Here are my reflections on China following my attendance of the 13th World Socialist Socialism Forum in Beijing, China on 28th November, 2023.
The Forum’s theme was “Building a Community with Shared Future for Humanity and the Development of World Socialism”.
I also attended the International Conference in FuzZhou, China on December, 3, 2023 on the theme “Innovative Value of the New Form of Human Advancement and World Socialism.”
I lastly attended the Symposium on the theme “Chinese Path to Modernization and Marxism in the 21st Century” at Xiamen University (XMU), Xiamen, China on December 6, 2023 and participated in the Xiamen Exchange Program for the 13th World Socialist Forum organized by the Academy of Marxism, the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and Huaqiao University at Xiamen, China from December 4-7, 2023.
I also visited Fujian Polytechnic Normal University where we had an interactive discussion with local leaders of the Communist Party of China. I was able to identify six areas which I considered pertinent and it is these six areas I present my reflections on.
1.0 The Concept of “Common Prosperity and modernizing the Chinese Way”.
The concept of common prosperity means joint wealth accumulation of the whole Chinese nation. The phrase can be traced to Mao Tse Tung who used it in 1953. Deng Xiaoping also in October 1985 said “at first, a certain part of the people will get richer, then gradually more and more areas will be involved and then common prosperity will be achieved”.
The phrase has now been reinvigorated following the conclusion of the ‘Poverty Eradication Campaign’ in which the government ended absolute poverty to more than 600 million Chinese citizens.
The government streamlined the private enterprise and using the slogan “tertiary redistribution” where big corporations like Alibaba, Tencent, Pinduoduo, Jingdong, Bytedance and so on, were compelled to pay massive amounts of money to the “common Prosperity Fund”.
As a result of this progressive initiative, common prosperity has led to the reduction of social inequality, let to the creation of a strong middle class and the creation of a strong state sector or parastatals using the “double circulation” strategy that have resulted in a creating an independent and self- sustaining national economy in China amidst the decoupling policies of both the Democrats and Republican Administrations of the United States.
The idea is to modernize and reach new heights in the new era and not to copy and paste western standards that the word modernization seems to imply.Xi Jinping conceptualized Chinese modernization as: “the modernization of a huge population … It is he modernization of common prosperity for all … It is the modernization of material and cultural-ethical advancement —-it is the modernization of harmony between humanity and nature … It is the modernization of peaceful development.”
The idea is to modernize and reach new heights in the new era and not to copy and paste western standards that the word modernization seems to imply.
2.0 The theory of “Building Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.”This theory can be said to have emerged in 1978 when I first visited China as a member of the UNIP Youth League then, following the defeat of the Gang of Four and the emergence of Deng Xiaoping who proposed new reforms.
Later Jiang Zemin put forward the ideas of the “Three Represents” and still later, Hu Jintao proposed the scientific outlook of developing the concept.
Xi Jinping has continued the reforms, devising a strategic plan of building a Morden Socialist State and adapting Marxism to the conditions in China.
I learned that China plan that up to 2035, the country will finalize modernization and build a prosperous civilization.
From 2035 to 2050, China will be transformed into a great Morden socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced, harmonious and beautiful.
The context of these ambitions were observed by Xi Jinping who said: “The world is undergoing major development transformation and adjustment, but peace and development remain the call of our day.
The trends of global multipolarity, economic globalization, IT applications and cultural diversity are surging; changes in the global governance system and the international order are speeding up; Countries are increasingly becoming interconnected and interdependent; Relative international forces are becoming more balanced; nevertheless, peace and development remain irreversible trends.”
3.0 Ideological and Theoretical Doctrine of the CPCChina wishes to adapt Marxism to the conditions in China. They are developing Chinese Marxism under new conditions alive to the fact that Marxism is not a dogma but a guide to action.
In 1938, Mao Tse Tung had called for the Sinization of Marxism. Later in 1945, Mao Tse Tung called for the unification of Marxist-Leninist theory with the practice of the Chinese Revolution.
Xi Jinping and the CPC have been advocating the use of the Marxist Scientific Outlook a and methods to solve China’s challenges, to remain committed to dialectical and historical materialism, to search for truth in facts and progress together with the times.
Furthermore, China has been calling for the integration of Marxism with China’s fine traditional culture that stretch from Confucius to Sun Yat Sen.
They have identified several ancient formulas that have a historical origin in Chinese culture and want to unite them with Marxism. Some of these formulas include the following: pushing common good for all; regarding people as the foundation of the state; governing by virtue; discarding the outdated in favour of the new; selecting officials on the basis of merit; promoting harmony between humanity and nature; pursing self-improvement, embracing the world with virtue, acting in good faith and being friendly to others and fostering good neighbourliness and so on.
And for China, the manifestation of these good ideas have found expression in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). Xi Jinping said: ”There is no end to theoretical innovation …. We must dare to say what has never been said and do what has never been done and we must use new theory to guide new practice.”
China has not abandoned Deng Xiaoping’s conclusion that peace and development are the basic trends of our time. The CPC still believe that there is a contradiction between peace and development on one hand and hegemony, despotism, extortive robbery and oppression of the weak on the other hand.
The Chinese now view that Chinese tradition and culture as a source of developing the ideological and theoretical doctrine of the CPC.
4.0 Foreign Policy
In the area of foreign policy, Deng Xiaoping had adopted the strategy of concealing China’s power and building China’s strength. Hu Jintao introduced the theory of “China’s peaceful rise”. Xi Jinping advocates that China must play a central role in global affairs. Xi Jinping said: “Chinese modernization is the modernization of peaceful development. In pursing modernization, China will not tread the path of war, colonization and plunder of some countries. The brutal and bloodstained path of enrichment at the expense of others caused great suffering for the people of developing countries. We will stand firmly on the right side of history …. Dedicated to peace, development, cooperation and mutual benefit, we will strive to safeguard world peace and development as we pursue our own development, and we will make greater contributions to world peace and development through our own development.”
Deng Xiaoping was opposed to China assuming the burden of world leadership. Xi Jinping appears to be coordinating international status and foreign policy as seen or manifested in the ideas of “peaceful rise”, the Silk Road Economic Belt, the Maritime Silk Road which also have now been integrated in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) policy building the “common destiny community for China and Humanity and so on.
The objective of China’s foreign policy is to contribute to the great rejuvenation of China where now, it has more than 181 diplomatic relations with foreign states, signed 113 Partnership Agreements with foreign countries, and since 2913, China has signed 206 BRI Agreements with 149 countries and 32 International Organizations.
It was evident from my discussion with Chinese academics and policy makers that China believed that the world political situation can only be stabilized when the per capita gross domestic product in China equals half that of the United States of America and when the overall size of the Chinese economy is double the American GDP.
Only then will the US stop blackmailing and bullying China because the US will not have an advantage in technology and China’s economy will be twice as large. Japan was given as a good example for this perspective. China overtook Japans GDP in 2010.
Initially, Japan was angry and raised anti- China sentiments which were proved baseless.
In time, Japan was forced to make good its relations with China. Why? Because China’s economy was 280% bigger than Japan’s. Common sense showed that it was profitable and in Japan’s interest to cooperate with China and stabilize their bilateral relations.. China is already the largest market. It is a leader in volume of foreign trade in manufactured articles – over K6 trillion in 2021 – and the US and the EU or any other country on earth can ignore China if they want to preserve jobs and maintain economic wealth in their jurisdictions.
5.0 Economic Issues
Within the last ten years, China’s GDP has more than doubled rising to about $17 Trillion. In 2019, China’s per capita GDP based on purchasing power parity (PPP) reached $14,000. Now its’s share based on PPP is 18% outpacing the USA at 16%. China’s grain harvest of 682 million metric tons showed that China was food secure. China possesses the world’s largest gold and foreign reserves.
It has built a network of high speed rail and highways. It spends over 2.4% of GDP on R&D second only to the US but has the largest number of scientists in the sector. China’s life expectancy is 78.2 years and is 53rd place in the Human Development index. China adds 13 million people to its labour force annually and over 95% of the country’s population is serviced by social insurance schemes.
The rural and urban has generally merged and the housing question where people live in overcrowded dirty slums has been solved with the state insuring that all Chinese have adequate shelter.It is without doubt that until 2035,
China has the potential to grow at the rate of 8% even as it will be constrained by circumstances such as demographic challenges of an aging population, environmental problems such as carbon neutrality obligations and technological piracy and sanctions from the western countries.
However, even if we postulate China’s growth at about 4% between 2035-2059, China will still outpace the GDP of the US.
Assuming a 6% average annual growth, China’s GDP will be 136 Trillion Yuan in 2025, 185.3 Trillion Yuan in 2030, over 200 Trillion Yuan in 2032 and 247.8 Trillion in 2035 which is about $35.4 Trillion using the current exchange rate. China is bound to catch up and surpass the USA between 2025 and 2027 if the GDP rates of the USA are maintained in the next ten years.6.0 Aim of China and the CPCChina wants to create a high level socialist market economy, a socialism with Chinese characteristics.
Public property ownership is the main form of property ownership which shall exist simultaneously with other forms of property such as private, mixed-property, individual enterprises, and SMEs.
In other words, a mixed economy.
Distribution according to labour will be the main form alongside other forms of distribution, raise incomes of low-income earners using several income regulation devices. They will continue reforming the state sector to ensure that it is competitive.
They will continue developing the key economic sectors that determine the country’s development prospects such as machine building and engineering, space research, transportation, the Internet and AI, the digital economy and new types of energy and so on.
In the rural areas, they have continued to increase labour productivity, ensuring food security, develop rural towns and solve the challenges of rapid urbanization such as unemployment, over-crowding, social security, pollution and so on.
The state also continues to co-ordinate Regional Development to insure that no Chinese nationality is left behind, enhance the role of science and technology and innovation and generally raise the standard of living of the Chinese people.
These are my reflections following my visit to China, a socialist pathway worth studying further by all humanity.
Mbita Chitala PhD
Lusaka, Zambia 26 December, 2023Email: Mbitachitala @yahoo.co.uk; Mobile: +260 976030398
