Sunday 14 February 2010

Embracing China’s century?

It’s surely paradoxical that the more China takes its place as a major player in the global market economy, the more hope many communists seem to place in it as a leading force for socialist transformation, even as restraints on private enterprise are loosened from Harbin to Hainan. There’s nothing intrinsically wrong with accepting some resort to private enterprise, as the experience of NEP (and perhaps of the trauma of its subsequent abrupt reversal) in 1920s Russia shows. But China’s rise to economic superpower status is fraught with contradictions and risks.

The reasoning and counter-arguments almost present themselves. China is using reliance on elements of capitalist economy to strengthen itself and raise its people’s living standards prior to renewed socialist effort nationally and internationally at some indeterminate time in the future, say its supporters. Critics point to the emergence of a large bourgeoisie, widening urban-rural economic disparities, erosion of worker’ rights, social dislocation through enormous internal migration flows, and reliance on transnational capital and western markets as alarming signs of danger to come. Others recall past actions, from Mao’s disastrous Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution to later war with Vietnam and support for the Khmers Rouges, Zia’s Pakistan or the 1980s Afghan jihad as evidence of Chinese unreliability as a force for progress.

Nor is China’s rise as the new workshop of the world an unmixed blessing to other nations seeking to break out of poverty and underdevelopment. The decimation of nascent African textile industries through Chinese competition after the elimination of trade quotas in 2005 was a chilling warning of unwanted consequences for the world’s disadvantaged. While China’s demand for raw materials has boosted commodity export prices for many primary producers across the developing would, prices have slumped for just the kind of low-tech manufactures traditionally seen as a first step to industrialisation. And the gain for primary exporters has inevitably favoured enclave sectors rather than those offering a stimulus for economy-wide growth. To make matters worse, China’s growing demand for foodstuffs has brought its consumers into competition with many of the world’s poorest, a trend which has now extended into buying up land itself in parts of Asia and Latin America to feed the mainland’s 1.35 billion people.

But all is not doom and gloom. China still offers a source of revenue for countries hitherto starved of earning opportunities. China has a vested interest in supporting developing-country infrastructure that meets its needs, and in defending some semblance of order and economic sufficiency among its poorer trading partners. And its own economic expansion will inevitably bring it into commercial conflict with the imperialist countries which have ruled the roost virtually unchallenged for a quarter-century. For its part, the developing world has barely begun to exploit the potential for regional economic integration and increased “South-South” trade which may offer a more effective development route than reliance on exchange with the developed world: the liquidity offered by China could yet play an important role in eroding the fragmentation that helps keep poor markets poor.

That may all be fine and rosy for developed-country leftists, but is for them of little practical immediate consequence. Will China take up the role once played by the USSR and it allies in assisting communist organisation and propaganda in the west? I think that’s unlikely; nor given the complexities of China’s own situation would it necessarily be desirable to rely on it for the sustenance formerly offered by Moscow. China is not an outward-looking country in the sense of Russia from Peter the Great onwards: to the extent that its interests will raise its profile in world affairs, its primary concerns are likely to remain commercial and strategic rather than ideological. And its medium-term commercial interest is unlikely to be best served by promoting revolutionary upheaval in the countries that buy its manufactures.

China’s true promise lies in what it is not: to put it crudely, it's not the United States or Europe. It may not be the key to a global workers’ paradise, but its contest with western neoliberal elites will offer some opportunity for those excluded from power to reclaim the room for manoeuvre once provided by the world’s Cold-War division. The west has had its spell of global hegemony: it won’t be an easy ride as workers in today's developed countries find themselves in competition with their Chinese counterparts, but China’s resurgence at least holds out the hope of breaking a deadening imperialist ideological, economic and geopolitical stranglehold that has cost millions of working people dearly.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Constructive criticism from communists and non-communists alike is welcome: it's how we move forward. But please don't bother posting abuse or dreary communist-hating diatribes here, as they'll be wiped: if you want a place for anticommunist vitriol, there are plenty about - otherwise feel free to start your own!