MIM NOTES No. 197,		November 1, 1999

On the 50th Anniversary of the Founding of the People's Republic 
of China

On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of the 
People's Republic of China, we celebrate the victory of the 
Chinese people in the new-democratic revolution against foreign 
monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism.

[...]

The People's Republic of China: 1949-76

The founding of the People's Republic of China constituted a great 
victory of the proletariat and people of the world. It signaled 
the greatest social revolution in the second half of the 20th 
century, with the new-democratic stage of the Chinese revolution 
passing on to the socialist stage. A quarter of humanity liberated 
itself from the shackles of imperialism and the local exploiting 
classes of big compradors and landlords through a protracted 
people's war under the leadership of the revolutionary 
proletariat.

The nationwide seizure of political power meant the basic 
completion of the new-democratic revolution and the end of 
semicolonial and semifeudal conditions. The Chinese proletariat 
and people proceeded to carry out socialist revolution and 
construction, with due attention to the necessary periods of 
transition for reconstruction and rehabilitation and for the basic 
socialist transformation in the ownership of the means of 
production.

Even as the state took the form of the people's democratic 
dictatorship, on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance, the 
main political factors of socialism were the class leadership of 
the proletariat through the CPC in the state and society and the 
main component of state power being the People's Liberation Army 
(PLA) under the command of the CPC. The class dictatorship of the 
proletariat was at the core of the people's democratic 
dictatorship.

The main economic factors of socialism were the state-owned sector 
of the economy (as a result of the confiscation of industrial 
enterprises, banks, major sources of raw materials and lines of 
distribution from the imperialists and the bureaucrat 
bourgeoisie), the cooperative enterprises, the establishment of 
new state-owned industries and the development of agricultural 
cooperation in stages.

In leading the socialist revolution and construction, Comrade Mao 
was ever mindful of class struggle as the key point and 
consistently pursued the line of trusting and relying on the 
masses. On the eve of the total victory of the Chinese revolution, 
he reiterated Lenin's teaching that socialism would take a whole 
historical epoch and that the class struggle between the 
proletariat and the bourgeoisie would continue and intensify in 
various forms in socialist society. 

Comrade Mao upheld the revolutionary principles of the proletariat 
in the Communist Manifesto and the lessons learned from the Paris 
Commune of 1871 and Soviet experience, from the period of 
socialism to that of modern revisionism.

He learned from the teachings of Marx on the problems in socialist 
society, such as the vestiges and adverse influence of the 
defeated bourgeois class and the contradictions between the 
working class and the peasantry, between town and country and 
between manual and mental work. He also learned from Lenin's 
teachings on the temporary concessions to middle and petty 
producers and traders in a period of transition, petty commodity 
production engendering the bourgeoisie, the persistence of old 
ideas, customs and habits and the influence of the international 
bourgeoisie on the domestic bourgeoisie.

Under the leadership of Comrade Mao, the Communist Party of China 
exercised vigilance against corruption in the period of 
reconstruction and rehabilitation. After the basic socialist 
transformation of the ownership of the means of production, he 
called for the diminution and elimination of the concessions to 
the patriotic bourgeoisie and for availing of the masses' 
revolutionary enthusiasm for accelerating the building of 
socialism.

Self-reliantly, China succeeded in building her industrial 
foundation, collectivized agriculture, made big headway in 
agricultural mechanization and provided for the basic needs of the 
toiling masses of workers and peasants. The basic framework for 
socialist construction involved developing basic and heavy 
industry as the leading factor, agriculture as the economic base 
and light industry as the bridging factor, for the purpose of 
serving the immediate social needs of the people and accumulate 
the capital requirements for development.

In a series of 5-year plans, China made gigantic achievements in 
socialist construction. The Great Leap Forward was crucial in 
accelerating socialist development in an all-round way, building 
industry in a balanced way and raising the level of agricultural 
cooperation through the people's communes, and in overcoming the 
difficulties posed by imperialist embargo, Soviet revisionist 
betrayal and natural calamities and the sabotage by the domestic 
phony communists, who were Bukharinites and revisionists trying 
all they could to enlarge the privileges of the bourgeoisie and 
the rich peasants. It was relatively easy to identify the 
counterrevolutionaries who actively fought the revolution, punish 
severely only the very few who had incurred blood debts and 
remained unrepentant. It was also relatively easy to investigate, 
prosecute and try the criminals during the anticorruption 
campaign. But most difficult for the proletarian revolutionaries 
to struggle against were persons in authority in the Party and the 
state who opposed the revolutionary line of building socialism. 
These revisionists were headed by Liu Shaochi and Deng Xiaoping.

These representatives of the bourgeoisie wished to prolong the 
privileges of the bourgeoisie, feathered their own nests or built 
independent kingdoms, espoused the consolidation or full 
development of a bourgeois economy prior to socialism, pushed the 
mechanistic notion that building socialism was merely a matter of 
developing the productive forces and proclaimed the dying out of 
the class struggle.

The class struggle was continuous between the proletarian 
revolutionaries and the bourgeois renegades within no less than 
the Central Committee of the CPC. At the 8th Congress of the CPC, 
Mao was ridiculed behind his back as a know-nothing in economics 
by so-called experts. In fact, he was most outstanding in 
understanding Marxist-Leninist political economy, the Chinese 
social and economic situation and the lessons from the Soviet 
experience. He was subjected to the most vicious attacks by the 
Rightists and by the covert revisionists up to the time of the 
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. The Party persons in 
authority taking the capitalist road used the trickiest tactics in 
opposing Mao's socialist line in the Great Leap Forward. They 
pushed hard their Rightist line. When their Rightist line was 
rebuffed, they whipped up an ultra-Left line to sabotage and 
discredit the correct line and policy. When Mao called for 
adjustments, they claimed credit for these in order to further 
attack him. He consistently applied his materialist dialectical 
view of theory and practice advancing wave upon wave.

He always fought back in a principled way, drawing from his 
profound and comprehensive study and practice of Marxism-Leninism 
and relying on the masses and on the power of persuasion and 
education among those who lagged behind. He called for a socialist 
education movement and identified the ranks of revisionist 
bureaucrats as the most dangerous breeding ground of the 
bourgeoisie. But the socialist education movement fell short of 
its objectives because of sabotage and self-promotion by the 
revisionist renegades.

Comrade Mao recognized that parts of the Communist Party and the 
socialist state had been taken over by the bourgeoisie and that 
there was an urgent need to wage class struggle against the 
capitalist-roaders and to ensure the consolidation and continuity 
of socialism. Thus, he put forward the theory and practice of 
continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship through the 
Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in order to combat 
revisionism, prevent the restoration of capitalism and consolidate 
socialism.

The purpose of the cultural revolution was to uphold class 
struggle as the key link in building socialism, promote the 
primacy of the socialist relations over the forces of production 
and revolutionize the superstructure in order to realize the 
cultural hegemony of the working class and serve the socialist 
revolution and construction. In brief, grasp revolution and 
promote production.

The greatest achievement of Comrade Mao is his theory and practice 
of continuing revolution under proletarian dictatorship. It grew 
out of his study of the teachings and experience of his great 
communist predecessors, from the rich revolutionary history and 
circumstances of the Chinese people and from his criticism and 
repudiation of modern revisionism and the betrayal of socialism by 
the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution aroused, organized and 
mobilized hundreds of millions of the Chinese people. It was 
democracy on the most extensive scale, unprecedented in the entire 
history of mankind and was a process whereby the workers and 
peasants exercised their democratic right to uphold, defend and 
advance socialism. It struck against the bourgeois headquarters 
within the Communist Party, brought the Party and the people's 
army closer to the people and took away the remaining excessive 
privileges of the old bourgeoisie. 

It sought to prevent the bureaucracy and new intelligentsia from 
becoming petty-bourgeois in mentality and from serving as the 
social base of modern revisionism and capitalist restoration. It 
gave revolutionary experience to the youth and trained them to 
become revolutionary successors. It sent the youth to the workers 
and peasants in order to learn from them and serve them. It 
promoted revolutionary education and created exemplary cultural 
works and artistic productions. It trained health workers in large 
numbers to serve the people, especially in the countryside.

It established revolutionary organs of political power combining 
the representatives of the Party, the masses and the people's army 
and balancing the proportions of the young, middle-aged and 
elders. It also created a new system of factory management which 
combined the representatives of the Party, the workers and the 
experts and in which the managers participated in work on the 
bench and the workers participated in management. It strengthened 
the people's communes and sought to increase the effective scope 
of the commune to the level of the county. It promoted learning 
from the examples of Daqing and Dazhai. The GPCR succeeded in 
carrying out its objectives for 10 years, from 1966 to 1976. In 
its own period, it succeeded in revolutionizing both the social 
base and the superstructure of Chinese society. And it raised the 
level of industrial and agricultural production, so much so that 
the revisionist renegades would raise the demagogic and 
economistic clamor for enjoying the fruits of initial prosperity. 
Without the cultural revolution, the proletarian revolutionary 
line of Mao would have been earlier defeated by the bourgeois 
renegades. 

While the cultural revolution was going on, some people could not 
believe that persons like Liu Shaochi and Deng Xiaoping could be 
revisionist renegades because of the high positions that they had 
gained in the CPC. But the correctness of Mao in posing the 
problem of revisionism and in conducting the cultural revolution 
is thoroughly confirmed by the actual restoration of capitalism 
after his death.

The theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian 
dictatorship is so far the highest level of development of 
Marxist-Leninist theory and practice. Like the Paris Commune of 
1871, the cultural revolution succeeded only for a certain period 
but laid down the basic principles and methods for further 
development to win greater and more lasting victories in building 
and defending socialism until the attainment of communism.

Certain errors undermined the cultural revolution and led to its 
reversal after the death of Mao. We can mention some of the major 
errors. Both the Right and ultra-Left opportunists whipped up 
factionalism and organized "fighting groups" among the masses in 
order to set them off against each other. The Left thereby became 
vulnerable to the intrigues and splitting tactics of the Right. 
The dictatorship of the proletariat was not consistently exercised 
to permanently pension off the retireable Rightists and prevent 
them from combining with the centrists against the Left. However, 
these errors do not invalidate the theory and practice of 
continuing revolution under the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Thanks to Comrade Mao, we have a lasting weapon to wield and 
improve upon in order to defeat the revisionist renegades that 
will surely arise in socialist societies that the workers and 
people will build in the future. Right now, we have a clear answer 
to the taunts of the imperialists and local reactionaries that 
socialism cannot solve and stop capitalist restoration. Under the 
leadership of Comrade Mao, the People's Republic of China adopted 
a socialist foreign policy. This was guided by the overriding 
principle of proletarian internationalism. It distinguished and 
correlated the revolutionary movements of the people and the 
implementation of the five principles of peaceful coexistence in 
the diplomatic relations of states. Comrade Mao led the genuine 
communist and workers' parties in combating modern revisionism, 
including Khrushchov's general line of peaceful coexistence and 
Brezhnev's blatant social-imperialism. 

China gave the highest importance to extending moral and material 
support to the international communist and workers' movement and 
to the wars of national liberation against imperialism in Asia, 
Africa and Latin America. At great sacrifice, she acted as a 
powerful rear and extended all the support it could to the people 
of Korea and Indochina who waged wars of national liberation 
against US imperialism. In a comprehensive way, she made great 
contributions to the world proletarian revolution.



Capitalist Restoration: 1976- Present

As we celebrate the glorious achievements of the People's Republic 
of China up to 1976, we must condemn the overthrow of the 
proletariat and the restoration of capitalism under the deceptive 
slogan of reforms and the reintegration of China into the world 
capitalist system under the equally deceptive slogan of opening 
up. The antisocialist counterrevolution has gone on since 1976, 
when aside from the group of four, so many proletarian 
revolutionary cadres were arrested and removed from their 
positions by decree and surprise attack. 

At the Third Plenum of the purged 10th CPC Central Committee in 
July 1977, Deng Xiaoping and other capitalist-roaders emerged from 
the shadows to signal their ascendancy. At the Third Plenum of the 
11th Central Committee in December 1978, the capitalist-roaders 
put forward their comprehensive program of restoring capitalism, 
condemning the cultural revolution as a complete catastrophe, 
attacking Comrade Mao as the criminal mastermind, and 
reinterpreting Mao Zedong Thought in order to oppose it. 
Sweepingly, they also restored the political rights of the 
Guomindang reactionary diehards, former bureaucrat capitalists and 
landlords and other types of reactionaries. 

The rulers of China continue to pay lip service to Marxism-
Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, although they have long cast this 
away. They now flaunt the Dengist theory and practice of 
capitalist counterrevolution with the deceptive slogan of 
"socialism with Chinese characteristics". They refer to the four 
cardinal principles from time to time only to embellish the 
slogans of capitalist reforms and opening up to foreign monopoly 
capitalism. The Chinese revisionists restored capitalism in a 
faster and more brazen way than the Soviet revisionists had done. 
The leading role of the proletariat in economic planning and in 
the management of enterprises was removed. The bourgeoisified 
bureaucrats and experts became overlords. They engaged in self-
aggrandizing cost-and-profit accounting and acquired the power to 
hire and fire workers and to buy and sell equipment and products 
as they deemed profitable for their isolated units. Organs and 
units of the Party and the people's army were encouraged to own 
and run enterprises for their narrow benefit and were thus 
corrupted and converted to capitalism.

The old bourgeoisie received huge amounts of capital in various 
ways and was allowed to set up private enterprises and borrow 
funds from the state banks. Bureaucrats privatized rural 
industries at first under the legal fiction of management lease. 
The people's communes were dismantled under the retrogressive 
slogan of household responsibility system. This meant the 
destruction of the base of the self-reliant socialist economy and 
the rapid emergence of the rich peasants and merchant-usurers at 
the expense of the majority of the peasants.

Under Deng's big comprador concept of modernization and bourgeois 
liberalization of the economy, investment and trade privileges 
have been extended to both foreign and domestic big bourgeoisie on 
the argument that the way to develop China is to gain access to 
foreign investments, technology and the world capitalist market. 
Thus the imperialists and domestic bourgeoisie have Taiwanized the 
Chinese economy. This has become subject to the policy dictates of 
foreign monopoly capitalism and such multilateral agencies as the 
IMF, World Bank and WTO. 

The export of low value-added semimanufactures to the imperialist 
countries and the import of consumer goods from said countries 
have gained such high importance that they influence the patterns 
of investment and consumption in China as in any neocolony. The 
state-owned heavy and basic industries have been undermined, 
subordinated to both the private and bureaucrat capitalists and 
have become subject to privatization and closure as in the former 
Soviet-bloc countries. The private ownership of shares of stock is 
now officially described as a new form of socialist ownership.

The workers and peasants are subjected to the most vicious forms 
of oppression and exploitation. The worst evils of pre-
revolutionary China are back. Conspicuous are extremely low levels 
of workers wages and peasant income, growing mass unemployment, 
coolie labor, inflation, arbitrary levies, bureaucratic 
corruption, usury, vagabondage, street begging, drug pushing, 
prostitution, buying and selling of women and children and female 
infanticide. China is now a country that is extremely polarized 
between exploiting and exploited classes. While a few flaunt their 
wealth, more than 90 percent of the people suffer poverty and 
misery. Social unrest is widespread.

The social stratification of pre-revolutionary China is back. The 
big compradors, big landlords acting as merchant-usurers, and the 
corrupt bureaucrats are riding roughshod over the people. An 
intermediate section of middle and petty bourgeoisie and rich 
peasants has arisen. More than 90 percent of the people are 
workers and peasants who suffer the oppression and exploitation 
that make possible for the imperialists to take out superprofits 
and the domestic bourgeoisie to enrich themselves "gloriously" 
ahead of the people.

The seizure of political power by the Chinese revisionists meant 
the overthrow of the proletariat and the advent of the class 
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. But the new bourgeois rulers of 
China occasionally call her socialist in order to deceive the 
people. At other times, they blame socialism for the pain and 
suffering that they themselves have inflicted on the people. Thus, 
they discredit the term socialism by their own oppressive and 
exploitative policies, especially by the widely perceived and 
intensely hated Guomintang-style bureaucrat capitalist corruption.

The ruling party, the Communist Party of China is more and more 
like the Guomindang of Chiang Kaishek. It is swamped with 
political degenerates who are not at all communists but are 
corrupt bureaucrats, businessmen and sheer careerists. It uses the 
name of the communist party to legitimize the rule of the 
bureaucrat capitalists who are at the helm of the new bourgeoisie. 
It is divorced from the masses and it acts against their rights 
and interests. It fears and seeks to prevent the revolutionary 
mass movement. It acts as a bureaucratic one-way top-down device 
for relaying orders.

The bourgeois liberalization of Chinese politics has steadily 
developed. The only question that remains is when the bureaucrat 
bourgeoisie itself would decide to cast away the signboards of 
socialism and the communist party, as in the Soviet Union. Thus, 
the US policymakers have cleverly advised the most rabid Chinese 
anticommunists to avoid any violent challenge to the Chinese 
authorities and to allow the peaceful growth of capitalism. 

Likewise, the authorities in Taiwan are confident that the 
capitalist character of the Chinese economy will inevitably lead 
to the full Taiwanization of China's political system. With this, 
they precondition reunification with China. The Chinese 
authorities themselves know that the multiplication of private 
capitalist firms will eventually lead to the multiplication of 
political organizations outside and against the nominal and 
corrupt communist party.

The capitalist restoration has resulted in violent social turmoil 
in more than 80 cities in 1989 and in many peasant uprisings and 
workers strikes in the decade of the 90s. All these overshadow all 
the mass uprisings, from the Hungarian uprising of 1956 to the 
Polish Solidarity strikes of the '80s, that foretold the end of 
socialist pretenses in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union in the 
1989-91 period.

The social turmoil and violent events of 1989 in China did not 
involve the struggle between socialist order and those who wished 
to put up a bourgeois republic. It was a struggle between social-
fascism and the aggrieved masses protesting against such 
manifestations of capitalist restoration as mass unemployment, 
inflation and corruption, even if among the masses there were a 
few petty-bourgeois anticommunists who clamored for bourgeois 
democracy. 

Mao Zedong Thought is both being misinterpreted and cut down by 
the bourgeois rulers and their minions in the cultural field. The 
bourgeois liberalization of China's culture is conspicuous in the 
recrudescence of pro-imperialist, big bourgeois, petty bourgeois 
and Confucian feudal ideas and values. China has become the 
biggest consumer of cultural junk from the US, Taiwan and 
Hongkong. 

The educational system, the mass media and entertainment 
productions have become thoroughly bourgeoisified. Antisocialist 
cynicism and contempt for the workers and peasants (especially for 
their poverty and lack of formal education) are being propagated. 
The high costs of education have prevented a high proportion of 
children and youth of school age from getting formal education. 
This is now a privilege of the few. So are healthcare and decent 
housing.

If from 1949 onwards, quite a number of Chinese students who 
studied in the Soviet Union imported revisionist ideas and would 
become the technocrats and rulers of China, so do now a far bigger 
number of students who have studied in the US and other 
imperialist countries bring into China antisocialist and pro-
imperialist ideas and become the technocrats of unabashed 
capitalism. 

The Dengist slogan of "opening up" means opening up China's 
economy, politics and culture to imperialism. It perversely blames 
Comrade Mao for the imperialist embargo that lasted until the 
capitalist-roaders were able to seize power. It is in complete 
opposition to proletarian internationalism, which China's rulers 
avoid mentioning while drumming up their general line of "peace, 
stability and development" for the benefit of the foreign and 
domestic big bourgeoisie. The Chinese proletariat and people 
themselves can take their destiny into their own hands and solve 
their own problems. They have the socialist legacy of Comrade Mao. 
They can use Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to guide them on the road of 
revolution against those who have restored capitalism. There is a 
high potential for a genuinely revolutionary communist party in 
China today.

In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the genuine 
communist parties of the world must expose and condemn the 
bureaucrat bourgeoisie in China for misappropriating and misusing 
the name of the communist party and the term socialism to serve 
the malicious purpose of restoring capitalism and practicing 
social fascism. Real communists have suffered enough the 
historical phenomenon of revisionists in power who destroy 
socialism and yet continue to misrepresent capitalism as 
socialism.
[...]