Is China a Communist Country?

China is not a communist country, said a young Chinese woman YouTuber on a video I saw recently. No, she said, China has socialism with Chinese characteristics. Others say that China is not a socialist country. It is a People's Republic which might become fully socialist sometime in the future. These kind of statements make eyes roll in the US. In the United States, our neocon policy wonks are stuck in the past, with their propaganda mainstream narrative taking most of the population with them. They barely recognize the multi polar or multi modal world. “BRICS? What's that?” We still hear politicians talking about the “Free World.” That term used to mean the non communist world. Now it designates adversaries who range from China to Cuba, Venezuela, Vietnam, Iran, and Russia – no matter what kind of system they have. It is an archaic notion that seems to prevail no matter what the facts might be. The shifting reality of global politics has undermined the western narrative. The anti communism of the cold war has been transformed into ethnic hatred of Russia and China while at the same time, Communism is no longer the boogie man it used to be.

Two things seem to have diluted our obsession with communism. First, the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991 and a capitalist Russia replaced it. Big business was shocked when they learned from Vladimir Putin recently that they lost 400 billion dollars worth of business due to American sanctions against Russia accompanying their Special Military Operation (SMO) in Ukraine. Second, communist China became the biggest market in the world which has American businesses all drooling in their soup. It was one thing to try to isolate and destroy a struggling Soviet Union and a poverty stricken China. It is another to try it on a revived nuclear armed Russia, a great power fully capable of giving western bullies a bloody nose. Or on a prosperous China which has become the primary source of profits for big American businesses. The strident calls to kill a commie for Christ have been drowned out by the 'cha ching' of the cash register.

When President Richard Nixon shook hands with Mao in 1972, the western world decided to do business with their old enemy and it changed the world. From that date on, inside the uni-polar world, industrialization and technology spread to places like China, Indonesia, South Korea and the Philippines, to name a few. Fast forward to Trump's second term and we are witnessing the demise the neocon “rules based order” as the US is forced to recognize the need for diplomacy. Trump's embrace of diplomacy with the rest of the world, free or not, has pulled us back from the brink of nuclear war. This pull back reflects the fact that the West has been defeated. Russia has already won the Ukraine war. That is something very hard for the old regime to admit. It is just as hard to admit our defeat in the wars in China (1949), Korea (1953), Vietnam (1973), Iraq (2003), Libya (2014) and Afghanistan (2021). No matter how they spin it, these defeats have set the world on a new path.

Western refusal to admit defeat blinded the US to the growing influence of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on the rest of the world. Mao died in 1976. Deng Xiaoping initiated the reform and opening up of China to foreign investment and trade in 1978. The balance of power globally was shifting away from the Western Empire which opened the door for the Communist Party of China to tolerate capitalism inside the People's Republic. Opening up to capitalism in the Gorbachev era during the Cold War had disastrous effect on the USSR. China studied the collapse of the Soviet Union very carefully. The result was that China created a new type of Central planning without the heavy hand, and it turned China into an economic giant. China has ignited a volcano of global change that rivals the industrial revolution in its impact on humanity. This new system of a centrally planned mixed economy has eliminated poverty in China for hundreds of millions of people, brought about the rise of the Chinese industrial machine, and did all this without China being at war.

The way that the CPC has controlled its capitalist sector is truly remarkable. First and foremost is the land: the state owns and controls all land. In the cities, all land is state owned. In the country, all land is collectively owned. Individual ownership is not allowed. Private interests can lease it for 99 years at a time. But never own it. Second is the CPC control of basic social institutions like the military, education, banking, transportation, telecommunications, tobacco, petroleum, resource extraction and electric power. When companies in the private sector grow large enough to impact the political power of the CPC, the Party steps in and appoints a Communist Party person as CEO of the company. This insures that large companies are in line with the five year plans of the government, among other things. And it works. You cannot understand the rise of China without seeing the central role of the CPC. The difference between the performance of the economy in China vs the rest of the world is starkly visible when you compare the high speed rail system built up in China over the last two decades to that of the US. The modern world has suddenly appeared in China while US capitalism seems to be stuck in a museum surrounded by homeless encampments.

The impact of central planning is not lost on the world. Drawing on his experiences in the KGB, Putin saved Russia from being dismembered and subjugated in the 1990s through his policy of subordinating the oligarchs to the state. He did not abolish the oligarchs. He just let them know who was boss. And then he turned to a policy of restoring Russia's sovereignty and building back its defenses against the inevitable assault by western powers. Subordinating the oligarchs to the state was Putin's cardinal sin in the eyes of the west. He has been labeled a dictator in spite of being elected and reelected over and over. Putin's approach to the economy proved its worth as Russia pivoted to Asia (eat your heart out Obama), not only surviving, but flourishing, under the mass of sanctions put on it by the west. Not to mention that he has led Russia to victory in the Ukraine.

China's miraculous ascendance without war is fundamental to all this. As China became the workshop of the world, it accumulated massive wealth in the form of positive trade balances. China may have its billionaires, but it does not allow them to squander the vast resources created by the mass production system and its advanced technology. Instead, the CPC uses its new found surplus to invest in education, technology and human welfare inside China, giving rise to the most highly educated, advanced work force in the world. This work force, combined with Chinese technology, attracts capital investment from the entire globe, including the large multi-national corporations of the old Empire. It is not about low wages anymore.

Outside its borders, China has used this surplus wealth not to subjugate other nations, nor to sink them into poverty through super exploitation and privatization schemes. Instead it has built out the old Silk Road in the form of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) constructing ports, rails, roads, and telecommunications that open up new possibilities for the development of their trading partners. When imperialism builds roads and rails in its colonial world, all roads lead to the capital and the ports for export. When China builds roads, they connect Global South nations together for the unhindered development of trade and prosperity. Neo colonial nations are shaking loose from the strangulation of the west because they now see an alternative mode of development that has proven itself in China, once, not so long ago, the poorest nation on earth.

The rise of BRICS+ along with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) countries and other regional associations on the Eurasian continent, are the physical manifestation of this new China led world taking shape today. BRICS+ started out with Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa searching for ways to avoid the sanctioned filled nightmare of western imperialist control. BRICS+ is now growing rapidly adding Indonesia, Ethiopia, Iran and the United Arab Emirates and many other partner organizations lining up to join. The Shanghai Cooperation Organization consists of 9 members, India, Iran, Kazakhstan, China, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, with Afghanistan, Belarus and Mongolia and many others as observers. ASEAN countries comprise 10 member states: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam. If you look at a map, you can see that these associations contain the vast majority of the Eurasian continent and the globe. This new grouping of nations represents the majority of people and even the majority of the worlds' economies.

China's role in supporting the development of all of these nations does not require others to adopt the Communist party form of government. China supports the diversity of the actual world and keeps its nose out of the internal affairs of its trading partners. What a concept! Peaceful co-existence lives on in an ever growing part of the world.

How has the west reacted to these new developments? Very badly, all in all. First, it suppresses all knowledge of them among its peoples. You don't see anything about them in the press. Moreover, the west, led by the US, has militarized the world by expanding NATO and establishing 800 US military bases all over the place to counter this trend. The secret government (CIA) and the Deep State (USAID et al) have tightened their grip on the world's resources, expanded regime change operations, deepening the poverty and displacement of the people around the world. Millions of displaced people flood into the wealthy nations of the empire seeking relief from the desperation forced upon them by the western neo colonialism. As people of color flood the US and Europe, the politics of the old empires turn into Nazi-like spectacles based on white supremacy and old outmoded hopes for world conquest. Europe and the US support genocide in Palestine because genocide is the tried and true method of capitalist rule throughout the whole history of western development. Inside the empire, western populations wake up to their own history while watching US and Israeli genocide on their cell phones. The fact that the western public is shocked at this ugly reality is a reflection of the illusions that underpin the western mainstream narrative. This change in awareness, spread by social media and smart phones, is propelling Western nations into a brick (pun intended) wall.

So is China a communist country? I think the young woman YouTuber is right. No, its a People's Republic practicing socialism with Chinese characteristics. It is time to let the old world's outmoded false narrative of democracy and freedom go and instead open our eyes to the new realities spreading across the world.