Economic reform in China
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https://www.gov.cn/yaowen/liebiao/202509/content_7040745.htm
(You’ll need to get Google to translate it).I think this confirms Xi’s statist/centralising instinct: the general gist seems to be about raising quality of production, and reducing price competition, i.e. planning the markets more:
“First, we must focus on rectifying the chaotic phenomenon of low-price, disorderly competition among enterprises. Areas severely affected by “involution” must be effectively governed in accordance with laws and regulations. We must better leverage the self-regulatory role of industry associations to guide enterprises in improving product quality, implementing a policy of premium pricing for quality and opposing low prices for inferior products. We must promote the orderly exit of outdated production capacity and achieve dynamic market clearance. We must integrate online and offline governance.”
The driver may be: “Building a unified national market is not only necessary for establishing a new development landscape and promoting high-quality development, but also for gaining the initiative in international competition.” This is a prescription for more state in state capitalism, and, in many ways, is simply the same sort of thing Labour traditionally put forward.
The best way of conceptualising the difference between US/UK and China, is by examining the meaning of ‘market’.
The US/UK try to utilise a ‘Free Market’, but China utilises a ‘Tool Market’.
The purpose of the former is ‘profit’ for an exploiting class, whereas the purpose of the latter is ‘growth’ for a nation.
Of course, any Marxist communist knows that ‘nation’ is also a tool for an exploiting class, but it raises the issue of whether political control of an economy can be maintained to benefit all classes within a nation (differentially, of course), or whether political ‘interference’ in ‘the market’ must eventually collapse capitalism.
Can the Chinese ruling class succeed with their version of ‘Communism with Chinese Characteristics’, or is it simply a doomed ‘State Capitalism’?
The ‘Tool Market’ appears to be overtaking the ‘Free Market’ as the ideological basis of the 21st century.
How can it benefit the exploited and the exploiting? The exploited are still exploited. The exploiters are still accumulating wealth on the backs of the exploited. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, the worst master is a kind one, because his/her slaves are content.
Look at Japan, so often praised as a ‘cohesive’ society – where many workers are so ruthlessly regimented and robotised that they die on the job, falling asleep in the street on their way home, and where the famous fake smile is compulsory.
They are so tired that they can not have sex, and the population is becoming old, they have to rent a friend and a girl friend or a boy friend. All workers around the whole world are exploited . It sounds like the reactionary governor of Florida De Santis who said that slavery benefited the slaves
Well, all markets are designed markets, and all markets (despite the propaganda) are creatures of the state and law, so in essence, China isn’t doing anything that Western states haven’t already done, as I understand it, Xi’s big thing is the central role of the party:
See, https://monitoring.bbc.co.uk/product/c1dmwn4r
(about a third of the points concern the Party).(I knew he is a Red Prince, but didn’t realise how significant his father was: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xi_Zhongxun)
The best way of conceptualising the difference between US/UK and China, is by examining the meaning of ‘market’.
Examining the meaning of ‘market’ (i.e., of capital circulation) is an unreliable approach, as traders on a market trade equally with each other.
The US/UK try to utilise a ‘Free Market’
In (neoliberal) usage a ‘free market’ implies freedom from state intervention and freedom of consumer choice.
For Marx, these are unachievable freedoms. The capitalist state must continually intervene to save the ‘free market’ from itself, from financial ruin and social upheaval of its own free making.
The US state acknowledges that free trade has screwed its national capitalists and soared national debt, and so in retaliation the US state is tariffing its international trading partners.
The US is quite prepared to freely sabotage a ‘free market’ that doesn’t work in its national capital’s interest. A fine spin on the US ‘trying to utilise’ the free market — by freely abusing/thwarting it!
… but China utilises a ‘Tool Market’. The purpose … is ‘growth’ for a nation.
China may state such (neoliberal) political rhetoric. Yet, the true (Marxian) metric of capitalist ‘growth’ always remains the expansion of capital value — the accumulation of surplus value by the exploitation of the working class. ‘Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets!’ (Capital Vol. 1, Ch. 24).
The incessant drive for Chinese capitalists to reinvest surplus value always keeps their government’s best-intentions for raising Chinese living standards on hold, as a hit-and-miss concomitant of their capital accumulation.
… it raises the issue of whether political control of an economy can be maintained to benefit all classes within a nation (differentially, of course)
Really? Political control of an economy can only be one economic class imposing its political will upon another economic class. Whether it can benefit both the imposing class and the imposed class may ‘raise an issue’ for academic philosophy, but not for Marxian political economy.
… or whether political ‘interference’ in ‘the market’ must eventually collapse capitalism.
No. Capitalism will only ‘collapse’ when the majority of the global working class takes concerted action to place the world’s means of production under its democratic control.
Can the Chinese ruling class succeed with their version of ‘Communism with Chinese Characteristics’
Succeed? In doing what? (On its own political economic terms, the Chinese ruling class, with its multi-billionaires, is succeeding in doing very well.)
The ‘Tool Market’ appears to be overtaking the ‘Free Market’ as the ideological basis of the 21st century.
No. It’s the same old capitalist market with the same old best-laid social plans, everywhere and always, governed by the same old rules.
twc wrote: “No. It’s the same old capitalist market with the same old best-laid social plans, everywhere and always, governed by the same old rules.”
And yet, to quote one thinker, “Men make history”.
Ahistorical certainty is of no use to workers wanting to discuss issues and develop their own understanding.
Whatever happened to the notion of ‘change’?
China has certainly changed in the last few decades.
And please, let’s not get into an exchange based upon clownish “Oh, no, it hasn’t!”, because I, for one, am not interested.
Thomas More wrote: “China has changed, but within capitalism, just as European countries have changed since the 1950s.”
Now, there’s a basis for a discussion. Thank you, Thomas.
So, what sort of ‘capitalism’ did China have, before the ‘change’, and what sort of ‘capitalism’ does it have now, after the ‘change’?
Or, is the ‘change’ superficial, and it hasn’t really ‘changed’? [perhaps twc’s position?]
Isn’t a good way of capturing this ‘change’, to use the notion of ‘Tool Market’? As opposed to ‘Free Market’, or non-Capitalist Maoism, or ‘Socialism with non-Chinese characteristics’ (take your pick of ‘pre-change’ notion)?
Ok. Let’s summarise.
In the 1950s, when Mao was dictator, China was in the mid-stage of its capitalist revolution, which had roots in the 19th century. The Chinese bourgeoisie, which, like the Russian, was small and weak, hedged its bets with the Kuomintang, its own party, which only partially succeeded. Its 1911 political revolution was hijacked by the former Ch’ing general Yuan Shi-k’ai in 1912, who sought to restore an Imperial aurocracy with himself as Emperor. But he died in 1916, and in 1917 monarchists restored P’u Yi to the throne.
The bourgeoisie could but trust in this or that strongman in the Kuomintang to realise its unfulfilled political revolution, and in 1924 Feng Yu-hsiang’s troops captured Peip’ing (as it was then) and expelled P’u Yi.
The Kuomintang then launched the “Northern Expedition” to seize the north from the various federalist provincial governors known as “warlords” (a dubious title) by westerners. The expedition stalled as KMT factions fought each other, and general Chiang Kai-shek seized Nanking as his power base in 1927.From 1927 onwards, the Nanking govt. strove to modernise urban life but could not harness the economic forces Chinese capitalism required. Little by little the “Communists” (not yet under Mao’s dictatorship, but containing the germs of state-capitalist dictatorship via their connections with Moscow) invited interested native capitalists to their “soviet republics” throughout the south and west, to set up factories, but realised that the vast majority of Chinese, the peasantry, would need to be used, first to place the “Communists” in power, and then as human fodder for developing a modern nation-state.
During the Long March to Yenan, Mao Tse-tung was “elected” leader of the “Communists” and from his beginnings in full power adopted Stalin-like terror in controlling dissent.
To move on, the “Communists” won the civil war in 1949 and a Bolshevik-style state-capitalism then turned, in the 1950s, to the expropriation of the peasantry which had carried Mao to power. His weapons were mass-starvation and “communes”- concentration camps with hard labour, the proceeds going to the state, i e. Mao and his CCP accomplices, the new bourgeoisie.Failures and shortfalls in economic growth were blamed on figures in the CCP Mao wanted rid of during the 1950s. These were mostly his own generation of civil war veterans and, to finish them off, he launched the so-called “Cultural Revolution” of the 1960s, furthering his personal cult and strengthening his hand through terror over the population as a whole. As Mao grew increasingly frail and died, “Thermidorian” – moderating and realistic – elements seized and reined in the “Jacobin” revolutionary impetus, and the reign of Teng Hsiao-p’ing could at last concentrate on the full advancement of stalled capitalist production which would lead to the economic hegemony of China today.
This new order still pays lip service to Mao and is a mixture of state-capitalism and private capitalism.
Thomas More wrote: “This new order still pays lip service to Mao and is a mixture of state-capitalism and private capitalism.”
But surely it was also ‘a mixture of state-capitalism and private capitalism’ after 1949? And indeed before?
So, what’s changed?
The terror has passed, with the Leninist hysteria. But it remains a one-party dictatorship.
It has allowed western pop culture and has opened to world markets. I don’t know if there were capitalists independent of the state machine. There certainly are now. The revolution ended in 1976 and apart from one-party rule and archaisms such as the death penalty, China now is no different from other states. Just less “liberal” and more authoritarian. In fact, not really different from Russia.
For socialists, living there would be much harsher, as no one can form a party or resist military service, without severe punishment.Great analysis here by Thomas More.
See also: https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2025/no-1449-may-2025/book-reviews-shiva-saito-stevenson-yang/ review of ‘Wild Ride’
and
https://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2020s/2025/no-1449-may-2025/book-reviews-shiva-saito-stevenson-yang/ (capitalist China and socialist revolution)Link to SPGB review of ‘Wild Ride’ wrote: “She sees the ‘ride’, even if in many ways smoke and mirrors, as broadly progressive in the sense of bringing alleviation to poverty in China and, while the system remains politically authoritarian, of being less nakedly repressive than the previous era.” [my bold]
Perhaps this displays the difference between the utilisation of the ‘Tool market’ (alleviation of poverty) and the utilisation of the ‘Free market’ (increasing of poverty).
I think that the answers in this thread to my comparison of ‘Tool’ versus ‘Free’ have confirmed my opinion that this is a useful way of explaining to workers the developments within China over the last three/four decades.
Using explanations that capture the essence of an issue is the way forward for developing workers’ understanding of their world.
That is the purpose of the ‘Tool Market’ / ‘Free Market’ model.
After the defeat or the coup given to the Gang of Four (or the Gang of Five, as the hardcore Maoists call this coup), all kinds of capitalist reforms were implemented in China based on the principles of the Four Modernizations introduced by the Gang of Deng Xiaoping.
The concept was first proposed by Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai in 1964, but was not implemented due to the Cultural Revolution. The mixture of state capitalism and private existed already during the time of Chairman Mao Tse Tung, known as the Great Timonel
Whatever fancy economics terms are being used now, everything is based on the principles of the Four Modernizations, and everything was published in the magazine Peking Review
These reforms are not new, and they were publicly denounced by the government of Albania and Enver Hoxha in his books and the magazine Albania Today. People who were involved in the Albania-China controversy knew about this
They started to support many reactionary governments and dictatorships around the world to expand their tentacles and capitalist expansions.
Everything was written and published on Albania Today, which had monthly and yearly subscriptions.
Most Leninist parties associated with Albania knew about it, and they published it, including the ML Party of Canada, which had a daily newspaper, and the US ML party published everything, and there is still a US magazine that continues publishing all the economic maneuvers of the Chinese capitalist class, and before that, they were Maoists
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Deng-Xiaoping. He played a much better role than Joseph Stalin, and he knew the economic platform of the Soviet Union; he knew the weaknesses and strengths of the soviet economy, which is the reason why it did not collapse like Russia
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