People's China: a Working-Class Perspective Via NY Transfer News Collective * All the News that Doesn't Fit ------------------------- Via Workers World News Service Reprinted from the October 2, 1997 issue of Workers World newspaper ------------------------- AFTER THE 15TH COMMUNIST PARTY CONGRESS: WHAT ROAD IS CHINA TAKING? By Deirdre Griswold When Chinese leader Jiang Zemin comes to the United States in October for a state visit, the capitalist media here will be full of advice for his country of 1.2 billion people. Columnists, commentators and other pundits will applaud the decision made at the Communist Party's recent congress to sell shares in state-owned industries. But that is not enough, they will say. China must create more favorable conditions for foreign investors. It must open its domestic market and import more from the United States. And, they will insist, China must "open up" politically and allow capitalist parties to operate. It is not likely, however, that they will point to Russia as an example. How can they? There, the destruction of the USSR and the breakup of the Communist Party--not only cheered on but in large part engineered by the U.S.--have led to economic chaos, civil war and a precipitous decline in life expectancy and population. CHINA'S ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT China has been on a different road. Although it has taken many steps toward a market economy since the Deng Xiao ping grouping in the party won out over more leftist leaders in the late 1970s, the bulk of its heavy industries and infrastructure are still state property. Vice-Minister of Finance Zhang Youcai, a delegate to the party congress interviewed by Xinhua, the New China News Agency, says that state assets have been producing 60 percent of the state's revenue and 67 percent of the jobs in urban areas. So far, China's economic reforms have had the opposite effect of those carried out in the USSR by Mikhail Gorbachev and later by Boris Yeltsin. There, the reforms led to the breakup of the state-owned industries, and often to their total collapse. In China, however, the economy has been growing at a robust rate. Last year, state-owned industries grew by 15 percent, outstripping the growth rate in the private sector. Finance Vice-Minister Zhang Youcai says that at the end of 1996, state assets in China totaled 6.5 trillion yuan, or 330 times their value in the early 1950s right after the triumph of the revolution. According to Gao Shangquan, vice president of the China Society for Economic Restructuring, the new reorganization of industry aims at promoting the productive forces in a socialist society, increasing the overall strength of the socialist state, and raising the people's living standards. The number of state industries will decline, but they will become larger and more efficient. Whether or not these goals can be reached through the new forms of ownership, it should be noted that their objective is very different from the openly capitalist aims of the present Russian leaders. EMPHASIS ON WESTERN AREAS AND INDUSTRIALIZING AGRICULTURE In Jiang Zemin's report, the party leader said the state planned to strengthen its support for the less-developed central and western areas of China by giving them priority in arranging infrastructure and resources development projects. The congress also placed emphasis on industrializing agriculture, which was returned to private farming after the breakup of the communes in the early 1980s. The introduction of market mechanisms has taken place under the control of the Communist Party of China, many of whose leaders still come from the ranks of those who guided the heroic revolutionary struggles of the workers and peasants in the 1930s and 1940s. However, younger people have moved into such bodies as the Standing Committee of the CPC Political Bureau, which now includes Jiang Zemin, Li Peng, Zhu Rongji, Li Ruihuan, Hu Jintao, Wei Jianxing and Li Lanqing. When Jiang and his delegation come to the U.S., they will undoubtedly visit the capital. Whether or not their hosts allow the Chinese delegation to see anything outside official Washington, they will be aware of the great extremes of poverty and wealth that exist in that highly segregated city. They will know that the United States stands at the pinnacle of world capitalism, yet has failed to end poverty, unemployment or racism. HOW WILL CHINA DEAL WITH LAYOFFS? One of the big unanswered questions about this new round of economic reforms is what will happen to Chinese workers in older state-owned industries that are forced to shut down. Until now, their jobs were protected in what the Chinese call the "iron rice bowl" system--meaning that no matter what, the state guarantees everyone will eat. U.S. "China watchers" have kept up a steady drumbeat of telling the Chinese leaders they must cast these workers adrift to achieve greater efficiency. They also admit, however, that the workers in the state industries have been the political backbone of the Communist Party. The working class, which was a small minority in China at the time of the revolution, is now over 100 million strong and growing rapidly. The reforms have nourished a capitalist class in China, but they have also provided the material basis for the growth of a modern proletariat. Not to be overlooked in assessing China's future is the situation in the capitalist world. Even as the CPC delegates were meeting, the currency markets in Thailand, the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia were in turmoil. These "tigers" of capitalist development are finding that their dynamic growth of a few years ago has left them heavily indebted to the imperialists. Much of their new wealth is evaporating as money flows out and into foreign banks. Already, the workers' movements in these countries are expressing themselves in more militant actions and slogans. Over the years, the tremendous spirit and energy of the Chinese Revolution has been dampened by the strength and aggressiveness of world imperialism and the passivity of the proletariat in the advanced capitalist countries. How to develop a strong and modern China given this adverse world situation has been the axis of most of the polemics and struggles within the CPC, made sharper by the turns to the right in the USSR. Now there is the beginning of a revival of class struggle in the U.S. and elsewhere. This can only strengthen the cause of socialism and the workers everywhere--from Manila to Bangkok to Shanghai. - END - (Copyright Workers World Service: Permission to reprint granted if source is cited. For more information contact Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011; via e-mail: ww@workers.org. For subscription info send message to: info@workers.org. Web: http://workers.org) ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytas-09.25.97-17:22:12-341