Two Books on China:
China in Global Capitalism, Building International Solidarity Against Imperial Rivalry, Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, Ashley Smith, Haymarket 2024
Is China an Imperialist Country? considerations and evidence, N.B. Turner, Kersplebeded, 2014
“The economic exploitation of the working class labor structures class inequality and is always interwoven with oppression of race, gender and nation. . Competition ..leads to economic, diplomatic and even military conflict among states for dominance over global capitalism. China possesses all these attributes.”
China is of course of major importance in any discussion of world politics. It is the most populous country and also the leading contender for world dominance against the United States. It is a rising industrial and military power.
Besides its obvious centrality to world politics, it has been a major bone of contention on the revolutionary Left in the U.S. and around the world. This debate has overlapped with debates on the nature of imperialism in general. Is the U.S. THE imperialist power in the world? Should leftists therefore side with its challengers no matter their internal regime and external power-driven agendas? Is China a leading force in the anti-imperialist bloc, or is it an imperialist power in its own right?
These books are a welcome addition to this debate!
Both China in Global Capitalism( CGC) and Is China an Imperialist Country? (CIC) reach the same conclusion: China is indeed a rising imperialist power. It dominates other countries and extracts profit from them. In spite of Western multi-national exploitation of Chinese workers, it is far more an exploiting nation than an exploited one. China in Global Capitalism also covers the internal dynamics of China, economy, migration , national oppression, gender relations, class divisions etc.
CIC was written in 2014, so its statistics need updating but its conclusions are valid. It gives details on investments, profits, penetration of markets etc.
CGC updates these and clearly explains why China is not a socialist country. It is instead run by a ruling class committed to maximization of profit. This in turn requires the exploitation of the working class in China and other countries China has investment in.
CiC’s framework is Maoist. This means that it sees China under Mao as socialist with its transition to capitalism happening after the death of Mao. It even claims that China’s foreign involvement was benign before the transition led by Deng Xiaoping. This belies the actual record, for example China’s embrace of the Pinochet dictatorship in Chile in 1973 or Mao’s support of the U.S. against Russia under Nixon and beyond.
However, since the subject of CiC is the more current (circa 2014) period, the Maoist orientation is more of an annoyance than a major analytical problem.
CGC focuses on the current period. It does not give an analysis of the Chinese revolution of 1949 though it does allude to exploitation existing under Mao. (pg.29) The introduction implies that there was a period when China was not capitalist though this question is left open. The authors avoid the origins of modern Chinese capitalism but give an extensive and detailed critique of class relations in China today. It might be the case that the authors disagree on the nature of the 1949 revolution. This would be an explanation of why they don’t analyze it.
Of the two books, CGC is definitely the most important. It explicitly opposes the “campist” position that China is leading the anti-imperialist camp. It instead sees China as a capitalist country and imperialist in its own right. Its international position connects directly to the internal dynamics of China. On page 13 the authors of CGC say:
“Capitalism is a system in which the owners of corporations exploit workers’ labor in competition with other corporations to make the most profit. Capital’s compulsion to accumulate takes precedence over meeting human needs .., while workers are forced into the market to purchase the goods they need to survive. The competitive drive for endless accumulation drives corporations into conflict with each other, forcing them to innovate, invest in research and development, squeeze higher productivity out of their workers, and make them work longer and harder for lower wages.. The economic exploitation of the working class labor structures class inequality and is always interwoven with oppression of race, gender and nation. . Competition ..leads to economic, diplomatic and even military conflict among states for dominance over global capitalism. China possesses all these attributes.”
CGC explains all these aspects in great detail. It says China is one of the most unequal societies in the world. (pg. 13, pg. 33).
Benign Foreign Policy?
“China, Russia and their allies have backed regimes against democratic uprisings in various countries..”
CGC also refutes the myth of benign foreign policy perpetrated on the Left:
“China was reinforcing underdevelopment in countries in the Global South. In Latin America, its cheap exports have undercut the region’s industries and reduced countries to shipping raw materials to China — the classic dependency trap.” (Pg.34)
“Xi announced a new foreign policy of ‘national rejuvenation’ to achieve ‘The Chinese Dream’ of reclaiming the country’s status as a great power.” (Pg.35)
The loans that China gives “often require countries to contract China’s state-owned corporations and hire Chinese labor.” (Pg.36)
China opposes democratic movements:
“China, Russia and their allies have backed regimes against democratic uprisings in various countries including Syria, Thailand, and Myanmar.” (Pg.41)
On Ukraine “China tacitly supporting Moscow and excusing its barbarous war as a justified response to NATO enlargement.” (Pg.41)
Class Relations and Class Struggle
As far as internal class relations, CGC discusses the struggles of workers at State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), migrant workers, urban private workers and state seizure of peasant land. The state is run by state and private capitalists in China. Its goal is to accumulate wealth. Class relations are an expression of that goal and the resistance of workers and peasants. This has been the source of heavy repression of strikes and union organizing:
“the Chinese state is guilty of massive human rights violations.”(Pg.3)
The book examines fazes of class struggle in China and exposes the official government run labor union federation as a company union.
Feminist Resistance
“The combination of state pressure for women to take up more productive labor and the country’s dependence on their labor will stoke resistance among women workers ..for improved conditions at work as well as demands for gender equality.”
Social reproduction has come under severe pressure as China has moved toward private market capitalism from the 1980s onward.
To provide labor for growing urban industries, migrant workers have been brought in from the countryside. Under the Hukou system the migrants have fewer rights than the workers entitled with urban residence. The migrant workers have less access to services. For example:
“Children who are brought by their parents to the cities are denied access to the city public school systems and other welfare services. As a result, migrant children often only have access to education in privatized, unregulated schools. “(Pg.68)
This differentiation between migrant workers and legacy urban workers is parallel to the distinction between documented and undocumented workers in the U.S.!
“Pay for urban women relative to men dropped from 78% in 1990 to 67% in 2010.”( Pg.69)
This puts a tremendous strain on women, but “this increased oppression is not experienced uniformly by all Chinese women.”(Pg.68)
This has resulted in an upsurge of Feminist movements in China:
“The state’s market reforms, consequent crisis of social reproduction, and Xi’s new pronatalist policies have precipitated the rise of a new women’s movement.” (Pg.71)
This will continue:
“The combination of state pressure for women to take up more productive labor and the country’s dependence on their labor will stoke resistance among women workers ..for improved conditions at work as well as demands for gender equality.”(Pg.73)
International Solidarity
“Workers of the world unite!
CGC takes up several other important questions. It goes into great detail on the oppression of national minorities in China, imperial rivalry between the U.S. and China, the international ecological crisis, pandemics and international rivalry, and the struggles of Chinese students in the U.S. These are all important additions to the understanding of China.
The most important point CGC makes is the political attitude leftists should take to the U.S.- China conflict. This is summed up by the slogan “Neither Washington nor Beijing: International Solidarity against Imperialist Rivalry”:
“The rulers of both states have turned to nationalism to deflect popular anger onto oppressed people and their imperial rivals. At the same time, increased exploitation and oppression have and will produce intense struggles by workers and the oppressed in both the U.S. and China. In this context the left must adopt a clear approach of building international solidarity from below against both imperial states and their ruling classes.”(Pg. 163)
This summary is extremely important. To be successful, working-class revolution must be international. International solidarity is a necessary prerequisite for international revolution. Campists disrupt that unity by favoring the interests of “progressive”, “anti-imperialist” or “socialist” states against the people those states are oppressing. They discredit the Left among oppressed people by aligning “Marxism” with state oppression and exploitation.
China in Global Capitalism presents one of the best overviews of China today! It is a must read for those interested in China and anyone interested in international relations or imperialism. Both of these books present a decisive refutation of campism and promote the exhortation of Marx and Engels “Workers of the world unite! “
