China

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon May 28, 2018 1:18 pm

Xi Jinping, Kim Jong Un hold talks in Dalian
Source: Xinhua| 2018-05-08 19:50:54|Editor: ZX

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Xi Jinping (R), general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chinese president, holds talks with Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, on May 7-8. (Xinhua/Ju Peng)

DALIAN, May 8 (Xinhua) -- Xi Jinping, general secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) and Chinese president, met Kim Jong Un, chairman of the Workers' Party of Korea (WPK) and chairman of the State Affairs Commission of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), in Dalian, northeast China's Liaoning Province, on May 7-8.

Wang Huning, member of the Standing Committee of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and member of the Secretariat of the CPC Central Committee, attended related activities.

Dalian sees lush mountains, blue seas and drifting clouds in May. Xi held talks with Kim and hosted a welcome banquet for him. Together, they also took a stroll and attended a luncheon.

In a cordial and friendly atmosphere, the top leaders of the two parties and the two countries had an all-round and in-depth exchange of views on China-DPRK relations and major issues of common concern.

Comrade Chairman made a special trip to China to meet me again just after 40-odd days, Xi said, at a crucial time when the Korean Peninsula situation is undergoing profound and complex changes. This embodies the great importance that Comrade Chairman and the WPK Central Committee have attached to the relations between the two parties and the two countries, and to their strategic communication. "I speak highly of it," Xi said.

"After the first meeting between me and Comrade Chairman, both China-DPRK relations and the Korean Peninsula situation have made positive progress. I feel happy about it," he said.

Xi said he was willing to meet Kim again to make joint efforts to push the healthy and stable development of China-DPRK relations, realize long-lasting peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula, and promote regional peace, stability and prosperity.

For his part, Kim said both the DPRK-China friendship and the Korean Peninsula situation have undergone meaningful progress since March this year. "These are the positive outcomes of the historic meeting between me and Comrade General Secretary," he said.

At a crucial time when the regional situation is developing rapidly, Kim said he came to China again to meet with General Secretary and inform him of the situation, hoping to strengthen strategic communication and cooperation with China, deepen DPRK-China friendship, and promote regional peace and stability.

Xi stressed that he and Kim held their historic first meeting in Beijing in March this year, during which they had a long and in-depth communication, and reached principled consensus in four aspects on developing China-DPRK relations in the new era.

Firstly, the China-DPRK traditional friendship has been a treasure of both countries. It is an unswerving principle and the only correct choice for both countries to develop the friendly and cooperative China-DPRK relations.

Secondly, both China and the DPRK are socialist countries, and their bilateral relations are of major strategic significance. Both sides need to enhance unity, cooperation, exchanges and mutual learning.

Thirdly, high-level exchanges between the two parties play an irreplaceably significant role in guiding bilateral relations, Xi said. The two sides should maintain frequent exchanges, strengthen strategic communication, deepen understanding and mutual trust, and safeguard common interests.

Fourthly, cementing the people-to-people friendship foundation is an important channel to advance the development of China-DPRK relations, Xi said. The two sides should, by multiple means, enhance people-to-people communication and exchanges to create a sound foundation of popular will for the advancement of China-DPRK relations.

Xi said that with concerted efforts of both sides, all of these consensuses are being well implemented.

Within a period of more than one month, he and Kim met twice and they have been keeping in close contact, Xi said.

He said that he is willing to work together with Kim to continue to guide relevant departments of the two sides to soundly implement the consensuses they have reached, promote the continuous advancement of China-DPRK relations, benefit the two countries and two peoples, and make positive contributions to the peace and stability of the region.

Xi also extended sincere gratitude to Kim for his great attention and earnest attitude demonstrated after a major road accident in the DPRK which resulted in casualties of the two countries' citizens.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-0 ... 164420.htm

Some people, SOME PEOPLE, will tell ya that China is throwing Korea under the bus.All of this is just to fool.......somebody.
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon Jun 04, 2018 5:46 pm

Syria and the West's last-ditch battle to halt the rise of China

The West has built up its unparalleled armoury for one reason only - to protect its dominant world position. Syria is most likely where it will be used

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Tuesday 17 April 2018 14:32 UTC

The colonial, imperialist nature of postwar capitalism has, to some extent, been disguised by the formal political independence of most of the formerly colonised world. With an unambiguous and unrivalled lead in technological capacity, the Western nations have not required direct colonisation in order to guarantee essentially "captive" markets for their goods and capital.

The former colonies have largely been dependent on products, finance and technology from the imperial world without the need for formal political control - and this dependence has been backed up with economic blackmail through international financial institutions such as the IMF and World Bank where possible, and direct military force against resistant nations where necessary.

More military force
Such dependence, however, has been decisively eroded since the beginning of the new millennium. The rise of China, in particular, has completely destroyed the West's monopoly on finance and market access for the global South: African, Asian and Latin American countries no longer have to rely on US markets for their goods or on World Bank loans for their infrastructure development.

China is now an alternative provider of all these, and generally on far superior terms of trade than those offered by the West. In times of continued economic stagnation, however, this loss of their (neo) colonies is entirely unacceptable to the Western capitalist nations, and threatens the entire carefully crafted system of global extortion on which their own prosperity is based.

Increasingly unable to rely on economic coercion alone to keep countries within its 'sphere of influence', then, the West has been turning more and more to military force

Increasingly unable to rely on economic coercion alone to keep countries within its "sphere of influence", then, the West has been turning more and more to military force.

Indeed, the US, UK and France have been permanently at war since the eve of the new millennium - starting with Yugoslavia, through Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Mali, Syria and Yemen (to say nothing of proxy wars such as that in the Congo, or the "drone wars" waged in Pakistan, Somalia and elsewhere).

In each case, the aim has been the same - to thwart the possibility of independent development. It is entirely indicative of this new era of decreasing economic power that several of these wars were waged against states whose leaders were once in the pocket of the US (Iraq and Afghanistan) or who they had hoped to buy off (Libya and Syria).

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British soldiers lower the flag at Camp Bastion in Afghanistan (AFP)

Thus, where it was once, at least in part, the result of economic superiority, the continued supremacy of the West in international affairs is increasingly reliant on military force alone. And even this military superiority is diminishing daily.

Deteriorating global power

Predictions of the length of time left before the Chinese economy overtakes the US economy continue to shrink. In 2016, China's share of the world economy had grown to 15 percent, compared to the USA's 25 percent. But with a growth rate over three times that of the USA, the difference is expected to decline rapidly; at this rate, the Chinese economy is on course to overtake that of the US by 2026.

Even if Putin were prepared to ditch Iran, or even China, for the right price (such as lifting sanctions, or recognising Russian sovereignty over Crimea), there is no way Congress would allow Trump to pay such a price

In fact, some scholars even argue that once adjustments are made for purchasing power parity and differential prices, the Chinese economy is already larger than that of the US. Furthermore, Chinese manufacturing output has been higher than that of the US for over a decade, and exports are one third higher, whilst China produces double the number of graduates annually than the US.

Such developments, however, are not of economic significance only: for it is only a matter of time before economic superiority is converted into military superiority. And this gives the US and its hangers-on an ever-diminishing window of opportunity in which to actually use their military superiority in order to preserve their deteriorating global power.

Regime change spoiler
Clearly the strategy hitherto has been to avoid direct war with China and its key ally Russia, and instead to focus on "taking out" their real or potential allies amongst states less able to defend themselves. But Russia's role as a spoiler in the regime change operation in Syria has demonstrated to the US that this may no longer be possible.

This has led to a split within the US ruling class on the issue of how to deal with Russia, with one side seeking to purchase Russian acquiescence to wars against Iran and China (advocated by the faction supporting Trump) and the other aiming to simply "regime change" Russia itself (advocated by the Hillary Clinton faction).

It is easy to see how the Syrian war could lead to a major escalation: indeed, it is difficult to see how it could not

At the heart of both is the attempt to break the alliance between Russia and China, in the case of Clinton by pulling China away from Russia, and for Trump, pulling Russia away from China.

The point is, however, that neither strategy is likely to work, as clearly the breaking of the China-Russia axis is aimed at weakening both of them. Furthermore, even if Putin were prepared to ditch Iran, or even China, for the right price (such as lifting sanctions, or recognising Russian sovereignty over Crimea), there is no way Congress would allow Trump to pay such a price.

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Russian soldiers march during a rehearsal of the Victory Day Parade at the Russian Hmeimim military base in Latakia province, in the northwest of Syria on 4 May, 2016 (AFP)

Trump would dearly love to offer to lift sanctions - but this is not within his gift; instead he can merely offer sops such as withdrawal from Syria, or pre-warning of missile attacks on Russia's allies - hardly enough to lure Russia into the suicidal severing of alliances with its most important allies.

The unthinkable war
This conundrum puts the unthinkable squarely on the agenda: direct war with Russia. The last month has shown clearly how, and how rapidly, this is developing. Britain's carefully calibrated efforts to create a worldwide diplomatic break with Russia can now clearly be seen as a prelude to what was almost certainly planned to be - and may yet become - an all-out war with Russia on the Syrian battlefield.

This scenario appears to have been averted for now by Russia's refusal to countenance it, and the West's fear of launching such an operation in the face of direct Russian threats, but such incidents are only likely to increase. It is only a matter of time before Russia will be put to the test.

Britain's carefully calibrated efforts to create a worldwide diplomatic break with Russia can now clearly be seen as a prelude to what was almost certainly planned to be an all-out war with Russia on the Syrian battlefield

It is easy to see how the Syrian war could lead to a major escalation: indeed, it is difficult to see how it could not. In Washington, there is much talk of the need to "confront" Iran in Syria, and recent Israeli attacks on Iranian positions in Syria indicate that they are itching to get this confrontation underway, with or without prior US approval.

Once underway, however, an Iranian-Israeli conflict could very easily draw in Russia and the US. Russia could hardly be expected to stand back whilst Israel reversed all its hard-fought gains of the past two and a half years - whilst demonstrating the feebleness of Russian "protection" - and would likely retaliate, or at the very least (and more likely) provide its allies with the means to do so.

Indeed, Putin reportedly warned Netanyahu last week that he can no longer expect to attack Syria with impunity. And once Israelis start getting killed by Russian hardware, it is hard to see how the US could not get involved.

This is just one possible scenario for the kind of escalation that would lead to war with Russia. Economic war with China is already underway, and US warships are already readying themselves to cut off China's supply lines in the South China Sea.

Each specific provocation and escalation may or may not lead to a direct showdown with one or both of these powers. What is clear, however, is that this is the direction in which Western imperialism is clearly headed.

It has built up its unparalleled armoury for one reason only - to protect its dominant world position. The time is soon coming when it will have to use it - and use it against a power that can actually fight back - whilst it still has a chance of winning.

- Dan Glazebrook is a political writer and editor of stopstarvingyemen.org. He is author of Divide and Ruin: The West's Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis and blogs at danglazebrook.com.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.

Photo: An image from the US Department of Defense shows a US Air Force B-1B Lancer flying over the East China Sea on 9 January 2018. The US reportedly used B-1 bombers in the strikes against Syria, but the American military declined to provide specifics. (AFP)

http://www.middleeasteye.net/columns/we ... 1965769486

He might be right, but I don't know that it will go beyond proxies, though if one side is getting it's ass beat that glove might come off.
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Tue Jun 19, 2018 8:40 pm

China’s socialist model enriches global governance philosophy
19 june, 2018 by stalinsmoustache, posted in china, socialist market economy, socialist state
I rather like this piece from the Global Times yesterday:

The most discussed challenge to liberal democracy in the West nowadays is the perceived threat of China’s rise and the “Chinese model.” That China has rapidly risen in a development model different from that of the West has startled and upset the West. Does China attempt to overthrow the Western liberal order? Would it spread its development ideas, values and political system to other countries? Such worries haunt many Western scholars, politicians and media outlets.

To figure out whether China is a threat to liberalism, the Economist initiated a debate “Should the West worry about the threat to liberal values posed by China’s rise?” as if liberal values are paramount standards that couldn’t be challenged.

After the Cold War, Western liberal democracy and the market economic system, which are built on core liberal values such as individual freedom, equality and capitalism, gained their momentum. Francis Fukuyama, an acclaimed American political scientist, even declared free-market liberal democracy would become the world’s “final form of human government.”

However, it’s absurd to hold Western liberal democracy was the “end of history.” Since the 2008 financial crisis, the Western world has undergone serious economic, political and social turbulence. Political polarization in the US, the European migrant crisis, Brexit and the rise of populism on both sides of the Atlantic all indicate the West has been mired in a liberalism crisis.

Fukuyama was compelled to revise his original opinion and turned to fear for the future of liberal democracy. He called to examine the deep structural reasons for dysfunctional democracy. Unfortunately, a more prevailing view is to blame external threats for the fall of liberal democracy, regardless of what deserves more attention is not threat from outside, but from within.

The West should make self-introspection for the liberalism crisis. Liberal ideas and institutions failed to solve the problems facing developing countries. Many developing governments found it hard to govern their country well after copying Western political systems and were plagued by political and social woes. More newly emerging countries have become skeptical about the Western model. In sharp contrast, the Chinese model is gaining popularity and giving hope to those countries longing for rapid development while maintaining independence.

The Chinese model has undoubtedly raised questions over liberal values, but it also enriches development philosophy. There is neither “end of history” nor “end of evolution” for development model. Now it’s the time for the West to seriously reflect upon its own problems and reconsider its values. What it needs to do is to improve and move forward, rather than be obsessed with past success. If it continues to defend its internal decay by fabricating external threats, liberal democracy and institutions will face a bigger crisis.

If you wish to read further, there is also an intriguing article about a Nigerian proposal to change to a one-party system and socialist economy in Nigeria. http://www.globaltimes.cn/content/1107176.shtml

https://stalinsmoustache.org/2018/06/19 ... hilosophy/

"philosophy", "governance model", anything but communism, but ha!, we'll take it.
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Wed Jun 20, 2018 1:08 pm

The China–Pakistan Economic Corridor
Beyond the Rule of Capital?
by Aasim Sajjad Akhtar
(Jun 01, 2018)

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Inside a Haier Pakistan factory. Credit: Arif Ali, White Star.

Aasim Sajjad Akhtar is an assistant professor at the National Institute of Pakistan Studies at Quaid-i-Azam University in Islamabad.

In August 2017, seven months into the most reactionary U.S. presidency of modern times, Donald Trump ventured into the political minefield that Washington has named the “AfPak” region, accusing Pakistan of hindering efforts to establish a lasting peace in Afghanistan and the region at large. Trump then reaffirmed his predecessor’s commitment to deepening ties with South Asia’s preeminent power, India. The Pakistani government, media, and intelligentsia reacted sharply, incensed both at Washington’s “do more” mantra and the continuing U.S. tilt toward their archrivals in New Delhi.

A little over a month later, U.S. Defense Secretary James Mattis upped the ante further by questioning the legality of China’s much-hyped One Belt One Road (OBOR) project, warning that the planned infrastructure-building initiative would pass through what India considers the “disputed territories” of Kashmir and Gilgit-Balistan, where the borders of China, India, and Pakistan meet. This time the retort came from Beijing, which called on other countries to join their regional cooperation agreements instead of perceiving them as a threat.

Three hundred years after what became known in the nineteenth century as the Great Game—a struggle for regional hegemony between the British and Russian Empires—Southwest Asia remains an imperial staging ground. By the middle of the twentieth century, with the collapse of European colonial empires, the United States and the Soviet Union had taken over the mantle of the world’s Great Powers, and Southwest Asia emerged as one of the major theatres of the Cold War. The collapse of the USSR ushered in a period of virtually unchallenged U.S. hegemony in the region, with China still cast as a “developing country” harboring only modest geopolitical aspirations.

The U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in September 2001 signaled Washington’s desire to cement its hegemonic position, but seventeen years later it is mired in an unwinnable war, even as the U.S. economy—and that of much of the Western world—endures the “endless crisis” of contemporary capitalism.1 At the same time, China’s economic power and political influence have grown steadily, and over the next decade the country is widely predicted to overtake the United States as the world’s largest economy. Today the globalized world order born after the demise of twentieth-century Communism is in the throes of profound change. In much of the Western political mainstream, neoliberal doctrines of globalization have been overtaken by parties and programs demanding a turn inward. The clamor barely masks the protracted decline of Western hegemony, and attendant shifts in the global balance of power.

Meanwhile, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which has long been known to understate its ambitions, has in recent years begun to acknowledge its global designs far more openly. This was made clear in the grandest of ways in May 2017, at a high-level summit in Beijing to mark the formal launch of OBOR, which will see a wave of Chinese-funded infrastructure projects initiated in many parts of Asia and Africa. While Trump and his neofascist counterparts fearmonger about the perils of “openness” and “globalism,” Chinese premier Xi Jinping has announced his country’s intention to lead the world into a new “golden age” of globalization.2

There has been much controversy on the left over the extent to which China’s remarkable transformation from an insular backwater to the center of the world-system represents a counterweight to capitalist imperialism. I do not engage here with the question of China’s own development trajectory per se, which has become a subject of debate even within China itself, most recently at the CCP’s Nineteenth Congress.3 Samir Amin has in any case argued that a full understanding of China’s “sovereign” path requires a rejection of a simple “capitalism vs. socialism” binary and of the prevailing trend toward “China bashing.”4

The most notable international impact of China’s growth has been its stunning emergence since the 1990s as the workshop of the global economy. For thirty years, Chinese manufactures have flooded world markets, a success made possible by its seemingly inexhaustible supplies of cheap labor. However, rising labor costs (and worker unrest), along with falling aggregate demand in Western economies, have confirmed to the CCP that the country is entering a new phase of accumulation, one that will facilitate the transition to a service-oriented economy and focus developmental efforts on western China. Among other initiatives, excess capacity will be channeled into massive communication thoroughfares linking both the western regions and the rest of mainland China to Southwest and Central Asia.

Arguably the most significant single element in Beijing’s calculus for the region—and certainly OBOR’s biggest component—is the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). In this essay, I will interrogate what China’s flagship globalization project means for Pakistan, and how to evaluate China’s growing footprint in the country, given Pakistan’s central place in U.S. imperial strategy in Southwest Asia for much of the postwar period. By distinguishing official CPEC rhetoric from reality, we can better evaluate the degree to which China’s role as an emergent global superpower challenges not only U.S. hegemony, but capitalist imperialism itself.

The debate over China’s emergence as a world power often ignores specific national and regional contexts, particularly those where Western imperialist nations have long-established interests. In recent years, OBOR-funded developments in Africa have become the subject of critical study on the left.5 Here I will consider whether CPEC is likely to reinforce class and state power within Pakistan, and what kind of larger developmental and ecological vision the project advances. Only by studying such on-the-ground effects—rather than abstractly hypothesizing whether China’s will be an “anti-imperialist” intervention by virtue of its displacing the United States—can we gain real insights into the trajectory of the world order in the coming decades, and specifically the future of working people and fragile ecosystems in the historically imperialized zones of the global South.

Trump’s announcement last August that Pakistan would be held to account for its alleged duplicity in the war against the Taliban in Afghanistan was followed by even more incendiary finger-pointing in subsequent months.6 In contrast, China has generally appeared to stand by Pakistan, thus reinforcing the belief that the country should move further away from a bullying Washington, into Beijing’s ever-expanding orbit. Even before Trump’s latest outburst, the CPEC project was widely hailed as a “game-changer” in Pakistani intellectual and political circles, notwithstanding the exceedingly limited public discussion of the plan itself.7

Outside the mainstream, however, Beijing’s growing power is a far more contested matter. CPEC has sparked considerable conflict within the small Pakistani left, with discernible pro-China and anti-China positions emerging. As I suggest below, both perspectives shed light on imperialism in Pakistan, as well as on the state, class, ethnicity, and other social fault lines. By mapping this history, it becomes possible to envision a meaningful anti-imperialist politics in Pakistan in the years to come.

Pakistan: Frontline of Imperialism
Since the events of 9/11 and the subsequent “war on terror,” Pakistan has arguably been the single most important country in U.S. foreign policy calculus. The U.S. military adventure in Afghanistan against the Taliban has been facilitated by successive Pakistani regimes, starting with the military rule of General Pervez Musharraf (1999–2008). Yet since shortly after the opening of the Afghan theatre, Washington has accused Pakistan of playing a “double game” by providing covert support to some Taliban factions, most notably the Haqqani Network.

The current love-hate U.S.-Pakistan relationship is to a significant extent a microcosm of the two countries’ ties through much of the postwar era. Pakistan remained central to U.S. imperial designs for most of the Cold War, despite their starkly different motivations for investing in bilateral relations. Washington saw Pakistan as a key member of its anticommunist alliances in Southwest Asia, namely the Southeast Asia Treaty Organization and the Central Treaty Organization, or Baghdad Pact. Bilateral aid began with the so-called Mutual Assistance Program in 1954, through which the United States provided resources and training to the Pakistani army, seeking to modernize it as a fighting force, and more generally to shape the new nation into a pliant third-world state along Huntingtonian lines.8 For its part, Pakistan, which after a military coup in 1958 had embraced its colonial inheritance as a garrison of Western imperialism, saw the alliance as a means of offsetting its relative weakness vis-à-vis a much bigger and better endowed India.

The contradictions of this uneasy alignment were exposed after the Sino-Indian border conflict erupted in 1962. Routed by the more professional and modern Red Army, New Delhi looked to Washington for help, and its request was promptly heeded by the Kennedy administration. Feeling betrayed by Washington’s overtures to Jawaharlal Nehru’s left-leaning Congress Party, the military regime in Islamabad headed by General Ayub Khan turned its attention to Beijing, laying the foundations of a Sino-Pakistani nexus and confirming the complex geopolitical calculus of the Cold War in South Asia.

However, China’s “all-weather friendship,” as it came to be known in Islamabad, could not offset fallout from the Pakistani military establishment’s India-centric strategic policy. When New Delhi decisively intervened in east Pakistan’s civil war in late 1971, neither Beijing nor Washington was willing to directly support the Pakistani army’s floundering Operation Searchlight against Bengali insurgents. The country’s eastern wing seceded to form the state of Bangladesh, and Pakistan’s strategic defeat reached its humiliating conclusion.

In the immediate aftermath, Pakistan’s foreign policy briefly approximated non-alignment. A left-of-center regime headed by Zulfikar Ali Bhutto claimed to represent a third-world popular-nationalist project, and for a time threatened to overturn a history of unconditional allegiance to larger powers. In the event, Bhutto’s first significant initiative was to facilitate Washington’s reestablishment of formal diplomatic ties with China, thus bringing together both of Islamabad’s major allies and confirming that Pakistan would remain firmly on the anti-Soviet side of the Cold War divide.9

Indeed, just a few years later, Pakistan became the staging ground for one of Washington’s most consequential anti-Soviet interventions, the “jihad” against the Moscow-backed People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan. By then Bhutto had been overthrown—and later hanged—by General Zia ul Haq, thus ushering in yet another military dictatorship backed by the United States. Pakistan had once again become Washington’s blue-eyed boy, while jihadi militants were depicted as warriors serving the cause of freedom and democracy, helping defang the “evil empire.”

The blowback from this anti-Soviet jihad has since engulfed much of the world. Right-wing millenarian ideology has taken deep root both in sections of majority-Muslim societies as well as among some disaffected Muslims in Western countries. The growing influence of religious militancy amongst Muslim populations is nevertheless far from an unchanging cultural fact. While Trump’s sheer demagoguery confirms the growing power of the far right, it is worth recalling that it was neoconservatives under George W. Bush who initiated a new phase of U.S. militarism under the guise of fighting radical Islam, fueling the “clash of civilizations” narrative from which reactionary forces in Muslim contexts have also benefited.

The shift in U.S. foreign policy toward direct confrontation with its erstwhile jihadi protégés, with Afghanistan again a major theatre of bloody conflict, has tested relations between the United States and Pakistan’s military establishment. The latter has sought at one and the same time to maintain a relationship with its overlords in the Pentagon, and to continue patronizing those jihadi groups that serve its longstanding strategic objectives in India and Afghanistan.

Even accounting for the opportunism of Pakistan’s generals, Washington’s convenient insistence, both before and during the Trump presidency, that Pakistan is the “epicenter of global terrorism” betrays the utterly contradictory effects of unbridled U.S. militarism. Delusions of grandeur notwithstanding, a U.S.-dominated global economy is now a thing of the past, with American working and even middle-class populations devastated by deindustrialization and financialization—the “endless crisis” exploited in the xenophobic idiom of Trump and his ilk. Although the U.S. dollar for now remains the global reserve currency, U.S. imperial power is sustained primarily by its enormous military capacity and the attendant ideology of unending war peddled by its military-industrial complex and a compliant corporate media.

China as New Patron Saint?
Against this backdrop of bloated militarism, Washington’s increasingly strained relations with Islamabad contrast sharply with the cordiality of the Sino-Pakistani relationship. Effusive and mutual praise has flowed freely since the two countries became close allies more than fifty years ago—although only in recent times has China emerged as a genuine competitor to the United States as Pakistan’s major benefactor.

Beijing has unfailingly supplied weapons to Islamabad for the better part of five decades, and its support was critical to the development of Pakistan’s nuclear program in the 1980s and early 1990s. Yet even China’s steadfast support during periods of strain between Pakistan and the United States has not lured Pakistani generals away from higher-quality U.S. weapons as part of their long-term efforts to modernize the county’s military. In fact, the ebbs and flows in the relationship between Washington and Islamabad have never translated into a complete freeze in arms sales and technical support from the Pentagon to the Pakistan army’s General Headquarters (GHQ).

At the same time, U.S. aid to Pakistan has never included a substantial economic component—at least not consistently so—and it is on this front that China’s evolving role is likely to prove distinct. While economic cooperation between China and Pakistan has increased considerably since the turn of the millennium, Beijing’s stakes in the Pakistani economy are set to increase exponentially in the form of CPEC commitments: to date the Chinese government has pledged more than $54 billion.

The question, as ever, is whether CPEC will simply buttress Pakistan’s inegalitarian and authoritarian power structure, or if, instead, Chinese intervention will trigger incipient forces of change, even if unwittingly. So far the only detailed material available in the public domain about CPEC is the so-called Long-Term Plan (LTP), a Chinese government document finalized in December 2015 by the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) and the China Development Bank. The LTP in its original form is over 250 pages long; a greatly abridged version of only 36 pages was released to the public in December 2017, simply to stave off growing criticism about a lack of transparency – secrecy, even – in CPEC-related matters.

Public relations gimmicks notwithstanding, the original document confirms Beijing’s longer-term objectives in Pakistan, meticulously outlining plans for cooperation between both governments to attract increased investment by Chinese companies in Pakistani industry, agriculture, coastal tourism, communications infrastructure, and water resources. While the document makes boilerplate overtures to Pakistan’s economic and social development, it can on the whole be read as a not very subtle assertion of China’s regional interests—especially the drive to gain market access for Chinese firms and develop China’s vast western interior via the transportation routes to be built under the CPEC plan.

Of particular note is the document’s emphasis on modernizing Pakistan’s agricultural heartland in central Punjab, which contradicts the vague claims by Pakistani officialdom and intelligentsia that CPEC is primarily about stimulating the country’s manufacturing industries. As far as China is concerned, Pakistan’s comparative advantage is in agriculture, and improving infrastructure and technical expertise while reducing waste in the sector will directly complement the modernization of agriculture in Xinjiang and other parts of western China. In the context of the CCP’s relatively undisguised policy of promoting migration by Han Chinese to the underdeveloped and sparsely populated western provinces, some of which have become hotbeds of minority unrest, the utility of Pakistan’s agricultural sector becomes even clearer.

As conceived in the plan, Beijing’s chief reciprocal contribution to Pakistan’s development would come from Chinese companies operating in the telecommunications, energy, and household appliances sectors. The resulting boost to a burgeoning domestic market of ostensibly middle-class consumers has been touted time and again as a virtual panacea for Pakistan’s development needs, recalling the remedies all too often outlined in standard neoliberal policy prescriptions.

In fact, Chinese goods and services started to flood the Pakistani market long before the CPEC initiative was announced, especially after a free trade agreement between the two countries was signed in July 2007. The total value of bilateral trade surged from just over $1 billion in the early 2000s to more than $16 billion by 2016. Wholesalers and retailers handling the influx of Chinese goods have undoubtedly benefited, but local industry has been throttled. Some manufacturers have survived by moving production abroad, to the detriment of Pakistan’s already immiserated industrial working class; more than 20,000 jobs have been slashed in the shoe-manufacturing sector alone.10

Pakistan’s Federal Chamber of Commerce has demanded that local businesses be given access to the Industrial Parks and Export Processing Zones conceived in the CPEC plan, but there is little evidence to suggest that Pakistani manufacturers will prove competitive enough to reverse established trends. The only “successful” local companies in recent years have partnered with Chinese manufacturers to shift at least part of the latter’s operations to Pakistan—but in doing so, they have helped push out other domestic firms that cannot offer cut-price production to Chinese businesses. In effect, the Pakistani bourgeoisie has become even more of a comprador class than when it operated exclusively as the middleman for the imported goods of Japanese zaibatsus and Western multinationals.

The business-friendly Pakistan Muslim League–Nawaz (PML–N) government, in power since 2013, has made much noise about fixing the country’s longstanding energy crisis, a major cause of stagnation in the manufacturing sector. The government has promised that chronic electricity shortfalls will be resolved once and for all by the numerous power plants envisaged under the CPEC plan. Yet there is no sign that power blackouts, popularly known as “load shedding” in Pakistan, will end anytime soon, and new power plants being built under the CPEC plan will likely only reinforce the competitive advantage that Chinese firms already wield over their local counterparts.

As for the prospect of Chinese investment generating employment for a rapidly increasing Pakistani population—now over 200 million, with more than 60 percent under the age of twenty-five—the evidence to date is clear. Chinese firms have acquired a reputation for bringing most of their employees with them, from highly skilled engineers to construction workers. In the Mansehra district of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa province, site of some of the most intensive road-building works initiated under the CPEC plan, thousands of Chinese engineers and laborers work and live in relative isolation from the local population, with only a specially designated Pakistani military unit allowed access to both the construction site and the nearby housing settlement.

While officials insist that CPEC has already generated an employment boom, the only concrete evidence of job creation is in the armed forces. A special security force of at least 15,000 operating under army command has been raised to protect CPEC instalments and Chinese personnel who, by keeping almost entirely to themselves, reinforce the perception that they are insular outsiders who want only access to the country’s resources, hardly endearing themselves to local populations.11

A Divided Left
This special military force was conceived after the CCP made clear that CPEC would be initiated only if the Pakistani government could guarantee the safety of Chinese investments, engineers, and workers. High-profile kidnappings and even murders of Chinese citizens working in Pakistan have been reported for some years, particularly in the resource-rich but insurgency-wracked province of Balochistan in the southwest. The Chinese government has accordingly appeared to support the intensification of counter-insurgency operations by the Pakistani army against secular Baloch separatists.

Meanwhile, Beijing is concerned with militancy of a decidedly non-secular variety in Xinjiang, where Islamists have cultivated pockets of support among the Uyghurs, a Turkic minority group that has long harbored fears of cultural and economic subjugation by the Han Chinese majority. A similar perception exists within the Baloch ethnic group, which for decades has resisted the oppressive rule of a Punjabi-dominated Pakistani state. Not surprisingly, CPEC is viewed as yet another state-sponsored attempt to rob the Baloch people of their resources in the guise of “development.”

The crown jewel in the CPEC plan is a deep-sea port opened in November 2016 in the once-sleepy fishing village of Gwadar, on the westernmost tip of Balochistan. The construction of Gwadar Port has been viewed with great suspicion by at least a segment of Baloch nationalists, who consider the project an extension of Islamabad’s longstanding economic colonialism. Moreover, they believe that Gwadar—and CPEC in general—will accelerate incipient demographic trends in Balochistan that are fast turning ethnic Baloch into a minority in their own land.

For China, Gwadar is a warm-water port offering the isolated cities of its western provinces a window to the world. Kashgar, the largest town on China’s western border, is more than 1,200 miles from Gwadar, but more than 3,100 miles from Shanghai, on China’s eastern seaboard. The development of Gwadar thus clearly serves China’s medium-term objectives. Whether it suits the Baloch people, or Pakistan’s working masses more generally is a matter of much greater contention.

CPEC has intensified longstanding divisions within the embattled Pakistani left, which has struggled to come to terms with what CPEC signifies, especially in light of Pakistan’s status as a frontline state of U.S. imperialism. While such thorny debates among left activists and intellectuals are in part a hangover from Cold War factionalism, distinct perspectives on the growing Chinese footprint in Pakistan have emerged in recent years. A closer look at these arguments offers considerable insights into a complex country and region where the geopolitical stakes are extremely high.

On one side is the fairly straightforward hypothesis that China’s growing power represents a counterweight to Washington’s seventy-year influence in Pakistan. In this argument, Beijing—and other capitals, like Moscow, that are reasserting themselves in the region—appears as an ally of anti-imperialists in the country, and the CPEC plan as concrete evidence that Chinese aid can address Pakistan’s development needs, in contrast to the narrow strategic and military goals that Washington has always pursued. Extrapolated further, this argument takes on an anti-imperialist accent on a global scale, envisioning emergent political-economic blocs such as the Shanghai Cooperation Agreement and BRICS as new opportunities for countries like Pakistan to extricate themselves from the centuries-old hegemonic orbit of Western imperialist powers.

The opposing view on the left emphasizes that even if changing geopolitical dynamics do reduce Islamabad’s historical dependency on the United States, China’s intervention is far from a win-win situation for Pakistan—and, in fact, is likely to exacerbate existing class, ethnic, and ecological conflicts. Like its pro-China counterpart, this left critique is relatively simple: it holds that the CPEC only reinforces the established neoliberal paradigm, with its emphasis on corporate control and endless expansion of markets for consumer goods, even as it intensifies ecological degradation and labor exploitation, all behind the veil of “development.” A rapidly expanding urban middle class in Pakistan—which by liberal estimates could number up to 60 million people—will certainly buttress demand by indulging a Rostowian fetish for mass consumption. But what of the dark side of development, ignored by the corporate media and Chinese and Pakistani authorities—namely, the masses of dispossessed working people whose livelihoods and cultures revolve around the land, water, mountains, forests, and other natural resources that predominantly Chinese corporations are being given free rein to pillage?

Such processes of dispossession were intensifying even before the launch of CPEC, with hitherto untapped mineral resource zones in peripheral regions like Balochistan, Sindh, and Gilgit-Balitstan most affected. Balochistan, for instance, is home to the Reko Diq and Saindak mines, with some of the largest untapped copper and gold reserves in the world. CPEC will no doubt signal intensified mining of such precious metals, along with other process of extraction and accumulation that are anything but beneficial for local communities. Coal-powered energy plants being set up in the Punjabi heartland, for example, will inevitably yield significant ecological fallouts across both central and peripheral regions. By 2020, thermal power production is expected to reach more than 13,000 megawatts annually, with all but about 500 megawatts coal-fired.

It is more than a little ironic that the CCP has in recent years begun cutting back on domestic coal and steel production in an effort to make the Chinese development model more efficient and ecologically sustainable. The NDRC reported in April 2017 that China has already reduced coal and steel production by 400 million metric tons, halfway toward its planned target of 800 million by 2020. By facilitating more intensive coal production in Pakistan, China appears to be following in the footsteps of “advanced” Western countries whose partial greening of their own economies has derived in large part from shifting environmentally destructive practices to the global South.

Under CPEC, coal production in Pakistan is expected to increase enormously, with the biggest initiative planned for the Thar coalfields in eastern Sindh, reportedly home to the world’s seventh-largest coal reserve, with around 175 billion metric tons. The extraction of Thar’s coal has been promoted within Pakistan as a homegrown cure for chronic underdevelopment, and China’s financial and technical support for the project has been met with much fanfare.

In practice, even in its initial phases—actual coal production is not projected to begin until 2019—the project has already begun to displace local communities and alter the regional ecosystem. More than 9,000 square miles of Thar’s total area of 22,000 square miles will be mined for coal, while the rest will be subject to substantial damming, projects that promise to transform the lives of the region’s 150,000 people. The Sindh Engro Coal Mining Company (SECMC), which is leading the development in partnership with China Power International, has launched a vigorous public relations campaign, claiming it will prioritize the hiring of local workers, compensate displaced communities, and preserve the local environment. Yet the reality in Thar is far less rosy: to take only one example, more than 70 percent of Thar’s people lack access to clean drinking water, and as coal mining intensifies, the already saline groundwater is growing contaminated and potentially poisonous.

Not surprisingly, authorities have not looked kindly on local activists’ demands for accountability. Several activists have been threatened by SECMC goons and local officials, and in August 2017 some were even forcibly disappeared by the military’s intelligence apparatus, a practice that has become almost endemic in Pakistan in recent years.

While intolerance for dissent in Pakistan is nothing new, CPEC has already acquired the status of a sacred cow. Despite serious conflicts between the PML–N government and the military establishment, there appears to be little elite disagreement over Chinese investment in the country. Pakistan’s rulers clearly do not want to antagonize their new patron-in-chief. For its part, the Chinese government has also stepped up its public relations efforts to silence the murmurs of dissent outside the mainstream. In short, to question CPEC in contemporary Pakistan, even if only to demand greater transparency around the project, is a dangerous endeavor.

The fear that Beijing will reinforce the Pakistani state’s authoritarian tendencies is not based only on circumstantial evidence or speculation. A significant section of the LTP focuses on how China will facilitate the surveillance capacities of local security agencies. The major infrastructural investment in this regard is the laying of a country-wide fiber-optic cable, which would both transform Pakistan’s communication network and give China extensive control over information flows in the country. China Mobile already accounts for 20 percent of domestic telecommunications traffic, and this share is projected to increase dramatically in the near future. Meanwhile, the Huawei group is likewise acquiring monopoly-like dominance over the digital technology and hardware markets.

The LTP also makes no secret of China’s plan to use communications networks, including digital television channels, to disseminate Chinese culture in Pakistan, while the explosion of Mandarin-teaching institutes across the country, alongside initiatives in the realm of arts and culture, reflects Beijing’s desire to project China’s power in new ways.

It is against this backdrop that left debates over China’s increasingly hegemonic role in Pakistan’s polity and economy must be understood. To a significant extent, these differences revolve around the question of the Pakistani state, and particularly the army. There is a palpable sense that China’s interventions will empower the coercive arm of the state and further constrict democratic space in the country, particularly in the historically oppressed peripheral regions outside the Punjab.

The debate also reflects a broader controversy over “development” itself. While some on the left have stayed true to a “stageist” Marxism which considers a certain level of capitalist industrialization a necessary evil in the protracted struggle for socialism, others see no progressive potential in the Chinese-supported incarnation of the Pakistani bourgeoisie, and view CPEC as hardly challenging the contemporary regime of global capital, with all its economic, ecological, and political crises.

To be sure, the displacement of local communities in Sindh due to the Thar coal project is only the latest example of forced migration in Pakistan, which has steadily increased over the past few years amid worsening ecological and political catastrophes. The “war on terror” has forced millions of Pakhtuns on the Pakistan-Afghanistan border to flee their homes for cities like Islamabad, Lahore, and Karachi, where they are condemned to poverty, squalor, and discrimination. Meanwhile the realities of climate change have come to the fore for numerous village communities in Siraiki and Sindhi regions in the heart of the Indus Basin which have been devastated by monsoon floods almost annually since 2010. The mass exodus that follows each episode has exacerbated the already explosive pressure on urban centers unable to meet the demand for either gainful employment or basic needs like housing and sanitation.

Of course, these longer-term trends cannot be attributed to the Chinese footprint in Pakistan per se. But there can be little doubt that CPEC will reinforce existing pressures on already vulnerable ecosystems while forcing ever more displaced communities into the ranks of the largely unseen and dispossessed masses, both in the rural hinterlands and major metropolitan areas. All this while the prevailing technocratic developmental imaginary—to which all contenders for political power in Pakistan subscribe—lavishes its attention solely on a mythical middle class, serviced by Chinese corporations.

Whether new political projects can confront this crisis of political imagination and organization in an era of near-total neoliberal hegemony is certainly not a challenge unique to the Pakistani left. Unfortunately, existing divisions in left circles have to date prevented this difficulty from even being acknowledged with any degree of coherence. Insofar as certain left factions view China’s growing role in Pakistan as unequivocally beneficial, based on a rather facile mapping of the shift from the unipolar post-1991 world order to an increasingly multipolar present, they draw a distinct line between themselves and those on the left working in peripheral zones among historically oppressed ethnic groups. If the left ignores these regions and communities where neoliberal development and war generates untold misery and ecological destruction, it risks delegitimizing the very essence of the socialist project.

Conclusion
U.S. imperialism has played an unambiguously destructive role in Pakistan for most of the country’s seventy-year history. Aside from decisively empowering the military establishment, its support of religious militancy in the 1980s precipitated a complete transformation of the body politic. The secular political traditions of other societies in the region were similarly undermined by the rise of millenarianism, with Afghanistan worst affected. Today Washington seeks to maintain its waning influence in the region through a zero-sum strategic game that has seen India, Pakistan, Iran, and Afghanistan pitted against one another, forcing their own people to bear the cost.

In this context, China’s claim to advance a development agenda that transcends the narrow geopolitical calculus that has long defined regional dynamics should be evaluated carefully. The biggest question mark in the OBOR strategy in South Asia remains Beijing’s frosty relations with New Delhi. Still, the volume of official trade between China and India totaled almost $71 billion in 2016—nearly six times that between China and Pakistan. Thus economic ties are expanding despite the Modi government’s nationalist posturing. In any case, China’s growing economic and political role in the region necessarily means that the era of Washington’s unrivalled hegemony, especially in its longtime frontline state of Pakistan, has ended.

Yet the discussion above confirms the danger that China’s emergent hegemony represents more of the same for Pakistan’s long-suffering people, especially those from historically underrepresented ethnic groups. There has also been little evidence so far that the ideal of building an “ecological civilization” that has gained credence in China in recent years is anything more than an afterthought when it comes to Chinese investments in Pakistan.12

Even if one takes the rather blunt metric of CPEC financing, the rhetoric is far removed from reality. Of the $28 billion injected into Pakistan’s economy by late 2016 through CPEC’s “early harvest” projects, $19 billion was in the form of commercial loans. In the not-too-distant future, this portends yearly debt repayments of more than $3.5 billion.13 It is not at all clear, then, that China offers a financial alternative to the International Monetary Fund/World Bank juggernaut that has already saddled Pakistan with a foreign debt burden approaching $80 billion.

Perhaps most importantly, China’s seemingly apolitical developmental intervention is consolidating the existing structure of power in Pakistan, and in particular the military establishment that Washington helped make into the country’s dominant force. Recent events suggest China is exerting some pressure on Pakistan’s GHQ to break with the religious militants long used as proxies against India and Afghanistan.14 This would make sense, given China’s commitment to expanding market exchange through its infrastructural and other investments, and the attendant fear that these investments may be threatened by militant movements in Pakistan.

Even if peace were achieved overnight, however, the Chinese vision of “development” would not represent a genuine and sustainable alternative to neoliberal development practices as they have been institutionalized around the world. China’s intervention in Pakistan thus cannot be considered the progressive “other” to the destructive militarism—both state and non-state—that U.S. imperialism and domestic elites have imposed on Southwest Asia for decades.

China’s larger-than-life role and the real material consequences of its global expansion are in fact reinforcing anxieties about the extent to which the Chinese challenge to U.S. hegemony can move the planet and its people toward a post-capitalist future. If the rosy rhetoric about the CPEC project does not translate into an environmentally sustainable reality, one that makes Pakistan more egalitarian and just, little hope will remain that China can lead the world into a new era of peace, prosperity, and ecological harmony that transcends the rule of capital.

Notes
↩John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney, The Endless Crisis (New York: Monthly Review Press, 2012).
↩Tom Phillips, “China’s Xi Lays Out $900bn Silk Road Vision amid Claims of Empire-Building,” Guardian, May 14, 2017.
↩Two recent analyses by Chinese writers are Yuezhi Zao, “The Struggle for Socialism in China: The Bo Xilai Saga and Beyond,” Monthly Review 64, no. 12 (October 2012): 1–17; and Cheng Enfu and Ding Xiaoqin, “A Theory of China’s ‘Miracle’: Eight Principles of Contemporary Chinese Political Economy,” Monthly Review 68, No. 8 (January 2017): 46–57.
↩Samir Amin, “China 2013,” Monthly Review 64, no. 10 (March 2013): 14–33.
↩Patrick Bond, “‘Africa Rising’ in Retreat: New Signs of Resistance,” Monthly Review 69, no. 4 (September 2017): 24–42.
↩“Trump Attacks Pakistan ‘Deceit’ in First Tweet of the Year,” BBC News, January 1, 2018.
↩“Complete Harmony on CPEC Project,” Dawn, March 19, 2016.
↩At the height of the Cold War struggle for influence in newly independent countries, Samuel Huntington famously described the Ayub Khan regime in Pakistan as an island of order in a chaotic third-world sea: Huntington, Political Order in Changing Societies (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968).
↩The “secret” visit of then-secretary of state Henry Kissinger to Beijing in 1971 was facilitated by Islamabad; Kissinger travelled to China in a state airliner while on a formal diplomatic trip to Pakistan.
↩Nasir Jamal, “Mother China: A ‘Chinese Revolution’ Sweeps across Pakistan,” Herald, August 2017.
↩Syed Irfan Raza, “15,000 Military Personnel Protecting CPEC,” Dawn, February 21, 2017.
↩See Zhihe Wang, Huili He, and Meijun Fan, “The Ecological Civilization Debate in China: The Role of Ecological Marxism and Constructive Postmodernism–Beyond the Predicament of Legislation,” Monthly Review 66, no. 6 (November 2014): 37–59.
↩Khurram Husain, “CPEC Cost Build-Up,” Dawn, December 15, 2016.
↩“BRICS Name Militant Groups as Regional Security Concern,” Dawn, September 5, 2017.

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Sat Jun 23, 2018 4:10 pm

China's Communist Youth League to convene national congress
Source: Xinhua| 2018-06-23 15:18:54|Editor: ZX


BEIJING, June 23 (Xinhua) -- Upon the approval of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee, the Communist Youth League (CYL) will convene its 18th national congress from June 26 to 29.

The congress will hear and review a report by the 17th CYL Central Committee, amend the CYL constitution and elect the 18th Central Committee, according to an official statement Saturday.

The preparatory work for the congress is going well, the statement said.

With over 8 million members, the CYL is the organization of youths with progressive ideas under the leadership of the CPC. It acts as the assistant and reserve for the CPC.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-0 ... 275555.htm

**************************

Reform plan for Central School of Communist Youth League published
Source: Xinhua| 2018-04-19 22:45:53|Editor: Chengcheng

BEIJING, April 19 (Xinhua) -- A reform plan for the Central School of Communist Youth League (CYL) of China has been published by the general offices of the Communist Party of China (CPC) Central Committee and the State Council.

The plan was adopted at the first meeting of the Leading Group for Deepening Overall Reform of the 19th CPC Central Committee in November last year.

According to the plan, the reform will highlight political training as the major task of the school, and strengthen education on the mass line and Party theories, constitution, regulations and discipline.

Teaching staff should have strong political sense, high professional skills and good conduct, according to the plan.

The management system will emphasize the role of the China Youth University for Political Sciences in improving quality of teaching, theory and international exchange.

A CYL think tank will be established and funds will come from the annual central budget.

The central committee of the CYL will push forward the reform to make sure that most targets are met by the end of 2020.

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Thu Jun 28, 2018 2:19 pm

Has China Turned to Capitalism?—Reflections on the Transition from Capitalism to Socialism

Department of Humanities, University of Urbino, Urbino, Italy
ABSTRACT
If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see three socialexperiments. The first experiment, based on the equal distributionof poverty, suggests the

universal asceticism

and

roughegalitarianism

criticised by the
Communist Manifesto
. We can nowunderstand the decision to move to Lenin

s New Economic Policy,which was often interpreted as a return to capitalism. Theincreasing threat of war pushed Stalin into sweeping economiccollectivisation. The third experiment produced a very advancedwelfare state but ended in failure: in the last years of the SovietUnion, it was characterised by mass absenteeism anddisengagement in the workplace; this stalled productivity, and itbecame hard to find any application of the principle that Marxsaid should preside over socialism

remuneration according tothe quantity and quality of work delivered. The history of China isdifferent: Mao believed that, unlike

political capital,

theeconomic capital of the bourgeoisie should not be subject to totalexpropriation, at least until it can serve the development of thenational economy. After the tragedy of the Great Leap Forwardand the Cultural Revolution, it took Deng Xiaoping to emphasisethat socialism implies the development of the productive forces.Chinese market socialism has achieved extraordinary success
1. Soviet Russia and Various Experiments in Post-Capitalism

NowadaysitiscommontotalkabouttherestorationofcapitalisminChinaasresultingfromthereformsofDengXiaoping.Butwhatisthebasisforthisjudgment?Isthereamoreorlesscoherentvisionofsocialismthatcanbecontrastedwiththerealityofthecurrentsocio-econ-omic relations in China today? Let

s take a quick look at the history of attempts to build apost-capitalist society. If we analyse the first 15 years of Soviet Russia, we see war commun-ism, then the New Economic Policy (NEP), and finally the complete collectivisation of theeconomy (including agriculture) in quick succession. These were three totally differentexperiments, but all of them were an attempt to build a post-capitalist society. Why shouldwe beshocked that,in the course of the more than 80 years that followed theseexperiments,other variations like market socialism and Chinese socialism appeared?Let

s concentrate for now on Soviet Russia: which of the three experiments mentionedis closest to the socialism espoused by Marx and Engels ? War communism was greeted by a devout French Catholic, Pierre Pascal, then in Moscow, as a

unique and intoxicating performance [. . .] The rich are gone: only the poor and the very poor [. . .] high andlow salaries draw closer. The right to property is reduced to personal effects

(cf. Losurdo2013, 185). This author read the widespread poverty and privation not as wretchednesscaused by the war, to be overcome as quickly as possible; in his eyes, as long as they aredistributed more or less equally, poverty and want are a condition of purity and moralexcellence; on the contrary, affluence and wealth are sins. It is a vision that we can callpopulist, one that was criticised with great precision by the
Communist Manifesto
: thereis

nothing easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist coat of paint

; the

firstmovements of the proletariat

often feature claims in the name of

universal asceticismand a rough egalitarianism

(Marx and Engels 1955

89, vol. 4, 484, 489; translatedfrom Italian). Lenin

s orientation was the opposite of Pascal

s, as he was far from the view that socialism would be the collectivisation of poverty, a more or less egalitarian dis-tribution of privation. In October 1920 (

The Tasks of the Youth Associations

) Lenindeclared,

We want to transform Russia from a poor and needy country to a rich country

(Lenin 1955

70, vol. 31, 283

84; translated from Italian). First, the country needed to bemodernised and wired with electricity; therefore, it required

organised work

and

con-scious and disciplined work,

overcoming anarchy in the workplace, with a methodicalassimilation of the

latest technical achievements,

if necessary, by importing themfrom the most advanced capitalist countries (Lenin 1955

70, vol. 31, 283

84; translatedfrom Italian).A few years later, the NEP took over from war communism. It was essential to over-come the desperate mass poverty and starvation that followed the catastrophe of WorldWar I and the civil war, and to restart the economy and develop the productive forces.This was necessary not only to improve the living conditions of the people and to broadenthe social basis of consensus on revolutionary power; it was also about avoiding anincrease in Russia

s lag in development compared to the more advanced capitalistcountries, which could affect the national security of the country emerging from the Octo-ber Revolution, not to mention it being surrounded and besieged by the capitalist powers.To achieve these objectives, the Soviet government also made use of private initiative and a(limited) part of the capitalist economy; it used

bourgeois

specialists who were rewardedgenerously, and it sought to take advanced technology and capital, which were guaranteedattractive returns, from the West. The NEP had positive results: production started upagain, and a certain development of the productive forces began to take place. Overall,the situation in Soviet Russia improved noticeably: on the international level it did notworsen; rather, Russia

s delay in development started to decrease compared to the success-ful capitalist countries. Domestically, the living conditions of the masses improved signifi-cantly. Precisely because social wealth increased, there were more than just

the poor andthe very poor,

as in the war communism celebrated by Pierre Pascal; desperate hungerand starvation disappeared, but social inequalities increased.These inequalities in Soviet Russia provoked a widespread and intense feeling of betrayal of the original ideals. Pierre Pascal was not the only one wanting to abandonthe Communist Party of the Soviet Union; there were literally tens of thousands of Bolshe- vik workers who tore up their party cards in disgust at the NEP, which they re-named the

New Extortion from the Proletariat.

In the 1940s, a rank-and-file militant very effec-tively described the spiritual atmosphere prevailing in the immediate aftermath of the
16 D. LOSURDO


October Revolution

the atmosphere arose from the horror of war caused by imperialistcompetition in plundering the colonies in order to conquer markets and acquire raw materials, as well as by capitalists searching for profit and super-profit:
We young Communists had all grown up in the belief that money was done away with onceand for all. [. . .] If money was reappearing, wouldn

t rich people reappear too? Weren

t we onthe slippery slope that led back to capitalism? (Figes 1996, 771)
Therefore, one can understand the scandal and a persistent feeling of repugnance forthe market and the commodity economy at the introduction of the NEP; it was aboveall the growing danger of war that caused the abandonment of the NEP and the removalof every trace of the private economy. The wholesale collectivisation of the country

s agri-culture provoked a civil war that was fought ruthlessly by both sides. And yet, after thishorrible tragedy, the Soviet economy seemed to proceed marvellously: the rapid develop-ment of modern industry was interwoven with the construction of a welfare state thatguaranteed the economic and social rights of citizens in a way that was unprecedented.This, however, was a model that fell into crisis after a couple of decades. With the tran-sition from great historical crisis to a more

normal

period (

peaceful coexistence

),the masses

enthusiasm and commitment to production and work weakened and then dis-appeared. In the last years of its existence, the Soviet Union was characterised by massiveabsenteeism and disengagement in the workplace: not only did production developmentstagnate, but there was no longer any application of the principle that Marx said drovesocialism

remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered. Youcould say that during the final stage of Soviet society, the dialectic of capitalist society that Marx described in
The Poverty of Philosophy
had been overturned:
While inside the modern factory the division of labour is meticulously regulated by the auth-ority of the entrepreneur, modern society has no other rule or authority to distribute thework, except for free competition. [. . .] One can also determine, as a general principle,that the less the authority presides over the division of labour inside the society, the morethe division of labour develops inside of the factory, and it is placed under the authority of just one person. Thus the authorities in the factory and in society, in relation to the div-ision of labour, are
inversely related
to each other. (Marx and Engels 1955

89, vol. 4, 151;translated from Italian)
In the last years of the Soviet Union, the tight control exercised by the political powersover civil society coincided with a substantial amount of anarchy in workplaces. It was thereversal of the dialectic of capitalist society, but the overthrow of the capitalist society

sdialectic was not socialism and, therefore, it produced a weak economic order unable toresist the ideological and political offensives of the capitalist-imperialist world.
2. The Peculiarity of the Chinese Experience
China

s history is different. Although the Communist Party of China seized power at thenational level in 1949, 20 years earlier it had already started to exercise its power in oneregion or another, regions whose size and population were comparable to those of asmall or medium-sized European country. For much of these 85 years in power, China,partly or totally ruled by the communists, was characterised by the coexistence of different , by a dictatorship exercised by the

revolution-ary classes

as well as the leadership of the Communist Party of China. It is a pattern con-firmed 17 years later, although in the meantime the People

s Republic of China wasfounded, in a speech on January 18, 1957 (

Talks at a Conference of Secretaries of Provin-cial, Municipal and Autonomous Regions Party Committees

):
As for the charge that our urban policy has deviated to the Right, this seems to be the case, aswe have undertaken to provide for the capitalists and pay them a fixed rate of interest for aperiod of seven years. What is to be done after the seven years? That is to be decided accord-ing to the circumstances prevailing then. It is better to leave the matter open, that is, to go ongiving them a certain amount in fixed interest. At this small cost we are buying over this class.[. . .] By buying over this class, we have deprived them of their political capital and kept theirmouths shut. [. . .] Thus political capital will not be in their hands but in ours. We mustdeprive them of every bit of their political capital and continue to do so until not one jotis left to them. Therefore, neither can our urban policy be said to have deviated to theRight. (Mao 1965

77, vol. 5, 357)
It is, therefore, a matter of distinguishing between the economic expropriation andthe political expropriation of the bourgeoisie. Only the latter should be carried out to
18 D. LOSURDO


the end, while the former, if not contained within clear limits, risks undermining thedevelopment of the productive forces. Unlike

political capital,

the bourgeoisie

seconomic capital should not be subject to total expropriation, at least as long as itserves the development of the national economy and thus, indirectly, the cause of socialism.After taking off in the second half of the 1920s, this model revealed a remarkablecontinuity and offered great economic vitality before 1949 to the

liberated

areas gov-erned by the communists and then the People

s Republic of China as a whole. The dra-matic moment of breakthrough came with the Great Leap Forward of 1958

59 and withthe Cultural Revolution unleashed in 1966. The coexistence of different forms of own-ership and the use of material incentives were radically thrown on the table. There wasan illusion of accelerating economic development through calls for mass mobilisationand mass enthusiasm, but this approach and these attempts failed miserably. Moreover,the struggle of everyone against everyone heightened the anarchy in factories and pro-duction sites.The anarchy was so widespread and deep-rooted that it did not disappear immedi-ately with the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping. For some time, customs continuedin the public sector as described by a witness and Western scholar,

even the lastattendant [. . .], if he wants to, can decide to do nothing, stay home for a year ortwo and still receive his salary at the end of the month.

The

culture of laziness

also infected the expanding private sector of the economy.

The former employees of the State [. . .] arrive late, then they read the newspaper, go to the canteen a half-hour early, leave the office an hour early,

and they were often absent for family reasons, for example,

because my wife is sick.

And the executives and technicianswho tried to introduce discipline and efficiency into the workplace were forced toface not only resistance and the moral outrage of the employees (who considered itinfamy to impose a fine on an absent worker caring for his wife), but sometimeseven threats and violence from below (Sisci 1994, 86, 89, 102).Thus, there was a paradox. After distinguishing itself for decades for its peculiar history and its commitment to stimulating production through competition not only betweenindividuals but also between different forms of ownership, the China that arose fromthe Cultural Revolution resembled the Soviet Union to an extraordinary degree in itslast years of existence: the socialist principle of compensation based on the amount andquality of work delivered was substantially liquidated, and disaffection, disengagement,absenteeism and anarchy reigned in the workplace. Before being ousted from power,the

Gang of Four

attempted to justify the economic stagnation, debating the populistreason for a socialism that is poor but beautiful, the populist

socialism

that in theearly years of Soviet Russia was dear to Pierre Pascal, the fervent Catholic whom wealready know.Then populism became the target of Deng Xiaoping

s criticism
.
He called on the Marx-ists to realise

that poverty is not socialism, that socialism means eliminating poverty.

Hewanted one thing to be absolutely clear:

Unless you are developing the productive forcesand raising people

s living standards, you cannot say you are building socialism.

No,

there can be no communism with pauperism, or socialism with pauperism. So to getrich is no sin

(Deng 1992

95, vol. 3, 122, 174). Deng Xiaoping had the historic merit
INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 19


of understanding that socialism had nothing to do with the more or less egalitarian distri-bution of poverty and privation. In the eyes of Marx and Engels, socialism was superior tocapitalism not only because it ensured a more equitable distribution of resources but also,and especially, because it ensured a faster and more equal development of social wealth,and to achieve this goal, socialism stimulated competition by affirming and putting intopractice the principle of remuneration according to the quantity and quality of work delivered.Deng Xiaoping

s reforms reintroduced in China the model that we already know,although giving it new coherence and radicalism. The fact remains that the coexistenceof different forms of ownership was counterbalanced by strict state control directed by the Communist Party of China. If we analyse the history of China, not beginning withthe founding of the People

s Republic, but as early as the first

liberated

areas being set up and governed by communists, we will find out that it was not China of the reformsof Deng Xiaoping, but China in the years of the Great Leap Forward and of the CulturalRevolution that was the exception or the anomaly
.
3. Marxism or Populism? A Confrontation of Long Duration
Well beyond the borders of Russia and China, during the twentieth century and even now,populism influenced and still negatively influences the reading of the great revolutions thatradically changed the face of the world. In this sense, we can say that, after having played apart as an essential feature of the twentieth century, the conflict between populism andMarxism is far from over.Pascal condemned the abandonment of war communism, or the society in which thereare

only the poor and the very poor,

and that is precisely why it was free of the tensionsand rifts caused by inequality and social polarisation. The attitude taken by fervent Chris-tians at that time in Moscow was not in any way confined to Soviet Russia. Traces of popu-lism can be felt in the young Ernst Bloch. In 1918, when he published the first edition of
Spirit of Utopia
, he called on the Soviets to effect a

transformation of power into love

andto put an end not only to

every private economy,

but also to any

money economy

andwith it the

mercantile values that consecrate whatever is most evil in man

(Bloch [1918]1971, 298). Here the populist trend was intertwined with Messianism: no attention waspaid to the task of rebuilding the economy and developing the productive forces in acountry destroyed by war and having a history marked by recurrent and devastating fam-ines. The horror at the carnage of World War I stimulated the dream of a community thatis satisfied with the scarce material resources available and that only in this circumstance,freed from worrying about wealth and power, can people live shielded from the

money economy

and instead live in

love.

When he published the second edition of
Spirit of Utopia
in 1923, Bloch believed that itwas appropriate to delete the populist and Messianic passages, as previously mentioned.However, the state of mind and the vision that inspired them did not vanish either inthe Soviet Union or outside of it. The transition to NEP found perhaps its most passionateor sentimental critics among the militants as well as among Western communist leaders.As for them, in the

Political Report

he presented to the XI Congress of the CommunistParty held on March 27, 1922, Lenin sarcastically wrote:
20 D. LOSURDO


Seeing that we were withdrawing, some of them scattered, childishly and shamefully, evenwith tears, as happened at the last large session of the Executive Committee of the Inter-national Communist Party. Motivated by the best communist sentiments and the mostardent communist aspirations, some friends burst into tears. (Lenin 1955

70, vol. 33, 254

55; translated from Italian)
Antonio Gramsci had a very different attitude as early as the October Revolution, whichhe expressed in this way:
Collectivism of poverty and suffering will be the principle. But those very conditions of pov-erty and suffering would be inherited from a bourgeois regime. Capitalism could not immedi-ately do more than collectivism did in Russia. Today, it would do even less, because it wouldhave immediately run afoul of an unhappy, frantic proletariat, now unable to bear for othersto endure the pain and bitterness that the economic hardship would have brought. [. . .] Thesuffering that will come after peace will be tolerated only because the workers feel that it istheir will and their determination to work to suppress it as quickly as possible. (Gramsci1982, 516; translated from Italian)



try to weave

Russian revolutionary impulses

with

the practical American approach

(quoted in Losurdo 2007, chapter III, § 2).

Americanism

and

the practical Americanapproach

were here synonyms for the development of productive forces and the escapefrom poverty or scarcity: socialism is not the equal sharing of poverty or deprivation, butthe definitive and widespread overcoming of these conditions.From outside of Russia, Gramsci countered populism with particular rigour and con-sistency. As we know, from the beginning he stressed the need for a rapid end to this

col-lectivism of poverty and suffering.

It was a political position with a wider theoretical vision as its foundation.
L

Ordine Nuovo
(The New Order)

the weekly he founded inthe wake of the October Revolution in Russia

plus the movement to occupy factoriesin Italy, asked the revolutionary workers to fight for wages and thus for a more equitabledistribution of social wealth, but also and above all to be

producers

taking

control of production

and the

development of work plans.

In doing so, in order also to promotethe development of the productive forces, the revolutionary workers must know how tomake use of the

most advanced industrial technology

that

(in a sense) is independentfrom the method of appropriating the assets produced,

that is, it got its autonomy fromcapitalism or socialism (Gramsci 1987, 622, 607

8, 624; translated from Italian). Not coin-cidentally, between October and November 1919,
L

Ordine Nuovo
devoted several articlesto Taylorism, analysed beginning with the latest analysis of the distinction between

richscientific achievements

(mentioned by Lenin) and their capitalist use. In this sense, the
Prison Notebooks
later observed that already
L

Ordine Nuovo
had claimed its

American-ism

(Gramsci 1975, 72; translated from Italian). It was the Americanism that Lenin,Bukharin and Stalin directly or indirectly referenced.And it should be clear that this is an Americanism that does not in any way rule out a judgment and clear condemnation of US capitalism and imperialism. In Gramsci

s eyes,this was a country that, despite its professions of democratic faith, imposed slavery onblacks for a long time and that, even after the Civil War, was characterised by a terroristregime of white supremacy, as shown by

lynching of blacks by crowds incited by atro-cious merchants dispossessed of human flesh

(Losurdo 1997, chapter II, 11

12; translatedfrom Italian). That terrorism was also manifested in terms of foreign policy: The NorthAmerican Republic threatened to deprive the Russians of the grain necessary for their sur- vival and, therefore, to starve to death the people who felt the pull of the October Revolu-tion and were tempted to follow its example.The

Americanism

understood as attention reserved for the problem of developmentof the productive forces pushed Gramsci, in the early 1930s, to greet enthusiastically thelaunching of the first Soviet five-year plan: the economic and industrial development of the country that emerged from the October Revolution was proof that, far from stimulat-ing

fatalism and passivity,

in fact,

the concept of historical materialism [. . .] gives rise toa flowering of initiatives and enterprises that astonishes many observers

(Gramsci 1975,893, 2763

64; translated from Italian). Materialism and Marxism showed the ability toinfluence reality concretely, not only inspiring revolutions like the one that occurred inRussia but also promoting the growth of social wealth and freeing the masses from cen-turies of poverty and deprivation.More disappointed than ever, even outraged by the developments in Soviet Russia,however, it was Simone Weil who in 1932 proceeded to a final showdown with the country which she had initially looked to with sympathy and hope: Soviet Russia had ended up
INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 23


taking America, American efficiency, productivity and

Taylorism

as its models. Therecould no longer be any doubts.
The fact that Stalin, on this issue, which is at the centre of the conflict between capital andlabour, has abandoned the views of Marx and has been seduced by the capitalist system in itsmost perfect form, shows that the USSR is still quite far from having a working-class culture.(Weil 1989

91, 106

7)
In fact, the position taken here had nothing to do with Marx and Engels: according to the
Communist Manifesto
, capitalism is destined to be overcome because, after developing theproductive forces with unprecedented scope and speed, it became an obstacle to theirfurther development, as con
󿬁
rmed by the recurrent crises of overproduction. This deeply Christian French philosopher, also inclined to populism, recognised the country thatemerged from the October Revolution only up to the stage of more or less equal distri-bution of poverty or deprivation; later, in addition to Soviet Russia, Weil also brokewith Marx and Engels.
4. Global Inequality and Inequality in China
Populism continues to make its presence felt more than ever in the dismissive judgmentthat the Western left passes on today

s China. It is true that the reforms introduced by Deng Xiaoping spurred an economic boom unprecedented in history, with hundredsand thousands of millions of people liberated from poverty, but this is basically irrelevantfor the populists.Did the elimination of desperate and mass poverty happen at the same time as the wor-sening inequality? The answer to that question is less obvious than it may appear at firstglance. Throughout history, the communist parties have won power only in countries thatare relatively undeveloped economically and technologically; for this reason, they had tofight against not one but two types of inequality: 1) inequality existing on the global scalebetween the most and least developed countries; and 2) the inequality existing within eachindividual country. Only if we take into account both sides of the struggle can we ade-quately take stock of policy reform. With regard to the first type of inequality, there areno doubts: internationally, global inequality is levelling out sharply. Yes, China is gradually catching up to the most advanced Western capitalist countries. It is a turning point!In the last years of the twentieth century, a prominent American political scientistnoted that if the process of industrialisation and modernisation that started with Deng Xiaoping is to be successful,

China

s emergence as a major power will dwarf any compar-able phenomena during the last half of the second millennium

(Huntington 1996, 231).About 15 years later, again with reference to the prodigious development of this greatAsian country, a no less illustrious British historian noted,

What we are living throughnow is the end of 500 years of Western predominance

(Ferguson 2011, 322). The twoauthors cited here share the same, emphatic, view of timing. About five centuries ago,the discovery/conquest of America took place. In other words, the extraordinarily rapidrise of China is ending or promises to end the

Colombian epoch,

a period characterisedby extreme inequality in international relations: the distinct lead held by the West in econ-omics, technology and military might has allowed it to subdue and plunder the rest of theworld for centuries.
24 D. LOSURDO


Thefightagainstglobalinequalityispartofthestruggleagainstcolonialismandneo-colo-nialism.Maounderstoodthiswelland,inaspeechgivenonSeptember16,1949(

TheBank-ruptcyoftheIdealistConceptionofHistory

)warnedthatWashingtonwantsChinareducedtorelying

onUSflour,inotherwords,tobecomeaUScolony

(Mao1965

77,vol.4,453).Infact, the newly founded People

s Republic of China became the target of a deadly embargoimposed by the United States. Its objectives are clear from studies done by the Trumanadministration andthe confessions andstatementsof its leaders. Itstarted from thepremisethatthetypeofmeasurethatcoulddefeatandoustthecommunistgovernment

iseconomicrather than military or political.

And so, they needed to ensure that China suffered or con-tinuedtosufferthescourgeofa

generalstandardoflivingaroundandbelowthesubsistencelevel

; Washington felt committed to causing

economic backwardness

and

cultural lag

and leading a country of

desperate needs

to

a catastrophic economic situation,
” “
towarddisaster

and

collapse

(Zhang 2002,20

22,25,27).AttheWhiteHouse,onepresidentsuc-ceedsanother,buttheembargoremains,anditissoruthlessastoincludemedicines,tractorsand fertilisers (Zhang 2002, 83, 179, 198). In short: in the early 1960s, a collaborator of theKennedyadministration,WaltW.Rostow,pointedoutthat,becauseofthispolicy,theecon-omic development of China was delayed for at least

tens of years

(Zhang 2002, 250).There is no doubt: Deng Xiaoping

s reforms greatly stimulated the fight against globalinequality and thus placed the economic (and political) independence of China on a solidfooting. High technology is no longer a monopoly of the West, either. Now we see the pro-spect of overcoming the international division of labour, which for centuries has subjectedpeople outside the West to a servile or semi-servile condition or relegated them in the bot-tom of the labour market. It is thus outlining a worldwide revolution that the Western leftdoes not seem to be noticing. Rationally, they consider a strike obtaining better wages orbetter working conditions in a factory as an integral part of the process of emancipation, orthey discuss it in the context of the patriarchal division of labour. It is very strange, then,that the struggle to end the oppressive international division of labour that was establishedthrough armed force during the

Colombian epoch

is considered something alien to theprocess of emancipation.In any case, those who condemn China today as a whole due to its inequalities woulddo well to consider that Deng Xiaoping also promoted his reform policies as a part of the fight against planetary inequality. In a conversation on October 10, 1978, he notedthat the technology

gap

was expanding compared to more advanced countries; thesewere developing

with tremendous speed,

while China could not keep up in any way.And, 10 years later,

High technology is advancing at a tremendous pace

; so that therewas a risk that

the gap between China and other countries will grow wider

(Deng 1992

95, vol. 2, 143; vol. 3, 273).

5. Quantitative and Qualitative Inequality



6. Wealth and Political Power: An Adversarial Relationship
Social and political destabilisation can also come from another front. How long will thenew rich continue to accept a situation in which they can quietly enjoy their economicwealth (accumulated legitimately) but cannot turn it into political power?Mao was aware of this problem. In 1958, he responded to criticism from the SovietUnion regarding the persistence of capitalist areas in the Chinese economy by saying,

There are still capitalists in China, but the state is under the leadership of the CommunistParty

(Mao 1998, 251). Almost 30 years later, to be exact, in August 1985, Deng Xiaoping (1992

95, vol. 3, 143) made a remark we should ponder:

Perhaps Lenin had a good ideawhen he adopted the New Economic Policy.

Here is an indirect comparison between theSoviet NEP and the reform policies adopted by Deng Xiaoping in China. It is obvious whatthe two have in common: total political expropriation of the bourgeoisie does not equaltotal economic expropriation. Of course there are also differences. The NEP involved a very small part of the private economy and was primarily intended as a temporary

retreat.

In other words, what was driving the Soviet NEP was the need to find someway out of an economically hopeless situation. There was no comprehensive reflectionon which economic model to pursue: not surprisingly, according to Benjamin

s testimony,which we have already seen, the rich NEP man, who was also expected to contribute todeveloping the productive forces, was facing a

terrible social isolation.

The policy adopted by Deng Xiaoping, on the other hand, leaves behind a clear historic toll: experi-ence has shown that the totally collectivist economy erases all material incentives andmotives for competition, paving the way (as previously seen) for mass disaffection andabsenteeism; moreover, the populism that saw wealth and gain as such a sin hinderedthe development of entrepreneurship and technological innovation.While initiating his policies of reform and openness, Deng was aware of their inherentrisks. In October 1978, he cautioned,

We shall not allow a new bourgeoisie to take shape.

This goal is not contradicted by tolerance granted to individual capitalists. Of course, they must be given much consideration. However, one point is constant:

the struggle againstthese individuals is different from the struggle of one class against another, which occurredin the past (these individuals cannot form a cohesive and overt class)

(Deng 1992

95, vol.2, 144, 178). Although there are residues of the old class struggle, on the whole, with thestrengthening of the revolution and the communist party

s power, a new situation was cre-ated.

Is it possible that a new bourgeoisie will emerge? A handful of bourgeois elementsmay appear, but they will not form a class,

especially as there is a

state apparatus

that is

powerful

and able to control them (Deng 1992

95, vol. 3, 142

43). Besides the power of the state, ideology plays an important role: many of the new rich, although not commu-nists, feel patriotic and share the horror at the

century of humiliation

that began with theOpium Wars and ended with the victory of the revolution, so these new rich also share thedream of

rejuvenation of the Chinese nation.

And yet, precisely as a result of the success of policy reforms and the extraordinary economic growth of China, the number of millionaires and billionaires is growing dra-matically; will the wealth accumulated by the new capitalists have an influence on politics?It is in light of this concern that you may fully comprehend the on-going campaign againstcorruption. The clean-up process does not aim only to consolidate social consensus on theCommunist Party of China and the government; it means to implement Deng Xiaoping

s
INTERNATIONAL CRITICAL THOUGHT 27


recommendation and thus prevent the

bourgeois elements

from forming a class that isready to take power.
7. The Sights of the West:

Democratisation

or

Plutocratisation

of China?
The capitalists who were established and continue to get established can be a real dangeronly if they ally themselves with imperialist circles or pro-imperialists committed toachieving a

colour revolution

even in China. Strengthened by their excessive mediapower, for a very long time the United States has been trying to consolidate their worldhegemony in order to impose a

democracy

on China in the time and manner Washing-ton dictates.In this behaviour, the United States shows ignorance of the lessons offered by their ownnational history and liberalism, that is, from the school of thought that they claim to rep-resent. In 1787, just before the implementation of the Federal Constitution, AlexanderHamilton explained that limits on power and the establishment of the rule of law hadbeen successful in two

insular

countries, Great Britain and the United States, thanksto the protection given by the ocean and their geopolitical position shielding them fromthreats from rival powers. If the plans for a federal union had failed and a system of statessimilar to the one in Europe had formed on its ruins, soon America would have seen astanding army, a strong central power and absolutism regardless.

Thus we should in alittle time see established in every part of this country, the same engines of despotism,which have been the scourge of the old world

(Hamilton 2001, 192). Hamilton ascribedso much weight to geopolitical security in creating a system based on the rule of law that hewrote how if, instead of being an island surrounded and protected by the sea, Britain hadbeen placed on the continent, it

would in all probability, be at this day a victim to theabsolute power of a single man,

just like the other European continental powers (194).On the other hand, according to Hamilton, whenever

the preservation of the publicpeace

is threatened either by

external attacks

or by

internal convulsions,

even acountry like the United States, which also enjoys an extremely fortunate geopolitical pos-ition, is authorised to resort to a strong power

without limitations

and without

consti-tutional shackles

(253).In fact, even protected by the Atlantic and the Pacific, every time it has felt, whetherrightly or wrongly, in danger, the North American Republic has more or less drastically strengthened executive power and more or less heavily restricted freedom of associationand expression. This was the case in the years immediately following the French Revolu-tion (when its followers in America were affected by the harsh measures provided by theAlien and Sedition Acts) and during the Civil War, World War I, the Great Depression,World War II, the Cold War and the situation created by the attack on the Twin Towers.To give an example: What happened to traditional liberal freedoms after the passage, onMay 16, 1918, of the Espionage Act? Based on this act, a person could be sentenced to upto 20 years in prison for having expressed:
any disloyal, profane, scurrilous, or abusive language about the form of government of theUnited States, or the Constitution of the United States, or the military or naval forces of the United States, or the flag [. . .] or the uniform of the Army or Navy of the United States.(Commager 1963, vol. 2, 146)
28 D. LOSURDO


If the leaders in Washington were really serious about the banner of democracy that never tires of waving, they would seek in some way to reinforce geopoliticalpeace and a sense of security in the countries they claim to want to see become demo-cratic. At the end of the Cold War (as was calmly acknowledged by a scholar who wasan adviser to Vice President Dick Cheney), the lone superpower used its naval and airforces to violate

China

s airspace and territorial waters with little fear of harassmentand interdiction

unscrupulously and with impunity. The great Asian country waspowerless at that time. Today, the situation has changed significantly. The UnitedStates is, however, still able to control the channels of maritime communications.Therefore,

China is already vulnerable to the effects of a naval blockade, and it willbecome even more so as its economy grows

; in fact,

its fate could depend onAmerican forbearance

(Friedberg 2011, 217, 228, 231). And it is this situation thatthe United States strives to perpetuate. All this is not conducive to the developmentof the rule of law.The campaign of the West for the

democratisation

of China is taking place just asmany political analysts are forced to see the decline of democracy in the West. A few years before the economic crisis, one could read in the
International Herald Tribune
that the United States had become a

plutocracy

; now the forces of private and corporatewealth have already taken hold of political institutions, while the rest of the population iscut off (Pfaff 2000). Nowadays, on the left as well as among those completely opposed tothe Marxist tradition, it is common to read that in the West, and primarily in the UnitedStates, plutocracy has taken the place of democracy. We can conclude that the on-going campaign for the

democratisation

of China is actually a campaign for its plutocratisa-tion, to turn in the opposite direction the

political expropriation

of the bourgeoisiethat has taken place since 1949 in the big Asian country.A second campaign, as usual, conducted by Washington and Brussels, requiressubstantial liquidation of the state-owned sector and the public economy which play such an important role in the fight against two great inequalities: on the internationalscene, this sector is making a major contribution to China

s technological development,which is increasingly closing the gap with the advanced countries; internally, the state-owned sector and the public economy reduce inequalities between different regions,accelerating the development of China

s less developed regions, which are now growing at a much faster pace than the coastal regions. If this second campaign launchedby the West had been successful, the

economic

expropriation of the bourgeoisie,already reduced, would have been cancelled altogether, so that the bourgeoisie couldenormously increase its influence in society and again pave the way for conquest of pol-itical power.It is very clear which weapons will be used to fight in the country that has emerged fromthe greatest anti-colonial revolution in history to engage in a long-term process of building a post-capitalist and socialist society. Which side will the Western left take?

Note
1. On Benjamin and Roth, see Losurdo (2013, chapter VII, § 3); in my book I am referring to a deepening of the problems discussed in this essay.

https://www.scribd.com/document/3585121 ... -Socialism

Domenico Losurdo has kicked the bucket.He was a great Marxist scholar who got it mostly right. However, to declare that the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution were tragedies is non-dialectical. One goddamn thing comes after the other... RIP

I dunno what happened to the format here, ain't what I was looking at. Go read the original.)
"There is great chaos under heaven; the situation is excellent."

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 06, 2018 1:11 pm

U.S. has ignited largest trade war in economic history: China's MOC
Source: Xinhua| 2018-07-06 13:16:06|Editor: Xiang Bo

BEIJING, July 6 (Xinhua) -- With the 25-percent additional tariffs on Chinese products worth 34 billion U.S. dollars effective on Friday, the United States has ignited the largest trade war in economic history, said a Ministry of Commerce (MOC) spokesperson.

These tariffs violate the World Trade Organization (WTO) rules and represents a typical "trade bully", posing a grave threat to the security of global industry and value chains.

Moreover, it will hamper global economic recovery and trigger global market turmoil while dealing a blow to many multinationals, enterprises and ordinary consumers.

Instead of serving the interests of U.S. companies and people, the move will prove to be counter-productive and damaging.

The Chinese side, having vowed not to fire the first shot, is forced to stage counter-attacks to protect the core national interests and interests of its people.

China will report the relevant situations to the WTO in time, and stand with other countries in defending free trade and multilateral mechanisms.

The ministry also reiterates China's unswerving commitment to deepening reform and expanding opening-up, protecting entrepreneurship, strengthening protection of intellectual property rights, and creating a good business environment for foreign-invested companies in China.

The MOC will continuously assess the impact on affected companies and take effective measures to offer them support.

http://www.xinhuanet.com/english/2018-0 ... 305729.htm

This can only be hurtful to an economy already shaky, especially if yer committed to the appearance capitalist propriety. The Chinese ain't.
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 13, 2018 11:23 am

Socialism Is the Path to Success for China’s Modernization
By: Qin Gang
From:English Edition of QiuShi Journal
April-June 2018|Vol.10,No.2,Issue No.35 | Updated: 2018-May-16 11:09

After years of social development in China since the dawn of modernity, socialism has shown itself to be the path to success and the people’s choice for China, while modernization has been the people’s steadfast pursuit. The point at which this path and pursuit converge marks the integration of socialism and modernization. Following the 18th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2012, Chinese socialism has entered a new era. This has come about on the foundation of years of efforts building on the tremendous achievements made since the founding of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) in 1949 and in particular since the launch of reform and opening up in 1978. Rather than being simply a sentimental affiliation or value-based judgment, socialism as the path to success for China’s modernization is a historical inevitability that has been fully proven in practice.


Image
Combine harvesters reap wheat in Zhonghe Modern Agriculture Demonstration Park, Junxian County, Henan Province. PHOTO BY XINHUA REPORTER LI AN

I. Socialism is the inevitable choice for China to move toward modernization.

Both socialism and modernization are historical processes that are global in scope, as well as important symbols of the advance of human civilization. Modernization began in Western countries, and it has long been regarded as inevitable that modernization can only be achieved via developing capitalism. However, China chose to realize modernization via developing socialism – an approach different from that of Western countries.

Due to a range of influencing factors, China has not undergone capitalist modernization. Before the Opium War in 1840, there had been signs of capitalism emerging in China, and certain elements of modernity. However, capitalism had not developed to a level that could initiate the process of modernization. The invasion of Western powers drew China into the system of global capitalism, which sped up the growth of capitalist elements but transformed China into a semi-colony and colony of the West. In the face of domestic turmoil and foreign aggression, some progressives and social forces imitated Western countries in a range of attempts at modernization, but none were successful.

The birth of the PRC in 1949, and in particular the establishment of the socialist system, laid the foundation for a new path to modernization. During the long period of inquiry following these events, the CPC and the Chinese people have remained committed to the goal of the modernization of socialism and to the socialist nature of modernization, and this commitment has since become their ideal and will.

In the course of pioneering the path of Chinese socialism since the launch of reform and opening up, the CPC has laid greater emphasis on the integration of socialism and modernization as an organic whole. The path of Chinese socialism is a new path for upholding and developing socialism and for realizing China’s modernization. The defining feature of this path is the integration of socialism and modernization, and all its key tasks are geared toward advancing the process of China’s modernization.

II. China has pioneered a completely new approach to modernization.

In the four decades since the launch of reform and opening up, the path, the theory, the system, and the culture of Chinese socialism have continued to develop, blazing a new trail for developing countries to achieve modernization. This provides a new option for other countries and nations who want to speed up their development while preserving their independence, proffering Chinese wisdom and a Chinese approach to solving the problems facing mankind. China’s unique approach to modernization incorporates the key points outlined below.

1. It upholds the overall leadership of the CPC.

With a huge population, relative shortage of resources, and enfeebled economy and culture, a large developing country like China needs to fully exert the advantages of the socialist system, mobilize all positive contributing factors possible, and pool national resources behind major undertakings in order to realize modernization. Doing so requires a strong leading core that guides progress and consolidates strengths. With the CPC as the strong leading core of the cause of Chinese socialism that exercises overall leadership and coordinates overall initiatives, political disorder and internal rifts are effectively avoided. This maintains a stable political environment, consistent policies, efficient decision making, and a great capacity for action, thus ensuring China’s modernization progresses smoothly and in the right direction.

2. It maintains a people-centered approach.

Socialism is an undertaking that puts people first and serves the interests of the people. Its driving force is drawn from the people and it is founded in the people. Consequently, to realize modernization along the socialist path, we must commit to a people-focused approach and rely on the people to move history forward.

3. It continues to unlock and develop productive forces.

Material production is the decisive factor in the development of society and history, and the fundamental task of socialism is to release and develop productive forces. At present, China is putting greater efforts into implementing the new development philosophy, promoting institutional innovation, bolstering reform in all fields, and removing all constraints on the development of productive forces. The purpose of these efforts is to continually increase its economic power and composite national strength.

4. It advances overall social development and progress.

Socialism is the pursuit of all-round development, and a socialist society is one that is progressive on all fronts. The comprehensive requirements of socialism are reflected in the course of modernization, i.e., on the basis of economic development, there must also be coordinated development with relation to fields including political affairs, culture, society, and the environment. It is precisely in accordance with these requirements for development that the drivers of China’s modernization – the five-pronged overall plan and the “Four Comprehensives” strategy – have gradually taken shape, and the goal of developing China into a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious, and beautiful has been set.

5. It safeguards social equity and justice.

Equity and justice are intrinsic requirements for socialism, and are also of necessity values pursued throughout the process of socialist modernization. In China today, safeguarding social equity and justice means that in the course of modernization we need to gradually establish a system for guaranteeing fairness in society that features, above all, equal rights, equal opportunities, and fair rules so as to foster a fair social environment. Doing this will ensure all members of society enjoy equal rights to survival and development, equal opportunities to realize their personal ideals, and lawful means to express their demands.

6. It takes a peaceful approach to development that is cooperative and mutually beneficial.

The commitment to a peaceful approach to development that is cooperative and mutually beneficial embodies both our respect for the diversity of the current world and our respect for other countries’ right to independently choose their own social system and approach to development. Considered in the context of world history, Chinese socialism is a novel approach to realizing modernization due to its emphasis on peaceful development.

In sum, the modernization China wants to realize is not capitalist modernization characterized by the polarization of the rich and the poor; rather, it is socialist modernization that will eradicate exploitation, end polarization, and ultimately realize common prosperity. In this context, all people can give rein to their talents, contribute to and benefit from development, and thus, through hard work and cooperation, improve their wellbeing and raise the level of civility.

III. The Chinese approach to modernization surpasses the Western approach.

For any country, modernization is an inevitable stage of social development as well as an inevitable historical process to undergo. However, there is no fixed approach to or standardized model of modernization, and as such different countries have different approaches to modernization. The CPC has committed to developing and modernizing China via socialism. This approach breaks through many of the problems and institutional limitations intrinsic to the Western approach, thus surpassing the Western model of modernization.

1. China’s socialist approach to modernization eliminates internal and external antagonistic issues arising from the Western process of modernization. Class antagonism and exploitation are examples of issues that arise internally, whereas colonial expansion and plunder are derived externally.

In the course of its socialist modernization, China has created a relatively stable social environment for its modernization drive. It has done this by adhering to the basic principles of socialism, giving top priority to the overall interests of society, improving its social system to address conflicts of interest, and advancing democracy and the rule of law to resolve social problems. In its involvement in the process of global development, China has remained committed to seeking common ground while setting aside differences despite conflicts of interest with other countries. By replacing confrontation with cooperation, and exclusive gain with mutual benefit, China has avoided conflict and rivalry. This approach has fostered a favorable external environment for China’s development. Therefore, China follows the principle of achieving shared growth through discussion and collaboration in engaging in global governance, proposes the idea of building a community of shared future for humanity, and works hard to promote and drive world development and prosperity through its own development. This is China’s trajectory toward modernization, and is also a new model for modernization for the world.

2. The Chinese approach to modernization not only transcends the capitalist approach, but also undermines the prejudicial views that “modernization means Westernization” and “modernization means becoming capitalist.” China is able to quicken its pace toward modernization while avoiding social turmoil and polarization and more widely distribute the benefits of modernization precisely due to its commitment to the socialist path. China’s modernization drive is able to arouse the national spirit, gather national strength, and intensify the Chinese people’s confidence and belief in upholding and developing Chinese socialism precisely because it pursues prosperity and strength for the country, revival for the nation, and happiness for the people, and seeks to realize the goal of the Chinese dream of national rejuvenation. China’s modernization drive and its accomplishments have delivered unprecedented dignity and self-confidence for the Chinese people and won unprecedented international status and influence for the country.

Qin Gang is a professor at the Department of Scientific Socialism, School of the CPC Central Committee.

(Originally appeared in Qiushi Journal, Chinese edition, No. 2, 2018)

http://english.qstheory.cn/2018-05/16/c ... 2205897891
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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Fri Jul 13, 2018 3:51 pm

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Explicit analysis of the situation with pension provision in China, and even in the comments periodically there are characters broadcasting that there are no pensions in China.

Why do we lie about pensions in China

Recently, in the Russian media and even in some scientific publications, when discussing the topic of raising the retirement age in Russia (for men - up to 65 years, for women - up to 63), there have been allegations that one should take an example from China, where supposedly large part of the population is not covered by the social insurance system at all. And, in general, China's success in the economy is due to the fact that the state and entrepreneurs almost do not bear the costs of the social insurance system of the population, and only a small part of civil servants (first of all - cadres and workers of large public sector enterprises) use the social insurance system .

I must say that such statements are not true. At present, a large part (58.52%) of the PRC population lives in cities. The living standard of the population has increased noticeably not only in comparison with 1978, the first year of reform, but also since 2000. According to the average salary of workers and employees in cities at the end of 2016: 67,569 yuan per year, or 5,630 yuan a month (about 56,000 rubles a month), - China has already outstripped Russia (about 30,000 rubles a month), although as early as 2010 China's retardation from Russia in terms of average wage level was significant: 36,539 yuan per year (about 3,000 yuan, or 18-20 thousand rubles a month at the exchange rate of the yuan to the ruble for that period). As noted in the documents of the 1st session of the National People's Congress (NPC) of the 13th convocation (March 2018), the social insurance system in China now covers 900 million people, and various types of medical insurance - 1.3 billion people. In addition, as part of the fight against poverty, subsidies for rural and non-working people were raised from 240 to 450 yuan per person per year.

Such indicators of population coverage by the social insurance system in China have not been achieved immediately. During the reform, it was required not only to achieve significant economic growth, but also for 40 years to carry out a number of activities aimed at providing social guarantees for a large part of the population of the country.

The foundations of China's social insurance system were laid back in the 50's. The workers were covered by the "Labor Insurance Law" of 1951 and 1953. with amendments made to it in the form of the Provisional Decisions of the State Council of the People's Republic of China of 1958. And the directive of the State Council of the People's Republic of China of 1952 "On medical care and preventive treatment at the expense of public funds for executives of all levels of the people's government, apparatus of political parties, public organizations and subordinates enterprises and institutions, "signed by the Premier of the State Council of the People's Republic of China, Zhou Enlai, stipulated that" workers of trade unions, youth and women's organizations, other public organizations, employees culture, education, health,

During the economic reform, some changes were made to the provisions on social insurance for workers and employees. In particular, in May 1978, the 2nd session of the NPC Standing Committee approved the "Temporary forms of workers' pensions" adopted by the State Council of the People's Republic of China. As a result, men were entitled to a pension with 60 years of age with a continuous record of 10 years and a total length of service of 25 years, women from 50 years (employees - from 55 years) with a continuous record of 10 years and a total of 20 years. For workers in difficult conditions (cold and hot shop, in the air, on water and under the ground), the retirement age was set at 5 years lower, while maintaining the same length of service as other workers.

In the event of injury in the workplace and total loss of working capacity, the worker was paid a pension in the amount of 60 to 80% of wages. In the event that the worker has completely lost his ability to work, not at work, but has not reached retirement age and has 10 years of continuous work experience at the enterprise, he was paid a pension of 40% of wages (sometimes up to 60%). If the worker completely lost his ability to work, he was paid a lifetime pension, and if he was able to work, then he had to provide a suitable job for him and pay a certain amount to the salary in the form of a benefit. In the event of the death of a worker or employee, all funeral expenses were borne by the enterprise, which was supposed to pay a pension to the members of the deceased's family.

Absolute and relative growth in the number of pensioners in the 1980s. demanded constant additional costs for the formation of the pension fund on the part of enterprises. Experimental forms of pension funds began to emerge. For example, in the 80s in some large cities joint pension funds of state enterprises were created, but they turned out to be insolvent. In the 1990s, the amount of contributions to pension funds began to depend on the number of pensioners at each enterprise, but in conditions of market competition and the growth of the number of pensioners, not all enterprises, especially large ones, could allocate the necessary funds to pay pensions.

In 1991, the State Council of the People's Republic of China adopted "Decisions on the reform of the system of payment of pensions to workers and employees of enterprises," which provided for the universal introduction of a new procedure for the payment of pensions, divided into three types:

1) uniform for all workers and employees;

2) special pension programs of enterprises (carried out by individual enterprises, if they have the means for additional pension insurance of their employees);

3) individual pension insurance (insurance policies that are acquired by individual employees).

A new important point was that the single pension fund was formed not only at the expense of enterprise contributions, but also at the expense of employee contributions (a percentage of wages).

The scheme assumed that part of the collected funds goes to the general fund for current pension payments, while the other part remains for accumulation on the personal account of the employee. To a large extent, the burden began to fall on the shoulders of workers in the period of work until they reach retirement age.

At the Third Plenum of the Central Committee of the 14th convocation (November 1993), a course was taken to reform the system of compulsory pension insurance, which combines public distribution with individual accounts. By the mid-1990s, the new pension system was extended to employees of all enterprises, regardless of the form of ownership. In 1996, the Ministry of Labor of the People's Republic of China and other departments prepared a number of changes in the system of insurance pensions for workers in industrial enterprises, which were approved by the State Council. According to the Decree "On the establishment of a unified system of basic pension insurance for enterprise workers" (published by the State Council of China in July 1997), a system of compulsory pension insurance ("Resolution No. 26") was introduced.

Beginning to participate in pension insurance in the first year transferred to his personal insurance account 3% of his salary, then every two years his contribution increases by 1%, until 10 years did not reach 8% of salary. At the same time, the contribution of the enterprise to the personal account of the employee decreased from 8% of the salary in the first year of participation to 3%, in total, both contributions were always 11% of the salary of the employee. Contributions of enterprises to the general fund, which goes to current pension payments, are determined by the local people's government and should not exceed 20% of the average salary of each employee. The pension received by the pensioner consisted of two parts: 1) the basic pension - no more than 25% of the average salary in the given district; 2) the amount equal to 1/120 of the funds accumulated in the personal account of the pensioner (this figure was determined,

For rural areas, the Ministry of Labor of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese People's Insurance Company have developed an old-age insurance system that allows each individual means to secure pension payments. All citizens aged 18 to 60 living in rural areas, regardless of the nature of work, can participate in pension insurance. In the formation of local pension funds, along with citizens, local governments can participate in accordance with economic conditions, but the share of citizens' contributions must be at least 50%. The amount of contributions can be from 2 to 20 yuan per month, which can be paid monthly or quarterly. The right to receive a pension comes from 60 years for men and women, subject to the payment of pension contributions for the required period and is valid until death;

Thus, the material security of elderly people living in both rural and urban areas of China is provided from three sources: 1) funds of children and relatives of elderly people; 2) the relevant place of residence of the pension insurance system; 3) for a small part of the elderly: single, incapacitated and not having a livelihood, - a system of "five types of provision" (food, clothing, housing, medical care and funeral funds).

According to the State Committee of the People's Republic of China on fertility planning, in 2014 more than 95% of rural residents were covered by the social insurance system; subsidies from local budgets were 320 yuan per person, and insurance payments covered 75% of the cost of hospitalization and 50% of the cost of outpatient services. The system of payment for medical services from postpaid to prepaid was also changed, which enabled the population to apply for medical help in a timely manner and to control the costs of diagnostics and treatment.

In July 2011, the Law on Social Insurance was adopted. According to the results of its execution at the end of 2016, the compulsory medical insurance program included an additional 120 million people among urban residents and 88.7 million people with pensions. In China, they plan to expand the system of social benefits for the elderly, both in medical care and in the pension system. First of all, it is supposed to provide additional social benefits to individual entrepreneurs and non-state enterprises engaged in enterprises, including housewives, rural migrant workers and working "remotely accessible" via the Internet.

In February 2014, the State Council issued a temporary resolution on social assistance, which referred to the allocation of social benefits to families whose income is below the subsistence level in the region, to elderly people requiring constant care, as well as children and seriously ill. In addition, this resolution provided for the allocation of special subsidies for medical care, payment of utility expenses for housing and other types of temporary social assistance for the poor.

As a result of the measures taken in the field of social policy in the 21st century, the size of the pension has significantly increased. If in 1998 the average pension in China was only 413 yuan, now the average pension is already significantly higher than the average Russian pension - 14,200 rubles a month. Of course, the average size of a monthly pension in China varies widely by region. For example, in Beijing it is 3 050 yuan (in the calculation of rubles at the current exchange rate of 30,500 rubles), in Qinghai - 2,593 yuan (25,930 rubles), in Xinjiang - 2,298 yuan (22,980 rubles), in Jiangsu - 2 027 yuan (20 270 rubles), in Yunnan - 1 820 yuan (18 200 rubles). At the same time, it should be taken into account that, despite the general increase in prices, the retail prices of the consumer sector in the PRC are significantly lower than in Russia.

The main problem of the social insurance system in China at present is the existence of a double system of social insurance in the country. One system operates for employees of state-owned enterprises, which basically receive all types of benefits from state social insurance funds. The other is for the rest, including enterprises of other forms of ownership and the majority of rural residents who receive benefits from local funds. In the future, it is planned to raise the level of social security. The new system of social insurance in China will not be associated with indicators of economic growth, but will depend directly on the amount of payments of enterprises and workers to social insurance funds. It is envisaged to create a multi-tier social insurance system consisting of three parts:

Thus, Chinese experience shows that over the years of reforms the coverage of the population by the system of social insurance and free medical care (like the Russian compulsory medical insurance) has increased significantly - from 100 million to 1 billion people. At the same time, the size of monthly pensions and social benefits, which have already exceeded Russian ones, have increased noticeably. Also, despite the noticeable growth of pensioners, China still maintains the retirement age set back in the 50s: men - 60 years, women - 50 years (for employees - 55 years). The main sources of social insurance funds in China, in addition to the state, are the enterprises and workers themselves who create their own social insurance funds, both at the level of administrative units and enterprises.

http://zavtra.ru/blogs/mifi_i_real_nost_ - zinc

https://colonelcassad.livejournal.com/4315175.html

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Re: China

Post by blindpig » Mon Jul 16, 2018 11:17 am

The German communists discuss "market socialism" implemented in China
14 July 2018 15:14

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pcc congressby Luca Frei | by sinistra.ch

was held last May in Marburg (Germany) a conference on China organized by the Marx-Engels. The socialist weekly "Unsere Zeit", published by the German Communist Party (DKP), contains an interesting summary. Speakers at the conference were economist Wolfram Elsner, labor law expert Rolf Geffken and Georges Hallermayer, one of the "Unsere Zeit" columnists.

Wolfram Elsner explained how the Chinese Communist Party wants to turn the People's Republic into a wealthy and modern socialist country by 2049.

He also said that there was an ideological reorientation in the Party, as the current Chinese president Xi Jinping has a stronger Marxist profile than Deng Xiaoping. In fact, Xi wants to strengthen ideological formation and has therefore introduced compulsory courses of Marxism in all the university faculties. Elsner also explained that in China social differences are shrinking: over the past 40 years, 800 million people have been brought out of a state of absolute poverty.

Georges Hallermayer, who studies and accompanies the development of the African countries and the role of China in it, has instead affirmed that the economic relations between China and the African countries have evolved, but are still based on the principles expressed by Jiang Zemin in 1996 : the same rights, mutual utility and non-intervention in the respective policies. In fact, China helps African countries in their economic development by providing them with interest-free credits, eliminating debts and also eliminating import duties on the goods of these countries. On the Chinese council, some African countries have also created free trade zones. Between 2010 and 2012, China has invested EUR 13.4 billion in aid for Africa, of which 36% in the form of aid without requiring anything in return, 8% in the form of interest free loans and 56% in the form of loans with interest. Since 2015 there has been a change in collaboration: from fragmented aid projects, we have moved on to a systematic industrial promotion. In fact, in Africa there are about ten thousand Chinese companies that produce more than 60 billion euros in turnover per year and whose local workers represent 89%. Hallermayer said that, considering the type of Chinese intervention in Africa, China is not at all imperialist and neo-colonial, as it is often accused of being on one side of the European left. in Africa there are about ten thousand Chinese companies that produce more than 60 billion euros in turnover per year and whose local workers represent 89%. Hallermayer said that, considering the type of Chinese intervention in Africa, China is not at all imperialist and neo-colonial, as it is often accused of being on one side of the European left. in Africa there are about ten thousand Chinese companies that produce more than 60 billion euros in turnover per year and whose local workers represent 89%. Hallermayer said that, considering the type of Chinese intervention in Africa, China is not at all imperialist and neo-colonial, as it is often accused of being on one side of the European left.

Rolf Geffken instead focused more on the roles of the unions in China, all of whom were created in the socialist context following the birth of the People's Republic of China. In the current strikes, however, a movement parallel to the trade unions has been created, a movement destined, however, not to be lasting, according to the speaker's words. Geffken also stated that if after the transition to the socialist market economy in the 1990s there was a strong work flexibility (for example, fixed-term contracts have become much more frequent), it is nevertheless true that, in the last few years, the conditions have improved again. Although Geffken proved to be more critical of China, stating that this country is full of contradictions, Wolfram Elsner said that in China there is an economic system organized under communist rule. There is indeed a socialist system, in which the market is exploited to develop the productive forces as envisaged by Karl Marx.

http://www.marx21.it/index.php/internaz ... to-in-cina

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