China’s superior leadership, rational system, and generous vision fuel her ascendancy

Billy Bob's Dispatches
THE WORLD THROUGH AN INDEPENDENT LEFT LENS

Her culture and style of governance remain incomprehensible to Western elites.

In 1936, Mao Zedong foretold the future when he prophesied the following: "When China finally wins her independence, then legitimate foreign trading interests will enjoy more opportunity than ever before. The power of production and consumption of 450,000,000 people is not a matter that can remain the exclusive interest of the Chinese, but one that must engage the many nations. Our millions of people, once really emancipated, with their great latent productive possibilities freed for creative activity in every field, can help improve the economy as well as raise the cultural level of the whole world."

In 1945 Mao said “Some people refuse to understand why the Chinese Communists do not fear capitalism but, on the contrary, develop it as much as possible. Our answer is simple: we have to replace foreign imperialist and native feudalist oppression with capitalist development because that is the inevitable course of our economy and because both the capitalist class and the proletariat benefit. What is superfluous is not native capitalism but foreign imperialism and native feudalism. On the contrary, our capitalism is indeed too little. To develop industry, enormous capital is required. Where will it come from? It can only come from two sources: the capital accumulated by the Chinese people themselves and from foreign loans, and we must welcome all foreign investments as long as they obey the laws of China and are advantageous to our economy.”

Of course, Mao’s desire to integrate into the global economy was put on hold due to the unilaterally imposed Western trade embargo and the Sino-Soviet split.  But Mao did not give up on his vision of global economic integration and he continually raised the issue of ending the trade embargo during the 136 ambassadorial level meetings that took place in Geneva (1954-1958) and later Warsaw (1958-1970).  Mao’s efforts finally paid off as Nixon and Kissinger officially agreed to end the Western trade embargo in 1972.

After Mao’s death, Deng took full advantage of the newly available trade opportunities and re-oriented China’s economy in order to maximize direct foreign investment.  It is nearly impossible to summarize the unprecedented skyrocketing of every conceivable metric that China has achieved over the last several decades, but here are some highlights that may provide some awareness of China’s amazing accomplishment:  Wages have tripled every ten years for forty years in a row.  Education spending has doubled every eight years for forty years in a row.  800 million people have been lifted out of poverty (“poverty” as defined by the World Bank).  According to the “Lived Change Index”, between 1990 and 2019, China experienced the highest increase in per-capita GDP of any country on earth (which is even more impressive when one considers China’s large population and the fact that Poland in the number two position, only grew by a factor of nine, while China, in the top spot, grew by more than a factor of thirty!!!).

China’s planned socialist economy did not allow massive slums to sprawl as they always do as an unwanted consequence of capitalist development and economic growth.  Instead, China built hundreds of cities from scratch, including twenty cities that house over a million citizens.  China developed the world's greatest high-speed rail network, they became the world's leading manufacturer of green energy as well as the world’s greatest user of green energy.  China developed a world-class education system that leads the world in the number of patents and published research papers.  Perhaps most importantly, China is working with the developing world and offering them a hand up, instead of a knee on their necks (as is offered by the Western imperialists).  China is helping the under-developed world to develop and is sharing their expertise and know-how, and providing assistance with large infrastructure projects that are desperately needed to improve lives and bring prosperity.  Additionally, China provides low-interest loans that finance, facilitate, and enable, all the development described above.

 China's Industrial Vigor is Revolutionising All Applied Sciences,
Civil Engineering Included

The Chinese have pushed furthest the notion of the city as a product. One of the most important aspects of China’s recent economic development is the profusion of new cities being built from scratch. These aren’t expansions of existing communities but fully master-planned, manufactured centers of economic and social life, often built on newly developed land such as artificial islands or reclaimed desert. On some estimates, China has built more than 600 new cities since the establishment of the People’s Republic in 1949. Some of these manufactured cities have been extraordinary successes. Shenzhen rose from a rice paddy into one of the world’s most dynamic metropolises—its economy is the size of South Korea’s—in just three or four decades. But even Shenzhen pales, compared with the plans for Xiongan in Hebei province, a new city that covers over 770 square miles, more than twice the size of New York City. (Bruno Maçães, The City in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction, City-Journal, Autumn 2019)

The West is not happy with any of this.  After ending the trade embargo in 1972, the West had hoped to affect regime change culminating in the failed color revolution in Tiananmen Square.  The West has worked tirelessly to infiltrate China’s political apparatus and get their political puppets in power in order to implement policies that benefit Western interests.  This is the basic MO of Western imperialism, but it has failed in China.  Wikileaks reported on a leaked diplomatic cable that laments Xi Jinping is “untainted by corruption”, “Mr. Clean”, “low key, humble, and self-effacing”, “a good guy”, and ideologically “redder than red”.  None of these traits make Xi someone that the West can use to further their own malign interests, quite the contrary in fact.  This is why Xi is reviled in the Western press and presented as a dictatorial human rights abuser who routinely harvests the organs of religious folks, when he’s not selling fentanyl to Appalachia or genociding Uyghurs in Xinjiang.

But, Mao’s vision has come true and it is coming more true with each passing day, much to the consternation of the West.  Western hegemony is being destroyed by a rising China and there is no clear solution to this problem. Since China is so integral to the global economy, it will not be easy to sanction or isolate China economically. Since the Chinese market is so lucrative, it is difficult to get greedy Western capitalists on board with the policy of decoupling urged by Western strategists.  You may remember how Trump was mercilessly mocked by the entirety of the liberal press when he tweeted:

In order to attain a decoupling from China, Biden has adopted a more sophisticated approach.  Unlike Trump, Biden has harnessed his media allies to promote the manufactured narrative that Western strategists hope will help achieve China’s economic isolation.  This new strategy is predicated on the hypocritical trashing of decades of “free trade” rhetoric as well as decades of faux environmentalism and a pretend desire to increase our use of renewable energy including solar panels, batteries, and electric cars.  In true Orwellian fashion, the Biden administration is trusting that everyone will simply forget about the decades of propaganda extolling free trade as being in the best interest of everyone because it lowers prices, breeds competition, and benefits consumers by increasing access to goods.  We are to immediately forget that fossil fuels will soon render our planet unlivable.  As imperialist imperatives change so do their narratives.

The new buzzword is “overproduction”.  China has “broken the rules” by subsidizing its green energy industries.  Of course, this is just more hypocrisy as Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act, signed into law in August of 2022, invested a trillion dollars into our own domestic green energy industries.  All of a sudden things have changed 180 degrees.  Free trade is now bad, green energy is now bad, and subsidizing domestic industries is now bad (except for when we do it).

So, China must be sanctioned with tariffs because they have “overproduced” green energy which has caused the price of solar panels, batteries, and electric cars to be “too low”.  There is now “too much” green energy.  China has “overproduced” green energy.  It’s almost as if every US household has all their useful surfaces covered in solar panels and yet there are extra solar panels just lying around the yard and on the side of the house cluttering everything up.  There’s only one solution to this clutter caused by China’s “overproduction”.  Biden is putting a 100% tariff on Chinese electric cars so US consumers will have to pay double what they otherwise would.  Solar panels from China will cost US consumers 50% more than what they otherwise would.  So much for promoting free trade and green energy.  It’s almost as if Biden doesn’t give a fuck about the interests of the working class and is solely interested in making sure China responds with tariffs of their own.  And Biden and his media allies are prepared to spin the most hypocritical, irrational, and counter-intuitive narratives, in order to implement their imperialist strategy.

My guess is that Biden hopes to stoke a trade war and that he is ready with additional tariffs and sanctions immediately following China’s response to this current round of tariffs.  In this way, Biden hopes to go back and forth with escalating rounds of tariffs and sanctions, eventually making it unprofitable for Western companies to do business in China.  What else can Western strategists do when greedy capitalists who have no class consciousness or concern for the imperatives of imperialism refuse to decouple from China’s immensely lucrative market?  Initiate a trade war and make sure that it becomes unprofitable to do business with China, seems like their only option.

It may be their only option, but it is a truly bad option, and it is definitely not in the interest of the Western working class whose consumption will be severely curtailed, probably worse than during COVID.  The low price of Chinese goods has represented a substantive, some would say indispensable, economic subsidy gifted by the Chinese workers to the US population across the board, especially the poorer sectors, a factor that has certainly helped to stabilise the frail US economy and spared many families from the ravages of indigence. Additionally, the speed of the green energy revolution will also be tremendously slowed down and reliance on fossil fuels will remain unnecessarily high.  This is just a bad policy and bad strategy for an empire in decline that lacks the competence necessary to shift from confrontation to cooperation.  Indeed by choosing confrontation the US ruling cliques show their appalling mediocrity and political myopia by not properly appreciating the political pacification benefits derived from assuring a decent consumption floor to the beleaguered working class. Until this fundamental shift takes place, and civilised collaboration replaces economic war, the ruling Western Establishment will continue to escalate its violent, immoral, and counterproductive efforts to maintain its supremacy while asking the global working class to make all the sacrifices on their behalf.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR / SOURCE

Editor-at-large Billy Bob is a dedicated anti-imperialist activist and blogger. He hosts the Blowback roundatable.  You can reach him at his Facebook page HERE.

First iteration 20 May, 2024