Staff Writer Jack Ford argues that to understand where China is going, we must understand where it has been. First in a series, this article analyses the historic context of crises which created the modern state of China, and its remarkable adaptability.
The year is 2026, and the unipolar world order is being called into question. Our familiar hegemons are resorting to evermore violent means of exacting their will, while the stability of the Western economic system becomes evermore uncertain.
This is the first of a body of articles I’m writing called ‘a material world’, written for the purpose of understanding the tumultuous, and seemingly chaotic nature of current affairs, while combatting outdated political orthodoxies, particularly with respect to the developing world. This series argues that such chaos can only be understood through material analysis.
To begin the series, we must discuss the new geopolitical player on the field – China. My interest in China was spurred through my reading of the works of Roland Boer (particularly Socialism with Chinese Characteristics – A Guide for Foreigners, from which the majority of this article is derived) providing me a Western lens into the process of Chinese development. Boer is the first Westerner to be employed as a professor in a Chinese school of Marxist studies, hence his insight is greatly valuable for foreigners.
How has China emerged from the 20th century in such a position of primacy? How has it developed the world’s second largest economy? How have 800 million people been lifted from poverty? How has a formerly exploited nation, following a self described ‘century of humiliation’, begun to catch up to the West across numerous metrics?
The ascendency of China will no doubt be the subject of numerous articles in this series, however to begin to understand its rapid ascent, we must begin in recent history, investigating the political and economic drive behind this rise. Despite the fantastical narratives often popularised in Western spheres – ‘oriental mysteries’, dystopian fictions, and ghost stories – China has a highly adaptive system and coherent philosophy of governance, however it demands understanding on its own terms.
The adaptive success and ultimately effective governance of the Chinese system is due to its deployment of dialectical materialism – contradiction analysis, hence it demands analysis through this lens to be truly understood. Dialectical materialism is a framework through which to understand the world – the belief in the absoluteness of the material world, and that the material world is changed through the unity and struggle of opposing forces.
Two Parallel Crises
The People’s Republic of China, as we know it today, has been largely defined through its reaction to two parallel internal crises – the ‘Cultural Revolution’, and the ‘Wild 90s’. These events, generated by tense contradictions in the nature of production, left a profound mark on the fabric of Chinese governance, and still influence policy into the modern day.
First, the Cultural Revolution.
The year is 1977. Mao Zedong is dead. The PRC exists in the shadow of the Cultural Revolution. A dogmatic ultra-left tendency had gripped the nation, attempting to enact a ‘radical equality’ without any of the wealth necessary for such an equality, yielding a social catastrophe. The Cultural Revolution had seen the violent rebirth of feudalistic and patriarchal practices, particularly a corrosive, and unthinking book worship (a deviation coined ‘Maoism’) – a systemic issue, stemming partly from Mao himself, ultimately culminating in the seizure of power by the ‘Gang of Four’ – a political faction within the party leadership that forwarded this immaterial doctrine until its downfall.
This crisis was diagnosed internally as an incorrect assessment of material reality. The Communist Party of China (CPC) had lost sight of productive development, and had placed its full emphasis behind managing issues internal to the people (class struggle), essentially overemphasising relations of production (‘the struggle between social/class groups’), instead of ‘liberating’ production (‘actually increasing productive capacity’) – a fundamental contradiction. Any prospective leader following this crisis would need to resolve this lack of productive capacity, thereby combatting this immaterial leftist tendency.
Second, the Wild 90s.
The year is 1997. Deng Xiaoping is dead. The national policy of ‘Reform and Opening Up’ had begun. In its infancy it had created many points of tension: the erosion of public ownership, worsening labour conditions, a rising Gini coefficient, ecological damage, and a tension in the application of the law. This period is often a source of the misconception that China had ‘flipped capitalist’. The legitimacy of the CPC hung in balance, and truly any path was open for prospective leadership into the new millennium, with numerous ideologies vying for the limelight.
The principal material contradiction here, existing at a social level, exists between the needs of the population and the nature of development – later described as ‘imbalanced and inadequate’ in 2017. Any prospective leader following this crisis would need to resolve this contradiction, and combat this rightist tendency – a growing inequality, and a withering legitimacy.
One Evolving Solution
Despite their radical differences, both these crises, and the contradictions that yielded them, had a singular solution: the aforementioned process of ‘Reform and Opening Up’, which remains at the ideological heart of the Chinese national project today. The programme was established by Deng Xiaoping, continued in successive leaderships, and deepened by the government of Xi Jinping. ‘Reform and Opening Up’ is evidence of the adaptivity of Chinese governance – a singular flexible framework correcting two opposing problems – driven via the lens of the aforementioned philosophy of dialectical materialism.
As a point of clarity, neither of the contradictions noted are antagonistic or irresolvable: instead they are non-antagonistic, and resolvable through reform of the current system. Essentially, antagonistic contradictions are issues stemming from fundamental irreconcilable interest (and hence are irresolvable except through violent means), meanwhile non-antagonistic contradictions involve internal tensions which can be resolved through reform.
The initial programme of reform was started to resolve the misstep of the Cultural Revolution – an impoverished socialism was no goal at all. In Deng’s words, “Poverty is not socialism”. Thus, beginning in his period as leader, and continuing through the leaderships of Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, productive capacity was ‘liberated’ – greatly expanded, raising the quality of life through the stimulation of economic growth: particularly leveraging the market as an economic tool for development, however within a fundamentally socialist context – building the economic preconditions for a wealthy socialism. The crisis of the Cultural Revolution evidences that the dialectical materialist method does not guarantee success, instead it is a method that can be misapplied – it stands as the CPC’s greatest misstep, and hence, in its correction, the greatest evidence forwarding its successful adaptive governance.
By firmly situating a market within a socialist system, one avoids the necessarily antagonistic contradictions of markets within capitalism. Rooted in Confucian tradition, the goal was a ‘xiaokang’ society – a society wherein all members were moderately well-off.
As an additional note, the process of ‘Opening Up’ was the engagement of the Chinese state in international affairs, also to further this liberation of productive forces: no country can hope to prosper fully in isolation, hence inroads were made into cultivating a degree of foreign investment, and foreign trade, however under strict governmental supervision. This engagement is also phrased as ‘neither depending on others, nor plundering others’, and win-win (‘gongying’) diplomacy.
The deepening of reform and opening up was initiated to combat the contradictions of the ‘Wild 90s’. The CPC elected that the solution to the rising inequality within the Chinese state was neither capitulation to a capitalistic mode of governance, nor the retreat to some rural feudal idyll, nor an immaterial stab toward a primitive ‘equality’, but the deepening of reform comprehensively. This deepening took place across every facet of government – both national and international: rural-urban development, social programmes, public ownership, greater supervision/accountability for governing bodies, the development of the Belt-and-Road Initiative (a subject for a future article), and the enhancement/elucidation of ‘law-based governance’. This reform continues into the modern day.
Outcomes & Global Implications
The outcomes of this process are astounding, and recognised by numerous Western institutions. Quoting the World Bank directly: “Since 1978, the beginning of China’s reform and opening up period, GDP growth has averaged over 9% per year, lifting almost 800 million people out of extreme poverty… By 2020, China had eradicated extreme poverty”.
It is greatly important to note that this process of reform is far from over. The very strength of the Chinese system is its ongoing self-correction – it remains tackling systemic issues: “15.2% living on less than $8.30 a day” (a revised World Bank poverty line at a higher level), “an ageing demographic structure”, “further tackling carbon emissions” (to quote more World Bank figures). Governance itself is a continual and evolving process, regulated through internal and external criticism, and the CPC itself has stated that in the coming century it would need to “ford dangerous rapids“.
The question of the Chinese approach to human rights, too, is of great importance, with its treatment of minority nationalities frequently questioned. The subject of human rights is not a ‘non-issue’, nor can it be reduced to Western media tropes – it is deserving of its own article entire. The Chinese approach defines human rights in a fundamentally differing way to the West – founded in sovereignty and economic rights, rather than prioritising individual and civil liberties as base – in a long history of development, and modern application in vastly different case studies from Hong Kong to Xinjiang.
The leveraging of the market as an economic tool for economic development, while rooting it firmly in a socialist mode of governance – subservient to the primacy of public ownership, serves as a potential model for replication (naturally with differing material alterations) in the developing world. Already, developing nations, a particularly pertinent example being Vietnam, are employing similar strategies of state-directed development, breaking from Western orthodoxy: adaptability, it seems, is a desirable characteristic for developing countries.
Analysis of the material contradictions driving crises – the method used to elucidate the causes of the Cultural Revolution, and the Wild 90s – will be a mainstay of this series, and is a critical tool for understanding what may initially appear to be irrational or strange occurrences.
I will leave you with the following question: is the system implemented in China better suited to the needs of the developing world than that of the West?
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