Chinese 'Plunder and Steal' Initiative
How modern China is the enemy of peoples of the world
What do we know about China? That it’s a big country located in East Asia with long history and enduring culture. And a Communist Party in charge that proclaims loyalty to Marxism-Leninism. In light of Chinese expansion of trade, the long-standing issue of Chinese socialism has been made relevant once again, and it’s important for every genuine nationalist be he right-wing, left-wing, or anything beyond to address the issue of China. Is it friend or enemy? Is China to be placed hopes on? Is the ‘multipolar world’ we’re heading towards a positive?
Looking deeper into the reality of China, we can see it resembles nothing of that socialism that has been historically achieved. Why is it? It is due to the fact China pushed the market reform in early 1980s and has been doing it in waves, with the most painful one being the Jiang Zemin’s stage of reforming the economy, where over 30 million people were laid off1 and had to seek employment in the market.
This market reform that has remade labour into a commodity is very significant as to know what’s so wrong with China: labour being bought and sold rather than stably employed is a characteristic of a capitalist system, not of a socialist system. The guts of ‘public property’ are decisively defined by this relation as state-owned enterprises also buy labour and operate according to the ways of the market and are able to extract large amounts of profit off of workers and monopoly-dictated prices.
Without a centralised planning system, state-owned enterprises are functioning like private capitalist enterprises, with the CCP wholeheartedly approving of ‘fair competition.’2 It turns out that so-called ‘public property’ is, in fact, not public property! This state property is bureaucratic capital. China is only peculiar for having large amounts of bureaucratic capital, and it doesn’t affect the nature of the Chinese state in any meaningful way.
It is capitalism, in one of its most ruthless forms, that sells out the brilliant Chinese nation, buries exuberant enthusiasm of the Chinese people, totally wrecks the achievements of the socialist era proper. Deng claimed market economy did not contradict socialism.3 He was totally wrong. If it’s a ‘state-regulated market’, it’s still a market, a medium for exchange of commodities. It decisively ends control over commodities present in the socialist system and restores former productive relations under the aegis of state ownership.
The Communist Party of China claiming to represent the working folk4 has failed its own mission. The Party did not hesitate to lay off 1.8 million workers in 20165. The true nature of the socialist market economy is revealed by this simple fact that a macroeconomic push could cause mass layoffs in state-owned enterprises. If the Party doesn’t represent China’s workers and peasants, who does it represent?
The answer at this point should be obvious: it only represents traitors that could get rich off of our suffering. A survey of 2003 illustrated that about a third of the Party members were private business owners6. This was not due to the fact Jiang Zemin let capitalists the year before but to the fact Party bureaucrats (‘some people’) could ‘get rich first’ – as Deng wished7 – and did not leave the Communist Party. Otherwise, why do you think the survey would detect so many bourgeois just one year after introduction of the Three Represents?
Is socialism with Chinese characteristics that does not hesitate to fund Duterte fighting against the Communist Party of the Philippines, the leading force in national liberation effort standing up against the global imperialist system, your friend? Is socialism with Chinese characteristics that gives loans as predatory as IMF and World Bank (but – as they say – with no ‘political strings attached,’ as if it means anything) to African and Latin American compradors stuffing countries with polluting production and Chinese state corporation-owned mines that China does not want at home, your ally?
Imperialist China, being the second largest military spender, is preparing a military buildup, constructing a far from defensive fleet to contend hegemony in South China Sea. It must be a coincidence that the massive fleet construction only started as China integrated so deep in the global market under Hu-Wen and Xi-Li administrations. Is it to be admired and supported as part of achieving a ‘multipolar world’? No and no again!
Not only is China giving away predatory loans it uses to seize infrastructure from the countries that were given a loan (Hambantota port leased for 99 years to Chinese Hong Kong-based SOE China Merchants; Lao 25-year electricity grid concession to Chinese state-owned China Southern Power Grid Company; etc.) and extracting resources to fund its own growth at the expense of other nations (state-owned Norinco subsidiary Wanbao Mining in DRC; Zhejiang Huayou Cobalt headquartered in the government-owned industrial zone Tongxiang Economic Development Zone that used to operate in DRC; state-owned Chinalco in Peru etc.), China is also internationalising currency8 and seeking to increase its convertibility9 so that Renminbi becomes another global reserve currency.
China not simply wants but needs this internationalisation, ‘relaxation’ (放松) of investment and bond issuance, promotion of bilateral opening of the capital market and so on, so they could export financial capital with ease. As the Chinese capital does not want to implode, it needs to grow indefinitely and embark on the road of expansion abroad. That’s what Jiang Zemin (aka the Toad)’s ‘Go Global’ policy and Xi Jinping’s One Belt One Road Initiative are all about.
Furthermore, it should be no secret that countries that issue major reserve currencies have some tricks up their sleeves: they are able to cover their trade deficits with national currency unlike exploited countries and to aid ‘domestic’ multinationals in global-scale competition with ‘foreign’ corporations. This only cements their position as exploiters, enemies of other peoples.
A fatally weakened US empire and a rising Chinese empire alongside many secondary imperialists like India, Russia, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Germany, and others setting entire nations ablaze with democratic bombing and ‘peacekeeping’ just to snatch fair share of other peoples’ resources – do we need this kind of multipolarity?
Is multipolarity any good so long as all poles of said multipolarity do not present with any alternative? Any principled anti-imperialist must defend a world of free peoples with no empires, a world of producer nations, must stand up against all kinds of empires no matter what flag they wave and rhetoric they utilise, be it American ‘freedom’ or Chinese ‘socialism.’
As a result, we need no multipolar world as a matter of principle. We only need unipolar world of peace and many national breeds of socialism. We need no capitalist-socialist ‘competition,’ as Khrushchev and modern pro-CCP Marxists-Leninists have suggested. This is the treacherous doctrine of ‘peaceful coexistence’ the ‘People’s Republic’ is now pursuing as Khrushchevite-Brezhnevite reformist sidekicks they are. This is the bourgeois idea of fair competition just wrapped up in red drapes. We need none of it.
A waning US imperialism with all its crimes has been called out and exposed so many times it doesn’t make sense to address the issue of the US once more. The US is still the main direct enemy of peoples of the world as Biden is prompting to instigate new wars to feed the greedy military industrial complex with blood money, but – as it turns out – two can play this people’s military industrial complex game!
China is now a major arms exporter on par with the US, Russia, Germany, and France10. It means China is profiting off of conflicts across the globe just like these four powers listed. It means China is so much an integral part of the imperialist system it needs blood money to fare further – imperialism is fuelling war, imperialism needs war to flourish, to destroy, to reinvest in what was destroyed, reap the profits, and flourish again. Rinse and repeat. War is knocking on our door the louder the more markets shrink due to competition and overproduction. If other empires don’t give way to China, the capitalist world will be in crisis so steep the war is inevitable.
China is a main competitor for the role of the most dangerous source of war and the worst enemy of peoples of the world. We need to call out all imperial criminals if we want a world better than this. We need to repudiate modern Marxists-Leninists and their red imperialist apology. We need to repudiate modern liberals and their star-and-stripe imperialist apology. It is a principal matter that can’t be ignored.
No to empires, yes to peoples! No to the bourgeoisie, yes to the toiling masses! Long live the Chinese people, down with the bureaucracy!
– Wang Wei
Song L., R. Garnaut, S. Tenev, Yao Y. – China’s Ownership Transformation, p. ix
‘China ‘welcomes fair competition, does not favour state firms’: https://www.scmp.com/economy/china-economy/article/2166387/china-welcomes-fair-competition-does-not-favour-state
Deng X., ‘There Is No Fundamental Contradiction Between Socialism and a Market Economy’: https://dengxiaopingworks.wordpress.com/2013/03/18/there-is-no-fundamental-contradiction-between-socialism-and-a-market-economy/
The Constitution of the Communist Party of China (2017 ed.), p.1
‘Laying off 1.8m workers challenges govt’s plans to cut industrial overcapacity’: https://www.globaltimes.cn/content/972596.shtml
“统计表明我国私营企业家中的中共党员比例上升”: http://news.sina.com.cn/c/2003-11-13/21522131323.shtml
“邓小平：让一部分人先富起来”: http://cpc.people.com.cn/GB/34136/2569304.html
‘Новый игрок: Китай незаметно сделал свою валюту международной’: https://iz.ru/1073381/dmitrii-migunov/novyi-igrok-kitai-nezametno-sdelal-svoiu-valiutu-mezhdunarodnoi
Source: ‘中华人民共和国国民经济和社会发展第十三个五年规划纲要’: http://www.gov.cn/xinwen/2016-03/17/content_5054992.htm
Quote: “有序实现人民币资本项目可兑换，提高可兑换、可自由使用程度，稳步推进人民币国际化，推进人民币资本走出去。逐步建立外汇管理负面清单制度。放宽境外投资汇兑限制，改进企业和个人外汇管理。放宽跨国公司资金境外运作限制，逐步提高境外放款比例。支持保险业走出去，拓展保险资金境外投资范围。统一内外资企业及金融机构外债管理，稳步推进企业外债登记制管理改革，健全本外币全口径外债和资本流动审慎管理框架体系。加强国际收支监测。推进资本市场双向开放，提高股票、债券市场对外开放程度，放宽境内机构境外发行债券，以及境外机构境内发行、投资和交易人民币债券。提高金融机构国际化水平，加强海外网点布局，完善全球服务网络，提高国内金融市场对境外机构开放水平。”
‘China, the world’s second largest defense spender, becomes a major arms exporter’: https://www.cnbc.com/2019/09/27/china-a-top-defense-spender-becomes-major-arms-exporter.html