Chinese dissident wins Nobel Peace Prize...

[RadioRaheem84]

http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1006/

Liu Xiaobo, a liberal Chinese dissident and advocate of free markets has been sentenced to eleven years in prison for subversion. He has written a pro market, pro privatization book called Charter 8. The manifesto calls upon human right and democracy, but also free market reform.

His inspiration was Vaclav Havel and wishes to repeat the shock therapy of Eastern Europe in China.

I do not condone Chinese State Repression but the media and the Nobel Committee is honoring him more for his pro-market views than anything else.
Some quotes:


Charter 08 calls unequivocally for capitalism and bourgeois property relations. It supports more privatisation, but says this should be carried out more “fairly”. In items 14 and 15, for example, its states: “We should establish and protect the right to private property and promote an economic system of free and fair markets. We should do away with government monopolies in commerce and industry and guarantee the freedom to start new enterprises. We should establish a Committee on State-Owned Property, reporting to the national legislature, that will monitor the transfer of state-owned enterprises to private ownership in a fair, competitive, and orderly manner. We should institute a land reform that promotes private ownership of land, guarantees the right to buy and sell land, and allows the true value of private property to be adequately reflected in the market.”



After 20 years of struggle with the regime, Liu and like minded liberal intellectuals have not discovered the true force of historical change – the working masses. In 1989, they tried to block workers and ordinary citizens from joining the student-led protests, and put their hopes in one wing of the CCP top brass (Zhao Ziyang). They resisted the only measures, such as a call for a workers’ general strike and organisation of democratic defence committees, that could have prevented the regime’s bloody crackdown.


As a part of the elite layer, Liu and his co-thinkers have never really trusted or sought to unite with working people in China, despite their calls for “equality and democracy”. They criticise Chinese peoples’ violence and revolutions throughout history, and see private ownership and the market economy as the bedrock for democratic development. “I have always opposed sudden reform taken at one step and, even more, have opposed violent revolution... The order of a bad government is better than the chaos of anarchy.” (From the statement Liu Xiaobo was prevented from reading at his trial).


In 1988 Liu Xiaobo was interviewed by a Hong Kong journalist and declared that China would have been better under a colonial system for 300 years, since Hong Kong, under British colonial rule for over a century, had become a “free-market” and a developed economy. This is completely refuted by reality in Hong Kong, where a small handful of pro-CCP tycoons exercise total control over the “free market”. It is a well known saying in Hong Kong that seven cents of every dollar spent goes to Li Ka Shing, Hong Kong’s wealthiest man, because of his economic control over telecoms, media, property, ports and retailing.

[ed miliband]

I do not condone Chinese State Repression but the media and the Nobel Committee is honoring him more for his pro-market views than anything else.


In the US? In Britain he is being heralded as a 'human rights defender', with little or no mention of his support for the free market. I suspected this to be the case anyway.

But anyway... Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize last year i.e. it's totally meaningless.

[RedStarOverChina]

The Nobel Piss Prize has always been a reward for promoting capitalism as well as anti-communist activism.

[RadioRaheem84]

In the US? In Britain he is being heralded as a 'human rights defender', with little or no mention of his support for the free market. I suspected this to be the case anyway.

But anyway... Obama got the Nobel Peace Prize last year i.e. it's totally meaningless.

You're right. All that is focused on is his human rights advocacy in the States too.

I meant that he is really being supported as another Vaclav Havel type dissident.

[Red Commissar]

In the US? In Britain he is being heralded as a 'human rights defender', with little or no mention of his support for the free market. I suspected this to be the case anyway.

That's his point. On the surface they may be preaching "human rights", but we have a lot of people who stand up for "human rights" depending on whose perspective you take. The real reasons are more under the surface.

I mean "human rights defender" sounds a lot better and compelling than other things that could describe him.

[Tavarisch_Mike]

The Nobels peace prize is the biggest joke ever. One of the earliest winners of the prize, was president Theodor Roosvelt despite his war with Spain (that took place in Cuba and the Fillipines) this was a tactic for the newly indeppendent nation Norway, too create allies. And this was just the start, other winners are Henry Kissinger, Jimmy Carter, Dalai Lama, Al Gore and (wheen you thought that the limit was reached) Barack Obama and now this. One funny thing is that in the 30s a swedish parlamentarian suggested Adolf Hitler.

[ed miliband]

That's his point. On the surface they may be preaching "human rights", but we have a lot of people who stand up for "human rights" depending on whose perspective you take. The real reasons are more under the surface.

I mean "human rights defender" sounds a lot better and compelling than other things that could describe him.


I know that perfectly well... I probably could have made it clearer.

[maskerade]

And Mario Vargas Llosa got the literature one - a leftist that became a neoliberal prick. At least he writes good books though

[RebelDog]

Obama has called for his "speedy release." Fair enough Barack, but what about the Miami 5, you fucking hypocrite.

[Crux]

Nobel Peace Prize awarded to Liu Xiaobo

Friday, 8 October 2010.
China’s regime fumes as imprisoned Charter 08 author is selected

Chinaworker.info

Last year’s Nobel Peace Prize laureate was president Obama. He is on course to spend more on war than any US president since 1945. This fact alone says a lot about the dubious rationale behind the Nobel Prize and the geopolitical calculations that influence its selection.

Liu Xiaobo is one of the most well known Chinese dissidents. The chinaworker.info website and the supporters of the Committee for a Workers’ International (cwi) have called for Liu’s release since his arrest in 2008 and the brutal 11-year jail sentence served on him on 25 December last year. Likewise we demand the immediate release of the thousands of political prisoners in China, whose fate is largely overlooked by overseas capitalist governments and media in their unseemly rush to take advantage of China’s booming economy. In this sense the award to Liu of this year’s Peace Prize can play a useful role in increasing public awareness.

China’s jails and ‘re-education camps’ are full of political prisoners whose beliefs have led them to fall foul of the one-party dictatorship. Repression is worse today than at any time for more than a decade. As veteran China reporter, John Pomfret, points out in the Washington Post (8 October): “Although China outwardly appears strong, with a world-beating economic growth rate, prosecutions for “state security” offences are approaching numbers not seen since the bloody crackdown on student-led protests around Tiananmen Square in 1989.”

Increasingly, the attention of the state security apparatus has fallen on the emerging left in China: socialists, Maoists and anti-capitalists. Liu Xiaobo does not rank among these, being firmly anchored on the right of the political spectrum. He is a pro-US liberal, whose ‘Charter 08’ manifesto not only champions democratic rights that socialists would fully endorse, but also calls for more rapid privatisation and other “free market” i.e. capitalist measures. This is no way conditions our support for his release from detention. While we do not subscribe to Liu’s political ideas, which we believe represent a political dead-end for workers and the poor, we defend his right to express and campaign for these ideas.

It is paradoxical that Liu Xiaobo, who Pomfret describes as part of the “loyal opposition” to the ruling Communist Party, has now become a major diplomatic and political problem for the regime. Rather than a call for revolutionary change, Charter 08, for which Liu was jailed, is crafted in the form of advice to the regime on how to ‘reform’ itself.

Undoubtedly the Norwegian-based Nobel committee’s decision reflects geopolitical factors, however much this will be denied. Perhaps also the committee wished to rescue its tarnished image after the controversial award to Obama in 2009. China has emerged from the first wave of the global capitalist crisis strengthened economically, diplomatically and militarily. Its more assertive role in the field of global capitalist relations and intensified competition as the crisis continues, is inevitably triggering new conflicts with other powers such as the EU, Japan, and particularly US capitalism.
Whereas top western politicians have generally ignored ‘human rights’ issues for years in their haste to sign deals with the Chinese regime, this may be about to change significantly. In order to strengthen their hand in strategic conflicts – over currencies, markets and spheres of influence – the capitalist ‘democracies’ of the West will be more prepared than previously to offer lip service to issues of democracy and human rights. The decision to award Liu Xiaobo the Nobel Prize fits in with this emerging pattern.
Predictably, Beijing lashed out at the Nobel committee’s decision as a “desecration”, an “obscenity”, and a violation of the principles of the Nobel Prize (!!). Prior to Friday’s decision, the Chinese regime exerted pressure on the Norwegian goverment and Nobel committee. The head of the Norwegian Nobel Institute, Geir Lundestad, said he was warned by a senior Chinese official that trade negotiations between Oslo and Beijing could be jeopardised as could China's willingness to buy Norwegian offshore oil and gas exploration technology. Since Friday’s announcement, news of the award to Liu Xiaobo has been blocked on Chinese media.
At the same time capitalist politicians everywhere are issuing self-righteous and hypocritical statements on this issue. “This decision embodies the defence of human rights everywhere in the world,” said France's Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner. This is the same French government that has orchestrated a racist campaign of persecution and deportation against Roma people.
Socialists fight for democratic rights, freedom of expression, and an end to repression and censorship, while making clear we oppose the pro-capitalist ideas that Liu Xiaobo stands for. While this award will surely focus some much needed attention on the issue of repression in China, we believe that the establishment of genuine democratic rights can only come from the mass struggle of workers and poor peasants in China and internationally. We place no confidence in bourgeois institutions, governments or politically questionable prizes to further this struggle.

• Release Liu Xiaobo, Tan Zouren and other political prisoners!
• For a mass democratic and socialist workers’ and peasants movement against dictatorship and repression!

[Nanatsu Yoru]

What was the excuse for giving Obama the prize anyway?:confused:

[The Vegan Marxist]

What was the excuse for giving Obama the prize anyway?:confused:

Because they saw him as an inspiration to peace, given that he originally declared opposition against the wars being waged. Despite the fact that before he was awarded the prize, he had already declared that the wars would continue.

As far as the rewarding of the counterrevolutionary Liu. This shows that there remains pro-socialist elements within the CPC, given that many are infuriated at the fact that the US is rewarding such a prize to someone who calls for capitalist restoration & colonialism.

[Q]

As far as the rewarding of the counterrevolutionary Liu. This shows that there remains pro-socialist elements within the CPC, given that many are infuriated at the fact that the US is rewarding such a prize to someone who calls for capitalist restoration & colonialism.

Can you please change your tune? It gets increasingly boring and out of touch with reality.

The CWI article posted by Majakovskij in post 10 gives a much more balanced view: "Socialists fight for democratic rights, freedom of expression, and an end to repression and censorship, while making clear we oppose the pro-capitalist ideas that Liu Xiaobo stands for. While this award will surely focus some much needed attention on the issue of repression in China, we believe that the establishment of genuine democratic rights can only come from the mass struggle of workers and poor peasants in China and internationally. We place no confidence in bourgeois institutions, governments or politically questionable prizes to further this struggle".

[The Vegan Marxist]

Can you please change your tune? It gets increasingly boring and out of touch with reality.

It appears you're the only one who's not in tune with reality, comrade. Fact of the matter is that China remains a worker's state to this day, & the vast majority of the CPC remain under the control of working class people.

[Q]

It appears you're the only one who's not in tune with reality, comrade. Fact of the matter is that China remains a worker's state to this day, & the vast majority of the CPC remain under the control of working class people.

Yeah, cool story bro.

[Nolan]

A complete joke two years in a row.

[Nolan]

It appears you're the only one who's not in tune with reality, comrade. Fact of the matter is that China remains a worker's state to this day, & the vast majority of the CPC remain under the control of working class people.

Ok so is Russia a workers state too? Tell me the difference.

I think you need to be put in a special place.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Yeah, cool story bro.

Answer why would they imprison a man who calls for capitalist restoration? Why does this man call for capitalist restoration if, according to your own opinion, capitalism is already restored?

[Red Commissar]

The Nobel Peace Prize, more so than the other categories (Chemistry, Physics, Medicine, Literature) tends to attract the most controversy due to its nature of being more politically influenced than the other ones. For what it's worth, I believe the Soviet Union only had two peace prizes awarded to it (Soviets got the most in Physics, and some in literature, though one of these was for Solzhenitsyn). The first was for the scientist Sakharov, who became a "dissident", and the last to Gorbachev. Obviously would be seen in a positive light by those in the west, not so uniformly to those residing in their nations.

It's a hot button issue. A political prisoner to one group may be a criminal/terrorist to another. We may have people we view as political prisoners that other nations view in another light. In other cases the prize seems to come out as a circle jerk. The reasoning behind joint awards are interesting too, say the one that was shared between Arafat, Rabin, and Peres over "peace" over Israel and Palestine. Or the one that Mandela shared with FW de Clerk. The one that I personally found interesting when they awarded that asshat Kissenger a Nobel Peace prize to be shared with North Vietnam's foreign minister, Le Duc Tho, for the Paris Peace Accords. Le Duc Tho refused, a good move for him.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Ok so is Russia a workers state too? Tell me the difference.

:laugh:

Russia is most definitely not, because:

Russia's means of production is not, of the majority, collectively owned between the workers & the State;
The Russian govt. is not, of the majority, run by working class people.

So yes, there's a difference.

[Nolan]

Answer why would they imprison a man who calls for capitalist restoration? Why does this man call for capitalist restoration if, according to your own opinion, capitalism is already restored?

It's not so much the pro-laissez-faire drivel as it is the liberal democracy he advocates. He represents a threat to the CPC and the status quo. Don't read more into it than there is.

[Nolan]

:laugh:

Russia is most definitely not, because:

Russia's means of production is not, of the majority, collectively owned between the workers & the State;
The Russian govt. is not, of the majority, run by working class people.

So yes, there's a difference.

You, sir, are a joke.

[The Vegan Marxist]

It's not so much the pro-laissez-faire drivel as it is the liberal democracy he advocates. He represents a threat to the CPC and the status quo. Don't read more into it than there is.

That's bullshit. It's just as much the liberalism it promotes as the capitalist restoration it promotes. There's a reason why capitalist SEZs haven't predominantly overrun the Chinese economy & why every worker strike that's taken place in the SEZs have been 100% successful.

[The Vegan Marxist]

You, sir, are a joke.

You, sir, can't prove me wrong.

[Crux]

It appears you're the only one who's not in tune with reality, comrade. Fact of the matter is that China remains a worker's state to this day, & the vast majority of the CPC remain under the control of working class people.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11499098
I think the commentaries there are representative. Those who support the regime and oppose this are doing it from a nationalist standpoint, with chinese "culture" being under attack. Of course this makes sense as the regime's own economic policies are no less neoliberal than Liu Xiaobo's proposals. That's also why the CPC regime so fiercly promotes a nationalist approach.

The vast majority of the CPC do not conform to your delusions, no.

[Nolan]

That's bullshit. It's just as much the liberalism it promotes as the capitalist restoration it promotes. There's a reason why capitalist SEZs haven't predominantly overrun the Chinese economy & why every worker strike that's taken place in the SEZs have been 100% successful.

You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Worker's rights have been fought tooth and nail by the state. The entire economy is capitalist.

[Q]

Answer why would they imprison a man who calls for capitalist restoration? Why does this man call for capitalist restoration if, according to your own opinion, capitalism is already restored?

Answer why would they imprison a man who calls for capitalist restoration? If China is such a powerful workers state, this man cannot possibly be taken seriously by anyone?

I can play that game too.

Anyway, as I already pointed out in post 13, we need to take a more balanced approach: As communists we stand for the most complete form of democracy and this man was put in prison for his ideas (which are actually about democratic reforms). As such we must protest against his imprisonment against a dictatorship that doesn't allow political freedom.

[mossy noonmann]

Didn't Kissenger win this once?

what does he win anyway, a cheque ?, no statue or anything?


now i'm not that well informed but i've never heard of him. so he didn't promote peace, at least, not with me.

but he can't be worse than kissenger can he!?

[The Vegan Marxist]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-11499098
I think the commentaries there are representative. Those who support the regime and oppose this are doing it from a nationalist standpoint, with chinese "culture" being under attack. Of course this makes sense as the regime's own economic policies are no less neoliberal than Liu Xiaobo's proposals. That's also why the CPC regime so fiercly promotes a nationalist approach.

The vast majority of the CPC do not conform to your delusions, no.

The vast majority of the CPC are still working class, whether you want to admit it or not, & the majority of China's economy is collectively owned between the workers & the State (given that the state is run by the CPC who is predominantly working class). This makes China still under Socialism. Though, I would admit that capitalism is becoming increasingly supported in China, which is a direct threat. I don't care about your delusional opinions, I'm only presenting the facts.

[Crux]

That's bullshit. It's just as much the liberalism it promotes as the capitalist restoration it promotes. There's a reason why capitalist SEZs haven't predominantly overrun the Chinese economy & why every worker strike that's taken place in the SEZs have been 100% successful.
:laugh: No. The Charter 08 is more of an advice to the CPC regime, i e, they believe the regime would implement those further liberlazations they promote. Amazingly they, like so many other liberals, hold the delusions that the lfurther liberalization of the economy should also mean more democracy. Well, it certainly didn't happen before, but just them saying that the regime is undemocratic is percieved as a threat. The regime wants neoliberals that are willing to look past this "flaw".

[The Vegan Marxist]

You don't have a clue what you're talking about. Worker's rights have been fought tooth and nail by the state. The entire economy is capitalist.

Wrong. Try again.

[The Vegan Marxist]

:laugh: No. The Charter 08 is more of an advice to the CPC regime, i e, they believe the regime would implement those further liberlazations they promote. Amazingly they, like so many other liberals, hold the delusions that the lfurther liberalization of the economy should also mean more democracy. Well, it certainly didn't happen before, but just them saying that the regime is undemocratic is percieved as a threat. The regime wants neoliberals that are willing to look past this "flaw".

Yeah, they really show this by locking them up. :thumbup1:

UPDATE: I must've read you wrong. Excuse my first comment.

[Nolan]

The vast majority of the CPC are still working class, whether you want to admit it or not, & the majority of China's economy is collectively owned between the workers & the State (given that the state is run by the CPC who is predominantly working class). This makes China still under Socialism. Though, I would admit that capitalism is becoming increasingly supported in China, which is a direct threat. I don't care about your delusional opinions, I'm only presenting the facts.

A sweatshop is mostly workers so I guess those must be socialist organizations as well. After all China has plenty of them.

I'd like to know what you're smoking.

[Crux]

The vast majority of the CPC are still working class, whether you want to admit it or not, & the majority of China's economy is collectively owned between the workers & the State (given that the state is run by the CPC who is predominantly working class). This makes China still under Socialism. Though, I would admit that capitalism is becoming increasingly supported in China, which is a direct threat. I don't care about your delusional opinions, I'm only presenting the facts.
No, no you are not. Who has influence in the CPC? Indeed who controls the nationalized parts of the economy that remain? I expect you'll say "the worker's" and then I'll laugh. I am sure Hu Jintao is a great leader of the working class in China. :laugh:

[Nolan]

Wrong. Try again.

Mmk buddy. Well I'm not going to waste any more of my time engaging with Dengists. See you in OI I guess.

[Q]

Mmk buddy. Well I'm not going to waste any more of my time engaging with Dengists. See you in OI I guess.

That's actually a good suggestion. I'll bring it up in Moderation right now.

[The Vegan Marxist]

A sweatshop is mostly workers so I guess those must be socialist organizations as well. After all China has plenty of them.

I'd like to know what you're smoking.

These sweatshops are present in the SEZs, where private corporations run them. Not under the state-run sector. So you're just proving yourself to be an idiot.

[Q]

These sweatshops are present in the SEZs, where private corporations run them. Not under the state-run sector. So you're just proving yourself to be an idiot.

Your beloved workers state had absolutely no hand in allowing those SEZ's, right?

[Crux]

Yeah, they really show this by locking them up. :thumbup1:

UPDATE: I must've read you wrong. Excuse my first comment.
They don't lock them up, they use them as advisors. You have admitted that there is a "threat of capitalism" in china, well good on you. Unfortunately that seems to be of no consequence for you, which is understandable since then you would have to admit that this "capitalist threat" is the CPC. Which given that the CPC have workingclass members perhaps makes you confused.

[The Vegan Marxist]

No, no you are not. Who has influence in the CPC? Indeed who controls the nationalized parts of the economy that remain? I expect you'll say "the worker's" and then I'll laugh. I am sure Hu Jintao is a great leader of the working class in China. :laugh:

Of course you'll laugh, because that's all you can do instead of engaging in facts presented to you. I'm not going to further this out worse than it already is. You clearly show no open mindedness to what I present, so I see no need of continuing.

Also, to those calling me a Dengist. I'm not a supporter of "market socialism". It's the very reason why there's SEZs in China in the first place. Deng was a centrist & a revisionist. I don't support people like that whatsoever.

[The Vegan Marxist]

Your beloved workers state had absolutely no hand in allowing those SEZ's, right?

Of course they did, by those that supported "market socialism". But that was under a different leadership within the CPC. Hu Jintao has shown opposition to the SEZs & has supported the workers strikes that's taken place in the SEZs.

[Q]

Of course they did, by those that supported "market socialism". But that was under a different leadership within the CPC. Hu Jintao has shown opposition to the SEZs & has supported the workers strikes that's taken place in the SEZs.

Please back that up with some resources.

Besides, the CPC has statepower. Why the hassle with supporting workers? Why don't just abolish the SEZ's?

[Crux]

Of course they did, by those that supported "market socialism". But that was under a different leadership within the CPC. Hu Jintao has shown opposition to the SEZs & has supported the workers strikes that's taken place in the SEZs.
Ah that litte minority in the CPC who supports Socialism With Chinese Characteristics. Good to know they've been replaced with Hu Jintao. Oh wait.

[RadioRaheem84]

Posting the Trot position was not my intention.

Even Chomsky called dissident Vaclav Havel a p.o.s and he suffered at the hands of Soviet repression.

Not to condone Chinese State repression at all, because there are probably socialist figures in jail for opposing the Chinese reforms, but the spotlight is on a person who has no love for the working class and opposes their participation in his obviously elitist movement. He wants the exact same thing as his former counterparts in Eastern Europe during the 80s; "representative" government and shock therapy.

He modeled his movement after the old dissident groups of Eastern Europe during the eighties and champions colonialism as a positive thing.

I don't think of the CPC as working class but I certainly don't see Liu as a hero. He shouldn't be jailed for his subversive activities, that is what I protest, but I am going to wait until it remains clear on how much support he receives from Western sources.

[Crux]

Of course you'll laugh, because that's all you can do instead of engaging in facts presented to you. I'm not going to further this out worse than it already is. You clearly show no open mindedness to what I present, so I see no need of continuing.

Also, to those calling me a Dengist. I'm not a supporter of "market socialism". It's the very reason why there's SEZs in China in the first place. Deng was a centrist & a revisionist. I don't support people like that whatsoever.
How about the facts presented to you?

China’s capitalist counter-revolution

Saturday, 5 January 2008.
Marxists like everyone else are discussing China, which has become central to economic and political developments in the world

By Vincent Kolo (This article is a contribution to the ongoing debate on the class nature of the Chinese state within the Committee for a Workers’ International, also published in issue 114 of Socialism Today magazine).

An important aspect of this discussion is how we view the Chinese state. The state (the police, army, judiciary and, in China’s case, the ruling Chinese ‘Communist’ Party – CCP) is as Lenin explained "an organ for the oppression of one class by another". In China, which class is oppressor and which are oppressed?
This discussion can be enormously beneficial in deepening our understanding of processes in China and perspectives for the period ahead. Our starting point is the brutal social counter-revolution of the last two decades that has seen the former Maoist-Stalinist bureaucracy, like its counterparts in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, abandon central planning and shift to a capitalist position. If we ask which class has benefited from the process in China, then without doubt the answer is the bourgeoisie, in China and globally. In 1949, the Chinese revolution meant a shift in the class balance of forces internationally. Today, the counter-revolution has shifted the balance in the other direction. There is absolutely nothing progressive in the current Chinese state.
China today is synonymous with vast sweatshops and the most brutal exploitation of labour by domestic and global capitalism. The majority of the ‘new’ industrial working class, mostly rural migrants who are the legal equivalent of ‘paperless’ immigrants in Europe or America, work twelve hours a day or longer, for pitiful wages, in unsafe factories, under a military-style regime of fines and petty rules. This edifice of super-exploitation is built around the repressive one-party state of the CCP, which viciously crushes strikes and all attempts to build free trade unions.
Mine and factory owners involved in serial law-breaking and appalling workplace ‘accidents’ (136,000 fatalities in 2004) are protected by CCP officials and the police. After the deaths of 123 miners at one coalmine in Guangdong province last year, it was discovered that half the shareholders were local government officials. One police officer had shares worth about 30 million yuan (€2.8 million) in the mine.
This is gangster capitalism, as brutal and lawless as that in Russia and other parts of the former Soviet Union. The top echelons of the Chinese state, including the central government in Beijing, are now fully integrated into the global capitalist system – through the open door policy that president Hu Jintao describes as the ‘cornerstone’ of China’s economic development. As a result, China has been turned upside down, from one of the most equal societies to one of the most unequal – with a wealth gap greater than in the US, India and Russia. This ‘fully capitalist’ programme is central to any discussion on the class character of the CCP regime and state.


‘Radical neo-liberalism’
"China has implemented one of the most radical neo-liberal policies in the world", explains Chinese author Dale Wen, whose report, China Copes with Globalisation, provides one of the best summaries of the so-called ‘reform process’. Wen likens the policies of the last 20 years to IMF and World Bank programmes in the neo-colonial world, pointing out, "The major difference is that the Chinese government willingly takes the measures".
Under the pressure of the masses aroused by the revolution of 1949, the Maoist state delivered immense social improvements in the field of educational standards, healthcare, housing and poverty reduction. These policies were possible because the economic foundations of this state rested on nationalised property and centralised planning, albeit within narrow national-bureaucratic limits. Most of these social gains have been liquidated as a result of the capitalist counter-revolution. What remains for the Chinese masses are only the worst leftovers of Stalinism (police terror and absence of the most elementary democratic rights) combined with the worst features of capitalism (extreme exploitation and absence of a social safety net).
The following facts illustrate the devastating effects of CCP policy:
• Education: Private sources account for 44% of total education costs in China, the highest share in the world apart from Chile. There is no longer any free education. Normal fees at secondary school level in most cities are around €200 a year – two month’s salary for a typical worker. In Shanghai, the average family spends 25% of their income on their children’s education, compared to 10% in the United States. There are half a million unqualified teachers and thousands of substandard unlicensed schools that cater for the 20 million migrant children who are debarred from attending state schools. Illiteracy is on the rise as dropout rates soar, especially in rural areas and among girls.
• Public health: China’s health service was once the envy of Asia. Today, a bigger share of total medical expenditure is financed privately in China than in the US. In the countryside, one-third of rural clinics and local hospitals are on the brink of bankruptcy and another third have already collapsed. Four hundred million Chinese, a figure almost equivalent to the population of the European Union, can no longer afford to visit a doctor.
• A similar process has taken place in the housing sector and local transport.


China’s global role
With the world economy more interlinked than ever, the question of the class character of the Chinese state and regime cannot be approached solely from a national perspective. China is more integrated into the capitalist world order than Russia and other ex-Stalinist states. Foreign capitalists today control a quarter of China’s industrial production (OECD 2005). The CCP’s economic model has been based on "an unusually high degree of openness to the world economy – foreign trade is 75% of its GDP", explains Susan L Shirk in her book Fragile Superpower. This ratio is twice as high as India’s, and more than three times that of Japan, Russia and the US.
The CCP regime today is instrumental in spreading neo-liberalism globally. This process is in no way ambiguous – it is strikingly clear. Chinese companies, many of which are state-owned, are hated across whole swathes of Africa due to their union-busting, corrupt, law-breaking and environmentally destructive practises. China’s banks have shown themselves to be as parasitic as any in the capitalist world – pouring billions of dollars into US subprime ‘derivatives’ for example. In Iraq and other debtor countries, Chinese representatives endorse treaties with exactly the same conditionality – privatisations, deregulation and other neo-liberal policies – as demanded by other capitalist powers. Foreign policy is of course an extension of domestic policy, they are not separated by a Chinese wall.


Counter-revolution on the land
An estimated 70 million peasants have been turned off the land over the last two decades to make way for factories, roads, and luxury projects like hotels and golf courses. Most land acquisitions are illegal, thwarting central government attempts to control this process.
There are more than a dozen property tycoons on the most recent Forbes’ list of China’s 40 top billionaires. The list is headed by 26 year-old Yang Huiyan, head of a Guangdong property empire, whose personal fortune in 2007 was valued at $16.2 billion – a fortune she inherited from her father. By comparison, in the years 2000-02, a staggering 42% of the rural population suffered an absolute decline in income.
In the 1950s, Mao’s regime nationalised the land and this measure has not formally been reversed, although successive partial ‘reforms’ have privatised land usage even while land ownership remains in the hands of the state. But as Lenin explained, land nationalisation does not in itself constitute a barrier to capitalism: "Is such a reform possible within the framework of capitalism? It is not only possible but it represents the purest, most consistent, and ideally perfect capitalism... According to Marx’s theory, land nationalisation means a maximum elimination of medieval monopolies and medieval relations in agriculture, maximum freedom in buying and selling land, and maximum facilities for agriculture to adapt itself to the market". (Democracy and Narodism in China, 15 July 1912)


Shrinking state
As a result of neo-liberal ‘reforms’ and anarchic capitalist growth the state’s economic power has been seriously degraded. The list of economic spheres over which the Beijing regime has lost control is long: urban property and construction sectors, credit and most investment decisions, food and drug safety, environmental protection, labour markets, most of manufacturing industry and, as we see from the above, allocation of agricultural land.
Every year, the Heritage Foundation, a capitalist think-tank, produces an Index of Economic Freedom, in which China regularly outperforms Russia and other ex-Stalinist states. Under the category ‘Freedom from government’, for example, based on an overview of government spending and privatisation, China was deemed 88.6% ‘free’, while Russia scored 71.6% and Ukraine only 61.9%. In China, total government spending in 2006 equalled 20.8% of gross domestic product (GDP), far lower than in Russia (33.6%), Ukraine (39.4%), and barely a third of the level in Sweden (56.7%).
In both Russia and Ukraine, state-owned enterprises and government ownership of property contribute a significantly higher share of total government revenue, 6.1% and 5.6% respectively, than in China where the figure is just 3.1% (all figures for 2006). In the context of East Asia, with its ‘state capitalist’ tradition, China’s figure is conspicuously low. The Malaysian and Taiwanese governments receive 11.5% and 14.4% respectively of their income from the state-owned sector.
The size of the state sector in itself is not decisive in determining the class nature of society – which class exercises economic power? In his analysis of Stalinism, The Revolution Betrayed, Leon Trotsky predicted that a bourgeois counter-revolution in the Soviet Union would be forced to retain a large state sector. In China this is even more the case given the Confucian tradition of government economic intervention, an important influence throughout East Asia. There are countries today with a far higher degree of state ownership than China – Iran for example, where the state controls 80% of the economy.


Privatisation and downsizing
According to a National Bureau of Statistics report in September 2007, foreign and private companies now account for 53% of total industrial output in China, an increase from 41% in 2002. The state-owned enterprises (SOEs) still play an important role, and predominate among the very largest companies. But the only industrial sectors in which SOEs now occupy a dominant position are in mining, energy and utilities. According to an OECD report in December 2005, in the remaining 23 major industrial sectors, from textiles and telecommunications equipment to steel and automobiles, the private sector employs two-thirds of the labour force and produces two-thirds of these industries’ value added.
Today, "three-quarters of urban employees work outside the state sector". (Shirk, Fragile Superpower) This is the result of the frenetic pace of privatisation and downsizing in the state sector over the last decade, accelerated by WTO strictures. As Zhou Tianyong, professor with the Party School of the Central Committee of the CCP explains, "the number of employees at state-owned enterprises and collective ownerships has dropped from 130 million in the mid-1990s to 30 million today". (China Daily, 8 October 2007)
Measured by the number of employees affected, this is without question the biggest privatisation programme in any country at any time. Given that agriculture was already privatised in the 1980s, the vast majority of Chinese – over 90% – are now employed in the private sector.
The state sector today is a lever for developing the capitalist economy, providing a framework of essential industries such as energy and communications, plus targeted investments in certain advanced technological sectors after the Japanese and Korean models. It would be incorrect to talk about ‘capitalist’ and ‘non-capitalist’ sectors of the economy, as if the state sector operated on an alternative, non-capitalist basis.
China’s SOEs have been transformed by wave after wave of corporate ‘reforms’, mergers and downsizing, management buy-outs (MBOs) and share-ownership, recruitment of western educated managers, public listings, joint ventures with foreign capital, and differing degrees of privatisation. Even when a company is wholly state-owned (a rarity today) it operates to make a profit in the same way as a private company. Commenting on the Thatcher government’s attacks on nationalised industries in Britain, a Financial Times columnist argued, "the transformation of British Airways and British Steel in the 1980s was not the result of privatisation – transformation preceded privatisation and made it possible". (John Kay, 26 September 2007)
This is exactly what has happened in China – only the scale is different. The state industrial and commercial sector consists of completely autonomous and in most cases semi-privatised units. This represents a form of ‘state capitalism’ similar to Gazprom, the state energy conglomerate that alone produces 8% of Russia’s GDP.


State-led investments
It is true that the bulk of investment in China comes from the state sector. But this is the case in Russia too. In China, however, most investment decisions are made at local level, very often in direct contravention of central government policies. A large proportion of infrastructure spending by local governments goes on prestige projects geared to attract private ‘investors’ – luxury hotels, conference centres, new ‘international’ airports, golf courses and half-deserted shopping malls.
This represents an insane – unrestrained capitalist – waste of public funds, and is setting the stage for an economic crash similar to the one that struck Southeast Asia ten years ago. No socialist government, or even reformist government of the old pattern, would approach the issue of public investment in this criminal fashion. But today every Chinese municipality and region wants its own direct link to the world market, at a time when the country’s foreign trade dependence is close to ‘overkill’. The most pressing need is to develop China’s internal market, but this can only be done by raising living standards and reconstructing essential public services like health, education and affordable housing – areas which local CCP bosses refuse to invest in.
The banking sector is majority state-owned in China. But this too is not unique, especially in Asia. China’s ‘Big Four’ majority-state-owned banks account for 71% of all loans and 62% of deposits. By comparison, in Russia the largest state-owned bank Sberbank holds over 60% of household deposits and 40% of all loans. In India, the state-owned banks account for 75% of all commercial banking. (Bank of International Settlements)
It would be a mistake to dismiss the neo-liberal ‘reforms’ (partial privatisations, mergers with foreign companies) in banking and other sectors as superficial – the changes are all too real and extremely detrimental to the interests of ordinary working people in China and abroad. A growing share of China’s gargantuan pool of savings – around $1.8 trillion – is being ploughed into speculative deals around the world, enriching hedge funds and other financial parasites instead of being used to rebuild collapsed public services.


Reform or revolution?
The Chinese state – like the governments of Germany and Britain recently – can and will intervene to rescue failing banks or strategic companies, and this can include renationalisation. Renationalisation on a capitalist basis, however, does not represent a return to central planning. Only a mass revolutionary movement of the super-oppressed workers and peasants can shatter what are now powerful capitalist economic foundations in China, which are closely bound up with global capitalism. Such a movement will not want to go back to Maoism-Stalinism, but will strive towards genuine democratic socialist planning based on the colossal potential of the Chinese proletariat, now numbering over 250 million.
The process of counter-revolution in China has been complex and sometimes extremely contradictory, but nevertheless the victory of bourgeois counter-revolution, albeit in a peculiar ‘Confucian’ form, is today brutally clear. A political – ‘anti-bureaucratic’ – revolution is no longer enough to raise the working class to power. Nor is it correct to say a new revolution will combine the tasks of the political and social revolution – this is true of every social revolution, which involves a change of the economic base and of necessity also the political superstructure, the state. A qualitative change has occurred, whereby a reversal of China’s capitalist counter-revolution is no longer possible other than through a new proletarian social revolution that must overthrow the present state and expropriate its main beneficiaries, the Chinese and foreign capitalists. This point is extremely important when we come to questions of perspectives and programme for China.


What is the bureaucracy?
Marxists do not base our assessment of the Chinese regime on its still ‘communist’ (Stalinist) symbols and occasional phraseology. This external shell is an entirely secondary factor: just as there are social democratic and ‘communist’ parties elsewhere that continue to march on May Day and sing the ‘Internationale’, while pursuing wholly capitalist policies. The class character of any social organism, regime, or party, is determined by the class interests it serves – its social base.
The Maoist regime acted to block any independent movements of the working class using a mix of cunning, manoeuvres and repression. But at the same time, in order to maintain its own privileges and power, it defended state property and the social gains of the revolution. This gave the regime a contradictory character – a combination of reactionary and progressive features. This is no longer the case. Having thrown in its lot with capitalism, the Chinese state has lost this dual, contradictory, character.
Trotsky described the Stalinist bureaucracy as a cancerous tumour on the body of the workers’ state. He explained that, "A tumour can grow to tremendous size and even strangle the living organism, but a tumour can never become an independent organism". (The Class Nature of the Soviet State, 1933)
The ‘tumour’ of the Chinese bureaucracy cannot acquire a life of its own in relation to the means of production, and it is certainly not itself the repository of the socially progressive features created by the 1949 revolution. Rather the opposite is true. Under Stalinism and Maoism these gains existed in the consciousness and mass pressure of the workers and poor peasants, despite the disorganising and confusing role of the bureaucracy. As Trotsky also explained, "The existence of a bureaucracy, in all its variety of forms and differences in specific weight, characterises every class regime. Its power is of a reflected character. The bureaucracy is indissolubly bound up with a ruling economic class, feeding itself upon the social roots of the latter, maintaining itself and falling together with it". (ibid, emphasis by VK)
Which is the ruling economic class in China today? With the destruction of the planned economy it is no longer the working class. A section of the former Maoist bureaucracy has converted itself through the ‘reform process’ into a property owning class.
The nexus of state and private capital is not a rigid one, but fluid, reflecting a vast array of intermediate, part-state part-private arrangements. The capitalist class is dependent on the current state for contracts, loans, favours and, above all, for protection from the working class. Of China’s 20,000 richest businessmen, 90% are either CCP members or their relatives.


No ‘big bang’?
The CCP regime and the bureaucracy as a whole were never in themselves the barrier to capitalist counter-revolution – this is the key to understanding what has happened. As in Russia and other ex-Stalinist states the resistance of the working class was the only real barrier to capitalist counter-revolution. This resistance – which at times assumed mass proportions – was nevertheless overcome in China due to a combination of factors. The terrifying and excessive violence used to crush the nascent revolutionary movement of 1989 was a critical factor. Rapid economic growth (averaging 10% per year over the past decade) has also provided a certain ‘safety valve’ for the regime.
For Trotsky, the threat of capitalist restoration did not hinge upon whether or not the Stalinist party was overthrown. This was only one possible perspective: "But bourgeois restoration, speaking in general, is only conceivable either in the form of a decisive and sharp overturn (with or without intervention) or in the form of several successive shifts...
"Thus, as long as the European revolution has not conquered, the possibilities of bourgeois restoration in our country cannot be denied. Which of the two possible paths is the more likely under our circumstances: the path of an abrupt counter-revolutionary overturn or the path of successive shiftings, with a bit of a shake-up at every stage and a Thermidorian shift as the most imminent stage? This question can be answered, I think, only in an extremely conditional way". (The Challenge of the Left Opposition, 1926-27, emphasis by VK)
This "path of successive shiftings" is an excellent description of what has happened in China. Capitalism, of a peculiar Chinese type, has been restored. This began as an empirical reflex by the Stalinist regime in the late 1970s, a search for a way out of the political and economic crisis, with elements of civil war, that it inherited from Mao. In the early stages this was an attempt to harness some market mechanisms within a Stalinist state-owned economy. But such processes have a logic of their own especially given the delay of the world socialist revolution, the crisis and collapse of Stalinism worldwide, and the ferocious acceleration of neo-liberal globalisation.
Unlike in the Soviet Union, there was no ‘big bang’ implosion of the one-party state and the CCP remains in power. But the emerging capitalist class particularly in the Russian Federation saw the break-up of the Soviet state as a prerequisite for completing the counter-revolution. In China’s case, however, with its history of warlordism and fragmentation, and with the immediate threat of mass protests exorcised by the massacre of 1989, the standpoint of the emerging capitalist class was different. Here, the continuation of CCP rule – to maintain ‘order’ and hold the country together – was the most advantageous basis for developing capitalism.
Who today is demanding regime change in China? Certainly not the capitalists, who understand that by keeping China’s massive working class down, the present regime is the best they could realistically hope for. Even the ‘democratic’ bourgeoisie – and they are a minority – do not seek the downfall of the CCP regime, rather its ‘reformation’. This gives the clearest possible answer to the question as to which class interests the Chinese state serves today.

[Crux]

Posting the Trot position was not my intention.

Even Chomsky called dissident Vaclav Havel a p.o.s and he suffered at the hands of Soviet repression.

Not to condone Chinese State repression at all, because there are probably socialist figures in jail for opposing the Chinese reforms, but the spotlight is on a person who has no love for the working class and opposes their participation in his obviously elitist movement. He wants the exact same thing as his former counterparts in Eastern Europe during the 80s; "representative" government and shock therapy.

He modeled his movement after the old dissident groups of Eastern Europe during the eighties and champions colonialism as a positive thing.

I don't think of the CPC as working class but I certainly don't see Liu as a hero. He shouldn't be jailed for his subversive activities, that is what I protest, but I am going to wait until it remains clear on how much support he receives from Western sources.
I don't see how that's different from the position put forward by chinaworker.

[Apoi_Viitor]

:laugh:

Russia is most definitely not, because:

Russia's means of production is not, of the majority, collectively owned between the workers & the State;
The Russian govt. is not, of the majority, run by working class people.

So yes, there's a difference.

http://images.whatport80.com/images/9/9e/HA_HA_HA,_OH_WOW.jpg

Funny shit, comrade!

[maskerade]

These sweatshops are present in the SEZs, where private corporations run them. Not under the state-run sector. So you're just proving yourself to be an idiot.

Oh, the irony.

[maskerade]

TVM, why does the glorious chinese workers state have SEZs in the first place?

Apparently, there is even a restaurant in Shenzhen were you can get Panda. Cooked. With rice and bamboo. Because in Shenzhen, everything is for sale. And it is administered by the CPC, regardless of its SEZ status.

[RadioRaheem84]

Vegan, comrade. I do not understand how you cannot see that the Chinese State is not capitalist. Just because state control of many sectors of the economy is still present, it doesn't mean that workers are in control. The State Sector in China has been completely reformed to meet market efficiency and it's revenues do not even go toward social services.

[RedStarOverChina]

Anyway, as I already pointed out in post 13, we need to take a more balanced approach: As communists we stand for the most complete form of democracy and this man was put in prison for his ideas (which are actually about democratic reforms). As such we must protest against his imprisonment against a dictatorship that doesn't allow political freedom.
I'm going to need some real incentive to support his so-called "freedom of speech" to preach neo-liberalism and Western hegemony.

[RadioRaheem84]

I'm going to need some real incentive to support his so-called "freedom of speech" to preach neo-liberalism and Western hegemony.

Agreed. I really do not want to fall into line saying that the CPC is that reactionary as to imprison anyone who is preaching free market utopianism.

There are plenty of right wing liberals in China and in positions of high power in the local arena. Heck, this dissident's movement was behind a high CPC official.

So there must be something more to the story we haven't yet heard.

This guy probably received some Western funding.

[Crux]

Agreed. I really do not want to fall into line saying that the CPC is that reactionary as to imprison anyone who is preaching free market utopianism.

There are plenty of right wing liberals in China and in positions of high power in the local arena. Heck, this dissident's movement was behind a high CPC official.

So there must be something more to the story we haven't yet heard.

This guy probably received some Western funding.
I think it's the "right of assembly" part of Charta 08 that bothers them.

[gorillafuck]

As far as the rewarding of the counterrevolutionary Liu. This shows that there remains pro-socialist elements within the CPC, given that many are infuriated at the fact that the US is rewarding such a prize to someone who calls for capitalist restoration & colonialism.
Arresting a dissident doesn't have anything to do with the class nature of the state. Saudi Arabia doesn't only imprison communists, they also imprison people who advocate bourgeois ideology that isn't their own. Is this because they're against capitalism? No, of course it's not.


The State Sector in China has been completely reformed to meet market efficiency and it's revenues do not even go toward social services.
This is exactly what I have been telling him. The state sector operates in a very capitalist, market fashion in China. He refuses to acknowledge it.

[Saorsa]

TVM, the fact that the majority of Communist Party members are working class/peasants and the fact that the economy is largely dominated by the state does not make a country socialist. Socialism is about more than state control, it requires the integration of state control of the economy with workers control of the state and the CP.

Back in the day the CCP was run from the bottom up by its members. All party members had to have their membership approved by the working people of their home area. That is not the case any more, and the state enterprises the CPC controls operate in an exploitative and capitalistic manner.

Your often repeated claim that all the strikes so far have been successful is complete rubbish. There have been countless illegal strikes suppressed, the police routinely attack picket lines, and the question must be asked why the workers feel the need to strike for some pretty basic demands in the first place?

State control is not the same thing as socialist. Read Marx, read Engels, read Lenin and you'll understand this soon enough. Frankly it's becoming very irritating that every time China is mentioned you start claiming it's socialist with your only evidence being the following three points;

1: State control of the economy
2: Various right wing dissident types being repressed
3: Workers strikes are supposedly all succesful

These are assertions, and largely inaccurate ones. Your argument is totally confused and contradictory and if you want to end up with a genuinely liberatory kind of Marxism, you need to examine your own reasons for equating workers control with the kind of repressive capitalist nightmare that is modern China.

Do you just want to take the most extreme position possible? Do you just want to have radically different ideas from most Americans? To define your politics on this basis can be very dangerous.

[Saorsa]

Under... Maoism these gains existed in the consciousness and mass pressure of the workers and poor peasants, despite the disorganising and confusing role of the bureaucracy.

Right... How does the Cultural Revolution, during which workers and students who joined the Red Guards were allowed free train travel and free use of government paper supplies for the creation and distribution of big character posters and general propaganda, fit into your analysis that the party in the 1960s and 70s was all about disorganising and confusing the masses?

The Chinese people were actors on a socialist stage, improvising their own lines. The fact that ultimately they lost and the play was cancelled does not negate their achievements or the many things we can learn from the experience.

[FSL]

China's economy is way more to the "left" compared to what the CWI adocates. Way, way more.
So if that's some people's argument, they'd better come up with something else.


Liu is the Havel or Walesa of our times. So it shouldn't be a surprise that he finds supporters among the left.


There has been no counter-revolution in China. There have been reforms. Reforms can create the material basis -and they've done that to some degree at least- for a counter-revolution, but until now we have not seen one.
If you think that reforms and reforms alone can change the class character of a state, you have broken any ties with marxism, dialectical materialism and scientific socialism.


CPC was never a marxist "jewel". Today it describes itself as the vanguard of the workers, peasants and the overwhelming majority of the Chinese people.
Mao Zedong thought seems very live indeed.


The base doesn't simply "boss the superstructure around". These are co-dependent. Under NEP, there again was the material basis for a counter-revolution. And I'm pretty sure that in factories owned by individuals or leased to them by the state, workers weren't having the greatest time either.
Russia was a workers' state and it did remain a workers' state because the working class didn't relax its grip on political power, even when it was forced to do so in the economic sphere.


China isn't socialist but that mainly has to do with how you define socialism. If you think socialism can use the market (which has been a common opinion for at least half a century), then you could describe China's economy as one where socialist relations of production -with their main feature being state ownership- still dominate. If you correctly think market is alien to socialism, then you'd probably say China's economy is more or less capitalistic.
This is where the main mistake of the CPC is. It's perception on socialism. But still, it only describes China as being on a premature phase of socialism, one where the antithesis between capital and labor is still alive, even if it considers it secondary.
That's worse than the Bolshevicks who clearly saw NEP as being nothing more than a retreat but then again, probably better than the CPSU of the latter days with Khrushchev saying "communism in 20 years"



I'm not quite sad at Liu being in prison. If he and the rest of the democratic activists got their way, the suffering for hundreds of millions of workers would be without precedent.

[RadioRaheem84]

Good points FSL. I am not in total agreement with many of the comrades here that China is totally capitalist nor on TVMs side that China is for that matter socialist. It is heavily a mixed economy with capitalism/market forces dominating the reigns. In so far as the CPC is concerned about the public, it's the same way the early progressive liberals and the FDR administration cared about the public; purely to keep them from total revolt.
Right now the leadership is looking toward domestic consumption and some minor developmental programs in order to gear the State toward Keynesianism. They support some elements of the workers strikes but repress others.
Even many of the leftist organizations in China, like the New Left, merely triumph social democracy of the European variety.

The situation is similar to the struggles in Eastern Europe during the eighties, except with reforms already coming to play. Liu is another Havel, Adam Michnik, and Walesa. A repugnant, neo-liberal jerk is what he is. Chinese State repression is something I do not condone but I see no reason to pine over this guy and demand that he be given full freedom of speech, especially since so much scholarship is now within the last decade we saw just how much of a role the West had in propping up Havel. His little Manifesto having been sponsored by Freedom House.

Damn, I hate this era we're living in. The liberal democracies have not only the economic edge, but the moral edge as they have us defending or indirectly siding with regimes like China and Iran against neo-liberal groups both indigenous and supplied by Western money. It sucks because they've snookered the left into buying their junk. Democracy Now! just ran a piece on the Chinese dissident and hardly mentioned his neo-liberal, pro-colonial remarks. Everything, as Naomi Klein indicated, is under the rouse of "human rights". There is no real analysis of what is going on in the nation.

[FSL]

Right now the leadership is looking toward domestic consumption and some minor developmental programs in order to gear the State toward Keynesianism. They support some elements of the workers strikes but repress others.

A bit more than that actually. Recently, a plan was enacted to make 9-year education compulsory and free for all. That's what the law says here for example too. I doubt children in Bangladesh get that. Also, a planned investment of 125 billion dollars on expanding medical services making most of it free.

If we weren't talking about China but for some other 3rd-world country with maybe some ex-guerilla elected to the presidency, it making these moves would seem oh so great. If it went along with nationalization of the banks and major industries almost everyone would be a fan.
China is at this point but people seem to think it's a hellhole.

Yes, in many ways it is a hellhole but just dismissing it is childish if you're not even trying to see what went wrong, when and how. It is a huge country, a huge economy and one should be watching it closely even if it wasn't for the red flag, Mao's mausoleum and the CP heading the government.

[RadioRaheem84]

Exactly, the Trot/left com/anarchist position of attacking China as if it were this uber-capitalist machine that is poised to take over Washington's place is just as bad as the position of claiming that it is still Mao's socialist workers paradise.

The situation is a little more nuanced than that.

[Crux]

China's economy is way more to the "left" compared to what the CWI adocates. Way, way more.
The fuck it is.


So if that's some people's argument, they'd better come up with something else.Or maybe you need to come with an argument.



Liu is the Havel or Walesa of our times. So it shouldn't be a surprise that he finds supporters among the left.We do not support Liu politically, which you would know if you had read anything we have written about his case. However we oppose the chinese state's repression against all dissidents.



There has been no counter-revolution in China. There have been reforms. Reforms can create the material basis -and they've done that to some degree at least- for a counter-revolution, but until now we have not seen one.I think there has been a fundamental change, starting in 1970's, culminating in 1989, where the protests were primarily motivated by the further market liberal reforms. The class base of the regime has changed.

[Q]

I'm going to need some real incentive to support his so-called "freedom of speech" to preach neo-liberalism and Western hegemony.

It's elementary my dear Watson. Political freedoms (freedom of speech, of assembly, of press, etc.) are all freedoms that are in the direct interests of the working class. If the class wants to organise as its own class collectivity, independent from the state or various capitalist layers (we can agree these exist in China, yes?), to be able to liberate itself, then political freedoms are not only nice to have, but an absolute must.

Under the similar circumstances, gaining political freedoms was a central part of Lenin's strategy before February 1917. I don't see what the controversy is.

[RadioRaheem84]

The controversy would lie in the dissidents political connections and possible ties to Western money. Not to say that this is the case with Liu, but it should be examined. I am kind of in between here, where I do not condone state repression of dissidents but at the same time, I am wondering what would've made the Chinese State to take such reactionary measures.

The question is not only intent, but for what interests and ends. The guy is not only advocating for reforms to go full steam, but also a regress of the revolution (or what is left that the CPC didn't already deform).

What would be the thing to do with a guy like Liu? Even if he didn't have the backing of Western money, what do you do with a guy that advocates such a position. It's not like he was a lone guy out with a cardboard sign saying the end is near, this was an organized individual with an organization that had a motive and an intent to enter the political realm in order to change it (for the worst I may add).

[AK]

Answer why would they imprison a man who calls for capitalist restoration? Why does this man call for capitalist restoration if, according to your own opinion, capitalism is already restored?
Because capitalism has not been completely restored and China still likes to present itself as a socialist state (therefore in opposition to capitalism)? I thought this blindingly was obvious.

[Crux]

The controversy would lie in the dissidents political connections and possible ties to Western money. Not to say that this is the case with Liu, but it should be examined. I am kind of in between here, where I do not condone state repression of dissidents but at the same time, I am wondering what would've made the Chinese State to take such reactionary measures.

The question is not only intent, but for what interests and ends. The guy is not only advocating for reforms to go full steam, but also a regress of the revolution (or what is left that the CPC didn't already deform).

What would be the thing to do with a guy like Liu? Even if he didn't have the backing of Western money, what do you do with a guy that advocates such a position. It's not like he was a lone guy out with a cardboard sign saying the end is near, this was an organized individual with an organization that had a motive and an intent to enter the political realm in order to change it (for the worst I may add).
I think it can well be viewed within the general crack-down on dissent. Given that the defender's of CCP regime, for the most part, stand on the political right this is also an oppurtunity to try and burst the bubble that market liberalization would lead to more democratic rights, when even a liberal reformist can be slapped with an 11 year sentence.

I posted this before:
http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1217/

[Crux]

Because capitalism has not been completely restored and China still likes to present itself as a socialist state (therefore in opposition to capitalism)? I thought this blindingly was obvious.
Eh, this is sarcasm right?

[AK]

Eh, this is sarcasm right?
What part of it exactly? I don't see private property accounting for most of the economy? Although I'm not too sure about how the PRC likes to present itself, but if the party and government insignia is anything to go by, it likes to give the impression that it stands for the people.

[FSL]

The fuck it is.
I'm quite sure more than a 100 big companies are property of the state.
My point stands.



I think there has been a fundamental change, starting in 1970's, culminating in 1989, where the protests were primarily motivated by the further market liberal reforms. The class base of the regime has changed.
Liu was among the leaders of said protests by the way.
Fundamental change = revolution?
Hmm.




We do not support Liu politically

But you want the bad state to stop opressing him for imitating a Havel move.




Political freedoms (freedom of speech, of assembly, of press, etc.) are all freedoms that are in the direct interests of the working class

You could use some Lenin, especially his polemics on Kautsky.

Liu wants to replace the current chinese regime with a bourgeois democracy. He acted against chinese laws and was punished in accordance with the country's penal code. You want him out. CPC wants him in.
If I were to choose I'd choose the second. States are an instrument of class domination. Many times communists have been prosecuted by bourgeois states in the past, many times it will happen in the future. And they aren't trying to push the society backwards.


CPC is undeniably bad on so many accounts. But Liu is just 2010's Obama.

[RadioRaheem84]

Eh, this is sarcasm right?

Well, this is simply a semantics match now.

Yes, China is capitalist, but it's hasn't gone over the hill into full fledged free market reign like the US after Carter or a third world hellhole. It's certainly diminishing the gains of the past Socialist regime but it looks like it's stopping short of right-soc dem shit. There are centers of total economic repression in the SEZs and the urban areas and with a total neglect of the rural communities, but it's not like the situation has drastically changed the nation into a capitalist nation like Nigeria or Mexico.

We're looking at a China that is a really strange hybrid. One that hasn't yet taken the full road that Russia took after 89.

But if we're to examine the social structure as well as economics, I would say it's capitalistic.

The only credit to China is that there is still some state control over the economy regardless of how much the state has been reformed to fit market models. This isn't saying much but it keeps it "socialist characteristics" that CPC loves to yap about.

At least they're leaving an infrastructure and a base for a working class to reverse trends and really use the revenue for social needs.

[Crux]

I'm quite sure more than a 100 big companies are property of the state.
My point stands.
:laugh: No, no it doesn't.




Liu was among the leaders of said protests by the way.
Fundamental change = revolution?
Hmm.
A counter-revolution, if you will.


But you want the bad state to stop opressing him for imitating a Havel move.
I want the bad state to stop oppressing dissidents. Can you please stop using baby talk? So when will you read the article we wrote on it? Which you obviously haven't.

[Bright Banana Beard]

I want the bad state to stop oppressing dissidents. Can you please stop using baby talk? So when will you read the article we wrote on it? Which you obviously haven't.

So you don't want China state to oppress the capitalists or the bourgeois narcissists anymore? You want to let them go and let them start the party that will demand another "colour" revolution?

[Crux]

So you don't want China state to oppress the capitalists or the bourgeois narcissists anymore? You want to let them go and let them start the party that will demand another "colour" revolution?
Another illiterate I see.
http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1217/

[synthesis]

Well, this is simply a semantics match now.

Yes, China is capitalist, but it's hasn't gone over the hill into full fledged free market reign like the US after Carter or a third world hellhole. It's certainly diminishing the gains of the past Socialist regime but it looks like it's stopping short of right-soc dem shit. There are centers of total economic repression in the SEZs and the urban areas and with a total neglect of the rural communities, but it's not like the situation has drastically changed the nation into a capitalist nation like Nigeria or Mexico.

We're looking at a China that is a really strange hybrid. One that hasn't yet taken the full road that Russia took after 89.

But if we're to examine the social structure as well as economics, I would say it's capitalistic.

The only credit to China is that there is still some state control over the economy regardless of how much the state has been reformed to fit market models. This isn't saying much but it keeps it "socialist characteristics" that CPC loves to yap about.

At least they're leaving an infrastructure and a base for a working class to reverse trends and really use the revenue for social needs.

I don't think it's a "really strange hybrid." I think it's straight-up state capitalism. I've actually read articles in The Economist which basically advised businesses to set up shop in places like Vietnam and China instead of supposed "free markets" because the former was so much more efficient in terms of collaborating with corporations to exploit its population.

[gorillafuck]

Exactly, the Trot/left com/anarchist/Maoist position
Added for more accuracy.

[RedStarOverChina]

In its article, even the ChinaWorker admits that Liu Xiaobo's neo-liberal ideas are "deadly" to the future of the Chinese working class and the poor.

Still, they threw their complete support behind the neo-liberal imperialist lapdog, because apparently, the fate of the Chinese working class isn't all that important compared to ChinaWorker's strong commitment to Bourgeois democracy and "freedom of speech"----the freedom to advocate genocidal economic policies, nonetheless.

Maybe they should form a support group for all the Nazis, racists, and every other scumbag whose "freedom of speech" has been curtailed.


This is a deadly struggle, and Neo-liberalism is the enemy. I don't have to explain what will happen if Liu Xiaobo and his ideas prevail---and they will, in the absence of a strong leftist opposition. Even the ChinaWorker knows, at least on an intellectual level.

Mao once said something that rings especially true right now: "Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to the people".

Maybe some here think that a neo-liberal puppet state of the US is preferable to a mercantilist bureaucratic dictatorship, but I'm not one of them. Neither is any other leftist Chinese person that I know.

What happens between the Chinese government and Liu Xiaobo is their own to deal with. We bear no responsibility what-so-ever with regards to how the Chinese state treats him. We simply shouldn't care.

In China, we call that "dog-bites-dog".

[Barry Lyndon]

Mao once said something that rings especially true right now: "Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to the people"

I think Robespierre said pretty much the same thing before him: 'There is no greater cruelty then to be merciful at an inopportune time'.

However, do you think that lining up behind the sweatshop-keeping scumbags who run the PRC is a good thing either? Their basically doing the same thing he's advocating, maybe just at a slower pace then he'd like.

[Crux]

In its article, even the ChinaWorker admits that Liu Xiaobo's neo-liberal ideas are "deadly" to the future of the Chinese working class and the poor.

Still, they threw their complete support behind the neo-liberal imperialist lapdog, because apparently, the fate of the Chinese working class isn't all that important compared to ChinaWorker's strong commitment to Bourgeois democracy and "freedom of speech"----the freedom to advocate genocidal economic policies, nonetheless.

Maybe they should form a support group for all the Nazis, racists, and every other scumbag whose "freedom of speech" has been curtailed.


This is a deadly struggle, and Neo-liberalism is the enemy. I don't have to explain what will happen if Liu Xiaobo and his ideas prevail---and they will, in the absence of a strong leftist opposition. Even the ChinaWorker knows, at least on an intellectual level.

Mao once said something that rings especially true right now: "Mercy to the enemy is cruelty to the people".

Maybe some here think that a neo-liberal puppet state of the US is preferable to a mercantilist bureaucratic dictatorship, but I'm not one of them. Neither is any other leftist Chinese person that I know.

What happens between the Chinese government and Liu Xiaobo is their own to deal with. We bear no responsibility what-so-ever with regards to how the Chinese state treats him. We simply shouldn't care.

In China, we call that "dog-bites-dog".
You are being completely fucking ridiculous. You've read the articles, so you know where we stand.

We simply shouldn't care? Great response. Neo-liberal ideas are already prevailing, left-wing activists are also in prison and yes giving the Peaceprice to Liu Xiaobo most certainly had some geopolitical resonings behind it. All stated in our article on it. You however have a "we shouldn't care" position. I suppose that's a workable position to take when you are somewhere where repression from the chinese state isn't an direct issue.

And again, since you've read what we write you ought to already know this, but we do present an alternative, and indeed the main focus of our article is the crack-down by the chinese state on the left.
But I guess none of those thing's are of any concern to you as well?

[Crux]

I think Robespierre said pretty much the same thing before him: 'There is no greater cruelty then to be merciful at an inopportune time'.

However, do you think that lining up behind the sweatshop-keeping scumbags who run the PRC is a good thing either? Their basically doing the same thing he's advocating, maybe just at a slower pace then he'd like.
He isn't being imprisoned for being a neo-liberal, it's just that the regime is so paranoid that any demands concerning the right to democratic elections and right to assembly upset them. Liu Xiaobo and the rest of the urban liberals usually make up a "loyal opposition". And again, all this is in the articles I have already posted, it would be great if someone bothered reading them and perhaps comment on them.

[RedStarOverChina]

However, do you think that lining up behind the sweatshop-keeping scumbags who run the PRC is a good thing either? Their basically doing the same thing he's advocating, maybe just at a slower pace then he'd like.
It's this kind of simplistic thinking that led to this much confusion.

If you're against the Chinese state you must support the pro-West Chinese "dissidents";
If you're against the Chinese dissidents you must support the Chinese state;
...

No, we support what we support, and THAT includes neither the Chinese government nor the US backed dissidents.



Neo-liberal ideas are already prevailing, left-wing activists are also in prison and yes giving the Peaceprice to Liu Xiaobo most certainly had some geopolitical resonings behind it.
So? Are you equating jailed leftist activists with parasites like Liu Xiaobo?

How did you connect the dots? Can't imagine what that kind of thinking would get us into.

"Free the Cuban Five! ...And Charles Manson as well!"

Because they're all victims of the capitalist state, right?



And again, since you've read what we write you ought to already know this, but we do present an alternative, Your political "alternative" sounds incredibly similar to that of Liu Xiaobo. If I'm not mistaken, you want a Bourgeois "democracy" with socialist characteristics (and I think I'm being generous here).


Socialists fight for democratic rights, freedom of expression, and an end to repression and censorship, while making clear we oppose the pro-capitalist ideas that Liu Xiaobo stands for. While this award will surely focus some much needed attention on the issue of repression in China, we believe that the establishment of genuine democratic rights can only come from the mass struggle of workers and poor peasants in China and internationally. We place no confidence in bourgeois institutions, governments or politically questionable prizes to further this struggle.

I don't want to get into a debate about which is better--Bureaucratic dictatorship or Bourgeois "democracy". It's pointless to argue about that, and I have my reservations about defending either one.

But one thing strikes me as odd...It almost seems like you guys are intentionally ignoring the real alternatives. You know, like communism.

From that article, there's not a single mention of working class rule, class struggle---hardly even class itself---with regards to your proposed alternative.

So from what I have seen, your alternative is to have Bourgeois "democracy" mixed in with unspecified socialist qualifications. That's not an alternative where I'm from.


Seriously, you can't blame me for suspecting this whole ChinaWorker thing to be a liberal/social democrat front. I've been reading your articles and trying hard to find something revolutionary in them for quite sometime.

And I still am.

[Chimurenga.]

His inspiration was Vaclav Havel

I mean, this really says it all.

[Crux]

It's this kind of simplistic thinking that led to this much confusion.

If you're against the Chinese state you must support the pro-West Chinese "dissidents";
If you're against the Chinese dissidents you must support the Chinese state;
...

No, we support what we support, and THAT includes neither the Chinese government nor the US backed dissidents.

So? Are you equating jailed leftist activists with parasites like Liu Xiaobo?

How did you connect the dots? Can't imagine what that kind of thinking would get us into.

"Free the Cuban Five! ...And Charles Manson as well!"

Because they're all victims of the capitalist state, right?
No, but if a U.S administration began locking up Blue Dog democrats I sure as hell would oppose that as well.



Your political "alternative" sounds incredibly similar to that of Liu Xiaobo. If I'm not mistaken, you want a Bourgeois "democracy" with socialist characteristics (and I think I'm being generous here).
No, we do not. We want a genuine people's assembly, and that in itself would only be a first step.


I don't want to get into a debate about which is better--Bureaucratic dictatorship or Bourgeois "democracy". It's pointless to argue about that, and I have my reservations about defending either one.
Well, that's not the two thing's up on offer. If the regime in china will fall it can only fall from the masses taking an active part. But if the regime falls that also opens up the threat of a "colour revolution", so to speak.
Our task as socialists is to fight for another alternative, by spreading our ideas and building our organization, sometimes under severe risks, as in china.


But one thing strikes me as odd...It almost seems like you guys are intentionally ignoring the real alternatives. You know, like communism.
It's not about snapping our fingers to make it happen.


From that article, there's not a single mention of working class rule, class struggle---hardly even class itself---with regards to your proposed alternative.

So from what I have seen, your alternative is to have Bourgeois "democracy" mixed in with unspecified socialist qualifications. That's not an alternative where I'm from.
"Increasingly, the attention of the state security apparatus has fallen on the emerging left in China: socialists, Maoists and anti-capitalists. Recently, a lawyer who sympathises with Maoism, Zhao Dongming, was prosecuted for helping several hundred migrant workers in Shanxi province organise a union to fight for their rights. His case has not attracted any puiblicity in the world media."


"Socialists fight for democratic rights, freedom of expression, and an end to repression and censorship, while making clear we oppose the pro-capitalist ideas that Liu Xiaobo stands for. While this award will surely focus some much needed attention on the issue of repression in China, we believe that the establishment of genuine democratic rights can only come from the mass struggle of workers and poor peasants in China and internationally. We place no confidence in bourgeois institutions, governments or politically questionable prizes to further this struggle.

• Release Liu Xiaobo, Tan Zouren and other political prisoners!
• For a mass democratic and socialist workers’ and peasants movement against dictatorship and repression!"


Seriously, you can't blame me for suspecting this whole ChinaWorker thing to be a liberal/social democrat front. I've been reading your articles and trying hard to find something revolutionary in them for quite sometime.

And I still am.
It seems you are missing thing's when you read then.
Here, have a perspective document: http://www.chinaworker.info/en/content/news/165/

[Queercommie Girl]

No, no you are not. Who has influence in the CPC? Indeed who controls the nationalized parts of the economy that remain? I expect you'll say "the worker's" and then I'll laugh. I am sure Hu Jintao is a great leader of the working class in China. :laugh:

Numerically speaking the majority of CCP members are indeed working class and middle class, but the ruling bloc is not, and the majority of members have no real political power, since there is no real democracy within the Communist Party. (One of the things many radical Maoists in China today are calling for)

[Queercommie Girl]

Well, that's not the two thing's up on offer. If the regime in china will fall it can only fall from the masses taking an active part. But if the regime falls that also opens up the threat of a "colour revolution", so to speak.
Our task as socialists is to fight for another alternative, by spreading our ideas and building our organization, sometimes under severe risks, as in china.


That's not the only three things up on offer. China today also has a "national bourgeois", not just a pro-Western "liberal bourgeois". For example, the capitalist ruling class in Taiwan and KMT supporters are the "national bourgeois" and they still want to restore their rule on the mainland.

Objectively it is better to have the "national bourgeois" rather than the "liberal bourgeois" in China as at least the latter option would create a more "multi-polar" world with Chinese capitalism competing with US capitalism, which is better for the working class and for socialists.

I'd be more sympathetic to Liu if he were a Taiwanese-style "national bourgeois". (Taiwan today is also a bourgeois "democracy") At least he would not come out with that "China should be colonised for 300 years" BS.

The four political forces in China today are:

1) Bureaucratic Bourgeois: ruling bloc in the CCP;
2) Liberal Bourgeois: pro-Western bourgeois like Liu Xiaobo;
3) National Bourgeois: Chinese capitalists linked to ethnic Chinese interests in Taiwan, Singapore etc;
4) Working Class: the working class and peasant masses in China.

[Queercommie Girl]

The funny thing here is that if the likes of Liu Xiaobo ever gets into power, they might suppress dissent in the same way as the Chinese government is doing to themselves now. Capitalists tend to be hypocrites like that. (And frankly some socialists too)

Reminds me of peasant rebels in ancient China: they always oppose imperial power, but when they actually acquire power themselves, they just become another feudal dynasty just as before.

[Q]

The funny thing here is that if the likes of Liu Xiaobo ever gets into power, they might suppress dissent in the same way as the Chinese government is doing to themselves now. Capitalists tend to be hypocrites like that. (And frankly some socialists too)

Reminds me of peasant rebels in ancient China: they always oppose imperial power, but when they actually acquire power themselves, they just become another feudal dynasty just as before.

Exactly right, but that shouldn't refrain genuine communists from being consistent democrats, as that is in the interest of the only potential ruling classthat wouldn't degenerate into yet another petty dynasty, the working class. And as such we should demand Liu to be set free, without giving him any political support whatsoever. Wouldn't you agree?

[Queercommie Girl]

Exactly right, but that shouldn't refrain genuine communists from being consistent democrats, as that is in the interest of the only potential ruling classthat wouldn't degenerate into yet another petty dynasty, the working class. And as such we should demand Liu to be set free, without giving him any political support whatsoever. Wouldn't you agree?

I agree in principle. Radical Maoists in China today would also agree, since they see China today as basically the same as another KMT regime, and the CCP itself before 1949 actually allied with some "pro-Western" liberal democratic organisations like the China Democratic League against the ruling Nationalist KMT. The CCP actually went further than the CWI today prior to 1949, which is not surprising given their adherence to the "two stages theory" and their class-collaborationist strategies with the "progressive bourgeois". The MCPC for instance considers the capitalists in China today like Liu Xiaobo to be objectively less reactionary than the ruling regime itself. Not sure if they would actually label Liu as the "progressive bourgeois" though. I think Liu might be too right-wing for that. The Maoists also say that revisionism is actually worse than real capitalism.

But since personally I'm a "devious pragmatist" who is willing to sacrifice political principles for strategic gain sometimes, I'm still not certain whether or not it is in the strategic interests of the working class in general and the Chinese working class in particular to defend Liu even in the limited sense. I think it is quite likely that Liu is explicitly supported by US imperialism.

Defending Liu in a very limited sense is the right thing to do. But is it the smart thing to do?

[Queercommie Girl]

I say radical Maoists and socialists in China today like Zhao Dongmin who got arrested simply for working to build grassroots trade unionism deserve the Nobel Peace Prize much more than people like Liu Xiaobo. But Western capitalist countries would never even mention people like Zhao.

Zhao's case is actually really sad. He was put into prison simply for taking a few workers to the local trade union branch in Xi'an to argue quite politely for the workers' case. He was charged for "disturbing public order and work" even though there was no disturbance at all and everything Zhao did was within the bounds of the Chinese socialist constitution. After he was arrested, his wife couldn't take it anymore and fell ill. They wouldn't let his wife visit Zhao despite this. Even ethnic separatist dissidents from Xinjiang and Tibet were allowed to have their family visit them. The Chinese government considers an ethnic Han Chinese grassroots radical Maoist and trade unionist like Zhao who campaigns completely peacefully to be a bigger threat than bourgeois ethnic separatists and terrorists. His wife has already died without having the chance to see her husband again. Their son who is a high school student is also falling ill due to these events. Both Zhao and his father are CCP members. Zhao's father is reported to have said: "How could CCP members not have the rights to speak out in a country that is supposedly ruled by the CCP?" But you would never hear cases like Zhao in the Western capitalist media, only Liu Xiaobo.

[PolPotist]

Liu Xiaobo was promoted as a Nobel Peace Prize winner as a smear against the Chinese People's Republic, which is obvious given the context of the Nobel organization as a Western agent.

[Trigonometry]

the hype around Liu Xiaobo being a hugely popular figure even of the neo liberal democracy in China is hugely ridiculous, they thought that he has any influence is ridiculous, and to many Chinese the idea that the man is a 'symbol' of creating a national 'democratic front' is utterly ridiculous, as in fact most Chinese have never even heard of him.
Contrary to what the Western media aims to show, majority of Chinese people do not see the Western 'democratic' system as something they want in the PRC itself, on a simple level many use the example of the ROC as a democratic failure of corruption and the president Chen's various political stunts, and Chinese people also dislike the idea of China collapsing and disintegrating like the USSR which is viewed by the majority to be the aim of the West. The idea of a powerful China under CCP dictatorship that can withstand foreign influence appeals to far more people a disintegrated China with 4 year elections, and to the vast majority of Chinese peasants the word democracy has little meaning.
From a socialist point of view, I would think it makes far more sense to support the Chinese bourgeosie, as the tumble of a despotic dictatorship is sure to fall one day, however under neoliberal democracy, most are utterly convinced they are living under best democracy, the chances of a true democracy seem far more scarce as the truth is socialists of the 21th century are a fringe minority. Only when a neo liberal system proves a failure to the majority of the world like the collapse of the Soviet Union do people start looking to other alternatives. Hence I believe the support for the PRC is more reasonable, as it is visibly bound to collapse and give way to a new system in the future, where as the same cannot be said of the neo liberal system.

And with concerns to the Chinese view on democracy/dictatorship for one thing I can tell you, far more Chinese sheared tears of pride at the opening of the Olympics, than boycotting it for support of a 'Chinese democracy'.

[Queercommie Girl]

From a socialist point of view, I would think it makes far more sense to support the Chinese bourgeosie, as the tumble of a despotic dictatorship is sure to fall one day,


You are not a socialist if you explicitly call for people to support the bourgeois. It makes far more sense for socialists to support the workers and peasants in China today. While sections of the Chinese bourgeois are objectively more progressive than others, it makes no fundamental difference. The colour might be dark grey rather than black, but it sure isn't white.

[Dimentio]

What "shock therapy" is China able to implement? They seem to pretty much have completed that.