The CPC’s decisive role in China’s rise to economic superpower

[Translation from the original Sinhala speech delivered at the 105th anniversary celebration of the Communist Party of China, organised by the CGTN Sinhala Service and hosted by the Communist Party of Sri Lanka. Watch full speech. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v* C90V4qY7iGQ] Be…

Before the MoU between the United States and Iran was signed, President Trump let slip something crucial at the G7 meeting in France. When he was asked how Iran’s enriched uranium was to be removed from the country, Trump said that the enrichment facility had been placed beneath a mountain by the Iranian government but US B2 bombers caved-in the mountain itself, burying the uranium under its rubble, making it almost impossible to retrieve. He claimed that the United States was the only country in the world which had the capacity to retrieve it, pausing momentarily and adding “and China”. So, by President Trump’s admission, this impossible task could be handled by only two countries on the planet: the US or China. China arrived at this point of development, not by having been a colonial power for centuries like the UK and much of Western Europe. Nor by transnational corporations extracting resources for many decades from around the world. Not by establishing over hundreds of military bases all over the globe. But today, even the US accepts that China has now reached the status of a “peer competitor”. Some would say that China is a civilisational state, and was able to do so because of nationalism built on their ancient civilisation. But it is while this same civilisation was in place that Genghis Khan’s Mongols were able to breach the Great Wall, enter China and conquer it. It is during this same civilisation that Britain was able to use its warships’ cannons to force China to buy and consume opium (‘the Opium Wars’). Therefore, the great and rapid rise of China is not purely attributable to its ancient civilisation. China’s economic development has eliminated absolute poverty within a short period of 40 years, for the first time in the economic history of the world and done so without a history of colonialism. So how did China achieve this miracle and when did this happen? The initial efforts were under the leadership of Sun Yat-Sen, who founded the Guomindang, a patriotic, modernising, progressive party. His party was supported by Lenin but the character of that party completely changed after his death. In 1926 the party was an honorary member of the Executive Committee of the Communist International, but in 1927, under the leadership of Chiang Kai-shek, they collaborated with the colonial powers and foreign capitalists based in China to turn on and massacre the Communist Party of China in Shanghai and Canton. We cannot conclude that the Guomindang party was the driver of the rise of China, because they were unable to protect China from Japan’s war of aggression against it (1937). Mao Zedong That task could only be achieved by the Communist Party of China (CPC) which was born in 1921, 105 years ago. Among the founders of that party was young Mao Zedong. Mao became the leader of the Communist Party during 7th Congress in Zunyi in 1935. So how did the leadership of the Communist Party of China (CPC) initiate and steer the rise of China to its current Great Power status? The secret of its success can be grasped by understanding the CPC through three major periods of its history, under the leaderships respectively of Mao Zedong, Deng Xiaoping and Xi Jinping. In September 1959, Mao Zedong himself explained the secret of China’s success, in an address to the Military Commission of the Central Committee of the CPC. Mao explained that if the political and military lines are correct, then you will receive all that you don’t have, such as cadre, people, weapons and eventually power. But if the political and military lines are incorrect, you will lose all that you have– cadre, the people, weapons and power. Therefore, the secret which is revealed is that of the correct line, i.e. correct thinking; the thought process. The Chinese Communist Party has never claimed that they always had the correct line of thinking from its inception through to the present day. According to the official history of the party, there were at least 11 struggles between ‘two lines’ in the history of the party. That’s how we know that there were struggles against Chen Du Xiu’s ‘rightist deviation’ and Li LiSan’s and Wang Ming’s ultra-left lines. The people were informed about these struggles through the published writings and speeches of Mao and other leaders throughout the history of the party. The CPC didn’t attempt to hide the line-struggles. Mao was not only a great political leader, but also a great military leader, philosopher and poet. He taught that in order to arrive at the correct line; one has to correctly identify contradictions; distinguish between antagonistic contradictions (with the enemy) and non-antagonistic contradictions (among friends); recognise the primary and secondary contradictions; understand the main and secondary aspects of the contradiction and how the secondary becomes the primary and vice versa. It is according to this philosophical methodology that the correct line could be established. For example, when Japan invaded China, the main enemy became this external aggressor. But when there was no external threat, the CPC taught that the main enemy was the comprador capitalists, bureaucrat capitalists and semi-colonialism. The ‘comprador capitalist’ class is the intermediary class between the imperialist power and the country; the agent of colonialism. Mao and the CPC also recognised the role of the ‘national bourgeoisie’. This is the nationalist capitalist class that stood for a national industrialisation and the national market, and had some contradictions with colonialism. One cannot achieve a victory without distinguishing between these different factions and strata of the capitalists. One cannot embrace the comprador capitalists and/or bureaucrat-capitalists in order to develop a country. That was not the way China achieved its victories. The Chinese Communist Party understood the contradictions correctly, and when there was an incorrect understanding of the contradictions, they fearlessly engaged in ‘line-struggles’ and ensured the correct line prevailed. It is in 1935 that the CPC under the leadership of Mao arrived at last, at the correct line. Even after that there were struggles of rectification, as in 1942. The Countryside and the Peasantry The great victories during Mao’s period were the victory in the struggle for national liberation by defeating Japan, and the peasant-based revolution. An important feature of Mao’s thinking was that in countries like ours, in the global south, the primary force was the rural peasantry. Without considering the rural peasantry as the main force, one cannot arrive at the correct line. This is the reason that while India is a great economic power, China has become an economic superpower. Why? Because there are no semi-feudal residues of casteism among the peasantry in China unlike in India. This is because the national liberation struggle of the CPC had as its main force, the rural peasantry and its main arena, the countryside. Mao Zedong recognized clearly the reality of China at the time. He said it was a semi-feudal, semi-colonized country. Why semi-colonized? Because all of China was colonized not by one colonial power but different parts of the country, especially the coastal ports and cities, were dominated by different foreign powers. This was done through China’s comprador- bureaucratic capitalist class. Having put an end to all these challenges, the foundation for the China we see today was laid by Mao Zedong. On October 1st 1949, addressing the people at a meeting to celebrate the victory of the Chinese Revolution and the liberation of China, the first sentence he uttered was “The Chinese people have stood up!” Deng Xiaoping The second period was of Deng Xiaoping. During the armed people’s revolution in China, there was a huge province-wide liberated zone under Deng. The pragmatic economic policies he implemented in that province were different from the policies adopted in other liberated zones under other CPC leaders. What he had was a model of economics that enabled and provided opportunities for the rural areas and the peasantry to grow prosperous. Decades after the Revolution Deng was expelled from power but Zhou Enlai rehabilitated him. When he assumed the CPC leadership there were three great contributions that Deng made. First, he introduced an objective historical analysis of Chairman Mao to the party and the country. He didn’t completely reject Mao the way that the Soviet Communist Party did to Stalin, nor did he say that Mao was holy and infallible. He didn’t maintain a cult of Mao but didn’t negate him. He followed Mao method regarding Stalin. Mao said that Stalin got more things right than wrong– 70% right and 30% wrong. Deng did a similar analysis of Mao. Because of that balanced perspective China was able to move forward taking the best from the past and eliminating what was bad. This was publicized widely, not limited to secret meetings inside the party. The Central Committee Resolution passed at the Party Congress in 1981 is available as a book, which analyses the errors made in the period encompassing the Great Leap Forward, the Cultural Revolution and the rue of the ultra-left Gang of Four. In economics, the first thing Deng did was to implement policies enabling the rural peasantry to become wealthy. The enriched peasantry in turn deposited their savings in state banks. The state then was able to invest those savings for the leap in its industrial development. His second step was to open the coastal areas to foreign capital. In this, he was encouraged by Lee Kuan Yew, during his 1978 visit to Singapore. Lee said to him, if the Singaporeans who originated from China’s poor fishing communities can transform their economy from Third World to First, it would be not be difficult for you and your comrades from the educated Chinese elite from the cities including Beijing, to do so. Deng took this advice into account. Xi Jinping and Globalization The third great period in the history of China led by the CPC is the on-going period of Xi Jin Ping. There are many things one can say about this period but I will draw out just one lesson: the question of globalization. Now, in Sri Lanka as well as in many other countries, there is a leftist denunciation of globalization and an anti-globalization movement. Yet the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels recognizes and applauds globalization by capitalism and the bourgeoisie. However, Xi Jinping offers a new perspective. He is against the inequity and unfairness of the prevailing system of globalization. He says China stands for globalization, but offers the Belt and Road project of globalization, which is very different to colonial, neocolonial and neo-liberal globalization. It is a developmental project in which China is prepared to invest in the infrastructure development of countries. In Sri Lanka one group is opposed to globalization, but when they obtain state-power, rush to embrace it as it is in the neoliberal version! Another group is partial to neoliberal globalization but their neoliberal version of globalization disregards the protection of sovereignty, and agrees to demands of bridges and channels to neighboring big countries. People are opposed to this kind of anti-national, unpatriotic globalization. Even in Britain, people were opposed to this, hence Brexit, Britian’s exit from the European Union. Under President Xi, a powerful, important and modern conceptual intervention has been made, offering a more balanced, more equitable world order and an alternative globalization project. It is a balanced, multipolar globalization. In my presentation, I’ve outlined the paradigmatic thinking in these three great periods of the Communist Party of China founded 105 years ago, that drove the unique economic miracle of China and its rapid rise to ‘peer competitor’ status with the USA.

by Dr Dayan Jayatilleka