It is interesting to read the debate among Chinese on Liu Xiaobo being awarded the Nobel Peace Prize. Although most liberals welcome this as encouragement for fighting for democracy in China, there are people who claim that Liu is not the proper candidate for the prize. They have a loud voice especially among those who are exiled in the west. In a petition letter to the The Norwegian Nobel Committee, a group of exiled dissidents wrote that they thought Liu is not the appropriate candidate for the prize because he has not been standing firm in upholding human rights, and has even practically cooperated with the authorities by inappropriately praising the CCP’s human rights rhetoric.
On the other hand, on the Utopia (Wuyouzhixiang) website, which is well known for being associated with some of the ‘new leftists’, articles were posted echoing the authorities’ attack on Liu, suggesting that Liu is an agent of US imperialism. In one of these articles, the author Xibeifeng denies that Liu’s sentences has anything to do with freedom of speech, arguing that Liu’s advocacy for Charter 08 is as criminal as a drunk driver demanding freedom to violate the rules of traffic.
Those Who Act are Spared, Those Who Talk are Indicted
Not everyone who criticizes Liu share Xibeifeng’s crude defense of the authorities’ absolute intolerance though. Two professors in Hong Kong, Barry Sautman and Yan Hairong, agree that ‘there was no need to imprison Liu’. ‘Rather, there has only been a need to bring to light Liu’s self-proclaimed goals. If most Chinese, especially the non-elite majority, knew about his prescribed path for China, they would turn away from him as from someone with ignoble things on offer.’ By this they mean that Liu’s pro-US and pro-market position is not something beneficial to the Chinese people.
In a certain sense it is true. We do not entirely share the Norwegian Nobel Committee’s statement on its decision to award the prize to Liu. The Committee praises China for having ‘achieved economic advances to which history can hardly show any equal’, but regrets that .it is in breach of several international agreements on human rights and also its own constitution concerning these rights. We must say that anyone who praises China’s economic achievement without at the same time qualifying this with the fact that labor’s share of national income has dropped 15 percent in the last 20 years for the benefit of profit, a necessary outcome being political repression concerning workers’ right to association and to strike, cannot be said to be a real friend of the Chinese working people who constitute the majority of the population.
Further down the statement praises Liu as having been ‘a strong spokesman for the application of fundamental human rights also in China. He took part in the Tiananmen protests in 1989; he was a leading author behind Charter 08, the manifesto of such rights in China’. We have written some time ago that Charter 08, while supportable whenever it advocates basic civil liberties, is severely limited by its call for the privatization of farm land and further privatization of state owned enterprises. This, along with the obvious negligence of labor rights, leads us to believe that the Charter is far from being one for the working people.
Sautman and Yan pointed out the same limitation regarding Liu, but they lost sense of proportion in their accusation. If Liu’s advocacy for privatization should be criticized, then by logic the CCP must be treated more harshly for actually pushing through two gigantic waves of privatization — first most state and collectively owned enterprises, resulting in more than 50 million workers being dismissed, then a second wave of privatization which targets urban lands, resulting in price hikes in the property market which most people cannot afford. While Liu boldly calls for privatization, but without the power and money to implement it, it has been the CCP which has acted boldly but silently (privatization is still a banned word in China). Curiously Sautman and Yan do not criticize the CCP. If they do it is just to remark that ‘there was no need to imprison Liu’; in other words the CCP’s only error was having taken a slightly superfluous step. One may wonder if there is more miserable misjudgment than this.
The same goes for their criticism of Liu’s support of the US war in Iraq. In their second article published in the Guardian, they accused Liu’s ‘stand for war not peace’. We do not share Liu’s position on the Iraq war, but again our criticism must be fair. While his support of the war carries no weight at all both in China and the international community, the Chinese government, with its power to veto, abstained from the vote in the UN Security Council in 1991, which thus practically credited the US and its allies with UN legitimacy to go to war against Iraq. It was done in the sacred name of expelling the invader from Kuwait, but only resulted in allowing another invader — the US – to enjoy an even more dominant role in the region, which led to the second Gulf war in 2003. If Liu should be indicted for his views supporting the US war effort, should not the Chinese government also be criticized for its action?
‘Democracy is Bad for You’
What is more troubling is that Sautman and Yan went even further when they condemned Liu ‘who has long been financed by the US government’s National Endowment for Democracy, proposes an instant shift to electoral democracy as the solution to China’s problems.’ We do not share Liu’s pro-American government position, but it has no bearing on the question of whether ‘electoral democracy’ is desirable or not. Sautman and Yan see electoral democracy as bad for China because ‘states that have made the transition to electoral democracy at low levels of wealth (and China is still very much a developing country) have low levels of development and considerable instability… In many cases the transition to electoral democracy in developing countries worsens rights.’ In arguing this they are taking the side of the CCP’s continual denial to the Chinese people of basic democratic rights. We believe free elections are a basic right of the Chinese people and the CCP has owed this to the people for too long. Apart from this moral imperative behind the demand for democracy, there is also an issue of political necessity. It is necessary, now more than ever, to put the CCP under democratic control before one can seriously talk about controlling the plundering of public wealth by the bureaucracy. Any attempt in minimizing the importance of advocating democratic rights, including free elections, is objectively justifying the absolutism of the one party state. Sautman and Yan went even further than the CCP indeed; whereas the latter justified its despotic rule by saying that Chinese people do enjoy all rights enshrined in the constitution — an absolutely stupid defense, Sautman and Yan provided the CCP a more sophisticated argument by telling Chinese people that fighting for electoral democracy now jeopardizes their own interests. This is especially harmful in a China context where awareness of popular sovereignty and democratic rights is at its all time low since the 1911 revolution.
Re-Colonization a Real Threat?
A common trait which runs through those who are associated with the Utopia is the ever stronger statist and nationalist arguments. They are statist because they fall into the false dichotomy of state versus market, hence in opposing, rightly, the privatization of public assets they come to embrace the state as the only viable vehicle to fight privatization — not only the state in general but first and foremost the one party state, despite the fact that it is this very state which pushes forward privatization in the first place. They are nationalist, not only because they allege that the supposed value of national interest overrides all other values, be it working class interest or human rights in general, but also because they wrongly judge the present situation. They often argue, in the light of the 150 years of contemporary Chinese history when China was invaded and humiliated by imperialism, that the greatest danger at all times for China now is the danger of re-colonization by Western or Japanese influence, not only in an economic sense but also a political sense — hence they echo the CCP’s repeated alarm regarding ‘color revolution’. There is a grain of truth in this argument, but only a grain. There has been features of dependent accumulation in China’s economy since the 1990’s, in relation to Western and Japanese economy, and correspondingly there has been growing sections of the bureaucracy and the new rich who have acquired features of a comprador mentality. However, since 2003, the bureaucracy finally settled on a decision for a more independent economic growth, with special emphasis on ‘autonomous innovation’. Features of dependent accumulation in the economy still exist, but are not dominant. For instance, the 2 trillion US dollar exchange reserves which China accumulates are both a sign of dependent accumulation and a factor in the rise of China. It is a sign of dependent accumulation because it is a result of over-reliance on exports, made possible only by surrendering China’s resources and surplus value to the West and Japan. However it also enables the CCP to import ambitiously modern foreign techniques and to enjoy a strong bargaining position in relation to global competition. Henceforth there is even less chance that China will be re-colonized economically in the strict sense.
If China had not been colonized, as India was, between 1840 and 1949 when it was much weaker, it would be equally difficult for Western countries and Japan to dominate China economically now, in face of a China which is much stronger. The party state draws its strength from China’s contemporary glorious history of anti-imperialist struggle, including fighting the US in Korea. It also benefited from the achievement of Mao’s enormous industrialization drive in a vast country, which has given the party state exceptional power to bargain with the developed countries since the reform period. The first factor determines the party state’s deep seated distrust against foreign influence, especially when it targets Chinese people, while the second gives the CCP enough power to fend off foreign competition, politically and economically. Hence the CCPs opening up of the market to foreign capital is always restrained by the need for the maintenance of its grip over the society. Although attacked by the nationalists for abandoning Mao’s self reliance strategy, the top leaders really never went that far; on the contrary, despite internal squabbles and vacillation, they have been keen for China to develop its own domestic players in all key industries. The CCP has promoted a second wave of even more rapid industrialization, outstanding if not exceptional among the so called transitional economies, and put itself as the ultimate ruler of the most strategic industries. In order to gain a more autonomous position for its industries, the party state often go one step further by developing its own industry standards, often in defiance of foreign capital and its governments, from a VCD, mobile phone, Wifi to a credit card standard,.
The self interest of the bureaucracy also determines its decision for a relatively autonomous path of development. Increasing sections of the bureaucracy clenched its teeth at the scenario where huge profit were garnered by foreign capital; they vow to seize back at least a part of this profit for themselves. With the help of the alignment of exceptional advantages peculiar to China (which we have discussed in earlier articles ), they succeeded, even if within limit.
China is deeply integrated within a global economy; hence its autonomous path of development must be highly qualified by this. There is also no doubt that China is now encountering a bottle neck for its growth model in the midst of global crisis, but how much it will hamper China’s rise still remains to be seen. Even with a slower rate of growth China is already a great power. As an economy ranking second in the world, any talk to suggest that China is under threat from economic re-colonization makes no sense.
The major threat for Chinese working people today is less re-colonization than the plundering of the wealth by the ruling party and a break- down of social fibers resulting from this. To argue the otherwise is simply providing support to the party in its attempt to divert attention from domestic corruption to an alleged re-colonization threat.
As to the threat of a color revolution, again it is grossly exaggerated. There are no signs at all that the US has enough support in China so as to put a color revolution in China on the agenda, nor is it true that the party state is so weak that even the smallest political liberalization will end up in the CCP losing power. Despite economic decentralization since the market reform, politically the CCP’s grip over society only grows stronger. There was and is no real civil society, no real social movement, no organized opposition. If China ever has a color revolution like those in Kyrgyzstan in a distant future, it is not because of people like Liu Xiaobo or because of free elections, but because the party state is hated so much by the people that they think any other party taking power will be better than the CCP, hence they are either indifferent to its downfall or act to make it happens. So it leads us back to the basic question which the nationalists try to avoid: the chief threat today in China is not foreign aggression, politically or economically, but the CCP dictatorship, a dictatorship which is corrupt to the core but armed to the teeth. It must be noted that it is also a dictatorship which also benefits the US ruling class, without it, it would not have been possible to hold back both wages and the Chinese workers movement for so long.
The debate between the liberals who support Liu Xiaobo and the nationalists is essentially a debate of either Washington or the Chinese party state. For us working people this is a false choice.
Au Loong Yu, December 7, 2010.
Further reading
- Liu Xiaobo huojiang shi xinzhiminzhuyi zai zhongguo zouxiang zhibian de biaozhi (Liu Xiaobo being Awarded with the Peace Prize Signifies Neo-Colonialism in China Now Reaches Qualitative Changes) , http://www.wyzxsx.com/Article/Class4/201010/190345.htm
- Liu Xiaobo Deserves an Ig Nobel Peace Prize?South China Morning Post, Oct. 12, 2010
- A Human Right Charter that Excludes the Working People, http://www.worldlabour.org/eng/node/36
http://www.mg.co.za/article/2010-10-25-liu-xiaobo-stands-for-war-not-peace
- China: End of a Model or the Birth of a New One?http://newpolitics.mayfirst.org/node/88
- See also Post MFA era and the Rise of China, http://www.asienhaus.de/public/archiv/post-mfa-era-china.pdf
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20 Comments
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`We believe free elections are a basic right of the Chinese people.’
That is an open policy for counter revolution. Are you for mobilising the working class against the bureaucracy or the petty bourgeois masses and bureaucracy against the working class? If you are to encourage a democratic movement you’d better give it a program for political revolution and put the working class at its head not give it a program for democratic counter-revolution which in China will result almost immediately in a regime of naked violence (fascist) which will smash communism and any independent working class politics with the utmost brutality for decades to come.
David, this article was written by a comrade of ours in China, so you may not get a quick repky from Au. There are not many people who would say that China is still a workers’ state. But who do should say that the fight for free elections, in the workplaces, cooperatives and localities, would be a huge step forward in the fight for workers’ power.
But both those who think China is a workers’ state and those who think that capitalism is dominant there should agree that’s the bureaucracy which is the pro-capitalist force in China. Ordinary workers cannot join the Communist party. It’s a meritocratic elite. Therefore the development of open democracy would be in the interests of working people.
I’m sorry but that is as mealy mouthed a response as one could get. What is your program? What does `open democracy’ mean? A bourgeois parliament? Who is to lead the fight against the bureaucracy the working class or the petty bourgeoisie? If the former what is your program if the latter you must know that the collapse of the Chinese workers state, however deformed it is by the self-serving bureaucracy, will result fascism, war lordism and China itself will be dismembered to the geo-political benefit of imperialism.
Just to broaden the terms a little. If you believe free elections are a basic right of the Chinese people you probably feel the same about the North Korean people in which case given that you have a very vague notion of this democracy will you be supporting any US-backed effort by S Korea to annex N Korea, with the connivance of the Chinese Stalinists, in the name of democracy?
Open democracy within the context of a genuine workers’ party makes perfect sense. David, you deliberately equate any talk of “democracy” with the capitalist and imperialist variety found in so-called Western democracies, where money remain king, and where a vote in a ballot box changes nothing. But s genuine workers’ democracy means exactly that – a democracy where all the workers are king, and where a true workers’ state could develop.
So don’t be mealy-mouthed about the workers, David!
There is no ‘either/or’ position.Standing with Chinese working people in the fight for full democratic rights against the party bureaucracy AND against the designs of the US regime should be the consistent position maintained by socialists.
???????: I would suggest then that when your organisation writes about democracy in regard of China it is a bit more specific about what it means. The article looks like bet hedging or deliberately vague.
Damien: what do you mean by full democratic rights? I don’t think you know. As for standing against the designs of the US regime will your position be neither Washington nor China in the event of a US or South Korean invasion of North Korea or even China itself? Will there be conditions on your opposition to the designs of the US regime even though its stated aim will be to bring democratic rights to the Chinese people?
David, the position of the Fi on democracy is here: http://internationalviewpoint.org/spip.php?article921 It will give you a good idea of what Damien is talking about when he says democracy. The struggle for democratic rights is a reaction against privatisation. Workers’ democracy in China would obstruct the principle force for privatisation: the Chinese communist party.
Your view is bizzare, in equating a defense of bonapartism with a defence of nationalisations: the bonapartists are the main danger to the living standards of Chinese workers! The idea that the US will invade China to bring democracy is totally bizzare. The US doesn’t care about grassroots democracy in China, or Saudi Arabia. We support China’s right to self-determination, and of course oppose US military actions abroad. SO democracy can only be brought to China through the revolutionary efforts of Chinese workers.
?????? isn’t a member of our organisation. There’s no point making his responsible for our views.
Those who refuse to elaborate a program for proletarian democracy and power in the coming revolution against the usurping Stalinsist/Maoist bureaucracy in China will end up following the petty bourgeois peddlers of liberal democracy to the restoration of capitalism and cheer leading the victory of Chinese fascism, the imperialist dismemberment of China and the return of the Chinese people to semi-colonial humiliation and brutalisation. There is no difference in supporting restoration from within to supporting an imperialist assault from without conducted in the name of the same end.
A mass democratic movement in China must be given a proletarian character. The use of amorphous, ambiguous, non-specifics and generalities about democracy and rights is to play into the hands of the enemies of the Chinese and international working class and ultimately to allow the bureaucracy, the chief danger to the revolution, an opportunity to participate in the spoils of restoration.
Leftists who oppose free elections, they have not understood the democratic rights needed by Chinese ordinary workers and have not understood that the implementation of socialist democracy is also the election system. And we are talking about democracy, not only political democracy, but the socio-economic power into the hands of the people, so that a society is free of oppression and exploitation. Washington and the Chinese capitalists just do not like this kind of democracy.
`Free’ elections means palriamentary democracy, constituent democracy. This is an impossibility in China. The Chinese bourgeoisie is far more scared of the Chinese working class than it is interested in fullfilling any kind of historical mission but free elections will legitimise not just their existence but their prefered means of production. Historically impotent the Chinese bourgeoisie and middle class is in the pockets of the Chinese feudal remnants and foreign imperialists. Free elections in the bourgeois democratic style will mark the overthrow of the 1949 Revolution, not the bureaucracy, and the return of China to semi-colonial status and its dismemberment amongst various warlords and their imperialist backers.
A political revolution against the bureaucracy is urgently required injecting democracy into working class organs of power. Any democracy movement that arises must be headed by the working class with a socialist economic policy and internationalist outlook not the petty bourgeoisie or the fate of China is fascism not democracy and of course the main beneficiaries internally of fascism will be a large section of the bureaucracy itself.
A democracy movement would demand the release of all political prisoners of course but it would reject the pseudo democratic, imperialist-inspired proposals of Liu Xiaobo.
The title is a false dichotomy: the choice is not between Washington and the Party state but between political revolution against the bureaucracy and fascism with it(the smashing of all workers organs old and new however decrepit and the dismemberment of China by imperialism and its internal allies).
When a mass democratic movement arises with working class participation and leadership it will throw up alternative organs of government. It will be necessary to demand that power be turned over to these not that an assembly is erected over its head to legitimise the bourgeois dismantling of China.
David, I am glad to see you it that way: the working class’s demand for democracy in China can only be successful if it grows over into a revolutionary struggle for workers’ power.
- First, our comrades in China had predicted the restoration of capitalism in China and now they think we are witnessing a second stage of capitalist development in China, namely the development of China as a bureaucratic monopoly capitalism, and an exceptionally strong one at that. It draws its strength not only from an exceptionally successful restoration of capitalism, but also from the 1949 revolution, and along with many advantages unique to China, which makes China’s fast growth and its ultimate rise possible.
- Secondly, because of this, our comrades tend to define China’s capitalism as simultaneously having both features of dependent accumulation and features of relatively autonomous domestic development, which had and will have great impact on the global economy and the balance of power.
- Thirdly, because of point 2, China is now also becoming an important capital-exporting country (comrades are tempted to say it may increasingly acquire the feature of economic dominance over smaller countries, a regional hegemonic power), in addition to its role as global manufacturing player and exporter. This will further sharpen global competition and the race to the bottom for working people.
- Fourthly, surely China also have great weaknesses, and which will increasingly transmit its effect on its further development. A great adjustment, economically and politically, is inevitable in the future. That is why a break from the capitalist road is so essential.
Duncan.
`David, I am glad to see you it that way: the working class’s demand for democracy in China can only be successful if it grows over into a revolutionary struggle for workers’ power.’
What a thoroughly disingenuous response. You talk of `free elections’ then say you mean workers democracy. You spout about this amorphouse struggle for democracy `growing’ over into a revolutionary struggle for workers power but how is that to happen if the revolutionary workers movement doesn’t start out with the demand for workers power and democracy. It is all so wonderfully vague, but of course you already think China is a capitalist state and therefore will support the `democratic’ counter-revolution and its demand for `free’ elections. Bourgeois democracy will mean the restoration of the bourgeois state which will immediately sweep away the `democracy’ that bought it into being and the working class will find it self under the yoke of a fascist regime and the Chinese will find themselves in a dismembered semi-colony.
David, the struggle for democracy in China isn’t amorphous: it’s a number of working class movements for political and economic power. Elections are part of that, and elections should be free. Free elections are not unique to capitalism, and the call for free is elections is not a call for more privatisation. It is a method to oppose privatisation. Socialism can also have free elections: in the workplaces, communities and elsewhere. Our programme for China is not only free elections: that’s why I linked to our resolution on socialist democracy. It’s the key political text from the FI in the last 25 years, and I recommend it to you. Actually the struggle for democratic demands does grow over into the struggle for workers’ power – that is the working’s class’s experience of the democratic revolution. Workers in China call for elections – and other democratic rights in order to defend and extend the few gains remaining from the revolution. There is no threat of external overthrow, or of fascist revolution, in China. Even if there were, defending the bureacratic dictatorship against the working class movement for economic and political democracy would make counterrevolution more likely.
`Workers in China call for elections – and other democratic rights in order to defend and extend the few gains remaining from the revolution.’
Free elections can only mean bourgeois rights. You can’t make your minds up whether China is imperialist, state capitalist or a deformed workers state. Depends on who you are talking to I reckon which is why you use the vague formula of `Free elections’. This is a capitulation to the bureaucracy and internal bourgeois restorationists not to mention the `human rights’ imperialists.
David, you are making little sense. If free elections is a capitulation to the bureaucrats and ‘internal bourgeois restorationists’ (clearly in the ascendancy- to say the least!)please explain what third force is preventing them from happening…
In my opinion, the demand should be for elections to a constituent assembly, which would then decide the constitution. This is a bourgeois democratic demand, but it does not mean that the outcome would be a bourgeois democracy. And it does not preclude putting forward working class demands at the same time – such a free trades unions and an independent workers’ party, along with economic demands and workers’ democracy in what is left of the state sector.
David Ellis should look at history to see what is most likely to happen though, which is that the movement will most likely start with bourgeois democratic demands, whether you consider the parasitic bureaucracy to be presiding over an essentially socialised economy (as in Eastern Europe) or a privatised one (as in Portugal, 1974).
But it is important to settle the issue of the class nature of the Chinese state as well. One test would be to study what it is doing in Africa, where it is trying to get its hands on minerals, oil and agricultural produce, through its own companies. Of course, it is not unique in this, but that is precisely the point…..
Phil, the demand for a constituent assembly is a “bourgeois democratic” demand in the sense that it’s the sort of demand that was raised when the capitalists in Europe revolted against aristocratic power. However, democratic demands that are in the interests of working people are also socialist demands: they are not demands for bourgeois economics, as David suggests.
Clearly David feels that China remains a workers’ state. That’s not the view of our comrades in China. Since the early 1990s, price subsidies for ordinary workers have been eliminated: that process was speeded up when China joined the WTO. Privatisation, including the floating of firms on Chinese and international stock markets, has been widespread. Government now accounts for one-third of GDP. The Chinese state is used to support these privatisised firms, with 80% of the corporate borrowing in China coming from four state-owned banks. However, the state does not own most of the shares in these companies. Most of China’s exports and imports go through foreign-invested companies. Foreign Direct Investment has exploded, up to around 100 billion US dollars a year. There are more than 100 Chinese billionaires. If David feels this still describes a workers’ state — that’s odd but secondary.
The primary question is this: is the anti-bureaucratic struggle for democracy progressive or reactionary? This was the debate, for example, in Poland in 1980 and in Czechoslovakia in 1968 and in Hungary in 1956. In our opinion, the bureaucracy is objectively counterrevolutionary. It is the key force promoting privatisation, repression and imperialism in China. Chinese workers would not use political power to invite in the imperialists: they would use the country’s huge resources to fight poverty and sickness — as China did in the 1950s.
Duncan.