Chinese history

On
the ninetieth anniversary of the founding of the Chinese Communist
Party, we begin the publication of a series of articles that trace the
origins and subsequent development of this party, which has played a key
role in world history. In this first part Dan Morley outlines the
conditions in China that led to the foundation of the party as part of
the Communist International. The founders of the party looked to the
October revolution in Russia as their model, with the working class
playing the leading role.

In this second part of Jeppe
Druedahl’s contribution to the
discussion on China, he explains how initially the Chinese bureaucracy,
after the death of Mao, introduced market methods as a means of
stimulating production within a planned economy. However, over time the
capitalist methods began to dominate and the relation between the plan
and the market were overturned. Quantity was transformed into quality,
and capitalism has come to dominate.

Does the development of China on a
capitalist basis deny the theory of permanent revolution? Does it mean
that capitalism on a world scale has a new lease of life? What was China
under Mao? In this first part of a two part article, which we publish
as a contribution to the discussion, Jeppe Druedahl looks at these and
other questions and draws lessons from the development of the Soviet
Union after the revolution and under the Stalinist bureaucracy.

On 4th May 1919 Chinese people marched to end backwardness in China and
humiliation by the imperialist powers. They were led by Chen Duxiu. Chen realised that the modernisation of China could only be carried out by
the working class and founded the Chinese Communist Party in 1921. For a
hundred years the Chinese have engeged on the long and tortuous march to
modernisation.