods from such ports as Shanghai, where full duties have to be paid, and so the amount of both trade and duties at these ports declines, and the actual loss to the revenue has amounted in one week alone to as much as £120,000. As the interest on the loans has hitherto taken “only” one-fifth of the Customs dues, there is still ample cover for the service of the loans. Nevertheless, the bondholders are very much upset, and so the Governments of both Great Britain and the United States have made strong official representations in Tokio.

For nearly a hundred years now, the capitalist powers have been nibbling at China; one of the most notorious occasions was the Opium Wars, fought with the object of forcing the Chinese to buy Indian opium—a harmful drug which they were quite capable of producing themselves. Twice have British troops marched on Pekin, and as long ago as 1860 they burnt the magnificent Imperial Palace, just outside Pekin, to the ground. The French pinched Annam and Tongking—once Chinese provinces, Japan long ago stole Taiwan, and more recently Korea, whilst her present intrigues are setting the teeth of the other capitalist powers on edge. Great Britain holds Hong Kong, whilst land in the vicinity has been obtained for fortification purposes. At every available opportunity the Chinese have been forced to agree to the opening of certain of their ports—called “treaty ports”—to foreign trade, and these even extend to the interior of China up to the limit of navigability of the Yang-tze-Kiang. Modern internal transport is now almost entirely in foreign hands. The majority of the railways are owned by British capitalists, whilst in the latest sphere— that of aviation—a new scramble has commenced. Here the British are behind—due doubtless to the British Government's present embargo on loans to foreign Governments and companies—and so we find the more important towns in this vast country —16 times the size of the British Isles—linked by a network of regular services, the most important being the American (China National Aviation Corporation), whilst the Germans have not been slow and their Eurasia Aviation Corporation flies from Shanghai to Hanchow and from Pekin to Canton. Chinese capitalism is, however, fast developing, and so we find the national South-Western Aviation Corporation operating American machines from Canton to Hangchow and Pakhoi in the southwestern extremity, and even now a dispute has arisen with the French and American lines over the carriage of mails.

Those who watch for the next war may well turn their eyes to China.

#    #    #    #

Beauty in the Stores

F. W. Woolworth & Co., Ltd., who last year made a profit of over £5,000,000, believe in leaving no stone unturned to increase their turnover, and so we find them issuing The New Bond. Unlike Chinese bonds, which produce a revenue for the purchaser, this “Bond" costs twopence and is designed to benefit the seller, rather than the buyer. The buyers are Woolworths' girl slaves, and the purchase of The New Bond is quite optional. We understand, however, that it is a brave girl who would refuse to buy. Like all “house” publications of this nature, the object is to produce a “team spirit” amongst the employees and to make them feel that they are at j one with the firm.

An issue before us contains a beauty chat— . “ Our Beauty Chat ” it is called, and we read— 

“It is the discreet touch of Rouge and Lipstick that makes or mars a face. The lighter shades of Rouge, such as Orange or Cherry, make your skin appear clearer—eyes brighter; but should you have blue-black hair and brown eyes, a slightly darker shade is necessary, such as Rosée.”

Concluding, they say—“ We shall recommend the well-known cosmetics which can be obtained at 'your' Store, so let us vote for a Bigger, Brighter, Beauty Movement!M

And, of course, Bigger and Better dividends. In return the firm will give the employees a paltry Christmas box and a vote of thanks!

  R. M.

Blogger's Note:

Original spelling in the article retained. A year to the day, Japan invaded China in the Second Sino-Japanese War.

Tiny Tips (2026)

The Tiny Tips column from the July 2026 issue of the Socialist Standard

Global real worker pay fell 12 percent while real CEO pay surged 54 percent between 2019 and 2025. At least four CEOs of major corporations each pocketed over $100 million in pay and bonuses last year. Broadcom CEO Hock Tan led the pack at over $205 million. Billionaires were paid $2,500 per second in dividends in 2025. The International Trade Union Confederation (ITUC) and Oxfam are calling for urgent action to rein in extreme wealth, including higher, fairer taxes on the richest and binding limits on CEO pay.

[Common Dreams]

In 2011, he spent 81 days detained in China for criticizing the government following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake, in which 90,000 people died. Ai Weiwei worked with hundreds of anonymous volunteers to identify and publish the names of more than 5,000 children who died under the rubble of poorly constructed schools, information that the government sought to censor. 

[El Pais]

…. the Housing and Land Rights Network, have argued that the real numbers are significantly higher and estimate at 3 million…Shelters, where available, are frequently inadequate, overcrowded, unsanitary, unsafe for women, or located far from work opportunities. Instead of treating shelter as a right linked to dignity, many city administrations treat it as temporary charity. During mega-events such as the Commonwealth Games 2010 or the G20 Summit gatherings hosted in India, homeless people are often subjected to eviction drives in the name of beautification. Pavements are cleared, encampments removed, and poverty hidden so that cities may appear modern to visitors.

[Countercurrents]

The right to life in Kenya is often treated as if it begins at conception and ends at birth. As in much of the world, self-described ‘pro-lifers’ claim to defend life at all costs – yet too often stop short of defending the lives already being lived, and those cut short too early.

[openDemocracy]

…the central question of his book, which is built around a concept Marx called ‘disposable time’—the time left over after workers have completed the labor necessary to sustain themselves and their families. Marx traced this idea back to an obscure 1821 pamphlet he discovered in the British Museum, in which the author argued that a nation’s true wealth lies not in gold or goods but in free time: ‘Wealth is disposable time, and nothing more’.

[People’s World]

The communist revolution, if it arrives in the nick of time to prevent humankind’s suicide, is a seismic event that changes everything. It is difficult to imagine it but it will leave nothing untouched. People will change. In the heat of the struggle for survival, proletarians will come together and become the self-conscious collective worker, which he/she already was but didn’t know it. All human relationships (between producers, family members, men-women, young-old, teachers-students and more) change in the process. The entire way in which society reproduces itself changes. Work changes. It no longer means labor.

[Internationalist Perspective]

(These links are provided for information, Target sites don’t necessarily represent our point of view.)

Finance & Industry: Our educated politicians (1961)

The Finance and Industry column from the February 1961 issue of the Socialist Standard

Our educated politicians

In an interview published in the Observer (8.1.61) the banker Lord Brand, asked if he thought that academic economists do more good than harm, replied that they are extremely valuable. He claimed that through the studies of Keynes and other economists knowledge has grown and this “has altered the whole picture of economic life”. Possibly because Lord Brand would hesitate to claim that economic life has altered particularly (“I do not think we have an easy time ahead of us in the next year or so”) he went on to blame the politicians for not accepting the good advice of the economists.

He recalled the reparations chaos after the first world war, when the politicians (backed however by 3 out of their 7 banking economic advisers) insisted on exacting impossible reparations from Germany. Lord Brand says: “It was clearly mad at the time to those who would, and could, see, and were prepared to act accordingly. But the people who had control of policy could not see”.

He singles out Lloyd George—”Like most statesmen of the day, he knew little or nothing of finance”—yet Lloyd George had been Chancellor of the Exchequer. But it appears, according to Lord Brand, that Lloyd George insisted on the mad policy because he had boasted of squeezing Germany “till the pip squeaked” and dared not back down for fear of losing political support among voters as blind as he was.

But in the second world war the statesmen appear not to have changed much. Lord Brand tells how Churchill and Roosevelt, on the advice of Morganthau, Secretary of the U.S. Treasury and with the agreement of Lord Cherwell (a “highly intelligent” man) adopted a plan to reduce Germany to a purely agricultural country. Lord Cherwell’s defence of his action was that the British Government wanted a loan from America and acceptance of this fantastic plan would make it easier to get the loan.

Capitalism 1961

Lord Brand’s complacency about the altered picture of economic life reads oddly in face of the motor car slump and the looming difficulties facing international trade and currencies. The years between the wars were spent creating currency collapse in one country after another and then laboriously re-establishing stable currencies. After World War II it was all supposed to be different but now Professor Meade is warning of the drastic remedies that he thinks may be necessary because of America’s loss of gold, so he proposes that the dollar and the pound should be cut adrift from their existing link with gold.

The Guardian in an editorial (3.1.61) remarks “Undoubtedly a period of chaos would follow. Professor Meade feels sure that stability would return at a new level of exchange rates within six months. Perhaps so; but in the process the structure of the International Monetary Fund, one of the greatest achievements of international collaboration in our generation would have been laid in ruins “.

One prospect seen by the Guardian is that “soon the Russian rouble might be the only major currency with a fixed gold parity “.

This seems ironical to the Guardian but only because they persist against all evidence in believing that Russia is not a great capitalist power, but something else.

Flood Havoc in China

Through floods and storms China is threatened with what may be a catastrophic fall of food supplies. In a Socialist world such an event would be met by movement of supplies from elsewhere. But under capitalism a different set of values rules. America, Canada and other countries have masses of food they cannot sell profitably. The Times (20.12.60) reported that in the four chief exporting countries America, Canada, Argentina and Australia, “the end-of-season carry-over on July 31 next are expected to reach the unprecedented total of 60,400,000 tons, a rise of 7,500,000 tons on the year”.

So what problem can there be? But capitalist trade and rivalries create problems. The American government when it wanted to give wheat away or sell it cheaply met opposition from the other exporting countries, who feared this would reduce world prices and cut into their own sales. Secondly there are those who on political grounds would object to help being given to China, and according to Mr. Cyril Osborne, M.P., who was recently in Peking, there are politicians in that country who reply that the Chinese people “would rather starve than eat American food or accept American charity”. (Daily Telegraph, 3.1.61). (The starving might give a different answer).

According to Reynolds News (1.1.61) projected Canadian sales of their surplus to China are likely to meet with objections from the American government.

In the meantime the American food stocks are being nibbled at by the recently increased numbers of unemployed :

“In September 3,200,000 Americans were given food from the surplus supplies held by the government”. (Guardian 2.1.61).

Speculating in Misery

Under the heading “It’s an ill Wind” the Financial Times (9.1.61) had the following:

“Americans, by their law, may not trade with Communist China. But no law stops them speculating on the effects of China’s misfortunes, and for the past week they have been rushing to do just that. Scene of their operations is the Chicago soybean (spelt this way in America) market, biggest commodity futures market in the world.

The present bout of speculation in soya-beans and their products began three months ago, as reports of crop disaster began to seep through from China, only big soya-bean producer apart from America itself. People in the trade saw then that if the usual Chinese exports did not reach Europe, American beans and oil would have to go instead. So they put their money on a rise in the market.”

Edgar Hardcastle

The Scientist's dilemma (1952)

From the October 1952 issue of the Socialist Standard

A spectre is haunting Asia—the spectre of Malthusianism. It so haunted Professor A. V. Hill, this year’s president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science as to virtually turn his address into a 1952 edition of Malthus’ “Essay on Population.”

Stating that the greatest problem to-day was the unrestricted growth of population—he had in view the Asiatic population—he said better medical services, prolongation of the span of life, lowering infant mortality, are accelerating the rate of population. "There is much discussion,” he went on to say, “of human rights, but do they extend to unlimited reproduction? Might not the consequences of such beliefs lead to soil exhaustion, international tensions and disorders which would threaten civilisation itself? ” He then asked “If ethical principles deny our right to do evil are we justified in doing good when the foreseeable consequences are evil? ” That, said the Professor, constitutes the ethical dilemma of science.

Professor Hill thus shares with Malthus and the Neo Malthusians the belief that population is in itself a potential source of evil which can actualise in overpopulation and result in widespread hunger, destitution and disease.

Malthus, a good Whig, but mostly a bad economist, also believed that. Living in what was perhaps the most pitiless period in English history—the Industrial Revolution—he held that the social misery it engendered was due to the fact that there were too many mouths and too little means with which to feed them. He stated that poverty and vice were due to over-population. Professor Hill switches the picture to Asia and arrives at the same conclusion. Just as Malthus declared that the giving of public charity would only aggravate the problem of over-population, so Professor Hill suggests that medical services and other aids to the peoples of Asia might have the same effect.

The growth of population is not of course governed by exclusive “Natural Laws.” In Western Capitalism, where the nature and tempo of production demands certain nutritional standards, these nutritional standards have not led, as predicted by Malthus and his followers, to accelerating the increase in population. In fact for decades now fertility has shown signs of declining. To the bogey of over-population there has been contrasted the bogey of under-population whose effects the “experts” have proclaimed would be almost as catastrophic.

Undoubtedly the higher nutritional levels and greater leisure of the workers of Western Capitalism as contrasted with the workers and peasants of India and China have made sex a less important emotional factor in their lives. Further, the insecurity of the wage worker in Western Capitalism and such things as unemployment, war, the housing situation, etc., are elements in family limitation. The entry of women into industry and the desire on their part to be relieved of the age-long burden of large families, have exercised a powerful influence on family limitation. The laws of population, as Marx pointed out, are not to be found in natural laws, but in a given historical situation. We may add that the world has never lived on the perilous margin between increasing population and food supplies which Malthusian doctrine would indicate.

A superficial survey might lead to the conclusion that the miserable living standards of the peoples of India and China are due to over-population. Professor Hill notes with dismay the five million yearly increase in the population of India where even with present plans for social aid, pre-war standards will hardly be restored. de Castro in “A Geography of Hunger,” puts the rate of increase at 4 million yearly, which amounts to a 1 per cent. increase, a figure, he adds, not very different from the European rate since 1900.

India, like Western Capitalism, is a place of contrast. It is a place of poverty for the many. It is also a place of vast wealth for the few. When the British ruling class added what was known as the Jewel of the Empire to their glittering colonial collection they did little or nothing during their stay there to improve the lot of the Indian people. When Professor Hill speaks of the impulses of decent humanity which insist that suffering should be relieved, history shows that the pukka Sahib was notoriously deficient in these things. It might also be interesting to note how much British rule was responsible for retarding the economic development of India and thus contributing to the distressing state of affairs that obtain there to-day.

In the past the native rulers of India and the British colonisers have evinced no real desire to raise the level of the masses. Thus Indian agriculture has remained in an intolerably primitive condition. It has been estimated that only 43 per cent, of the country is cultivated. One might think that an attempt to utilise for productive purposes the remaining portion by the application of Western resources and scientific techniques would constitute a challenge to those decent impulses of humanity instead of leading to the ethical dilemma in which Professor Hill finds himself.

Where there is poverty and degradation high birth rates and high death rates will inevitably occur. As Ritchie Calder said in the News Chronicle (4/9/52), “Men who live like animals breed like animals,” and we could add, die like them as well.

To suggest, as many Neo Malthusians do, that birth control is an answer to the problem, ignores the fact that a population could not by the mere act of reducing itself supply the necessary increased muscular energy that would be needed for an increased production of economic resources necessary for higher living standards. It could be held that where productivity is low and the death rate and ill health of people are high, large families are an inevitable and necessary feature of the. situation. It can be shown then, as de Castro emphasises in “ A Geography of Hunger,” that it is not over-population that leads to poverty, but the reverse. No wonder Marx caustically referred to Malthusian doctrines as “a libel on the human race.” We may add also that in a world where the privileged few exploit the unprivileged many, and that includes China and India, there can be no dominant social motive for the betterment of the vast majority by the use of all the economic resources available.

Again the class character of income distribution, inherent in Capitalism, compels it, if profits are threatened, to throw fish back into the sea, burn grain and coffee and generally restrict production no matter how crying the needs of the peoples of the world might be. And if further evidence was needed to show the misdirection of wealth production in Capitalism, a fellow scientist of Professor Hill, Sir Boyd Orr, has told us that soil exhaustion and erosion and the waste of labour and material on armaments threatens the world with famine.

It is perhaps pathetic to witness Professor Hill, a competent scientist in his own field, applying to complex social problems, not the appropriate level of scientific judgment, but a vague and amorphous ethical one.

Because of his lack of understanding of the nature of the world he lives in, the future for him is sinister and uncertain. Like Malthus he propounds a philosophy of social pessimism. We are optimistic enough to believe that economic and social development will falsify his gloomy prognosis as they falsified that of Malthus.

It would seem that fear and uncertainty of the future lead Professor Hill to sec in the “over-populated" a threat to Western ideas and the ordered existence of one’s life. Thus for him the withholding of economic resources from undeveloped countries might be one way of ensuring Western supremacy. The world will then still be the White Man’s World. From that assumption it is only a short step to a belief in a Master Race. Such assumptions, if widely held, help to prepare the ground for its realisation.

Perhaps that is why Professor Hill relegated the atomic bomb to a second place in world problems. It would seem, however, that Professor Hill does not like the idea of killing. He thus raises a dilemma unnoticed by himself. While he is opposed on moral grounds to killing, dying by hunger might be a necessary evil. Apparently, like Pope, he holds—"Thou shall’st not kill but need’st not strive, officiously, to keep alive.”

One might say in conclusion, looking at the ethically minded and their inhuman suggestions for the salvation of man, one sighs for the humanity of the anthropoid ape.

Ted Wilmott

Moving Around (2025)

Book Review from the September 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Private Revolutions: Coming of Age in a New China. By Yuan Yang. Bloomsbury £10.99.

The author was born in China but moved to the UK with her parents. She worked as a journalist for the Financial Times in London and Shanghai, and is now a Labour MP. Here she looks at the lives of four women born in China in the 1980s and 90s, their struggles with traditional ideas and the changes in Chinese society. In this review we will focus on the general points made, rather than discussing the individual cases.

One important issue is the hukou system, a household registration system related to a person’s place of birth. This enables them to access local services, such as education and healthcare, but without a local hukou they can face real problems. They may have difficulty getting their children into a suitable middle school, but can try relying on ‘friends of friends’ to influence headteachers to relax the rules. This system is presumably intended as a way of controlling workers, especially, but not only, those who move from the countryside to cities in search of work. Children are often sent to live with their grandparents and so gain access to a school that way.

The possibility of factory work did lead to many people migrating from rural areas, but the numbers often exceeded the jobs available and working hours could be very long. One factory was seen as improving conditions by capping overtime to 9pm and guaranteeing one day off a week. Many migrant workers preferred short-term contracts so they could avoid abusive bosses. But, partly because of Covid, the job market contracted, and by the middle of 2020 one-tenth of urban residents had lost their jobs. Yang says that southern China had industrialised and then de-industrialised within four decades.

The most common problems workers faced were ‘too much overtime, unpaid wages, workplace injuries and being without a labour contract’. There were no effective trade unions, but there were community-based ‘labour NGOs’, providing legal assistance and so on. But such NGOs could find themselves evicted from their offices, and activists were sometimes arrested; some responded by going abroad to study.

For a while, the online forum Utopia (sometimes seen as part of the Chinese ‘New Left’) supported the system under Mao Zedong, before the market reforms of Deng Xiaoping, a time when the welfare system was allegedly better. In 2018 fifty students who had supported workers in an electronics factory who wished to organise their own union were arrested: ‘China’s biggest student crackdown since Tiananmen Square’.

The book provides both general and particular views of what one document on social media in 2012 quoted here described as ‘China’s path towards globalised capitalism’.

Perhaps publishers these days find it hard to provide helpful things like a table of contents.

Paul Bennett

World View: Nuclear Testing (1996)

From the July 1996 issue of the Socialist Standard

China’s nuclear test on 8 June sparked off a wave of protest. Greenpeace sent one of its ships to Shanghai. Demonstrators gathered outside Chinese embassies in Asia and Europe. Socialists are opposed to all weapon tests of any kind by any government but we know that governments don’t take any notice of protests.

They can't allow themselves to as under capitalism, where all states compete against each other for profits and spheres of influences, might is right. All capitalist states (and China is a capitalist state) must seek to arm themselves with the most effective weapons they can afford, including weapons of mass destruction like nuclear bombs.

The test ban treaty, which China says it will sign when its current series of tests is over is just a cynical move by the nuclear powers to maintain their monopoly of this particular weapon of mass destruction. Possessing nuclear weapons gives them an advantage which they don’t want any more of their rivals to possess. They won’t give up their nuclear bombs and missiles but they want to stop other states developing them. There will never be nuclear disarmament under capitalism so the threat of a nuclear war will exist as long as capitalism does.

Socialism is opposed to war and to what war represents. At the same time it is the only solution to the conditions that breed war. It is a new form of society in which the people of the world will work harmoniously together for their mutual benefit, for there will be no privilege, property or profit to cause enmity. No coercion will be needed because each part of the world will gain from co-operating harmoniously with the rest. With the establishment of socialism, i.e. a worldwide system without frontiers where the means of production and distribution are held in common and things are produced solely in order to meet human needs, war will disappear and humanity will have taken the first step out of the jungle.

Some anti-nuclear protesters, while agreeing that capitalism is the cause of war in the modern world, maintain that although a new social organisation may be necessary, a nuclear war would prevent the establishment of this, perhaps for all time, and therefore the anti-nuclear movement should be given priority over socialism.

This argument is logically unsound. It assumes that which has yet to be demonstrated. It pre-supposes that such a campaign will be able to prevent a nuclear war occurring. But for it to “succeed” it would have to have a majority of people who were opposed unconditionally to nuclear weapons, in the major countries of the world. These majorities would have to be prepared to oppose their own ruling classes, to put aside all, nationalistic feeling and be immune from all attempts of their rulers to influence them during periods of international crisis and tension.

Is it possible that such internationalist solidarity could be achieved by a movement which would be composed of so many fundamentally diverse elements and which lacked any clear conception of an alternative to our inhuman social system, No, only a revolutionary socialist consciousness could ensure such a united unshakeable attitude and in that event the question of opposition to nuclear weapons alone would be redundant.

Our view is that there is no way out of the contemporary dilemma other than by the building of a new kind of society. Socialists re-affirm the supreme relevance of Marx's classic exhortation—Workers of All Countries—Unite!

Nationalism no answer (1974)

From the June 1974 issue of the Socialist Standard

The 70th anniversary issue of the Socialist Standard carried throughout its pages a series of snippets from old Socialist Standard articles highlighting the SPGB's unique position on issues of the day. Where possible, I've provided a link to the full article.

We recognise, as Marx recognised, that China, like other backward countries, must pass through the stage of capitalist development, but that is no reason for deluding the workers there or here into the belief that nationalism is anything but a capitalist movement. Premature attempts to seize power before economic conditions are ripe and before the workers are numerous enough and conscious enough to make success thinkable, are foredoomed to failure.

[From “The Mask off China”, Socialist Standard, May 1927]

China (2025)

Book Review from the May 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Wild Ride: A Short History of the Opening and Closing of the Chinese Economy. By Anne Stevenson-Yang. Bui Jones, 2024. xxii +149pp.

This book really is Chinese capitalism up close. Its American author, the mother of a Chinese family, spent over 25 years living in China between the 1980s and 2014, first as a journalist and then as an entrepreneur in publishing and software. This gave her experience of life in China both in its social dimension and, more relevantly to this book, in the economic twists and turns that followed the Mao era (late 1970s onwards) leading right up to the present day. She presents the knowledge gained from this experience in a fascinatingly detailed way and with a turn of phrase that makes it far more readable than any recent academic study of that country’s development.

Unlike many commentators who seek to differentiate China’s economic system from that of the West, she has no scruple about labelling it as capitalist, understanding that, even if the country is far more socially and politically coercive than Western liberal democracies, it still operates, as Western capitalism does, a system of production for profit which divides its population into two main classes, a small one of extremely wealthy people, whether private individuals or state bureaucrats, and a vast majority of others who are forced to survive by selling their energies to an employer (again whether state or private) for a wage or salary.

The ‘wild ride’ of the title refers to the various iterations Chinese capitalism has been through since the extremely backwards state-run capitalism of Mao’s reign (which by the way she calls ‘socialism’ – something we would not accept), and her analysis is detailed and compelling. She sees the ‘ride’, even if in many ways smoke and mirrors, as broadly progressive in the sense of bringing alleviation to poverty in China and, while the system remains politically authoritarian, of being less nakedly repressive than the previous era. However, she sees things as having gone backwards since Xi Jinping came to power in 2012, both in terms of autocratic state control over the population and of state capitalism reasserting its primacy over private ownership of capital. And she is pessimistic about the chances of this changing any time soon. It should of course be added that other commentators on China take a different view and think the pendulum is more likely to swing the other way, ie towards the freer, more open exchange of ideas which tends to characterise advanced capitalist development and provides a better terrain for the spread of socialist ideas. But this remains to be seen.

Howard Moss

Material World: Straits and narrow (2025)

The Material World column from the March 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

Taiwan is an island about a hundred miles from the Chinese mainland, across the Taiwan Strait, and is officially the Republic of China. Its population is just under 24 million, its land area about the same as the Netherlands, and it is ranked 22nd in the list of the world’s largest economies. In particular it is the leader in the manufacturing of semiconductors, which are used in computers, smartphones and many other products. It is a big trading partner for a number of countries, with exports massively exceeding imports. The US, for instance, has a trade deficit with Taiwan of around $50bn a year. The UK, however, exports about £5bn a year to Taiwan, and imports around £3.6bn; the biggest exports from Britain are beverages and tobacco, also cars, while the imports are headed by office machinery and metal goods, and nearly £2bn of financial services are ‘exported’ each year from the UK.

Taiwan was once joined to the Asian mainland. The so-called indigenous people there, who speak a variety of languages, number around six hundred thousand. Over the centuries Taiwan was visited at various times by people from China and Japan. In the sixteenth century Portuguese sailors termed it Ilha Formosa (‘beautiful island’), and it was sometimes known as Formosa. In the following century the Dutch East India Company controlled part of the island and encouraged Chinese farmers to migrate there and cultivate rice and sugar. Later in the seventeenth century the Qing dynasty rulers of China annexed the island, which was again invaded by Japan in the late nineteenth century. From 1895 Taiwan was ceded to Japan after a war, and much industrialisation took place. In 1949 the Nationalist Party was defeated by the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party in the civil war and escaped to Taiwan.

Nationalist rule was extremely vicious and authoritarian, with martial law in force until 1987 and political opposition suppressed by means of imprisonment and execution. After that a transition to capitalist-style democracy took place, and links with mainland China (the so-called People’s Republic) increased. Taiwan businesses have invested over $200bn in China, and trade across the straits is around $160bn a year, with China being Taiwan’s biggest trading partner. Taiwan has over fifty dollar billionaires, the richest being Barry Lam, who is worth $11.7bn. In 2024 the combined wealth of the top fifty increased from $155bn to $174bn (forbes.com). At the same time, there are officially 400,000 unemployed and a large number of homeless people (drastically undercounted in government statistics).

At the end of last year, China’s leader Xi Jinping said in a speech that ‘The people on both sides of the Taiwan Strait are one family. No one can sever our family bonds, and no one can stop the historical trend of national reunification.’ Over the centuries, the borders of China have expanded massively from the original area around the valleys of the Yellow and Yangzi Rivers. They now include the so-called autonomous regions of Tibet, Inner Mongolia and Xinjiang (which means ‘new frontier’). But as for the idea of ‘one family’, this is just nationalistic nonsense.

China’s interest in Taiwan is for two reasons. One is financial or industrial, with Taiwan being economically very important in a number of areas, as mentioned above. The other is strategic, with Taiwan an important location in the South China Sea and potentially a significant part of China’s naval empire. The Chinese government views Taiwan as a province of China, which will one day be re-united with it. However, there is a Taiwan independence movement, which believes it should be an independent state, which in effect would be a formalisation of the current situation.

Large Chinese maritime forces have been assembled around Taiwan, and the use of force to achieve unification is still in principle on the table. China’s armed forces are far more powerful than those of Taiwan, though any invasion would be likely to be costly in terms of lives and also expensive in terms of materiel. The US Council on Foreign Relations states that ‘To invade Taiwan, China would have to conduct an extraordinarily complex military operation, synchronising air, land, and sea power as well as electronic and cyberwarfare’. Which does not mean it will never happen, though. The invasion of an offshore island would inevitably be more problematic than the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

This is clearly a case of a very powerful capitalist country, one that is still expanding its economic and military might, seeking to conquer another territory as a way of increasing its power and influence.

Paul Bennett

50 Years Ago: Who is Mao Tse-Tung? (2025)

The 50 Years Ago column from the February 2025 issue of the Socialist Standard

It is the purpose of this article to show what Mao really stands for by examining The Thoughts of Chairman Mao (‘The Little Red Book’). This Chinese Bible contains extracts from Mao’s voluminous writings. There are quotes from his early works written when as a guerrilla leader, Mao (and his Red Army) were such a thorn in the side of the Chiang-Kai-Shek regime, right through to the 1960s. Now Mao’s ideas are so influential in China that they actually do serve as the equivalent of religious dogma. (…)

Mao’s own words show that he is in favour of keeping the Chinese workers in poverty. In 1958 (nine years after the revolution!) he wrote:

‘Apart from their other characteristics, the outstanding thing about China’s 600 million people is that they are ‘poor and blank’. This may seem a bad thing, but in reality it is a good thing‘ (p. 36 — our emphasis).

It must be such a comfort for the poverty-stricken Chinese to know their leader thinks it is good for them to be poor. Mao does not make it clear that he thinks it is good for the leaders to be poor! (…)

In order to ensure that the workers are kept down, Mao can’t resist urging on them abstinence and sacrifice:

‘To make China rich and strong needs several decades of intense effort, which will include, among other things, the effort to practise strict economy and combat waste ie, the policy of building up our country through diligence and frugality’ (p.186).

If those words had been spoken by Wilson or Heath in crisis-ridden Britain you would not have been surprised.

The similarity between Mao and other capitalist politicians is so striking as to make one rub one’s eyes in disbelief at the sight of people in the West waving banners with Mao’s picture on them and proudly calling themselves ‘Maoists’. Mao is just as much an anti-Socialist as his one-time hero Stalin was. They both have in common the fact that they successfully exercised a dictatorship over the proletariat in their own country. When workers throughout the world learn to examine the contents of the packet and refuse just to accept the label, the fraud of Mao Tse-Tung will also be a ‘Museum piece’.

[From the article, 'Who is Mao Tse-Tung?' by Ronnie Warrington, Socialist Standard, February 1975]

Dreams and Schemes (2024)

Book Review from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

We Need to Talk About Xi: What We Need to Know About the World’s Most Powerful Leader. By Michael Dillon. Ebury Press/Penguin £10.99.

Xi Jinping is general secretary of the Chinese ‘Communist’ Party, president of China and chair of the country’s Central Military Commission. This combination certainly makes him one of the most powerful people on the planet, and here Michael Dillon summarises his personal history and political policies, against the background of developments in China, especially since the death of Mao Zedong. Little is known of his private life, but who cares?

Born in 1953, Xi gradually worked his way up through CCP ranks, working in various provincial posts. In 2002 he became a member of the Central Committee, and in 2007 of the Politburo Standing Committee. He became general secretary of the party in 2012, and his five-year term was renewed in 2017 and again in 2022. The expected practice was for the general secretary to serve two such five-year terms before stepping down, but Xi has overturned this. He is apparently seen by others in ruling circles as a ‘safe pair of hands’, though he is also less collegial and more authoritarian.

Dillon says that Xi has reversed much of the modernisation of the Chinese economy begun under Deng Xiaoping, though without saying a great deal about this. And he has lost support among ‘captains of industry’, who see him as not sufficiently friendly to business. A few years ago he announced a clampdown on the billionaires with plans to ‘regulate excessively high incomes’ (NBC News, 5/9/21), though it is not clear that this has had any real effect.

The authoritarian side has been made plain not just in the general attacks on dissidents but in events in Hong Kong and Xinjiang. In both cases, Xi has run things behind the scenes, making local leaders appear responsible. In Hong Kong, for instance, a man was recently jailed for fourteen months for wearing a T-shirt with a supposedly seditious slogan on it. Many Uyghurs in Xinjiang have been sent to ‘re-education camps’ as they are euphemistically called, in order to suppress demands for independence for the region. Finding information about developments there is difficult, but Dillon states that there has been much damage to social and religious networks, and also to the economy, with many workers being removed from their posts.

Allegedly Xi has less interest in international affairs, though the Belt and Road initiative has been an expensive and potentially influential policy. His extremely vague China Dream may see the country as a global power like the US, but clearly he is primarily interested in maintaining his own power and that of all those who rule China, whether private capitalists or part of the state and party bureaucracy.

Paul Bennett

Halo Halo! (2024)

The Halo Halo! column from the December 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

Shakespeare used the idiom ‘He who sups with the Devil should have a long spoon’. The ‘Devil’ is a character in a fairy story, similar to the one wherein this month millions still ‘celebrate’ the birth of a made-up ‘messiah’.

As a writer in a previous Socialist Standard wrote, ‘religion is intensely anti-working-class… the whole panoply of belief, ritual, salvation and miracle stands against the interests of all working people.’ The Catholic Church and totalitarian states have much in common.

Proponents of mumbo jumbo, the Catholic Church, should have used a longer spoon. A United States Commission on International Religious Freedom report noted that ‘the Vatican entered into an undisclosed agreement with the Chinese Communist Party (sic) in 2018 that established cooperation between Church authorities and Chinese officials in appointing bishops. But “the government has unilaterally installed CCP-aligned bishops without the Vatican’s consultation and approval” despite that agreement’.

‘Chinese officials have ordered the removal of crosses from churches and have replaced images of Christ and the Virgin Mary with images of President Xi Jinping. They have also censored religious texts, forced members of the clergy to preach CCP ideology, and mandated the display of CCP slogans within churches. “Ultimately, the Chinese government is solely interested in instilling unwavering obedience and devotion to the CCP, its political agenda, and its vision for religion, not protecting the religious freedom rights of Catholics”’ (Ncresister.com).

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In Malaysia, where almost two thirds of the populace practise Islam, the state’s official religion, the government is seeking to enact a Mufti Bill which would grant ‘greater authority to religious courts, potentially eroding the rights of non-Muslims’. ‘The Mufti bill is not just about religious matters. It’s about power and control. If this bill passes, it could lead to a situation where religious authorities have the final say on a wide range of issues, from personal relationships to public policy. Supporters of the bill contend that it is necessary to strengthen the role of Islamic law to uphold traditional values. They argue that the bill would not infringe upon the rights of non-Muslims.’ Flying pigs come to mind. Oh, not halal. Flying gibbons or crocodiles?

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Christmas, and hopefully all other religious festivals, may be on its way to extinction. The UK now has more atheists than people who believe in the existence of God.

‘Queen’s University Belfast, in a global project Explaining Atheism (nearly 25,000 people from six countries surveyed) to find out why people become atheists and agnostics. found that the common notion of the “purposeless unbeliever”, lacking a sense of ultimate meaning in life, objective morality, and strong values is not accurate, challenging the stereotype that atheists lead lives devoid of meaning, morality, and purpose. Dr Lee said: “The UK is entering its first atheist age. Whilst atheism has been prominent in our culture for some time, be it through Karl Marx, George Eliot, or Ricky Gervais, it is only now that atheists have begun to outnumber theists for the first time in our history”’.

DC

Voice From The Back: Profits And Oily Words (2006)

The Voice From The Back Column from the December 2006 issue of the Socialist Standard

Profits And Oily Words

You have seen advertisements by oil companies that express concern for the environment and claim they fight global warming. It is of course a fraud. “Britain’s leading scientists have challenged the US oil company Exxon-Mobil to stop funding groups that attempt to undermine the scientific consensus on climate change. In an unprecedented step, the Royal Society, Britain premier scientific academy, has written to the oil giant to demand that the company withdraws support for dozens of groups that have “misrepresented the science of climate change by outright denial of the evidence.” (Guardian, 20 September) Capitalists are only interested in profits, they don’t give a damn about your children or their children’s future. That is capitalism.

A Toxic Society

The World Health Organisation (WHO) estimate at least 90,000 people die every year of asbestos related diseases but that didn’t stop the manufacture of the obnoxious material. “Chrysotile asbestos, a known human carcinogen, will remain off a global “watch list” of toxic substances for at least two more years after countries led by Canada blocked consensus in United Nations talks on Friday. … Canada, whose French-speaking Quebec province is a major asbestos producer and exporter, led opposition to its addition to the list, according to environmentalists tracking the talks. Canadian officials say puting chrysotile asbestos on the list would be tantamount to banning international trade in it and threaten jobs.” (Yahoo! News, 13 October) 90,000 deaths a year is a mere inconvenience compared to a couple of bucks for the owning class who make their money from death and disease. That is why we are socialists, also some of us once worked in shipyards, where they used asbestos, and we have difficulty breathing.

Cut Price Killers

“BP, the British oil group, had a “check-book mentality” towards safety and was aware of maintenance backlogs and unsafe equipment at its Texas City refinery years before the fire there in 2005 in which 15 workers died, according to findings from US safety officials. .. Safety was compromised by a succession of budget cuts … The company implemented a 25 per cut on fixed costs between 1998 and 2000 which adversely affected maintenance expenditure at the refinery.” (Times, 31 October) In order to compete inside capitalism firms are constantly trying to cut overheads. In this case leading to the death and injury of many workers. That is how capitalism operates. Nasty aint it?

Gangster Talk

The recent electoral losses of the Republican Party in the USA have led to the Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld quitting his post. His political demise led to newspapers running articles on him. Here are a couple of his past statements that were quoted. “Death has a tendency to encourage a depressing view of war” and “You get a lot more with a kind word and a gun than you do with a kind word alone.” (Times, 9 November) It is significant that this last statement of Runsfeld was a quote from the gangster Al Capone. We can understand why a US Defence Secretary would have admired a murderous gangster chief, after all they both lived in a capitalist society based on violence.

Bull In A China Shop

The media mogul Rupert Murdoch has been making strenous efforts to break in to the Chinese market, but in 1993 he made a mess of it by stating, “Advances in the technology of telecommunications are an unambiguous threat to totalitarian regimes everywhere.” The Chinese took this threat seriously and imposed strict rules on satellite dishes thus depriving Murdoch’s Star TV of the huge Chinese's potential audience. “The following year Star removed BBC World Television from its Chinese service, in a move that was regarded by many as a sop to the Chinese government.” (Observer, 12 November) Last month Murdoch was in China trying to sweet talk his way in with government officials. When it comes to making money democratic views take a back seat with capitalists like Murdoch. What is suppression of political ideas, imprisonment, torture and death compared with more money to a billionaire? Very little it seems.

An American Myth

Supporters of the profit system often site the USA as a good example of how democratic capitalism really is. They give us the old homily about “log cabin to White House” although today it should probably be “trailer park to White House”. It is of course a complete fallacy as the following item about the recent mid-term election illustrates. “This election proved that it pays to spend big(ger). The average House winner burned through about $1 million on the stump – and the candidate who spent the most won in 93% of House races. The most expensive victory was, oddly, one of the Dems’ safe bets: New York Senator Hillary Clinton, who won a second term with 67% of the vote – and $35.9 million.” (Time, 20 November) Forget the myths, for a lot of Americans it is “trailer park to trailer park”.

What’s happening in China (1965)

From the November 1965 issue of the Socialist Standard

The so-called communist rulers of China are in trouble. They are trying to achieve two impossible feats; to make exploitation popular with the Chinese workers and to kid them along that the form of capitalism which is developing there is socialism.

The latest campaign to accomplish this is called the “Socialist Education Campaign”, now in full swing, which was recently commended by the Chinese premier as being “of great revolutionary and historical significance”. Such campaigns are no novelty in “communist” China, where the workers seem to need a lot of convincing.

Previous campaigns have been passed off as methods of getting rid of the remains of capitalism or as part of the building-up of a “communist” system of society, or as the eradication of specific errors and failings of the Old China. They were represented as a necessary process of cleaning up and modernising the social structure and they dealt largely with problems that were laid at the door of the old era.

But this time it is different, in that the government leaders have to deal with problems which, they frankly proclaim arise directly from the present system of society. The “Socialist Education Campaign” is teaching workers, both in industry and the civil service, to deal with the new problems caused by the creation of a modern, technically developed state from a recently backward country. It is this which enables Premier Chou-En-lai to assign “historical significance” to the current campaign.

To enable them to reconcile awkward facts with an incorrect interpretation of society, the Chinese have to be dosed with plenty of “communist” education.

One problem with which they have to deal is that of the new “managerial class”. Mao-Tze-tung, Chou-En-lai and the rest of the old die-hards of the Communist Party, were tough, unscrupulous but courageous labour leaders tested in battle and called upon for great personal sacrifices in prompting the Communist Party to the leadership of what they may have once believed was a different system of society.

But the old guard are getting older, and they are finding it difficult to select their successors from the ranks of the new business bureaucracy who seem to be taking their place. These young people are slick, well educated executive types who are rising to the top in the nationalised concerns and government departments. They have little understanding of political theory, little desire to make personal sacrifices, but, like business executives the world over, are ambitious to rise in the hierarchy and enjoy the luxuries which only the possession of money makes possible. Such is a thumb-nail sketch of one of the groups that the die-hards are trying to impregnate with so-called communist ideology. But the die-hards are as horrified at this developing class, as the swan was when it found it had hatched a duckling. Capitalist society develops along its own lines, irrespective of the muddled thinking of its apologists.

An Tzu-wen, Director of the Organisation Department of the Party’s Central Committee, considered the nature of some of these groups in some detail in an article which appeared in the Party journal Red Flag on 22/9/64 and which was reported in the China Quarterly April/June 1965. An is primarily concerned with the campaign to train successors to the present leadership. He distinguishes between the older cadres of pre-liberation vintage who have failed to adapt themselves to the technical and organisational development going on, and the younger ones who have not the political benefit of those who went through the Civil War.

It is from An’s article that it is possible to build up a picture of the various groups he sees developing around him. His criticisms have been publicised to the greatest extent possible in the Chinese national press and on the radio. He said that the gravest dilemma for the Chinese leaders may be the conflict between their own background and the need for modernisation in economic planning.

Chou-En-lai made it clear in his report last December that one of the main motives behind the “Socialist Education Movement’’ was the need to prepare the country for economic expansion. He speaks of the need for a “scientific and realistic approach”. An calls on the older cadres to adapt themselves and he describes the movement as “a mass movement for studying Marxist-Leninist and Mao Tse-tung ideology with emphasis in its flexible interpretation and application”.

The Chinese Government are training the new managerial class to a degree which must involve contact with the thinking of the outside world and they are at the same time inducing the old die-hards to work efficiently in the fervent atmosphere of industrial capitalism, misnamed “socialist expansion”.

Another section being “educated” are the Chinese followers of the Russian communist party. Since it now seems that many of the interests of the Chinese ruling class are opposed to those of .the Russian, Chinese supporters must be “re-educated” to enable them to make an intellectual somersault. China is living in a capitalist world jungle and must be prepared, in its own interests, to support a war against its erstwhile “comrades”. There must be no fifth column in the Chinese camp.

Another homegrown problem is the rise of the wealthy farmer, a new economic group since the seizure of governmental power by the Chinese “communists”. With their surpluses of commodity crops they have made a mockery of the food and clothing rationing which still obtains in China. The black market is now known as the free market and is officially recognised by the Government. Any of the rationed goods can be obtained at a higher price and this is part of a process whereby the rural rich are becoming richer. Universal rationing for all has become rationing by price, officially lauded by the authorities. This, of course, is the state of affairs to which the workers of the rest of the world are accustomed, whether they are starving in the backward countries or the “affluent” of western capitalism.

China has had a somewhat different history of social development to the West over the centuries, so that capitalism there is a little different from capitalism here in some of the details. But Chinese workers have basically the same economic interests as the workers here; and the so-called communist government there behaves domestically and in its foreign policies, like the capitalist power that in fact it is.

Frank Offord

The Yellow Revolt. (1914)

Pamphlet Review from the September 1914 issue of the Socialist Standard

“China and the Social Revolution,” by Kiang Kang Hu.

This little pamphlet is an all too brief sketch of the revolutionary movement in China during the recent upheaval. It is exceedingly interesting reading, and would be a startling eye-opener to the brand of anti-Socialist whose only excuse for opposing Socialism is that England must wait for Socialism until the “uncivilised” and the heathen are converted to our cause.

Here we have the “heathen Chinee” applying Marxian remedies to working class evils, and showing a knowledge of capitalist conditions that would put to shame many a “civilised” Christian “labour leader.”

The great revolution in China in which the working class, as is customary in all such revolutions, was used to free the land from Manchu rule, leaves the Chinese worker groaning under still worse conditions, conditions common to the early development of capitalist production. And, as a result, to use the author’s words ;

“The faith of the people is gone in Republicanism. The belief that it was the Manchu’s only who were oppressive is shattered. There remains but one thing, THE SOCIAL REVOLUTION. That and that only can bring relief to the toiling millions of China. Their only hope lies in this : the taking over of the entire mechanism of production and operation of it by the workers, for the workers—the Socialist or Industrial Republic.”

The growth of The Socialist Party of China was evidently too swift for the powers that were, for in 1913 martial law was declared in Peking, the headquarters raided, the Secretary, Chen Ye Long, was beheaded and the S. P. of China dissolved. It is however but for a time.

“China cannot remain long in the grip of the re-action. Yuan Shi Kai can overrun the country with his troops. He can zealously stamp out, every spark of revolt. And yet, even as he does that, the tremendous forces are gathering, forces to which his army is but a toy, which will hurl aside Yuan Shi Kai and the re-action as though they were nothing. The name of those forces is industrialism. Steadily in ever increasing speed, the great economic change to machine production continues in China. This means that China must be, will be modernised.

“And the Socialist Movement in China will reassemble its forces, fall in step with the great Red International and march with it to victory.”

The author puts things very straight, and a passage dealing with the missionary, the capitalist, and the invasion of China by the Allied Powers is thus neatly and forcibly summarised: “China can now come into contact with the holy trinity of capitalism, the Cross, the Dollar Mark, and the Bayonet.”

Much other useful information is given in this brochure, which is well worth perusal.

Twel.

Tiny Tips (2010)

The Tiny Tips column from the September 2010 issue of the Socialist Standard

According to one organizer, a scrappy former bank teller named Wu Lijuan, there are at least 70,000 people seeking to regain their old jobs or receive monetary compensation, a sizeable wedge of the 400,000 who were laid off during a decade-long purge. Like many other state-owned companies, the banks slashed payrolls and restructured to raise profitability and make themselves more attractive to outside investors. “They tossed us out like garbage,” Ms. Wu, 44, said before a recent protest, scanning fellow restaurant patrons for potential eavesdroppers. “All we’re asking for is justice and maybe to serve as a model for others who have been wronged.” For a government determined to maintain social harmony, the protests and petitioning are vexing. Compared with farmers angry over seized land or retired soldiers seeking fatter pensions, the bank workers — educated, organized and knowledgeable about the Internet — are better equipped to outsmart the public security agents constantly on their trail.

[Link.]

“Women demand men have houses and cars, why can’t men demand women be virgins?” asked one man on the Tianya site. “So, greedy women, remember, you have to protect your hymens, because those are big dowries for you to exchange for money.” Some men who were interviewed agreed about the importance of finding a virgin. “I really care about virginity,” said Xia Yang, product manager for a technology company. “If you go to buy a cellphone, of course you’d want to buy a new cellphone. Who would spend the same amount of money to buy an old cellphone that’s been used for two years?” The virginity debate also underscores a contradiction in modern China: As the nation becomes more freewheeling, there remains a deeply conservative core.

[Link.]

The report listed numerous areas in which China’s military is on the march. China is deploying a new class of nuclear-powered submarines equipped with intercontinental ballistic missiles. It is pouring money into space warfare systems and cyber-warfare capabilities. It is developing a “carrier killer” anti-ship ballistic missile. China has “the most active land-based ballistic and cruise missile program in the world,” the report said. Beijing “now possesses one of the largest” forces of surface-to-air missiles in the world, it added. And it has the “largest force of principal combatants, submarines, and amphibious warfare ships in Asia.”

[Link.]

Life & Times: Work in China and the UK (2024)

The Life and Times column from the June 2024 issue of the Socialist Standard

The other day I had a conversation with someone who told me he’d recently visited China and, having worked there in the past, now found things significantly changed. The context of this was a university academic, a social scientist, coming to speak with his trade union’s volunteer personal case officer (myself). He (I’ll call him Simon) was dissatisfied with his work situation largely owing to the volume of work he was being given, consisting of teaching, administration and research. In particular he was concerned that the teaching and administration had become so overwhelming that he was being left with little time to get on with and publish his research, which is what would dictate the progress of his career. What could be done? I made a few suggestions, among which was an approach by the union to his head of department protesting at his treatment and its apparent unfairness. He seemed happy with this – as a first step anyway.

‘Dire’

But in mentioning China at the start of our conversation, he’d also told me that, on his recent visit there with his wife, also a social scientist and herself Chinese, both of them had been offered jobs at a Chinese university. They’d thought about it but decided not to take up the offer because the current situation in China was ‘dire’ (his word). This made me curious, so after talking about Simon’s current employment issues, I asked him what he meant by ‘dire’ in relation to China. He was only too ready to explain.

He said there were three main reasons. The first one had been of particular concern to his wife – a noticeable increase in what he called misogyny. He explained that China’s ‘one-child’ policy having been abandoned quite some time ago, the government was concerned that the population now wasn’t replacing itself and so was putting considerable pressure on women to have more children and stay at home to bring them up. Women insisting on being employed were being portrayed almost as betrayers of the nation. The second thing was that they had noticed, since they last spent time there, that the climate had become noticeably more repressive. This manifested itself, for example, in university academics having to seek special permission simply if they wanted to spend a weekend away in another city or another part of the country and in it having become more difficult to get colleagues they knew to speak openly about any subject that might be considered sensitive or political. The third thing was that it was being made increasingly difficult for foreigners to obtain visas to stay in the country or to continue residence there, one consequence of which was that it was not unusual for western media correspondents not to have their visas renewed. Simon also told me they noticed a definite deterioration in economic conditions with signs that the government seemed nervous about possible unrest or protest and was seeking ways (eg, the furore about Taiwan) of distracting attention from deteriorating prospects and living conditions for its citizens. He ended by wondering, tongue in cheek of course, whether, given the increasingly repressive atmosphere, a comparison with the Ming dynasty might not be appropriate.

Xi Jinping: a ruler for ever?

All of this is anecdotal of course, but there does seem a lot of backing for Simon’s take on China from a good many other sources. For example, recent newspaper coverage has reported on the shrinking of China’s population and government concern about the low birth rate leading potentially to a loss of young workers. China’s apparently permanent leader Xi Jinping has been quoted as referring to women playing ‘a unique role in promoting traditional virtues’ and to the ‘need to cultivate a new marriage and childbearing culture to tackle the ageing population’. There is also evidence that, after decades of relatively high economic growth under a mixture of state and private capitalism, China’s economy is losing momentum, with significant downturns in various sectors (eg, building and construction, property, private tutoring, data management and transfer), unrest and unemployment leading to strikes and demonstrations among workers and also concern within the small Chinese private capitalist class, some of them fabulously rich, about government crackdowns, as the one-party regime seeks to tighten its control over both state and private economic activity.

As long ago as the 1980s, many people thought that China was moving towards less authoritarian, more democratic political institutions. Such hopes were dashed by the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, but there are again some commentators who consider that the current regime will find it difficult in the longer term to contain social unrest and this may lead to more enlightened government policies or at least a relaxation of repression – as happened for example in Eastern Europe where, against most people’s expectations, seemingly stable regimes crumbled almost overnight. This is obviously to be hoped for, since not only is the current anti-democratic, repressive regime an obstacle to the needs of continuing capitalist development, bumping up against the free circulation and exchange of ideas that need to go with that development, but it is also an obstacle to the subsequent development of socialist consciousness that we are looking for.

Socialism (with Chinese characteristics?)

To return to Simon and his wife, their perception of the way the Chinese regime currently operates (which it laughably called ‘socialism with Chinese characteristics’) and their rationale for not staying there seem fully corroborated. There seems little doubt that their work situation and their freedoms, academic and otherwise, would have been far more restricted in China than in the UK. Of course, Simon had complaints about the way he was being treated by his employer here. But at least he was able to seek to address this via his trade union, a body independent of government or other ‘higher’ authority. How much more difficult would he have found the same kind of thing in China, where unions do exist but are closely government monitored and controlled? Would the outcome be a cancelled visa? Anyway, hasten the day when all such autocracies give way to at least the limited democracy that capitalism can offer and provide the ground for workers to decide collectively that they want to move on the road to that genuine alternative system of society beyond the system of wages, money and profit, which we call socialism.

Howard Moss