China

[blindpig]

John Ross: The international and historical significance of the resolution on the history of the CPC

In his latest article, which we are pleased to republish from Learning from China, John Ross provides a useful summary of the three key resolutions on party history adopted by the Communist Party of China in its century of struggle. Against this background, John further outlines how generations of Chinese communists, and especially Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping, have defended, applied, enriched and developed Marxism-Leninism and in so doing have not only immeasurably improved the lives of the Chinese people but also contributed significantly to the progress of humanity, especially to the liberation struggles of the countries and peoples of Asia, Africa and Latin America.

The following article was originally published in Chinese by Guancha.cn.

The “Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century”, adopted by the Sixth Session of the 19th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in November 2021, is, rightly, regarded as in the first place an issue for China itself. As the Resolution notes in its first sentence: “Since its founding in 1921, the Communist Party of China (CPC) has remained true to its original aspiration and mission of seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation.”

It is obviously correct to start with the position of China itself. But the second sentence of the Resolution starts by noting the connection of China’s national struggle with international developments – in particular in regard to socialism: “Staying committed to communist ideals and socialist convictions, it [the CPC] has united and led Chinese people of all ethnic groups in working tirelessly to achieve national independence and liberation.” Indeed, for reasons that will be analysed, this resolution on the history of the CPC is of very great international and historical importance for all countries as well as for China itself. Therefore, while in no way wishing to deflect from the correctly China focussed nature of discussion on the Resolution, it is also hoped here it may cast some light on the discussion if international aspects of the significance of the Resolution are also considered.

WHY ONLY THREE RESOLUTIONS ON THE HISTORY OF THE CPC?

As has been widely noted the CPC has only adopted three resolutions on its history during the century of its existence.

*The first was in April 1945, as World War II was ending with the successful defeat of German and Japanese fascism, and the CPC was preparing for the struggle which in 1949 led to the creation of the People’s Republic of China (PRC). This was the “Resolution of the CPC CC on Certain Historical Questions.”
*The second was in June 1981, to consolidate China’s policy of Reform and Opening Up which had been launched in 1978. This was the: “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China.”
*The third, in 2021, was just adopted by the Sixth Plenum.

Therefore, the question is obviously raised as to why were these three occasions considered so important that they were especially marked out by the adoption of such significant documents? The answer to that may be found within the new resolution itself and by considering the international implications of each situation when they were adopted.

NEW DEMOCRACY AND THE BEGINNING OF THE CONSTRUCTION OF SOCIALISM

The first resolution on the CPC’s history, as was noted at the recent Plenum, was adopted in the period of the “new democratic revolution” led by Mao Zedong. This period secured China’s national unity and independence after more than a century of foreign military occupations and eliminated the remnants of China’s feudalism. After 1949 Mao Zedong also led the beginning of the construction of socialism.

These were epoch making achievements for China. But they were also monumental in their global significance and in the development of socialism and Marxism. Mao Zedong led a process which had never before been achieved in human history – to make a socialist revolution in an underdeveloped semi-colonial country. The present Resolution of the Sixth Plenum refers to this in summary in the context of China: “The shift from attacking big cities to marching into the countryside was a decisive new starting point for the Chinese revolution… In the course of the revolutionary struggle, Chinese communists, with Comrade Mao Zedong as their chief representative, adapted the basic tenets of Marxism-Leninism to China’s specific realities and developed a theoretical synthesis of China’s unique experience which came from painstaking trials and great sacrifices. They blazed the right revolutionary path of encircling cities from the countryside.”

But these striking statements in the Resolution on China do not elaborate on the international significance of what Mao Zedong and the CPC achieved – the Resolution is, rightly, focussed on China. Marx and Engels had, of course, laid the foundations of Marxism. Lenin had been the first to show how socialists could take power in an imperialist country. But it was Mao Zedong, and the CPC, that showed how socialists could take power in a developing, semi-colonial, country. This established Mao Zedong, with Lenin, as the greatest Marxist thinker of the 20th century.

But to develop this strategy Mao Zedong had to solve innumerable other problems than a simple shift in the “geographic” basis of the struggle – from the cities to the countryside. It was necessary to identify the correct method for analysing a situation (philosophic works such as “On Contradiction” and “On Practice”), new strategic methods for struggle (“On Protracted War”), new conceptions on the precise approach to socialist revolution (“On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship”) and numerous other contributions to Marxism. As the present resolution put it such contributions: “established Mao Zedong Thought, which charted the correct course for securing victory in the new-democratic revolution.”

Regarding the international implications of this, naturally no other country could or should mechanically apply the same conclusions, and the CPC has never advocated this, but the method of analysis of Mao Zedong Thought was an immense universal contribution to humanity.

Furthermore, for a prolonged period after Mao Zedong and the CPC put forward these concepts, other socialist revolutions and national liberation struggles directly learned from them. The socialist revolutions in Vietnam, Laos and Cuba followed the strategy of “the countryside surrounds the cities”. So many national liberation struggles against colonialism followed this strategy that is impossible to list them all – Mozambique, Zimbabwe, Algeria, Angola will do for a few.

In summary, China’s revolution of 1949 was of course above all a decisive event in China’s own history. But it also had enormous international ramifications.

*Mao Zedong analysis became, with Leninism, the greatest contribution to socialist theory and Marxism since the epoch of Marx himself.
*An entirely new chapter of Marxism was created in showing how a developing country could achieve socialism – and the methods of struggle which achieved this influenced numerous other progressive struggles.
*An immense strengthening of world socialism took place as China, at that time accompanied by the USSR, embarked on the road of socialist construction

These achievements were literally epoch making. While China was always careful to insist on the precise nature of the situation in each country, other countries could and did learn from China in order to aid in understanding their own specific situation.

In summary, the first resolution of the CPC on its history, in 1945, “Resolution of the CPC CC on Certain Historical Questions,” was in the first place, a decision concerning China. But it also had major consequences regarding the international situation and socialism. The fact that in 1945 the Soviet Union, not China, was the most powerful socialist force in the world meant that at this time this resolution did not receive the enormous international attention it merited. But this did not in any way detract from its fundamental objective significance.

THE ROAD TO REFORM AND OPENING UP

After the establishment of the PRC in 1949 gigantic steps forward for the Chinese people were taken. Modern industrialisation began. The greatest improvement in the conditions of the largest number of people in human history, in a similar time frame, was achieved – as measured in increased life expectancy, education, health etc.

But at that time, despite these gigantic steps forward, China’s economic growth was only roughly in line with the world average. From 1950 until 1976, the year of Mao Zedong’s death, China’s GDP growth of 224% was essentially in line with the world average of 227%. China’s gigantic achievement was that this economic growth was overwhelming directed towards the improvement of the improvement of the lives of China’s people – and this was achieved. But while China made enormous steps forward in improving the conditions of its population in this period, and laid the basis for future economic development, it cannot be objectively claimed that it made overwhelming achievements in economic growth – due in part to mistakes in this period of which the Resolution notes in particular the errors of the “Great Leap Forward and the people’s commune movement” as well as the “catastrophic Cultural Revolution”.

This economic reality had a necessary consequence – including for China’s international situation. In 1949 China, due to a century of foreign invasions, had become almost the poorest country in the world in terms of per capita GDP. Therefore, if China’s GDP was only growing roughly in line with the world average, it would not escape from being a relatively poor country.

Furthermore, in the 1970s an overall crisis of the world economy, affecting both capitalist and socialist countries, began. In the capitalist countries, starting in 1971, the US launched an offensive against its competitors Japan and Germany – which until that point, since World War II, had been growing more rapidly than the US. The US imposed tariffs, insisted on radical increases in the exchange rates of Germany and Japan, and by these means succeeded in defeating its capitalist rivals. This was then followed by the US orchestrating a huge increase in oil prices – from which it, as a major oil producer, gained while Japan and Germany, which had no significant oil reserves, lost.

By these means by the end of the 1970s the US had comprehensively defeated its Japanese and German capitalist rivals and conclusively re-established dominance among capitalist countries – a position which it has not lost until today.

However, the US did not achieve this strengthened position, among capitalist countries, by accelerating its own economy – annual average US GDP growth, taking a 10-year moving average to remove the effect of short-term business cycles, almost halved from 4.3% in 1971 to 2.2% by 2020. Instead of accelerating its own economy, the US slowed its rivals – the 10-year moving average of annual GDP growth among advanced economies fell by an enormous 75%, from 5.1% to 1.3%, between 1971 and 2020. Primarily as a result of this annual average world economic growth, dominated during most of this period by capitalist countries, fell by more than half, from 5.2% to 2.4%, in the same period.

But simultaneously an economic crisis developed among socialist countries. By the late 1970s Soviet economic growth was slower than that of the USSR – see Figure 1. Despite the gigantic contribution to humanity of USSR, not only in the increase in the living standards of its population but in the defeat of German fascism and the destruction of the colonial Empires, this economic failure in turn led to a deep crisis in the USSR, creating the context for the disastrous policies of Gorbachev, and culminated finally in 1991 in the restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union and the geopolitical catastrophe for Russia of the disintegration of the USSR.



But in contrast to the economic failure of the USSR, China from 1978 embarked on a policy which led to the most rapid economic growth in a major country in human history. By 1990, the last year of the USSR, China’s GDP had grown by 767% from 1950 – compared to 299% for the US, 290% for the USSR, and 409% for the world average (see Figure 2). Updating to the present, from 1978 to 2020 China’s economy grew by 3,914% compared to 231% for the US and a world average of 180%. In short, whereas by the mid-1970s the USSR’s economy was entering a crisis which resulted in its collapse, China was advancing to the most successful economic system seen in world history. It was this new economic policy and structure after 1978 which allowed China not only to avoid the economic failure of the USSR by the 1970s but to grow far more rapidly than any major capitalist economy.



The causes of this stupendous economic success of China after 1978 are set out in the new resolution of the Sixth Plenum: “China achieved the historic transformations from a highly centralized planned economy into a socialist market economy… and from a country that was largely isolated into one that is open to the outside world.” The domestic impact of this in China is so well known that it is unnecessary to deal with it in detail here – the fastest economic growth in a major country in world history, the fastest rise in living standards in any major country, more than 850 million people taken out of internationally defined poverty, the achievement of “moderate prosperity” by China’s domestic criteria, China being taken from almost the world’s poorest economy in terms of per capita GDP in 1949 to achieving, in the next three years, “high income” status by World Bank international standards.

To summarise, these achievements produced the greatest improvement in the living standards of the largest proportion of humanity in human history in any comparable time frame. This achievement, following on from the social miracle of the Mao Zedong period meant that, in the opening sentence of the Sixth Plenum resolution, the CPC confirmed its success in its: “original aspiration and mission of seeking happiness for the Chinese people and rejuvenation for the Chinese nation.”

But, in addition to its consequences for the Chinse people, what was the international significance of this achievement? This may be stated bluntly with full understanding of the significance of the words. It is often, correctly, stated in China that only socialism saved China from national humiliation. But while China embarked on its socialist revolution in 1949, and then Reform and Opening Up in 1978, for reasons of its national rejuvenation nevertheless this produced an epoch making international effect. Regarding Reform and Opening Up it may be stated bluntly that the economic policies embarked on by China under Reform and Opening Up, under the leadership of Deng Xiaoping and the other leaders of the CPC, saved world socialism. This statement is not intended in the slightest to belittle the role of other countries which achieved socialism, and the achievements of which were decisive for their country. In the period after World War II other countries achieved socialist revolutions which were decisive for their own development, and which had a great international impact – notably Cuba and Vietnam. But, given the strength and aggression of US imperialism, which was fully demonstrated after the collapse of the Soviet Union in military attacks on Iraq, Libya and other countries, only the USSR and China had the strength to prevent US aggression against themselves and other countries. After the collapse of the USSR only China possessed that strength.

More than that, China’s stupendous economic success after 1978 destroyed the argument that socialism was an economically inefficient system – a myth which was created by the economic failure of the USSR by the 1970s. China achieved what every developing country dreamed of – to take its people from poverty and underdevelopment to prosperity in a single lifetime. China, rightly, never proposed to other countries to copy its “model”. But any progressive force with sense would study China’s success to understand what lessons could be applied to the situation of its own country.

The contrast between the economic failure of the USSR and China’s success was also totally clear. As Gennady Zyuganov, leader of the Communist Party of the Russian Federation, noted in 2008 regarding China’s policy of Reform and Opening Up: “Had we learned from the success of China earlier, the Soviet Union would not have dissolved.”

THE CPC’S TRIUMPH OF MARXIST THINKING

If the practical triumphs of the CPC’s policy of Reform and Opening Up are obvious it should be emphasised that this was also an intellectual triumph. China’s “reform and opening up”, its creation of a socialist market economy, created a new economic structure never before seen in world history. Furthermore, as the data already given shows, this is the most successful economic structure in world history. China and the CPC not merely outperformed the West, they “out thought” the West.

It is a pure myth, promoted by those who have never studied the debates in China, that China was guided in this process without theory – as anyone who studies the theoretical discussions in China around 1978, knows. These culminated in what is termed in China “Deng Xiaoping Theory” – the second great contribution of China to Marxism after Mao Zedong. This was, in a striking way, both a “return to Marx”, many of Deng Xiaoping’s speeches at this time are obviously reflections on Marx’s “Critique of the Gotha Programme” and other works, and in both its original statement and further development simultaneously an entirely practical and original conceptualisations of China’s objective situation – as with the analysis of the “primary stage of socialism”, “grasping the large and letting the small go” (Zhuā dà fàng xiǎo) etc. For those who regrettably cannot read the Chinese originals, there is no shortage of official translations of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping – five volumes of the Mao Zedong available in English (2,082 pages), and three volumes of Deng Xiaoping (1,108 pages).

From a theoretical point of view this period of China’s reform and opening up was simultaneously highly creative and brought China’s economic structure more into line with Marx. Marx had set out clearly that the transition from capitalism to fully developed socialism would take a prolonged historical period. More precisely in the Communist Manifesto he noted: “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” Note Marx’s use of the term “by degree.” Marx, therefore, clearly envisaged a period during which political power would be socialist, held by the working class, but in the economy both state-owned property and private property would exist. However, after 1929 the USSR had, embarked on a policy in which essentially 100% of the economy was taken into state hands. Small scale production, in particular agriculture was collectivised or statified, and the USSR’s economy was relatively isolated from foreign trade. By the late 1970s not an identical but a parallel economic structure also existed in China.

Whatever its geopolitical justification when such a structure was introduced in the USSR, in particular there was the threat of military attack, the facts show that the USSR’s “ultra-left” economic structure in Marxist terms, which had been successful in the short term (12 year) period of essentially military dominated struggle against Nazi Germany, was unsuccessful in the prolonged economic struggle between the USSR and the US after World War II. China’s “reform and opening up”, the return to an economic structure closer to Marx, in contrast produced the greatest economic growth seen in world history.

Naturally no country can or should mechanically copy China, but the fundamental issues involved in China’s adoption of a socialist market economy can be learnt from by every country.

In short, China’s Reform and Opening Up, set out in the 1981 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China” was not only a key document in the history of China. It analysed a decisive step for the world.

*China from 1978, building on but developing Marxism, had created a new practical economic structure in world history.
*This system produced the most rapid economic growth, and the most rapid improvement of the conditions of the people, in world history.
*China showed the way out of the economic impasse into which the USSR had fallen.
*In so doing China had not merely taken a giant step in its own national rejuvenation but it had saved world socialism.

These were the achievements which became embodied in Deng Xiaoping Theory, and the foundations of which were set out in the 1981 “Resolution on Certain Questions in the History of Our Party Since the Founding of the People’s Republic of China”. Such gigantic achievements, with their global impact, made it a fundamental document not only for China but for the entire world.

Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era

The cumulative effect of this unequalled economic growth under Reform and Opening Up in turn necessarily created new and different challenges for China – or more precisely it created a new era of China’s development. As the “Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century” puts it: “following the Party’s 18th National Congress in 2012, socialism with Chinese characteristics entered a new era.”. More precisely: “the Chinese nation has achieved the tremendous transformation from standing up and becoming prosperous to growing strong.” The resolution notes key domestic criteria for this new era, but from an international point of view they may be summarised in one decisive development which has not merely domestic but widespread international implications. China, from being almost the world’s poorest country in 1949, with therefore only a small role in the world economy, and then experiencing the world’s most rapid economic growth from 1978, had entered into the period of comprehensive moderate prosperity by its own national standards and, in the next three years, it will become a high-income economy by international World Bank criteria.

But, because China has the largest population in the world becoming a high-income economy also transforms its international position. China, therefore, necessarily began to play an increasingly central role in world affairs. The new era for China therefore necessarily meant new transformations and challenges in both domestic and international policy.

It is to deal with these new challenges that Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era was developed. As the Resolution notes: “Xi Jinping, through… assessment and deep reflection on a number of major theoretical and practical questions…has set forth a series of original new ideas, thoughts, and strategies on national governance revolving around the major questions of our times”.

This is a process through which a successful country develops. A country faces innumerable key decisions regarding its development. Therefore, at great turning points, a successful nation finds by a process of “natural selection”, the leadership most capable of taking these correct decisions regarding the greatest issues facing the nation. At decisive moments in its modern history the Chinese people therefore selected leaders capable of confronting the greatest issues facing the nation. Mao Zedong re-established China’s national independence, Deng Xiaoping created the greatest economic success of any country in human history, Xi Jinping led China in its transition to becoming a prosperous strong country.

Instead of infantile criticisms on “personalities” the people of the US should well understand this situation from their own history. The two greatest US presidents are regarded as Lincoln and Roosevelt – because each dealt decisively with the greatest challenges facing the United States. Lincoln preserved the unity of the US against the threat of secession and destroyed slavery. Roosevelt led the US in its role in the destruction of German and Japanese fascism – a contribution not only to the US but to humanity. They are therefore, rightly, regarded as great figures in the history of the United States. This is the same as with the “natural selection” of modern China’s great leaders.

But in addition to Xi Jinping’s domestic significance in China this also had an immense international impact. Xi Jinping’s defence of China’s national interests and socialism entirely thwarted US plans to damage China. The US had spent decades searching for a “Chinese Gorbachev” – that is a confused pro-capitalist leader who would undermine socialism, therefore weaken China, and allow the US to deliver a devastating blow to China of the type of the disintegration of the USSR. Instead, in Xi Jinping, they found a strong clear sighted leader, devoted to China and to socialism. This thwarted the US intention to damage China and to weaken world socialism. This, of course, reflected the strength of the Chinese working class – its struggle not only for the rejuvenation of the Chinese nation but of its objective role in world socialism.

It is necessary, but not sufficient, for the Chinese working class not simply to have the intention to defeat attacks on China. There are fortunately many millions of people in China, and in the CPC, who are devoted to China and to socialism. Without this nothing at all could be achieved. It is precisely their efforts which ensure the success of the country and which selects the leadership capable of taking China forward. But they have to find leaders with the greatest ability to find the solutions to how to carry forward that patriotism and socialism – both in overall conception and in precise solutions to practical problems. It is precisely historically the positions of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping which have achieved this.

KEY NEW CONCEPTS

Numerous examples of Xi Jinping analysis could be given relating to China’s domestic situation. But two may be singled out a of particular international importance.

The first is the concept of a human community with a shared future. As the Resolution of the Sixth Plenum notes, with regard to foreign relations: “the concept of a human community with a shared future has become a banner leading trends of the times and human progress.” During the period of Reform and Opening Up it China certainly had tactics on foreign policy – the famous phrase of Deng Xiaoping 韬光养晦 (bide our time and hide our capabilities) embodied this. But it was Xi Jinping’s concept of a “human community with a shared future” which provided a clear strategic basis for China’s foreign policy.

This was simultaneously entirely rooted in Marxism and a new development of its conclusions. The basis in Marxism was Marx’s analysis that the progress of human civilisation was based on the increasing socialisation (division) of labour. This process, culminating in globalisation, meant each country increasingly interacted with and was dependent on other countries. But previously no one had analysed the practical foreign policy implications of this – making “a human community with a shared future” simultaneously rooted in classical Marxism and deeply original.

Another example is that of “common prosperity”. As was already analysed, the introduction of China’s socialist market economy after 1978 was epoch making – creating the most rapid economic growth in a major economy in human history and lifting China from a poor country to the brink of a high-income economy. But precisely because it was such a successful economic innovation it produced new social challenges which had not been envisaged.

Regarding the foundations of “common prosperity”, in China in the period leading to 1978, and earlier in the USSR after 1929, essentially the entire economy had been statified. In that situation, therefore, there was no significant income from capitalist property. Consequently, the issue of inequality was not very significant – in all countries inequality of income is low compared to inequality of property/wealth. But, as already analysed, this essentially 100% statification of the economy was not in line with Marx’s analysis and therefore did not produce satisfactory long term economic growth. However, after 1978, China’s socialist market economy, in the context of the dominant role of the state sector, correctly allowed the recreation of private capital. This, therefore, consequently recreated the problem of inequality arising from private ownership of capital. While this economic change was entirely necessary it created a new social problem the consequences of which at that time were not theoretically analysed. This problem was then resolved in Xi Jinping’s analysis of “common prosperity”. In this, within the context of the leading role of the state sector, private sector investment is regarded as progressive and fully protected. However, use of capitalist income for luxury consumption, “celebrity culture” etc is regarded as negative. A full analysis of this is made in 共同富裕”将让中国人“更加富裕 (Common Prosperity Will Make China Richer).

CONCLUSION

What conclusions can be drawn from this? They are that China, in seeking solutions on the path of its own national rejuvenation, established itself as the leading socialist force in the world making what are now the world’s leading contributions to Marxism. In terms of the conditions of the Chinese people as the Resolution notes: “China’s economic strength, scientific and technological capabilities, and composite national strength have reached new height.” Overall, “the people’s lives have improved in all aspects,” and there has been: “a notable boost in confidence in our culture among… all Chinese people.

These are stupendous achievements, in the first place for the Chinese people. But the whole world, and all of progressive humanity, benefits from them.

Naturally, every country, has its own specific character and no country can mechanically copy China. But every country can learn from China and integrate those lessons with their own national reality – precisely in the way that China’s great leaders had the sense to initially learn from a German (Marx) and a Russian (Lenin), to combine it with their national reality, to create something that was specifically Chinese in the analyses of the CPC.

It is merely necessary to summarise a few of these achievements to understand why the CPC has become not only the leading force of the Chinese nation but also the leading force with the most advanced ideas for world socialism.

*Mao Zedong’s leadership of the CPC, for the first time, showed that it was possible for a developing semi-colonial country to achieve socialism and in so doing create a social miracle which improved the position of the greatest proportion of humanity in world history.
*China’s development showed that in a single lifetime it was possible for a huge country to go from being almost the world’s poorest to a high income developed economy – with all the steps forward for the lives of its people it represented. If the rest of the world, 84% of the population of which lives in developing countries, could achieve the same very many of the problems facing humanity would be solved. China’s development thereby shows in practical way hope for the overwhelming majority of humanity
*China after 1978 created a new economic structure, the socialist market economy, which while it had been theoretically foreseen in Marx’s writings, had never before existed in practice, and therefore in its concrete reality, in human history. This economic structure has created the most rapid economic development in history. China pursues its own “China Dream”, but this success allows every developing country to understand that, with correct policies, its own dream can become a reality – it can be transformed from a developing to a developed country.
*China has now become powerful country with a central role in world affairs. Xi Jinping’s concept of a human community with a shared future provides a clear strategic base not only for China’s own foreign policy but for the overall interrelation of countries.
*The concept of “common prosperity” creates the basis for simultaneously using the stupendous economic success of China’s post-1978 socialist market economy with ensuring social justice and therefore political stability.

In summary, China developed its policies to deal with its national issues. But in so doing it has created both practical and theoretical achievements which are the world’s most advanced. China has never asked other countries to learn from its example, but neither can if forbid them to do so. Given the gigantic scale of China’s achievements anyone with sense in the world will study these intently. The “Resolution on the Major Achievements and Historical Experience of the Party over the Past Century” is therefore not only key for China, it is a document of crucial importance for the entire world.

https://socialistchina.org/2021/12/02/j ... f-the-cpc/

[blindpig]

What Has China Done Right To Pursue Democracy, Freedom and Human Rights


Combo photo taken on July 15, 2020 shows smiling villagers in Shenshan Village of Jinggangshan, east China's Jiangxi Province.

Published 9 December 2021

-- Based on its reality, culture and history, China is exploring a path of inheritance and innovation in realizing democratic values and is pursuing a "substantial democracy" in which the people are the masters of the country.

-- The democracy China practices is a "whole-process democracy" that covers all aspects and all procedures, and pursues the unification of process and results-based democracy, procedural democracy and substantive democracy, direct democracy and indirect democracy, as well as people's democracy and the state's will.

-- An advanced non-partisan party, a people-centered philosophy, and a development-focused worldview are three leading features of China's approach to sound governance.

-- As a faithful and innovative practitioner of democracy, freedom and human rights, China has provided four principles -- result-oriented, self-determination, steady-paced and ever-progressing -- for pursuing the common values of humanity.




New China Research, the think tank of Xinhua News Agency, released a report on China's approach to democracy, freedom and human rights in the context of common values of humanity on Tuesday.

The report, titled "Pursuing Common Values of Humanity -- China's Approach to Democracy, Freedom and Human Rights," provides a perspective on the logic of China's democratic practice of "the people running the country," its whole-process democracy, the touchstone for institutional effectiveness, as well as useful insights China's exploration has provided for realizing the common values of humanity.

The world is experiencing changes unseen in a century, including the raging COVID-19 pandemic, coupled with the enlarging wealth gap, polarized politics and governance failure in some countries. What has China done right in its exploration of the practice of democracy and the protection of freedom and human rights for pursuing the common values of humanity?

THE PEOPLE RUN THE COUNTRY

Based on its own reality, China is exploring a path of inheritance and innovation in realizing democratic values and is pursuing a "substantial democracy" in which the people are the masters of the country.

China's democratic development combines the "goal-oriented" realization of people's happiness, national prosperity and national rejuvenation, the ground "reality" of the world's most populous developing country, and the "historical dimension" of 5,000 years of civilization. By remembering its roots, absorbing outside ideas, facing the future, continuous integration, summarizing, refining and sublimating, China has formed a new form of democracy, stated the report.

The three basic political systems -- CPC-led multi-party cooperation and political consultation, regional ethnic autonomy and community-level self-governance -- and the fundamental political system of people's congresses, underpin the institutional framework for the running of the country by the people, the report added.

In China, the people's congress system puts into action the constitutional principle of "all power in the People's Republic of China belongs to the people." The general public elects deputies who represent their will and interests to form organs of state power at various levels. Broad representation is the hallmark of the system, noted the report.

In the current National People's Congress, 15.7 percent of the deputies exercise state power on behalf of workers and farmers, and 55 ethnic minority groups have deputies from their respective ethnic groups.

The very design of the democratic institutions of the People's Republic of China incorporates foresight to prevent chaos, stated the report, adding that the pursuit of democracy, freedom and human rights also serves as the driving force behind China's development and prosperity.

WHOLE-PROCESS DEMOCRACY

The democracy China practices is a "whole-process democracy" that covers all aspects and all procedures, and pursues the unification of process and results-based democracy, procedural democracy and substantive democracy, direct democracy and indirect democracy, as well as people's democracy and the state's will.

The Chinese people have the right to participate extensively in state governance, a right which is embodied in all aspects of China's democratic elections, democratic consultations, democratic decision-making, democratic management and democratic supervision.

China's whole-process democracy is a new form of implementing people's sovereignty, which can be described in electing officials, deliberating state affairs, making policies, and overseeing the use of power.

For example, in the Chinese mechanism of selecting officials, moral integrity, professional ability and past governing performances are the basic requirements for selection involving a democratic election to determine qualified officials, according to the report.

The whole-process people's democracy emphasizes citizen participation in the entire process of public policy-making, which allows citizens to participate before, during, and after the decision-making, and safeguards people's right to be informed, participate, be heard and oversee in order to find the best solution while drawing on the pooled wisdom of the people, the report stated.

Outlines of the five-year plan for national economic and social development and other policies well illustrate democratic decision-making procedures, it added.

Meanwhile, China uses a series of institutional arrangements such as intraparty oversight, oversight by the National People's Congress, democratic oversight, administrative oversight, judicial oversight, public oversight, and oversight through public opinion to set up, regulate, restrain, and oversee the exercise of power by law.

TOUCHSTONE FOR EFFECTIVE DEMOCRACY

Democracy must be real and effective. If it cannot translate into good governance and benefit the people, it must be viewed with suspicion no matter how attractive it looks, the report noted.

What is a democracy that works like? The report provides four dimensions of China's approach -- "governance democracy," "efficient democracy," "democracy as driving force," and "systematic democracy."

"Governance democracy" emphasizes not only the democracy of the political process but also the results of democratic politics, or good governance. China's democracy is centered on governance rather than on elections, the report stated, noting that the country has maintained long-term social stability along with rapid economic growth.

China's "democratic centralism" gives the country both dynamism and solid execution. The system gives full play to democracy in order to stimulate the enthusiasm, initiative, and creativity of the people. It also attaches value to proper centralism -- pooling wisdom based on democracy, making scientific decisions, and putting these into practice.

China is committed to empowerment through development and "investing in its people" to expand their free development. In parallel, the expansion of freedom brings about the further liberation of productive forces and the increase of human and social capital, helping boost national development.

China has proposed eight criteria for measuring democracy, including whether the succession of its leaders is conducted in an orderly way and whether government affairs and social, economic and cultural affairs are managed by all the people in accordance with the law.

INSPIRATIONS FOR PURSUING COMMON VALUES

The common values of humanity -- peace, development, equity, justice, democracy and freedom -- are the key to solving the problems of the present time, and the greatest common denominator in building a better world.

What useful insights has China provided for pursuing the common values of humanity?

The report summarized the three "leading features" of China's approach to sound governance -- an advanced non-partisan party, a people-centered philosophy, and a development-focused worldview.

As a prominent feature of an advanced political party, the CPC has always acted in the interests of the people, followed the trend of the progress of humankind and the times, taken charge of the overall situation, coordinated with all parties, united and organized all political forces and resources, and striven for the happiness of all the people and the rejuvenation for the Chinese nation.

Unlike the so-called "one-party dictatorship" misinterpreted by the outside world, China's new political party system can be perceived as a democratic practice of "1+8+N." There are eight non-CPC political parties, those without any party affiliation and members of the general public, who can participate in the country's democratic agenda through a variety of means.

It is a credo of the governing party in China that people's support is the highest political priority, stated the report. For more than 70 years, the CPC and the government have focused on development, enabling the Chinese people to gain more and more freedom and democratic rights.

China, a faithful and innovative practitioner of democracy, has also provided inspiration for the world, with four principles -- result-oriented, self-determination, steady-paced and ever-progressing, according to the report.

The path of democracy, freedom and human rights must be chosen based on national conditions. The effectiveness of democracy must be tested and perfected by solving the practical problems of the vast majority of people.

To promote democracy, safeguard freedom and protect human rights, a country needs to proceed in a gradual and orderly fashion, rather than rapidly shift beyond its current stage of social development.

The pursuit of democracy, freedom and human rights never ends, and a country should always strive for betterment.

The exploration of people of different countries will enrich and improve the practice of democracy, freedom and human rights, and make the common values of humanity more vivid, instead of being gradually hollowed out, the report noted.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Wha ... -0020.html

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Afghanistan Receives Batch of China-Donated Sinopharm Vaccines


A new batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by Chinese government arrived in Kabul, Afghanistan on Wednesday. China has decided to donate 3 million doses of vaccines and other medical supplies to Afghanistan. | Photo: Twitter/@ChinaEmbinCH

Published 9 December 2021 (14 hours 20 minutes ago)

A batch of COVID-19 vaccines donated by the Chinese government arrived in Kabul, the capital of Afghanistan, on Wednesday.


A handover ceremony was held at Kabul International Airport, attended by Chinese Ambassador to Afghanistan Wang Yu and deputy minister of Afghanistan's Public Health Ministry Abdul Bari Omar.

Since the political situation of Afghanistan has changed, China has announced to donate 3 million doses of vaccines and other medical supplies to Afghanistan, Wang said while addressing the ceremony.

In order to help Afghanistan overcome the current difficulties, China is now accelerating its work through 200 million yuan (31 million USD) worth of emergency assistance to Afghanistan, including food, winter supplies, vaccines and medicines, he said.

Wang noted that China is importing a large amount of pine nuts that will bring Afghan pine nut farmers with income worth hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars. Moreover, China will assist Afghanistan in further expanding its exports and other projects that will help improve people's livelihood.


For his part, Omar expressed his appreciation to the Chinese government for the donation and support provided to Afghanistan. He said the donation is very important for the people of Afghanistan in this critical situation.

This shipment of Sinopharm vaccines is the second Chinese donation of the COVID-19 vaccine to Afghanistan. In June, a batch of China-donated COVID-19 vaccines was similarly handed over to the country's authorities.

https://www.telesurenglish.net/news/Afg ... -0018.html

Meanwhile the US leaves Afghanistan to suffer the results of it's 20 years occupation and will continue to do so like a pathetic jilted lover, punishing those who reject it's 'loving benevolence'.

[blindpig]

Deputies to the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) leave the Great Hall of the People after the closing meeting of the fourth session of the 13th NPC in Beijing, capital of China, March 11, 2021. /Xinhua

From grassroots to lawmaker: a glimpse of China’s ‘whole-process democracy’

Originally published: CGTN (China Global TV Network) by CGTN (China Global TV Network) (October 24, 2021 ) | - Posted Dec 11, 2021


Chinese President Xi Jinping visits the Gubei civic center where a consultation meeting on a draft law was held in Changning District of Shanghai, east China, November 2, 2019. /Xinhua

The notion of Chinese democracy is not the same as that in the West. The political system in China is more about consensus building within a greater voice rather than the protracted bargaining to arrive at decisions common in the West.

The country’s application of democratic principles follows an approach Chinese President Xi Jinping has termed “whole-process people’s democracy.” The concept was put forward about two years ago, during Xi’s visit to a civic center in Shanghai.

Based on people’s congress system, the “whole-process people’s democracy” enables the Chinese people to broadly and continuously participate in the day-to-day political activities at all levels, including democratic elections, political consultation, decision-making and oversight.

The story of Chinese lawmaker Liu Li gives a glimpse into how China’s whole-process democracy operates.

A foot masseuse’s way up to China’s top legislature
Liu, a deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) China’s top legislature, has fought her way to the influential position from the grassroots.

She was born in a poor rural family in Yingshang, a small county in east China’s Anhui Province. She quit school at the age of 14 and worked to support the education of her four siblings.


Liu Li, a deputy to the 13th National People’s Congress talks with CGTN. /CGTN

After leaving home penniless, she went to Wuhan in central China’s Hubei Province to work as a waitress and nanny before finding a job as an apprentice in a foot massage center in Xiamen, east China’s Fujian Province.

Her humble background didn’t stop her charitable giving. Liu dropped out of school, but she didn’t want others to be like her. From 2006 to 2010, she sponsored over 100 students.

Liu’s goodwill made her a national celebrity. She was called “the most beautiful foot masseuse in China” and later became a representative for migrant workers and the rural population in China’s top legislative body.

In 2012, Liu was elected as a deputy to the local legislature in Xiamen and became an NPC deputy in 2013. A year later, she moved back to Anhui, where she runs a foot massage parlor and a community center for seniors. She was elected as a deputy for the 13th NPC.

‘Democracy is not for decoration’


The closing meeting of the fourth session of the 13th National People’s Congress (NPC) is held at the Great Hall of the People in Beijing, capital of China, March 11, 2021. /VCG

Unlike legislators in the West who make a career of politics, China’s NPC deputies, like Liu, work part-time, and many of them are ordinary citizens from all walks of life, including farmers, factory workers, craftsmen, and even street cleaners.

At the annual full session, NPC deputies review and vote on important legal documents and personnel changes, including electing China’s president and vice president every five years and submitting motions and proposals.

Liu’s proposals have focused on disadvantaged groups, such as the elderly, children and migrant workers. In 2018, Liu proposed establishing local “one-stop” help centers to investigate child sexual abuse cases to the NPC. Her proposal was addressed by the NPC and measures were adopted.

Prosecution authorities in Anhui’s Dingyuan County took the lead and set up a juvenile legal education center to handle such cases and minimize the negative impact on children during investigations. Now, there are 15 such centers in the province.

Liu’s suggestions originated from close contact with local communities. When the NPC is not in session, she visits fellow migrant workers’ homes and collects their opinions online. She also listens to comments on society from her clients who come from all walks of life.



Liu’s story is only one example of how grassroots deputies respond to people’s needs and how people’s congresses contribute to China’s “whole-process democracy.” As Xi observed,

Democracy is not an ornament to be used for decoration; it is to be used to solve the problems that the people want to solve.

There are five levels of people’s congresses. The deputies are elected by their respective constituencies, either directly or indirectly. NPC deputies are elected by the people’s congresses of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities. At the lower levels of township and county, deputies to people’s congresses are elected directly by voters, accounting for a majority of deputies at all levels. They elect deputies to people’s congresses of cities, who in turn elect deputies at the provincial level.

In 2019, there were a total of 2.67 million deputies of people’s congresses of all levels, including 590,000 at the county-level, and 1.94 million at the township level. Deputies at the two levels accounted for 95 percent of the total number.



“If the people are awakened only for voting but enter a dormant period soon after, if they are given a song and dance during campaigning but have no say after the election, or if they are favored during canvassing but are left out in the cold after the election, such a democracy is not a true democracy,” Xi has said.

https://mronline.org/2021/12/11/from-gr ... democracy/

[blindpig]

Wen Tiejun (right) and Samir Amin at Southwest University, China, 2012. (Photo: Monthly Review)

“Ten crises: The political economy of China’s development,” by Wen Tiejun
Posted Dec 12, 2021 by Ken Hammond

Originally published: Liberation School (November 30, 2021 ) |

When the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was proclaimed in October 1949, the country’s economy was in a shambles, devastated by decades of war and ravaged by inflation triggered by global forces beyond local control. The Communist Party of China (CPC) and the new revolutionary government faced tremendous challenges in restoring order to rural and urban areas, securing the country’s territory from foreign influence or invasion, and establishing conditions of stability and security within which the people could pursue their livelihoods. The new leadership was dedicated to the long-term goal of developing China into a modern, industrialized, socialist economy, but had to undertake that endeavor in a context of institutional limitations, complex social conditions, and an uncertain geopolitical environment. The CPC had a membership of around 1,000,000 and faced the prospect of guiding the governance and advancing the economy of a population of more than 450,000,000.

Seventy years later, China was the second largest economy in the world, had eliminated absolute poverty among its people, and was re-emerging as a significant participant in global economic and political affairs. With nearly 1.4 billion people—and more than half of them living in modern cities, with life expectancy more than double that in 1949, and with education and public health provision at high level global standards—China achieved what the Party characterized as a “moderately prosperous society,” the initial stage of “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Wen Tiejun’s new book, Ten Crises: The Political Economy of China’s Development (1949-2020) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2021), traces the history of China’s economic development from the founding of the PRC to the beginning of the 2020s. He articulates this narrative through a series of economic turning points, which he characterizes as “crises” in classical political economic terms, or moments in which the budgetary or fiscal system developed major imbalances and stresses which required policy intervention and innovation. Wen is primarily an agricultural economist and serves as the Director of the Center for Rural Revitalization at Peking University. His perspective on China’s developmental history is strongly shaped by this orientation. He sees the long process of socialist development and its requisite industrialization as both a phenomenal success in terms of expanding the productive capacity and the material wealth of the country, and as a generator of deep structural contradictions and challenges. In his final chapter, he suggests these contradictions and challenges can be resolved through a program of “ecological civilization as localization,” or turning away from a single focus on productivism towards a more balanced economy of social provision and environmental stewardship.

Wen distinguishes between crises arising from factors outside of China, or exogenous crises, and those generated by contradictions within China’s domestic economic and political environment, or endogenous crises. Exogenous crises included the hyperinflation that confronted the new PRC government in 1949-50, the Asian financial crisis of 1997, and the global economic meltdown of 2008, while endogenous crises included those associated with significant developmental phases and turning points, such as land reform in the early 1950s, the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution, and several stages in the evolution of the policies of reform and opening. In each instance, the resolution of the problems of one crisis carried within it the seeds of the next, a dialectical process which Wen sees as continuing to the present. He concludes his analysis with a consideration of the situation of China in 2020, arguing that the country is on the verge of entering a new phase that entails major readjustments to generate a system of “ecological civilization as localization,” resonating with Pan Jiahua’s writings about environmental governance and Xi Jinping’s discussion of the economic and environmental future in volume three of The Governance of China. What follows is a brief recapitulation of the Wen’s narrative of the PRC’s developmental history.

The early years of the People’s Republic (1949-52)

The collapse of the Republic of China as the revolutionary struggle and the Civil War advanced in the late 1940s intensified inflationary pressures that were building since the early 1930s. During the 1930s, China’s currency was linked to the U.S. dollar. China operated on a silver-based currency, so at first it benefited from the booming economy of the 1920s. When the U.S. abandoned the gold standard in 1933, silver appreciated in global markets, which drove down China’s exports. When the U.S. government passed the Silver Purchase Act in 1934, silver prices rose rapidly in international markets, but the Chinese domestic price remained lower, which led to large outflows of silver, in turn spurring deflation within the country. The Guomindang government decided to shift from a silver standard to a fiat currency in 1935.

When Japan invaded China in 1937, the Nationalists embarked on a course of massive printing of money, which triggered inflation. By the autumn of 1949, when the PRC was formally declared and the new government, under the leadership of the Communist Party, began to take steps to manage the economy, inflation was out of control and working people in both urban and rural China faced severe hardships. Two policy initiatives sought to create a stable economy that could begin to improve the lives of the people. Inflation was brought under control by linking the new currency, the renminbi, not to a precious metal nor to another international standard like the dollar, but to a basket of basic goods, so that the farming population (which at that time was still more than 80% of the people) could have a reliable basis for the acquisition of the things they needed in their daily lives and productive activities.

In tandem with the fight against inflation, the process of land reform also advanced. Land reform had been a key component of the CPC’s program since the days of the Jiangxi Soviet in the early 1930s, and had been undertaken in the liberated zones in northern China in the closing days of the Civil War. From 1949 through 1952, land reform was carried out across the agricultural expanse of China, reallocating land from those who had much more than they could farm themselves to the many millions who lacked enough to support themselves and their families. Land was given to adult members of households, so that the mass of the peasantry had the economic resources to pursue their livelihoods free of the exploitation by landlords and loan sharks which had been the plague of the people for centuries.

But land reform, which created a social economy of small proprietors, also complicated some tasks of developing a new, modern, socialist economy, which was the primary objective of the revolution and the new government. Rural villages were largely self-sufficient units and were not well integrated with the urban commercial economy. This meant that, while agricultural productivity increased, the gains were modest and social accumulation was limited. Development of the urban industrial economy required the input of surplus from the agricultural sector, but in the first years of the 1950s this remained at a very low level.

The new government pursued a moderate course in its relationship with private capital in the cities. Campaigns against corruption and profiteering, especially in the context of the war in Korea—which was a serious threat to the PRC until 1953—reduced many economic abuses, but the building of a new industrial system lagged without the influx of investment capital. This challenge began to be addressed in two ways: aid from the Soviet Union and beginning the process of agricultural collectivization from 1954 on. China and the USSR had signed a treaty of friendship and cooperation in 1950, and this was implemented with a program of loans and other financial assistance, along with a flow of advisors and technology for industrial and scientific development projects across the country. Much of this was focused on heavy industry, from steel mills and chemical plants to the building of railways and the construction of electrical generating capacity. As the collectivization of farming advanced in stages, from small cooperative efforts to larger units of collective production and accounting, agricultural production increased significantly, raising the material standard of living for hundreds of millions in both urban and rural China, and yielding a fund of surplus products which could be sold on global markets to generate additional capital for industrial investment. The combination of Soviet aid and domestic accumulation drove economic expansion by well over 3% per year through the 1950s. But the very success of this process also brought with it new contradictions which generated successive crises at the end of 1950s, through the 1960s, and into the 1970s.

Political and economic challenges (1958-76)

Wen sees the period from the late 1950s until the death of Chairman Mao in 1976 as one shaped largely by the exogenous contradictions arising in the course of the Sino-Soviet relationship in the first decade of the PRC, as well as the efforts to resolve those contradictions through political struggle in the following two decades. These found expression in economic policies and practices aimed at pushing forward the development of the industrial economy. These initiatives, which were developed in reaction to the influences exerted by the Soviet Union, in turn generated a series of endogenous crises over the following two decades, emerging as contradictions within China’s political and economic system.

The Soviet model of development emphasized heavy industry and a top-down approach to economic policy making and management, along with the rapid expansion in membership in the Communist Party, which brought in not only people sincerely committed to building a socialist future for the country but also individuals who saw Party membership as a path of personal advancement. This fostered tendencies towards bureaucratization within the CPC and the PRC government. Political forces within the Party centered around Mao Zedong sought to counter this trend by emphasizing a developmental model which sought to engage the industriousness and innovation of the masses as a material factor of production which could accelerate growth in both the agricultural and industrial sectors. One concrete expression of this was the decision in 1957 to decrease central oversight of economic decision making, which gave greater scope to local initiative but also put more control over information into the hands of middle-level cadres.

Tensions with the USSR began to increase by 1958, as the Soviet leadership came to view China’s developmental strategy as adventurist. The Soviet government started requiring payment for debts in commodities like grain or vegetables, which put strains on Chinese food supplies. When the Great Leap Forward (GLF) was launched in 1958-59, the Soviets decided to withdraw their aid and advisers, and the relationship deteriorated to one of mutual criticism and growing antagonism. This rupture exacerbated serious problems which were emerging in the domestic food supply, as distorted reporting of harvest yields led to misallocation of resources. In 1959 and 1960, China faced crises both in its fiscal accounts, as Soviet demands for repayment placed great stress on state finances, and even more severe problems with food, as hunger spread in rural areas and large numbers of people faced starvation. Wen does not embrace the exaggerated figures proffered by some critics of the Great Leap, but he does provide a frank assessment of the elevated mortality of this period. The combination of bureaucratic exaggeration and later efforts to cover up and evade responsibility coupled with the devastating effects of the withdrawal of Soviet aid yielded a disaster for the Chinese people and posed serious challenges for the Party and the state..

Wen argues that a key response to the crisis generated by the GLF was the transfer of educated urban youth to the countryside to help with agricultural production in 1959-62. This had the effect of both providing additional labor inputs in rural areas and of easing unemployment pressures in the cities, where the readjustment of agricultural procurement in the wake of the shortages led to a depression in urban productive activity. In addition, the central leadership authorized a reduction in the level of integration reached by the People’s Communes, returning most economic decision making to lower-level production units—which were formed on the basis of the natural village unit—as well as encouraging peasant households to engage in sideline production of vegetables and fruits. These shifts in policy resulted in a revival in agricultural production and the return of harvests and procurements to pre-crisis levels by 1963. But the contradictions between bureaucratization in the Party and state and the goals of rapid economic development remained unresolved.

Wen sees the Cultural Revolution, especially its first three years—between 1966-69—as an effort to address the lingering bureaucratic tendencies within the CPC, which were embedded in a period of geopolitical anxiety about both U.S. imperialism and the deepening antagonism with the Soviet Union. While the political turmoil of the effort to promote mass oversight and criticism of the Party was largely confined to cities and towns and had relatively minimal economic impact, a plan to shift industrial production to cities in the country’s interior—as part of concerns about possible invasion by either Soviet or American forces—led to massive expenditures and caused a serious crisis in the government’s budget. Once again, Wen argues, large numbers of urban youth were sent to the countryside both to contribute to economic and social development there and to ease pressure on urban resources. The rustication of Red Guards and other young people, in much greater numbers than in 1959-62, is generally seen in its political context as part of the winding-down of the radical phase of the Cultural Revolution. Placing it in a broader context of the budgetary crisis on the later 1960s provides a more nuanced understanding of this episode.

The third economic crisis of the period from 1958-76 resulted from the shifting geopolitical orientation of the CPC leadership around Mao Zedong and a new effort to gain access to modern industrial productive technologies in the early 1970s. The split with the Soviets, which deprived China of its only source of modern productive equipment and expertise, reached a point of maximum intensity with armed clashes on the Sino-Soviet border in 1969. This led Mao and others to the conclusion that the primary contradiction facing China in geopolitical terms was no longer with U.S. imperialism, but was with the Soviet Union. Secret negotiations with the Americans led to the visit of President Nixon to China in February 1972. Relations with Japan also improved during this period. As a result of these diplomatic shifts, China was also able to begin acquiring new technological inputs from Japan and the U.S., which enabled it to reinvigorate industrial development. At the same time, however, China began to assume new debt, especially foreign debt, which caused new stresses in the urban economy by 1973-75. This led to a third round of sending urban youth to rural areas, although this time it didn’t develop into a major initiative and was short lived. A period of economic stagnation set in, paralleled by lingering unresolved political contradictions within the Party, the state, and society at large, which would persist until the end of the decade, when dramatic changes in the leadership of the CPC gave rise to the era of reform and opening to the outside.

Structural crises associated with reform (1979-97)

The political transition that followed the death of Mao in September 1976 not only embodied the resolution of the contradictions around the role of the CPC in guiding the course of development in China’s economy, but also, as Wen emphasizes, brought a new and younger cohort of leaders to prominence in the years after 1979. The Communist Party would remain the guiding force in national policy making and would oversee the process of economic planning and development. While not fully embodying the Soviet style of political leadership, the CPC would eschew campaigns of mass mobilization like those of the previous eras. The reaffirmed the central role of the Party, which continues to remain the core of China’s system.

The period immediately following Mao’s death was one of intense maneuvering within the Party, which limited the leadership’s ability to address economic issues arising from the expenditures undertaken earlier to acquire new productive technologies from abroad. The reversal of the program of rustication for urban youth resulted in the return of millions of men and women—now in their mid to late twenties—to the cities, where they added to the urban labor force in need of employment. As Deng Xiaoping emerged as the leading figure in Party and state affairs after November 1978, and along with the emergent younger leadership sought to legitimize the new political order, the policies of reform and opening to the outside were formulated and implemented. This included a reorientation in industrial policy towards the production of consumer goods, and a corollary enhancement of social service provision. These factors combined to generate a budgetary crisis by the beginning of the 1980s, the first of three Wen delineates for the first two decades of the reform era.

This crisis was addressed with two policy initiatives, one centered in the countryside and the other taking shape in east coast provinces. In the agricultural sector, the household responsibility system, which devolved most economic decision making to the level of the individual household (although some functions continued to be managed within the framework of what Wen terms the natural village) was developed. Households started entering into contractual relationships with township or county governments for the delivery of set, modest quotas of specified commodities. Production beyond the contractual obligations could be sold on markets which developed rapidly across rural China. This resulted in a significant increase in agricultural production, which in turn enhanced the revenues of village and township administrations. These, in turn, began to invest new income streams into small scale industrial enterprises, known as Township and Village Enterprises (TVEs), which quickly developed as an important new source of low-cost goods for rural consumers and as providers of employment for surplus labor.

China sought new inputs of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) by establishing Special Economic Zones (SEZs) in several locations, first of all in the coastal areas of Shenzhen and Zhuhai. Foreign enterprises were offered tax concessions, land use rights, and the chance to build industrial facilities with easy access to state-of-the-art production technologies and industrial management practices to learn from and emulate these in order to develop China’s modern economy, with the long-term objective of achieving a “moderately prosperous society” and eventually to build a truly socialist system for the equitable distribution of social wealth. The SEZs soon became successful attractors of major FDI, and grew rapidly into centers of industrial employment and production. Additional SEZ were set up in other coastal locations in the following years.

The reforms in the agricultural sector and the development of TVEs and SEZs resolved the budgetary crisis at the end of the 1970s and the early 1980s, but once again created new contradictions which built during the latter decade. These contradictions, which would help produce an economic crisis at the end of the decade, spurred social unrest during the same period. The very success of the growth of investment in both rural and coastal areas created overcapacity in production and drove a new cycle of inflation. The transition to market forces generated social stresses, especially in the cities, as the reform of state-owned enterprises reduced employment in some areas. These tensions were manipulated by certain elements, including foreign interests, and this contributed to the serious anti-government turmoil of April-June 1989. The violence which marked the ending of the occupation of central Beijing, and which saw the death of perhaps 600-800 people, including around 200 military personnel killed in street fighting, caused a sharp negative reaction among Western political elites, and China was subjected to criticism and sanctions which had a strong impact economically, driving foreign trade and investment down in the following year or two. This further deepened the economic crisis facing the country.

Serious debates took place within the Party and the PRC government about how to proceed with reform. Some who had advocated from more large-scale marketization were now weakened by the negative effects which had emerged in the ‘80s. Deng Xiaoping argued for maintaining the reform program, but with modifications which would address the issues plaguing the economy. In 1992 Deng undertook what was called his nanxun, a Classical Chinese term for an imperial tour of inspection, in the course of which he visited the Shenzhen SEZ and made several very strong statements aiming to reinvigorate the reforms. This succeeded in jump-starting a new phase of economic expansion fueled by Foreign Direct Investment, by new policy changes in the rural sector, and by refocusing industrial production towards the global export market.

Once the initial wave of international criticism of China for the events of 1989 receded, the imperatives of global capitalism drove a new phase of interest in investing in the PRC. FDI began to flow into China in greater volume than ever before. Much of this new investment was directed to the production of goods for export, from electronic gear to clothing and footwear. Factories sprang up in cities along the coast, and employment skyrocketed. Millions of younger workers moved from rural villages to the expanding urban centers. Many young women went to work in factories, while many men sought employment in construction, as both commercial and housing development boomed.

Changes in the rural economy both contributed to the surge in urban industrial development and were the result of that growth. Between 1992-94 the government phased out the use of coupons as a means of rationing the supply of key commodities, which meant that the rural economy was finally fully monetized. This had several effects. It severed a strong link between individuals and their place of household registration, since they were no longer dependent on the township or village government for the provision of such coupons. This allowed young people in particular to decide to move to the cities in search of employment. This expansion of the mobile labor population dovetailed with the rapid growth of demand for labor in urban factories and on building sites. It also created a new pool of finance in the hands of individual citizens which could serve as a source of investment funds.

The growth of the SEZs and the focus on production for export eclipsed the TVE sector, as the smaller scale and lower quality standards characteristic of rural light industry could not compete with the newer, state-of-the-art technologies of the big factories. This further contributed to the “push” of labor from the rural to the urban sector. The export strategy was a great success, and in 1994 China began to run a surplus in its international trade, as it has done in every year since. The trade surplus also led to the accumulation of foreign currency reserves, which would become a major resource pool for managing economic challenges in the coming decades.

The developmentalist policies of the revived reform program improved the material conditions of life for many people, and overall growth in Gross Domestic Product (GDP) reached unprecedented rates by the late 1990s. But the very success of these measures generated new economic contradictions, now largely of a speculative financial nature. The emphasis on production for export had the unintended effect of depressing domestic demand, which resulted in high savings rates. This created new pools of funds seeking investment opportunities, which fueled speculation in real estate, in the new equity markets which were being set up, and in new forms of financial activity. Systems of regulatory oversight in these areas were not yet adequately developed, so that markets were often volatile. At the same time the government was further pursuing the marketization of social services such as medical care and education. Core services continued to be provided by the state, but private clinics and hospitals and private educational programs sprang up in cities across the country.

The primacy of urban development, both in the production for export industries and in the rapid pace of urban construction, along with the attendant flow of young working people to the cities, left rural county and township governments strapped for resources. Central government funds were no longer proved as budgetary allocations, but were redefined as loans, which would require repayment. This drove local officials to seek other ways of financing their administrative operations. The sale of land to property developers became a favored way to raise revenues, but also often led to conflicts with local communities, sometimes resulting in incidents of popular unrest.

By the late 1990s China’s economy was growing quickly, but was also plagued by structural contradictions stemming from the reform policies. At this point new challenges emerged from outside the country, as a result of China’s deepening engagement with the global capitalist system.

Exogenous crises of 1997 and 2008

Wen Tiejun sees the economic crises which arose in China from the early 1950s through the late 1990s as largely the result of contradictions which developed within the domestic economy, often as the dialectical outcome of the resolution of the preceding fiscal or budgetary difficulties. As China became more deeply engaged with the global economy in the later 1990s and into the twenty-first century new challenges confronted the Party and the PRC state which came not from the internal dynamics of the country, but as the result of major breakdowns in global financial markets and in the Western, especially American, capitalist core.

The first of these externally driven crises was the 1997 Asian financial meltdown, which resulted from the actions of speculators in the money markets seeking profits from the exploitation of weaknesses in the currencies of some countries. The Thai baht was the first of several Southeast Asian currencies to come under attack in July as the royal government had to sever the link to the U.S. dollar which had been the basis of monetary stability. The currency was allowed to float, and its value plummeted as speculators reaped profits. The collapse of the Thai Currency had a ripple effect through other East and Southeast Asian economies, especially those of Indonesia and South Korea. The Hong Kong dollar, long pegged to the U.S. dollar, also came under pressure just as Hong Kong was returning to Chinese sovereignty after the end of British colonial rule.

China was already grappling with contradictions arising from the effects of the reform policies, as outlined above, and given its increasing interconnection with global markets it was now more vulnerable to downturns in both the monetary system and in aggregate consumer demand. The expansion of production for export, in tandem with further decentralization of economic decision making, had given rise to overcapacity in many industries, and the decline in demand as Asian countries struggled with their monetary difficulties had a negative impact on employment and overall output in China.

But at this point the PRC government was able to build on the success of the reform program in developing the economy to cope with the effects of the financial crisis in several ways. The large reserves of foreign exchange which the state had accumulated allowed the central government to back up the Hong Kong dollar by injecting funds into the banking system of the new Special Administrative Region (SAR), which stabilized the currency and insulated Hong Kong, and China more broadly, from the more serious impact of financial speculators. The PRC’s national currency, the renminbi, was not yet traded internationally and so was protected from market fluctuations. The financial resources of the central government were also sufficient to allow it to take over some of the debt obligations of local governments, which eased the pressure on them in the wake of the temporary decline of export demand. This also gave the central government to opportunity to re-centralize some economic decision-making functions, which enhanced oversight and planning capacity.

A further series of policy measures were deployed over the following years to begin to encourage greater domestic consumption, thus reducing reliance on exports to drive development. These included major investments in rural infrastructure and a significant expansion of social services, specifically the expansion of health insurance and health care provision for rural residents. In 2006 the land tax, which had been the foundation of government finance throughout the imperial and Republican periods and had been maintained under the PRC, was abolished, which greatly enhanced rural household incomes and proved funds which could be used for all kinds of consumption activities, from basic products for personal use to new home construction to tourism and other forms of entertainment.

These measures combined to help China weather the 1997 crisis relatively unscathed, and by the time of the outbreak of the 2008 global financial crisis they helped provide the basis for handling this much greater economic challenge. The development of opaque and unmanageable financial derivatives, such as collateralized debt obligations, based on poorly understood risk assessments in real estate markets, had driven a massive wave of false growth in the American and other Western economies for the first seven years of the 21st century. Profits on paper were translated into bonuses and other material benefits flowing to a small subset of capitalist plunderers. This house of cards collapsed in the summer of 2008 and by that Fall the effects had spread around the world, wiping out the savings and pensions of workers and casting large numbers of working families out of their mortgaged homes. As consumer demand evaporated millions of people lost their jobs as well, further depressing economic activity.

In China the impact of the crisis was dramatic. More than 20,000,000 workers were laid off in factories normally producing a wide range of goods for export to Western markets. Yet the long-term effects of the global downturn were relatively minimal, and China recovered more quickly than any other major economy, resuming steady growth by 2009. The steps which had been taken in the wake of 1997, and the commitment of the CPC and the PRC government to prioritizing the needs of the people, reduced the economic pain for laid-off workers, the vast majority of whom could return to the rural villages from which they had come, where they remained eligible, because of the household registration system, for at least basic social services, including housing, education for their children, and health care. Further government investment in rural infrastructure projects absorbed some labor, and as further policies were put in place to re-orient production to domestic consumer products employment began to revive and those workers who had been laid off could either return to their previous jobs or seek new work opportunities elsewhere.

China’s political economic system, which retained both a core of publicly owned enterprises and a socialist legal infrastructure, had achieved, through the twists and turns of successive crises, their resolution in new policy initiatives, and the dialectical unfolding of what the CPC calls “socialism with Chinese characteristics”, the ability to manage these shocks from the global capitalist system, even while having to constantly adapt and update its theory and practice. The leading role of the Party was critical to this success, and in the final period analyzed by Wen, the CPC would once again embark on a new phase of building socialism, which would yield new contradictions as well as new opportunities.

From globalization to ecological civilization as localization (2013-20 and beyond)

By the second decade of the twenty-first century China was entering a new relationship with the Western, American led capitalist system. During the first three decades of the reform period China had largely subordinated itself to the interests of the global bourgeoisie, in order to gain access to state-of-the-art productive technologies, and to accumulate capital through the production of export goods. The overall goal was to use the mechanisms of the marketplace to develop the productive economy, with the CPC playing a guiding role and with the ultimate objective of reaching a level of social wealth which would allow for the beginnings of new forms of social distribution, an initial step on the path to true socialism. But as Wen has demonstrated, while this yielded rapid growth in GDP, it also brought with it attendant contradictions within the economy, and in the interaction of the economy with social and environmental conditions, generating serious inequalities of income and producing pollution of the air, water, and soil among other ecological stresses. Each economic crisis in the history of the PRC had been addressed in ways which resolved the immediate issues, but which also fostered the conditions which led to the next outbreak. In the wake of the 2008 global meltdown China was able to handle the challenges which it faced more effectively than other countries, largely because of the measures which had been put in place over the course of reform and building on the foundation of infrastructure developed in the initial period of the PRC from 1949-79. This success, along with changing attitudes on the part of the United States and other capitalist countries towards China, contributed to a new perspective among leaders of the Party and government, more confident in the country’s strengths and capacities, and less willing to accommodate the demands and expectations of the Americans and Europeans.

This shift in the global orientation of the Chinese leadership was reflected in the choice of Xi Jinping as CPC General Secretary and President of the PRC in 2012. Under Xi’s guidance China has become more assertive in international affairs, both in response to an increasingly hostile and aggressive posture taken by the Americans, and in proactive programs like the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) and various other forms of aid and assistance to less developed countries, as well as in seeking to create new institutional structures for international cooperation not subordinated to the domination of the U.S.

This changing relationship with the global capitalist system has been paralleled within China by developments in the political and economic spheres which also reflect the recognition of what has been accomplished over the previous decades and a confidence in the country’s readiness to undertake dramatic initiatives to move towards a more equitable distribution of social wealth, to reign in and carry out greater oversight of the activities of private capital, and to significantly strengthen China’s efforts to address environmental concerns, most particularly global warming and climate change, through expanding investment in alternative energy development and aggressive mitigation programs.

Wen traces the course of these developments through the years from 2013-2020, noting as ever the persistent problems of systemic debt and the role the central government played in recirculating financial assets accumulated from foreign trade to meet needs arising within the domestic sphere. He also notes that the place of the rural sector within the economy was declining as more people came to live in cities than in the countryside for the first time in Chinese history. Conditions in the country were improving in many ways during these years. The government and the CPC carried on a strenuous anti-corruption campaign seeking to reduce the abuses of power and the draining of social wealth into private hands through the illegal actions of officials at all levels of administration. Efforts to reduce reliance on coal and oil as energy sources were advancing as China became a world leader in the development and deployment of wind, solar, and hydroelectric power. Ongoing long-term programs of poverty reduction were nearing fulfilment as the last pockets of absolute poverty in remote corners of the country were being reached. But as the new year of 2020 arrived a crisis of massive dimensions, unlike the series of turning points charted by Wen across the previous seven decades, struck the People’s Republic with the emergence of the COVID-19 virus.

Wen takes note of the effectiveness of China’s response to the health crisis, which was also an economic crisis, and lauds the mobilization of governmental resources and the participation of masses of ordinary people in bringing the viral outbreak under control and preventing the kinds of catastrophic loss of life which have so sadly been characteristic of the “advanced” Western world, most particularly the United States, where the for-profit health care system and the polarized political culture of decaying bourgeois democracy produced a death rate more than 600 times that of China.

As a political economic history, though, Wen’s study takes the crisis of 2020-21, and the dynamics of China’s ongoing course of development, as a point of departure for reflection on how that process can and should play out in the coming era. He argues that there are continuing structural contradictions within the economy, especially with regard to debt within the domestic sector and the relationship to the global capitalist system externally, but also that China is now in a position to pursue a reconfigured developmental gestalt, moving away from the developmentalist globalization of the period since 1979 and towards what he calls “ecological civilization as localization”.

Wen’s vision is of a China which would be increasingly self-reliant, delinking from the American dominated global capitalism and developing its own key technologies and productive capacities, while at the same time continuing to engage with other emerging economies which share a desire to be free of Western neo-imperial control. Within the PRC there would be an even deeper dedication to addressing environmental concerns, especially alternative energy, but also through rebalancing urban and rural development, with an emphasis on rural revitalization. The leadership of the CPC and the PRC government, the oversight and supervision of private capital, is critical to this vision. This is not a prediction of a Chinese version of the “end of history”, with the country reaching a fully realized socialism in the immediate future, but rather Wen’s projection and prescription for what China could and should achieve in its next steps along the path to the future.

Conclusions

What are the lessons, the overall patterns and understandings, which can be drawn from Wen Tiejun’s deeply detailed and thoughtful presentation of the history of China’s political economy from Liberation to the era of Xi Jinping? In a few brief, tightly argued paragraphs in the closing pages of the book he presents an overview of what he calls “the institutional experience of China’s late-developing introvert industrialization.” In this narrative the main lines of development began with the stabilization of the country and economy in the early 1950s backed by the equalization of land tenure and the influx of investment and technology from the Soviet Union. This allowed China, by the mid-1950s, to undertake what Wen defines as primitive accumulation through the extraction of surplus value from increased agricultural productivity driven by the economies of scale attained through collectivization, in tandem with the mobilization of large-scale rural labor forces on major infrastructure projects to some extent replacing regular capital inputs. This process, while launching the industrial development of China’s economy, also incurred great costs which, Wen notes, were not always borne equitably across society. In the course of this first decade Wen discerns the emergence of “government corporatism”, essentially the core of state-owned enterprises which became the basis of the socialist system. He sees this structure as having been essential to China’s ability to maintain its intact economic system over the ensuing shifts and reorientations in policy.

Wen further defines two critical aspects of China’s successes in economic development. The first is cultural in nature, drawing on collectivist and collaborative elements within traditional society to overcome what in other developing economies were often debilitating cost externalities by absorbing them into existing community structures. In other words, the progressive collectivization of agriculture in the 1950s facilitated accumulation as part of a wider social consciousness, not as an arbitrary extraction by an alien governmental power. He elaborates this concept further as a kind of “non-monetized” investment strategy in the villages, arguing that it was the capacity of rural society and the rural economy to pursue collective development goals through the mobilization of labor resources which underpinned the development of the urban socialist industrial system.

Based on the growth of agricultural productivity across the first thirty years of the PRC and the investment in industrial development which this had fueled, despite the withdrawal of Soviet assistance after 1959, the reform policies instituted beginning in 1979 followed what Wen characterizes as a course of pro-capital development, allowing private capital to greatly expand within the domestic economy as well as welcoming FDI to grow the productive forces of the country. After some twenty-five years of this approach Wen sees a major shift to “pro-people” policies beginning 2003, and carrying on with steadily increasing effect following the successful management of the 2008 global financial crisis’ effects on China and into the period of Xi Jinping’s leadership.

Given the levels of industrial production and the accumulation of social wealth which have been achieved through the seven decades since Liberation, Wen sees China as poised to embark on his vision of an ecological civilization. He sees this as requiring a sharp break with the developmentalist model of “high investment-high debt-high GDP” which has been the basis of policy heretofore, in favor of an economic system more firmly grounded in a sustainable relationship between human society and the natural world.

Wen Tiejun’s history of the People’s Republic of China’s political economy is a remarkable document of struggle and achievement, while frankly recognizing the challenges and contradiction which arose along the path of development. It is a counterpoint to bourgeois histories which seek to portray the course of post-1949 China’s history primarily in terms of political factionalism and the grasping for power of the Communist Party and its leaders. Wen’s focus is on the fiscal and budgetary constraints which shaped the crises he details and the policies he analyzes. He traces the intricate dialectical course which this history followed, showing how the resolution of one set of contradictions in turn generated those which ensued; a masterful exercise in historical materialist analysis. His background and experience in rural reconstruction work leads him to give greater prominence to the rural sector than many accounts of China’s economy which focus almost exclusively on urban industry. Wen’s perspective brings greater nuance to his account, and provides the ultimate basis of his vision of the ecological civilization of the future.

Theorists of socialist development, from Marx and Engels to Lenin to Mao Zedong, have been quite clear that building socialism is neither a quick nor easy process, that it will be a lengthy and sometimes convoluted itinerary. Wen’s narrative of China’s course since 1949 reveals both continuities and ruptures, from the ongoing quest for foreign investment and technology, the fraught process of primary accumulation, to the extraction of surplus value from labor. These were accompanied by shifts in emphasis from mobilizational movements to expert-led management. He is clear that much has been achieved, but just as clear that the future will contain its own contradictions and challenges.

https://mronline.org/2021/12/12/ten-cri ... velopment/

[blindpig]

China and the other socialist countries are smashing the myth of socialism as undemocratic

Friends of Socialist China was honoured to be invited by the International Department of the Communist Party of China to participate in a virtual meeting entitled ‘Democracy, Justice, Development and Progress: The Pursuit of Marxist Political Parties’ on 15 December 2021. This meeting brought together over 20 Marxist political parties and organisations from across Europe, North America and Oceania to discuss and share insights on how to promote democracy, justice, development and progress for humanity, as well as comparing notes on innovation in Marxist theory and practice. The keynote speech was given by Song Tao, head of the CPC’s International Department.

What follows is the written contribution to that meeting submitted by our co-editor Carlos Martinez.

Dear comrades and friends,

The themes of today’s event are democracy, justice, development and progress. These are concepts that capitalism has long tried to exercise a monopoly over. The capitalist world, led by the US, has sought to portray itself as the central force for democracy and progress globally. Conversely it has sought to portray the socialist world as the enemy of democracy and progress; as a force of authoritarianism and backwardness. This was a core pillar of the propaganda connected with the Cold War, and is now central to the New Cold War.

In recent years, the idea of the socialist countries being ‘backward’ or ‘undeveloped’ has started to lose any of the resonance it once had, even among people in the West. The People’s Republic of China in particular has emerged as a powerhouse in science and technology; it is among the world leaders in 5G, in artificial intelligence, in quantum computing, in nanotechnology, in space research, and more. China’s successful campaigns to suppress Covid-19 and to eliminate extreme poverty have caught the world’s attention, and the ‘backward’ label just does not stick.

As a result, the propaganda campaign against socialism has had to shift somewhat. Its emphasis has moved away from questions of development and progress, and towards questions of democracy and justice. This is consistent with the Biden administration’s attempts to differentiate itself from Donald Trump, who had a negative impact on the US’s image as the upholder of ‘liberal democratic’ values.

This is the reason Biden hosted a ‘Summit for Democracy’ last week: to attempt to consolidate an alliance of imperialist countries and their hangers-on; to reaffirm the US’s position at the centre of that alliance; and to remind the world that ‘democracy’ is defined in Washington DC.

In the broadest sense, democracy simply refers to the exercise of power – direct or indirect – by the people. However, it has become synonymous with the system of ‘liberal democracy’, characterised by a multi-party parliament, universal suffrage, the separation of powers, and a strong emphasis on the protection of private property.

This narrow definition of democracy is widely considered in the West as a universal and absolute truth. Indeed, in the dominant narrative, adherence to the principles of liberal democracy constitutes the fundamental dividing line in global politics. On one side there is a group of ‘democracies’ (including the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, most of Europe, Japan, India and South Korea) and on the other side a group of ‘non-democracies’ or ‘authoritarian regimes’ (including China, the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Bolivia , Venezuela, Nicaragua, Syria, Iran, Russia, Belarus, Eritrea, Algeria and Zimbabwe, among others).

The correlation between this definition of democracy and the 500-year old system of racism and imperialism can be easily understood when one sees that, of Africa’s 54 countries, less than a third were invited to Biden’s Summit for Democracy, whereas practically all the countries of Europe, North America and Australasia were invited.

As Marxists, we can immediately recognise the fundamental weakness and inadequacy of this concept of liberal democracy, as it makes no reference to social class. It presents democracy as a purely procedural phenomenon and masks the underlying political and economic content. In contrast, Mao Zedong considered that the particulars of governance in any given society reflect nothing more than “the form in which one social class or another chooses to arrange its apparatus of political power to oppose its enemies and protect itself”. The important question therefore, wholly obscured in Western discourse, is which social class dominates political power? Which class is the ruling class?

On closer inspection, it becomes clear that ‘liberal democracy’ is simply a euphemism for capitalist democracy, the democratic limits of which are strictly defined by the need to reinforce capitalist production relations. Such a system allows people to vote for one or another capitalist party, but it does not allow for substantive changes to the economic system. It is possible for the working classes to win certain concessions and improve their situation; the immovable red line, however, is the position of the capitalist class as ruling class. As Lenin wrote:

“Freedom in capitalist society always remains about the same as it was in the ancient Greek republics: freedom for the slaveowners. Owing to the conditions of capitalist exploitation the modern wage slaves are so crushed by want and poverty that ‘they cannot be bothered with democracy’, ‘they cannot be bothered with politics’; in the ordinary peaceful course of events the majority of the population is debarred from participation in public and political life.”

Indeed, the limits of the Western democratic model are becoming increasingly plain for people to see; more and more people are recognising that, while they can vote for a personality and a political party, they can’t vote for the type of economic and political change they need. They participate in elections – “spectacular and meaningless duels between two bourgeois parties” – but they end up with a democracy “for the minority, only for the propertied classes, only for the rich.”

As Xi Jinping observed recently:

“If the people are awakened only at voting time and dormant afterward; if the people hear big slogans during elections but have no say after; if the people are favoured during canvassing but are left out after elections, this is not true democracy.”

Poverty is rising in the advanced capitalist countries. The number of homeless increases year after year. Life expectancy in the US decreased by one year in 2020 – and for African-Americans it decreased by three years. Infrastructure is collapsing. The Biden administration has signed off on a military budget of 750 billion dollars for a single year, while tens of millions languish in poverty. The number of deaths caused by Covid-19 in the US and Britain is close to one million, even according to official figures. To what extent does all this reflect the will of the people? And as such, what does it say about the limitations of capitalist democracy?

The US has by far the largest prison population in the world. And African-Americans are several times more likely to be incarcerated than European-Americans. Black, Latino and indigenous people suffer significantly lower life expectancy, lower income, higher infant mortality. For ethnic minorities in many of the advanced capitalist countries, democracy is significantly curtailed. Not to mention the peoples of Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Yugoslavia among others, to whom ‘democracy’ has been delivered in the form of wholesale death and destruction.

The Cuban revolutionary Che Guevara once remarked, “we should not allow the word ‘democracy’ to be utilised to represent the dictatorship of the exploiting classes.” More and more people are coming to understand the reality of capitalist democracy. Meanwhile, socialist democracy is making tremendous advances.

In fact, the day after Biden’s ‘Summit for Democracy’, Friends of Socialist China and the International Manifesto Group held a successful online ‘Summit for Socialist Democracy’, with speakers from several countries including China, Korea, Vietnam, Cuba, Venezuela. One of the key topics discussed was China’s whole-process people’s democracy, which is proving to be far more responsive to the needs of the people than capitalist democracy.

Among other things, the participants noted that the priorities of the Chinese government are highly consistent with the priorities of the majority of the Chinese people: improving living standards, tackling poverty, suppressing the pandemic, reducing pollution, protecting the environment, cracking down on corruption, improving the education and healthcare systems, working towards social harmony.

Why don’t the governments of Western Europe and North America share the priorities of their populations? Why don’t they end homelessness? Why don’t they do what China has done and employ tens of thousands of people to go into poor neighbourhoods and work with families and communities to help lift them out of poverty? Why don’t they put a huge priority on containing the pandemic and saving the lives of hundreds of thousands of people?

Because capitalist governments must prioritise the interests of the capitalist class first and foremost. What this boils down to is protecting profits above all other considerations. This is why socialist democracy is in essence more democratic than capitalist democracy; because it applies to the vast majority of the people – the 99 percent rather than the 1 percent.

The West’s dominance in the realms of media and academia has been leveraged to universalise capitalist democracy, “to conceal from the people the bourgeois character of modern democracy; to picture it as democracy in general or ‘pure democracy’”, as Lenin wrote in 1918.

However, this monopoly on democracy is falling apart. Just as it is no longer possible to paint the socialist world as backward, the progress of China and the other socialist countries is smashing the myth of socialism as undemocratic. China’s whole-process people’s democracy is a highly inclusive and effective system of governance that constitutes a valuable addition to Marxist theory and practice in the 21st century.

https://socialistchina.org/2021/12/17/c ... emocratic/

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Keith Lamb: Phoney ‘Uygur Tribunal’ seeks to build public support for anti-China strategy

Below we republish an article by Keith Lamb in CGTN about the so-called Uygur Tribunal and its value for the imperialist powers in building public support for the US-led New Cold War on China. The author points out that millions of people in the West were deceived by the lies about Saddam Hussein’s weapons of mass destruction, or Muammar Gaddafi’s use of rape as a weapon of war, and therefore tacitly lent their support to the horrific and criminal wars waged against Iraq and Libya.

The sham “independent” Uygur Tribunal (UT), funded by the U.S. government through the National Endowment for Democracy (NED), recently declared that China is committing genocide in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region. This is despite “witnesses” changing and exaggerating their tales when seeking asylum; despite the main “academic” papers being funded by the military-industrial complex and the U.S., and despite the “evidence” being found full of inconsistencies and circular referencing.

What then is going on? Doesn’t the West pride itself on openness and honesty? If you believe the meta-propaganda then yes; but scanning history the West has inflicted agonizing suffering on the Global South and carrying out these injustices, and covering them up, requires sophisticated dishonesty.

Elites who plan atrocities must first indoctrinate their masses with absurdities. Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, to name only three, all prove this point. With a trail of catastrophe sewn by the Western elites’ dishonesty they now move on to fresh pastures where through the careful planting of atrocity propaganda they seek to reap new harvests, in war profits and geopolitical gains, through a war against China.

Indeed, even before the UT took place its website ominously stated that results could be used for aggressive actions like sanctioning China.

The modus-operandi is to weaponize the emotions of Western audiences through distortion, decontextualization, and outright falsity which then serves to justify preplanned aggression. The above-mentioned cases are textbook examples of this stratagem.

To buttress the case against Saddam Hussain, Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) claims became a useful expedient. When these proved to be fictitious, Westerners, who swallowed this absurdity, could at least console themselves with the “magnanimous Western gift” of “freedom” to justify the horrors their elites inflicted on the Iraqi people.

When it came to Libya’s turn so brazen had the Western propaganda machine become and so gullible and hypnotized were Western audiences that stories of Muammar Gaddafi’s troops ordered to commit Viagra-fueled rapes were uncritically swallowed by the Western press who are now culpable for bringing a refugee crisis to Europe and open slave markets to Libya which was once Africa’s most prosperous state.

In retrospect, I ask the reader where they stood when faced with the persuasive power of this atrocity propaganda? Most enthralled by the illusion of “Western objectivity” danced to the tune of war. Others petrified of being labeled an apologist for atrocity were cowered into silence and, perversely, allowed the worst atrocities to be committed in their name.

Even though some events, such as the WMD lies, have become common knowledge, Western populations still don’t wake up. At any rate, the opiate of time eases their guilt and the divulging of some truth ironically renews faith in a system masquerading as an honest broker which then cleanses itself of previous sins. In a state of amnesia, Western citizens are then misdirected to new fancied monstrosities taking place far from home.

However, history continues as does the cycle of “lie-war-regret.” China’s development is a “threat” as is the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) which seeks to develop the Global South. Even-development of the world diminishes Western hegemony who would no longer be able to use their superior military and financial power to enforce the whims of their elites onto impoverished states.

The playing of the ethnic card in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, a main hub for the BRI, is a major front for the onslaught of atrocity propaganda. Here the battle against extremism and terrorism bolstered by the mess that is Afghanistan, which borders Xinjiang, is spuriously sold as genocide, slavery, and concentration camps.

These claims are made despite the Arab League supporting China’s policies in Xinjiang. Of course, in response, Western propaganda claims Muslim states are terrified by the might of China. Considering many Muslim states have stood up to a more powerful and threatening U.S., such alleged cowardice is insulting.

In fact, the U.S., the self-appointed leader of the West, as shown by its destruction of numerous Muslim states cares little about Muslims and, as demonstrated by the current propaganda campaign, also has no love for China. However, perversely we are to forget these inconsistencies and accept the deception that the U.S. cherishes China’s Muslims.

The contradictions are in plain sight and the record of history is clear. Afghanistan didn’t attack the U.S.; there was no Iraqi WMD; there was no Libyan mass Viagra rape, and there is no genocide in China. We can no longer be corralled into the bounds of sanctioned thought which advocates absurdities.

For the sake of global justice and the emancipation of the Global South and Western citizens alike, we must stand up to the tidal wave of human rights propaganda that disguises itself as independent only to be used to commit the atrocity of war.

https://socialistchina.org/2021/12/17/k ... -strategy/

[blindpig]

New York Times Covers Up Its Debunked Lies About Peng Shuai By Adding New Ones

The Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai recently gave an interview in which she refuted various lies the New York Times and other media had made about her.

Today the Times responded by creating and publishing more lies about her.

To recap:

In mid November the New York Times had launched a campaign for a boycott of the Olympics in Beijing. As Moon of Alabama reported at that time:

New York Times Invents 'Sexual Assault' #MeToo Case To Blame China https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/11/n ... china.html

There is currently a push for a boycott of the winter Olympics in Beijing. Western media are busy to push for an anti-China angle of the games. Their aim is a political boycott so no one 'in good standing' dares to visit them.

On November 2, by timely chance, some well known Chinese sportswoman posted a sad story about the end of her love affair with a once powerful older man on the Chinese social media site Weibo. That post was soon taken down, likely by the woman herself, but that was too late to prevent that the 'woke' western media and Olympic boycott campaigners made a hash out of it.

A day after the post was published and unpublished the New York Times mangled the facts to make it into a 'woke' anti-China story:

A Chinese Tennis Star Accuses a Former Top Leader of Sexual Assault https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/worl ... gaoli.html
Peng Shuai’s accusation against Zhang Gaoli takes the country’s budding #MeToo movement to the top echelons of the Communist Party for the first time.

A diligent reading of the NYT piece revealed that there was zero evidence that a 'sexual assault' had happened or that Peng Shuai had ever claimed that there had been one:

Where is the headlined 'sexual assault' one might ask. The NYT piece wont say:

Mr. Zhang retired in 2018, when, according to Ms. Peng’s account, the two resumed a relationship that had begun when he served in Tianjin, which would have been between 2007 and 2012. She said he had first assaulted her after inviting her to play tennis with him and his wife. “I never consented that afternoon, crying all the time,” she wrote, not specifying when exactly the assault occurred.
As it turns out no 'assault' had happened. Moreover Peng Shuai never alleged that an 'assault' happened. The New York Times made that up!

A full English language translation of Peng Shuai's Weibo post can be found here.

Peng Shuai's Weibo post said nothing about an 'assault' sexual or otherwise against her. Her post was about her long term relation with an older man that had just broken up. She was sad when she wrote her piece. Here is an excerpt:

Romantic attraction is such a complicated thing that explain it clearly. From that day on, I renewed my love for you. Throughout my time with you after that, purely based on our interactions, you were a very good person, and you treated me well. We talking about recent history, as well as ancient eras. You educated me on so many topics, and we had discussions about economics, politics. We never ran out of things to talk about. We played chess, sang, played table tennis, played pool and also played tennis together. We always had endless fun. It was as if our personalities fit perfectly together.

Where please is a 'sexual assault' in that?

Two weeks later, at the next stage of its campaign, the New York Times declared that Peng Shuai was 'missing'.

The women’s professional tennis tour announced Wednesday that it was immediately suspending all tournaments in China, including Hong Kong, in response to the disappearance from public life of the tennis star Peng Shuai after she accused a top Communist Party leader of sexual assault.
With the move, the Women’s Tennis Association became the only major sports organization to push back against China’s increasingly authoritarian government.

However as Moon of Alabama reported Peng Shuai was not missing at all:

Peng Shuai did not disappear from public life. She has sent an email to the WTA which asked to respect her privacy. She has posted pictures of herself and video showed her taking part in a public tennis event and going to dinner in a public restaurant. The International Olympic Committee (IOC) has held a 30 minute video conference with her and found her well and happily alive.

Despite that the WTA and especially Steve Simon, its chief executive, have instead gone public with the issue and continue to intrude her privacy.

The IOC in contrast has been discrete and has shown respect for Peng Shuai's privacy. A short clip of their video call was published with her consent.

And today the IOC announced that it had another video call with Peng Shuai.

A search of the New York Times website finds that the paper since November 2 published 82 news and opinion pieces, editorials and briefings that mention Peng Shuai.

The paper will obviously not let go of the fake story it itself had created.

News today is that Peng Shuai directly refutes the false claims the New York Times and other media had made about her:

Chinese tennis star Peng Shuai has denied saying that a senior Communist Party leader sexually assaulted her despite her November social media post and insisted she is living freely, in her first media interview since her accusations triggered concerns for her safety.
The Lianhe Zaobao Chinese-language newspaper posted a video of Peng in which she said she has been mainly staying at home in Beijing but was free to come and go as she chose.

"First of all, I want to emphasise something that is very important. I have never said nor written anything accusing anyone of sexually assaulting me," Peng said in the footage apparently filmed on a phone at a sports event in Shanghai on Sunday.

"I would like to emphasise this point very clearly," she went on.

A video of the seemingly spontaneous 6 minutes long interview can be seen here.

You may wonder what the Times is making of that. Will it continue to lie?

Well, its the New York Times, so of course it will.

Chinese Tennis Player Denies Sexual Abuse Claim, Raising More Questions
Peng Shuai said in an interview with a Singaporean newspaper that she had been misunderstood. She also said, “I’ve been very free all along.”

Peng Shuai, the Chinese tennis star whose account of sexual coercion by a former Communist Party leader ignited weeks of tensions and galvanized calls for boycotts of the Winter Olympics in Beijing, has reversed her assertion that she had been sexually assaulted by the official.

Peng Shuai has of course not "reversed" anything. She had never claimed to have been 'sexually assaulted' in the first place. It is only the Times that had made that claim and who is unwilling to 'reverse' that.

Ms. Peng made the comments in an interview that was published on Sunday by a Singaporean newspaper. But the retraction appeared unlikely to extinguish concerns about her well-being and suspicions that she had been the target of well-honed pressure techniques and a propaganda campaign by Chinese officials.

There was no "retraction". The claim had never been made by her. However with that sentence the Times announces that will continue its campaign by keeping its sorry fake 'news' tale up.

The controversy erupted last month when Ms. Peng wrote in a post on Weibo, a Chinese social media platform, that she had maintained a yearslong, on-and-off relationship with Zhang Gaoli, now 75, a retired Chinese vice premier. She said that in an encounter with him about three years ago, she had “never consented” and that she was “crying all the time.”

That is false. The quotes are fake. Peng Shuai did not write that she was "crying all the time". She just describes how her former lover wanted to restart the affair with her after a few years pause. As I described her tale while quoting the relevant parts of her post:

[H]e had not forgotten Peng Shuai and as soon as he retired he again contacted her:

About three years ago, Zhang Gaoli vice president, you retired. You asked Dr. Liu at the Tianjin Tennis Centre to contact me, and asked me with play tennis with you at Kang Ming Hotel in Beijing. After we finished playing tennis, you and your wife Kang Jie brought me to your home. Then you took me into your room. Like what happened ten years ago in Tianjin, you wanted to have sex with me.
She did not want to have sex that afternoon and she nowhere claims that they had sex that afternoon. He asked for sex. She said no. Nothing happened. She stayed for dinner:

That afternoon I didn't agree, and I kept crying. I had dinner with you and auntie Kang Jie together. You said the universe is very very big. The earth is merely a speck of sand in the universe, and us human beings are smaller than even a speck of sand. You said a lot more than that, and the purpose was basically to persuade me to drop my guard. After dinner, I was still not willing to have sex. You said you hated me. You said in those seven years, you never forgot about me, and you will treat me well etc... I was terrified and anxious. Taking into consideration the affection I had for you seven years ago, I agreed... yes, we had sex.
She agreed, they had sex, and a lot of affection for each other ...

The Times lies when it claims that Peng Shuai wrote she “never consented”. The Times lies when it claims Peng Shuai wrote that "she was crying all the time". It was what happened on "that afternoon". The same day, after dinner, Peng Shuai was in a good mood, had again fallen in love, explicitly "agreed" and had sex with her lover.

After that their happy life continued for more than three years with consent and without crying.

The Times also keeps up its second big lie that Peng Shuai went "missing" even as she only had refuted the claims made about her and only had asked for privacy:

She then abruptly dropped from public view, and global concern for her whereabouts grew. In a written statement later, she appeared to seek to pull back the accusation, and the Women’s Tennis Association and other professional players rallied to her side, saying they believed that her statement had been written under official duress.

Peng Shuai "did not seek to pull back the accusation". She had never made any. The Times had made it up.

In the fact free disinformation campaign spread by the New York Times one lie begets the other. Every time one of its lies is revealed as such the Times ignores the evidence and adds new lies to continue its disinformation spree. It even misquotes her original posting out of context.

After falsely claiming that Peng Shuai had "reversed" accusations she had never made and "retracted" a story she never had told, after the insertion of false quotes into the story and after repeating the false claim that Peng Shuai went "missing" the Times for a moment reverts to the facts:

In the interview with Lianhe Zaobao, a Chinese-language Singaporean newspaper, Ms. Peng, 35, said, “First, I want to stress a very important point — I never said or wrote that anyone sexually assaulted me.”
“There may have been misunderstandings by everyone,” she said of her initial post on Weibo.

Ms. Peng also denied that she had been under house arrest or that she had been forced to make any statements against her will.

“Why would someone keep watch over me?” she said. “I’ve been very free all along.”

After quoting Peng Shuai's spontaneous statement, which debunks everything the Times had claimed about her, the paper goes on to put doubt on her very clear explanation:

Her denial drew skepticism from human rights advocates, who have said that Chinese officials appear to have corralled her into rehearsed video appearances.
Kenneth Roth, the executive director of Human Rights Watch, said on Twitter that Ms. Peng’s latest statement was “only deepening concerns about the pressure to which the Chinese government is subjecting her.”

Kenneth Roth is of course a a proven liar so it is only appropriate that the lying New York Times is quoting him.

Do New York Times writers ever wonder why no one trusts whatever their paper claims?

Posted by b on December 20, 2021 at 17:15 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/n ... .html#more

[blindpig]

Have you been lied to about Xinjiang, human rights − and China?

This statement from the International Action Center thoroughly dismantles US-led imperialist propaganda about alleged human rights abuses in Xinjiang, and exposes how these are being leveraged to build public support for a reckless and aggressive anti-China strategy that offers nothing to ordinary people in the West.

Claiming that it is acting in defense of human rights, the U.S. tries to cover its own criminal record on internal human rights violations and its record of endless wars, assassinations, coups and devastating sanctions by making charges and targeting other countries.

Propaganda fuels U.S. wars
The “2021 Annual Threat Assessment of the U.S. Intelligence Community,” issued April 9 by Avril Haines, Director of National Intelligence, labeled China as “the greatest threat to the United States.” Numerous other reports and official statements claim Washington must prepare an intensifying level of U.S. intelligence operations, cyberattacks and investment in military technology to counter China.

The U.S. military has encircled China. With joint Democratic and Republican Party backing, the U.S. has imposed economic sanctions, an onerous trade war and canceled cultural exchanges and visas for tens of thousands of Chinese students. This campaign is cynically justified as a defense of human rights.

To confront Washington’s escalating anti-China aggression, the progressive political movement in the U.S. must move into action. We must challenge the tidal wave of racist anti-China assaults in the U.S. corporate media and from Washington’s political establishment.

The most extreme U.S. claims and smear campaigns are focused on charges that China is violating the rights of the minority Uyghur people in the Xinjiang [pronounced Shinjaang] Uyghur Autonomous Region of China.

Propaganda serves to deflect our attention from what we already know. Over 2.2 million people are incarcerated in the U.S., which has the largest prison population in the world. Racist police kill over 1,000 people a year. Why not address the glaring human rights crimes in the U.S.?

Xinjiang and China’s Belt and Road Initiative
Xinjiang Province, in the far western region of China, is an arid, mountainous and still developing region. Xinjiang has significant oil and mineral reserves and is China’s largest natural gas-producing region.

Urumqi, the capital, is a modern rail-and-transit hub. For hundreds of years it was the gateway to Central and West Asia and now to European markets. The province is home to diverse ethnic groups, including Turkic-speaking Muslim Uyghurs, Tajiks, Tibetans and Hui peoples, as well as Han people, who comprise the large majority of the Chinese population.

Xinjiang is a major logistics center for China’s ambitious Belt and Road Initiative. This broad infrastructure development program is a multitrillion-dollar initiative that has expanded to include programs in 138 countries.

Unable or unwilling to compete by helping countries develop in Central and Western Asia and Africa, the U.S. has done everything possible to sabotage the Belt and Road programs. Washington has imposed economic sanctions on China, surrounded the country with missiles and military bases, funded mercenary armies and promoted internal dissention. This is highly profitable for the U.S. military industrial complex.

Xinjiang borders five Central Asian countries, including Afghanistan and Pakistan, where more than 1 million U.S. troops — and an even greater number of mercenaries, contractors and secret agents — have operated for over four decades in an endless series of destructive U.S. wars.

Washington’s ‘Big Lie’ against China
The U.S. and its corporate media charge that the Chinese government has rounded up 1 million people, mainly Muslim Uyghurs, into internment camps. Many note the cynical duplicity of Washington posing as a friend of Muslims.

In the last 30 years, the U.S. has waged wars primarily against Muslim countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Syria, and has engineered proxy wars which have killed 4 million people and turned 40 million people into refugees. Washington has imposed harsh economic sanctions on 15 Muslim countries, creating hyperinflation and hunger. This war policy reverberates into anti-Muslim campaigns within the U.S.

Like the “weapons of mass destruction” pretext for the war on Iraq, Washington is justifying its aggressive policy against China with false claims that China is committing “genocide” against the Uyghur minority. The U.S. media claims this is based on a United Nations report. However, the U.N. Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights has confirmed that no U.N. body or official has made any charges against China similar to what Washington charges is “genocide.”

Tales of forced birth control and sterilization against the Uyghur minority are exposed by census data. The Uyghur population has actually grown from 3.61 million in 1953 to 11.62 million in 2020. Like the other minority (non-Han) peoples, the Uyghurs were exempt from China’s one-child policy.

More than 60 countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America support China against these false U.S.-initiated claims, including more than a dozen members of the Organization of Islamic States.

Supporting the U.S. charges are non-Muslim countries in Europe, plus Canada, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. These countries are the historic colonizers, which supported decades of U.S. wars in the Muslim world.

U.S. proposes endless funding for conflict with China
The $250 billion U.S. Innovation and Competition Act (USICA) passed the Senate in June 2021 and is about to be voted on by the House of Representatives as November ends. USICA integrates the previously proposed Endless Frontier Act, the Strategic Competition Act of 2021 and the Meeting the China Challenge Act and others.

USICA’s more than 2,000 pages lay out plans to invest tens of billions of taxpayer dollars to give the U.S. technological edge over China in semiconductor manufacturing, require “buy American” requirements for federally funded infrastructure projects and slowdown or sabotage China’s technological development.

Measures against China include allocations of $300 million a year for four years ($1.2 billion), in what is called the ‘‘Countering Chinese Influence Fund.” It provides funding for charging China with “forced labor” in its Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, suppressing human rights, “unfair competition” and “intellectual theft.”

Congressional funding for mercenary operations include $655 million in Foreign Military Financing in the Indo-Pacific region.

Who makes the charges on ‘human rights’?
Sensationalized claims that China is guilty of rights violations in Xinjiang come from the Washington-based and funded Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders and the World Uyghur Congress. These groups receive most of their funds from the CIA-linked National Endowment for Democracy (NED), a major source of funding for U.S. “regime change” operations around the world.

Other sources of unsubstantiated reports by the International Uyghur Human Rights and Democracy Foundation and the Uyghur American Association, are also funded by NED. Their information sources include Radio Free Asia, a news agency the U.S. government has funded for decades.

The Network of Chinese Human Rights Defenders shares the same Washington address as Human Rights Watch. The network has long called for sanctions against China. HRW has been a major source of attacks on governments targeted by the U.S., such as Venezuela, Nicaragua, Cuba, Syria and China.

Can these U.S.-funded organizations be trusted?
This entire network of shadowy, well-funded, civil society groups, think tanks, nongovernmental organizations and news sources operates under the cover of “protecting human rights” to promote Washington’s policy of escalating sanctions and war preparations.

Just as in past U.S. military offensives, the corporate media is willing to use flimsy anti-China propaganda without checking basic facts.

A detailed investigative report written by Ben Norton and Ajit Singh, entitled: “No, the U.N. did not report China has ‘massive internment camps’ for Uighur

Muslims,” includes IRS filing forms, which confirm the writers’ claims of generous U.S. government funding to generate false reports. (The Grayzone, Aug. 23, 2018)

The NED pays handsomely for unsourced documents making claims against China. But these claims provide nothing like the documentary proof of U.S. war crimes made public by Chelsea Manning, Julian Assange, Daniel Hale and John Kiriakou. They were imprisoned for providing concrete evidence of U.S. war crimes. (Kiriakou spent two years in prison, Manning seven; both have been released.)

Harsh new sanctions on Chinese cotton, a major export from the Xinjiang region, were fueled by lurid descriptions of handpicking, using slave labor and child labor in the cotton fields. However, cotton farming is more than 90% mechanized in Xinjiang.

U.S. corporate media give little recognition to China’s historic achievements of ending extreme poverty, illiteracy and lack of potable water, while providing access to basic health care for 800 million of its 1.4 billion people.

Haines’ 2021 Intelligence Report, referred to earlier, even condemns China for “using its success in combating the coronavirus pandemic to promote the ‘superiority’ of its system”!

China follows a different program
For four decades, the CIA and secret Pakistan Intelligence Services (ISI) in Afghanistan sought to recruit and train Uyghurs as mercenaries, planning to use them as a future terror force in China. They recruited Chechnyans from Russia’s Caucasus region for the same reason. Both groups were funneled into Syria in the U.S. regime-change operation there.

China’s government responded after terror attacks and explosives in the country had killed hundreds of civilians in busy shopping areas and crowded train and bus stations since the 1990s. Rather than copy Washington’s “war on terror” tactics, China has dealt with the problem of groups that are weaponized with religious extremism by setting up large-scale vocational education and training centers.

Rather than worsening underdevelopment through bombing campaigns, military occupation, secret rendition kidnappings, sanctions and drone strikes — tactics employed by the U.S., China is seeking to engage the Xinjiang population through education, skills development and rapid economic and infrastructure development.

There have been no terrorist attacks in Xinjiang since the reeducation campaigns began in 2017.

A big part of opposing the next U.S. onslaught is challenging the corporate media’s war propaganda and providing facts to counter the defamation campaigns against China.

We need health care for all, free education, union jobs and a clean environment, not continuous U.S. war propaganda and militarism.

https://socialistchina.org/2021/12/23/h ... and-china/

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


https://socialistchina.org/2021/12/24/z ... and-power/

[blindpig]

When China Does Great Question Its Cost

There seem to be general meme directives for 'western' outlets with regards to official enemies.

Russia is said to weaponize everything. The position of China is not (yet) seen as in military terms. The emphasis is on economic competition. Any undeniable Chinese achievement must be declared to have been a bad investment. The directive thus reads:

"When writing about China's achievements - question their purported cost."

The results:

Global Markets – 1st quarter 2007 : China powers ahead – but at what cost?
- Fin Law, Feb 09, 2007
China pumps up the Cambodian economy, but at what cost?
- Taipei Times Apr 07 2011
Luxury Property in China: Boom, but at what cost?
- Spears, Oct 18 2011
Tibet: Tourism Rises, But At What Cost?
- UNPO, Dec 28 2011
China brings jobs to Ethiopia but at what cost?
- Horn Affairs, May 31 2012
China: smartphone market domination...but at what cost?
- GFK, Feb 27 2014
China wants the Gold but at what Cost? - Disturbing Road to Olympic Stardom
- Linkedin, Aug 14 2016
Podcast: China Aims for Bluer Skies Ahead, But at What Cost to Commodity Demand?
- SPGlobal, 2017
Peter Bart: Hollywood Has Appetite For China’s Big Bucks, But At What Cost?
- Deadline, Mar 2 2017
China is driving a boom in Brazilian mining, but at what cost?
- China Dialogue, Jul 27 2017
Chinese Tech Firms Are at the Cutting Edge of Artificial Intelligence — But at What Cost?
- Global Voices, 28 Aug 2017
China Invests in Environment – but at What Cost?
- US News, Apr 20 2018
China’s Belt and Road poised to transform the Earth, but at what cost?
- Mongabay, Apr 24 2018
China’s Belt and Road poised to transform the Earth, but at what cost to the environment?
- Eco Business, Apr 25 2018
China May Become the World’s Leader in AI. But at What Cost?
- China File, Jul 30 2018
President Xi pledges $60 Billion to African Countries, but at what Cost?
- Medium, Sep 8 2018
Vatican–China relations are warming up, but at what cost?
- East Asia Forum, 23 Oct 2018
Gene-edited babies: China wants to be the world leader, but at what cost?
- The Conservation, Nov 26 2018
China's economy looks to be stabilising, but at what cost?
- France24, Apr 17 2019
China’s Big Cities Get Cleaner Air, But at What Cost?
- Caixing, Oct 26 2019
China's Experimental Cure for Cancer
China's curing cancer faster and cheaper than anywhere else. But some worry they may be going too fast.
- Bloomberg, Dec 12th 2019
China is getting smarter - but at what cost?
- BBC, Dec 24 2019
Hou Jianbin wants to educate China. But at what cost?
- Protocol
A better, stronger China after the epidemic? But at what cost?
- Think China, Feb 21 2020
China May Forge Ahead of the Us in AI Chip Race, but at What Cost to Both?
- CIGI, Apr 9 2020
China’s Three Gorges Dam may be safe for now, but at what cost?
- Dams, Rivers and People, 27 Jul 2020
Serbia has rolled out the red carpet to China - but at what cost?
- Euronews, Oct 08 2020
The BRI’s Footprint in the Lower Mekong Region Myanmar, Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, and Vietnam all need infrastructure—but at what cost?
- RosaLux, Dec 15 2020
Chinese PD-1s secure broad reimbursement, but at what cost?
- Pharmaletter, Dec 28 2020
Green Transition in China: At What Cost?
- Green Europe Journal, 16 Jan 2021
Wuhan one year on: The city that appears safe from Covid - but at what cost?
- Telegraph, Jan 23 2021
China's economy grows, but at what cost? (vid)
- SCMP, Jan 27,2021
China Is Imposing Strict Lockdowns To Contain New COVID Outbreaks. But There's A Cost
- NPR, Sep 2 2021
China keeps virus at bay but at what cost?
- Sioux City Journal, Sep 21 9 2021
China keeps virus at bay at high cost ahead of Olympics
- ABC News, Sep 21 2021
China celebrates Meng Wanzhou's return as a victory — even at the cost of its global image ´
- CNN, Sep 28 2021
Clean Air at What Cost? The Rise of Blunt Force Regulation
- US China Dialogue, Oct 21 2021
China Rewriting Economic Narrative - But At What Cost?
- BMF, Oct 27 2021
China's 'Zero Covid' Efforts Come With a Cost
- New York Times, Nov 12 2021
China is now controlling the weather. What’s the environmental cost?
- Euronews, Dec 9 2021
Ultra-leftist voices are making themselves heard in China, but at what cost?
- SCMP, Dec 24 2021

Posted by b on December 27, 2021 at 13:19 UTC | Permalink

https://www.moonofalabama.org/2021/12/c ... .html#more

Go to link to view articles.

Memo, directive or mebbe the false class consciousness of these suckfish masquerading as journalists?

Bits like this are what MoA is good for, which is why I expose myself to some of his foolish and reactionary writing. In this case 'b' certainly illustrates a pattern.

[blindpig]

Radhika Desai: The pandemic has turned out to be a tale of two systems

This insightful article by Radhika Desai, originally published in CGTN, seeks to understand why the advanced capitalist countries – particularly the most neoliberal and financialized ones – have performed so poorly in the face of Covid-19; and why socialist countries have done so much better.

As the world marked the second International Day for Epidemic Preparedness (IDEP) on December 27, 2021, nothing is clearer than the world’s richest and most powerful countries’ un-readiness before the pandemic. The highly transmissible Omicron was causing flight delays and cancellations by infecting flight crews, especially in the U.S.

Why are the richest countries doing so badly against the virus? It is not just that they have hogged available vaccine supply, giving second and third doses, while the virus rages and mutates elsewhere. It is not just that they have left China to donate 600 million vaccine doses to Africa even as the U.S. leads a new Cold War with it, dividing the world, rather than participating in any united world effort against the pandemic.

The fact is that the pandemic has turned out to be a tale of two systems. The world’s richest countries, led by the most neoliberal and financialized ones, the U.S. and the UK, have performed abysmally while socialist countries, led by China, have performed far better.

Consider just one indicator. On the second IDEP, according to the widely trusted Our World in Data website, the confirmed cumulative COVID-19 deaths per million stood at 2,450.20 for the U.S. and 2171.55 for the UK while for Vietnam that figure was 320.04 and for China a mere 3.21. Even Cuba, dependent on tourism and devastated by illegal U.S. sanctions clocked in at 735.23.

The plain fact is that these wealthy countries have not been fighting the virus but prioritized three other things. Firstly, their aim is not to stop but “flatten the curve” of infections such that their public health care systems, emaciated by decades of neoliberal cuts, are not overwhelmed. Instead of health care systems saving citizens in these countries, citizens are asked to save health care systems instead.

Secondly, under the slogan of needing to balance saving “lives” against saving “livelihoods,” they have saved billionaires’ fortunes and capitalists’ assets while compelling millions of the most marginalized working people to expose themselves to the virus and suffer illness and even death. Their latest slogan is that people must learn to “live with the virus.” What they mean is that while elites keep safe at home and in ultra clean rarefied environments, a female and non-white class of “essential workers” are kept exposed to the virus.

Finally, they prioritized vaccines above all else, profiting Big Pharma and sidestepping the question of increasing the staffing, funding and community-based testing, tracing and supported isolation capacities of their health care systems, the key to fighting this pandemic and inevitable future pandemics, as the experience of China in particular has shown. The neoliberal omerta or code of silence on expanding health care facilities remains unbroken.

Indeed, the new Cold War has made it impossible for the West to learn from China. Not only are China’s experience and success dismissed as “authoritarian,” not only have major studies carefully avoided including China, but lately major news outlets have taken to criticizing China for its “maximum suppression” and “zero COVID” strategy.

For The Economist, “China’s attempts to eliminate the virus, rather than merely manage it, are certainly costly.” The Financial Times complains that “China’s efforts to control the pandemic have contributed to a broader economic slowdown.” Such complaints entirely ignore the fact that China has been saving lives as well as livelihoods far better than the West.

Vaccines are not and cannot be silver bullets against the virus. They only reduce the risk of transmission, the morbidity and mortality rate. Moreover, much of the world remains in any case unvaccinated and hosts mutations.

Finally, even in rich countries vaccine uptake remains far below levels required for herd immunity thanks chiefly to the bad faith with which the governments have treated so many of their own citizens, chiefly marginalized communities.

It continues to do so by stigmatizing the unvaccinated rather than reaching out to them and engaging with them. That is why, barring a miracle, countries like the U.S. face a repeated cycle of outbreaks and lockdowns.

Perhaps that is why a miracle has become the new hope. As the world ends a second pandemic year, Omicron has raised the hope that it might end the pandemic by becoming the dominant variant and converting the novel coronavirus into just another common cold virus against which only the most vulnerable have to be protected. That this is the West’s best hope of release from the pandemic is noteworthy. It is vested not in anything public authorities or even capitalism’s vaunted scientific, technological or innovative capacities have done, but in the mercy of nature itself. This is where capitalism has brought the Enlightenment.

https://socialistchina.org/2021/12/31/r ... o-systems/

[blindpig]

Theoretical and practical innovations in regard to party diplomacy of the Communist Party of China

We are very pleased to be able to make available this important paper by Pan Jin’e, Director and Professor of the International Communist Movement Research Department of the Academy of Marxism, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS). It was delivered at the Cloud International Workshop on “New Forms of Human Civilization from a World Perspective,” held by the School of Marxism, Dalian University of Technology (DUT), 29-31 October 2021. In his paper, Professor Pan outlines the development of the CPC’s international relations through different historical periods, relating it both to the situation in China and the world as well as to Marxist-Leninist theory. We are grateful to the DUT Translation Team for their work as well as to Professor Roland Boer for his meticulous sub-editing.

Party Diplomacy’s Significant Contributions to the Creation of A New Form of Human Civilisation: Theoretical and Practical Innovations in Regard to Party Diplomacy of the Communist Party of China

Xi Jinping, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC), commented in his speech at the ceremony marking the CPC’s 100th anniversary that socialism with Chinese characteristics has created a new form of human civilisation: “We adhere to and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics, promoting the coordinated development of material, political, spiritual, social and ecological civilisations, and thereby creating a new path of Chinese-style modernisation and a new form of human civilisation.”[1] These “five civilisations” are not only a profound summary of the development of socialist civilisation with Chinese characteristics, but also an important connotation of the “new form of human civilisation.”[/b]

As the leading force of socialism with Chinese characteristics, the CPC’s diplomacy with political parties around the world comprises both the significant content of foreign relations, and is an important part of the political civilisation of Chinese socialism. The party diplomacy of the CPC has made an indispensable and important contribution to the creation of a new form of human civilisation. Therefore, a comprehensive explanation of the theory and practice of the CPC’s diplomacy in relation to political parties and governments will, on the one hand, help to enrich the connotations of the theory of a new form of human civilisation in light of Chinese socialism, and, on the other hand, help countries around the world to come to know and understand the CPC, enhance the cohesive strength of the building of a new type of party diplomacy, and help in creating a new form of party exchanges around the world and so a new form of political civilisation.

To begin with, this paper will trace the theoretical source of the CPC’s approach to engagements with political parties, that is, Marxist theoretical views on international political relations and relations with international parties. On this basis, the paper combs through the understanding of the Marxist theory (of international relations) by several generations of CPC leaders, that is, the new developments of a Sinicised Marxist theory of party diplomacy, and especially Xi Jinping’s thought on global structures, party diplomacy, and its application in China’s new socialist era. Finally, it calls on political parties all over the world, especially Marxist political parties, to unite and cooperate, and jointly make new contributions to the construction of a new form of political party exchanges, and so to the creation of a new form of human political civilisation.

1. The basic theoretical viewpoint of Marxism on international politics and relations between political parties

Communist parties throughout the world take Marxism-Leninism as their guiding theory. Historical materialism is the theoretical core of Marxism-Leninism and the most basic starting point and foothold for worldwide communist parties to understand and transform the world. The Marxist-Leninist approach to international political theory is an important part of the scientific system of Marxism, and its foundation and core is historical materialism. Marxist historical materialism holds that the material realities of life and economic production have determined the evolution of human history. Taking this as the starting point, Marxism examines the development of social forms from the perspective of production relations, and proposes that the development of human society needs to go through five major social forms, namely the “primitive commune, slave-owning, feudalism, capitalism and socialism (and communism).”[2]

Lenin developed Marxist historical materialism and proposed that the transition of human society from a capitalist system to a socialist system requires a long period of time. In this transitional period, the socialist system and the capitalist system would long coexist. Therefore, in order to survive and develop in a powerful capitalist world, the new and relatively weak proletarian government must carry out international cooperation with capitalism in order to make full use of the wealth and technology created by capitalism so as to develop the material foundation of socialism. At the same time, this approach would help prevent war by strengthening economic ties with capitalist countries, and at the same time consolidate the strength of socialist countries through cooperation.

At the same time, Marxism is still a theory concerning human liberation, which holds that “history is nothing but the activity of humanity pursuing its aims.”[3] Marx held that human nature is the sum of all practical social relations. Therefore, human survival must depend on a certain form of community. In different historical stages, with the changes of social reality and human needs, the form of community also changes accordingly. In his Economic Manuscripts 1857-1858, Marx proposed that the development of human society goes through three communal stages: first, the pre-capitalist era was based on “relations of human dependence,” that is, the “naturally evolved community”; the second is capitalist society based on “dependence mediated by things,” that is, a false or “illusory community”; the third is communist society based on “individual all-round development,” that is, the true or “real community” in which “individuals attain their freedom in and through their association.”[4] In his works, Marx often used the “real community” and the “free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” to refer to the future communist society.[5]

In short, according to the Marxist theory of the development of forms of human society, there is a long period of transition from capitalist society to communist society, that is, there is a long process between the “illusory community” and the “real community” (the association of free people).[6] It is necessary to establish a cooperative relationship in line with the transition period, so as to gradually expand the material basis of socialist relations of production, and help all peoples and countries to coordinate and solve global problems while taking into account their own practical interests.

In terms of the relations between proletarian political parties in various countries, Marxism emphasises the unity of the proletariat. Marx and Engels attached great importance to the international unity and joint action of workers of various countries and stressed that “proletarian liberation can only be an international undertaking.”[7] At the same time, a working-class political party should respect the right of choice of each party and avoid imposing its own views on others: any “choice … is the affair of the working classes of that country”[8] and “every section is to have its own theoretical views of the real movement.”[9] All parties should establish a relationship of equal cooperation, since “any international action must have as a necessary premise a previous agreement both as to the substance and the form,”[10] and “international cooperation is possible only among equals.”[11] Lenin inherited Marx and Engels’s views on Communist Party relations. He stressed that all parties in various countries should choose their own strategies of struggle according to the actual situation and characteristics, and learn well from the experience of other countries in taking their own development path. Lenin pointed out: “it is not enough … simply to copy out the latest resolutions” from other countries; instead, “what is required is the ability to treat these experiences critically and to test them independently.”[12]

At present, human society is in a long period of transition from capitalism to socialism. Marxism’s views on the transition period, the human community, the proletariat’s standing, unity and cooperation have become the theoretical source of interactions between the CPC and political parties all over the world.

2. The CPC’s theoretical innovation and development of Marxist international cooperation and inter-party relations

Under the leadership of each generation of CPC leaders – from Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao to Xi Jinping – the CPC has always adhered to Marxism as its guiding theory, persisted in understanding the world from the perspective of Marxist historical materialism and the standpoint of the proletariat, and formed its own theoretical viewpoints that have been used to guide China’s diplomatic practice.

In Mao Zedong’s era, from the founding of the CPC to the establishment of the People’s Republic of China, the CPC made contact only with the communist parties and workers’ parties in various countries. It adopted the “one-sided” policy of completely leaning towards the socialist camp headed by the Soviet Union, while rejecting and not contacting socialist parties and conservative parties with ideological differences.

However, in the 1960s, ideological differences among the communist parties of various countries broke out. The CPC criticised the Great Power and Big Party behaviour of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. In the context of the international communist movement, the CPC stressed that communist parties of various countries should have fraternal relations, not parent-child relations, and that all parties regardless of their history and strength are equal to one another.[13] In order to oppose the hegemonism of great powers, Mao Zedong put forward the theory of “Three Worlds.” On the one hand, China should steadfastly safeguard its national sovereignty and interests, on the other hand, it should carry forward the spirit of internationalism and provide generous assistance to the peoples of the third world. A country’s diplomacy should adhere to the five principles of “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual non-aggression, non-interference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.”[14] When dealing with the relationship with the communist parties of non-socialist countries, Mao Zedong advocated the two principles of “the state is concerned with inter-state relations, and the party is concerned with inter-party relations.” These principles aimed to maintain relations with these countries and safeguard national interests, while also paying attention to those who share the same ideology and carry forward the international communist spirit of helping other communist parties. Mao Zedong advocated the dialectical unity of national interests and ideology. However, in practice, the CPC’s foreign policy in this period not only had successful experiences, but also accumulated some lessons.

In the 1970s, Deng Xiaoping reflected on the problems of the times and put forward the theme of peace and development. With this background, China implemented the policy of the reform and opening-up, taking advantage of the strategic opportunity of a period of overall world peace. China focused on economic construction and, by integrating more openly with the world, enabled the socialist modernisation drive. The guiding thought and objectives of the CPC’s international relations began to be adjusted, from supporting world revolution in the past to serving domestic economic construction. In diplomacy, the CPC advocates “avoiding alliances and confrontation, and not targeting any third country,”[15] and carried out diversified and all-round diplomacy.

In terms of inter-party relations, on the basis of drawing from experiences and lessons of the international communist movement, Deng Xiaoping set forth the principle of interaction with communist parties, ruling parties, and non-ruling parties all over the world. In regard to relations with communist parties of all countries, Deng Xiaoping proposed that historical issues should be treated with the attitude of seeking truth from facts, and not denying disputes and contradictions. And regarding the grievances, between the CPC and the communist parties of other countries, in the great debates of the international communist movement in the 1960s, Deng held a forward-looking attitude, proposing to establish a “new type of inter-party relationship” between the parties.

On the basis of Deng Xiaoping’s thinking, the CPC’s 12th National Congress of 1982 formally put forward the “four principles of inter-party interaction” in terms of “independence, complete equality, mutual respect, and non-interference in each other’s internal affairs,”[16] as the CPC’s core guiding principle of inter-party interaction in the new period. At the CPC’s 14th National Congress in 1992 it was also proposed to “develop our party’s relations with communist parties and other political parties of various countries.”[17] And at the CPC’s 15th National Congress in 1997 it was proposed, on the basis of the Four Principles, “to develop new types of inter-party exchanges and cooperation with the political parties of all countries that desire contact with our Party.”[18] Here, the CPC’s foreign relations were extended to include “political parties of all countries that desire contact with the CPC,” in order to serve the development of the state-to-state foreign relations. These major adjustments have injected new elements into China’s development of interaction and cooperation with political parties of other countries.

Under the guidance of this principle, the CPC successively restored its ties with the communist parties of most countries and eased its relations with the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (and later the Communist Party of the Russian Federation). At the same time, it began extensive interactions with socialist parties in Western European countries, the ruling nationalist parties in Asian, African and Latin American countries and other major political parties. Party diplomacy had begun a new chapter.[19]

In the early 1990s, with the drastic changes in Eastern Europe and the disintegration of the Soviet Union, the international communist movement suffered serious setbacks, and socialism with Chinese characteristics was facing a very difficult international environment. The CPC continued to adhere to the four principles of inter-party relations to deal with the relations between various parties. General Secretary Jiang Zemin provided a new theoretical summary of the changes in world patterns and the prospects for the development of human society. He believed that the diversity of world civilisations is a historical necessity and an objective reality: “The diversity of different nationalities, religions and civilisations should be fully respected.”[20] In order to establish extensive relations and maintain independence, China has put forward the view of “partnership-but-not-alliance,” which dominated the direction of inter-party interaction of the CPC in this period.

At the beginning of the new century and in light of China’s rapid rise that led some to speak in terms of a “China threat” hypothesis, General Secretary Hu Jintao put forward the political concept of a “harmonious world,” thereby announcing to the world that China will always follow the path of peaceful development. In order to establish a positive international image of the CPC as the largest ruling party and to demonstrate to the world the party’s ruling concepts and achievements, the CPC constantly expanded inter-party relations, deepened the exchange of ideas, and consolidated the foundation for interaction with political parties all over the world.

At present, the world is experiencing great changes unseen for a century. The COVID-19 pandemic, natural disasters, terrorism, and extremism bring all manner of challenges to the world. In order to counter these challenges, the CPC with Xi Jinping at the core has continued to understand the world and analyse problems by means of Marxist historical materialism. The CPC has grasped the characteristics and key issues of the current era and put forward the proposal of building a community with a shared future for humankind, thus offering the CPC’s solution to the difficult problems of our times. The core connotation of the initiative to build a community with a shared future for humankind is to “build an open, inclusive, clean, and beautiful world that enjoys lasting peace, universal security, and common prosperity” under the principles of “consultation, co-construction and shared benefits.”[21] Building a community with a shared future for humankind is the requirement of the era when human society has developed to the stage of the coexistence of capitalism and socialism, and it will create the material basis and objective conditions for the “real community” described by Marx (see above). It is not only the requirement of the development of human history, but also in line with the values of proletarian political parties all over the world.

In terms of exchanges with the world’s political parties, Xi Jinping proposed further establishing the new type of relations between political parties based on the four principles of independence, complete equality, mutual respect and non-interference in internal affairs, to which the CPC adheres in its external contacts and in accordance with the requirements of the new era. In December of 2017, the CPC held a high-level dialogue with the world’s political parties. At the meeting, Xi Jinping delivered an important speech and stressed: “Political parties of different countries should enhance mutual trust, communication and coordination; explore ways to build a new type of relations among political parties, featuring the seeking of common ground while reserving differences; mutual respect and mutual learning on the basis of a new type of international relations; and build an international network of exchanges and cooperation between political parties in various forms and at various levels so as to pool powerful forces for building a community with a shared future for humankind.”[22] Xi Jinping’s thought indicates the direction for the new situation of party relations and promotes the theory of China’s inter-party relations to a new height.

3. Conclusion

Reviewing the development of the CPC in the past century since its founding, the leaders of the CPC have always guided their relations with communist parties, ruling parties and other political parties around the world with Marxist positions and viewpoints. It has formed the principles and guiding theory of the CPC’s foreign relations with political parties in different periods, guided the CPC and its diplomatic practice, made important contributions to the success of socialism with Chinese characteristics, and provided experiences upon which to draw for exchanges between political parties in other countries.

At the 2017 first high-level dialogue between the CPC and world political parties held in Beijing (mentioned above), Xi Jinping pointed out: “Moving forward, the CPC will enhance exchanges with political parties of other countries to share ideas on enhancing party competence and state governance and conduct further exchanges and dialogue among civilisations so as to improve our strategic mutual trust. Let all of us, people of all countries, join hands to build a global community of shared future for humankind and jointly build a better world!”[23] This is the embodiment of Xi Jinping’s diplomatic thinking in the relations between political parties. It clearly defines the direction of the CPC’s contacts with political parties in the world in the new era.

At present, the world is in a period of great change unseen for a century, posing severe challenges to world peace and people’s happiness. There is an urgent need for new ideas and new solutions to help solve global problems. The report of the CPC’s 19th National Congress in 2017 proposed that the “Communist Party of China strives for both the wellbeing of the Chinese people and human progress. To make new and greater contributions for humankind is our Party’s abiding mission.”[24] Therefore, “China is willing to expand converging interests with other countries, accelerating the construction of new international relations centring on win-win cooperation and forming a community of shared future for humankind and the common interests of humankind.”[25] Building this community is the solution proposed by the CPC in the face of the problems of our times. The CPC takes as its vision and mission the guiding of inter-party exchanges with political parties in various countries, promoting mutual trust by advocating better communication and close cooperation, and advancing the construction of a new type of political party relations on the basis of seeking common ground while reserving differences, mutual respect through mutual learning, so as to realise the ultimate goal of building a community with a shared future for humankind and a better world.

It is the purpose and mission of political parties all over the world to solve various problems and challenges faced by their own countries and all humankind. Therefore, we call on the world’s political parties, especially ruling parties and Marxist political parties, to take promoting the construction of a community with a shared future for all humankind as the new content and goal of political party exchanges, and jointly make new contributions to the creation of a new form of human political civilisation.

References
Chai Shangjin. 2021. “The Innovative Contribution of the CPC’s One Hundred Years of International Engagement to the Marxist Theory of Inter-Party Relations.” Studies on the Theories of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, no. 4, 42-50+108. In Chinese.

Engels, Friedrich. 1882. “Engels to Karl Kautsky, 7 February 1882.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 46, 191-95. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1992.

Engels, Friedrich. 1883. “Preface to the 1883 German Edition of the Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 26, 118-19. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990.

Engels, Friedrich. 1888. “Preface to the 1888 English Edition of the ‘Manifesto of the Communist Party’.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol, 512-18. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990.

Engels, Friedrich. 1892. “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 26, 129-276. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1990.

Engels, Friedrich. 1894. “Engels to Paul Lafargue, 3 January 1894.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 50, 252-54. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

Jiang Zemin. 1998. “Speech at the Science City of Novosibirsk (24 November 1998).” In Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, vol. 2, 231-35. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2012.

Jiang Zemin, 2000. “Speech at the United Nations Millennium Summit (7 September 2000).” In Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, vol. 3, 1-7-12. Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 2012.

Lenin, V. I. 1902. “What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.” In Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 5, 347-529. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1961.

Mao Zedong. 1954. “The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence are a Long-term Goal (December 1954). In On Diplomacy, 136-50. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1998.

Marx, Karl. 1858. Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58 (First Version of Capital, also known Grundrisse). In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 28. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986.

Marx, Karl. 1859. “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 26, 257-417. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1987.

Marx, Karl. 1870. “Marx to Paul Lafargue, 19 April 1870.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 43, 489-93. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988.

Marx, Karl. 1871. “Record of Marx’s Interview with ‘The World’ Correspondent.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 22, 600-6. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels, 1845. The Holy Family. In Marx Engels Collected Works, vol. 4, 5-211. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975.

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1846. The German Ideology. In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5, 19-539 Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976

Marx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. 1848. “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 6, 477-519. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976.

Zhou Enlai. 1953. “Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence (31 December, 1953).” In Selected Works of Zhou Enlai, Vol. 2, 128. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989.

Xi Jinping. 2016. “Stay True to Our Original Aspiration and Continue Marching Forward (1 July 2016).” In The Governance of China, vol. 2, 32-48. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2017.

Xi Jinping. 2017. “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era: Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 18, 2017.” In The Governance of China, vol. 3, 1-82. China: Foreign Languages Press.

Xi Jinping. 2017. “Turn People’s Aspirations for a Better Life into Reality: Keynote Speech at the High-level Dialogue of the CPC and World Political Parties held on 1 December 2017.” In The Governance of China, vol. 3, 354-57. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press.

Xi Jinping. 2021. “Speech at a Ceremony Marking the Centenary of the Communist Party of China (1 July, 2021).” Qiushi, 6 September 2021. Available at http://en.qstheory.cn/2021-09/06/c_658164.htm.

Footnotes
[1] This speech is now available on many websites and will soon be available in print form. The quotation here is made from the Chinese text at the CPC Central Committee’s journal, Qiushi (Seeking Truth): http://www.qstheory.cn/dukan/qs/2021-07 ... 656422.htm. An initial English translation may be found at the English version of Qiushi, at http://en.qstheory.cn/2021-09/06/c_658164.htm.

[2] This sentence summarises the conclusions of a number of works by Marx and Engels, including the opening lines of the “Manifesto of the Communist Party” (1848), Marx’s preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859), Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, and Engels’s prefaces to the German edition of the “Manifesto” in 1883 and the English edition in 1888.

[3] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, 1845. “The Holy Family.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, vol. 4, 5-211. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975, p. 93.

[4] These three types of community (共同体, a word coined to translate the German Gemeinschaft and Gemeinwesen) are well-known in Chinese Marxist scholarship. The core of this approach is found in Marx, Economic Manuscripts of 1857-58 (First Version of Capital, also known Grundrisse). In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 28. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986, p. 95, from which many of the quotations here come. See also pp. 415, 420. The phrases “illusory community,” “real community,” and “individuals attain their freedom in and through their association” come from Marx and Engels, 1846, The German Ideology. In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 5. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976, pp. 46, 78.

[5] The final quotation comes from “The Manifesto of the Communist Party.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 6, 477-519. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976, p. 506.

[6] The phrase “association of free people” is shorthand for the text quoted above from the “Manifesto.”

[7] Engels, 1893, “Engels to Paul Lafargue, 27 June 1893.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 50, 156-60. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976, p. 157.

[8] Marx, 1871. “Record of Marx’s Interview with ‘The World’ Correspondent.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 22, 600-6. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1986, p. 602.

[9] Marx, 1870. “Marx to Paul Lafargue, 19 April 1870.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 43, 489-93. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988, p. 491.

[10] Engels, 1894, “Engels to Paul Lafargue, 3 January 1894.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 50, 252-54. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1976, p. 252.

[11] Engels, 1882, “Engels to Karl Kautsky, 7 February 1882.” In Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 46, 191-95. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1992, p. 192.

[12] Lenin, 1902, “What Is to Be Done? Burning Questions of Our Movement.” In Lenin Collected Works, Vol. 5, 347-529. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1961, p. 370.

[13] See Chai Shangjin, 2021, “The Innovative Contribution of the CPC’s One Hundred Years of International Engagement to the Marxist Theory of Inter-Party Relations.” Studies on the Theories of Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, no. 4, 42-50+108.

[14] Zhou Enlai. 1953. “Five Principles for Peaceful Coexistence (31 December, 1953).” In Selected Works of Zhou Enlai, Vol. 2, 128. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1989. See also, Mao Zedong, “The Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence are a Long-term Goal (December 1954). In On Diplomacy, 136-50. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1998.

[15] This sentence, which summarises a long tradition of CPC diplomacy, was first proposed by Jiang Zemin in 1998, “Speech at the Science City of Novosibirsk (24 November 1998).” In Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, vol. 2, 231-35. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2012, p. 234.It also appears in the 2001 “Joint Statement Signed by the Chinese and Russian Heads of States, l6 July, 2001,” and has been included in each development to what is now, from 2019, “A Comprehensive Strategic Partnership for Collaboration in the New Era.” The text of the initial statement may be found at Foreign Ministry website of the PRC (https://www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjdt_6 ... 79028.html).

[16] The text – in Chinese – may be found at the official site containing material from all of the CPC National Congresses: http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64168 ... 15129.html.

[17] The Chinese text may be found at http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/64162/64168 ... 15682.html.

[18] This quotation comes from Jiang Zemin’s speech on 12 September, 1997. Jiang Zemin, 1997, “Hold High the Great Banner of Deng Xiaoping Theory and Comprehensively Advance the Cause of Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics into the 21st Century (12 September, 1997).” In Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, vol. 2, 1-50. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2012, p. 42.

[19] See Chai Shangjin, 2021, “The Innovative Contribution.”

[20] Jiang Zemin, 2000, “Speech at the United Nations Millennium Summit (7 September 2000).” In Selected Works of Jiang Zemin, vol. 3, 1-7-12. Beijing Foreign Languages Press, 2012,p. 110

[21] Xi Jinping, 2017, “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects and Strive for the Great Success of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era: Report to the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China, October 18, 2017.” In The Governance of China, vol. 3, 1-82. China: Foreign Languages Press, 2020.p. 63.

[22] Xi Jinping, 2017, “Turn People’s Aspirations for a Better Life into Reality: Keynote Speech at the High-level Dialogue of the CPC and World Political Parties held on 1 December 2017.” In The Governance of China, vol. 3, 354-57. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, p. 356. Quotation from the Chinese original, which contains the complete text of the speech.

[23] Xi Jinping, 2017, “Turn People’s Aspirations for a Better Life into Reality,” p. 357.

[24] Xi Jinping, 2017, “Secure a Decisive Victory in Building a Moderately Prosperous Society in All Respects,” p. 62.

[25] Xi Jinping, 2016, “Stay True to Our Original Aspiration and Continue Marching Forward (1 July 2016).” In The Governance of China, vol. 2, 32-48. Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 2017, p. 42.

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