THE PEOPLE’S REPUBLIC OF CHINA;   FROM   REVOLUTION AND COMMUNES,
TO COUNTER REVOLUTION AND CAPITALISM

One fifth of the world’s population, China, an essentially feudal
society for over 2000 years was victim of plunder, oppression and dominance
by colonialism and western imperialism on an unprecedented scale until the
middle of the 20th century. From the Chang and successive Dynasties, Mongol
invasions, Opium Wars with British and French colonialism of the 19th
century and the U.S. “Open Door Policy” of plunder, to genocidal Japanese
imperial domination and international isolation until 1972 when US
imperialism played its “China card” to gain a strategic advantage over the Soviet Union.

The Chinese Communist Party organized in 1924, was the leading revolutionary
force that culminated in the successful “Long March” in the 1930’s and
ultimately the People’s Liberation Army’s victory over counter revolutionary
nationalist forces of Chiang Kai -Shek  and Imperial Japan and the
establishment of the People’s Republic of China in 1949. (PRC)  The Central
Committee of the Party embarked on land reform with the first 5 year plan in
1950 with Soviet assistance.  In 1952 Chinese  material aid was sent to the
Democratic People’s Republic of Korea including military aid which
prevented U.S. imperialism and its puppets in the South from establishing
hegemony on the Peninsula.

The Maoist leadership challenged the Soviet Union’s leading role  and
prestige within the world’s Communist and Workers Parties.  The Beijing
leadership attempted to develop an alternative Chinese form of socialism
with largely failed schemes of the “Great Leap Forward” with Communes
instead of State owned  Agricultural Collectives and factories.  The
devastating effects of the so called Cultural Revolution and the policy of
“Let a Hundred Flowers Bloom,” of the late 50’s and 60’s was not a
continuation of class struggle based on the working class and peasantry, but
rather an expression of a petit bourgeois radicalism and factional struggles
with no sound political basis.  The ensuing chaos provided fertile soil for
revisionism of the late 1970’s and a “reformed” Central Committee by Deng
Xiaoping  in 1984 which set China firmly on the capitalist road.  The
“velvet counter revolution” reaped similar “benefits” that the Russians have
experienced; a handful of millionaires, poverty, and corruption while
proclaiming Marxism, Socialism and the supremacy of the Chinese Communist
Party.

The embrace of bourgeois ideology was reflected in the PRC’s open support
in 1975 of the counter revolutionary UNITA bandits in Angola who were
aligned with fascist South Africa against the victorious MPLA and Cuban
liberation forces.  The PRC militarily attacked the Socialist Republic of
Vietnam during its efforts to rid Cambodia of the genocidal Khmer Rouge
who were parading under an ultra left banner.  The PRC did its best to
destabilize the People’s Democracies of eastern Europe by making an alliance
with Albania under Hoxha who also opposed “revisionism in Moscow.”  The PRC
supported a  reactionary Pakistani regime in Islamabad  since they were a
major player along with US imperialism under Jimmy Carter that gave material
and Intelligence assistance to the clerical fascist Taliban to fight “the
infidels” and Soviet tanks in support of the progressive secular Afghan
government of Najibullah in Kabul.

As internationalists and Marxists we must expose the traitorous path China
has been taking for the past  25 years abandoning the building of socialism
at home and collaboration with imperialism abroad so they can not only have
favored nation trading status with the transnational ruling class but also a
seat at the World Trade Organization  and the Group of 8 countries that
control or dominate most of  the world’s resources and its puppet
governments in Asia, Africa and Latin America that do their bidding.
 

January 2002
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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