polsic

China: Imperialism, Revolution and the

New Cold War

POLS220

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Rationale

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• China’s economic take off since the 1980s has re-structured and re-balanced the world economy • China, and Asia, now account for the majority of world economic growth • The US is worried about losing hegemony and has initiated a New Cold War

against China • This New Cold War in Asia is a key dynamic of multi-polarity in the world • China’s unique model of Market Socialism under the guidance of the

Communist Party of China (CPC) has challenged US pretensions to leadership and dominance based on neoliberal capitalism and liberal democracy

2

Next few lectures

1. From Imperialism to Revolution 2. Socialist Construction 3. Reform and Opening Up 4. Global China

Part 1: From Imperialism to Revolution

Markets Without Capitalism

• 17th and 18th Centuries, China becomes the world’s most advanced market society • Exports silk, cotton, porcelain, sugar, tea, spices • Urbanization, industrialization, coastal infrastructure • Financed by European and American silver

Markets Without Capitalism

• Dominant classes were: – Imperial state elite – Rural feudal landlords

• Merchant entrepreneurial elite had support of Qing dynasty but never became a hegemonic class – Tendency to pull out of merchant activity and to enter state bureaucracy – Nascent merchant class thus stunted

–The vast majority of the population were peasants, living under the class relations of feudalism

Markets Without Capitalism

• Why no capitalist take off? • Paternalistic state defused social conflict

• Fearful of social unrest, the state granted concessions • Higher wages limit industrial profit • Merchants return to gentry or state service, or move to port cities of Southeast Asia • Differed from English state

• The absence of capitalist transformation leaves China unprepared for several international challenges…

Imperialism and Underdevelopment

• 1830s-1949 China loses political and economic sovereignty, experiences imperial invasions and civil wars, and suffers economic decline

Imperialism and Underdevelopment

• British Imperialism – British ran trade deficit with China in late 1700s/early 1800s: imported tea,

silks, porcelain paid for by silver – China didn’t buy British goods, and protected its internal market, with only

token access – To finance the trade deficit, Britain began to push opium on China’s black

market – After a Chinese crackdown, British and French military invasions follow…

Imperialism and Underdevelopment

• 1839 The First Opium War • Treaty of Nanjing (1842) cedes Hong Kong and many Chinese ports to the

British • “Extra-territoriality” extends British law to British citizens in China • Establishes “Most Favored Nation” principle

• Any commercial rights wrested from the Chinese by other countries would have to be granted to Britain too

• In 1844, the Qing was forced at gunpoint to sign new treaties with France and the US; these were followed by treaties with Prussia, Italy, Russia, and other European powers

• This marks the beginning of the “century of humiliation”

Imperialism and Underdevelopment

• 1856 Second Opium War • 1858 Treaty of Tientsin gives more ports to imperial powers and foreign

merchants and missionaries are allowed into the interior of China

• In 1895 China loses a war with Japan, which destroys China’s navy, claims Korea and Taiwan, imposes huge indemnity payments, and demands manufacturing rights in China’s open ports

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Imperialism and Underdevelopment

• Unequal Treaties follow, opening up China to foreign domination, with one-sided tariff policies • 1897: Germany given mining and rail rights • Russia claims ports and right to build rails across Manchuria • UK and France gain other “concessions” • 1899 US demands “Open Door” policy

Imperialism and Underdevelopment

• Imperialism undermines the bureaucratic state, feudalism, and rural landlord-gentry class • Foreign commercial penetration into China destroys small-scale

Chinese industry, and destabilizes Chinese markets through building new rail systems • Christian missionaries also create tension with Chinese population • Many peasant uprisings occur in the mid- to late-1800s, and this

forces the Emperor to cede more power to local elites to defeat major rebellions

Imperialism and Underdevelopment

• Landlord class is incapable of leading modernization campaign • Exploits peasantry further • Becomes a “military-predatory elite” of warlords

• China was plagued by weak social classes • It was stuck between feudalism and capitalism, and it was dominated by

imperialism, leaving it fragmented and ruled by regional feudal warlords

• By the late 1890s, the Qing dynasty was on death’s door

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Failed Capitalism, Uprisings and Civil War

• Between the 1880s and 1940s, China experiences: • Widespread rebellions and protests against foreign influence, such as the

Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) • China’s share of the world economy shrinks from 35% before the Opium Wars

to 4.6% in 1950 • China’s loss of control over its grain markets also led, in part, to the famines of

the late 19th century, during which 30 million died

Failed Capitalism, Uprisings and Civil War

• One major uprising is the Boxer Rebellion (1899-1901) • Initiated by a secret Chinese martial arts group, it targeted initially

missionaries and their Chinese converts • But it develops into a widespread anti-foreign and anti-Christian uprising • The rebels seized Beijing • The Qing joined the rebels to regain credibility • This triggers an invasion of eight foreign nations, which carried out massacres

of rebels and their supporters • Britain, the US, Prussia, Japan and others impose punitive terms on the Qing

court, giving country away to foreign business

Failed Capitalism, Uprisings and Civil War

• In 1911, the Xinhai Revolution, led by Sun Yat-Sen, overthrows the feudal state and establishes the Republic of China • Forms the Guomindang Party (GMD, Nationalist Party) and the National

Revolutionary Army to unify the country and eliminate the warlords • The Guomindang rule China until 1949

• Its strategy was to build a strong, unified state and develop capitalist markets, based on urban industry

• However, the GMD failed to transform rural, feudal class relations, through which the vast majority labored and produced in China

May 4th Movement

• May 4th, 1919 is the beginning of the Chinese communist revolution • Student and workers strikes in Beijing against Versailles Treaty • Japan gains German holdings in China • China had been an allied nation, and 100,000 Chinese workers had dug

trenches in France • China expected to recover German-owned territories in China • The May 4th Movement becomes a nationalist and anti-imperialist uprising,

with boycotts of Japanese products and mass demonstrations

Failed Capitalism, Uprisings and Civil War

• The Communist Party of China (CPC) is formed in Shanghai in 1921, in the aftermath of the May 4th Movement of 1919. • Marxism and the Russian Revolution as a model for Chinese development • Mao led the Communist Party organization in Hunan

• CPC’s strategy: • Capitalism was the problem, not the solution • Capitalism in its imperialist form had combined with Chinese feudalism to

produce underdevelopment • The CPC called this “semi-feudalism and semi-colonialism,” or the “two semis”

Failed Capitalism, Uprisings and Civil War

• CPC • Two implications

• As an imperialized country, the nation was subordinated to global capitalism and could not be an equal

• Foreign capital and local bourgeois elements failed to transform agrarian feudalism • Hence, landlords and weak industrialists had to be overthrown, and their

properties redistributed • While national unity was essential, the real transformative target was national

and global capitalism as well as domestic feudalism and landlordism. • The real strategic need was class struggle and revolution

China in the 1920s

• Divided amongst rapacious feudal warlords • Coastal cities under the rule of Western powers and Japan • No unified state • Mao, in Hunan, organizes miners, rail workers, printing press

employees, and municipal workers into unions • Women’s rights were also supported, especially literacy and education

• CPC replicates these organizing methods in other regions, but they are crushed by warlords in 1923

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Towards United Front

• By 1923, the Guomindang had become a mass party, organized along centralized lines, and had advisors from the Communist International, including military advisors • In May 1922, the GMD had co-sponsored a major strike, the Hong

Kong seamen’s strike, which shut down the British colony • The Comintern induces the CPC to form a United Front with the GMD • For Stalin, China first needed a “bourgeois-democratic” revolution,

not Communism • CPC members would join the GMD in a subordinate role but maintain

their CPC membership

United Front

• GMD • Believed that China’s major problem was its poverty and inability to compete

on the global capitalist stage • The task was to build a strong state, and encourage capitalism • Urban-led industrialization was the strategy • Thus, cooperation with global capitalism from a position of sovereign strength

became the overall strategy • Yet, the GMD was loathe to confront feudal relations in the countryside,

because China’s elite overwhelmingly originated out of the class relations of the rural sector

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May 30th Movement, 1925

• On 12 March 1925, the founder of the Republic of China, Sun Yat- Sen, dies • Nationalist sentiment, and protests against imperialism, follow,

encouraged by the Guomindang and CPC • March 21-22, 1925 worker strikes seize Shanghai • Peasant organizations, workers unions, and the CPC grow

May 30th Movement, 1925

• In the morning of May 30th, 1925, the Shanghai police arrest student protestors in the foreign-controlled international settlement • Later in the afternoon, police shoot and kill 9 demonstrators, and

wound many more • General Strikes were called in Shanghai and Guangzhou;

demonstrations and anti-foreign boycotts were organized in other cities • Over the next months, nationalist sentiment grows against imperial

domination

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Summary

• In the late 1600s and 1700s, China is the leading market society, running trade surpluses • 1840s-1949: Imperialism and unequal treaties underdeveloped China

and weaken the state – China is stuck between feudalism and capitalism, with weak social classes • Frequent rebellions and uprisings further destabilize and fragment

China • The nascent bourgeoisie fails to lead a modernization campaign • The ‘warlord-landlords’ further exploit the peasantry

Summary

• The GMD (Guomindang, Nationalist Party) aims for a bourgeois revolution, but fails to challenge rural feudalism and foreign imperialism; it can’t do these things without mobilizing the peasantry and working class, whose material interests are too threatening. • The CPC forms in 1921, and submits that capitalism and imperialism

combine with China’s internal feudalism to promote underdevelopment, and that class struggle for socialism is the path to development and modernization. • Stalin, though, instructs a United Front

Contradictions Emerge

• The Guomindang Army, with support of the CPC, are unifying the country militarily against warlords • Stalin backed this alliance, and provided aid to the GMD • Strong national movement but with a radical class foundation

amongst the working class and peasantry • But these class dynamics strain the CPC-Guomindang alliance

• The peasantry and working-class demand radical social reforms • Bourgeois elements want to protect the old ruling classes, and refuse agrarian reform

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Shanghai Massacre

• 12 April 1927, National Army, now led by Chiang Kai-shek crushes the Communist Party and workers organizations in Shanghai • Violent suppression of the CPC also occurs in Guangzhou and Changsha • Of the 60,000 CPC members, only 10,000 survive 1927 • This ends the four-year national alliance of the GMD and CPC

Failed Revolutions

• The CPC’s urban strategy of workers’ revolution fails • But, more importantly at this point, the GMD allies itself with

conservative and landlord factions, and thus does not complete the “bourgeois revolution” • Feudal relations in the countryside are left untouched • GMD does not address imperial domination

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CPC Lessons

• The CPC flees to the countryside, and draws lessons: • Military power decisive in class struggle • Moscow not trustworthy • Dependent capitalist classes would not abolish feudalism and imperialism and

achieve the “bourgeois revolution” • In China, the peasantry was the truly revolutionary, and majority, class

Jiangxi Soviet

• In Jiangxi province in southern China, CPC establishes Chinese Soviet Republic • Builds military base, recruits peasants, land reform, women’s rights,

literacy, schools, public health • 15,000 sq miles; 3 million people • Red Army of 300,000 • For several years, the outnumbered CPC defeats massive GMD attacks • But in 1934, the Jiangxi Soviet defeated by Nationalist Army

Long March

• Long March to Yan’an in Shaanxi, Northwest China • 6,000 miles • 100,000 men and 50 women, only 8,000 survive • Maoist values: sacrifice, struggle, dedication, selflessness, self-denial,

etc.

The “Yan’an Way”

• CPC rebuilds Soviet government in Yan’an in Shaanxi province • Land reform • Communist administration, with popular involvement • Literacy, education, propaganda • Local production, self-sufficiency • Values: frugality, altruism, sharing, selfless struggle

Mao Zedong

Maoism

• …as a distinct version of Marxism crystallizes in Yan’an period • Voluntarist theory of history (ideas and consciousness as motors of history) • Populism, anti-elitism, anti-bureaucracy • Faith in revolutionary agency of peasantry • “Mass Line”: the CPC must live with and learn from the people • Rural-based armed struggle

Maoism

• Key idea of Mao was the necessity of socialism for modernization • The Chinese revolution against internal feudalism and external imperialism

could not be a democratic revolution of the old type—like the British or the French—a revolution to open the road to capitalism, but must be a democratic revolution of a new type, one that would open the road to socialism

• Why?

Maoism

• The imperialist powers would not allow China to carry out any transformation aimed at autonomous capitalist development • Every time any section of the Chinese people rose up to challenge traditional

rule the powers intervened, singly or in unison, to suppress the effort by force of arms

Maoism • In addition, China’s independent national bourgeoisie, the

revolutionary sector of the bourgeois class, was weak and vacillating • It could not possibly take on both the Chinese landlords and the

imperialists plus their Chinese comprador partners without fully mobilizing both the working class and the peasantry, whose objective interests lay not in capitalist exploitation but in the socialist abolition of private property and class domination.

Maoism

• Indeed, mobilizing the working class meant putting certain limits on managerial powers and meeting certain working-class demands—job security, retirement pay, and health care—while mobilizing the peasantry meant carrying out land reform • This could not be done without confiscating the wealth of the

landlord class, from which the bourgeoisie had, in the main, arisen and to which it still maintained myriad ties • Furthermore, the confiscation of property and land threatened the

foundations of all private property and caused capitalists—much as they desired liberation from feudalism and imperialism—to vacillate

Maoism

• Over and over again, the national bourgeoisie proved incapable of firm national leadership against the people’s enemies, foreign and domestic • Leading the Chinese democratic revolution thus shifted by default to

the popular classes (working class and peasantry), which were more numerous by far, and to the Communist Party that had established itself as spokesman for all the oppressed.

War Accelerates the Contradictions

• Japan invades Manchuria in 1931 • In 1935, Japan begins military entry into China • GMD leaders, Chiang Kai-shek, focuses on fighting the CPC instead of the Japanese invasion • As Mao wrote, Chiang was “the most diligent trailblazer for Japan in swallowing up China.”

War Accelerates the Contradictions

• The full-scale Japanese attack on China began in July, 1937 • Japanese treat the Chinese as racially inferior • The Japanese invasion, and resistance against it, led to the deaths of 10-15 million Chinese, and 90 million refugees inside China • In 1940, the Chinese nationalists seemed close to defeat and Japan's

vision of a “Great East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere” (a Japanese- dominated Asian new order) looked closer than ever to achievement

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War Accelerates the Contradictions

• The country is fragmented politically and militarily • The GMD government collapses, and the GMD retreats inland to its wartime

capital, Chongqing in Sichuan Province • In the north and east, the Japanese conquered large areas, where they

installed and collaborated with puppet regimes, including Puyi (the last emperor) in Manchuria • Mongolia was more or less under Soviet domination • In the south and east, rival warlords maintained an uneasy relationship with

Chiang's nationalists • In Nanjing, Chiang's former colleague Wang Jingwei set up a rival nationalist

government under Japanese supervision in 1940 • In the north-west, Mao Zedong and Zhou Enlai maintained control in Yan'an

War Accelerates the Contradictions

• The Japanese occupation commits heinous war crimes – for example, mass rape and murder in Nanjing in 1937-38, after the GMD abandon the city • In Autumn, 1937, the CPC and GMD make an uneasy, second “united

front” against Japan, with Soviet and US aid • US aid increases after Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, Hawaii

War Accelerates the Contradictions

• Chiang’s wartime decisions • Orders the destruction of the dykes on the Yellow River to stop the Japanese

advance, which left more than half a million Chinese dead and 4.8 million as refugees • Renews blockade of Yan’an in 1939 • In 1941, GDM surrounds and attacks the CPC’s New Fourth Army • The GMD became increasingly brutal and terroristic towards Chinese citizens • Chiang’s security chief Dai Li ran a terror organization that killed and tortured

thousands of Chinese suspected of treason or of being communist • 1942-3 Henan Famine kills 2-3 million, caused by wartime destruction,

drought and corrupt governance

War Accelerates the Contradictions

• Creates opportunity for CPC to wage rural class war and anti- imperialist war • CPC becomes the political force of national liberation and social reform • The Red Army grows to over 1 million soldiers

From Victory to Civil War

• August, 1945, Japan surrenders • US military moves GMD forces around China to facilitate the

surrender of Japan • 50,000 US troops occupy north China • Stalin had signed a secret treaty of alliance with Chiang Kaishek,

forcing Mao into an attempt at a coalition government • Another example of Stalin’s betrayal of the CPC

• Mao flies to Chongqing to negotiate a coalition government between August and October 1945 • Fails and civil war breaks out in Manchuria

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From Victory to Civil War

• In December 1945, US Pres. Truman dispatches General George C. Marshall to mediate a ceasefire with Zhou Enlai • Ceasefire lasts until Spring 1946 • Marshall departs and the US effort fails

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From Victory to Civil War

• Civil War between Guomindang and CPC after WW2: 1946-1949 • Chiang’s decision to go to war against the Communists in 1946 came at the

cost of postponing the economic reconstruction of China • This meant diverting tax revenues, investment, and other resources to the

war effort rather than to the needs of the people • Heavy taxes, a huge government debt, inflation, unemployment, and food

shortages caused many, especially in the cities, to lose faith in the Nationalist government

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From Victory to Civil War

• Civil War between Guomindang and CPC after WW2: 1946-1949 • Economic discontent in the cities led to thousands of labor strikes • Students, newspaper editors, and intellectuals protested against Chiang’s

Nationalist government • They demanded an end to the civil war and the creation of a government that

included the Communists • The Nationalists responded with censorship, beatings, mass arrests, and even

assassinations

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From Victory to Civil War

• Mao focused on winning over the peasants to gain their support in the civil war • “The battle for China,” he said, “is a battle for the hearts and minds of the

peasants.”

• Whenever the Communists secured an area, CPC members went to work, organizing village “struggle meetings.” • Peasants and laborers, who owned little or no land, met to force wealthy

landlords to confess their bad treatment of the poor • The cadres then cancelled all debts owed to the landlords and distributed

their land and other property to the poor peasants and laborers

From Victory to Civil War

• October 1, 1949, Mao proclaims People’s Republic of China in Beijing • GMD flees to Taiwan, rules as one-party state till 1986, retains China’s

UN seat until 1971, claims to represent all of China as the Republic of China

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