At the moment, the Chinese capitalist
class, on the whole, is happy to go along with the status quo. They see
no alternative, and are terrified of lifting the lid on the anger of the
working class, therefore they seek stability at all costs.
At the moment, the Chinese capitalist
class, on the whole, is happy to go along with the status quo. They see
no alternative, and are terrified of lifting the lid on the anger of the
working class, therefore they seek stability at all costs.
[Read part one here]
The
removal of Bo Xilai, not a socialist threat but a political
loose-cannon, sufficiently demonstrates their fear of the appearance of
any divisions and any legitimisation of a leftist alternative. But as
these figures suggest, capitalism cannot deliver stability forever.
Should an economic crisis break out, and a wave of defaults flood
through the system, engulfing the state finances, what will happen then?
Notwithstanding the upturn in the class struggle this is likely to
generate (this we will deal with shortly), such a crisis will also
expose all the splits amongst the Chinese ruling class and in the state.
Those salivating at the prospect of breaking up the monopolistic SOEs
will try to seize the opportunity.
In Wenzhou, the government is already experimenting with liberalising the banking system. The Financial Times has also reported that,
“China will give foreign investors greater access to its stock and
bond markets as part of a cautious reform push to open its financial
system to the world.“Guo Shuqing, the securities regulator, said China would increase the
quotas that are allocated to foreign institutions for investing in its
closely guarded capital markets.“With the ruling Communist party gathered in Beijing this week for a
congress at which they will unveil the country’s leaders for the next
decade, Mr Guo signalled that the government wanted to accelerate the
opening of the country’s financial system.”
Already Li Keqiang’s department, as mentioned earlier, has published a
joint report with the World Bank which concluded that the banking and
other monopolies must be broken up. If these monopolies, which are
basically state subsidised capitalist firms, had state support
withdrawn, many of them would go bust. Thus the situation is analogous
to the crisis in the British economy in the 1970s, when Keynesianism had
run its course. The unprofitable state owned companies were privatised,
others had state subsidies withdrawn. The result was massive layoffs,
worsening in terms and conditions, and naked profiteering from which the
British working class is still suffering.
Those smug liberals in journals such as The Economist and The Guardian,
who look forward to the breaking up of these monopolies as the
heralding of a glorious democratic era in China, are deluded. Although,
in the face of economic crisis and a strike wave, a section of the
Chinese leadership may pose as democratic reformers in the hope of
diverting this anger (democratic reform is often spoken of as necessary,
both by Chinese politicians and liberal intellectuals, because it can
help to stave off revolution), this would always be a smokescreen for
full-scale privatisation. Such a policy is no solution to the Chinese
working class’ problems. It would raise unemployment, increase
inequality and accelerate the development of capitalism. The only people
to really benefit would be the bureaucrats at the top of the SOEs. As
Marxists we are utterly opposed to privatisation in all its forms, even
when hidden behind the mask of ‘democratic reform’.
It is also completely false, as the liberals maintain, that
corruption is due to the state owned character of much of the Chinese
economy. As already explained, corruption represents the capitalist
corrosion of the old state apparatus. Much of the anger of the Chinese
people is correctly directed at the corruption generated by
privatisation. Companies are sold off at knockdown prices to insiders,
top bureaucrats, who then become top capitalists. Privatisation involves
and encourages corruption; it is not its solution.
The brewing economic crisis threatens to turn China’s simmering class
struggle into an all out explosion. The slowing economy has recently
led to a rise in unpaid bills between businesses. Another expression of
the scarcity of cash is the sudden sharp increase in wage arrears,
according to China Labour Bulletin. This has led to an immediate
increase in strike activity and workers’ protests, which this October
reached their highest level for almost two years.
There was a strike surge in September as well, especially in the
service sector. The infamous Foxconn, which employs an incredible one
million workers in China, has been particularly strike prone and seems
to represent the vanguard of the class struggle in China. It is
reminiscent of Petrograd’s legendary Putilov Works. The production of
the iPhone 5 twice came to a halt due to strikes in one fortnight in
October. Apple, whose profit margins are around 30%, compared to
Foxconn’s 1.5%, is well known to put extreme demands onto Foxconn, which
in turn puts unbearable pressure onto its workers so that that tiny
profit margin is maintained.
“Every job is tagged to time, there are targets on how many things
must be completed within an hour,” said Xie Xiaogang, 22, who worked at
Foxconn’s Shenzhen plant and was transferred to Taiyuan in June this
year. “You don’t have much time to relax. In this environment, many
people cannot take it.” (Quoted from Bloomberg).
So intense is the pressure that riots are frequent occurrences. The
most recent one took place in Foxconn’s Taiyuan factory in the province
of Shanxi. This factory employs 79,000 people and the riot involved
anything between 2,000 and 10,000 workers. The immediate cause of the
riot appears to be the ongoing brutality of the security staff, who
apparently stabbed a female worker. In another incident, four or five
guards almost beat one worker to death. This brutality is a general
feature of Foxconn and is a direct result of the equally brutal drive
for profits. So intense is the pressure that this factory alone loses
400-500 workers a day. Some of them, as was widely reported, left the
company by committing suicide.
“And some workers from other Foxconn plants in Henan, Shandong, and
Shenzhen posted letters praising the Taiyuan workers for their courage
to start a riot…workers had not meant to instigate a riot but they had
no other way to address injustice. When they called a hotline to
complain about the abusive security guards, for example, they were told
their complaint could not be handled…Although several workers posted
demands to set up their own more representative trade union, they are
unlikely to gain support from local official unions”. (China Labour Bulletin)
This is only one example of the extremity of the class contradictions
in China, and helps to explain why the Chinese ruling class cannot
tolerate any genuine democratic reform, especially the granting of
genuine trade union freedom.
October also witnessed a successful strike at Xinfei Electronics Co.
in Henan Province. During a public consultation regarding revisions to
the Labour Contract Law, half a million people submitted suggestions,
forcing the delay of the drafting of this law. No doubt this inundation
reflected the burning desire for genuine workers’ rights. These are the
class tensions that threaten to explode and which Xi Jinping is charged
with holding down at all costs.
Further evidence of the simmering class struggle is the famous Siege
of Wukan, lasting from September to December last year. Protests several
thousand strong erupted in this Southern Chinese village of around
15,000 people, gathering momentum and militancy after the police cruelly
tricked the population into electing their own leaders, 5 of whom were
then kidnapped by police and one of them, Xue Jinbo, was killed.
Although police laughingly claimed he died of a sudden heart-attack from
his non-existent heart condition, relatives eventually allowed access
to his body (but not a post-mortem) reported it being covered in large
bruises, cuts, dried blood and with his thumbs twisted and bent
backwards. 7,000 took part in Xue’s funeral ceremony after his murder.
What caused this movement is very instructive both of the social
crises caused by the development of capitalism in China, and of the
relationship between the looming economic crisis and the class struggle.
For the past 30 or so years the Chinese peasantry has been experiencing
something like the infamous Enclosure of the Commons which laid the
basis of the industrial revolution in Britain. Untold hundreds of
millions of peasants have had their land stolen from them by local
‘Communist’ authorities in collusion with predatory land developers.
These landless peasants have fed what has been the world’s largest ever
industrial revolution by flocking to the cities, where they have been
and still are ruthlessly exploited.
Although the solvency of local authorities has now been so heavily
undermined by their involvement in the fiscal stimulus that the central
government has recently allowed them to start selling bonds (thus
dragging them into the inescapable trap of debt), until recently they
have relied heavily on selling off communal land (tilled by peasants) to
raise funds. One report has estimated that in 2010 74% of local
authority income was from illegally selling off communal land.
“According to the Chinese Academy of Sciences, by the end of 2011 there
was a total of 50 million displaced farmers across China (from all
preceding years), and an average of 3 million farmers are displaced
across China per year.” (Wikipedia).
This process has accelerated greatly since 2008, because local
authorities were the chief vehicle for delivering the vast stimulus
whose intention was to prevent economic crisis. All the debt burden of
this short-sighted stimulus was (and is) borne by local authorities, who
were obliged to borrow heavily, against dubious collateral of local,
communal land, to fund the infrastructure projects. In order to be able
to keep the ball rolling, these authorities have had to rob peasants of
land, selling it off to dodgy property speculators and developers, who
apparently buy it up for an average 40 times more than what the
authority pays to the peasants (if it pays anything at all)! Nice work
if you can get it!
This is another example of the way in which the Chinese economy resembles the bus from the Hollywood movie Speed.
The boom has been based on such unstable foundations, with so much
swindling and so much debt borrowed on the assumption that the market
will keep going up and up, that they will do anything to keep it from
moving forward so that the rotten reality does not come to the surface.
So Wukan’s local authority had naturally been practicing this scam on
its own people. The CCP village leader, who had been in the position
for 42 years, was only too happy to sell off the land, without
permission from the peasants, to local developers, who have already been
building vulgar nightclubs, holiday resorts and sumptuous CCP local HQ
in the area for years. This also demonstrates why corruption in China is
not some sort of mistake which its politicians can ‘opt’ out of. It is
not a question of bad morality. The local CCP leaders are merely
carrying out the brutal requirements of capitalism’s violent entry into
China, and taking a cut for themselves in the process.
Two days before Xue died, on 12th December, daily protests against
this land theft started taking place, and on 14th, when it became known
Xue had been killed by the police, an uncontrollable mass of the
villagers overwhelmed the local authorities. All police and CCP
officials were utterly expelled from the village, which was now
administered by the village population.
1,000 police stormed but failed to retake this village of only
15,000. The unity and militancy of the entire village population, their
determination in beating off the formidable forces of the Chinese state,
shows, in an anecdotal way, the shared experience of exploitation and
injustice amongst the Chinese masses, and the immense potential they
have for running society themselves when united.
By 21st December the movement ended in victory. The Guangdong
provincial CCP stepped in, terrified of the irrepressible determination
embodied in this small number of peasants. They agreed to the demands of
making Wukan Village’s finances public and to redistribute all the
recently taken land. Elections were then held in which the CCP
authorities had no choice but to allow the people to elect their own
leaders, and unsurprisingly it was the recognised leaders of the
movement who took the positions. However, being a one-party state, they
were of course elected as CCP officials.
The demands and the political character of this movement are useful
as a litmus test as to the consciousness of the Chinese masses. Although
on the one hand driving out all CCP officials and the forces of
the state, the villages also displayed banners pledging their support
for the CCP as a whole. To an extent, this will have been to protect
them from government reprisals and to make it easier for the provincial
party to give in to their demands whilst saving face. But it also
represents the contradiction at the centre of the coming Chinese
revolution.
There is certainly a very militant opposition to the apparatus of the
CCP, which is really part of the state and is correctly seen as
thoroughly corrupt. Workers and peasants rightly want to see all these
place seekers who have profiteered from the labour of hundreds of
millions in China purged from all positions of influence. In this
respect, the Chinese revolution will bear some resemblance to the
Tunisian revolution, in which the Tunisian people attempted to drive out
the whole apparatus of power. The hated and corrupt party of the
dictator Ben Ali was expelled from Tunisian politics, just as the local
CCP leadership in Wukan was driven out of the village. The demands were
for the wealth of this entire layer, who had lined their pockets at the
Tunisian people’s expense, to be confiscated.
This would be a good demand for all those corrupt officials in the Chinese state, especially those at the top like Wen Jiabao. All wealth acquired in China through the looting of the former planned economy must be put back in the hands of the people.
Thus there is a high level of consciousness that those running the
CCP are fake communists. There is a strong desire for a purgation of
these types and the building of a real Communist Party, which for
millions of Chinese is the real tradition of China. However, as they
move into struggle, they will find that it is not a question of simply a
few corrupt officials and capitalist-roaders at the top. In fact a
great deal of the CCP has been transformed into one half a part of the
state apparatus, like a spy network, and the other half a career ladder
and ‘old boys club’. This means that the CCP as a whole is unwinnable to
the interests of the working class.
However, the party has around 80m members, and it is the party of the
1949 revolution, the war against Japan and the ending of feudal
anachronisms. It is impossible to imagine that a movement in China
powerful enough to transform society, that is a worker led revolution
involving hundreds of millions, will not in some way express itself
inside the CCP, which is after all the only party in China. Not all
these 80m party members are careerists and crooks!
Therefore, in the event of a new Chinese revolution, we can
anticipate the splitting of the CCP, and the formation of a workers’
CCP. Those who represent capitalism, such as Xi Jinpgin will receive a
fate similar to that of Ben Ali, Gaddafi and Mubarak. Xi’s ten years of
power will not be anything like those of Hu Jintao. They will be wracked
by social turmoil and possibly even revolution.
- For a workers’ Communist Party!
No to privatisation of the SOEs! For workers’ control of the SOEs to prevent corruption and creeping privatisation!
Re-nationalise the privatised SOEs! Nationalise all major private corporations!
Confiscation of the property of all who have amassed wealth through corruption and privatisation!
Full trade union freedom for all workers!
End the capitalist transformation of China! For a planned and democratically controlled economy!
