Socialist Party Australia - Is China the 'bogey man' of Europe?

Recently the Belgian section of the CWI – the LSP – received a question from a school student for a paper, about our position on China and the relationship between China and Europe. As a small party, the Belgian LSP doesn't always have the time and means to answer at length all the questions they receive in relation to school papers. But the question on China comes up quite a lot. So we have produced an answer which we have made available online.
By Peter Delsing, Linkse Socialistiche Partij (CWI Belgium).Taken from chinaworker.org

The student had to ask a political party the following question : Is China a bogey man for Europe?

This question undoubtedly arises because of the recent discussion about the import of cheap Chinese textile, which threatens to lead to a big loss of jobs in the countries of the European Union. Besides this, there has also been, for a time already, the question of the 'offshoring' of companies. Bosses in Western Europe threaten to partially or completely move their companies to China. The argument they use for this is that the wage costs are allegedly too high in Belgium, and that production in China would be much more profitable.

The economically dominant - as socialists we would say ’imperialist’ - countries in the US and the European Union also fear that China with its growing industrial might will try to strenghten its military position and strategic influence in Asia and the rest of world. Before we enter into these questions, we would like to go back to the way the question was put. Is China the bogey man of Europe? As socialists it would be difficult to answer this question directly. Are the Chinese workers and poor peasants the ’bogey man’ of workers and youth in Europe? We don't think so. Is the Chinese ruling elite, the oppressive bureaucrats of the regime, a ’bogey man’ for workers and youth here? This is already a different story. We think that everything which weakens the Chinese working class, also weakens the working class in Belgium and the rest of the world. An injury to one is an injury to all. Capitalism is a world system, we can only fight it effectively on a world scale.

Neo-liberalism

The question becomes even more complex when you consider the term ’Europe’. According to us also here the interests of the ruling politicians and bosses are not the same as those of the majority of the population. The last 30 years the crisis of this system has led in Belgium to a lowering of the real purchasing power of working class people, a destruction of stable contracts which were replaced by temporary and flexible ones, mass structural unemployment (17% are touched by this, wholly or partially, according to official figures), privatisations and growing poverty.

Europe? in general does not exist, according to the LSP. It is an empty abstraction, which is contradictory at its core. Unfortunately the media sometimes consciously try to use these kind of abstract, empty terms: to make it ideologically clear that there simply cannot exist anything else but the current ?Europe?. This is supposed to mean: the European Union which is a capitalist instrument of the European bosses and the politicians which defend their interests. You can have the current model - if you want with the edges a bit ’softened at the margins’ - or you have a big frightening Nothing. This is the picture they constantly try to convince us of. It can certainly not be a Europe of mass, radical movements of workers and youth against the current European Union. Think of the recent, massive ?no? in France against the neoliberal European Constitution. Who represents ?Europe? here? The conservative politicians or the ?no?-voters? What it certainly cannot be - according to the established way of speaking - is a Europe of workers' states, based on the democratic planning of the wealth of society.

Karl Marx had a name for this false representation of social relations as ’fixed’ and ’independent of our will’: fetishism. In the official capitalist media, consciously or unconsciously, work a lot of ’fetishists’. If ’Europe’ does not exist, what does exist? According to us there exists a ruling capitalist class which dominates the state (politically, the judiciary and with relation to repressive elements as the police, the army, etc.). What also exists is a working class with fundamentally opposed interests to those of the capitalists.

There also exists a ruling ideological apparatus in the form of newspapers, TV (mostly also capitalist companies), education (which today is controlled by parties which defend the current unequal system), etc. which tries to prevent the majority of the population looking at the world like this. This does not mean that every journalist or teacher goes along with this like that. It is, however, the framework in which they are supposed to work from above: from the ruling political parties 'the management' of the media companies. More and more, however, the daily propaganda of this system is in conflict with the concrete problems and experiences of workers and youth under a capitalism in crisis.

Bureaucratic system

So the question which was asked falls into different parts. Is the Chinese ruling elite a 'bogey man' for the ruling elite in Europe? Yes and no. In a competitive capitalist system each government is forced to create the best possible conditions for capitalist investment in its own country, or for its own companies in other countries (in order to conquer new profitable markets). This constantly brings the different capitalist leaders into conflict with one another.

In China the bureaucratic leadership - organised in the 'Communist Party' - has today made its choice to leave the state ownership of companies behind, and make the transition to a capitalist economy based on private property of the big companies. The CWI has never considered China to be a genuine democratic workers' state. It was not real socialism. A guerilla army with a stalinist (totalitarian, not democratically controlled) leadership took power in 1949. Balancing between the different classes - peasants, capitalists and workers - this leadership established a bureaucratically controlled planned economy. Power in 'communist China' has never been with democratically elected councils of workers and poor peasants. However, living standards through state ownership of the economy were able to rise for a certain period. This despite the many failures - often with barbaric consequences - of the autocratically planned economy under Mao.

From the middle of the 1970s this bureaucratic system began to strain its limits. The leadership then made the decision to introduce market elements in agriculture. (Peasants were able to sell a part of their production on markets, the other part which they sold to the state was bought by the latter at higher prices. In this way production was able to rise and peasants had more money to introduce new techniques.

In fact, this development happened because of a resetting of priorities in the stalinist planned economy, which had always favoured the development - on a bureacratic basis - of industry more than agriculture. It was a recognition of the failure not of planning as such, but of planning on a rigid, undemocratic, stalinist basis. Under a democratic workers' state, with an internationalist approach, agricultural production would be able to rise on the basis of genuine involvement of the peasants in the planning of production, setting democratically discussed and decided examples of collective farming, state aid for new technology, support for the spread of socialist workers' and peasants governments in the rest of the world and international economic co-operation with them...

Because this route wasn't going to be taken by a stalinist, priviliged leadership, the only other alternative was the introduction of market elements, with all this entailed. Peasant incomes rose in the beginning, but also the gap between more well off and poor peasants grew in the 1980's. Significantly, all the talk of the 'wonders of the free market' for China hasn't meant that today they have created with ¾ of its inhabitants - the peasant masses - an internal market which can sustain economic growth in general. The Chinese peasants have become less extremely poor because of the developments of the last 25 years, but not enough to create an internal market. The big majority of peasant families still spend most of their income on basic necessities such as food, clothing, education..

Special Economic Zones

Also in the 1980's Special Economic Zones were selectively created in the coastal areas of China. This was done in conditions which remind you of the superexploitation in Europe in the 19th century. The Chinese bureaucracy used the infrastructure of the planned economy to offer qualified, but low paid workers to foreign capitalists eager to make big profits.

Towards the 1990s the stalinist bureaucracy started with the privatisation of big parts of industry. The bureaucracy in China for a long time had a very hesitant policy in this regard: they had and have a terrible fear of social revolts and uprisings of the Chinese working class, as a consequence of the privatisations. Because of the low, poverty wages and working conditions in China they are capable of producing very cheaply and throwing their products on the world market at very low prices. As a result companies in Europe and the United States - for example in the textile sector - come into problems and the capitalist governments begin to threaten with limits on Chinese imports, taxes on Chinese products, etc. The CWI thinks that workers and youth shouldn't let themselves be swept along this path of protectionist measures.

Companies which threaten with offshoring, mass redundancies or closure should receive a different answer. Workers in the sector and the region should be mobilised to build a relationship of forces against the bosses. If necessary the whole of the labour movement should be mobilised: tomorrow there will be other companies which threaten to do the same, given the crisis of this system. Through strikes and demonstrations the power of the organised working class should be shown and the demand for nationalisation, under workers' control, of companies which threaten with lay offs or offshoring should be posed. Not the ’realism' - read: the profits - of the bosses is important. What is, are the needs of the working class: the majority of the population.

So yes, given the competitive character of capitalism there is a conflict between the ruling elite in Europe, and also the US, and in China. At a certain stage, if the workers movement doesn't show a way out of the crisis on a socialist basis, this can also lead to military conflicts. However, deep and fundamental defeats of the working class in the western world would be necessary before the capitalists can throw us into a new World War. Luckily, we aren't in such a situation yet.

On the other hand, there is also a shared interest between the Chinese ruling elite and the elites in the rest of the capitalist world, directed against the interests of workers and youth world wide. In China as in Europe the rulers fear insurrectionary movements of working people and youth. During the massive movement of Chinese workers, poor peasants and small traders in 1925-27 - which confronted the western imperialist powers which were trying to control parts of China - the Chinese capitalists saw that their struggle against the Chinese workers was becoming more fundamental than the one against their imperialist rivals (for example Great Britain). They suppressed with brute violence their own working class, when it came into open revolt in several cities and demanded fundamental social gains.

Workers’ unity

Is there a conflict between the working people of Europe and those of China? No, off course not. In Europe as well as in China working people and youth are confronted with the exploitation of capitalism. In Europe the neoliberal attacks have been going on for 25 years: lowering of real wages of workers; a decline in the purchasing power of the benefits for unemployment, pensions, invalidity... stable contracts which are replaced by temporary, flexible jobs (certainly for young people); mass privatisations...

In China there is still a relatively high growth of the economy, which however comes from a much lower level. But this growth is threatened by overproduction in many sectors of the economy, mountains of debt, an international economic crisis. Also in China we see that workers want a change in what is often an almost slave existence. Only in some larger cities a middle layer has been able to develop which has seen a significant rise in its income. But also this middle layer will be forced in the direction of struggle once the Chinese economy slows down, and together with the world economy gets sucked into an economic abyss.

Socialists in Europe encourage Chinese workers and youth in their struggle for better wages, democratic rights, decent housing, etc. Concrete solidarity action can be organised with strike movements in China, by left wing trade unionists elsewhere in the world. Moreover, we must try to build in China, an enormously important country in world relations, independent unions, a large and democratic workers party and a real socialist, revolutionary current. Armed with a programme for a fundamental transformation of society in a socialist sense no power on the planet can resist the Chinese and world working class.