China: Another “Success“ of the Stalinist-Capitalist Regime

Official announcement that China has become the world's second largest bond market

By Michael Pröbsting, International Secretary of the Revolutionary Communist International Tendency (RCIT), 3 July 2019, www.thecommunists.net

Xinhua, China’s state news agency, recently published an interesting announcement. Referring to information from Shanghai Clearing House and the China Central Depository & Clearing Co, the agency reported that “China has become the world's second largest bond market after the United States”. It noted in glowing terms that the confidence of the global financial elite in China’s market has grown to the point that overseas institutions have responded by making substantial investments in Chinese financial assets. ^[1]

While China’s ruling class has hailed this development as good news, there’s a definite, related downside for the numerous cheerleaders in the Stalinist and Castro-Chavista camp. As we substantiated in our recently published book on Great Power rivalry, these pseudo-socialists have made a habit of kowtowing to the claims of China’s “socialism” for many years. ^[2] We Trotskyists have been repeatedly attacked as “CIA agents” and “imperialist provocateurs” because we have always denied any “socialist” character to the Chinese economy and, instead emphasized, by contrast, its capitalist nature.

When we supported our analysis of China’s capitalism with credible data, these Beijing poodles simply denied them as “capitalist” or “Trotskyist” propaganda. Unfortunately, the authoritative source is now neither a Trotskyist nor a Western think tank highlighting claims concerning China’s capitalist nature but rather the Chinese “communist” authorities themselves. And the “confession” is not an act of contrition but a point of pride.

We ask the Stalinist friends of China: how can a regime that is supposedly “communist” create the world's second largest bond market that offers huge opportunities to appropriate profits for Chinese and other financial sharks?! Additionally, how can a socialist entity proudly claim credit for such an “achievement”?!

This information about China’s triumphs in the financial markets is not particularly surprising for Marxists. The RCIT has demonstrated in numerous articles, studies, and books that China had become a capitalist state by the early 1990s and, more recently, entered the ranks of imperialist Great Powers. ^[3] We have shown that behind the curtain of “socialist” rhetoric in official media lies the reality of capitalist exploitation. China’s banks and industry – both private and state-owned – operate according to the capitalist law of value. ^[4] Capitalist property relations in China have advanced to the point where the country has become a leading global force in terms capitalist value production, capital export, military expenditures, its share of the world’s population of billionaires, its Belt and Road Initiative project, its increasing dominance in various African and Asian countries, etc. ^[5]

In short, our analysis of China has stood the test of time. It’s been vindicated. In contrast, the Stalinist and Castro-Chavista cheerleaders of Beijing are compelled to bury their heads even deeper in the sand in order to ignore and deny a reality that is plain for all to see!

These are not merely theoretical differences but have major implications for the positioning of any political force in the global class struggle. While the RCIT unconditionally supports the struggles of China’s workers and youth against the regime (like e.g. the current mass protests against the extradition law in Hong Kong), the Stalinists denounce them vociferously as “mob violence”. ^[6] Likewise, while we Marxists equally oppose all imperialist Great Powers (the U.S., China, the EU, Russia and Japan) in economic, political, or military conflicts – the Global Trade War is an actual example for this – the social-imperialist friends of Beijing and Moscow support them against their Western rivals. ^[7]

As a result we confront, once more, the two basic truths that must be understood by every Marxist. First, one must not be taken in by the self-serving terms that a given political force uses to annoint itself. It has no meaning if an organization formally gathers under a circus tent they refer to as “Marxism”, “Communism” or even “Trotskyism”. What counts are the concrete theoretical and practical positions such an entity takes in the global class struggle. Only by studying these positions and their related consequences is it possible to accurately assess if that organization is really adhering to Marxism or if it is, rather, an enemy of Marxism functioning on behalf of one or another section of the bourgeoisie.

Secondly, the analysis of China’s class character demonstrates that such theoretical differences result in real positions being taken on opposite sides of the barricades.

All Marxists must internalize these lessons and learn from these experiences to prepare for the class battles and Great Power conflicts that lie ahead of us!