By Alain Badiou
24 January 2023
via Verso Blog

This article was originally published by L’Obs on 2 September 2022.

By Steve Dubb and Emily Kawano

Nonprofit Quarterly
July 13, 2022 – What does ownership mean, and how can it be structured to design a more democratic economy? It is common to think of ownership as being about possession: it’s yours, or it’s mine—or perhaps, if we are thinking as a group, it’s ours. But it is much more than that. Ownership is a bundle of rights—social, individual, and collective—which means its boundaries and intersections vary from place to place.1

Today, a growing number of people are questioning how those ownership rights are defined and distributed. These days, in the world of work in the United States, there is talk of a Great Resignation;2 but this can also be thought of in other ways—as a great awakening, a great rebellion, a great recalibration.3 Beyond the workplace, communities are designing entirely new ecosystems of institutions—reclaiming ownership of their identities, cultures, land, and businesses.

Discussion of systems change has also rarely been more present. Yet, when people say “systems change,” more often than not they don’t mean systemic change—not really. Perhaps, to be generous, they mean systemic change writ small, focused on taking a multifaceted (sometimes called “collective impact”) approach to addressing a single problem—such as building a better workforce training and development system4— rather than shifting power and changing rights of ownership in society as a whole.

As Cyndi Suarez, NPQ’s president and editor in chief, observed a few years ago, “[S]ystem thinking has become deracinated, devoid of its true power implications.”5 Nowhere is this point more apt than when it comes to thinking of the overall economy. Simply put, when it comes to the economy, all too often systems change is treated as a bridge too far, best not entertained at all. Alternatively, systems change is only framed within the confines of our current dominant system: we are invited to “reimagine capitalism” rather than to dare imagine beyond it.6

With this article, we want to take that challenge on. We do this not out of curiosity or academic fancy but for some highly practical and pragmatic reasons. Our collective well-being—and perhaps even our collective survival—depends on it.

The Nature of the Challenge

It is common to treat the present global economy as a fact of nature, but it is not. Greed, we are also told, is part of the human condition. Maybe it is, but so too is cooperation. As Ariel Knafo, a psychology professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, explained in Scientific American years ago, “Human nature supports both prosocial and selfish traits,” and the “degree to which we act cooperatively or selfishly is unique to each individual and hinges on a variety of genetic and environmental influences.”7 Our current economic system privileges greed and diminishes cooperation; an economic system that prioritized solidarity would do the opposite. We can design our economy to build on the more cooperative, rather than the more self-serving, parts of our human selves—if we choose.

Can a redesign be done? Well, it has been done before. In fact, our present capitalist system, so often treated as permanent, is, historically speaking, quite new. The origins of the capitalist economy can be traced back to at least the beginning of the imperialist process unleashed by the European so-called “discovery” of the Americas. As economist Jeffrey Sachs explains in “Twentieth-century political economy: a brief history of global capitalism,” modern capitalism only “emerged as a [dominant] social system in western Europe in the first half of the nineteenth century.”8

In short, capitalism became the world’s reigning economic system only two centuries ago, and in many parts of the world its ascendancy is more recent than that. Economic systems have changed before. They can—and almost certainly will—change again.

Capitalism, as an economic system, has unleashed human productive capacity, but it has done so in ways that are highly exploitative and extractive. Capitalism, in short, has done and is doing great harm. It is impossible to discuss capitalism without recognizing its roots in Indigenous genocide and the enslavement of millions of Africans and their forcible relocation—dragged in chains to the “New World.” As Joseph Inikori, a University of Rochester historian, details, “the employment of enslaved Africans in large-scale commodity production in the Americas was central to the rise of the nineteenth-century Atlantic economy.”9

These days, even the benefits of capitalism on its own terms (such as gross domestic product) are showing diminishing returns—one sign of which is a decline in productivity increases.10 Meanwhile, when it comes to economic justice, the costs are disturbingly obvious. In January 2022, Oxfam offered a report that noted, “The 10 richest men in the world own more than the bottom 3.1 billion people.”11 And U.S. data on the racial wealth and wage gaps give few indications—to be polite—of substantive progress. In 2020, David Leonhardt in the New York Times observed that “the wages of Black men trail those of white men by as much as when Harry Truman was president.”12 Meanwhile, the Black-white wealth gap, according to Federal Reserve data, was greater in 2016 than in 1968 (2019 data showed modest improvement).13

Environmental costs are also rapidly rising. The climate crisis, the result of mounting carbon emissions, has already increased global temperatures by an estimated 1.11 degrees Celsius above preindustrial levels.14 But carbon emissions are by no means the only environmental challenge. As journalist Ashoka Mukpo writes in Mongabay, “The past 50 years have seen a catastrophic decline in the planet’s ecosystems and natural environments. Every day at least 32,300 hectares (80,000 acres) of forest vanish, and the size of wildlife populations has dropped by an average of 60%.”15

A Path Forward: Steps Toward a Solidarity Economy

How can any economy address the vast injustices ours generates today? The word economy is a combination of two Greek words—oikos, meaning household, and nomos, meaning management.16 The global economy, then, requires that we collectively manage our planetary home, including how we generate wealth and allocate resources. This is, of course, an immensely complicated endeavor in a world inhabited by more than 7.9 billion people.17

Still, the good news is that the economy is ultimately a human creation. It therefore can be—and is now, albeit often in very harmful ways—collectively managed. Even better news is that there is widespread creativity and innovation building a new economy right now in the shell of the old. In some cases, people are doing so consciously—in other words, in their work, they are pursuing a vision of replacing the overall economic system with one that would prioritize solidarity. More often, though, these innovators are claiming ownership of their community and their local economies without explicitly seeking to build a solidarity economy. But in this pragmatic, practical, problem-solving work, these economy-building movement leaders are laying crucial building blocks of a different, more humane form of economic and social organization.

But what do we mean by the phrase solidarity economy? As was noted last year in the Nonprofit Quarterly, when moving toward an economy that is rooted in principles of solidarity, there is neither a “ready-made” formula nor a “one-size-fits-all” approach. A solidarity economy is, however, organized around some core values—solidarity, participatory democracy, equity in all dimensions, sustainability, and pluralism.18 In terms of its theoretical base, the solidarity economy builds on the notion of economic democracy—namely, the idea that principles of popular sovereignty should be applied to management of the economy.19

The notion of a solidarity economy is also based on lessons from the failures of twentieth-century state socialism. The core solidarity economy values of pluralism, participatory democracy, and sustainability are a direct response to the lessons learned from state socialism’s overreliance on centralized decision-making, as is the solidarity economy movement’s overall emphasis on the importance of decentralization and federation.

A mistaken assumption of state socialism was its implicit postulate that economic management of our collective home meant management from the top. The work of the late Elinor Ostrom, who was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economic Sciences in 2009, points to the fallacy of this assumption. Her Nobel Prize lecture is titled “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems.” Ostrom’s research focused on the organization of what she called “common pool resources.” To pick a prominent example, the free-for-all dumping of carbon into the air could be considered a degradation of the common pool resource of our global atmosphere, resulting in climate change. Among her conclusions: more often than not, effective resource management solutions come from the bottom rather than the top. Ostrom also argued that “a core goal of public policy should be to facilitate the development of institutions that bring out the best in humans.”20 This also happens to be a good way to summarize a central goal of the solidarity economy movement.

Putting Solidarity Economy Values Into Practice

So, what practical, pragmatic lessons can be learned from economic justice movements today? Here are a few:

Mutual Aid. The COVID-19 pandemic has lifted mutual aid out of obscurity and made evident to all the practicality of solidarity as an operating principle. An article published last year in Frontiers in Psychology noted the fundamental role that mutual aid played in promoting community health and well-being during the pandemic in the United Kingdom. It called for sustaining such practices even after the pandemic finally subsides, by (among other things) prioritizing community-level interventions, and recognizing their importance in public policy in developing “long-term community responses.”21

Democratic Planning. Participatory democracy is sometimes described as a pie-in-the-sky concept; but participatory budgeting in the United States is, increasingly, shifting from a niche idea to a serious mechanism for the public to take ownership of public resources and plan their use in a democratic way.22

Take the city of Seattle, Washington. In response to calls to defund the police, the city council allocated

$30 million to be distributed through a public planning process. The process was sometimes contentious, but it succeeded in giving BIPOC communities in Seattle an opportunity to self-determine the investments that they needed. As city council member Debora Juarez said, when the council geared up to approve the measure, “We don’t need to tell BIPOC communities what they need. We just need to listen and deliver.”23

Figure 1: Seattle, $30 million Participatory Budgeting
(as adopted by City Council on August 9, 2021)26

Housing: $8.8 million
•  $4.6 million: Subsidized homeownership projects, with target outreach to households of color

•  $1.8 million: Wealth-building education for residents, artists, and business owners of color

•  $1 million: City contracting help for construction businesses owned by women and people of color

•  $875,000: Help for homeowners to keep their properties

•  $250,000: Study on potential lease-to-own program

•  $250,000: Consultant work on housing for union apprentices

Small businesses: $7.5 million

•  $5 million: Grants and subsidized loans to small businesses, including those owned by people of color

•  $2.5 million: Consultant support for small businesses

Education: $7.5 million

•  $4 million: Various student and teacher programs, with focus on youth of color

•  $2 million: Cultural programs aimed at youth of color

•  $1.5 million: Programs for youth involved in the criminal legal system

Health: $6.2 million

•  $1.7 million: Programs helping residents of color with healthcare careers

•  $1.5 million: Innovative healing programs at community health centers

•  $1 million: Efforts to secure healthcare for residents without coverage, with focus on communities of color

•  $750,000: Healthy food programs aimed at communities of color

•  $550,000: Environmental justice grants for community organizations that focus on people of color

•  $500,000: Healthcare mentorships and internships for youth of color

•  $250,000: Farm-to-table programs aimed at youth of color

Political economist Gar Alperovitz has noted that the issue of democratic planning is a central challenge for building a post-capitalist economy.24 There is, quite obviously, a lot more work to do to build governance structures that can allow for effective democratic input into economic planning at the regional and national level. Nonetheless, nascent though they may be, local examples of democratic planning, such as in Seattle, are building a critical knowledge base in this direction.25

Workplace Democracy. Employees typically spend around half of their waking hours at their workplace. All too often, they are excluded from any democratic decision-making beyond what’s for lunch. The transformative potential of fostering workplace democracy is enormous, and data suggest that it pays off in terms of productivity, job quality, job satisfaction, and employee retention. Employee ownership is a hot trend these days, especially given the so-called “silver tsunami”—the impending retirement of the baby boom generation of small business owners.27 There are two major avenues of employee ownership: an employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) and a worker cooperative. Both have been shown to improve business performance.

ESOPs give workers shares of stock in their workplace, and are by far the more widespread model. While workers in some ESOPs have a controlling interest, the vast majority do not. Worker cooperatives, by contrast, are owned and controlled by the workers, thus hardwiring workplace democracy into the structure. While ESOPs are a step in the right direction, worker co-ops are a better strategy to build democracy in the workplace.

Sustainability. At the Midwest Organic and Sustainable Education Service (MOSES), executive director Lori Stern sees regenerative agriculture as a means to apply solidarity economy principles to build “a more equitable and resilient system that puts farmers, workers, and eaters in control.” Her organization pursues this vision through a range of strategies, including increasing connections between farmers (including by building domestic supply chains), promoting cooperative ownership structures, and food system policy advocacy. Stern adds that, “The emerging farming solidarity economy is a sum of a range of practices, rooted in solidarity economy principles of pluralism, democracy, equity, mutualism, and sustainability. The connected and circular nature of life on a diverse farm forms the ecosystem that enables all to thrive.”28

Equity and Reparations. There are many inspiring examples of how a genuine solidarity economy, organizing effectively, combines equity and community ownership. One example comes from Humboldt, California, where Cooperation Humboldt—an organization with an explicit solidarity economy mission—has partnered with the local Wiyot nation. This partnership has involved committing to paying an honor tax of 1 percent of Cooperation Humboldt’s annual budget to the Wiyot nation, in acknowledgment that Humboldt is unceded Wiyot ancestral territory. Such reparations are integral to a solidarity economy.29

But Is Systemic Change Possible?

We conclude where we began. We respect those, such as Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, who advocate for the broad application of solidarity principles in our economy but seek to do so within the framework of the existing economic system.30 Benner and Pastor note that “we have reached a point where our fundamental economic structures are driving unprecedented inequality, social divisions, and ecological destruction, amidst a politics of polarization, fragmentation, and alienation,” and ask if we cannot “build a better economy” out of a sense of mutuality.31 That is, indeed, the right question to ask.

Where we differ is in our contention that advocates of a solidarity economy must be brave enough to admit that building an alternative economics that is truly based on cooperation will very likely require systemic change beyond capitalism.32 In particular, we believe the separation of the overwhelming majority of people from meaningful ownership of the economy is a central flaw of capitalism that fosters division, creates concentration of wealth and power, encourages corruption (and cheating—anything to get an edge), and, ultimately, undermines solidarity. This is not to deny the need to fight for reforms; however, it is also to affirm the need for movements to retain the imagination to envision systemic transformation, even while fighting for reforms such as the ones obtained by solidarity economy advocates in Seattle.

Where we agree with Benner and Pastor is in the necessity of rooting social change in social movements. The struggle for a solidarity economy is a practical one, and there is no path forward without social movement. As the late sociologist Erik Olin Wright noted, “If processes of social reproduction were comprehensive, and fully coherent, then there would be little possibility for effective strategies of radical social transformation.”33 But Wright was an optimist, and he added that “even when the spaces are limited, they can allow for transformations that matter.”34

That remains the work. It begins with imagining an economy beyond capitalism. Is this possible? Not only is it possible, it’s a must, if we truly want to work toward an economy that we can all claim as our own.

Notes
1. Steve Dubb, “Ownership as Social Relation: Nonprofit Strategies to Build Community Wealth through Land,” Nonprofit Quarterly, December 11, 2018, org/ownership-as-social-relation-nonprofit-strategies-to-build-community-wealth-through-land.

2. Ophelia Akanjo, “The Great Resignation—A Call for Change in Organizational Culture,” Nonprofit Quarterly, February 16, 2022, org/the-great-resignation-a-call-for-change-in-organizational-culture.

3. Manuel Pastor et , “Solidarity Economics: OUR Movement, OUR Economy” (UC Santa Cruz Institute for Social Transformation and USC Dornsife Equity Research Institute, November 4, 2021, virtual), transform.ucsc.edu/event/solidarity-economics/.

4. Bryan Lindsley, “Our Change Systems Solutions—FAQs,” National Fund for Workforce Solutions, Washington, C., accessed April 2, 2022, nationalfund.org/our-solutions/change-systems-for-improved-outcomes/frequently-asked-questions-about-our-change-systems-solution.

5. Cyndi Suarez, “Systems Change Is All about Shifting Power,” Nonprofit Quarterly, October 1, 2019, org/systems-change-is-all-about-shifting-power.

6. See, for example, Our Call to Reimagine Capitalism in America (Redwood City, CA: Omidyar Network, September 2020); and Rebecca Henderson, Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire (New York: PublicAffairs, 2020). See also Rebecca Henderson, website for Reimagining Capitalism in a World on Fire, accessed May 2, 2022, org.

7. Matthew Robison, “Are People Naturally Inclined to Cooperate or Be Selfish?” Scientific American, September 1, 2014, scientificamerican.com/article/are-people-naturally-inclined-to-cooperate-or-be-selfish.

8. Jeffrey Sachs, “Twentieth-century political economy: a brief history of global capitalism,” Oxford Review of Economic Policy 15, no. 4 (December 1999): 92.

9. Joseph Inikori, “Atlantic Slavery and the Rise of the Capitalist Global Economy.” Supplement, Current Anthropology 61, no. S22 (October 2020): S166–67.

10. Shawn Sprague, “The S. productivity slowdown: an economy-wide and industry-level analysis,” Monthly Labor Review, April 2021, www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2021/article/the-us-productivity-slowdown-the-economy-wide-and-industry-level-analysis.htm.

11. Nabil Ahmed et , Inequality kills: The unparalleled action needed to combat unprecedented inequality in the wake of COVID-19 (Oxford, UK: Oxfam Great Britain, January 17, 2022), 10.
12. David Leonhardt, “The Black-White Wage Gap Is as Big as It Was in 1950,” New York Times, June 25, 2020, com/2020/06/25/opinion/sunday/race-wage-gap.html.

13. Heather Long and Andrew Van Dam, “The black-white economic divide is as wide as it was in 1968,” Washington Post, June 4, 2020, washingtonpost.com/business/2020/06/04/economic-divide-black-households; and Rachel Siegel, “Wealth gaps between Black and White families persisted even at the height of the economic expansion,” Washington Post, September 28, 2020, washingtonpost.com/business/2020/09/28/wealth-gap-fed.

14. World Meteorological Organization, “2021 one of the seven warmest years on record, WMO consolidated data shows,” press release 19012022, January 19, 2022, public.wmo.int/en/media/press-release/2021-one-of-seven-warmest-years-record-wmo-consolidated-data-shows.

15, Ashoka Mukpo, “As nature declines, so does human quality of life, study finds,” Mongabay, February 9, 2021, mongabay.com/2021/02/as-nature-declines-so-does-human-quality-of-life-study-finds.

16. “The Oikos of God: Economy and Ecology in the Global Household,” Interfaith Center for Sustainable Development, accessed May 3, 2022, com/the-oikos-of-god-economy-and-ecology-in-the-global-household.

17. “Wold Population Dashboard,” United Nations Population Fund, 2022, accessed May 3, 2022, org/data/world-population-dashboard.

18. Emily Kawano, “Imaginal Cells of the Solidarity Economy,” Nonprofit Quarterly 28, 2 (Summer 2021): 48–55, nonprofitquarterly.org/imaginal-cells-of-the-solidarity-economy/.

19, Ted Howard, Steve Dubb, and Sarah McKinley, “Economic Democracy,” in Achieving Sustainability: Visions, Principles, and Practices, Debra Rowe (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2014), 231–39.

20. Elinor Ostrom, “Beyond Markets and States: Polycentric Governance of Complex Economic Systems” (Nobel Prize lecture, Aula Magna, Stockholm University, Stockholm, December 8, 2009), org/uploads/2018/06/ostrom_lecture.pdf.

21. Maria Fernandes-Jesus et , “More Than a COVID-19 Response: Sustaining Mutual Aid Groups During and Beyond the Pandemic,” Frontiers in Psychology 12 (October 20, 2021).

22. See Michael Menser, “From Defunding to Reinvestment: Why We Need to Scale Participatory Budgeting,” Nonprofit Quarterly, June 25, 2020, nonprofitquarterly.org/from-defunding-to-reinvestment-why-we-need-to-scale-participatory-budgeting.

23. Daniel Beekman, “Seattle will invest $30 million in strategies recommended by panel for communities of color,” Seattle Times, last modified August 10, 2021, com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-will-invest-30-million-in-strategies-recommended-by-panel-for-communities-of-color. See also Daniel Beekman, “Seattle Mayor Durkan sends proposal to City Council for $30 million promised to communities of color,” Seattle Times, last modified July 13, 2021, seattletimes.com/seattle-news/politics/seattle-mayor-durkan-sends-proposal-to-city-council-for-30-million-promised-to-communities-of-color/.

24. Gar Alperovitz,” Building a Democratic Economy: Sketch of a Pluralist Commonwealth,” Nonprofit Quarterly 27, 1 (Spring 2020): 50–57, nonprfitquarterly.org/building-a-democratic-economy-sketch-of-a-pluralist-commonwealth/.

25. Steve Dubb, “Seattle Launches $30 million Participatory Budgeting Process,” Nonprofit Quarterly, February 5, 2021, org/seattle-launches-30-million-participatory-budgeting-process/.

26. For these data, see Beekman, “Seattle Mayor Durkan sends proposal to City Council for $30 million promised to communities of color.”

27. Steve Dubb, “Can Employee Ownership Hold Back a Tsunami of Small Business Closures?” Nonprofit Quarterly, November 27, 2017, org/can-employee-ownership-hold-back-tsunami-small-business-closures.

28. Lori Stern, “Rethinking Food with Solidarity in Mind: Lessons from COVID-19,” Nonprofit Quarterly, October 20, 2021, org/rethinking-food-with-solidarity-in-mind-lessons-from-covid-19.

29. Michelle Vassel and David Cobb, “An Indigenous Community Land Trust Rises: Making Land Back a Reality,” Nonprofit Quarterly, October 13, 2021, org/an-indigenous-community-land-trust-rises-making-land-back-a-reality.

30. Chris Benner and Manuel Pastor, Solidarity Economics: Why Mutuality and Movements Matter (Cambridge, UK: Polity Press, 2021), 2.

31. Ibid.

32, Emily Kawano and Julie Matthaei, “System Change: A Basic Primer to the Solidarity Economy,” Nonprofit Quarterly, July 8, 2020, org/system-change-a-basic-primer-to-the-solidarity-economy.

33. Erik Olin Wright, “Elements of a Theory of Transformation,” in Envisioning Real Utopias (London: Verso Books, 2010), 290.

34. Ibid.

Steve Dubb is a senior editor at NPQ, where he directs NPQ’s economic justice program, including NPQ’s Economy Remix column. Steve has worked with cooperatives and nonprofits for over two decades, including twelve years at The Democracy Collaborative and three years as executive director of NASCO (North American Students of Cooperation). In his work, Steve has authored, co-authored and edited numerous reports; participated in and facilitated learning cohorts; designed community building strategies; and helped build the field of community wealth building. Steve is the lead author of Building Wealth: The Asset-Based Approach to Solving Social and Economic Problems (Aspen 2005) and coauthor (with Rita Hodges) of The Road Half Traveled: University Engagement at a Crossroads, published by MSU Press in 2012. In 2016, Steve curated and authored Conversations on Community Wealth Building, a collection of interviews of community builders that Steve had conducted over the previous decade.

Emily Kawano is a cofounder of the US Solidarity Economic Network, codirector of Wellspring Cooperatives in Springfield, Massachusetts, and is a member of NPQ’s economic justice advisory committee.

Decolonization and Communism

 

 

By Nodrada

“We have to give life to Indo-American socialism with our own reality, in our own language.
Here is a mission worthy of a new generation.”

-José Carlos Mariátegui, “Anniversary and Balance,” José Carlos Mariátegui: AnAnthology

 

June 26, 2021 — Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal reposted from Orinoco Tribune — While the turn towards analyzing ongoing settler-colonialism has finally reached the mainstream of North American political discussions, there is still a lack of popular understanding of the issues involved. Settler-colonialism is, ironically, understood within the framework of the ways of thinking brought by the European ruling classes to the Americas. By extension, the conceptions of decolonization are similarly limited. Although the transition from analyzing psychological or “discursive” decolonization to analyzing literal, concrete colonization has been extremely important, it requires some clarifications.

Settler–colonialism is a form of colonialism distinct from franchise colonialism. The colonizers seek primarily to eliminate the indigenous population rather than exploit them, as in the latter form of colonialism. Decolonization is the struggle to abolish colonial conditions, though approaches to it may vary. Societies formed on a settler-colonial basis include the United States, Canada, Israel, New Zealand, and Australia. For our purposes, we will focus on the United States in analyzing local ideas of settler-colonialism and decolonization.

Among North American radicals, there are two frequent errors in approaching decolonization.

On the one hand, there are the opponents of decolonization who argue that settler-colonialism no longer exists. In their view, to identify specific concerns for Indigenous peoples and to identify the ongoing presence of settler-colonial social positions is divisive and stuck in the past. They believe that settlers no longer exist, and Euro-Americans have fully become indigenous to North America through a few centuries of residency.

On the other hand, there are proponents of decolonization who believe that Euro-Americans are eternally damned as settlers, and cannot be involved in any radical change whatsoever. The most extreme of these argue for the exclusion of Euro-Americans from radical politics entirely.

Settler-colonialism is not over, contrary to the first view. Rather, Indigenous peoples still struggle for their rights to sovereignty within and outside reservations, especially ecological-spiritual rights. Their ostensibly legally recognized rights are not respected, either. The examples of the struggles of the Wet’suwet’en, Standing Rock Lakota, Mi’kmaq, and other peoples in recent memory are testimony to this. Indigenous peoples are still here, and they are still fighting to thrive as Indigenous peoples. Capitalists drive to exploit the earth, destroying ecology and throwing society into what John Bellamy Foster calls a metabolic rift. This means that the demands of capital for expansion are incompatible with the ‘rhythm’ of ecology, destroying concrete life for abstract aims as a result.

An atomistic, individualist worldview is what undergirds the view of settler-colonialism as over and of contemporary Euro-Americans as being just as indigenous as Indigenous peoples. When settler-colonialism is seen as an individual responsibility or guilt, we are left with a very crude concept of it.

The denialists of settler-colonialism assume that it must be over, because the colonization of the Americas is apparently over. Thus, they think that modern Euro-Americans cannot be blamed for the sins of their forefathers, since individuals shouldn’t be held responsible for things which happened outside of their lifetimes. Guilt in this conception is an assessment of whether an atomistic individual is responsible for extremely specific crimes, such as participating in something like the Paxton Boys’ ethnic cleansing campaign in 1763 Pennsylvania.

The same ideological approach characterizes the other side, which obsesses over the individual status of “settler” and micro-categorizing the contemporary residents of North America within an abstract concept of settler-colonialism. They argue that having the individual status of “settler” means one is eternally damned, one is marked as a specific person by the crimes of a social system always and forever. This hefty sentence has high stakes, thus the obsession with categorizing every unique case within a specific box.

Neither of these approaches offers a successful insight into settler-colonialism. Instead, they project the thinking of European bourgeois liberalism. The individual is defined in an atomistic way, in their characteristics, rights, crimes, and so on. The individual as a node on a web of social relations is totally out of the question here. Yet, that is how we must think if we wish to understand settler-colonialism and, therefore, abolish it.

To focus primarily on categorizing atomistic individuals, instead of focusing on social relations, loses sight of the true engine of settler-colonialism. It is not that individuals choose one day to behave brutally, or that it is simply the nature of a specific people. Instead, it has very concrete historical motivations in the global system and the rise of settler-colonialism within it. For example, North American settler-colonialism was motivated significantly by the land hunger of capitalists who grew cash crops like tobacco and cotton, which were sold on the world market. Thinking in broad, structural terms is important in order to avoid reductive analyses and approaches.

While the side which focuses on damning individual Euro-Americans certainly have land in mind while thinking about this subject, they have a static and simple concept of land. In their minds, settlers are settlers because they are present in a certain place, to which a specific Indigenous group has an abstract, moral right to exclusive habitation in. To put it simply, their thought process is “if X person is in Y place, which belongs to Z people, then they are a settler.”

They do not understand the social relation of Indigenous peoples to their homelands, which extends into the aspects of ecology, history, spirituality, etc. That is, Indigeneity as itself a social relation. Indigenous peoples explicitly refer to their nations and homelands as relations. Their relation to land is not to land as an abstract thing, but to specific spaces that are inseparable from their specific communal lives.

In the context of describing his people’s history, Nick Estes (Lower Brulé Lakota) said in Our History is the Future:

“Next to the maintenance of good relations within the nation, an individual’s second duty was the protection of communal territory. In the east, the vast wild rice patties and seasonal farms that grew corn, beans, and squash demarcated Dakota territory. In the west, Lakota territory extended as far as the buffalo herds that traveled in the fertile Powder River country. For Dakotas, Lakotas, and Nakotas, territory was defined as any place where they cultivated relations with plant and animal life; this often overlaid, and was sometimes in conflict, with other Indigenous nations.”

Identity and mode of life in communalist societies is specific to spaces, because keeping in the ‘rhythm’ of these spaces is a basic guiding logic of life. Because land is a relative, there was and is significant resistance among Indigenous peoples to the settler seizure of land and commodification of their non-human relative. The European bourgeoisie, meanwhile, was more concerned with what value could be extracted from the land, their worldview being based in abstract concepts of Right, Justice, Liberty and so on.

The faction in question does not understand settler-colonists as part of social relations which seek to negate that communal land social relation for concrete aims. They lack broad perspective, they only see society as a collection of atoms, falling into micro-categories, bundled together.

Having critiqued these two views, we can now give a better idea of how to properly approach the category groupings involved in analysis of settler-colonialism.

Indigeneity is defined by continuity of long-standing communal relations and identities indigenous to a certain region. Relation to a specific homeland or region is important to this, but the loss of direct ties to land does not necessarily negate Indigeneity. Rather, the continuity of belonging to a certain ‘mode of life’ and community is key.

A settler is one who is outside of these relations, and plays an active role in the negation of these Indigenous relations. A settler is not merely a settler because they are foreign. Rather, they are a settler because of this active negating role.

To play an active negating role does not necessarily mean one personally enforces colonial laws. Instead, it means that one directly benefits from their participation in the destruction of these relations, such as by gaining residencies or employment at the expense of those land-relations. An important aspect of being a settler is being a socio-political citizen of a settler-colonial society. This means that, in law and in social practice, one has the full rights of belonging to the settler-colonial nation, and is recognized as such in ideology.

Many analysts of settler-colonialism, such as Jodi Byrd (Chickasaw), use a third category in their analysis: arrivants. Arrivants are those who are part of social structures which dissolve those land-relations, but lack the citizenship and agency of settlers. An example of this would be Filipino debt peons. They cannot fully belong to the settler structures, in practice or in ideology, but they are still part of those structures. In North American history, these groups have at various times been explicitly excluded from the potential to own property or obtain full legal citizenship. Said citizenship was directly defined around whiteness, first de jure, and later de facto.

These categories should be treated in a nuanced way, as tools to understand a concrete society and history. We should avoid trying to bend reality to fit abstract categories. Otherwise, one assumes these categories are destiny. One assumes that Indigenous peoples cannot be part of settler-colonial structures, or that all settlers are eternally damned and cannot overcome their social role.

In history, there are many examples of Indigenous peoples participating in settler-colonial processes, such as with Tohono O’odham warriors participating in the Camp Grant Massacre against Apaches, or the Indigenous Vice President Charles Curtis sponsoring assimilation and allotment of communal lands. There are also examples of people without full socio-political citizenship participating in these processes, such as with Black Buffalo Soldiers fighting on the front lines of Manifest Destiny.

There are also examples of Euro-Americans defecting to Indigenous societies in order to escape bourgeois “civilization.” Cynthia Ann Parker was abducted and adopted as a child by a Comanche war band. Texas Rangers, who had massacred her adopted relatives, had to force her to return to Euro-American society. While adopted Euro-Americans remained Euro-Americans, inclusion in those communal relations transformed them. Instead of playing a negating influence on the part of bourgeois society, they became participants in Indigenous relations. To be a settler is not destiny, but is a status which can be negated through a revolutionary transformation of society. In a word, through decolonization.

To obsess over policing micro-categories is not helpful for understanding or fighting settler-colonialism. Being conscious of it is important, but the key is to focus on broad social structures. The way we alter individuals is by altering social relations, and the way we fight for Indigenous sovereignty is by abolishing the negating forces in society. To successfully treat a disease, one must keep in mind the body as a system rather than a simple collection of parts. The same applies to society.

Settler-colonialism in North America is the conflict of two social forms, one fighting to negate the other. The capitalist system: private, individualist, focused on expanding an abstract ‘god’ (capital). The Indigenous communal modes of life: premised on relationality, collectivist, focused on viewing the individual as a part of a whole.

The bourgeoisie seek exclusive, private ownership of land as property to be bought and sold as a commodity. They do not recognize communal land rights, or anything like having a social relation with a place. Instead, they seek to cut off the nerves connecting every aspect of communal life in order to box things in as commodities, so that they can be abstracted into an exchange-value.

The 1887 Dawes Act, which dissolved Indigenous communal landholdings in the United States, was aimed at forcing this system on Indigenous peoples. In the eyes of the ruling class, this was simply “civilization.” The bourgeoisie had to go to war with these communal ways of life to construct a capitalist system in its place. In the communal systems, unlike capitalism: land itself has rights as a relative instead of being merely a vehicle for value, people live off the land as a community instead of being landless wage-laborers, and exploitation is heavily frowned upon.

The first Red Scare in the United States was not during the 1919–1920 assault on organized labor and anti-war activists, but during the struggle of the government and capitalists against Indigenous communal modes of life.

This war of generalized commodity production, capitalism, against alternative ways of being extended to ways of knowing. When forcing Indigenous children into boarding schools, the colonizers worked hard to destroy languages, religious practices, and cultural practices. In their place, they promoted individualism, bourgeois values, and a future as wage-laborers.

The liberal view of individuals is quite representative of typical bourgeois thinking. Liberalism posits individuals in an atomistic way, without considering them as concrete beings with concrete relationships in a real world. It sees individuals as simply bundles of rights, obligations, and so on. It premises meaning on extremely abstract, albeit universalizing concepts, such as “justice.” The rights of the liberal citizen are rights they have apart from society. Their freedom is a space separate from society, since they see others as fundamentally competitors.

This abstract thinking, individualism, and competitive view makes plenty of sense for a bourgeois. Their well-off conditions and obsession with preserving their private property against others reflect in their lack of concern for positive rights (rights to things, like food or shelter). What they want is to realize their capital, defeat their competitors, and pay as little as they have to for the working class’s living.

They only concern themselves with concrete things as far as they relate to their mission to realize abstract, congealed labor: capital. Capital commands them. If they do not expand their capital through exploitation and investment, they fall behind and decay in the rat race. Thus, the bourgeois is shrewd, atomistic, and anti-social.

By contrast, the communal view of individuals which is characteristic of Indigenous nations is focused on very concrete things. Individuals are part of specific communities with specific histories, who are relatives with specific land-spaces. To preserve balance in one’s real relations is an important value, contrasting sharply to the obsession with satisfying the god of abstract capital by feeding it concrete sacrifices. The key to this worldview is keeping in the ‘rhythm’ of life: the rhythm of one’s human relatives, non-human relatives, the ecology, the spirits, etc.

The latter view has a sibling in the views of Karl Marx. In the sixth thesis from Theses On Feuerbach, Marx said: […]the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.

Further, Marx was very concerned with the metabolic rift wrought by capitalism. In his view, while capitalism had for the first time linked up the whole world and all people into one global social system of production, it had also unleashed forces it could not control. While everyone in capitalism depends on everyone else, the system is controlled by self-interested bourgeoisie, who have no concern for humans, animals, or ecology.

Therefore, there is a need for a working class revolution, where the people who produce what the world runs on establish social control of this social production. Through that social control, they must restore the balance of humanity and nature, using the planning of production to end the chaos and blindness characteristic of capital. Once they have fully developed this system of social control and planning and brought about a world where all people contribute to the social product instead of anyone exploiting anyone else, they will have established a communist society.

The basis for Pan-Indigenism in North America was laid by the proletarianization of Indigenous peoples during and after World War II. The Federal government explicitly hoped to use this to assimilate Indigenous peoples by removing them from communal life on reservations. Instead, the contact of many distinct peoples in urban workforces and communities led to the development of a new, broad concept of Indigeneity. These proletarians thought of themselves not only as, for example, Standing Rock Lakota or Chiricahua Apache, but also as “Indigenous.”

This had precedence with people such as Tecumseh and Tenskwatawa, the Shawnee leaders of a Pan-Indigenous resistance to settler-colonialism in late 18th and early 19th century Ohio, or Wovoka, the Paiute founder of the Ghost Dance movement in the late 19th century. However, it had never reached this scale before. The same forces which sought to destroy Indigenous identity created means of establishing a new political movement in defense of it.

This universalization of identity from particular to general, without necessarily negating the particular, is something which must be done by social revolution as well. Proletarianization unites many distinct peoples into one class, leading to radical contacts between worlds. It lays the basis for a revolution which for the first time establishes a real community of all of humanity.

Decolonization ties directly into this project of social revolution. Capital attacks communal relations to establish and reproduce itself, yet by doing this it lays the foundation for a more universal form of communal life: communism. To decolonize is not to merely undo history and return to the past. We cannot undo centuries of change, of destruction.

Instead, as advocated by anti-colonial theorists like Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon, we must assert indigenous aims on the basis of the world colonialism has brought. This must take the form of the social revolution, because capital leaves intact the negating force against communalism and the relations of domination between groups of people.

In our theorizing of communism, we must avoid the thought patterns of the bourgeoisie. We must not only avoid individualism, but avoid the denigration of communalist ways of life. Indigenous peoples are at the forefront of the defense of bio-diversity. They are staunch protectors of the earth, of their ways of life and of their relation with the earth. They resist capitalist primitive accumulation, defending their sovereignty, daily. Communism cannot be some form of universalized bourgeois society, nor can it carry over the denigrated view the bourgeoisie have of life. Instead, it must be communalism reasserted on a universal scale.

Decolonization does not mean one throws out settlers. It does not mean we send Euro-Americans back to Europe. This belief is premised on a bourgeois, colonial thinking about life. It assumes that behavior is ahistoric, inscribed into the DNA of people. Rather, it is social relations that we must expel, transforming people through incorporation into new ones.

In the past, the adoption of Euro-Americans served as an alternative to their behavior as settlers. A decolonized society can follow this model on a broader scale, while preserving the sovereignty of Indigenous peoples over their homelands. Indigenous conceptions of land are not based on bourgeois exclusive right, but the right of specific people to have an ongoing relation with specific spaces. Abolishing the negating force, capitalism, and asserting these ways of life while working to establish the universalist form, communism, must be our program.

To put it simply, decolonization should be understood as the indigenization of settlers. This necessitates a social revolution in all aspects of life. It does not mean settlers must immediately “play Native.” Within the context of bourgeois settler-colonialism, that is part of a process of dissolving Indigenous communities, destroying their ability to remain sovereign. Rather, it means that we must destroy the capitalist society which drives these antagonisms.

This decolonization also necessitates a conscious revolution in ideology as part and parcel of social transformation. As discussed, communalist societies have a strong sense of concrete locality, of specificity according to a space and the relations of that space. Capitalism seeks to negate that in favor of universalist abstractions. Communism must take the universalizing capitalism has engaged in and place it on a concrete, conscious basis.

We ought to oppose the negation of local life capitalism engages in, while having the universal goal of revolution. That is, unite the particular with the universal, establish the particular as the basis of the universal. The old, European bourgeois ways of thinking, lacking metabolism or relationality with other humans and with ecology, must be overcome.

Communism is the abolition of the present state of things on the basis of existing premises. The emancipatory project of communism should not be hostile to, but a student of Indigenous peoples. When all people are one kin, when they are not divided by class or other social antagonisms, then we will all be free. That is the relation of decolonization to communism.

By Xuan Tan
People’s Daily
June 07, 2021

General Secretary Xi Jinping profoundly pointed out at the Party History Study and Education Mobilization Conference that the belief in communism and the belief in socialism with Chinese characteristics is the political soul of the Communists and the spiritual pillar for the Communists to withstand any test. He emphasized the centuries of the party. The course of struggle and great achievements are the most solid foundation for us to strengthen our confidence in road, theory, system, and culture. The words of the general secretary are loud, firm and heroic, deeply revealing the inner relationship between socialism and communism, and a century of struggle and struggle, and demonstrates the perseverance and perseverance of the Chinese Communists to advance along the only correct path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Over the course of a hundred years, many people and things are still vivid, and many shouts and singing are still in my ears. After going through the wind, frost, snow and rain, and creating miracles on earth, we have the obligation to comfort the martyrs with victory: Socialism has not failed China! We have the responsibility to let history tell the future: socialism will not fail China!

One

The accidents of history often carry certainty. In the 1840s, ancient China was opened by the powerful ships and guns of the great powers, and China’s destiny has since entered an unprecedentedly miserable situation. In almost the same era, in Europe where capitalism was in the ascendant, Marx and Engels began their great explorations of scientific socialism and the cause of human liberation and progress.

After the Opium War, China was poor, weak, and at the mercy of others. “Forty million people shed tears, where is China in the End of the World”. This poem by Tan Sitong is full of blood and tears and hesitation. The Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, the Reform Movement of 1898, the Boxer Movement, the Revolution of 1911… the Chinese struggled in the dark to find a way to save the nation and survive; reformism, liberalism, social Darwinism, anarchism, pragmatism… all kinds of Western theories and doctrines have been Introduce as a prescription to strengthen the country and enrich the people. I have tried every plan, but they have repeatedly come to nothing. Every road was explored, but he was battered. “Countless heads and blood, poorly bought fake republics.” Great powers were rampant, warlords fought, and the people were in dire straits. The First World War pierced the seemingly beautiful illusion of capitalist civilization. Countless people with lofty ideals use their lives and souls to ask questions again and again: Where is the way out for China? Where is the hope of the nation?

The blast of the October Revolution brought Marxism-Leninism to China. This is a great historical agreement, this is a solemn historical promise! The shackles of feudal society for thousands of years are too tight, and the old cannot be replaced without a thorough social transformation. The oppression imposed by imperialism on the Chinese is too heavy, and it cannot be resisted without the mighty power of mobilizing tens of thousands of toiling people.

Li Dazhao praised: “The alarm bell of humanity is ringing! The dawn of freedom is here! Try to see the future of the world, it must be the world of red flag!” Chen Duxiu declared: “The political revolution in France in the eighteenth century, and the social revolution in Russia in the twentieth century. People are all swearing at them; but later historians will regard them as the key to the change and evolution of human society.” The young Mao Zedong exclaimed: “The time has come! The tide of the world is getting more urgent! Dongting The gate of the lake moved and opened! The mighty new thoughts have surged on both sides of the Xiangjiang River!”

In 1920, when it was warm and cold, the 29-year-old Chen Wangdao spent two months in the firewood room in his hometown of Yiwu, Zhejiang, and forgot to eat and sleep for two months. For the first time, he translated the “Communist Manifesto” completely, and the first 1,000 copies were sold out immediately. By 1926, it was reprinted and republished 17 times. The advanced and unyielding Chinese have chosen Marxism as the way to save the country and the people after repeated comparisons and repetitions, as their unswerving ambition.

In July 1921, the Communist Party of China, a political party with Marxism as its guiding ideology and communism as its goal, was born, with faith, entrustment and dreams in mind, resolutely in the rising sun of Shanghai Shikumen and the blue waves of Nanhu Lake in Jiaxing set sail. Since then, the fire of socialism has been ignited in the East, and China, once troubled and hopeless, has a direction!

Two

After the failure of the Great Revolution, the Communist Party member Xia Minghan was arrested in Hankou and wrote a farewell to his wife before his heroic death: “Tossing his head and shed blood, Minghan has long been taken care of. Everyone needs what he needs, and the revolutionary cause will be passed on from generation to generation. Hong Zhu Keep the thoughts of each other, and the red cloud hopes for perfection. Persevere in the revolution and follow my will and vowed to pass on the truth to the world.” In those stormy years, like Xia Minghan, he did not regret nine deaths for his communist belief and firmly believed in the revolutionary ideals. There are more than tens of thousands of martyrs who have realized it. Once they recognized their beliefs and doctrines, they never hesitated or wavered, and did not hesitate to water the “communist blossoms” with youth and blood.

This belief and doctrine is shining with the light of ideals. The “Communist Manifesto” described: “Instead of the old bourgeois society where there are classes and class antagonisms, there will be such a union, where the free development of everyone is the condition for the free development of all people.” In the new world, the value of human beings comes first. There is no exploitation or oppression, labor is glorious, labor is supreme, everyone is equal and prosperous, and close to each other… This is a new world that transcends the capitalist world, and it is also the Chinese nation since ancient times. The longing for “Great Harmony in the World” has attracted countless advanced elements who are excited, fascinated, and practiced.

This belief and doctrine reveals the law of social development and evolution. The general trend of the world is huge, and those who follow it will survive, and those who go against it will perish. The Communist Party of China is the vanguard of the working class, represents the direction of advanced productive forces, and represents the trend of historical progress. Armed with scientific theories and mastering the laws of social development, the party has the consciousness to lead social changes and advance the cause of justice, and it has the power to be invincible and indomitable.

This belief and doctrine guide the revolution to victory. The Chinese Communists, with Mao Zedong as the main representative, used Marxist standpoints and methods to analyze China’s national conditions and solve China’s problems. They clearly stated that the task of the Chinese revolution is to overthrow the oppression of the “three mountains” of imperialism, feudalism, and bureaucratic capitalism. China The road of the revolution is to encircle the cities from the countryside and seize power by armed force. The power of the Chinese revolution is the working class, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie under certain conditions. The proletariat is the leading force and the people are the true heroes. The Chinese revolution must It is divided into two stages: the democratic revolution and the socialist revolution… These scientific understandings are shining with the brilliance of Marxist truth everywhere, leading the Chinese revolution to surging forward.

The revolutionary ideal is higher than the sky. It was under the torch of ideals and beliefs that our party mobilized the masses of workers and peasants, dared to make surprise charges, and successfully advanced the Northern Expedition; it was under the torch of ideals and beliefs that the surviving Communists buried the bodies of their companions slaughtered by the reactionaries and took them. Raising weapons, walking into the mountains and forests, and embarking on new battles; it was under the torch of ideals and beliefs that the Red Army soldiers rushed through the natural dangers, fought strong enemies, climbed the snowy mountains, and crossed the grass. “The harder the bones of the wind and rain, the stronger the ambition of wild vegetables to satisfy their hunger.” , Completed the 25,000-mile long march that shines through the annals of human history; it was under the torch of ideals and beliefs that the party and the people used perseverance and bloody battle to the end, wrote the national song of resisting Japanese militarism, and achieved resistance to foreign aggression. Victory in the end; it was precisely under the torch of ideals and beliefs that the heroic People’s Liberation Army defeated the Kuomintang reactionary forces of 8 million in only three years, demonstrating what is meant by “if the sky is sentimental, the sky is also old, and the righteous world is the vicissitudes of life.”

“Critical weapons can’t replace the criticism of weapons. Material power can only be destroyed by material power.” 28 years of bloody battle and 28 years of hard work, our country has changed from a bullying “sick man in East Asia” to an admiration for the world. In the “Oriental Lion Awakening”, our people have changed from being slaves to cattle and horses to masters with high spirits. The victory of the Chinese revolution is the great practice of the Chinese Communists in using Marxism to save China, and the great course of scientific truth showing its strength!

Three

On June 30, 1949, Mao Zedong published “On the People’s Democratic Dictatorship” and stated that we must pass through the People’s Republic, from an agricultural country to an industrial country, and from a new democratic society to a socialist society and a communist society. The founding of the People’s Republic of China is the historical result of combining the principles of scientific socialism with the reality of the Chinese revolution. It also marked the development and growth of the cause of human progress and the forces of socialism, and ushered in the great era of socialism in the East of the world.

This is an era of innovating and changing the world. In the face of many difficulties and tests, the Chinese Communist Party led the people to quickly heal the wounds of war and restore the national economy, and realized the socialist transformation of agriculture, handicrafts, and capitalist industry and commerce in a unique form in China, and creatively completed the transition from the new democratic revolution. The transformation of the socialist revolution successfully achieved the most profound and greatest social transformation in Chinese history. The vigorous land reform enabled more than 300 million peasants to obtain 700 million mu of land and production materials free of charge; the 1954 Constitution fixed the principles of people’s democracy and socialism in the form of a fundamental law; the People’s Congress system and the leadership of the Communist Party of China The system of party cooperation and political consultation, and the system of regional ethnic autonomy have built the “four beams and eight pillars” of the socialist system…In this ancient and youthful country, the Chinese people are building towering socialist buildings and savoring the taste of a happy life.

This is an era of vigor and passion. “Every second is working to create a socialist society.” The Chengdu-Chongqing Railway, planned in the late Qing Dynasty, was still a dotted line on the map for more than 40 years before the founding of New China. After the official start in 1950, it took only two years to complete the line; 156 key projects and 694 construction projects during the “First Five-Year Plan” period The completion has laid a solid foundation for socialist industrialization; the treatment of the Huai River and the Yellow River and the Yangtze River have achieved significant results, and the construction of farmland water conservancy has been spreading nationwide; the national urban and rural health care network has basically formed, smallpox, cholera, schistosomiasis, malaria, plague, etc. Diseases may be eradicated or effectively prevented… The new people’s regime has awakened tremendous productivity, and the new socialist system has activated the people’s energy and promoted the people’s well-being.

This is an era of heroes and high morale. For peace, Volunteer soldiers went abroad to fight and wrote a majestic epic with “less steel, more gas” and “more steel and less gas”; to remove the “poor oil and less oil” hat, “Iron Man” Wang Jinxi led the drilling team to fight against the sky. I would rather live less than 20 years, and desperately want to win big oil fields”; in order to change the face of poverty and backwardness, Jiao Yulu, the role model of the county party committee secretary, led the people of Lankao to rectify the “three evils”. To lay a solid foundation for the country’s self-reliance, Qian Xuesen, Qian Sanqiang, Deng Jiaxian and a large number of scientific researchers sprinkled their sweat and blood on the vast Gobi, creating the miracle of “two bombs and one star”… There are countless named heroes and no one. The hero who left his name, with flesh and blood and strong arms, shoulders the responsibility of the nation and the glory of the Republic.

“The roads and blue strands lead to mountains and forests.” Building socialism in a large eastern country with a relatively backward economy and culture and a large population is like climbing an unreached mountain. There are no straight roads to walk and no ready-made paths to follow. We rely on the power of “the people to create history” and the advantage of “concentrating our strength to do great things” to create one after another miracle that can be recorded in the history of the Chinese nation and humanity. With the spirit of “revolution and desperation”, with the courage of “ten thousand years too long, fighting for the day and night”, we painted the most beautiful picture of socialist new China on a land of more than 9.6 million square kilometers. We have also suffered serious setbacks like the “Cultural Revolution” on the road of exploration and exploration. The painful lessons are worth learning forever.

Whether it is flat or rugged, whether it is sunshine or wind or rain, the party leads the people in exploring the path of socialism. History has proven: “Not only are we good at destroying an old world, we will also be good at building a new world”!

Four

“What is socialism? How to build socialism?” The Chinese Communists have never stopped answering this historical question that echoes over China. From profoundly revealing the “ten major relationships” between socialist construction and socialist transformation, to promptly making the important conclusion that the main social contradiction in our country has been transformed into “the contradiction between the advanced socialist system and the backward social productive forces”, to the clear presentation To correctly handle the contradictions among the people is precious exploration and difficult progress.

The Third Plenary Session of the Eleventh Central Committee of the Party was a great turning point in the history of the Party and the history of New China. Stop using “class struggle as the key link”, shift the focus of the work of the whole party to socialist modernization, and re-establish the ideological line of emancipating the mind and seeking truth from facts…In order to build socialism, the Chinese Communist Party leads the people to promote a great new revolution. Started the great voyage of reform and opening up.

Poverty is not socialism! Deng Xiaoping pointed out: “The essence of socialism is to liberate the productive forces, develop productive forces, eliminate exploitation, eliminate polarization, and ultimately achieve common prosperity.” In order to adapt production relations to the development of productive forces, the household contract responsibility system with joint output has been widely implemented, and special economic zones have been implemented first. In the first test, township and village enterprises have sprung up, reforms in the scientific and technological system are intensified, the pattern of opening to the outside world has been accelerated, and the vitality and creativity hidden in the broad masses of people are fully bursting out.

Take your own path and build socialism with Chinese characteristics! We are deeply aware that our country is and will be in the primary stage of socialism for a long time. We propose the party’s basic line in the primary stage of socialism, actively develop a basic economic system with public ownership as the mainstay and the common development of multiple ownership economies, and constantly improve the socialist market economic system. , Put forward the goal of a well-off society and a step-by-step strategy of modernization, and created and developed socialism with Chinese characteristics.

Adhere to the socialist direction of reform and opening up! Adhere to reform and opening up and adhere to the four basic principles. These two basic points are closely linked and cannot be partial or neglected. We adhere to the socialist material civilization and spiritual civilization “to grasp both hands and both hands must be hard”, firmly promote the new great project of party building, comprehensively promote the construction of socialist economic, political, cultural, social, and ecological civilization with Chinese characteristics, and let the people Share the fruits of reform and development and put realistic wings on the ideals of socialism.

Over the past 40 years of reform and opening up, China’s economic aggregate has surpassed Italy, France, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Japan, ranking second in the world; China’s people’s living standards have continued to improve and have entered the ranks of middle- and high-income countries; , Dense railways, west-to-east gas transmission, south-to-north water transfer, towering dams, towering bridges, and the transformation of the sky; China also defeated historically rare major natural disasters such as floods, rain, snow and freezing, earthquakes, and major epidemics such as SARS, and withstood Asia The financial crisis and the international financial crisis have been severely tested, and they have become more calm and upright after the storm.

Advance by grasping the logic of historical advancement, and develop in conformity with the trend of the development of the times. The surging great practice of the turbulent land of China shows that only socialism can develop China, and only reform and opening up can make China catch up with the times in great strides and let the people live a happy life. The road of socialism with Chinese characteristics is getting wider and wider!

Five

The majestic and majestic cause of socialism has condensed the arduousness and dedication of generations of Communists, and it carries the sustenance and aspirations of many sages and heroes. When the baton of history was passed on again, General Secretary Xi Jinping’s words were sonorous: The task of our generation of Communists is to continue to write down the great essay of upholding and developing socialism with Chinese characteristics!

The 19th National Congress of the Party solemnly declared to the entire party, the country and the world: “After long-term efforts, socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era. This is a new historical direction for my country’s development.”

In the new era of China, the ideal banner is bright and high. In the face of the world without major changes in a century, General Secretary Xi Jinping led the entire party and the people to take the overall situation, respond to the situation, and initiate new situations. The party and the country have made historic achievements and realized historic changes. The Chinese nation is more than ever before in history. Close to the great goal of national rejuvenation. The Chinese people’s belief in Marxism and communism has become stronger, their belief in socialism with Chinese characteristics has become stronger, and their confidence in realizing the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation has never been higher.

In the new era, China has a strong and strong driving force for development. From the comprehensive and deepening reforms of the Third Plenary Session of the Eighteenth Central Committee, to comprehensively governing the country according to law and building a well-off society in an all-round way, to comprehensively administering the party strictly and promoting social revolution through the party’s self-revolution, from adhering to and improving the socialist system with Chinese characteristics, to Based on the new development stage, implementing new development concepts, building a new development pattern, promoting high-quality development, and building a socialist modern country in an all-round way, the strategic layout of socialism with Chinese characteristics is becoming more and more perfect, and the direction and goals of modernization are becoming more clear.

In China in the new era, the status of the people is fully demonstrated. “The country is the people, and the people are the country”, the echo of the original intention travels through time and space. “The people’s yearning for a better life is our goal”, the sonorous declaration hardened the iron into a nail. In order to realize the millennium long-cherished wish of the Chinese people to get rid of poverty, the party led the people to fight poverty. The broad masses of cadres and the masses in poverty-stricken areas worked tenaciously. The first secretary and cadres in the villages devoted all their efforts to the precise alignment of cooperation between the east and the west. With efforts, families of poor folks feel the warmth of the big socialist family, and the silent mountains are full of vitality and hope.

In the new era of China, the strength of unity has never been ahead. Faced with the peak of technology, we never back down. Chang’e flew into the sky, the dragon enters the sea, sky-eye gazing, and the Beidou network. Not long ago, the “Zhurong” rover successfully landed on Mars after a 295-day journey. In the face of bullying and suppression, we have never succumbed. The whole party and the whole country have the courage to fight and win, to gather strength and twist into a rope. The unprecedented new crown pneumonia epidemic has closely linked the destiny of each of us with the destiny of the country and the collective. 1.4 billion Chinese people are connected with their hearts, guarding their homes and protecting the country, creating a great miracle in the history of human anti-epidemic struggle…Socialism The advantages of the system have been greatly demonstrated.

There is righteousness in the heaven and the earth, and Cang Ming is awe-inspiring. If socialism, as the just cause of mankind and the pursuit of lofty values, endows the new era with the most distinctive background and the heaviest confidence; then, with its most magnificent practice, the new era has endowed scientific socialism with newness. Ideological dimension, a new historical height.

In April 2021, General Secretary Xi Jinping made a special trip to Quanzhou, Guangxi to pay homage to the Red Army’s Long March Xiangjiang Battle Memorial Park. He said emotionally that once the fire of ideals and belief is ignited, great spiritual power will be produced. We must cherish the memory of revolutionary martyrs and continue the Communist Party. People’s spiritual blood, firm ideals and beliefs, and forge revolutionary will.

Looking back at 87 years ago, on the Long March road and on the banks of the Xiangjiang River, countless Red Army soldiers fought fiercely to preserve the fire of the revolution. They dyed the long journey and rolled the river with blood. These fighters, who are mostly in their twenties, or even fifteen or sixteen, are optimistic and tenacious because they have the belief in the victory of the revolution and their longing for a better society of socialism and communism. This is the eternal gene of a party, and the code of a nation’s prosperity from decline.

Today, we can comfort all the ancestors and heroes of the century: at this moment, the sun of socialism is shining in the shadows of the strugglers and the smiling faces of children, and the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics is leading the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. An unprecedented bright prospect. We will surely create even greater miracles that will admire the world, and will surely realize the most lofty and great ideals of the Communists!  (Translated by Google Translate)

‘State Capitalism’? Or Socialist Market Economy? Which Shoe Fits Whom?

Qiushi Magazine
CCP Central Committee Fall 2018

The United States equates China’s economy with “state capitalism”, saying socialist market economy is not real market economy but state-led protectionist and mercantilist economy, which, it claims justifies the imposition of high tariffs on Chinese goods.

This is not the first time a Western country has labeled China’s economic model as “state capitalism”. Some people are re-circulating the term in the West now to hide the real reason why the US has resorted to trade protectionism and imposed high tariffs on Chinese imports, namely, their concern over China’s development road and economic system.

The US is a self-proclaimed representative of free market economy and free market capitalism, but the government’s role has been particularly important in its economic development. Let us not forget, the US has resorted to protectionism from its founding to the end of World War II.

Using free market as a ploy to make profits

In the postwar period, too, the US administration has intervened in the economy to fulfill its self-interests even while promoting trade liberalization, as Keynesianism came to play the dominant role in US economic policymaking. For example, the US’ total government spending increased from 26.8 percent of GDP in 1960 to 41.3 percent in 2010, and the number of its government employees increased from more than 4 million in 1940 to more than 22 million in 2010.

Some experts on innovation say, despite advocating “small government” and “free market”, the US has been running massive public investment programs in technology and innovation for decades, which have brought the US great economic benefits. In fact, the US government has always been a central driver of innovation-led growth, from internet to biotechnology and even shale gas development. After the outbreak of the 2008 global financial crisis, the US once again resorted to state interventionism, and introduced huge financial rescue and fiscal stimulus packages to stabilize its economy.

Since taking office, President Donald Trump and his administration have been using interventionist policies, such as protectionism and immigration control measures, to realize their “America first” goal at the cost of the interests of people around the world. Which shows the “pure” free market economy and “true” laissez-faire that the US bandies about have never existed. Instead, capitalism as we see it today is closely related to “state capitalism”. So to label China’s socialist market economy as “state capitalism” is to confuse one thing with another.

“State-capitalism” theory a result of ill intentions

After the global financial crisis, some developed economies, such as the US and some European countries, faced severe economic difficulties while China and many other emerging economies maintained relatively strong growth. The resultant rise and fall in the relative strengths of China and the US made the contradictions among the developed economies, and those between the developed world and emerging economies, such as China, increasingly prominent.

Some politicians cannot accept China’s rapid but peaceful rise under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, so they use terms such as “state capitalism” to criticize it. The intention of such people is clear: to defend capitalism by pitting “state capitalism” against “liberal capitalism” and creating an atmosphere that would curb the development of developing and emerging market economies, especially China.

On the one hand, such observers try to divert and cover up people’s discontent with the profound defects of the capitalist system, and claim free market capitalism is facing a crisis because of the threat posed by “state capitalism”. On the other hand, they try to find faults with socialism with Chinese characteristics, so as to distort the attributes of socialist market economy with the aim of shaking people’s confidence in the socialist market system, and forcing China to abandon its development path. Their ultimate is to contain China’s rise.

Such people always use double standards when it comes describing the attributes of “state capitalism”. When Western economies need state support for capital accumulation, these people advocate protectionism and state intervention. But when Western economies enjoy competitive advantage, they forcibly promote free trade and require other countries to unconditionally open up their markets, so as to benefit from it. And when the Western economies’ competitive advantages fade out due to competition from other economies, including latecomers such as China, they go back to practicing protectionism.

A pretext for not accepting reality

Many observers and politicians have attempted to include China into the capitalist spectrum, or assumed that by adhering to the rules of market economy, China will automatically embrace the capitalist system. But when they realize socialism with Chinese characteristics, compared with capitalism, is yielding better results, some of them start identifying China’s socialist market economy with “state capitalism”, instead of admitting that socialism with Chinese characteristics and socialist market economy have achieved success beyond their wildest dreams. This is the essence of their “state capitalism” argument.

Western countries have always regarded market economy as their exclusive economic system, as is evidenced from Western economic theories. But market economy and capitalism are two different things, the former being a means to allocate resources, which can be combined either with the capitalist or socialist system.

Capitalist market economy and socialist market economy share common features in terms of resource allocation and commodity relations. For example, both have clear property rights relations and require market players to maintain equal and fair competition. And both allow the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation.

The macro-regulatory policies implemented by China conform to the laws of market economy and the rules of the World Trade Organization. Yet market economy is a social and historical concept with different characteristics under different social systems and stages of development. Socialist market economy is a new type of market economy, which, despite having the general characteristics of market economy, is fundamentally different from capitalist market economy in terms of ownership structure, distribution system and institutional mechanism. So it is erroneous to identify the Chinese economy as “state capitalism” just because China has State-owned enterprises and its government plays a role in some economic activities.

Argument on SOEs untenable, baseless

Moreover, it is grossly erroneous to equate state-owned enterprises with “state capitalism”, as SOEs are just a means to ensure large-scale production through modern methods. In fact, state-owned enterprises first appeared in Western capitalist countries.

In the postwar period, some capitalist countries nationalized enterprises on a large scale, and established a large number of SOEs in many sectors. Even when the wave of privatization was at its peak, many Western countries retained a sizable number of state-owned enterprises. In fact, even after the outbreak of the 2008 global financial crisis, some Western countries took measures to nationalize a number of enterprises to offset the effects of the economic slowdown, which shows the West also uses state-owned enterprises as a means to resolve the basic contradictions of capitalism.

However, it should also be noted that the natures and functions of state-owned enterprises vary in different social systems. In Western economies, state-owned enterprises are essentially controlled by a few big capitalists backed by governments and operate to make more and more profits. In a socialist market economy, however, SOEs are owned by the people, and serve as an important tool for promoting modernization and safeguarding the common interests of the people. They shoulder multiple responsibilities, from providing public services, developing strategically important industries and protecting the environment to promoting science and technology, safeguarding national security, facilitating fair resource distribution and realizing common prosperity. These traits distinguish them from their counterparts in capitalist market economies.

Is this Western envy or jealousy?

The fundamental reason why some Western politicians target China’s SOEs for criticism is that these enterprises have become bigger and stronger than Western politicians’ expectations, and are helping China to develop into a comprehensive modern socialist power to realize the Chinese Dream of national rejuvenation.

Yet there is no inherent logic in using the role of the government to identify the Chinese economy with “state capitalism”. The relationship between the government and the market depends on the evolution of the economic system, with the two being mutually complementary and indivisible. This is the development law of market economy.

Capitalist market economy and socialist market economy both need effective market regulations — which only the government can provide — for the supply of public goods, maintenance of macroeconomic stability, improvement of the social security system and strengthening of economic security.

In a capitalist market economy, which is based on private ownership, the government is not only the spokesperson for capital but also serves the interests of capital. As a result, it is difficult for the government to ensure economic and social development serves the interests of the entire society, so as to resolve the basic contradictions between socialization of production and private ownership.

Govt represents people in socialist market economy

In contrast, a socialist market economy is dominated by public ownership, in which the government represents the people and serves their interests. This makes it possible for the government to implement regulations for social and economic development in order to meet the people’s increasing needs for a better life, and achieve prosperity for all.

The difference between socialist market economy and capitalist market economy, as such, is not whether the market or the government plays a decisive role in the allocation of resources, or whether state-owned enterprises exist. Instead, it depends on whether the government and market are serving capital or the people.

Those that equate the Chinese economy with “state capitalism” claim that an economy in which the government intervenes to serve the interests of capital and private ownership will be seen as following the “free market system” irrespective of the extent of its intervention. In contrast, a socialist market economy for them is equivalent to “state capitalism” regardless of the aim and magnitude of the government intervention.

This shows such observers identify Western countries with the “free market system” even if their governments support enterprises with policies and financing. But if an emerging market economy does the same, it is labeled “state capitalism”. Which is a typical example of economic hegemony.

Since launching reform and opening-up four decades ago, China has developed the socialist development road, theory, system and culture with Chinese characteristics, fulfilled the basic economic requirements to build the primary stage of socialism, allowed public ownership to develop along with private and other forms of ownership, and transformed from a planned economy to a dynamic socialist market economy.

Fostering development of high quality

Moreover, since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, China, under the strong leadership of the CPC Central Committee with Xi Jinping at the core, has more vigorously helped the market to play a decisive role in resource allocation. Simultaneously, the government has taken concrete measures to improve the property rights system, further deepen economic reform, and improve the socialist economic system with Chinese characteristics, in order to promote high-quality economic development.

China is committed to building a community with a shared future for mankind and improving global economic governance, by safeguarding and promoting economic globalization and free trade. In this regard, it has taken a series of measures to greatly ease access to its huge market, build a more attractive investment environment, strengthen intellectual property rights protection and expand imports.

A socialist market economy gives full play to the advantages of market economy and the socialist system, and helps build an organic bond between the government and the market. It also ensures sustainable development and market stability, which have benefited the Chinese people and contributed to human development and progress across the world.

These are the great achievements of socialist market economy and socialism with Chinese characteristics, and have nothing to do with “state capitalism”.

The socialist economic system with Chinese characteristics is the result of Chinese wisdom, the Party’s leadership and Chinese people’s efforts to build a prosperous but sustainable social and economic system, and thus a great innovation in economic development history. Chinese people, led by the Party, have embarked on the road of socialism with Chinese characteristics. And they most certainly will achieve success after greater success.

TWO REVOLUTIONS

Rough Notes

By Perry Anderson
New Left Review 118
July-August 2019

If the twentieth century was dominated, more than by any other single event, by the trajectory of the Russian Revolution, the twenty-first will be shaped by the outcome of the Chinese Revolution. The Soviet state, born of the First World War, victor in the Second, defeated in the cold replica of a Third, dissolved after seven decades with scarcely a shot, as swiftly as it had once arisen. What has remained is a Russia lesser in size than the Enlightenment once knew, with under half the population of the USSR, restored to a capitalism now more dependent on the export of raw materials than in the last days of Tsarism. While future reversals are not to be excluded, for the moment what has survived of the October rising, in any positive sense, looks small. Its most lasting achievement, huge enough, was negative: the defeat of Nazism, which no other European regime could have encompassed. That, at any rate, would be a common judgement today.

The outcome of the Chinese Revolution offers an arresting contrast. As it enters its seventh decade, the People’s Republic is an engine of the world economy, the largest exporter at once to the EU, Japan and the United States; the largest holder of foreign-exchange reserves on earth; for a quarter of a century posting the fastest growth rates in per capita income, for the largest population, ever recorded. Its big cities are without rival for commercial and architectural ambition, its goods sold everywhere. Its builders, prospectors and diplomats criss-cross the globe in search of further opportunities and influence. Courted by former foes and friends alike, for the first time in its history the Middle Kingdom has become a true world power, whose presence reaches into every continent. With the fall of the ussr, no formula to describe the turn of events it signified became so canonized as ‘the collapse of communism’. Twenty years later that looks a touch Eurocentric. Viewed in one light, communism has not just survived, but become the success story of the age. In the character and scale of that achievement, of course, there is more than one—bitter—irony. But of the difference between the fate of the revolutions in China and Russia, there can be little doubt.

Where does the explanation of this contrast lie? Despite the world-historical gravamen of the question, it has not been much discussed. At issue, of course, is not just a comparison of two similar but distinct upheavals, otherwise unrelated in their different settings, as in the once familiar pairing of 1789 and 1917. The Chinese Revolution grew directly out of the Russian Revolution, and remained connected with it, as inspiration or admonition, down to their common moment of truth at the end of the eighties. The two experiences were not independent of each other, but formed a consciously ordinal sequence. footnote1 That tie enters into any consideration of their differing outcomes. To explain these, in turn, involves reflection at a number of levels. Four of these will be distinguished here. Firstly, how far did the subjective political agencies of the two revolutions—that is, the respective parties in each country, and the strategies they pursued—differ? Secondly, what were the objective starting-points—socio-economic and other conditions—from which each ruling party set out on its course of reform? Thirdly, what were the effective consequences of the policies they adopted? Fourthly, which legacies in the longue durée of the history of the two societies can be regarded as underlying determinants of the ultimate outcome of revolutions and reforms alike? Since the PRC has outlived the USSR, and its future poses perhaps the central conundrum of world politics, the organizing focus of what follows will be China, as seen in the Russian mirror—not the only relevant one, as will become clear, but an ineludable condition of the rest.

1. Matrices

The October Revolution, famously, was a swift urban insurrection that seized power in Russia’s major cities in a matter of days. The speed of its overthrow of the Provisional Government was matched by the crystallization of the Party that accomplished it. The Bolsheviks, numbering no more than 24,000 in January 1917, on the eve of the abdication of Nicholas ii, had mushroomed to somewhere over 200,000 when they toppled Kerensky’s regime nine months later. Their social base lay in the young Russian working class, which comprised less than 3 per cent of the population. They had no presence in the countryside, where over 80 per cent of the population lived, having never thought to organize among the peasantry—any more than had the Social Revolutionaries, though the srs enjoyed an overwhelming rural following in 1917. Such rapid victory, from a still narrow ledge of support, was rendered possible by the shattering of the Tsarist state by German hammer-blows in the First World War—military failure detonating mutinies that dissolved its repressive apparatus, the February Revolution leaving only the shakiest lean-to of a successor authority.

But if power was taken easily in this vacuum, it proved hard to hold. Vast tracts of territory fell to German occupation. Once Germany was itself defeated in 1918, ten different expeditionary forces—American, British, Canadian, Serb, Finnish, Romanian, Turkish, Greek, French, Japanese—were dispatched to help White armies crush the new regime in a bitter Civil War that lasted till 1920. At the end of it, completing the destruction wrought in the World War, Russia was in ruins: famine in the villages, factories abandoned in the towns, the working class pulverized by the fighting and de-industrialization of the country. Lenin’s Party, its social base disintegrated or absorbed into the structures of the new state, was left an isolated apparatus of power suspended over a devastated landscape: its rule now associated with the miseries of domestic war rather than the gifts of peace and land delivered after October.

The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics that, by a supreme effort, it brought into being covered the larger part of the former Russian empire. But, the first modern state in history to reject any territorial definition, the emergent ussr laid no claim to patriotic pride or national construction. Its appeal was international: to the solidarity of the labour movement across the world. Having taken power in a huge backward country, whose economy was overwhelmingly agrarian and population largely illiterate, the Bolsheviks counted on revolutions in the more developed, industrial lands of Europe to rescue them from the predicament of a radical commitment to socialism in a society without the preconditions of any coherent capitalism. A gamble the beleaguered rulers soon lost, it meant nothing to the mass of the ruled from the start. The Soviet Party would have to hold out on its own, attempting to move as far as it could towards another form of society, without much support at home or any assistance from abroad.

2

The Chinese Revolution, although it was inspired by the Russian, inverted virtually all its terms. The CCP, created in 1921, still had less than a thousand members four years later, when it started to become for the first time a significant force, born of the explosion of working-class militancy in coastal cities with the May 30th movement of 1925, and aided by the vital role of Soviet advisers and supplies in the fledgling GMD regime led by Sun Yat-sen in Canton. Between that founding moment and the Communist conquest of power across China lay struggles that extended through a quarter of a century. Its milestones are well known—the Northern Expedition of 1926, joining Nationalists and Communists against the leading warlord regimes; the massacre of Communists by Chiang Kai-shek in Shanghai in 1927; the ensuing White Terror; the establishment of the Jiangxi Soviet in 1931, and the five annihilation campaigns waged against it by the gmd; the Long March of the Red Army to Yan’an in 1934–35, and the creation of Border Regions ruled by the ccp in the north-west; the United Front again with the gmd against Japanese invasion in 1937–45; and the final civil war of 1946–49, in which the PLA swept the country.

More than just the wholly different temporality of this experience separated it from the overturn in Russia. The way in which power was won was altogether distinct. If the state is defined, in Weber’s famous formula, by the exercise of a monopoly of legitimate violence over a given territory, a revolution always involves a breaking of that monopoly, and the emergence of what Lenin and Trotsky called a dual power. Logically, there are three ways in which this can arise, corresponding to the three terms of Weber’s formula. A revolution can break the monopoly of the state’s power by destroying the legitimacy of its rule, so that coercion cannot be exercised to repress the movement against it. The Iranian Revolution, in which there was no fighting, the royal army remaining paralysed as the monarchy fell, would be an example. Alternatively, a revolution can pit an insurgent violence against the coercive apparatus of the state, overwhelming it in a quick knock-out blow, without having secured any general legitimacy. This was the Russian pattern, possible only against a weak opponent.

Finally, a revolution can break the state’s monopoly of power, not by depriving it from the outset of legitimacy, nor rapidly undoing its capacity for violence, but by subtracting enough territory from it to erect a counter-state, able in time to erode its possession of force and consent alike. This was the Chinese pattern. It was not exclusive to China, forming the general path of guerrilla forces—also Yugoslav or Cuban—to power. What was exceptional in the Chinese case was not the creation of successive ‘rebel states’ within the state, but their combined longevity. It is the conditions of this duration that require explanation.

At the turn of the century the Romanov monarchy, whatever its own weaknesses, was incomparably stronger than the Qing: a native institution that could draw not only on pockets of advanced industry and abundant natural resources, but on a huge army and deep reserves of patriotic loyalty, born of victory over Napoleon. In the Far East, it was foremost among the European powers in encroaching on the Chinese empire. Only massive defeat on the battlefield, first by Japan and then by Germany, triggered the revolutions of 1905 and 1917 against it. The Qing monarchy, by contrast, was already by the mid-19th century widely hated as an alien dynasty, and soon too as a corrupt dependency of the West. After the Taiping Rebellion, it never regained central control of force throughout the country. So enfeebled had the imperial state become that it fell in 1911 without even a concerted movement against it. No successor regime lived up to Weber’s standard. The Republic dissolved, first into a chequerboard of rival warlord fiefs; then into the hybrid regime based in Nanjing, the GMD commanding the centre of the country around the Yangzi delta, assorted regional militarists the rest: never more than half of China’s eighteen traditional provinces under Chiang Kai-shek’s control, often less.

It was in this maze of competing power-centres that the CCP could anchor itself in gaps between jurisdictions, and build a movable counter-power. But although it never confronted a unified state machine, as the Bolsheviks had done, its adversary was paradoxically more formidable, and the risks of defeat higher. Restricted to its strategic strongholds though it was, the gmd was not an absolutist regime at the end of its life span, nor a spectral interim government. Nationalism and Communism were coeval as antagonists, formed in the same organizational mould: equally modern rivals, in their own fashion, for mastery of the country. The GMD, however, controlled vastly larger armies, equipped with heavy armour and trained in successive missions—Von Seeckt, Von Falkenhausen—by the cream of the Wehrmacht; it commanded the tax revenues of the richest regions of China. For all the heroism of the Long March, it would no doubt have wiped out the CCP by the end of the 30s, had Japan not launched a full-scale attack on the Nanjing regime in 1937.

In this emergency Chiang, cheated of his prey but still obsessed with communism as the greater danger, proved incapable of confronting the foreign enemy to any effect. A long-time collaborator with the Japanese military—with whom he planned the Shanghai massacre of 1927, flying to Tokyo shortly afterwards to seal a pact with its General Staff—who had acquiesced in its seizure of Manchuria, he retreated into the interior, hoping after Pearl Harbour to wait out the war for American victory and then turn on the CCP with his main forces intact. Japan’s final campaign in China, the Ichigo Offensive of 1944, put paid to any easy realization of this prospect, shattering the GMD’s best divisions beyond repair. No less damaging was the discredit Chiang’s dictatorship incurred in refusing to commit all to the defence of the nation.

Beyond GMD reach or Japanese penetration, from its base in the remote Border Region of Yan’an the CCP waged increasingly effective guerrilla war against the invader across North China. The growth in its power came from its ability to combine reform in the villages—rent reduction, debt cancellation, limited land redistribution—with resistance to the foreigner. The union of the two gave it a depth of social racination the Russian Party never acquired, in an expanding mass base among the peasantry, the class that composed the vast majority of the population. In the eight years from 1937 to 1945, the Chinese Party grew from 40,000 to 1,200,000, and its armies from 90,000 to 900,000. Once Japan had surrendered, its implantation spread very rapidly across the North China plain: by the time civil war broke out in 1947, its ranks had more than doubled again, to some 2,700,000. Meanwhile, in the GMD-controlled zones of the Centre and South, unbridled corruption and inflation destroyed urban support for Chiang’s regime, whose demoralized armies, however well-armed and equipped by the United States, proved no match for the pla. In increasing numbers, his commanders surrendered or switched sides as it marched south: Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Guangzhou—one after another, the great cities of China fell with scarcely a shot being fired.

In Russia, the civil war came after the Revolution, and as if in retribution for it, plunging the country into a far worse condition than it had been in before the Bolsheviks came to power. In China, the Revolution followed the civil war, and its immediate effects came as a redemption from it. For over a century, China had not known a central state capable of withstanding foreign aggression, or assuring order throughout the country. Communism brought both: national independence and internal peace. With the defeat of the Guomindang, US officers, British gunboats, Japanese hold-overs were sent packing. The victory of the PLA, far from leaving economy and society ravaged, delivered recovery and stability. Inflation was mastered; corruption banished; supplies resumed. In the countryside, landlordism was abolished. In the cities, no sweeping expropriation was needed, since over two-thirds of industry was already state-owned under the GMD, and comprador capital had fled to Hong Kong or Taiwan. The middle class was so alienated by the last years of Nationalist rule that much of it greeted the arrival of Communism with relief rather than resistance; as production revived, workers returned to normal employment and received wages again. The People’s Republic, embodying patriotic ideals and social discipline, entered life enjoying a degree of popular assent that the Soviet Union never knew.

3

These differing matrices left their imprint on the course of each regime, in which the proportions of force and consent were always distinct. Under Stalin, Soviet communism acquired active popular support twice after the civil war: among the new generation of workers, from rural backgrounds, mobilized in the all-out industrialization drives of the first Five Year Plans, in a Sturm und Drang atmosphere of collective enthusiasm, real if never universal; and during the Second World War, when the regime could draw on a much broader Russian patriotism in a life-and-death struggle of the whole population against Nazi conquest. Neither altered the distrust of the rulers for the masses under them. The Soviet system utilized episodes of popular adhesion, when they arose. But it rested on repression. In the era of Stalin’s dictatorship, the secret police became a more central and powerful institution than the Party itself. Violence, compulsively unleashed against real or imaginary enemies, not least within the regime’s own ranks, was omnipresent.

Against a background of continual tension, its two great paroxysms were the collectivization of the late twenties, and the purges of the thirties. In the first, the regime launched an all-out war on the peasantry, in which mass deportations and famine cost perhaps 6 million lives, reducing it to a sullen, broken force from which Russian agriculture has never recovered. In the second, not only the entire Old Guard of Bolsheviks who had made the October Revolution, but virtually the whole next levy of cadres in leading positions of Party and state, and a huge number of further victims, were wiped out—at least 700,000 in all. Labour camps, to which those not executed outright in these savageries were dispatched, came to hold another 2 million in these years, amounting to a significant sector of the economy. footnote2 After victory in the Second World War, in which the USSR suffered an immense toll of destruction, terror abated. But for all the consecration he had won on the battlefield, fear remained the mainspring of Stalin’s power to the end.

4

The Chinese Party inherited the Soviet model as it took shape under Stalin, developing much the same monolithic discipline, authoritarian structure, and habits of command. Organizationally and ideologically, the state it created in the early 50s resembled the USSR quite closely. More than this: in due course, Communist rule inflicted two parallel convulsions on China. Because of its roots in the countryside, where the peasantry by and large retained confidence in its leadership, the ccp was able to carry out a swift and complete collectivization within a few years of its original redistribution of land, without incurring the disaster that had occurred in Russia. But in 1958, determined to accelerate the tempo of development, it launched the Great Leap Forward, creating people’s communes that were supposed both to produce backyard industries and to deliver much higher quotas of grain. With labour diverted to homemade steelworks, and harvests failing in bad weather, the result was the worst famine of the century, in which at least 15 and perhaps 30 million died. Eight years later, the Cultural Revolution scythed through the Party itself, decimating its ranks in a series of purges that, as in Russia, then spread beyond it. To all appearances, as if in the grip of an unalterable common dynamic, the prc had replicated the two worst cataclysms of the ussr.

But uncanny though the similarities might seem, the differing matrix of the Chinese Revolution had persisted. If the scale of the dead in the countryside was, relative to the population of each society, probably comparable, its mechanisms were distinct, as were its consequences. Soviet collectivization was conceived as an operation to destroy ‘rich’ peasants—typically those with some livestock—as a stratum, and executed with military levels of violence. Over 2 million kulaks were deported to wastelands, under the guns of the OGPU. The famine of 1932–33 that followed, though in part caused by bad weather, was basically an effect of the wreckage of rural society this second civil war left behind. Wildly voluntarist though it was, the Great Leap Forward, by contrast, was never intended as an attack on the peasantry, or any part of it. There were no deportations or troops of the Interior Ministry rounding up recalcitrants. Bureaucratic blindness, due to (naturally, self-inflicted) lack of truthful reports from below on grain actually harvested, rather than police ferocity, was the immediate cause of the disaster. By the same token, no comparable alienation of the peasantry ensued. The countryside was not durably demoralized by the Great Leap Forward, village life in even the worst afflicted regions recovering with surprising speed.

Contrasts of motivation and outcome were still more marked in the Cultural Revolution. In the second half of the 30s, Stalin sowed terror from top to bottom of the Soviet Party and state, targeting most of the very officials who had given him supreme power in the CPSU, shot out of hand during the Yezhovshchina, as spies, traitors or counter-revolutionaries. Though the full reasons for this dementia remain uncertain, it is clear that Stalin, whose legitimacy as personal dictator had never been altogether secure—he had played no significant role in the October Revolution, and Lenin had expressly warned the Party against him—was gripped by a morbid suspicion of all those around him, and operated on the belief that the only way to deal with potential doubters or opponents was to kill them.

In launching the Cultural Revolution, Mao too aimed at his immediate colleagues, in part because he had been obliged to acknowledge the failure of the Great Leap Forward and accept the reversal of agrarian policy they had imposed when it could no longer be denied. But his broader motive was to prevent any reproduction in China of the congealed bureaucratic caste that, as he saw it, was leading the USSR after Stalin towards a class society indistinguishable from capitalism. To block this development, he did not turn to the security organs, which in China never acquired the importance they had in Russia, but to student youth. Unleashing, against those he feared would take the Soviet path, mass turbulence from below, rather than decapitating them from above, Mao plunged the country into a decade of controlled chaos.

The cruelties that followed were legion. Uncoordinated violence—persecutions and dissensions; humiliations, beatings, shootings; factional warfare—spread from city to city; in the counties, organized executions. The number of victims, still to be properly computed, was well over a million. footnote3 Yet deaths, proportionately much fewer than in the Soviet maelstrom, were meted out not by central instruction but at vindictive local initiative, as authorities were overthrown and scores settled across the country. No Yezhov or Beria was in charge. But unlike the Great Terror, the Cultural Revolution was not just a gigantic repression. It was a sweeping attempt to shake up bureaucratic structures by mobilizing a younger generation in revolt against them, and was lived as a mental liberation—if only because of the temporary collapse of so much institutional authority—by many who would later become disillusioned with its outcome, or even passionate opponents of communism. Its self-proclaimed goal was an egalitarian transformation of outlooks that would no longer accept the ‘three great differences’: between town and country, between agriculture and industry, and—above all—between manual and intellectual labour.

Such ideals were utopian in any society at the time, let alone one still as backward as China. But they were not simply window-dressing. The suspension of universities and high schools to dispatch 17 million youngsters from the cities to undertake agricultural labour in the countryside, alongside peasants, was a more distinctive and longer-lasting process than the persecutions of the period. Carried out without violence, often with enthusiasm, it answered to other objectives. These in turn left their mark on the way the Cultural Revolution enacted successive purges of the Party itself. There was no wholesale slaughter. Humiliation, demotion and rustication was the typical fate of most of those targeted, rather than liquidation. The rituals of thought reform, ‘curing the disease, rather than killing the patient’ in the Yan’an phrase, remained in theory, and in—brutal enough—practice, the customary method for dealing with suspects of the capitalist road. When the Cultural Revolution came to an end, only about 1 per cent of the CCP had been permanently evicted from it, and—with the exception of Liu Shaoqi—virtually the entire top leadership of the Party on whom Mao had turned in 1966–69 had survived. Unlike Stalin, he had led the Chinese Revolution to victory, and there was no massacre of the Old Guard who had fought together with him.

Cultural and political variables intertwined in the differing dénouement. Mao had become a latter-day emperor, wielding an absolute personal power. But the imperial tradition in China had always placed more emphasis on indoctrination than coercion as an instrument of rule, however ruthless its exercise of violence when need or whim arose: the idea of the Cultural Revolution—altering minds to alter things, as if intellectual conceptions determined social relations—owed more to Confucian than to any Marxist notions of historical change. Yet this was still a regime born of a social revolution in which power—contrary to a dictum of Mao at the time—had grown not only out of the barrel of a gun, but also out of the moral confidence of millions in the party holding it. If the Cultural Revolution came close to destroying that political inheritance, it was nevertheless strangely shaped and, in the end, constrained by it, too.

II. Mutations

Separated by thirty years at their origin, the two revolutions ended in projects of reform close enough in time to overlap. The background to each of these was the failure of a preceding attempt at reconstruction. In the USSR, once Stalin died, reaction against his tyranny was swift. Under Khrushchev, the machinery of terror was dismantled; censorship lightened; collective farms granted more autonomy; investment in consumption increased; and peaceful coexistence with capitalism proclaimed. De-Stalinization proceeded for some five years, from the 20th to 21st Party Congresses of the cpsu, with considerable momentum. Thereafter, Khrushchev’s erratic zig-zags in foreign and domestic policy—gambling and retreating in the Caribbean, pointlessly restructuring the Party, improvising schemes for agricultural revival—antagonized his colleagues and led to his summary removal. He had not envisaged any basic change in the economic system inherited from Stalin, of highly centralized planning and priority to heavy industry, which had assured Soviet triumph in 1945, and on which his own career had been based. Legitimizing all that Gosplan had achieved, the prestige of victory over the most industrialized power in Europe crippled the flexibility of the socio-economic system responsible for transforming the USSR into a Great Power just when it was most needed, at the entrance to a new era. footnote4

When Khrushchev was ousted, growth was still respectable and the USSR’s military power expanding. The price of his failure was the ‘period of stagnation’, as its long aftermath from the mid-60s to the mid-80s would come to be called. Freed from his restless initiatives, and now secure from arbitrary arrest, the Soviet bureaucracy settled into a complacent inertia, contenting itself with a mounting stockpile of weapons and ignoring steadily declining returns from its routines of industrial investment. The USSR achieved nuclear parity with the USA, and was accorded the rank of a super-power. But twenty years of Brezhnevism left the Party a petrified forest of office-holders, presiding over a society in which life expectancy was falling, economic growth had virtually ground to a halt, and cynicism was universal. Such was the stage on which Gorbachev stepped in 1985.

The disarray in China when Deng Xiaoping came to power was more dramatic. Society was still traumatized by the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. Higher education had effectively ceased for a decade. Vandalism had destroyed monuments, dogmatism snuffed out intellectual life. Vast numbers of youth remained immured in rural exile. Urban discontent was seething, the country’s capital recently the scene of a massive popular riot in which the Public Security Bureau building on the edge of Tiananmen Square was sacked and set on fire by infuriated crowds: turmoil unthinkable in Moscow. Mao had wanted to avoid the kind of communism to which Khrushchev’s policies, as he saw them, had led. In that goal, he had succeeded. No slow involution of a conservative bureaucracy, paralysing economy and society in a degenerative mould, as had gripped the USSR under Brezhnev, could now occur. His negative aim had been achieved. But his positive alternative had failed no less completely. By the time he died, his policies had ended in another kind of historical impasse.

2

Of the two states as they crossed the threshold of reform, the USSR enjoyed to all appearances much the better conditions, material and cultural, for success. Its GDP was four to five times higher than that of China. Its industrial base was far larger, employing over twice the relative labour force. It was richer in nearly every natural resource—fossil fuels, valuable minerals, abundant land. It was much more urbanized. Its population was better fed, with an average intake of calories half as much again as in China. Its infrastructure was considerably more developed. Last but not least, it was incomparably better educated: not only fully literate, but enrolling twenty times the relative number of students in higher education, and possessing a large pool of well-trained scientists.

Yet the ‘period of stagnation’ had progressively neutralized, and in critical respects degraded, these endowments. For twenty years, no political change ruffled the dead surface of Soviet life. Central planning taken to a caricatural extreme—specifying the prices of some 60,000 commodities—stifled innovation and accumulated every kind of irrationality. Labour productivity stagnated; capital–output ratios worsened; obsolete plant remained unscrapped; the new information technology was missed. But as the performance of the economy declined, the pressure of the arms race increased. Locked into strategic rivalry with the United States, an enormously wealthier and more advanced society, the Soviet leadership diverted a crippling portion of GDP to military expenditure, with little or no spin-offs to the rest of the economy, without ultimately being able to keep up with American weaponry. Its protectorates in Eastern Europe and Afghanistan, requiring subsidies and expeditionary forces, represented a further burden. For the ussr not just a diplomatic stand-off, the Cold War froze the springs of growth too.

But when the hour of reform came, long overdue, the greatest deficit in this deadlocked system was not economic, but political. The ruling Party was now four generations away from the Revolution. The insurrectionary spirit of Bolshevism was long gone. The rough dynamism of Stalinist sturmovshchina, in industry and war, was a thing of the past. Memory even of Khrushchev’s boisterous show of combining something of the two, brief enough, had faded. The torpid bulk of the CPSU—the Soviet nomenklatura proper—consisted for the most part of mediocre administrative functionaries, incapable of imagination or initiative. But that it was not completely catatonic is suggested by the emergence of Gorbachev at its head. Once installed as General Secretary, he first moved rapidly to clear out the top layer of hold-overs from the Brezhnev period, consolidating his power in the Party with a hand-picked majority in the Politburo. He then proclaimed his watchwords: glasnost and perestroika—the need for greater openness of public life, and a make-over of the country’s institutions.

The first of these, which saw a broad relaxation of censorship, was greeted with a great wave of enthusiasm in society, as long-suppressed energies were released in every kind of iconoclastic argument, exposé and debate. The second left its listeners more perplexed. What did perestroika—a term once fleetingly used by Lenin—actually mean, in practice? It soon became clear that Gorbachev, courageous in his intentions, was vague in his ideas: although morally distant from the Brezhnevized CPSU in which he had ascended, he had few intellectual resources independent of it, and only the haziest notion of the reforms he had in mind. Most of his appointees in the cupola of the Party had still less idea, and many were soon resisting him. So to circumvent their opposition, he increasingly turned to an alternative constituency for legitimacy and direction.

The Russian intelligentsia had long been alienated from the regime. The brilliant avant-garde culture of those who were not in exile after the Revolution was buried by Stalin. Hopes raised by the thaw after his death were quickly dashed, even before Khrushchev fell, by the crudity and philistinism of the successor regime. By the mid-80s, communism in any shape or form was anathema to nearly all currents in this historically influential stratum of Russian society. Slavophiles and Westernizers alike, its two traditional poles, were united in rejection of the Soviet order. The former, however, were—for all the fame of Solzhenitsyn—residual; the latter were hegemonic. Liberals, convinced of the superiority of the West, and aspiring to become part of it, they were soon setting the pace in Gorbachev’s entourage, supplying more decided ideas and objectives than he had developed himself. For them, real reform could mean only two, inter-related things: the introduction of democracy, with free competitive elections; and the establishment of a market economy, based on private ownership of the means of production.

As the General Secretary of the CPSU, Gorbachev was not in a position to espouse the second of these goals, even if he had wanted to, which he did not. But the first he embraced, provided the rules were such that he could count on winning endorsement of his own power from a popular consultation, helping to free him from dependence on a Party which he had come increasingly to mistrust, as it mistrusted him. Political reform, the creation for the first time in Russian history of a representative democracy, became the priority. Economic reform, which had originally been the principal meaning of perestroika, was deferred. This was the indicated order of battle for the liberal intelligentsia, which needed to break the communist monopoly of power before being able to attack the foundations of the planned economy. For Gorbachev, however, it had another attraction. Dismantling censorship and allowing free elections was relatively simple to do—essentially just a matter of lifting restrictions. Reorganizing the economy would be far more difficult—a huge task, by comparison. He opted for the less arduous route.

If Western-style democracy was to be introduced at home, what was the point of confrontation with it abroad? Winding down the Cold War could garner not only the applause of an intelligentsia that, now well entrenched in the media, had become the dominant opinion-maker in society, but real economic benefits, by reducing the burden of military spending. Not only that: the international prestige of a ruler consorting on the friendliest of terms with his Western counterparts, above all the President of the United States of America, and bringing peace and good-will to the nations of the world, could not but burnish his domestic image. From 1987 onwards, Gorbachev devoted himself more and more to foreign trips and confabulations, becoming the toast of Western opinion, and visibly intoxicated by the figure he was cutting on the world stage. Less and less time was spent on the ungrateful job of controlling the domestic economy.

There, after initial half-baked schemes for promoting cooperatives had come to nothing, one incoherent expedient for introducing greater enterprise autonomy after another was toyed with, to little or no effect, as a massive social crisis hit the ussr, stemming directly from the priority given to political over economic reanimation of the country. Growth was virtually zero when Gorbachev came to power, and oil prices—on which the government’s foreign-exchange earnings critically depended—were already starting to fall, putting pressure on the budget that became steadily more acute as oil revenues continued to drop. These would have been difficulties in any circumstances. What converted them into a catastrophic free-fall was Gorbachev’s sidelining of the CPSU in his quest for popular consecration. The planned economy depended on the ability of the Party to enforce the deliveries from enterprises that were required by the centre. Once it was removed from effective power, without any coherent replacement, managers simply ceased to supply the state with their output at its prescribed prices, selling it instead for whatever they could get to whomever they could. The result was a collapse of the central allocation mechanism that had held the system together, and a mounting disruption of economic exchange, particularly severe in inter-republican trade.

As the economy descended into chaos, the state became increasingly unable to collect taxes from enterprises or republics, and resorted to printing money instead, to cover food subsidies and social expenditures. Spiralling inflation was compounded by a widening balance of payments deficit, as the government tried to ward off unpopularity with consumer imports, and galloping foreign debt, which all but doubled in five years. By 1989 the Soviet state was not far from bankruptcy. More fatefully still, it was on the brink of disintegration, and for the same reason. Once Gorbachev pulled the linchpin of the Party out of the system, positioning himself as personal ruler apart from and above it, nothing held the republics together any longer. footnote5 Without the binding structure of the cpsu, the ussr lacked any all-Union ligaments. Gorbachev, immersed to the end in his role as stayer of the Cold War and liberator of Eastern Europe, proved blinder to the national question within his own country than even to its economic plight. When what was left of the old order finally revolted against him in 1991, and brought him down along with itself, the ussr dissolved overnight.

3

When, seven years before the CPSU, the CCP embarked on its reform course, China was a far poorer and more backward country than Russia. footnote6 Around 1980, the per capita GNP of the PRC was fourteen times lower than that of the USSR. Over 70 per cent of its labour force was engaged in agriculture, as against 14 per cent in the Soviet Union. Nearly every third Chinese could still not read or write. Its universities were a fraction of those even in India. It can safely be said that no observer, either inside or outside the country, could have predicted the reversal in the fortunes of the two societies three decades later. Yet from the start, there was a series of Soviet handicaps that China did not suffer from: a set of negative advantages that gave it initial conditions—economic, social, political—which, in less obvious respects, favoured it.

The first of these was the lesser weight of obsolescent plant in the economy, not because fixed capital was more advanced than in the ussr, but simply by virtue of a lower degree of industrialization. That what would become the Chinese rust-belt was still not inconsiderable, no-one who has seen Wang Bing’s trilogy ‘West of the Tracks’—perhaps the greatest documentary of all time, on the ultimate fate of the smoke-stack district of Shenyang and its workers—could forget. But, relatively speaking, it was smaller than in the ussr. There were fewer factories to scrap. More significantly still, Chinese planning had always been much looser than its Soviet template. Mao had early on recognized the impossibility of imposing the ubiquitous directives of Gosplan on a far less articulated Chinese economy, with much deeper regional traditions and poorer infrastructures. From the beginning, provincial and township authorities had enjoyed greater autonomy than in the Soviet system at any point in its history. Deliberately, the Cultural Revolution had further weakened the powers of the centre, leaving local governments more room for initiative. So output targets for industry were quite modest and pressure to fulfill them was not overwhelming. The result was a much more decentralized system, in which the number of allocated commodities whose prices were fixed in Beijing was at its maximum no more than 600, a hundredth of the Soviet plethora. footnote7 Less constraining, this was an institutional framework that allowed for greater flexibility and undisruptive change.

Socially, too, China had one huge, critical advantage over the USSR. The peasantry was not a listless, sullen rump of the class it had once been, as in Russia. It was neither tired nor disaffected, but full of potential energy, waiting to be released, as events would show. Historically, it had never possessed collective institutions comparable to the mir. Rural society, long atomized in the North and shaken loose by the Taiping upheaval in the South, could recover after the Great Leap Forward with centuries of market impulses behind it. The absence of deep agrarian alienation was not, moreover, simply a difference between the two countrysides. Making up the overwhelming majority of the population, the Chinese peasantry was the central pediment of the nation. Its nearest equivalent in the ussr, even if not so proportionately large a part of society, would have been the industrial working class. But it too, though not so demoralized as the kolkhozniki, was by the 80s thoroughly disabused as a social force, deeply cynical about the regime, inured to make-work and low productivity, in compensation for the vast gap between its nominal role as the leading class in the state and its actual position in the hierarchy of privilege. In China, where after the Great Leap Forward the rural population was barred entry into the cities, and had always lacked social benefits that urban workers received, formal inequalities between town and country were greater than in the Soviet Union. But the ruling ideology had never told peasants they were the vanguard class building socialism in the first place. There was less moral gulf between theory and reality, and less lived time between original hope and subsequent experience. For all that had been inflicted, as well as bestowed on it, the countryside remained a reserve of the Party in power.

Internationally, the situation of the prc gave it further leeway. It was not burdened with any costly satellite zone, requiring soldiers and subventions to hold down. It was not in a position, and did not attempt, to compete with the superpowers in the missile race. Beyond freedom from these fetters, however, was the radically different relationship of China to the United States. After a decade of extreme tension with the USSR, to the point of border hostilities, Mao had swung into an entente with the US during the Cultural Revolution itself. The Nixon visit and its aftermath, spectacular though these were, remained a diplomatic opening, without significant broader dimensions, as long as he lived. But it meant that when the turn towards domestic reform came, its external setting was propitious. A cautious amity rather than calculated antagonism had created conditions in which the headquarters of world capital, and its assorted regional affiliates, were already primed to extend financial support to any sign of a move towards the market in China. To absence of any deep peasant alienation at home corresponded lack of any direct imperialist threat abroad, for the first time in the modern history of the country.

Internally, moreover, the PRC was in no danger of disintegrating, as the USSR would do. It was not composed of fifteen different constituent republics. Ethnically more homogeneous than most nation-states, it confronted rebellious nationalities—Tibetan and Uighur—within its borders, as the Soviet Union had not done for half a century. But their weight within the population as a whole was minimal compared with the sum of the peoples who broke up the ussr a decade later. Higher on the agenda of the ccp than continuing problems of keeping control of these regions was the still unfulfilled task of recovering Taiwan, where the GMD had built an island redoubt under American protection, still claiming to represent the true Republic of China, and now flourishing economically. The Party’s primary concern was not with risks of dissolution, but problems of repossession.

4

Yet, at the gateway to their reforms, perhaps the most decisive of all the differences between Russia and China lay in the character of their political leadership. In command of the prc was not an isolated, inexperienced functionary, surrounded by aides and publicists infused with a naive Schwärmerei for all that was Western, but battle-hardened veterans of the original Revolution, leaders who had been Mao’s colleagues, and had suffered under him, but had lost none of their strategic skills or self-confidence. Deng Xiaoping, indeed, had been so indispensable to the regime that Mao had recalled him to office while still alive. After Mao’s death, his authority was such that he soon emerged as the unquestioned arbiter of the Party, without having to seek this eminence personally, or even occupy the highest posts in it. But he was not alone. With him returned Chen Yun, Bo Yibo, Peng Zhen, Yang Shangkun and others, forming a compact, outspoken group of equals—the ‘Eight Immortals’—who, often disagreeing vigorously with each other, steered the course towards reform with him. Collectively, they were in a strong position, enjoying not only the prestige of their roles in the Civil War and building of the nation, but the popularity of having brought the Cultural Revolution to an end, which was met with a surge of relief in the cities.

In confronting the situation of the country as Mao had left it, this leadership, with Deng at its head, remained the revolutionaries they had always been. Their temper was Leninist: radical, disciplined, imaginative—capable at once of tactical patience and prudent experimentation, and of the boldest initiatives and most dramatic switches of direction. It was this spirit that had inspired the Long March and won the Civil War. They now brought it to bear on the impasse into which the Cultural Revolution had taken China. In doing so, they were acutely aware of the transformation of its environment, in a way that the functionaries of the cpsu, presiding over a relatively more advanced society, were not of theirs. Western Europe was certainly richer and more developed than Russia, but it had always been so, and the difference between the growth rates of the two—the 70s and early 80s saw a long downturn in the ec itself—was not so vast as to shock Soviet rulers, even as late as the early Gorbachev, into rethinking the basic assumptions on which the success of the state had been built.

In East Asia, on the other hand, Japan had broken all historical records in its high-speed growth, from the 50s onwards—far outdistancing not just Europe, but the United States too. This spectacular recovery of an economy reduced to ashes at the end of the War—the creation of super-competitive export industries and a fully modernized consumer society—threw the relative poverty and autarchy of China, for all its substantial development under Mao, into pointed relief. Nor was Japan, towering above its neighbours though it now did, alone in its success. By the late 70s, South Korea had industrialized at a break-neck pace under Park Chung Hee and, most galling of all, the gmd regime in Taiwan was not far behind. The pressure of this setting on the prc was inescapable. Deng gave vivid expression to it a decade later, at the height of the political crisis of 1989. After remarking that so long as China was isolated, ‘there was no way the economy could develop, no way living standards could rise, and no way the country could get stronger’, he went on: ‘The world is galloping forward these days, a mile a minute, especially in science and technology. We can hardly keep up’. footnote8

The task of making good the lag between communism in China and capitalism in East Asia was a formidable agenda for any programme of reforms. But the Immortals were not daunted. They tackled it with a vigour born not just from the momentum, still active, of the Revolution they had made, but from a millennial self-confidence, battered for a century, but ultimately unbroken, of the oldest continuous civilization in the world. Mao’s dynamism, for better or worse, had been one expression of the recovery of that confidence. The Reform Era propelled by Deng would be another. In this historical self-assurance lay a fundamental difference between Russia and China.

5

Ideologically, Tsarism had from the start possessed a weak messianic streak, transmitted to Russian elites and in due course to the country’s intelligentsia—notions of Russia as the Third Rome, the saviour of the Slavs, the redeemer of humanity from Western materialism. In the century leading up to the Revolution, versions of this strain could be found in the Aksakovs, Dostoevsky, Rozanov, Blok. But it was a compensation mechanism. Russia remained, as all Russians knew, a backward margin of Europe, redoubtable only by reason of its vastness. Westernization, devoid of religious or ethnic foibles, had been the driving vision of its greatest rulers, Peter and Catherine, and in one variant or another—liberal or radical—came to dominate its elites and intelligentsia alike by the early 20th century. Still, hankerings for a special Russian mission persisted, yielding a recurrent schizophrenia, visible to this day. Leninism resolved this split mentality by waging war on Russian backwardness, not in desperate imitation of the West, but in revolt against it, moved by its own deepest critique of itself.

Under Stalin, the Second World War and its aftermath brought a return to nationalism of a more traditional Great Russian stamp, with its train of defence mechanisms, though this always coexisted with Marxist themes. After Stalin, such chauvinism receded, without any real alternative succeeding it. The embers of internationalism, still extant under Khrushchev, were soon snuffed out, leaving only the ideological vacuum of Brezhnevism. By the time of perestroika, not only virtually the whole intelligentsia but elements within the ruling elite itself, despondent at the stagnation of the country, had reverted to what could be considered, historically speaking, the ideological default position of thorough-going Westernization—if, this time, in a spirit more of abasement than ambition.

China’s geo-cultural traditions were altogether distinct. The Middle Kingdom had dominated its known world ever since the unification of the first Emperor, in the time of the Punic Wars in the West; sometimes conquered, but never rivalled by any comparable state in the region, where it was always far the largest, richest and most advanced power, to which others could only pay tribute, rather than hope for equal relations. Under the Qing, the empire had extended further than ever, stretching deep into Central Asia. The ideology of successive dynasties had varied—Manchu cults were more heteroclite than most—but the imperial claim to absolute preeminence over all lesser rulers, nearer or farther, did not. China was the centre of civilization, and its natural summit.

In the 19th century, Western intrusion shattered these age-old pretensions. Once it became clear that the monarchy was crumbling, under domestic and foreign blows, the alarm of the literati—normally the linchpin of imperial administration—became steadily more acute; and with the first failures of the new Republic, their reaction took a uniquely radical turn. Different currents criss-crossed in the May Fourth culture that crystallized around the student protests of 1919 against Japanese demands on China, and the Treaty of Versailles that upheld them. But its central thrust was a complete demolition of scriptural Confucianism, which had been the ruling doctrine of China’s socio-political order and the moral framework of educated life since Han times. Within a few years, virtually nothing was left of it: an achievement no opponents of any comparable creed, world religions—Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist—occupying a similar position in the ideological firmament of their civilizations, have ever matched. footnote9 The assault on the Chinese past, intermittently passionate enough already in Liang Qichao, became uncompromising and comprehensive in Chen Duxiu, the intellectual polestar of New Youth.footnote10

The vehemence of this rejection of native traditions, utterly unlike any current of feeling in Japan, did not reflect—this too was unlike Japan—any profound temptation by the West. In China, the predatory record of the Western powers was too blatant to permit a zapadnichestvo. The mutual slaughter of the First World War in Europe clinched the lessons of imperialist greed in Asia, their marriage at Versailles precipitating May Fourth itself. The hallmark of this intelligentsia, after the collapse of the examination system, was abhorrence of the traditional past and revulsion at the capitalist present, as these mingled in warlord China. Its greatest mind, Lu Xun, gave unforgettable expression to both. Without denying that something of value lurked in each system—in the spirit of a sardonic Montaigne, he urged his compatriots to take what good they could find of either, in a freebooting ‘haptism’—he remained an irreconcilable enemy of both. But the very extremity of his positions sprang from the strength of the culture he criticized.

Mao, who admired Lu Xun, took his advice on a grand scale, transforming his negations into the positive synthesis of a Sinified Marxism, at once more systematically receptive of intellectual subversion from the West, and more profoundly attached to political traditions of the imperial past—composing ‘On Contradiction’ in the caves of Yan’an; neglecting affairs of state, at the height of his power, to re-read the chronicles of Sima Guang. Lu Xun knew little of dialectical materialism, and did not relish annals of autocracy. But today’s liberals, detesting both men, are not wrong to see a connexion between the ‘totalism’ of the critic and the ‘totalitarianism’ of the ruler. In their own way, each embodied a Chinese response to the crises of their country of a creative vigour without counterpart in Russia after the mid-20s, drawn from the deepest resources of a culture that was both much older and more threatened by foreign domination. In productive or perverted form, from May Fourth to the Cultural Revolution, related energies were at work. From 1919 to 1949—confidence in negation; then in revolt. From 1958 to 1976—over-confidence in construction; then in destruction. Finally, after 1978—confidence in reform and reconstruction.

6

The degree of inner security with which the senate of revolutionary elders tackled the problems confronting them found early expression in the way it dealt with the Party’s past and future. De-Stalinization in Russia was the sensational but surreptitious act of a single leader, Khrushchev, who stunned the 20th Congress of his party with a speech denouncing the crimes of Stalin about which he had consulted no-one. Emotional and anecdotal, without more explanation of how the repressions he selectively reported had been possible than the empty bureaucratic euphemism, ‘cult of personality’, this rambling address was never officially published; nor was it followed by any more substantial documentation or analysis from the leadership of that time or later, until the days of perestroika.

Deng and his colleagues proceeded very differently. Some 4,000 Party officials and historians were involved in a retrospect of the Cultural Revolution, out of whose discussions a drafting group of 20–40 distilled a 35,000 word balance-sheet under Deng’s supervision, formally adopted as a resolution by the Central Committee of the ccp in June 1981. While certainly no complete accounting of the Cultural Revolution—for which it recorded Mao’s responsibility, ‘comprehensive in magnitude and protracted in duration’, but confined its toll of repressions to the Party rather than the population—it offered a reasoned explanation of it, beyond the misdeeds of one man: the peculiar traditions of a party whose road to power had inured it to harsh class struggle, as if this were a permanent task; the distorting effect of conflict with the ussr, fanning fears of revisionism within; and last but not least, ‘the evil ideological and political influence of centuries of feudal autocracy’. Unlike Khrushchev’s commination, the Resolution accepted co-responsibility of the Central Committee for the modern autocrat’s rule, and made no attempt to diminish his contribution to the Chinese Revolution as a whole.

Looking forward, the Elders’ approach was equally distinct. In the USSR, Khrushchev had given no thought to any passing of his powers. Those who ousted him, Brezhnev at their head, clung to their posts into senility. In the palsied gerontocracy that the CPSU became, new generations were less a promise than a threat, and only deaths could bring any renewal of the leadership. Three General Secretaries had to die within three years, all in their seventies, before a younger politician could finally take over. In the CCP, on the other hand, the Elders suffered from no such insecurity. They lost little time in finding a relay. Within two years of recovering power, they had delegated its daily exercise to the cohort below them, making Hu Yaobang head of the Party and Zhao Ziyang of the government.

7

The Reform Era began—if not quite in point of time, in substantial effect—with a transformation of relations on the land. First, procurement prices for grain were increased. Then, in a rolling process spreading across the country, after experimental success in two provinces, Anhui and Sichuan, the People’s Communes were wound up and usufruct of their land carefully divided among the individual peasant families composing them, giving them control of their holdings to produce what they wanted, once deliveries to the state were met. The resulting ‘household responsibility system’ amounted to a second agrarian reform, as egalitarian as the first, but far more favourable to peasant production. Responding to the new incentives, productivity shot up: labour inputs fell and harvests rose, agricultural output jumping by a third. With work-times released from tillage, rural industry—textiles, bricks and the like—spread rapidly. The result was to lift peasant incomes from 30 to 44 per cent of national income in the space of a few years, 1978 to 1984.

In the industrial sector, no sudden wrench was thrown into the central allocation system, Russian-style. Rather, state enterprises were gradually permitted to charge market prices for output above the quotas required of them by the plan and sold at fixed prices—giving managers incentives, not unlike farmers, to produce profitably outside the official delivery system, without it being dismantled. Once such dual-track pricing was well tested, the size of the plan was in effect frozen, allowing further industrial growth to develop outside it. In practice the state now leased enterprises to managers on a contractual basis, much as peasants held their land on leases of thirty years from the state, which retained ultimate ownership of it.

For fifteen years or more, under these arrangements, the most dynamic sector of the economy proved to be the distinctive hybrid form of Chinese ‘township and village enterprises’—firms intermediate between state, collective and private property, benefiting from low taxes and easy credit from local governments, often stake-holders in them—which mushroomed in the simpler branches of industry with astonishing speed and competitive success. Rural industrial output increased at an annual rate of over 20 per cent, as employment in TVES more than quadrupled from 28 to 135 million, and their share of gdp along with it, from 6 to 26 per cent, between the onset of the reforms and the mid-90s. footnote11 Highly profitable, the phenomenon of the tves was ignored by Russian reformers of every stripe as perestroika got under way. Of all the contrasts between the changes in the two economies, their performance offers the most dramatic single antithesis to the careening Soviet plunge towards de-industrialization.

The spectacular growth of the TVES was based, of course, on unlimited supplies of cheap labour, absent in the USSR. With them, the PRC for the first time drew full benefit from its principal factor endowment, for which its earlier Soviet-inspired model of industrialization—focused on capital-intensive investment in heavy industry—had been a misfit, however necessary at the time. Reversing this pattern with labour-intensive investment in light industry, the tves gained an enormous comparative advantage: by the end of the 80s, their ratio of labour to fixed capital was nine times that of state-owned enterprises. But the latter were also direct beneficiaries of the growth of the TVES, whose profits swelled peasant savings, which were then channelled by state banks into further investments in the big nationalized enterprises, re-equipping and modernizing them.

Very high levels of rural savings were in turn another feature of Chinese development rooted in the paradoxical legacy of the Revolution itself. For what determined them was a combination of the traditional limitation of full welfare coverage to the towns, the dismantling of the communes that had provided social services, lesser but real, in the countryside, and the effects of the one-child policy to restrain demographic growth. Without security against misfortune from the state, or sure prospect of family support from the next generation, peasant households had little option, even as their consumption increased, but to save a considerable portion of their income. The state benefited twice over. Unlike its Soviet counterpart, it was spared welfare expenditures on the larger part of its population, and had easy access to the funding required to finance its modernization programme.

Capital was also available from another source. As early as 1979–80, Special Economic Zones were opened along the southern coast to attract investment from the Chinese diaspora, targeting Hong Kong, Taiwanese and South-East Asian wealth. After a slow start, the Open Door shown to such foreign entrepreneurs became a success. Drawn by the privileges, absence of import duties and the cheaper labour of the mainland, diaspora firms arrived in force, bringing with them technologies beyond the reach of the tves, essentially in export processing. China was thus able to piggy-back on the accumulated experience and assets of diaspora capitalism for its entry into the world market as a low-cost manufacturing centre for assembly work; over time, principally in electronic and white goods. Here too lay a regional advantage that the Soviet economy, whatever else was possible for it, could not hope to match.

Last but not least, the Chinese reforms benefited crucially from the decentralization of state controls over the economy that was one of the most fruitful legacies of Maoism. This meant not only was there a much smaller planning empire to reconfigure, with far less muscle-bound paraphernalia of quotas and directives, but that the country already possessed in its provinces a web of autonomous centres of economic activity. Once these were further released from intervention by Beijing, their governments sprang into high gear, with every kind of incentive to increase investment and accelerate growth within their jurisdictions. In due course, this generated many an irrationality of its own: duplication of industries, gigantomania of public works, mushrooming of informal protectionism; not to speak of fiscal weakening of the centre, as local authorities competed with each other for best results. But, with all its tares, inter-provincial competition in China, as once rivalry between cities in Italy, was and remains a source of economic vitality. Russia is nominally a federation today; but its vast, featureless plains have never fostered strong regional identities, and its government remains as centralized as ever. The contrast with China is fundamental. Not in constitutional law, but in commercial reality, the People’s Republic of today is as much a case of dynamic federalism as the United States.

III. Breaking Points

A decade into the Reform Era, by the end of the 80s the Chinese economy had been substantially transformed. The scale and speed of such changes, naturally, had not left society or culture unaffected. In the countryside, income growth levelled off after 1984, but the peasantry had enjoyed such a major improvement in its conditions of life that in relative terms it remained a contented class. The intelligentsia, historically the other key to social order, had also gained greatly from the reform course. But its attitude to the regime was more ambiguous. Universities had been reopened, research institutes expanded, new employment opportunities created. Rusticated youth had been reintegrated into urban life, and victims of past repressions released. Freedom of expression was far greater than under Mao, access to foreign thought and literature by and large unhindered, giving rise to a veritable ‘high-culture fever’. In a heady atmosphere of increasing emancipation, the future of the nation was debated, with an overwhelming consensus in favour of further reforms.

This was not a point of contention with the government itself, whose official aim was also to deepen the reform process. For many intellectuals the two were working in the same direction, with an exchange of consultation and advice between them, particularly around Zhao Ziyang and his aides. But there was also a certain tension, which grew as the decade progressed. The Party possessed the authority of its economic success. It had also enjoyed the legitimacy of its rescue of society from the Cultural Revolution. But this was a deliverance that did not outline any alternative political order. Here the Elders, themselves scarred by the experience of the upheaval, were without a message, beyond warnings of the need to avert any relapse into chaos. At the very outset of the Reform Era, in 1978, voices calling for democracy were swiftly silenced, as a threat to stability. At the time, these were still relatively isolated.

But as the economic reforms developed, with more and more emphasis on the introduction of market relations, coherent theorization did not accompany them—there was no official explanation of the significance of the tves, for example. The result was a kind of ideological limbo, in which liberal ideas quite naturally spread. For if market principles of economic freedom were the order of the day, why should not juridical principles of political freedom—some nominally enshrined in the prc constitution itself—follow them, as accredited doctrines in the West held they must? Historically, for all the distinction of Hu Shi, its one outstanding representative in the May Fourth generation, liberalism had been a very weak current in the Chinese intelligentsia. But in the 80s, without producing any comparable thinker, and with no very clear outlines, it became in the wake of the Cultural Revolution something like a dominant outlook among intellectuals. For the most part, this remained quite moderate, though over time more radical notes, closer to Russian norms, could be heard. By 1988, the popular television series River Elegy was offering a coded hymn to the West, contrasted with China’s own grim traditions, of which any zapadnik could have been proud; though even this included a flattering portrait of Zhao Ziyang, evoking a great future ahead for the nation, and as history was widely criticized by scholars.

By this time, the mood among students differed. Among a generation no longer touched directly by the Cultural Revolution, spirits were higher, and ideas less fixed. Few were unaffected by the original ideals of the Liberation; some were influenced by liberal, others by more orthodox, teachers; most, attuned to culture and news from abroad—songs from Taiwan, music from America; strikes in Poland, elections in Russia; all, borne by the élan of a society in movement, excited by the opening of its horizons and frustrated by its continuing inertias. Conscious of its historic role in awakening the nation, in 1919 and again in 1935, this was the layer of the population readiest for collective action. In 1985 it showed its traditional nationalist mettle in protests against Japan. Then in the winter of 1986–87, it mounted demonstrations in Hefei and Beijing, calling for democratization. When Hu Yaobang, at the head of the Party, refused to suppress these, the Elders dismissed him. The movement was contained, but the sentiments behind it had not disappeared.

The following year, economic reform itself—hitherto the breakwater against demands for political reform—ran into its first serious crisis, as the cost of basic necessities started to rise, and urban wages stagnated. When Zhao and Deng hinted that full-scale liberalization of prices might be imminent, panic hoarding ensued, and in the summer inflation spiralled to an annualized rate of 50 per cent. Nor, in popular perception, was this the only baleful effect of the system of dual-track pricing. Corruption, unknown under Mao, was spreading, as officials took advantage of their position to exploit the difference between administered and market prices for the same products, and was detested. The combination of unexpected material hardship and anger at social injustice was an explosive mixture, creating a tense atmosphere in the cities.

In Beijing, students were already preparing demonstrations to coincide with the seventieth anniversary of May Fourth in 1989, when in April the death of Hu Yaobang—disgraced for his protection of them—suddenly provided a more immediate rallying-point for the expression of their feelings about the political clamp-down. Marching into Tiananmen Square to honour Hu, they caught the government off-balance. Zhao had been a party to the downfall of Hu, whom he replaced as Chairman of the CCP. But faced with this unrest he now temporized, and the Standing Committee split, leaving the authorities without direction. Showing extraordinary levels of self-organization, the student movement proved able to mobilize every campus in the city and keep up continual pressure on the government. By early May, the marches had become an occupation of the Square, demanding democratic change, backed by enormous demonstrations of the ordinary citizens of Beijing, on edge at the worsening of their economic situation and in open sympathy with the basic political aims of the students. Similar protests swept across the country, wherever there were universities to ignite them. Millions took to the streets, in a social movement without precedent in the history of the People’s Republic.

The depth and scale of the upheaval of 1989 in China was far larger than anything in Eastern Europe in that year, let alone in Russia, then or later. The insurgent energy and idealism of the country’s students, and the active solidarity with them of the urban population, were without comparison elsewhere: testimony in their way to the political vitality of a society still close to its revolutionary origins. But in China one kind of energy met another. When the crisis came, the post-revolutionary leadership charged with the daily running of the state and Party hesitated, and divided. But the Elders, veterans of decades of armed struggle to win power, were not going to lose it by indecision. They remained the combatants they had always been, unafraid to strike at a threat to the Party’s rule, as they saw it, when the necessary force was assembled. In June, the PLA was ordered to clear the Square, and in a night of violence the movement was crushed.

2

Repression came at a high price. The CCP lost more legitimacy on June Fourth than in the Cultural Revolution, which not only had once enjoyed real support, but left a respected leadership in reserve to take charge once it was over. In 1989, no part of the nation supported the crack-down, and there was no opposition in the Party that survived—Zhao, dismissed for failing to vote for martial law, passed quietly away sixteen years later, still under house arrest. On the other hand, the regime still had the card of economic growth. Earlier ideological credentials spent, everything now had to be banked on this. A dose of austerity, to master inflation, lasted into 1991. What next?

Here Deng separated himself from his colleagues, and his own past. In May 1989, he had said: ‘Some people, of course, understand “reform” to mean movement towards liberalism or capitalism. Capitalism is the heart of reform for them, but not for us. What we mean by reform is different and still under debate’. footnote12 In January 1992, Deng travelled to the South and declared in Shenzhen, the largest of the Special Economic Zones, that the principal danger facing China was not from the Right but Left opposition to further liberalization of the economy, of which the local stock-market was an exemplary innovation. While still maintaining that China needed socialism rather than capitalism, he now dismissed ‘talk of capital C and capital S’ as futile, explaining that since inequalities were functional for growth, individual accumulation of wealth was not reprehensible, but laudable: ‘to get rich is glorious’. Hopes of collective liberty buried, compensation was to be found in private prosperity. All that mattered was growth, without anachronistic specifications: as the official slogan, trumpeted to doubters, would put it: ‘Development is the irrefutable argument’.

Development duly came, at a spectacular rate. Chinese growth in the 90s overtook even that of the 80s, as liberalization of the economy deepened. By the end of the decade, the industrial landscape had been transformed, with a massive shake-out of state-owned enterprises. As late as 1996, the state sector still accounted for the bulk of urban employment. But from 1997 onwards, provincial officials were allowed to dispose of most of them as they wished, closing down, transforming or privatizing them. In the process, some 7 million workers a year lost their jobs, until by 2004 total private employment was nearly double that in the public sector. Over the same period, the tves were privatized on an even more sweeping scale—leaving only about 10 per cent of them in any form of collective ownership. So too was 80 per cent of urban housing stock. But ‘keeping the big and letting go the small’, the state did not relinquish command of what it regarded as the strategic heights of the economy: energy, metallurgy, arms and telecoms. Accounting for a third of all industrial sales, and posting high rates of profit, its giant firms in these key sectors comprised some three-quarters of all soe assets. footnote13

Structurally, if controlled divestment was one of the two fundamental changes of the second reform period, after 1989, the other was maximization of foreign trade. The speed and degree of opening had few precedents. By the new century, average industrial tariffs were less than 10 per cent, about a third of Indian levels; agricultural not more than 15 per cent. Boosted by foreign investment, in which non-diaspora capital—American, Japanese, European—now played a significant, though minority role, exports of manufactures soared, increasingly in higher-tech lines, if still mainly assembly work in these. Within a generation, in effect, China had become the new workshop of the world, the value of its foreign trade in goods amounting to two-thirds of its GDP—an unheard-of figure for a large country, two to three times higher than that of the United States or Japan. But as in industry at home, so in commerce abroad, the state has to date reserved a critical lever for itself, retaining control of the exchange rate, capital account and banking system.

The material success of this model of development has made the prc the contemporary wonder of the world. With a rate of investment of over 40 per cent, in fifteen years gdp grew four times over, between 1989 and 2004. In the cities, the income of urban households rose at a rate of 7.7 per cent a year; in the countryside, at nearly 5 per cent. footnote14 From the beginning of the Reform Era to 2006, the average living standards of the Chinese increased eight times over, expressed in dollars. In a single decade, the urban population jumped by 200 million. footnote15 City-dwellers now comprise two-fifths of the nation, and sustain the largest car market in the world. Towering above even Japanese reserves, holdings of foreign exchange top $1.9 trillion, more than the gnp of Canada. China has arrived, with a vengeance.

IV. The Novum

But is arrival the right term? Would not return be more appropriate? For centuries, after all, China was the wealthiest and most advanced civilization on earth: surely there must be some connexion between the prowess of this past and the formidable achievements of the present? Such questions take us to a terrain at once grander and more obscure than the relatively clear-cut field of comparison between two modern revolutions. Here three rival schools of thought can be stylized, without to date there being any systematic confrontation between them. The first, currently most in vogue among historians, attributes high-speed growth in the prc essentially to millennial legacies of the imperial past—commercial dynamism based on intensive agriculture; deepening division of labour; flourishing urban networks and expansion of domestic trade; record demographic growth; an ‘industrious revolution’. In this view the Chinese economy, long the largest and most sophisticated in the world, exhibiting a classically Smithian path of growth, was fully as developed as that of Western Europe—if not more so—down to the Opium War. Knocked off course for over a century by foreign penetration and internal disorder, it is now reverting to its natural position in the world.

For a second school, more prevalent among economists, the imperial past offers few clues to the modern present, if only because—as Smith emphasized—absence of foreign trade deprived the traditional economy of competitive stimulus, and inadequate security of property rights inhibited entrepreneurship, cramping Chinese development within limits closer to a Malthusian pattern. On this reading, contemporary high-speed growth is the product of the belated integration of China into a world capitalist economy from whose formation it was historically absent. With the opening of its markets to foreign investment, and gradual strengthening of property rights, factors of production were at last liberated for a new dynamism. The combination of abundant supplies of cheap labour with abundant overseas capital and technology has built an export machine with no precedent in the Chinese past.

For a third school, to be found (not exclusively) among sociologists, the key to China’s economic ascent lies, on the contrary, in the Chinese Revolution. In this version, it is the achievements of the Mao period that laid the deep foundation for the feats of the Reform Era. Central to this legacy were the creation of a strong sovereign state for the first time in the modern history of the country, putting an end to semi-colonial bondage; the formation of an educated and disciplined labour-force, with high rates of literacy and life-expectancy for a still otherwise backward society; and the establishment of powerful mechanisms of economic control—planning, public sector, external account—within a relatively decentralized institutional framework, that allowed for provincial autonomies. Only on these transformative conditions has the performance of the Open Door period been possible. footnote16

Plainly, none of these interpretations are absolutes. Mixtures can as often be found as pure cases. Generally lacking, however, are attempts to assess the relative weight of the alternative variables on offer. Analytically, the requisite causal hierarchy will not crystallize overnight. Here it is enough to indicate one relevant control for the contending hypotheses, which can be put as follows. How, and in what ways, has high-speed growth in the prc differed from, or been similar to, that in Japan, South Korea or Taiwan? If the Chinese experience closely resembles these, the case for either pre-modern or late-capitalist explanations gains traction; if it diverges significantly from them, the revolutionary explanation will prima facie look more plausible. What does the evidence suggest?

A glance at the statistics yields a paradox. Impressively swift though it has been, prc growth has not been that much faster than that of its East Asian neighbours at comparable stages of their development, though it has been sustained a decade longer. Nor has its economic basis been significantly different: in each case, the model of development has been overwhelmingly export-led. In these two respects, the family resemblance is strong. In five others, however, the contrast is marked. Since the 90s, export-dependence has been much higher in the prc than in Japan, the ROK or Taiwan; the share of consumption in gdp much lower; reliance on foreign capital has been vastly greater; the gap between urban and rural incomes—and investment—much wider. footnote17 Finally, and no less fundamentally, the size and role of the state sector in the economy has been, and remains, structurally far greater. These features of Chinese growth, which set it apart within East Asia, are interrelated, and have a single explanation. In Japan, Korea and Taiwan, the post-war states were creatures of American occupation or protection, on a front-line of the Cold War. Strategically, they remain to this day wards of Washington—planted with us bases or ringed by us warships—without real diplomatic or military autonomy. Lacking political sovereignty, yet needing domestic legitimacy, their rulers—ldp, Park Chung Hee, GMD—compensated with policies of economic self-development, keeping foreign capital at bay with one hand, promoting domestic corporations with the other. So too, fearing peasant radicalization, with the spectre of the Chinese Revolution before them, they implemented agrarian reforms—here the us was with them—and were careful never to let the countryside fall too far behind the cities, as growth accelerated.

The opposite configuration held in the PRC. There, the post-revolutionary state was externally completely sovereign—capable, indeed, of fighting America to a halt in Korea—and domestically very strong, from the start. Just for that reason, once the Reform Era arrived, the prc could afford a massive influx of foreign capital, without fear of discredit or subversion by it. As a fully independent state, in tight command of its territory, it could be confident of its ability to control flows of alien capital by political power, much as Lenin had once hoped to do in the days of NEP; and, with a continuing grip on the strategic—financial and industrial—heights of the economy, of its ability to dominate or manipulate domestic capital. By the same token, it could also repress rural consumption, driving destitute peasants into the cities as migrant labour, in a way impossible for governments in Tokyo, Seoul or Taibei, whose farmers had to be looked after if the local regimes were to survive. If the ccp could do so without loss of control over urbanization—the planetary slums proliferating in South or South-East Asia—it was the hukou system separating cities and countryside, installed during the Great Leap Forward, that enabled it. Under Mao too, peasants had been victims of primitive accumulation, to the benefit of the towns. But once public health and education in the villages were dismantled after him, and under Jiang investment was switched away from the countryside, discrepancies between rural and urban incomes grew by bounds. The historical premise of both high levels of FDI and low levels of rural provision in the prc has been the same—a regime born of revolution in a country with a population over seven times that of Japan, the rok and Taiwan combined, capable of dealing toughly with peasants and foreigners alike. For both, the price has yet to be paid. But the direct or indirect bill for each is visibly increasing—still disconnected, but spreading unrest in the villages; still manageable, but mounting addiction to US Treasuries.

2

The Party that has presided over this transformation of the country has been transformed by it. The Immortals have passed away. But the advantages of being the second mover, rather than the first, have not. Learning from the fate of Brezhnevism, the CCP has institutionalized renovation of its leading ranks, with limits for tenure of office, and regular transfer of power from one generation to the next. Without any revolutionary background, those now in charge and to come have more formal education, and draw—much as imperial rulers once used the literati—on wider technical and intellectual resources, from many a think-tank and informal consultation with expert or interested opinion, than ever before. Economic growth and diplomatic success have restored political reputation: the Party of today enjoys greater popular legitimacy than at any time since the fifties. The mandate it has gained is at once powerful and brittle. Powerful: prosperity at home and dignity abroad are appeals few resist. Brittle: economic development without social justice, national assertion and international entanglement, are hard to square with the ideals of the Revolution which the Party claims as its own. Consumer nationalism is a shallow ideological construct, on which it cannot completely rely. Depoliticized as the principal discourse of the ccp has become, purging it of socialism altogether would be counter-productive. The inherited claim to another legitimacy, still inscribed in its name, remains a necessary reserve. For the revolutionary sentiments of injustice, and demands for equality, have not disappeared from the minds of citizens. Nor have the risks of ignoring them.

Explanation is one thing, classification another, evaluation a third. Taxonomically, the PRC of the 21st century is a world-historical novum: the combination of what is now, by any conventional measure, a predominantly capitalist economy with what is still, by any conventional measure, unquestionably a communist state—each the most dynamic of its type to date. footnote18 Politically, the effects of the contradiction between them are branded everywhere into the society where they fuse or intertwine. Never have so many moved out of absolute poverty so fast. Never have modern industries and ultra-modern infrastructures been created on so vast a scale, in so short a space of time, nor a flourishing middle class arisen at such speed along with them. Never has the rank-order of powers been altered so dramatically, to such unforced popular pride. Nor, in the same years, has inequality ever spiralled to such dizzying heights so swiftly, from such low starting-points. Nor corruption spread so widely, where once probity was taken for granted. Nor workers, till yesterday theoretical masters of the state, treated at will so ruthlessly—jobs destroyed, wages unpaid, injuries mocked, protests stifled. footnote19 Nor have peasants, the backbone of the revolution, been robbed in such numbers of land and livelihood by developers and officials, in clearances as out of the Scottish Highlands. More users of the internet than in any country on earth, no terror, much freedom of private life; with more streamlined and effective machinery of surveillance than ever before. For minorities, affirmative action and cultural-political repression, hand in hand; for the rich, every luxury and privilege exploitation can buy; for the weak and uprooted, crumbs or less; for dissenters, gag or dungeon. Amid formal—even, not wholly unreal—ideological conformity, colossal social energy and human vitality. Emancipation and regression have often been conjoined in the past; but never quite so vertiginously as in the China that Mao helped to create and sought to prevent.

Judgement of so awesome a historical process, still in its early stages, is bound to be fallible. Difficult enough for those living through it, to keep the whole experience steadily in view and reach some dialectical balance-sheet of it may be all but impossible for those outside. In the West, Sinomania and Sinophobia have regularly alternated since the Enlightenment, the pendulum now swinging from the second back towards the first, amid a new wave of chinoiserie, popular and intellectual, not necessarily more enlightened than the original. In China their counterparts are recurrent moods of Westernism and Great Han chauvinism. A spirit of unintoxicated comparison, rarely achieved, is the only safeguard against such temptations. That goes for the future too. The scenarios, optimistic or pessimistic, heard from time to time among its citizens, are often drawn from Taiwan and Singapore: eventual democratization as living standards and political expectations rise, or authoritarian paternalism in perpetuo, with an electoral façade. Neither is particularly persuasive. Taiwanese democracy was less the product of a gradual change of heart by the gmd than of its need for a new kind of international legitimation, once America withdrew recognition from the island. The one-party regime in Singapore rests on a welfare system that can be so provident only because it is built for a city-state, not one of imperial proportions. Beijing neither requires the first, nor is likely to reproduce the second. Towards what horizon the mega-junk of the prc is moving resists calculation, at least of any current astrolabe.

Notes

1 Isaac Deutscher’s remarkable essay ‘Maoism—its Origins and Outlook’ (1964) remains the starting-point for any consideration of the relationship between the revolutions: Ironies of History, Oxford 1966, pp. 88–120.

2 For estimates of these tolls, see R. W. Davies, ‘Forced Labour under Stalin: The Archive Revelations’, nlr 1/224, Nov–Dec 1995, pp. 62–80; J. Arch Getty and Oleg Naumov, The Road to Terror, New Haven, ct 1999, pp. 587–94.

3 See Andrew Walder and Yang Su, ‘The Cultural Revolution in the Countryside: Scope, Timing and Human Impact’, China Quarterly, March 2003, pp. 82–107.

4 Negatively, collectivization and the purges had a not dissimilar effect on the political system: catastrophes whose success sealed off renewals, where the failures of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution would allow them.

5 For the dismantling of the all-union party, see Stephen Kotkin, Armageddon Averted: The Soviet Collapse 1970–2000, Oxford 2001, pp. 76–81; for the monetary chaos, spread of barter exchange and escalating theft of public assets as perestroika spiralled downwards, David Woodruff, Money Unmade: Barter and the Fate of Russian Capitalism, Ithaca 1999, pp. 56–78, and Andrew Barnes, Owning Russia: The Struggle over Factories, Farms and Power, Ithaca 2006, pp. 43–67.

6 The relevant comparisons are set out in Peter Nolan’s essential work, China’s Rise, Russia’s Fall: Politics, Economics and Planning in the Transition from Stalinism, Basingstoke 1995, pp. 110–59, which also contains one of the sharpest and still best critical accounts of perestroika: pp. 230–301. For regretful reflections on its failure to ‘spark a capitalist revolution’, compare Minxin Pei, From Reform to Revolution: The Demise of Communism in China and the Soviet Union, Cambridge, ma 1994, pp. 118–42.

7 Barry Naughton, Growing out of the Plan: Chinese Economic Reform, 1978–1993, New York 1995, pp. 41–2.

8 The Tiananmen Papers, New York 2001, p. 327.

9 For a coruscating analysis, see Mark Elvin, ‘The Collapse of Scriptural Confucianism’, in Another History: Essays on China from a European Perspective, Honolulu 1996, pp. 352–89.

10 ‘Where are the Babylonians today? What good is their culture to them now?’, he asked: Jack Gray, Rebellions and Revolutions: China from the 1800s to 2000, Oxford 2002, p. 195.

11 Naughton, The Chinese Economy: Transitions and Growth, Cambridge, ma 2007, pp. 83, 274–6.

12 The Tiananmen Papers, p. 325.

13 Naughton, The Chinese Economy, pp. 186, 106, 286, 303–4.

14 The overall figures mask a sharp break in both the model of growth and distribution of gains from it after 1989, favouring the cities at the expense of the countryside, and state and foreign enterprise at the expense of private firms. For an analysis of the change, see Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State, New York 2008, who further argues that total factor productivity has been falling across it: pp. 288–90.

15 Fred Bergsten, Bates Gill, Nicholas Lardy, Derek Mitchell, China: the Balance Sheet, New York 2006, pp. 5, 31.

16 For foundations of the first view, see Kenneth Pomeranz, The Great Divergence: Europe, China and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton 2000, and Sugihara Kaoru, ‘The East Asian Path of Economic Development: a Long-Term Perspective’, in Giovanni Arrighi, Hamashita Takeshi and Mark Selden, eds, The Resurgence of East Asia: 500, 150 and 50 Year Perspectives, London 2003, pp. 78–117; for illustration of the second, Jim Rowher, ‘When China Wakes’, Economist Special Report, 28 November 1992; for examples of the third, Chris Bramall, Sources of Chinese Economic Growth, 1978–1996, Oxford 2000, and especially Lin Chun, The Transformation of Chinese Socialism, Durham, nc 2006.

17 See the striking analysis, with accompanying graphs, of Hung Ho-fung, ‘America’s Head Servant?’, nlr 60, Nov–Dec 2009.

18 For the clearest recent analysis of the structure of the economy, see Joel Andreas, ‘Changing Colours in China’, nlr 54, Nov–Dec 2008, pp. 123–52; and of the continuities in the Party, David Shambaugh, China’s Communist Party: Atrophy and Adaptation, Berkeley–Los Angeles 2008, who stresses its learning abilities in the wake of the collapse of the cpsu.

19 The fate of the Chinese working class, old and new, is the subject of a sociological masterpiece: Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt, Berkeley–Los Angeles 2007.

We need a socialism that goes beyond capitalism. And not just for moral reasons

By Joseph M. Schwartz and Bhaskar Sunkara
Jacobin

Oct 3, 2017 – John Judis has all the right intentions. He’s looking at the resurgence of openly democratic socialist currents in the United States with a mix of excitement and trepidation. Excitement, because he knows how desperately the country’s workers need social reforms. Trepidation, because he worries that the new left might fall into the familiar traps of insularity and sectarianism.

But while Judis wants us to change society for the better, his response to the failures of twentieth-century state socialism would lead us into the dead end of twentieth-century social democracy.

In his New Republic essay “The Socialism America Needs Now,” Judis makes a passionate plea for the rebuilding of a social-democratic movement — or what he calls “liberal socialism.” He contends that the welfare state and democratic regulation of a capitalist economy should be the end goal for socialists, as past efforts at top-down nationalization and planning yielded the repressive societies and stagnant economies of the Soviet bloc. In contrast, Judis argues, the Scandinavian states are dynamic capitalist economies that are still far more equitable and humane than the United States.

For him, socialism — democratic control over workplaces and the economy — consists of “old nostrums” whose days have past.

Of course, we urgently need the reforms that Judis and the movement around Bernie Sanders advocate for. No democratic socialist could oppose efforts to guarantee public provision of basic needs and take key aspects of economic and social life like education, health care, and housing out of the market. It would, as Judis writes, “bring immeasurable benefit to ordinary Americans.”

But we have moral reasons to demand something more. After all, we can’t have real political democracy without economic democracy. Corporations are “private governments” that exercise tyrannical power over workers and society writ large. The corporate hierarchy decides how we produce, what we produce, and what we do with the profits that workers collectively make.

To embrace radical democracy is to believe that any decision that has a binding effect on its members — say, the power to hire or fire or control over one’s work hours — should be made by all those affected by it. What touches all, should be determined by all.

At minimum, we should demand an economy in which various forms of ownership (worker-owned firms, as well as state-owned natural monopolies and financial institutions) are coordinated by a regulated market — an economy that enables society to be governed democratically. In an undemocratic capitalist economy, managers hire and fire workers; in a democratic socialist economy, workers would hire those managers deemed necessary to build a content and productive firm.

They Won’t Let Us Keep Nice Things

This, however, isn’t a debate about the contours of the world we would like to see. While Judis rejects the desire of socialists (and the historic goal of social democracy itself) to create a radical democracy after capitalism, he does so largely on pragmatic grounds. The old vision, for him, is “not remotely viable.”

Yet history shows us that achieving a stable welfare state while leaving capital’s power over the economy largely intact is itself far from viable. Even if we wanted to stop at socialism within capitalism, it’s not clear that we could.

Since the early 1970s, the height of Western social democracy, corporate elites have abandoned the postwar “class compromise” and sought to radically restrict the scope of economic regulation. What capitalists grudgingly accepted during an exceptional period of postwar growth and rising profits, they would no longer.

The past forty years have witnessed an ideological and political war against once-powerful labor movements and the welfare states they helped build. This bipartisan class war advocated for the four “d”s of neoliberalism: deregulating the economy, decreasing progressive taxation; decreasing the scope of public goods; and decreasing the power of organized labor.

Corporations also moved their investment in production to newly industrializing nations or lower-wage regions and automated much of the higher-skilled manufacturing that remained. The focus of corporate profitability shifted to the FIRE economy (finance, insurance, and real estate), an economy based heavily on speculation and a low-wage service economy that mostly serves the richest earners.

So did it have to end this way? Could the old welfare state not only have survived but been expanded? Yes, but that would have required pushing back against capital’s power to withhold investment. Simply put, that would have required a more radical socialism.

Many of the last generation’s social democrats knew that capital would disinvest from societies that enjoyed strong social rights. Back in the 1970s and ‘80s there were important attempts to gain greater control over capital to prevent just that.

Left social democrats in the Swedish labor federation advanced the Meidner Plan, which would have taxed corporate profits over a twenty-five-year period to achieve social ownership of major Swedish corporations. The Socialist-led and Communist-supported government in France under François Mitterrand from 1981 to 1983 nationalized 25 percent of French industry overnight and radically expanded labor rights (mandating collective bargaining in firms of fifty workers or more).

Of course, these attempts and others were defeated. France faced a real capital strike, whereas the Swedish Social Democrats pulled back from adopting the Meidner Plan out of fears of such a strike. The lag in corporate investment created a recession in France that led to a major conservative victory in the 1985 parliamentary elections. Mitterrand had to denationalize firms and adopt budgetary austerity.

Judis mentions in passing social democracy’s rightward lurch over the past thirty years. But he fails to mention the extent of its neoliberalization or the historical lesson we must draw: when capital goes on the offensive, either labor must do the same or it will be forced to retreat.

In short, Judis writes out of history the conscious corporate offensive against constraints on its power.  To sustain even the modest reforms he sees as the horizon of socialism, we need to legitimate a greater role for democratic and state regulation of capital.

Private capital simply refuses to invest in those goods needed to overcome radical inequality: affordable housing, mass transit, alternative energy, and job retraining. Capital is often reluctant to risk heavy investment in natural monopolies that almost inevitably come under state regulation or ownership (no company would invest in a competing alternative energy grid). Judis does not speak of the climate crisis, yet there is no road to solving it short of massive public investment and control over utilities.

Of course, the United States is the place where “social democracy in one country” would be the most economically viable. Our domestic market is as large as the European Union’s, and we control our own global currency. We are a wealthy society that could easily afford universal health, elder, and child care, as well as high quality education for all. But on the road to achieving those nice things, corporations would resist and deploy their most powerful tactic: the capital strike.

Social democrats like Judis refuse to grapple with this, causing them at key moments to sound the retreat and accommodate capitalist forces, eroding the very reforms they hope to preserve.

To chart a different course, we would need a militant labor movement and a mass socialist presence strengthened by accumulated victories, looking to not merely tame but overcome capitalism. A socialism that refuses to deal with the “old nostrums about ownership and control of the means of production” will not only fall short of our democratic expectations of what a just society would look like — it will doom us to failure.

Joseph M. Schwartz is the national vice-chair of the Democratic Socialists of America, and professor of political science at Temple.

Bhaskar Sunkara is the founding editor of Jacobin.

This article originally appeared in Jacobin

Keynote Speech by H.E. Xi Jinping

President of the People’s Republic of China

At the Opening Session

Of the World Economic Forum Annual Meeting 2017

Davos, 17 January 2017

President Doris Leuthard and Mr. Roland Hausin,

Heads of State and Government, Deputy Heads of State and Your Spouses,

Heads of International Organizations,

Dr. Klaus Schwab and Mrs. Hilde Schwab,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear Friends,

I’m delighted to come to beautiful Davos. Though just a small town in the Alps, Davos is an important window for taking the pulse of the global economy. People from around the world come here to exchange ideas and insights, which broaden their vision. This makes the WEF annual meeting a cost-effective brainstorming event, which I would call “Schwab economics”.

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times.” These are the words used by the English writer Charles Dickens to describe the world after the Industrial Revolution. Today, we also live in a world of contradictions. On the one hand, with growing material wealth and advances in science and technology, human civilization has developed as never before. On the other hand, frequent regional conflicts, global challenges like terrorism and refugees, as well as poverty, unemployment and widening income gap have all added to the uncertainties of the world.

Many people feel bewildered and wonder: What has gone wrong with the world?

To answer this question, one must first track the source of the problem. Some blame economic globalization for the chaos in the world. Economic globalization was once viewed as the treasure cave found by Ali Baba in The Arabian Nights, but it has now become the Pandora’s box in the eyes of many. The international community finds itself in a heated debate on economic globalization.

Today, I wish to address the global economy in the context of economic globalization.

The point I want to make is that many of the problems troubling the world are not caused by economic globalization. For instance, the refugee waves from the Middle East and North Africa in recent years have become a global concern. Several million people have been displaced, and some small children lost their lives while crossing the rough sea. This is indeed heartbreaking. It is war, conflict and regional turbulence that have created this problem, and its solution lies in making peace, promoting reconciliation and restoring stability. The international financial crisis is another example. It is not an inevitable outcome of economic globalization; rather, it is the consequence of excessive chase of profit by financial capital and grave failure of financial regulation. Just blaming economic globalization for the world’s problems is inconsistent with reality, and it will not help solve the problems.

From the historical perspective, economic globalization resulted from growing social productivity, and is a natural outcome of scientific and technological progress, not something created by any individuals or any countries. Economic globalization has powered global growth and facilitated movement of goods and capital, advances in science, technology and civilization, and interactions among peoples.

But we should also recognize that economic globalization is a double-edged sword. When the global economy is under downward pressure, it is hard to make the cake of global economy bigger. It may even shrink, which will strain the relations between growth and distribution, between capital and labor, and between efficiency and equity. Both developed and developing countries have felt the punch. Voices against globalization have laid bare pitfalls in the process of economic globalization that we need to take seriously.

As a line in an old Chinese poem goes, “Honey melons hang on bitter vines; sweet dates grow on thistles and thorns.” In a philosophical sense, nothing is perfect in the world. One would fail to see the full picture if he claims something is perfect because of its merits, or if he views something as useless just because of its defects. It is true that economic globalization has created new problems, but this is no justification to write economic globalization off completely. Rather, we should adapt to and guide economic globalization, cushion its negative impact, and deliver its benefits to all countries and all nations.

There was a time when China also had doubts about economic globalization, and was not sure whether it should join the World Trade Organization. But we came to the conclusion that integration into the global economy is a historical trend. To grow its economy, China must have the courage to swim in the vast ocean of the global market. If one is always afraid of bracing the storm and exploring the new world, he will sooner or later get drowned in the ocean. Therefore, China took a brave step to embrace the global market. We have had our fair share of choking in the water and encountered whirlpools and choppy waves, but we have learned how to swim in this process. It has proved to be a right strategic choice.

Whether you like it or not, the global economy is the big ocean that you cannot escape from. Any attempt to cut off the flow of capital, technologies, products, industries and people between economies, and channel the waters in the ocean back into isolated lakes and creeks is simply not possible. Indeed, it runs counter to the historical trend.

The history of mankind tells us that problems are not to be feared. What should concern us is refusing to face up to problems and not knowing what to do about them. In the face of both opportunities and challenges of economic globalization, the right thing to do is to seize every opportunity, jointly meet challenges and chart the right course for economic globalization.

At the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting in late 2016, I spoke about the necessity to make the process of economic globalization more invigorated, more inclusive and more sustainable. We should act pro-actively and manage economic globalization as appropriate so as to release its positive impact and rebalance the process of economic globalization. We should follow the general trend, proceed from our respective national conditions and embark on the right pathway of integrating into economic globalization with the right pace. We should strike a balance between efficiency and equity to ensure that different countries, different social strata and different groups of people all share in the benefits of economic globalization. The people of all countries expect nothing less from us, and this is our unshirkable responsibility as leaders of our times. 

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,

At present, the most pressing task before us is to steer the global economy out of difficulty. The global economy has remained sluggish for quite some time. The gap between the poor and the rich and between the South and the North is widening. The root cause is that the three critical issues in the economic sphere have not been effectively addressed.

First, lack of robust driving forces for global growth makes it difficult to sustain the steady growth of the global economy. The growth of the global economy is now at its slowest pace in seven years. Growth of global trade has been slower than global GDP growth. Short-term policy stimuli are ineffective. Fundamental structural reform is just unfolding. The global economy is now in a period of moving toward new growth drivers, and the role of traditional engines to drive growth has weakened. Despite the emergence of new technologies such as artificial intelligence and 3D printing, new sources of growth are yet to emerge. A new path for the global economy remains elusive.

Second, inadequate global economic governance makes it difficult to adapt to new developments in the global economy. Madame Christine Lagarde recently told me that emerging markets and developing countries already contribute to 80% of the growth of the global economy. The global economic landscape has changed profoundly in the past few decades. However, the global governance system has not embraced those new changes and is therefore inadequate in terms of representation and inclusiveness. The global industrial landscape is changing and new industrial chains, value chains and supply chains are taking shape. However, trade and investment rules have not kept pace with these developments, resulting in acute problems such as closed mechanisms and fragmentation of rules. The global financial market needs to be more resilient against risks, but the global financial governance mechanism fails to meet the new requirement and is thus unable to effectively resolve problems such as frequent international financial market volatility and the build-up of asset bubbles.

Third, uneven global development makes it difficult to meet people’s expectations for better lives. Dr. Schwab has observed in his book The Fourth Industrial Revolution that this round of industrial revolution will produce extensive and far-reaching impacts such as growing inequality, particularly the possible widening gap between return on capital and return on labor. The richest one percent of the world’s population own more wealth than the remaining 99 percent. Inequality in income distribution and uneven development space are worrying. Over 700 million people in the world are still living in extreme poverty. For many families, to have warm houses, enough food and secure jobs is still a distant dream. This is the biggest challenge facing the world today. It is also what is behind the social turmoil in some countries.

All this shows that there are indeed problems with world economic growth, governance and development models, and they must be resolved. The founder of the Red Cross Henry Dunant once said, “Our real enemy is not the neighboring country; it is hunger, poverty, ignorance, superstition and prejudice.” We need to have the vision to dissect these problems; more importantly, we need to have the courage to take actions to address them.

First, we should develop a dynamic, innovation-driven growth model. The fundamental issue plaguing the global economy is the lack of driving force for growth. Innovation is the primary force guiding development. Unlike the previous industrial revolutions, the fourth industrial revolution is unfolding at an exponential rather than linear pace. We need to relentlessly pursue innovation. Only with the courage to innovate and reform can we remove bottlenecks blocking global growth and development.

With this in mind, G20 leaders reached an important consensus at the Hangzhou Summit, which is to take innovation as a key driver and foster new driving force of growth for both individual countries and the global economy. We should develop a new development philosophy and rise above the debate about whether there should be more fiscal stimulus or more monetary easing. We should adopt a multipronged approach to address both the symptoms and the underlying problems. We should adopt new policy instruments and advance structural reform to create more space for growth and sustain its momentum. We should develop new growth models and seize opportunities presented by the new round of industrial revolution and digital economy. We should meet the challenges of climate change and aging population. We should address the negative impact of IT application and automation on jobs. When cultivating new industries and new forms models of business models, we should create new jobs and restore confidence and hope to our peoples.

Second, we should pursue a well-coordinated and inter-connected approach to develop a model of open and win-win cooperation. Today, mankind has become a close-knit community of shared future. Countries have extensive converging interests and are mutually dependent. All countries enjoy the right to development. At the same time, they should view their own interests in a broader context and refrain from pursuing them at the expense of others.

We should commit ourselves to growing an open global economy to share opportunities and interests through opening-up and achieve win-win outcomes. One should not just retreat to the harbor when encountering a storm, for this will never get us to the other shore of the ocean. We must redouble efforts to develop global connectivity to enable all countries to achieve inter-connected growth and share prosperity. We must remain committed to developing global free trade and investment, promote trade and investment liberalization and facilitation through opening-up and say no to protectionism. Pursuing protectionism is like locking oneself in a dark room. While wind and rain may be kept outside, that dark room will also block light and air. No one will emerge as a winner in a trade war.

Third, we should develop a model of fair and equitable governance in keeping with the trend of the times. As the Chinese saying goes, people with petty shrewdness attend to trivial matters, while people with vision attend to governance of institutions. There is a growing call from the international community for reforming the global economic governance system, which is a pressing task for us. Only when it adapts to new dynamics in the international economic architecture can the global governance system sustain global growth.

Countries, big or small, strong or weak, rich or poor, are all equal members of the international community. As such, they are entitled to participate in decision-making, enjoy rights and fulfill obligations on an equal basis. Emerging markets and developing countries deserve greater representation and voice. The 2010 IMF quota reform has entered into force, and its momentum should be sustained. We should adhere to multilateralism to uphold the authority and efficacy of multilateral institutions. We should honor promises and abide by rules. One should not select or bend rules as he sees fit. The Paris Agreement is a hard-won achievement which is in keeping with the underlying trend of global development. All signatories should stick to it instead of walking away from it as this is a responsibility we must assume for future generations.

Fourth, we should develop a balanced, equitable and inclusive development model. As the Chinese saying goes, “A just cause should be pursued for common good.” Development is ultimately for the people. To achieve more balanced development and ensure that the people have equal access to opportunities and share in the benefits of development, it is crucial to have a sound development philosophy and model and make development equitable, effective and balanced.

We should foster a culture that values diligence, frugality and enterprise and respects the fruits of hard work of all. Priority should be given to addressing poverty, unemployment, the widening income gap and the concerns of the disadvantaged to promote social equity and justice. It is important to protect the environment while pursuing economic and social progress so as to achieve harmony between man and nature and between man and society. The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development should be implemented to realize balanced development across the world.

A Chinese adage reads, “Victory is ensured when people pool their strength; success is secured when people put their heads together.” As long as we keep to the goal of building a community of shared future for mankind and work hand in hand to fulfill our responsibilities and overcome difficulties, we will be able to create a better world and deliver better lives for our peoples.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,

China has become the world’s second largest economy thanks to 38 years of reform and opening-up. A right path leads to a bright future. China has come this far because the Chinese people have, under the leadership of the Communist Party of China, blazed a development path that suits China’s actual conditions.

This is a path based on China’s realities. China has in the past years succeeded in embarking on a development path that suits itself by drawing on both the wisdom of its civilization and the practices of other countries in both East and West. In exploring this path, China refuses to stay insensitive to the changing times or to blindly follow in others’ footsteps. All roads lead to Rome. No country should view its own development path as the only viable one, still less should it impose its own development path on others.

This is a path that puts people’s interests first. China follows a people-oriented development philosophy and is committed to bettering the lives of its people. Development is of the people, by the people and for the people. China pursues the goal of common prosperity. We have taken major steps to alleviate poverty and lifted over 700 million people out of poverty, and good progress is being made in our efforts to finish building a society of initial prosperity in all respects.

This is a path of pursuing reform and innovation. China has tackled difficulties and met challenges on its way forward through reform. China has demonstrated its courage to take on difficult issues, navigate treacherous rapids and remove institutional hurdles standing in the way of development. These efforts have enabled us to unleash productivity and social vitality. Building on progress of 30-odd years of reform, we have introduced more than 1,200 reform measures over the past four years, injecting powerful impetus into China’s development.

This is a path of pursuing common development through opening-up. China is committed to a fundamental policy of opening-up and pursues a win-win opening-up strategy. China’s development is both domestic and external oriented; while developing itself, China also shares more of its development outcomes with other countries and peoples.

China’s outstanding development achievements and the vastly improved living standards of the Chinese people are a blessing to both China and the world. Such achievements in development over the past decades owe themselves to the hard work and perseverance of the Chinese people, a quality that has defined the Chinese nation for several thousand years. We Chinese know only too well that there is no such thing as a free lunch in the world. For a big country with over 1.3 billion people, development can be achieved only with the dedication and tireless efforts of its own people. We cannot expect others to deliver development to China, and no one is in a position to do so. When assessing China’s development, one should not only see what benefits the Chinese people have gained, but also how much hard effort they have put in, not just what achievements China has made, but also what contribution China has made to the world. Then one will reach a balanced conclusion about China’s development.

Between 1950 and 2016, despite its modest level of development and living standard, China provided more than 400 billion yuan of foreign assistance, undertook over 5,000 foreign assistance projects, including nearly 3,000 complete projects, and held over 11,000 training workshops in China for over 260,000 personnel from other developing countries. Since it launched reform and opening-up, China has attracted over 1.7 trillion US dollars of foreign investment and made over 1.2 trillion US dollars of direct outbound investment, making huge contribution to global economic development. In the years following the outbreak of the international financial crisis, China contributed to over 30% of global growth every year on average. All these figures are among the highest in the world.

The figures speak for themselves. China’s development is an opportunity for the world; China has not only benefited from economic globalization but also contributed to it. Rapid growth in China has been a sustained, powerful engine for global economic stability and expansion. The inter-connected development of China and a large number of other countries has made the world economy more balanced. China’s remarkable achievement in poverty reduction has contributed to more inclusive global growth. And China’s continuous progress in reform and opening-up has lent much momentum to an open world economy.

We Chinese know only too well what it takes to achieve prosperity, so we applaud the achievements made by others and wish them a better future. We are not jealous of others’ success; and we will not complain about others who have benefited so much from the great opportunities presented by China’s development. We will open our arms to the people of other countries and welcome them aboard the express train of China’s development.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,

I know you are all closely following China’s economic development, and let me give you an update on the state of China’s economy. China’s economy has entered what we call a new normal, in which major changes are taking place in terms of growth rate, development model, economic structure and drivers of growth. But the economic fundamentals sustaining sound development remain unchanged.

Despite a sluggish global economy, China’s economy is expected to grow by 6.7% in 2016, still one of the highest in the world. China’s economy is far bigger in size than in the past, and it now generates more output than it did with double-digit growth in the past. Household consumption and the services sector have become the main drivers of growth. In the first three quarters of 2016, added value of the tertiary industry took up 52.8% of the GDP and domestic consumption contributed to 71% of economic growth. Household income and employment have steadily risen, while per unit GDP energy consumption continues to drop. Our efforts to pursue green development are paying off.

The Chinese economy faces downward pressure and many difficulties, including acute mismatch between excess capacity and an upgrading demand structure, lack of internal driving force for growth, accumulation of financial risks, and growing challenges in certain regions. We see these as temporary hardships that occur on the way forward. And the measures we have taken to address these problems are producing good results. We are firm in our resolve to forge ahead. China is the world’s largest developing country with over 1.3 billion people, and their living standards are not yet high. But this reality also means China has enormous potential and space for development. Guided by the vision of innovative, coordinated, green, open and shared development, we will adapt to the new normal, stay ahead of the curve, and make coordinated efforts to maintain steady growth, accelerate reform, adjust economic structure, improve people’s living standards and fend off risks. With these efforts, we aim to achieve medium-high rate of growth and upgrade the economy to higher end of the value chain.

— China will strive to enhance the performance of economic growth. We will pursue supply-side structural reform as the general goal, shift the growth model and upgrade the economic structure. We will continue to cut overcapacity, reduce inventory, deleverage financing, reduce cost and strengthen weak links. We will foster new drivers of growth, develop an advanced manufacturing sector and upgrade the real economy. We will implement the Internet Plus action plan to boost effective demand and better meet the individualized and diverse needs of consumers. And we will do more to protect the ecosystem.

— China will boost market vitality to add new impetus to growth. We will intensify reform efforts in priority areas and key links and enable the market to play a decisive role in resources allocation. Innovation will continue to feature prominently on our growth agenda. In pursuing the strategy of innovation-driven development, we will bolster the strategic emerging industries, apply new technologies and foster new business models to upgrade traditional industries; and we will boost new drivers of growth and revitalize traditional ones.

— China will foster an enabling and orderly environment for investment. We will expand market access for foreign investors, build high-standard pilot free trade zones, strengthen protection of property rights, and level the playing field to make China’s market more transparent and better regulated. In the coming five years, China is expected to import eight trillion US dollars of goods, attract 600 billion US dollars of foreign investment and make 750 billion US dollars of outbound investment. Chinese tourists will make 700 million overseas visits. All this will create a bigger market, more capital, more products and more business opportunities for other countries. China’s development will continue to offer opportunities to business communities in other countries. China will keep its door wide open and not close it. An open door allows both other countries to access the Chinese market and China itself to integrate with the world. And we hope that other countries will also keep their door open to Chinese investors and keep the playing field level for us.

— China will vigorously foster an external environment of opening-up for common development. We will advance the building of the Free Trade Area of the Asia Pacific and negotiations of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership to form a global network of free trade arrangements. China stands for concluding open, transparent and win-win regional free trade arrangements and opposes forming exclusive groups that are fragmented in nature. China has no intention to boost its trade competitiveness by devaluing the RMB, still less will it launch a currency war.

Over three years ago, I put forward the “Belt and Road” initiative. Since then, over 100 countries and international organizations have given warm responses and support to the initiative. More than 40 countries and international organizations have signed cooperation agreements with China, and our circle of friends along the “Belt and Road” is growing bigger. Chinese companies have made over 50 billion US dollars of investment and launched a number of major projects in the countries along the routes, spurring the economic development of these countries and creating many local jobs. The “Belt and Road” initiative originated in China, but it has delivered benefits well beyond its borders.

In May this year, China will host in Beijing the Belt and Road Forum for International Cooperation, which aims to discuss ways to boost cooperation, build cooperation platforms and share cooperation outcomes. The forum will also explore ways to address problems facing global and regional economy, create fresh energy for pursuing inter-connected development and make the “Belt and Road” initiative deliver greater benefits to people of countries involved.

Ladies and Gentlemen, Dear Friends,

World history shows that the road of human civilization has never been a smooth one, and that mankind has made progress by surmounting difficulties. No difficulty, however daunting, will stop mankind from advancing. When encountering difficulties, we should not complain about ourselves, blame others, lose confidence or run away from responsibilities. We should join hands and rise to the challenge. History is created by the brave. Let us boost confidence, take actions and march arm-in-arm toward a bright future.

Thank you!

Three Sides to Every Story

By Fu Ying

Chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People’s Congress.

Dec 18, 2015 –CRI Online

At a time when Russian relations with the United States and western European countries are growing cold, the relatively warm ties between China and Russia have attracted renewed interest. Scholars and journalists in the West find themselves debating the nature of the Chinese-Russian partnership and wondering whether it will evolve into an alliance.

Since the end of the Cold War, two main views have tended to define Western assessments of the Chinese-Russian relationship and predictions of its future. The first view holds that the link between Beijing and Moscow is vulnerable, contingent, and marked by uncertainties—a “marriage of convenience,” to use the phrase favored by many advocates of this argument, who see it as unlikely that the two countries will grow much closer and quite possible that they will begin to drift apart. The other view posits that strategic and even ideological factors form the basis of Chinese-Russian ties and predicts that the two countries—both of which see the United States as a possible obstacle to their objectives—will eventually form an anti-U.S., anti-Western alliance.

Neither view accurately captures the true nature of the relationship. The Chinese-Russian relationship is a stable strategic partnership and by no means a marriage of convenience: it is complex, sturdy, and deeply rooted. Changes in international relations since the end of the Cold War have only brought the two countries closer together. Some Western analysts and officials have speculated (and perhaps even hoped) that the ongoing conflicts in Syria and Ukraine, in which Russia has become heavily involved, would lead to tensions between Beijing and Moscow—or even a rupture. But that has not happened.

Nevertheless, China has no interest in a formal alliance with Russia, nor in forming an anti-U.S. or anti-Western bloc of any kind. Rather, Beijing hopes that China and Russia can maintain their relationship in a way that will provide a safe environment for the two big neighbors to achieve their development goals and to support each other through mutually beneficial cooperation, offering a model for how major countries can manage their differences and cooperate in ways that strengthen the international system.

TIES THAT BIND

On several occasions between the end of the nineteenth century and the middle of the twentieth century, China entered into an alliance with the Russian empire and its successor, the Soviet Union. But every time, the arrangement proved short-lived, as each amounted to nothing more than an expediency between countries of unequal strength. In the decades that followed, the two powerful communist-led countries muddled through, occasionally cooperating but often riven by rivalry and mistrust. In 1989, in the waning years of Soviet rule, they finally restored normalcy to their relations. They jointly declared that they would develop bilateral relations based on “mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression, noninterference in each other’s internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence.” Two years later, the Soviet Union disintegrated, but Chinese-Russian relations carried on with the principle of “no alliance, no conflict, and no targeting any third country.”

Soon thereafter, the newborn Russian Federation embraced the so-called Atlanticist approach. To win the trust and help of the West, Russia not only followed Western prescriptions for economic reform but also made concessions on major security issues, including reducing its stockpile of strategic nuclear weapons. However, things didn’t turn out the way the Russians had hoped, as the country’s economy tanked and its regional influence waned. In 1992, disappointed with what they saw as unfulfilled pledges of American and European assistance and irritated by talk of NATO’s eastward expansion, the Russians began to pay more attention to Asia. That year, China and Russia announced that each would regard the other as a “friendly country” and issued a joint political statement stipulating that “the freedom of people to choose their own development paths should be respected, while differences in social systems and ideologies should not hamper the normal progress of relations.”

Ever since, Chinese-Russian relations have gradually improved and deepened. During the past 20 years or so, bilateral trade and investment have expanded on a massive scale. In 2011, China became Russia’s largest trading partner. In 2014 alone, China’s investment in Russia grew by 80 percent—and the trend toward more investment remains strong. To get a sense of the growth in economic ties, consider that in the early 1990s, annual bilateral trade between China and Russia amounted to around $5 billion; by 2014, it came close to $100 billion. That year, Beijing and Moscow signed a landmark agreement to construct a pipeline that, by 2018, will bring as much as 38 billion cubic meters of Russian natural gas to China every year. The two countries are also planning significant deals involving nuclear power generation, aerospace manufacturing, high-speed rail, and infrastructure development. Furthermore, they are cooperating on new multinational financial institutions, such as the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank, the New Development Bank BRICS, and the BRICS foreign exchange reserve pool.

Meanwhile, security ties have improved as well. China has become one of the largest importers of Russian arms, and the two countries are discussing a number of joint arms research-and-development projects. Extensive Chinese-Russian defense cooperation involves consultations between high-level military personnel and joint training and exercises, including more than a dozen joint counterterrorism exercises during the past decade or so, carried out either bilaterally or under the auspices of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. In the past 20 years, thousands of Chinese military personnel have studied in Russia, and many Russian military officials have received short-term training at the National Defense University of China.

As economic and military links have strengthened, so, too, have political ones. In 2008, China and Russia were able to peacefully resolve territorial disputes that had troubled relations for decades, formally demarcating their 2,600-mile-plus border and thus eliminating their single largest source of tension—a rare achievement for big neighbors. In recent years, the two countries have held regular annual meetings between their heads of states, prime ministers, top legislators, and foreign ministers. Since 2013, when Xi Jinping became president of China, he has paid five visits to Russia, and Russian President Vladimir Putin has traveled three times to China in the same time period. All told, Xi and Putin have met 12 times, making Putin the foreign head of state whom Xi has met most frequently since assuming the presidency.

MANAGING DIFFERENCES

For all this progress, differences still exist between the two neighbors, and they don’t always share the same focus when it comes to foreign policy. Russia is traditionally oriented toward Europe, whereas China is more concerned with Asia. The two countries’ diplomatic styles differ as well. Russia is more experienced on the global theater, and it tends to favor strong, active, and often surprising diplomatic maneuvers. Chinese diplomacy, in contrast, is more reactive and cautious.

China’s rise has produced discomfort among some in Russia, where some people have had difficulty adjusting to the shift in relative power between China and Russia. There is still talk in Russia of “the China threat,” a holdover expression from past eras. A poll conducted in 2008 by Russia’s Public Opinion Foundation showed that around 60 percent of Russians were concerned that Chinese migration to Far Eastern border areas would threaten Russia’s territorial integrity; 41 percent believed that a stronger China would harm Russian interests. And as China’s quest for new investment and trade opportunities abroad has led to increased Chinese cooperation with former Soviet states, Russians have worried that China is competing for influence in their neighborhood. Partly as a result, Moscow initially hesitated to support Beijing’s Silk Road Economic Belt initiative before ultimately embracing it in 2014. Meanwhile, some Chinese continue to nurse historical grievances regarding Russia. Despite the resolution of the border issue, Chinese commentators sometimes make critical references to the nearly 600,000 square miles of Chinese territory that tsarist Russia annexed in the late nineteenth century.

However, these differences hardly support speculation in the West that Beijing and Moscow are drifting apart. This theory has occasionally appeared in Western commentary in the past two years, as Russia’s relations with the United States and the EU have deteriorated owing to the crises in Syria and Ukraine. Despite some differences, however, China and Russia share a desire to firmly develop their bilateral relations and understand that they must join hands to achieve national security and development. Their cooperation is conducive to balance in the international system and can facilitate the solution of some international problems. Sometimes they agree; sometimes they do not. But they are able to acknowledge and manage their disagreements while continuing to expand areas of consensus. As Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi has noted, the Chinese-Russian relationship offers a new approach for conducting external relations and represents a possible model for other states to follow.

The crises in Syria and Ukraine illuminate the ways in which China and Russia have effectively managed their partnership. Many in the United States see China’s attitude toward the conflict in Ukraine as unclear or suspect that China has sided with Russia. In fact, after the Russian annexation of Crimea in 2014, the spokesperson for the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated unequivocally that Ukraine’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity should be respected. China emphasized that all the parties involved in the Ukrainian conflict should resolve their differences through dialogue, establish coordinating mechanisms, refrain from activities that could worsen the situation, and assist Ukraine in maintaining its economic and financial stability. China did not take any side: fairness and objectivity serve as guiding principles for Beijing when addressing international affairs.

But Chinese diplomats and leaders are also mindful of what led to the crisis, including the series of Western-supported “color revolutions” in post-Soviet states and the pressure on Russia that resulted from NATO’s eastward expansion. It is also worth noting that there have long been complicated historical, ethnic, religious, and territorial issues between Russia and the former Soviet republics. The Ukraine crisis is a result of all these factors. As Xi put it, the crisis is “not coming from nowhere.”

On Syria, the view in Beijing is that Russia launched its military intervention at the request of the Syrian government in order to combat terrorist and extremist forces. Although Washington has called for Syrian President Bashar al-Assad to step down, it shares Russia’s goal of taking on the Islamic State (also known as ISIS). So on the one hand, the United States has criticized the Russian intervention, but on the other hand, it has expressed willingness to work with Russia on counterterrorism. The Russian move, then, was not exactly what the United States wanted to see but was not an entirely bad thing for U.S. interests, either. From China’s perspective, Russia and the United States share an interest in confronting the brutal terrorists of ISIS. The hope in China is that talks among Russia, the United States, Iran, and a number of other regional powers will make progress in resolving the conflict.

But it is difficult to know how far U.S.-Russian cooperation in Syria can go without a common understanding about what will lead to peace and order. And many in China find it perplexing that U.S. and Russian perceptions are still so heavily influenced by the Cold War. U.S. politicians and commentators tend to talk about Russia as if it were still the failed Cold War rival. Meanwhile, Russian officials and observers frequently criticize Washington’s behavior as arrogant or imperial. Some analysts on both sides have suggested that the standoff between Moscow and Washington over Syria and Ukraine could lead to a new Cold War. But from China’s point of view, the current confrontations seem more like a prolonged ending of the original Cold War. It remains unclear if Moscow and Washington will take this opportunity to finally put old enmities to rest.

GETTING PAST ZERO-SUM

Given the way that relations among China, Russia, and the United States are intertwined, no analysis of Chinese-Russian ties would be complete without a consideration of where things stand between China and the United States. Compared with the Chinese-Russian relationship, the one between Beijing and Washington is wider and more complicated. Combined, China and the United States account for one-third of global GDP. In 2014, U.S.-Chinese trade reached nearly $600 billion, and accumulated mutual investment exceeded $120 billion. Thirty-seven years ago, when the People’s Republic of China established diplomatic relations with the United States, no one expected such a strong partnership to emerge.

But there is no denying the structural difficulties in the relationship. Significant differences remain between Chinese and U.S. political values and between the governing systems in the two countries. And many Americans perceive China’s growing economic strength and its correspondingly higher international influence as a potential threat to Washington’s global leadership. China has quickly grown into the world’s second-largest economy. When U.S. troops invaded Iraq in 2003, China’s GDP was roughly one-eighth that of the United States. By the time the Americans pulled out of Iraq eight years later, China’s GDP had grown to half that of the United States. According to many estimates, China’s GDP will approach the United States’ by 2020. These changes have provoked fears in Washington that China and the United States are on a collision course. Disputes over China’s construction activities in the Spratly Islands, in the South China Sea, have fueled a heated debate about how the United States should respond to what some American scholars and commentators see as expansionism. Meanwhile, Beijing regards the presence of U.S. military vessels near Chinese territory in the South China Sea as an act of provocation. Some argue that U.S. policy toward China may shift from constructive engagement to containment.

These debates provided the backdrop for Xi’s state visit to Washington last September. In remarks during the visit, Xi directly addressed the idea that China’s development presents a challenge to the United States’ global leadership. “The path China follows is one of peaceful development, and China does not pose a threat to other countries,” Xi said. Later, he added, “People should give up the old concepts of ‘you lose, I win,’ or zero-sum game, and establish a new concept of peaceful development and win-win cooperation. If China develops well, it will benefit the whole world and benefit the United States. If the United States develops well, it will also benefit the world and China.”

Chinese leaders attribute much of their country’s rapid ascent to China’s successful integration into the world economy. They see China as a beneficiary of the international order, with the UN at its core, and as a strong advocate of principles such as sovereign equality and nonintervention in the internal affairs of states, which the UN Charter enshrines. China expects that it will have to focus on its own domestic economic and social development for a long time to come and thus highly values the maintenance of a stable and peaceful external environment. Although China is determined to protect its own interests and would respond firmly to provocations, encroachments on its territorial sovereignty, or threats to its rights and interests, its main goal is still to ensure that peace and stability prevail. And China is committed to safeguarding the international order and the Asia-Pacific regional order, as well as further integrating into the globalized world.

Improving U.S.-Chinese relations represents an important part of China’s diplomatic effort. Last September marked Xi’s first state visit to Washington, but he and U.S. President Barack Obama had previously met five times since 2013 and had spoken over the phone on three occasions. In June 2013, when the two leaders met at the Sunnylands summit, in California, they talked for more than seven hours. After the meeting, Xi announced that China and the United States would pursue a “new model of major-country relationship,” which he defined as a relationship based on nonconflict, nonconfrontation, mutual respect, and win-win cooperation. The two leaders have since continued their conversations on that theme: in November 2014 in Beijing, they held the “Yingtai dialogue,” which lasted for nearly five hours. And during Xi’s state visit, he and Obama spent around nine hours talking to each other and attending events together. These long meetings between the two leaders have helped them build understanding and ward off the confrontation that some U.S. analysts believe is inevitable.

The state visit, in particular, was very productive. The two sides reached agreement on a wide range of issues, including macroeconomic policy coordination, climate change, global health, counterterrorism, and nuclear nonproliferation. Xi and Obama also spoke candidly about the cybersecurity issues that have represented a serious point of contention between Beijing and Washington; the two leaders clarified their countries’ intentions, agreed to form a high-level joint dialogue on the subject, and committed to work together to establish an international cybersecurity code of conduct. This is a strong demonstration that the two countries can promote global cooperation on important issues.

Of course, Beijing and Washington may continue to have disagreements over the South China Sea, Taiwan, human rights, trade policy, and other matters. The intentions of the U.S. military alliances in the Asia-Pacific remain a particular source of concern for China, especially since Washington announced its “pivot” to Asia in 2011. Some U.S. allies in the region have made claims on China’s sovereign territory and infringed on Chinese maritime rights, hoping that by cozying up to Washington, they could involve the United States in their disputes with Beijing. This is a dangerous path, reminiscent of the “bloc politics” of the Cold War.

Some scholars in China and elsewhere have suggested that if the United States insists on imposing bloc politics on the region, China and Russia should consider responding by forming a bloc of their own. But the Chinese leadership does not approve of such arguments. China does not pursue blocs or alliances, nor do such arrangements fit comfortably with Chinese political culture. Russia does not intend to form such an bloc, either. China and Russia should stick to the principle of partnership rather than build an alliance. As for China and the United States, they should continue pursuing a new model of major-country relations and allow dialogue, cooperation, and management of differences to prevail.

THREE SIDES TO EVERY STORY

Relations among China, Russia, and the United States currently resemble a scalene triangle, in which the greatest distance between the three points lies between Moscow and Washington. Within this triangle, Chinese-Russian relations are the most positive and stable. The U.S.-Chinese relationship has frequent ups and downs, and U.S.-Russian relations have become very tense, especially because Russia now has to contend with significant U.S. sanctions. Meanwhile, both Beijing and Moscow object to Washington’s use of force against and imposition of sanctions on other countries and to the double standards the United States applies in its foreign policies.

The United States and its allies might interpret closer ties between China and Russia as evidence of a proto-alliance that intends to disrupt or challenge the U.S.-led world order. But from the Chinese perspective, the tripartite relationship should not be considered a game in which two players ally against a third. The sound development of Chinese-Russian relations is not intended to harm the United States, nor should Washington seek to influence it. Likewise, China’s cooperation with the United States will not be affected by Russia, nor by tensions between Moscow and Washington. China should neither form an alliance based on bloc politics nor allow itself to be recruited as an ally by other countries.

The current international order is the cornerstone of global stability—but it is not perfect. In 2005, China and Russia issued a joint statement on “the international order in the twenty-first century,” which called for the international system to become more just, drawing its legitimacy from the principles and norms of international law. The statement made clear that Beijing and Moscow see the evolution of their relations—from mistrust and competition to partnership and cooperation—as a model for how countries can manage their differences and work together on areas of agreement in a way that supports global order and decreases the chance that the world will descend into great-power conflict and war.

The Author：Fu Ying is the current chair of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People’s Congress. She was the former vice minister of the Foreign Ministry of China. She also was the Chinese ambassador to the United Kingdom from March 2007 to 2009. From 2004 to 2007 she was the ambassador to Australia. She led the Chinese Delegation during talks with North Korea that led to the latter country’s decision to abandon nuclear weapons.