The large student demonstrations in China in recent weeks, particularly at Beijing University, are a portent of social and political crisis. Demonstrations of such magnitude can only signify a deepening of the contradictions in the Chinese economy today.The Chinese leadership, while still fundamentally adhering to socialist centralized planning, has unloosed a blizzard of capitalist market mechanisms; has dismantled the communes, the revolutionary basis of Chinese agriculture; and has given vent to and stimulated lust for private gain and profit on a scale which amazes even the imperialist bourgeoisie.
Galloping inflation is the inevitable concomitant of the introduction of bourgeois mechanisms in distribution and the sale of consumption items at a time when there are still official, government-"regulated" prices. This type of regulation, when accompanied by the stimulation of the capitalist market, only brings to the fore once more (as has happened so many times in the bourgeois economies) the growing specter of the black market and its rivalry with the official market.
1976 demonstration at Tienanmen
Significant as these student demonstrations are, they should not at this time be put on the same level as the demonstrations at Tienanmen Square in the spring of 1976, which were supposedly to honor Chou En lai, the Communist leader who had died in January of that year. However, it's true that, then and now, these events act as springboards for the pro-capitalist reforms, which have put China in danger of sinking to the level of a dependent bourgeois economy.
The bourgeois press here are trying to connect the present student demonstrations with the genuinely revolutionary struggles of May 4, 1919, which constituted the starting point for one of the greatest social and political transformations in modern times. Such an effort is altogether spurious.
Demonstration of May 4, 1919, a world apart
The May 4th demonstrations were thoroughly anti-imperialist in character. They came in the wake of a momentous, revolutionary revival of the working class and anti-imperialist movement on a scale never before seen, which brought with it the proletarian revolution in Russia. The reverberations of that event could be felt all over the world, not least in the great cities of Shanghai, Peking, Canton and others.
The May 4th student movement was the embryo from which sprang the further development of the cadres of the Chinese Revolution, who later formed the Communist Party of China and the Peoples Liberation Army.
There is an effort by the bourgeois press here to lump all these different demonstrations together. They try to mix oil with water and obscure the difference between the demands of the bourgeoisie, those who are for the capitalist road, and those who fought during the years of the revolution for socialism and the struggle against imperialism.
The glorious revolutionary tradition of May 4, 1919, and its significance for the victory of the Chinese Revolution over the Chiang Kai-shek/imperialist forces, has nothing in common with the current Beijing demonstrations. But these latter do have striking similarities to the April 1976 demonstrations, which were in reality a show of support for the bourgeois forces arrayed against the revolutionary leadership allied with Mao Zedong.
At the time, we wrote (Workers World, April 9, 1976): "This is the first time that the right-wing forces in China have more or less come out into the open ... .
"The demonstration this week, ostensibly held to honor the memory of Chou En lai, could virtually be called a support demonstration for the rightists and a bourgeois threat to the regime."
During that crisis, we asked why "the Party leadership brought back into prominent positions of power and authority figures like Deng Xiaoping, who was made Senior Deputy Prime Minister, Deputy Chairman of the Party, and Acting Chief of Staff of the Army." We asked why the rehabilitation of "a figure who had been cast down during the Cultural Revolution ... was carried out without any public explanation or discussion!"
Forces behind Deng's return
Viewing these events in the perspective of 13 years later, it is still difficult to understand how the Deng forces, after having been purged during the Cultural Revolution, were suddenly brought back into the Party leadership. Was it really done with the blessings of Mao himself? Was Mao really in charge at the time, or was his name merely being utilized by rightist forces within his own entourage?
There can be no doubt that after Deng consolidated his forces on the basis of bourgeois, pro-capitalist reform, he ousted the revolutionary elements in the leadership and did, as the Maoists had always predicted, put China on the road to capitalism.
For many years, the Mao forces had warned of the danger of the capitalist roaders seizing power in China. The question today is how far the capitalist roaders still want to go and in which direction. Can they retain the socialist ownership of the means of production and the modicum of centralized socialist planning after having unleashed capitalist market forces and opened China to the imperialists? This is really the basic problem.
Now that they have abandoned the revolutionary socialist program, and embraced a pro-capitalist and conciliatory position toward imperialism, particularly the U.S., the issue is virtually posed on a razor's edge: which direction will China take? We know what the entire imperialist camp is rooting for.
Workers moving in opposite direction
The fortunate part about these student demonstrations is that they have, at least as of now, been unable to attract even the most minimal attention of the new, broad working class that now embraces many tens of millions. On the contrary, signs have been accumulating which show that the more advanced elements have been moving in an altogether opposite direction. Recent articles in the New York Times (April 6) and Christian Science Monitor (April 11) tell of spontaneous resistance by workers and poor farmers to the market-oriented reforms (see Workers World of April 27).
As of now, the Chinese leadership may be said to be at the border separating socialism from capitalism, while the social and economic problems are assuming menacing proportions. Deng's pragmatism, which seemed so alluring in the first years of the takeover by the pro-bourgeois reform elements, has now shown its seamy, ugly side.
The vast entrepreneurial capital that was to flow into China to enrich the country has thus far enriched only the privileged few and has meant little economic improvement for the mass of the urban working class. So far as the peasants are concerned, they are still at the mercy of the weather, not much different than in pre-revolutionary times, notwithstanding the availability of productive new technology and the growth of the capitalist market for farming products.
No doubt some have progressed as a result of the dismantling of the communes, but the larger number have gained nothing from the reforms. In the event of one of those frequent natural disasters, such as a crop failure, or the reverberations of a big downturn in the capitalist world, the government would find it immeasurably more difficult to help the masses, who are now split up into millions of individual farms, as compared to the period of the communes.
First Gorbachev, then the bankers
The student demonstrations take place in the shadow of two significant upcoming events to be held in China. The first is the visit of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev, which has been described as a summit meeting. The purpose of it is to cement a significant improvement in state-to-state relations, if not a new socialist relationship. Either way, there is mutual benefit for both China and the USSR in the pursuit of such a goal.
The significance of the student demonstrations will not be lost on the USSR leadership. It remains to be seen how they view them. Ten years ago, the Soviet leaders would have said, if they could, "We told you so!" At that time the incumbent Soviet leadership was criticizing Deng Xiaoping's domestic policy as steering a course toward the right and of being pro-imperialist in foreign relations.
The other event is the 22nd annual meeting of the Asian Development Bank, to be held in Beijing in the beginning of May. This entity is a creation of the imperialist banks; its leading proponents are the U.S., Japan, Britain, France and Holland.
On the agenda of the bank is a proposal to finance ten projects in China, estimated by the Wall Street Journal (April 25) to cost one billion dollars. The International Monetary Fund some years ago decided to stage just such an annual meeting in Belgrade, Yugoslavia. On its agenda at the time were several projects to be financed by the bank. It is hard to avoid relating Yugoslavia's economic condition today and its virtual bondage to the imperialist financiers to what the bankers now have in mind for China.
On the one hand, the State Department will be watching the conference with Gorbachev. On the other hand, the Treasury Department will be relating the significance of the Gorbachev meeting to the propriety of advancing funds for economic development.
The question remains the same one that Lenin posed when, for temporary, strategic purposes, he initiated the New Economic Policy: "Who will conquer whom?"