Chinese Workers on strike. Photo: Taken on August 11, 2007 by en jachère. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0).
Chinese Workers on strike. Photo: Taken on August 11, 2007 by en jachère. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0). Source: flickr.com.

Links to sites and articles on China and Capitalism

Socialistisk Bibliotek/Bjarne A. Frandsen


See also at Socialistisk Bibliotek:

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Against the Current

  • Peter Solenberger: Entangled rivalry: the United States and China (No.216, January-February 2022)
    “… the Chinese economy is approaching the size of the U.S. economy; China and the United States are imperialist rivals. How did China do this? Why didn’t the United States block it? What’s the situation now? How might it develop? What interests do workers have in the conflict? What should socialists advocate? This article begins to explore these questions.”
  • Qian Ben-li: Jasic struggle: Debate among Chinese Maoists (No.200, May-June 2019)
    “While these self-proclaimed socialists in China begin from the framework of Maoism, this article’s outlining of their internal debates indicate how they are grappling with strategic and tactical problems in the face of sharp repression, differences in regional conditions, and varying levels of workers’ consciousness and combativity.”
  • Jane Slaughter: China: Workers rising? (No.178, September/October 2015)
    Review of Lu Zhang, Inside China’s Automobile Factories: The Politics of Labor and Worker Resistance (Cambridge University Press, 2015, 258 p.) + Eli Friedman, Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China (Institute for Labor Research: Cornell University Press, 2014, 232 p.)
  • Au Loong Yu and Bai Ruixue: Resistance in China today (No.161, November/December 2012)
    “The authors discuss new features in the growing popular resistance to privatization, environmental degradation and rampant elite corruption.”
  • Au Loong-Yu: China’s disposable labor (No.140, May/June 2009)
    “What we are witnessing is not a regular business cycle as we have in the past 20 years, but a crisis at the core of China’s growth model. Thus it will be not only an economic crisis but a social one as well.”
  • Martin Hart-Landsberg: The realities of China today (No.137, November/December 2008)
    “Several conclusions emerge from the above examination of the Chinese experience. First, China’s market reform process has led not to a new form of (market) socialism, but rather to the restoration of capitalism (although ‘with Chinese characteristics’). Concretely, the Chinese growth process has given rise to a new political economy that is hostile to the goals of socialism …”
  • Au Loong-Yu: The new Chinese nationalism (No.136, September/October 2008)
    “The new Chinese nationalism is both a response by the ruling elite and important parts of the intellectuals to internal and external problems as China is reintegrated into global capitalism. But the ideology also advocates modernizing China via strengthening the one-party state.”
  • Au Loong-Yu: The post MFA era and the rise of China, Part 1 (No.125, November/December 2006)
    “This essay will not spill too much ink on the current negotiations, but rather focuses on a wider picture: What is at stake for working people around the world with the free trade model as promoted by the WTO in general, and the phasing out of MFA in particular? How does the ‘rise of China’ relate to this question?”
  • Au Loong-Yu: The China Advantage, Part 2 (No.126, January/February 2007)
    “The huge growth of China’s manufacturing in the last 20 years cannot be attributed to China’s embrace of the world market alone, as neoliberal academics want us to believe. It is the outcome of a combination of many unique factors, the most important of which relate to the legacy of the great social and political transformation that came about between 1949-79, albeit at unnecessarily high social cost.”

Anti Capitalist Resistance

Aufheben

  • Class conflicts in the transformation of China (pdf) (Issue 16, 2008)
    “Indeed, it may be asked how much longer can the Chinese state ensure social peace, and how much longer can it provide world capital with a cheap and compliant supply of labour-power? It is to this issue that we shall now turn to consider.”

Autonom Infoservice

  • Kinas Kommunistiske Parti fejrer sine 100 år med et historisk glansbillede (2. juli 2021)
    “Partiets jubilæum fejres med en gigantisk iscenesat festuge, der udstråler succes og magt. Her er ingen plads til de mørke kapitler i partiets historie og ingen kritiske blikke på partiet af i dag.”
  • Kina: Arbejderkampe for autonomi (10. oktober 2018)
    “På svejseteknikfabrikken JiaShi i den sydkinesiske by Shenzhen tog arbejderne i maj 2018 initiativ til dannelsen af deres egen basisdemokratiske fagforening for kollektivt at gøre modstand mod deres elendige arbejdsforhold.”
  • Klassekampe i Kina (27. april 2017)
    “I dette interview fortæller Li Qiang fra ”China Labour Watch” om de vilde strejkekampe og stigende lønninger.”
  • Kinas nye brogede venstrefløj og sociale bevægelser (29. august 2011)
    “Kinas nye venstrefløjsintellektuelle har de sidste ti år skabt sig mere råderum og deres bøger har nået et bredt publikum. Dette kan lade sig gøre, sålænge de ikke direkte kritiserer den nuværende stats- og partiledelse i Kinas såkaldte kommunistiske parti.”

China Labour Bulletin
“China Labour Bulletin is committed to promoting workers’ rights, as well as raising international awareness and understanding of labour issues in China.”

  • A decade of change: The workers’ movement in China 2000-2010 (pdf) (March 2012, 26 p.)
    “CLB analyses the remarkable transformation of the worker’s movement over the last decade and discusses how the picture might change in the future.”
  • Unity is strength: The workers’ movement in China, 2009-2011 (October 2011, 53 p.)
    “CLB’s fourth in-depth report on the workers’ movement examines the trends and developments in worker activism in China from 2009 to 2011, and documents the responses of employers, government and trade unions.”
  • Going it alone: The workers’ movement in China, 2007-2008 (July 2009, 57 p.)
    “CLB looks at how the workers’ movement in China developed in 2007 and 2008, how the government responded to it, and why the official trade union was unable or unwilling to play a positive role in it.”

China Left Review

China Strikes
“The purpose of China Strikes is to track strikes, protests and other collective actions by Chinese workers to defend their rights and interests. I hope that over time the site will serve as a resource to those wishing to better understand and support the labor movement in China.” See also Eric Lee: New website maps strikes in China (Solidarity, 3/200, 6 April 2011)

China Worker

Chuang

  • Frontiers (Issue 2, 2019)
    “ln our second issue we turn our focus to the frontiers of crisis and capital in China. We expand our conceptual framework here, digging more deeply into some of our central theoretical concerns while also providing coherent narratives of historical events and contemporary faultlines.” See here: Red Dust: The transition to capitalism in China.
  • Dead Generations (Issue 1, July 2016)
    “In this first issue we outline our basic conceptual framework and illustrate the current state of class conflict in China. We also include translated reports and interviews with the proletarians engaged in these struggles, pairing our theory with primary sources drawn from class dynamics that might otherwise remain abstract.” See here: No way forward, no way back: China in the era of riots.
    See also the site’s Blog and Resources.

Counterfire

Dissent Magazine

  • William Hurst: Chinese Labor divided. (Spring 2015)
    “… it is necessary to review the historical roots and composition of the Chinese working class.”

Europe Solidaire Sans Frontieres

  • China’s New Left: the revival of lost traditions (17 February 2023)
    “Gregor Benton on the emergence of leftist and Trotskyist youth organisations in China and the Chinese diaspora.”
  • Peter Boyle: China and the global capitalist economic meltdown (15 November 2008)
    “As the US, Japan and Europe slide into recession, the leaders of many smaller countries are desperately hoping that continued strong growth in the Chinese economy, which has contributed about 15 per cent of world economic growth in recent years, might save them from this meltdown. There’s hope and then there’s hard facts.”

Fifth International

  • Peter Main: Getting the measure of China (Vol.2, No.5, Summer 2008; online at Internet Archive)
    “As the US economy moves into recession, Peter Main looks at the possible repercussions on China, a country that has become an icon of globalisation’s dynamism in recent years. Rather than coming to the rescue of world capitalism, he argues that the coming year will see China face slackening export markets at a time when its domestic cycle is moving towards its peak.”
  • Peter Main: China: From Mao to the market (Vol. 2, No. 4, Autumn 2007; online at Internet Archive)
    “The country is approaching the 30th anniversary of the 1978 reforms which led to the restoration of capitalism. Peter Main reviews the strategies adopted by Beijing since then, and the social and economic consequences of capitalist restoration which have given China a pivotal role in the world economy while sowing the seeds of a domestic class conflict …”

Fight racism! Fight Imperialism!

  • Trevor Rayne: China: myths and realities (Issue 193, October/November 2006)
    “China’s surging growth and emergence as a significant player in the world economy are undeniable but what this means for the global balance of forces and future of imperialism has still to be demonstrated. For some on the left the image of a rising China coming into conflict with the US eclipses the necessity of analysing inter-imperialist rivalries and the substance of China’s rise.”

Historical Materialism

  • Symposium on Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing: Lineages of the twenty-first century (Vol. 18, No.1, 2010, p.31-129)
    With articles from Liam Campling, Christopher Chase-Dunn, Richard Walker, Leo Panitch, Lucia Pradella and Flemming Christiansen. Only abstracts online.

In Defence of Marxism

  • China and its role in the world (
  • Congyue Dai: China: Significant upsurge in workers’ strikes and protests in 2014 (27 January 2015)
    “The further slowdown of the Chinese economy will result in a further worsening of wages and working conditions, which are already the main factors causing the present rise in strike levels.”
  • Adam Booth: From exports to investment: contradictions in the Chinese economy intensify (12 September 2012)
    “The picture of the Chinese economy painted by commentators in the West is often one of strength … Recent figures released by the International Monetary Fund, however, describe a very different situation; a situation where contradictions are intensifying below the surface …”
  • Daniel Morley: The limitations and contradictions of the ‘Chinese Model’ (9 November 2011)
    “The evident failures of ‘monetarism’ and so-called ‘neoliberalism’ have led many to herald Keynesianism and the Chinese model as the long sought for answer to capitalism’s ills. A closer look at the Chinese economy, however, reveals equally deep contradictions.”
  • Alan Woods: China: the anger beneath the surface (29 June 2011)
    “The media is full of glowing reports about China’s economic growth, which is supposed to have shrugged off the world economic crisis, averaging annual growth of over 10 per cent. But these figures do not tell us anything about the effects of this economic growth on the mass of the population.”
  • Jorge Martin: Negative economic indicators pile up as China is hit by global capitalist crisis (12 December 2008)
    “… we see [now] how the integration of the Chinese economy into the world market brings with it all the contradictions of capitalism, first among them recession and growing unemployment.”
  • China’s long march to capitalism, Part 1 + Part 2 + Part 3 (October 2006)
    “A document, which looks at events from: The revolution up to the end of the Mao era … [to] Deng’s early ‘reforms’ initiated in the late 1970 [and to] China as the fourth largest world power.”
  • See also Special section on China.

International Socialism

  • Adrian Budd: China’s environmental catastrophe (Issue 176, Autumn 2022, p.167-172). Review of Richard Smith, China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse (Pluto, 2020, 320 p.). “Unlike some on the left, Smith does not see China as a more ecologically sustainable alternative to Western capitalism. Rather, he views the Chinese model as an ecological disaster for both China and the rest of the world.”
  • Simon Gilbert: Theorising China’s transition (Issue 174, Spring 2022). “Review of Ralf Ruckus, The Communist Road to Capitalism: How Social Unrest and Containment Have Pushed China’s (R)evolution since 1949, Ralf Ruckus (PM Press, 2021, 256 p.)
    “While authors generally focus on the Communist Party leadership and its internal conflicts, Ruckus writes history from below.”
  • Simon Gilbert: China, the Uyghurs and the left (Issue 172, Autumn 2021, p.47-74)
    “This article … supports Uyghur self-determination while opposing co-option of their cause by US imperialism and its British junior partner.”
  • Adrian Budd: China and imperialism in the 21st century (Issue 170, Spring 2021, p.123-150)
    “This article aims to disentangle this complex relationship. It focuses on the geopolitics of inter-imperialist rivalry … It outlines how Marxist theory enables us to understand this rivalry before exploring the strategic interests of the US and Chinese ruling classes and the intensification of their mutual antagonism.”
  • Simon Gilbert: Class and class struggle in China today (Issue 155, Summer 2017, p.153-174)
    “This article will examine the changes in each of the social classes, then look at the strategies the CCP has adopted to ensure its continued rule, and finally argue that the working class has the potential to lead a struggle for democracy …”
  • Jane Hardy and Adrian Budd: China’s capitalism and the crisis (Issue 133, Winter 2012, p.65-100)
    “This article looks at the reality behind the hype of China’s economic rise, the deepening contradictions that it faces and its impact on interstate economic and geopolitical rivalry.”
  • Charlie Hore: Class struggle in China (Issue 125, Winter 2010). Review of William Hurst, The Chinese Worker After Socialism (Cambridge University Press, 2009)
    “Hurst’s book is a sobering account of how a key section of China’s working class have lost important battles over the past 20 years, but the fight is far from over.”
  • Charlie Hore: China’s place in the world (Issue 123, Summer 2009). Review article of Shaun Breslin, China and the Global Political Economy (Macmillan, 2009) + Jenny Clegg, China’s Global Strategy (Pluto, 2009)
  • Jeong Seong-jin: Karl Marx in Beijing (Issue 123, Summer 2009). Review of Giovanni Arrighi, Adam Smith in Beijing (Verso, 2007)
    “Jeong’s polemical attack on Arrighi’s concept of a ‘non-capitalist market society’ should … be understood in the context of South Korean left politics.”
  • Charlie Hore: China, Tibet and the left (Issue 119, Summer 2008, p.75-91)
    “In this short article, I aim firstly to look at the extent of the 2008 protests and then give a sketch of Tibet’s history since 1949. I will then look at some controversial arguments over China and Tibet, and finally consider how Tibet fits into the wider analysis of China today.”
  • Charlie Hore: China’s growth pains (Issue 118, Spring 2008, p.139-153)
    “Beijings Olympics will put China and its rapid economic growth at the centre of world attention. Charlie Hore provides a critical look at the differing arguments over the prospects for that growth.”
  • Simon Gilbert: The first emperor and after: analysing Imperial China (Issue 118, Spring 2008, p.171-187)
    “Understanding China’s past is not just about understanding its more recent development, but also serves to better explain how and why capitalism emerged in Europe.”
  • Chris Harman: China’s economy and Europe’s crisis (Issue 109, Winter 2006, p.69-90)
    “Growth in China and India is the excuse mainstream politicians use for neo-liberal attacks. Chris Harman looks at the reality of Asian growth, and its connection to global instability and attacks on workers in the West.”
  • Charlie Hore: China’s century? (Issue 103, Summer 2004, p.3-48)
    “Charlie Hore examines the contradictions of China’s boom, and the impact on workers of a repressive regime tying itself to an increasingly vulnerable system of global capitalism.”

International Socialist Review

  • China’s rise as a world power (Issue 112, Spring 2019, p.120-130)
    “Ashley Smith interviewed activist and scholar Au Loong Yu about the nature of China’s emergence as a new imperial power and what it means for the world system.”
  • China’s changing working class (Issue 95, Winter 2014-15)
    “Charlie Hore reviews five important books on China’s labor movement … [this books] are necessary reading for anyone who wants to understand how we got here and make sense of whatever comes next.”
  • David Whitehouse: Crisis and class struggle in China (Issue 67, September-October 2009)
    “This article begins with a snapshot of the course the crisis has taken so far in China. Next come some notes on the view from the top – how China’s rulers approach the economy in general. The last part, and the bulk of the article, is devoted to the view from below, including an assessment of the past two years of struggle, which has grown in pace and scale, and taken new forms …”
  • Asley Smith: China, Inc. – the rise of a new power (Issue 42 [i.e. 43], September–October 2005)
    “China’s transformation into major world power portends a protracted period of political, economic, and possibly military competition with the United States for dominance in Asia and throughout the world.”

International Viewpoint

  • Pierre Rousset: China: a new imperialism emerges! (18 November 2021)
    “The formation of a new imperialism is a rare event. It requires multiple preconditions related to the international situation and the specific characteristics of the country concerned. From this dual viewpoint, the Chinese emergence has posed us unusual questions.”
  • Pierre Rousset: From bureaucratic counter-revolution to bourgeois counter-revolution (Issue 473, June 2014)
    “From whence did the new Chinese capitalism emerge, what has allowed its blossoming and what are its specificities?”
  • Au Loong-Yu and Bai Ruixue: New signs of hope: Resistance in China today (Issue 447, April 2012)
    “The number of cases of resistance in China continues to grow. Protests both large and small are an extremely frequent occurrence in China. They range in scale and nature from workers’ protests against unpaid wages or demands for increasing labour rights, to protests against corrupt officials or environmental protests.”
  • Josep Mari­a Antentas and Esther Vivas: The new Chinese capitalism (Issue 404, September 2008)
    “China has today been through a long process of capitalist restoration initiated three decades ago. The reforms began in 1978, and extended and deepened, progressively debilitating the mechanisms of the planned economy and received a decisive push from 1992 onwards.” Dansk oversættelse i Socialistisk Information (01.10.08)

Irish Marxist Review

  • The China Syndrome? (Vol.9, No.26, 2020, p.23-30)
    “Peadar O’Grady analyses a number of aspects including the trade war with America and the spread of the coronavirus.”
  • Simon Gilbert: The National Question in China (Vol.7, No.22, 2018, p.65-68)
    “The regime, having largely abandoned any claims to socialism with the country’s integration into global capitalism, has fallen back for its legitimacy on a crude nationalism that involves the oppressive rule of Tibet and other non-Han Chinese areas.”

Jacobin: Reason in Revolt

  • Charlie Hore: Pundits keep predicting China’siImminent collapse — and keep getting it wrong (June 15, 2023)
    “Frank Dikötter is the best-selling popular historian of China today. In his latest work on the post-Mao years, Dikötter joins a long line of those predicting the speedy demise of the Chinese system, letting ideology get in the way of analysis.”
  • Jane Haywood: China’s nationwide protests have deep roots (December 17, 2022)
    Alex Dohert interviews Jane Haywood: “A coordinated protest wave across China, the country’s largest since the Tiananmen Square movement in 1989, has been instrumental in prompting the government’s policy shift on COVID-19. It’s a culmination of tensions that have been building for years.”
  • Ho-fung Hung: What Chinese capitalists owe to Mao Zedong (July 30, 2022)
    “China did not develop capitalism during the 18th century, despite having a market economy as strong as Britain’s. The raw material for China’s 20th-century capitalist takeoff came from an unlikely figure: Mao Zedong.” In Danish: Hvad de kinesiske kapitalister kan takke Mao Zedong for (Solidaritet.dk/Kritisk Revy, 15. september 2022). See also part 2: Corporate interests are inflaming US-China tensions (Jacobin, July 31, 2022).
  • Ho-fung Hung: China’s growth model is in crisis (November 22, 2021)
    “China has long seen high-speed economic growth tied to property investment. That model is now failing.”
  • Ho-fung Hung: China fantasies (December 11, 2015)
    “Illusions on both the Left and Right about China miss how the contradictions of capitalism are shaping that country’s development.”
  • Eli Friedman: China in revolt (No.7-8, 2012)
    “Few in the West are aware of the drama unfolding in today’s ‘epicenter’ of global labor unrest.”

John Hopkins University

  • Beverly J. Silver and Lu Zhang: China as an emerging epicenter of world labor unrest (pdf). Chapter 9 in: China and the Transformation of Global Capitalism. Ed. Ho-fung Hung (John Hopkins University Press, 2009, p.174-187)
    “Contrary to the race-to-the bottom thesis, our counterthesis is that where capital goes, labor-capital conflict shortly follows.”

Kritisk Debat

  • Peer Møller Christensen: Den kinesiske økonomi og den globale kapitalakkumulation (15. august 2016; online på DBC Webarkiv)
    “Inden for det sidste halve års tid har tre publikationer præsenteret forskellige venstrefløjsvurderinger af udviklingen. Det britiske erklæret marxistiske forfatterkollektiv Aufheben, det nye venstrefløjstidsskrift om Kina, Chuang, og den marxistiske samfundsforsker, Li Minqi …”
  • Peer Møller Christensen: Den kinesiske drøm og demokratiet (15. december 2015; online på DBC Webarkiv)
    “Det kinesiske samfund er i en brydningstid og der er omfattende diskussioner om demokrati og hvorledes dette skal forstås og anvendes i Kina. Venstrefløj og højrefløj er uenige om forståelsen af demokrati, og hvorvidt det vestlige demokrati bør indføres i Kina.”
  • Niels Frølich: ”Kinesiske arbejdere rejser sig – arbejdernes stigende magt” (15. december 2014; online på DBC Webarkiv)
    “Sådan lød titlen på et møde 3F afholdt 20. oktober med den kinesiske arbejderaktivist Han Dongfang om perspektiverne i den underskov af uro, modstand og strejker blandt kinesiske arbejdere …”
  • Jonas Gielfeldt: Udviklingstendenser i den kinesiske fagbevægelse – ånden har (måske) forladt flasken (15. august 2014; online på DBC Webarkiv)
    “Denne artikel vil først klargøre den overordnede indretning af det kinesiske arbejdsmarked, for herefter at beskrive de udviklingstendenser, der måske peger i retningen af en bedre organiseret arbejderklasse i Kina.”
  • Peer Møller Christensen: Den internationale akademiske venstrefløj og Kina (15. februar 2013; online på DBC Webarkiv)
    “… jeg vil i det følgende præsentere nogle udvalgte af disse teoretikeres syn på udviklingen i Kina … især fra miljøerne omkring de to engelsk-sprogede tidsskrifter Monthly Review og New Left Review.”
  • Peer Møller Christensen: Den danske venstrefløj og Kina (15. oktober 2012; online på DBC Webarkiv)
    “Dette billede af Kina, som formidles af den borgerlige medieverden, hvortil man efterhånden vel også må regne Dagbladet Information, udfordres stort set ikke på den danske venstrefløj, og den generelle fordømmelse af Kina betyder også, at hele den kinesiske revolutionshistorie afskrives sammen med de socialistiske perspektiver i den kinesiske udvikling.”
  • Minqi Li: Arbejderklassens opstandelse og den kinesiske revolutions fremtid (august 2011; online på DBC Webarkiv)
    “Hvordan vil øgningen af den kinesiske arbejderklasse påvirke Kinas – og verdens – fremtid? Vil den kinesiske kapitalistklasse formå at imødekomme arbejderklassen og samtidig opretholde det kapitalistiske system? Eller vil den kinesiske arbejderklasses opstandelse føre til en ny kinesisk socialistisk revolution, der på længere sigt kunne bane vejen for en global socialistisk revolution?

Labor Notes

  • Eve Ottenberg: Chinese workers strike against runaway factories (July 20, 2018). Review of Fan Shigang, Striking to Survive: Workers’ Resistance to Factory Relocations in China  (Haymarket Books, 2018, 200 p.)
    “The book gives workers’ oral histories of three strikes between 2012 and 2016 in the Pearl River Delta.”
  • Jane Slaughter: Behind China’s wildcat strike wave (October 15, 2014). Review of Eli Friedman, Insurgency Trap: Labor Politics in Postsocialist China (Cornell University Press/ILR Press, 2014)
    “The book shows why the rising wave of protests sometimes wins concrete gains, but stops short of forming lasting organizations that could alter the balance of power.”
  • Ellen David Friedman: Wildcat strikes push China to write new Labor laws (November 27, 2013)
    ” A wave of auto worker strikes in 2010 led to reforms like collective bargaining and democratic elections to union positions. Now the government is looking to create collective bargaining laws – but outlaw strikes.”

Left Voice

  • Strength and contradictions of the Chinese economy (September 13, 2018)
    Left Voice discussed with Au Loong Yu, a Hong Kong-based labor scholar and a longtime political activist. He is the author of China’s Rise: Strength and Fragilities (2012): “Chinese global aspirations can be seen in the country’s expanding investments abroad. A trade war with the United States may have devastating consequences.”

Libcom.org

  • Jackie Sheehan: Chinese Workers: a new history (Routledge, 1998, 269 p.)
    “This is the best book on labour in the Communist era, covering the whole period from 1949 to the early 1990s.”

Links: International Journal of Socialist Renewal

  • Chris Slee: Revolution, capitalist restoration and class struggle in China (February 24, 2019)
    A talk given to Socialist Alliance Summer School, January 2019.
  • Chris Slee: Capitalism and workers’ struggle in China (June 6, 2011)
    Revised edition of a pamphlet from Resistance Books (2010)
  • Michael Karadjis: The left cannot ignore China’s achievements, but neither can it be too celebratory (November 24, 2010)
    “Ignoring China is wrong, and impossible; celebrating it too much, however (I’m certainly not suggesting Reihana is doing this), can however be interpreted as celebrating a new capitalist, if not semi-imperialist, “model” of development which in many ways has shown itself to be quite ruthless, in particular towards its own workers and peasants …”
  • Reihana Mohideen: The left cannot ignore China’s achievement in poverty reduction (October 15, 2010)
    “China’s achievements in reducing poverty have been outstanding. From 1978 – when the restructuring of the Chinese economy began – to 2007 the incidence of rural poverty dropped from 30.7% in 1978 to 1.6% in 2007 … No other Third World country has achieved so much and made such a significant contribution to reducing global poverty, as China has, over this period.”
  • Martin Hart-Landsberg: China, capitalist accumulation and the world crisis (February 2010)
    “The consensus among economists is that China’s post-1978 market reform policies have produced one of the world’s greatest economic success stories. Some believe that China is now capable of serving as an anchor for a new (non-US dominated) global economy. A few claim that the reform experience demonstrates the workability (and desirability) of market socialism. This paper is critical of these views.”

London Review of Books

  • Perry Anderson: Sinomania (Vol.32, No.2, 28 January 2010). Review article of Martin Jacques, When China Rules the World: The Rise of the Middle Kingdom and the End of the Western World (Allen Lane, 2009) + Yasheng Huang, Capitalism with Chinese Characteristics: Entrepreneurship and the State (Cambridge University Press, 2008) + Ching Kwan Lee, Against the Law: Labour Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt (University of California Press, 2007)
    “Today, the high-speed growth of the People’s Republic is transforming Western attitudes once again, attracting excitement and enthusiasm in business and media alike, with a wave of fashion and fascination recalling the chinoiserie of rococo Europe. Sinophobia has by no means disappeared. But another round of Sinomania is in the making.”

Made in China Journal
“An quarterly on Chinese labour, civil society, and rights. In recent years, the Chinese labour movement has witnessed significant developments, not only with the occurrence of some of the largest strikes in decades but also the emergence of increasingly serious challenges for workers and activists.”
See also Made in China Yearbook Series

Marxist Sociology Blog

Marxistarkiv.se

  • Martin Fahlgren: Maoism idag – exemplet Minqi Li (pdf) (august 2012, 15 sider)
    “Bland dagens teoretiker som står högt i kurs bland moderna maoister kan nämnas amerikanen Robert Weil och kinesen Minqi Li (f n professor i ekonomi vid Utah-universitetet i USA). Det är den sistnämnde som vi här ska titta lite närmare på.”
    Se også: Texter om utvecklingen i Kina efter Mao (pdf).

Michael Roberts Blog

  • China: consumption or investment? (August 2, 2023)
    “The West’s China ‘experts’ have been quick to argue that the Chinese economy is in deep trouble, with slowing growth, falling exports, weak consumption growth and rising debt. The great economic miracle is over. But how many times have we heard this refrain from the experts over the last 20 years?”
    See also: China and the ‘experts’ (Ibid., March 5, 2023)
  • Views on China (November 28, 2021)
    “What is the experience and future for China and its Communist party rule? It seems appropriate to consider a number of new books on China that have been published [by Isabelle Weber, John Ross and Richard Smith] that try to answer this question.”
  • Chinese Communist Party: a party of workers or capitalists? (July 1, 2021)
    “In 2021, is the CCP a party of and for capitalists or of and for workers? The short answer is that it is neither. But the long answer is more complex.”
  • Xi takes full control of China’s future (October 25, 2017)
    “… in China public ownership in the means of production is dominant – unlike any other major economy.” See also Louis Proyect: China’s state-owned enterprises: a reply to Michael Roberts (The Unrepentant Marxist, October 30, 2017)
  • Which way for China, Part 1 (March 19, 2012) + Part 2 (March 23)
    “In this first part of a look at the Chinese economy, I’ll consider what will happen over, say, the next two years or so. China has experienced truly exponential economic growth over the last decade in particular … But now the question is: can that ”˜breakneck’ pace continue or is it really breakneck?”

Modkraft.dk

  • Anita Chan og Kaxton Siu: Perleflodens kinesiske migrantarbejdere (Kontradoxa, 22. august 2013)
    “Klassebevidsthed og udvikling af faglige kampe i Kina 1980-2010.” Artiklen er tidligere bragt i tidsskriftet Solidaritet (nr. 2, maj 2013)
  • Klassekamp på kinesisk (Kontradoxa, 10. juli 2013)
    “Hvorfor har den kinesiske arbejderstat så svag en fagbevægelse? Bo Ærenlund Sørensen, der har vundet en pris i arbejderhistorie, giver et bud.” Artiklen er tidligere bragt i tidsskriftet Arbejderhistorie (nr.1, juni 2013)
  • Faglig uro presser kommunistparti (Kontradoxa, 13. august 2010). Ole Wugge Christiansen interviewer Eva Flyvholm.
    “Strejkebølge i Kina resulterer i højere lønninger – og åbning for mere uafhængig faglig organisering. Myndighederne i Quandong-provinsen tager i løbet af september stilling til en revidering af arbejdsmarkedslovgivning, der kan give arbejdere ret til at vælge egne repræsentanter.”

Le Monde Diplomatique

  • Philip S. Golub: All the riches of the east restored (No.10, 2004)
    “In a long-term perspective China, like Asia as a whole, can be seen to be resuming its precolonial history and gradually reclaiming the place that it occupied before 1800, when it was one of the main centres of the world economy and the world’s principal manufacturing power.”

Monthly Review

  • Minqi Li: Degrowing China—by collapse, redistribution, or planning? (Vol.75, No.3, July-August 2023)
    “How can China, the world’s largest energy consumer, be ‘de-grown’? What policies and institutions must change, and what are the potential social implications? How can social ownership of production, redistribution of wealth the working class, and democratically controlled planning bring the country closer to a zero growth scenario?”
  • China 2020 (Vol.72, No.5, October 2020)
    “This special issue is the product of a long period of cooperation with critical Chinese Marxist scholars … [It] takes on a special significance due to the growing conflict between the United States and China, making critical Marxist analysis in this area all the more important.”
  • Zhiming Long and Rémy Herrera: The enigma of China’s growth (Vol.70, No.7, December 2018)
    “China’s economic development and success has been widely misunderstood and treated with perplexity. This overview of the Chinese economy provides an analysis of the drivers of the country’s growth and crises, including industrialization and the agrarian question.”
  • Hao Qi: The Labor share question in China (Vol.65, No.8, January 2014)
    “After the outbreak of the global crisis in 2007, China’s growth slowed down and workers’ struggles against poor living and working conditions were surging.”
  • Samir Amin: China 2013 (Vol.64, No.10, March 2013)
    “For my part, I argue that if China is indeed an emerging power, this is precisely because it has not chosen the capitalist path of development pure and simple.”
  • Yuezhi Zhao: The struggle for socialism in China: The Bo Xilai saga and beyond
    Yuezhi Zhao (Vol.64, No.5, October 2012)
    “The ousting of Bo was so significant that it has widely been described as a political earthquake of a magnitude rivaling the downfall of Mao’s designated heir Lin Biao in 1971 or the crackdown in 1989.”
  • John Bellamy Foster and Robert W. McChesney: The global stagnation and China (Vol.63, No.9, February 2012)
    “The complex system of global supply chains that has made China the world’s factory has also made China increasingly dependent on foreign capital and foreign markets, while making these markets vulnerable to any disruption in the Chinese economy. If a severe Chinese crisis were to occur it would open up an enormous chasm in the capitalist system as a whole.” The article in Norwegian: Den globale stagnasjonen og Kina (Rødt!/Gnist, nr.4a, 2012, s.42-69)
  • Minqi Li: The rise of the working class and the future of the Chinese revolution (Vol.63, No.2, June 2011)
    “In July 2009, workers at the state-owned Tonghua Steel Company in Jilin, China organized a massive anti-privatization protest. Then, in the summer of 2010, a wave of strikes swept through China’s coastal provinces. These events may prove to be a historic turning point. After decades of defeat, retreat, and silence, the Chinese working class is now re-emerging as a new social and political force.” The article in Norwegian: Veksten i arbeidarklassen og framtida til den kinesiske revolusjonen (Rødt! nr.4, 2011)
  • Martin Hart-Landsberg: The U.S. economy and China: Capitalism, class, and crisis (Vol.61, No.9, February 2010)
    “In this paper, I offer an alternative approach to understanding the U.S.-China trade relationship; one that relies on a class-based analysis of (global) capitalist dynamics.”
  • Minqi Li: An age of transition: The United States, China, Peak Oil, and the demise of Neoliberalism (Vol.59, No.11, April 2008)
    “If the current level of investment is sustained for some more years, it would leave China with a massive amount of excess production capacity that is far greater than what is needed to meet the final demand in the world market and far greater than what can be supported by the world supply of energy and raw materials. China would then be threatened with a major economic crisis.” See also review by Charlie Hore of Minqi Li’s book: The rise of China and the demise of the capitalist world economy (Socialist Review, January 2009)
  • Martin Hart-Landsberg & Paul Burkett: China, capitalist accumulation, and labor (Vol.59, No.2, May 2007)
    “Most economists continue to celebrate China as one of the most successful developing countries in modern times. We, however, are highly critical of the Chinese growth experience. China’s growth has been driven by the intensified exploitation of the country’s farmers and workers …”
  • Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett: China and socialism: Market reforms and class struggle (Vol.56, No.3, July-August 2004, 123 p.)
    “We depart this year from our usual practice for MR’s July-August double issue. Instead of a collection of articles on a common theme, we are devoting the issue to a single manuscript””a study of China and economic development theory by Martin Hart-Landsberg and Paul Burkett that will be published in book form by Monthly Review Press early next year.”
    Reviews: Sue Sparks: Actually existing capitalism (International Socialism, Issue 110, Spring 2006) + Bill Jefferies: Review (Permanent Revolution, October 2006; online at Internet Archive) + Nat Weinstein: In response to Monthly Review on China (Socialist Viewpoint, Vol.4, No.8, September 2004)

MR Online

  • China and climate change: an exchange (April 12, 2021)
    “In the Notes from the Editors to the March 2021 issue of Monthly Review, the MR editors questioned some of the arguments in Richard Smith’s book, China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse, as well as replied to Simon Pirani’s related criticisms of MR editor John Bellamy Foster on China and the environment. Both Smith and Pirani have written replies to our March editorial, which we are publishing here, along with our own rejoinder.”
  • John Bellamy Foster: Marxism, ecological civilization, and China (June 12, 2015)
    “In recent decades there has been an enormous growth of interest in Marx’s ecological ideas, first in the West, and more recently in China.” See reply from Louis Proyect: Is China going green? (The Unrepentant Marxist, June 22, 2015) + What does ecological Marxism mean for China? – Exchange (Monthly Review, 2013)
  • When China overtakes the United States. By Mark Weisbrot (April 28, 2011)
    “Various observers have noted this week that China’s economy will be bigger than that of the United States in 2016 … Since 2016 is just a few years away, and it will be the first time in more than a century that the United States will no longer be the world’s largest economy, this development will be the object of some discussion – from various perspectives.”

New Internationalist

  • Theme: China in charge (Issue 423, June 2009)
    “This month we take a critical look at China’s global reach.”

New Left Review

  • Joel Andreas: Paths not taken (Issue 130, July-August 2021). Review of Isabella Weber, How China Escaped Shock Therapy: The Market Reform Debate (Routledge, Abingdon 2021, 358 p.)
    “Reconstruction of the tight contest bestween ‘big-bang’ and ‘dual-track’ market reformers in Deng’s PRC, weighing generational experience, Western proselytising and the classical Chinese tradition.”
  • China’s credit conundrum (Issue 115, January-February 2019, p.59-74)
    “Interviewed by Robert Brenner, Victor Shih discusses the one-off factors that enabled China’s rise as workshop of the world and its subsequent dependence on state credit as driver of growth.” In Swedish: Kinas kreditgåta (pdf) (Marxistarkiv.se, 22. marts 2019, 12 s.).
  • Wang Chaohua: The party and its success story (Issue 91, January-February 2015)
    “How should the balance-sheet of Chinese Communism be assessed? In a rejoinder to Perry Anderson’s comparison of the Russian and Chinese revolutions, Wang Chaohua delivers a critical verdict on the record of Mao’s utopianism and Deng’s pragmatism, and the bleak legacy of the crushing of popular aspirations in 1989.”
  • Sean Starrs: The chimera of global convergence (Issue 87, May-June 2014)
    “Has the rise of the BRICs weakened the West’s grip on core sectors of the world economy? Sean Starrs weighs impressions of Western decline against the empirical evidence, finding plentiful signs of enduring US and European corporate power.”
  • Ho-fung Hung: America’s head servant? (Issue 60, November-December 2009)
    “Against predictions that China will soon replace the US as the world’s dominant economic power, Hung Ho-fung argues that the PRC’s export-oriented growth and vast dollar reserves have trapped it in a subordinate role – to which much of its elite remains committed.”
  • Joel Andreas: Changing colours in China (Issue 54, November-December 2008, p.123-142)
    “The nature of China’s present socio-economic system has for some time been hotly debated. Reflecting on Giovanni Arrighi’s Adam Smith in Beijing, Joel Andreas traces the path of property relations, social services and income distribution in the PRC since the late seventies, reaching unambiguous conclusions.”
  • Richard Walker & Daniel Buck: The Chinese road (Issue 46, July-August 2007, p.39-66)
    “The PRC’s breakneck transition to capitalism seen through the prism of 19th-century Europe and America, as its cities rehearse the processes analysed by Marx: commodification of land and labour, formation of markets and capitalist elites. What lessons might the West’s past hold for China’s future?”
  • Han Dongfang: Chines labour struggle (Issue 34, July-August 2005, p.65-85)
    “A railway worker caught up in the events of Tiananmen Square, now using his radio show to broadcast the problems of Chinese factory hands live on air. Han Dongfang describes life in the Red Army, student-worker unity in 1989, surviving TB and torture in prison and the China Labour Bulletin’s legal strategy. Can the PRC’s official trade unions be captured from below?

New Politics

  • Richard Smith: Can Xi Jinping’s ‘Chinese Model’ supplant capitalist democracies and why should western socialists care? Part 1 (“Xi’s ‘new type civilization’ is the opposite of all this. Instead of enlightenment, emancipation, freedom, critical thinking, science and democracy.”
    Part 2 (December 4, 2023)
    “In fact, China’s ‘miracle’ was neither an ‘unprecedented feat’ nor as rapid as the modernizations of its own East Asian neighbors, let alone characterized by ‘long-term social stability’.”
    Part 3 (December 19, 2023)
    “If Xi’s Chinese-style modernization has shattered the myth that modern-is-Western, then why is his economy still so dependent on Western science and technology?”
    Part 4 (January 9, 2024)
    “Given China’s drivers, it’s difficult to imagine how this trend could be halted or reversed short of the collapse or overthrow of the CCP. That’s coming but of course it’s impossible to predict when.”
  • Au Loong Yu: A Leftist perspective on China’s environmental destruction (Issue 70, Winter 2021). Review of Richard Smith, China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse (Pluto Press, 2020, 320 p.)
    “China’s Engine is impressive for the vast amount of empirical evidence it contains. But a reader may also be saddened, as I was, to learn how grave the crisis in China is today.”
    Se også anmeldelse af Kristen Nordhaug: Den kinesiske modellen som en miljøversting (Gnist: marxistisk tidsskrift, nr.2, 2021)
  • Ashley Smith and Kevin Lin: China and the United States: a new cold war (Issue 69, Summer 2020)
    “With interimperial rivalry returned for the first time since the end of the Cold War, and with each side whipping up dueling nationalisms, the left will have to stake out a clear position of international solidarity from below against both Washington and Beijing.”
  • Ashley Smith: U.S. and China conflict: The 21st Century’s central inter-imperial rivalry (August 28, 2019)
    “The first of three articles providing analysis of what’s happening now in China – and why.” See part 2 by Kevin Lin: How should the U.S. Left think about China? (September 5, 2019) + part 3 by Elaine Lu: Delving into the current state of China’s labor movement (October 23, 2019)
  • Au Loong Yu: The Jasic struggle in China’s political context (Issue 66, Winter 2019)
    “The Jasic case, in particular relationships that were forged between students and workers, reveals important developments in China’s politics.”
    See also Jenny Chan: Jasic workers fight for union rights (ibid.)
    . “On July 27, 2018, police arrested thirty protesters in Shenzhen, including 29 Jasic Technology workers and a university student.”
  • Dan La Botz: Workers’ stories of their strikes in China (Issue 61, Summer 2016). Review of China on Strike: Narratives of Workers’ Resistance. Edited by Hao Ren. English edition edited by Zhongjin Li and Eli Friedman (Haymarket Books, 2016, 224 p.)
    “… [the book] is the product of an extraordinary collective endeavor by workers, leftists in the Chinese labor movement, and academics at universities in China and abroad …” See also review by Orlando Hill (Counterfire July 14, 2016) + review by Charlie Hore (International Socialist Review, Issue 102, Fall 2016) + review by Jane Slaughter (Against the Current, Issue 184, September-October 2016) + review by Rebecca Townesend (International Socialism, Issue 153, Winter 2017) + Hao Ren, Zhongjin Li, & Eli Friedman: The life and resistance of a Chinese worker (Jacobin: Reason in Revolt, 15 July 2016)
  • Michael Pröbsting: China’s emergence as an imperialist power (Issue 57, Summer 2014)
    “One of the most important issues in world politics today is China’s rise as a great imperialist power. Most left-wing writers consider China either as a ‘socialist country’, a ‘deformed workers’ state’, or as a ‘dependent capitalist country’ exploited by Western monopolies … I am of the opinion that China has never been an authentic socialist country.”
  • Au Loong Yu: How socialist is the Chinese party state? (Issue 51, Summer 2011). Review of Wang Hui, The End of Revolution: China and the Limits of Modernity (Verso, 2010)
    “What follows is our review of the book in the light of this description: how far this assessment is correct, and how relevant it is for those social activists who are pursuing just such an alternative in China.”
  • Au Loong Yu: China: End of a model” or the birth of a new one? (Issue 47, Summer 2009)
    “China’s thirty years of nearly uninterrupted high growth has encountered great challenge as the global economic crisis has hit China’s export hard … The global downturn on one hand and China’s relative strength in containing the crisis on the other makes the topic ‘the rise of China’ more heated than ever.”

Permanent Revolution

  • Bill Jefferies: China’s economy: Firewall or final domino? (Issue 11, Winter 2009; online at Internet Archive)
    “Growth in China has slowed this year. But Bill Jefferies contests the widely held view on the left that China is particularly vulnerable due to a dependence on exports for its continued expansion.”
  • Bill Jefferies: Chinese capitalism and the left (Issue 9, October 2008; online at Internet Archive)
    “As the credit crunch bites and US imports slow, the left eagerly awaits the collapse of the Chinese economy. A new period of stagnation has arrived they say. Bill Jefferies takes issue with the stagnation theorists and shows that China’s astonishing sustained vitality and growth rests on the impact of capitalist restoration on the Chinese working class and poor.”

Real-World Economics Review

  • Richard Smith: Climate arsonist Xi Jinping: a carbon-neutral China with a 6% growth rate? (pdf) (Issue 94, 9 December 2020, p.32-52)
    “I contend that regardless of his stated intentions, Xi cannot meet this carbon-neutral goal because the Communist Party’s overriding priority since Mao’s day has been to ‘catch up and overtake the United States’ by turning China into the world’s leading superpower.”
  • Richard Smith: China’s drivers and planetary ecological collapse (pdf) (Issue 82, 13 December 2017, p.1-28)
    “Can China lead the fight against climate change? If not, why not? Richard Smith, drawing on his forthcoming book China’s Engine of Ecological Apocalypse (Verso, 2018) argues that the built-in drivers and barriers of China’s hybrid bureaucratic-collectivist capitalism severely limit President Xi Jinping’s options, rendering his ambitions impossible and reinforcing China’s role as the world’s leading driver of global warming and thus planetary ecological collapse.”
  • Richard Smith: China’s Communist-Capitalist ecological apocalypse (pdf) (Issue 71, May 2015, p.19-63)
    “This article seeks to explain why China’s environmental crisis is so horrific, so much worse that ‘normal’ capitalism most everywhere else, and why the government is incapable of suppressing pollution even from its own industries.”

Red Flag

  • Tom Bramble: China after the boom (29 July 2015)
    “After three decades of spectacular growth, the Chinese economy is at a turning point, and workers will be expected to bear the brunt of the crisis.”

Revolution: organ for Revolutionære Socialister

  • Kinas lange march mod kapitalisme (5. september 2014)
    “Udkastet til dette dokument blev skrevet i april 2006 og diskuteret og vedtaget ved IMT’s Verdenskongres i juli 2006 … På grund af Kina’s stigende vigtighed, både økonomisk, militært og geoplitisk, gør vi det nu tilgængeligt, for at give vores læsere en grundlæggende forståelse af hvordan Kina er kommet til der hvor det er i dag.”

RS21: Revolutionbary Socialism in the 21st Century

  • Charlie Hore: The Communist Road to Capitalism and The Left in China (19 April 2023) Review of two books by Ralf Ruckus: “These two complementary books are important additions to critical left writing on modern China. Ruckus is a long-standing left critic of both Maoism and the post-Mao leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) …” See also review by Rob Hoveman (Socialist Worker, Issue 2845, 9 March 2023).
  • Understanding China after Mao (10 January 2023)
    “Charlie Hore reviews Frank Dikötter’s China after Mao [Bloomsbury, 2022], finding a work with large omissions which fails to explain why China has changed so much since the 1970s.”
  • Back on the streets in China (30 November 2022)
    “After a weekend of widespread protests across China, rs21 member Charlie Hore explains the movement’s significance and looks at what might come next.”
  • Winter is coming – on the situation in China (December 15, 2017)
    “As China’s economic, political and geo-strategic role increases, Charlie Hore assesses the position of China today and outlines a number of key challenges that face the leadership.”
  • Five books you should read on China (October 24, 2015)
    “Charlie Hore offers some suggestions to help understand what is happening in the world’s largest country.”

Rødt! Marxistisk Tidsskrift/Gnist

  • Kristen Nordhaug: En oppstigende stormakt i en verden dominert av USA (nr.3, 2016)
    “Nordhaug drøfter Kinas stormaktsposisjon i sammenheng med dets økonomiske utviklingsmodell. Han viser til to nye bøker, The China boom av Ho-fung Hung og The global rise of China av Alvin So og Yin-wah Chu.”
  • John Bellamy Foster og Robert W. McChesney: Den globale stagnasjonen og Kina (nr.4a, 2012, s.42-69)
    “Står Kina foran en krise, eller greier de å holde seg utenfor? Hva er forholdet til USA, økonomisk sett? Hvor avhengige er de av hverandre? Er Kina egentlig bare en sammenstiller av halvfabrikata fra Korea, Sør-Øst-Asia og Japan?” Se også hele Rødts temanummer: Midtens rike (nr.4a, 2012, 83 s.)
  • Minqi Li: Veksten i arbeidarklassen og framtida til den kinesiske revolusjonen (nr.4, 2011)
    “I juli 2009 organiserte arbeidarar ved det statseigde Tonghua Stålkompani i Jilin i Kina ein massiv protest mot privatisering. Deretter sveipa ei streikebølgje over dei kinesiske kystprovinsane sommaren 2010. Desse hendingane kan vise seg å vere eit historisk vendepunkt.”
  • Hung Ho Fung: USAs førstetjenar? Kinas dilemma i krisa (nr.2a, 2010)
    “I det følgande vil eg sjå på dei historiske og sosiale årsakene til at Kina og Aust- Asia har blitt stadig meir avhengige av forbrukar-marknaden i Nord som grunnlag for veksten, og på finansmarknaden i USA som lagringsplass for sparepengane sine.”
  • Martin Hart-Landsberg og Paul Burkett: Sosialismen i Kina – hvor blei den av?:  Markedsreform og klassekamp (nr.2a, 2005, 98 s.)
    “Dette ekstranummeret av Rødt! er en oversettelse av China & socialism: Market reforms and class struggle, Monthly Review, juli-august 2004.

Socialism Today

  • Peter Taaffe: China’s halfway house (Issue 150, July 2011)
    “A new book, Red Capitalism, draws the conclusion that China has some way to go before it can be described as a fully-fledged capitalist state. Socialism Today has long argued, from a socialist viewpoint, that the monopoly of power exercised by the so-called ‘Communist’ Party and the overwhelming influence of the state sector in economic life makes China a curious hybrid.”
  • Lynn Walsh: China’s hybrid economy (Issue 122, Oct 2008)
    “Despite the rapid growth of the private capitalist sector and the strengthening of centrifugal market forces, the state still exercises considerable economic power.”
  • Lynn Walsh: The character of the Chinese state (Issue 122, Oct 2008)
    “The China debate continues with a reply to Vincent Kolo’s article. In that article, Vincent argues that China is now a fully-fledged capitalist economy. Is it that clear cut?”
  • Vincent Kolo: China’s capitalist counter-revolution (Issue 114, Dec-Jan 07-08)
    “As part of our series, The China Debate, we publish below an article by Vincent Kolo, which offers a view on the nature of China’s state.”
  • Peter Taaffe: China’s future? (Issue 108, April 2007)
    “In the first of a series of articles on the nature of China’s state and economy, Peter Taaffe reviews Will Hutton’s new book: The writing on the wall: China and the West in the 21st century.”

Socialist Resistance

Socialist Review

  • Implications of imperial ambitions (Issue 464, January 2021)
    “China’s rulers have, for the past four decades, sought to increase the country’s global role, particularly via their Belt and Road Initiative. Simon Gilbert reviews three recently published books on the repercussions of these policies, while Adrian Budd considers a study of US/Chinese tensions.”
  • China’s rise and the threat of a new cold war. By Adrian Budd (Issue 460, September 2020)
    “The phenomenal growth of Chinese military power is challenging the post-war hegemony in the Pacific, but it remains dependent on the US for its future economic stability.”
  • New sites of struggle in a changing China (Issue 449, September 2019; online at Internet Archive)
    “In a sobering and detailed analysis, Kevin Lin speaks to Adrian Budd about the resilience of workers’ struggles in China, despite fierce state repression.”
  • Adrian Budd: Rulers make ready for discontent (Issue 439, October 2018; online at Internet Archive)
    “The recent centralisation of authority around Xi Jinping, and moves to reinforce conformity within Chinese society, have more to do with preparations to confront a host of emerging economic, social and political issues than the formation of a new cult of personality.”
  • China: New strains on state capitalism (Issue 435, May 2018)
    “Adrian Budd discusses the contradictions in the Chinese economy that might pose a threat to its celebrated — and feared — growth rates.”
  • China: A labour movement in the making (Issue 434, April 2018; online at Internet Archive)
    “Simon Gilbert looks at whether there is potential for the host of seperate disputes to coalesce into a national workers’ movement, with enormous power.”
  • Instability and crisis in China (Issue 339, February 2015)
    “Despite its meteoric growth rates, China may not be the economic juggernaut the Western media portrays. Jane Hardy uncovers the structural tensions and the workers’ movements challenging the global superpower.”
  • Trouble brewing in China (Issue 368, April 2012)
    “Estelle Cooch and Jack Farmer spoke to Geoffrey Crothall from the China Labour Bulletin about workers’ resistance in China.”
  • Charlie Hore: Will this be China’s century? (Issue 343, January 2010)
    “China is now widely tipped to challenge the power and dominance of the US in the next few decades. Charlie Hore assesses the global implications of China’s economic growth and the impact of workers’ struggles on the regime.”

SocialistWorker.org (US)

  • Contours of the class struggle in China (April 22, 2015)
    “Since the 2008 and the spread of the global economic crisis, China has experienced a sharp rise in class struggle, both in Hong Kong and on the mainland. Ellen David Friedman spoke with Ashley Smith about the dynamics and nature of these struggles.”
  • David Whitehouse: A sleeping giant stirs in China (July 27, 2010)
    “Workers in China’s booming auto industry have mounted an unprecedented series of strikes in Japanese-owned plants since late May.”

Socialist Worker (UK)

  • Dave Sewell: Are the Brics on the brink? (Issue 2288, 4 February 2012; online at Internet Archive)
    “Many look to developing economies such as China to come to the rescue of Western capitalism – but these countries aren’t immune from the instability of whole system.”
  • China: the masses are on the move (Issue 2232, 18 December 2010; online at Internet Archive)
    “One of the most inspiring developments of 2010 was the wave of strikes by China’s workers. Charlie Hore looks at the background to the rising discontent of China’s masses.”
  • China: empty bowls and unemployment (Issue 2140, 28 February 2009; online at Internet Archive)
    “Journalist Hsiao-Hung Pai spoke to migrant workers at a labour market in Sichuan province about the impact of the global economic crisis on China’s economy.”
  • Charlie Hore: Recession creates trouble for China (Issue 2124, 25 October 2008; online at Internet Archive)
    “Events in the Chinese economy and decisions by the Chinese government will have major consequences for how the global recession develops.”

Solidaritet

  • Peer Møller Christensen: Kinesisk marxistisk økonom: Kina må bremse den økonomiske vækst, hvis en global klimakatastrofe skal afværges (Kritisk Revy, 26. oktober 2023)
    “Den kinesiske marxistiske økonom Li Minqi konkluderer i en artikel i Monthly Review, at den kinesiske økonomi skal nærme sig nulvækst, hvis en global klimakatastrofe skal undgås – og det kommer måske af sig selv.”
    Se Minqi Li: Degrowing China—by collapse, redistribution, or planning? (Monthly Review, Vol.75, No.3, July-August 2023)
  • Peer Møller Christensen: Kineserne er mere klimabevidste end folk i Vesten (Kritisk Revy,  25. august 2023)
    “Den kinesiske befolkning er langt mere bevidst om, hvad klimaforandringerne betyder for deres dagligdag og i højere grad indstillet på at acceptere indgreb i deres livsstil, for at afværge en kommende klimakatastrofe, end befolkningerne i Vesten. Den kinesiske ledelse er imidlertid ikke interesseret i at sænke sine ambitioner om ‘Den Kinesiske Drøm’, der kræver fortsat økonomisk vækst og udledning af drivhusgasser.”
  • Ralf Ruckus: Kinesiske arbejdere står over for en voksende undertrykkelse (Kritisk Revy, nr. 15, maj 2023). “Den nye arbejderklasse, som blev skabt af Kinas [økonomiske] transformation har lært at organisere sig og kræve bedre aftaler med hjælp fra arbejder-NGOer og venstrefløjsaktivister. Men en undertrykkelse af oppositionel aktivitet under Xi Jinping har gjort dette arbejde meget vanskeligere.”
  • Daniel Devir: Virksomhedsinteresser opflammer spændingerne mellem USA og Kina (Kritisk Revy, nr. 12, november 2022). Interview med ​​ Ho-Fung Hung: “I en global økonomi præget af overproduktion og underforbrug, kæmper amerikanske og kinesiske virksomheder for at udtrække overskud fra udviklingslandene. Uden massiv omfordeling ​​ af velstanden, vil forbruget ikke vende tilbage til stabile niveauer.”
  • Daniel Devir: Hvad de kinesiske kapitalister kan takke Mao Zedong for (Kritisk Revy, 15. september 2022). Interview med Ho-Fung Hung: “Kina udviklede ikke kapitalisme i løbet af det 18. århundrede, på trods af at landet havde en markedsøkonomi, der var lige så stærk som Storbritanniens. Råmaterialet til Kinas kapitalistiske start i det 20. århundrede kom fra en usandsynlig figur: Mao Zedong.”
  • Per Møller Christensen: Kinas rolle i den internationale økonomi (Kritisk Revy, 15. februar 2022)
    “Til efteråret skal Kinas Kommunistiske Parti afholde sin 20. nationale kongres. I Kritisk Revy vil vi op til kongressen bringe en række baggrundsartikler om Kinas økonomi og politik, og i denne den første artikel i rækken vil de senere års udvikling i Kinas position i den internationale økonomi blive behandlet.”
  • Handelskrigen mellem USA og Kina. Af Zhiming Long, Zhixuan Feng, Bangxi Li og Rémy Herrera (Kritisk Revy, 12. november 2020)
    “Forfatterne foretager en marxistisk analyse af handelsrelationerne mellem USA og Kina, som de har udfoldet sig de seneste årtier. De påviser, at handelen mellem de to lande har haft karakter af et ulige bytte til USA’s fordel. Denne fordel er imidlertid i de allerseneste år skrumpet ind, og dette kunne, ifølge forfatterne, være en forklaring på, at den amerikanske regering har indledt handelskrigen med Kina.”

Spectre

  • Yun Donf: The uprising in China: resisting lockdowns, repression, and precarity (November 30, 2022)
    “This resistance is the result of a confluence of immediate catalysts and long-term political and economic dynamics. It has shattered a certain political-psychological barrier among large numbers of people, leading them to lose their fear of arrest in a highly surveilled state and join mass demonstrations.”
  • China and the U.S. Left (July 17, 2021) + Marxism and Imperialism (August 3, 2021)
    “A group of critical China scholars and editors from Spectre got together to talk through the complexity of responding to the intensifying US-China rivalry, with an eye towards formulating anti-capitalist and liberatory politics on both sides of the Pacific.”
  • Roundtable on China: A dialogue between Lausan and Critical China Scholars (March 10, 2021)
    “It centered around the question of how to navigate nascent US-China tensions and how to effectively articulate a leftist, internationalist framework of solidarity.”
  • Eli Friedman: Why China is capitalist: toward an anti-nationalist anti-imperialism (July 15, 2020)
    “China’s communist road to capitalism has led to serious confusion for the left (both within China and globally) about how to characterize the current state of affairs.”
    See reply from Richard Smith: Why China isn’t capitalist (despite the pink Ferraris) (August 17, 2020).

State of Nature

Tempest

Travis S.: Building a mass movement with no apologism: The Left and the Communist Party of China (December 24, 2021)
“Within and outside DSA, many on the Left have aligned themselves with the Communist Party of China (CPC). Guest author Travis S. submitted this piece to Tempest in the interest of furthering debate on the question of how the left should relate to the CPC. He explores the contradictions and implications of tying the Left to the ruling party of China.”

Weekly Worker

  • Michael Roberts: Contradictions and ambiguities (Issue 1375, 9 December 2021)
    “Market socialism, capitalism with Chinese characteristics, or a workers’ state? Michael Roberts takes issue with three recent books”
  • Michael Roberts: Is it all over? (Issue 1070, 6 August 2015)
    “Michael Roberts looks at the implications of China’s stock market collapse.”
  • Ben Lewis: Capitalism with Chinese characteristics (Issue 857, 17 March 2011)
    “Ben Lewis wonders why some still consider China a model for socialist development.”
  • Steve Freeman: The triumph of state capitalism (Issue 727, 26 June 2008)
    “What kind of society is China? Steve Freeman analyses the facts and figures following his recent visit.”