An educational trip to China: Reflections of a philosopher

By Domenico Losurdo 

It seems especially timely to republish the following article, written by the late Italian Marxist-Leninist philosopher Domenico Losurdo in the summer of 2010, after his visit to China, as we just have hosted a meeting on Oct. 24, 2024, in New York City launching a book of selected works by him, much of it involving building toward a socialist society in a world dominated by imperialism. Comparing his observations with those of recent visitors to China shows the validity of scientific Marxism in understanding a complex and rapidly changing society and how far the People’s Republic has advanced in 14 years. 

The new book is “Western Marxism: How It Was Born, How It Died, How It Can Be Reborn,” edited by Gabriel Rockhill, with an introduction by Rockhill and Jennifer Ponce de Leon, translated by Steven Colatrella with George de Stefano, published by Monthly Review Press. In it, Losurdo argues against those Marxists who minimize the importance of the anti-imperialist struggle. A second book edited by Carlos Martinez and Keith Bennett, “People’s China at 75: The Flag Stays Red,” was also presented. (workers.org/2024/11/81713/)

Workers World had translated the article below to English in the fall of 2010 to facilitate its use at a conference in Serpa, Portugal, in November of that year. – John Catalinotto

A visit to China

From July 3 to July 16, 2010, I had the privilege of visiting several cities in China and seeing some of the social realities there. (I didn’t see all of China, only four cities.) Invited by the Communist Party of China, I was part of a delegation that also included representatives of the Communist parties of Portugal, Greece and France and the German Left Party. From Italy, in addition to me, were Vladimiro Giacché and Francesco Maringiò. The text that follows is neither diary nor narrative; it consists of reflections stimulated by an extraordinary experience. 

1. The first thing that struck me during discussions with Communist Party of China leaders and managers of factories, schools and districts we visited was the emphasis on self-criticism — indeed, the passion for self-criticism — that our Chinese counterparts demonstrated. Regarding this point, there is a clear break with the tradition of “real socialism” [that is, the USSR and Eastern Europe. – translator.] The Chinese Communists never tire of pointing out that the road ahead is long, that they have huge problems to solve and numerous daunting challenges ahead and that their country is still an integral part of the Third World. 

In truth, we never encountered the Third World [Global South-tr] during our journey, certainly not in Beijing — which is already fascinating with its modern, shiny airport — and even less in Qingdao, where the boat races were held during the 2008 Olympics. Qingdao is reminiscent of a Western city of outstanding beauty and elegance, with an elevated lifestyle. 

Even though we traveled more than 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) away from the more developed eastern coastal regions, we saw no evidence of the Third World as we landed in Chongqing. It is a huge megalopolis with a total population of 32 million inhabitants and until a few years ago seemed to be lagging behind the economic miracle. 

There is no doubt that the Third World still exists in this vast Asian country, but if we failed to see it, this arose not from any desire to hide the weaknesses of China today but because the tremendous economic growth underway now for more than three decades is reducing, thinning and breaking up the area of underdevelopment at an accelerated pace, so that it is fading into an increasingly remote place. 

In the West there will be some people who turn up their noses at this point: development, growth, industrialization, urbanization, an economic miracle of unprecedented magnitude and duration unprecedented in history. How vulgar! 

This snobbery from the privileged seems to deem irrelevant the fact that hundreds of millions of people have escaped a fate that condemned them to malnutrition, hunger and even starvation. Those who might think that the development of productive forces is only a matter of economic prosperity and consumerism would do well to reread (or read) the pages of the Communist Manifesto that highlight the idiocy of rural life in misery — not only material but cultural, with narrow and impassable boundaries. 

When visiting the wonders of the Imperial City in Beijing and, just a few miles away, the Great Wall, you today come across a phenomenon absent not only in 1973 but even in 2000, the years of my two previous trips to China. 

Nowadays the massive presence of Chinese visitors is immediately obvious. They are tourists with particular characteristics, often from a remote corner of the immense country; perhaps it’s the first time they are visiting the capital. On a cultural plane they are starting to take inside themselves some part of this nation with its ancient civilizations, a nation to which they belong. They cease to be simple peasants tied to the piece of earth they cultivated, as if imprisoned, and become true citizens of a country increasingly open to the world. 

In Beijing, even after the scheduled time for visiting the monuments and museums, Tiananmen Square was still teeming with people. Many wait and watch with pride the hoisting of the flag of the People’s Republic of China. No, this isn’t jingoism: the Chinese like to be photographed together with Western visitors (including this writer, who received and accepted such requests with pleasure). It is as if they invite the world to join their celebration of the return of an ancient civilization, long oppressed and humiliated by imperialism. 

There is no doubt that the extensive development of the productive forces was not limited to snatching hundreds of millions of people out of poverty and starvation; it assured both their individual and national dignity, and has allowed them to greatly expand their horizons by looking at the vast country they’re part of and, beyond it, the whole world. 

The environment

2. But isn’t the development of the productive forces synonymous with the degradation and destruction of nature? We are confronted with a concern, often trumpeted indeed as a particularly strident certainty by the Western left. There emerges a strange view of nature, which is judged to be damaged if plants are droopy and withered but, apparently, is considered perfectly healthy if mass numbers of women and men wither and die. A certain type of environmentalism ends up by digging even deeper the gap, which it claims to be critical of, between the human world and the natural world. 

But let us concentrate on nature in the strict sense. Some time ago a very famous historian (Niall Ferguson) wrote an article published in the Corriere della Sera [a prestigious corporate newspaper in Italy – tr] whose headline denounced “China’s war on nature.” 

In reality, both during the long stretch that took us from Beijing to the Great Wall and the long stretch following a different route from the city center back to the airport, we noticed an impressive number of trees, obviously planted recently as part of a very ambitious project of reforestation and extension of forest area that involves the whole country. 

A few days before the end of our trip we had the opportunity to visit a unique ecological area of 10 square kilometers located near Weifang, a city in China’s Northeast. This city is in the midst of rapid expansion. It is involved in the development of high technology but at the same time wants to distinguish itself for its livability. The ecological zone — where access is without cost for everyone and which can be visited only on foot or using a small, open, electric-powered bus — was obtained by recovering a territory that until recently was seriously degraded but now shines in its enchanting beauty and serenity.

Industrial and economic development does not automatically rule out protection of the environment. Certainly, the balance between these two requirements is particularly difficult in a country like China, which must feed one-fifth of the world’s population while having only one-seventh of the arable land. Mistakes and serious damage inflicted on the environment in the years when the economic priority was to end starvation and mass misery as quickly as possible should be seen in this framework. But fortunately, this phase is over. Now an environmentalism can be promoted that, while it defends the life and health of plants and flowers, knows how to guarantee the life and health of women and men. 

Self-criticism

3. I have already mentioned the passionate self-criticism that seems to characterize the Chinese Communists. It is they who insist on pointing out the intolerable situation, especially that created by the growing gap between city and countryside, between coastal areas on one side and the center and west of the country on the other. Aren’t these phenomena evidence of China’s capitalist direction? This theory is widely held within the Western left, and it apparently resonated among some members of our multi-party delegation. In a frank and lively debate that developed, I intervened with a so-to-speak “philosophical” comment. 

One can approach this question by making two completely different types of comparisons. We can compare “market socialism” with socialism as we imagine it should be, in other words, with a mature and successful socialism, and then highlight the limitations, contradictions and disharmony, the inequalities that characterize market socialism. It is the Chinese Communists themselves who insist that the country they direct is only in “the primary stage of socialism,” and that this stage will last until the middle of the 21st century, confirming the length and complexity of the transition needed to build a new society. But this does not mean it is legitimate to conflate “market socialism” with capitalism. 

To illustrate the fundamental difference that exists between the two, we can make use of a metaphor. In China we see two trains leaving the station called “underdevelopment” to advance towards the station called “development.” Yes, one of the two is an express train, the other is moving slower. Thus, the distance between them gradually increases. But do not forget that both are moving towards the same terminal. In addition, bear in mind that steps are being taken to accelerate the slower train. Besides, through the process of urbanization, more and more passengers come aboard the express train. 

Under capitalism, on the other hand, the two trains involved are going in opposite directions. The latest capitalist economic crisis has exposed to everyone a process that has been going on for several decades: the impoverishment of the masses and the dismantling of the welfare state is going hand in hand with the concentration of social wealth in the hands of a narrow, parasitic oligarchy. 

Extend development westward

4. Nevertheless, among the Chinese Communists themselves there is growing impatience with the gap between the coastal and central-western areas, as well as between city and countryside and within the city itself. This attitude was received with surprise and delight by the entire West European delegation. 

This impatience is felt acutely in Chongqing, a metropolis located 900 miles from the coast. The slogan “Go West!” was launched ten years ago and called on the Chinese population to extend the prodigious development, now found in the East, to the center and West of the immense country. We can see the initial results: for example, in recent years Tibet and Inner Mongolia have had a growth rate above the national average. 

This is not the case with Xinjiang, where in 2009 (the first full year of the worldwide capitalist crisis) the GDP grew “only” 8.1 percent compared to a national average of 8.7 percent. It is precisely into Xinjiang that a new wave of funding and incentives has been poured in recent weeks and months. But now, outside the regions inhabited by national minorities — for whom the central government obviously reserves special attention — a decisive general acceleration and new and more radical significance is being given to the policy of “Go West!” 

Chongqing has become an autonomous municipality directly under the central government (Beijing, Shanghai and Tianjin are also in this situation) and can thus take advantage of incentives and support of all kinds. Chongqing would like to become the new Shanghai, which means that it aims not only to overcome backwardness but to achieve the level of China’s most advanced regions and become a point of reference for the world. 

To us, this megalopolis located within the large Asian country looked like a huge construction site. Work is going on to develop the infrastructure for the construction of factories, offices and residential housing. Rows of trees planted recently and the jealously guarded green hedges that line and sometimes even divide the roads and highways leap up before our eyes. Yes, because beyond the economic miracle Chongqing pursues a more ambitious target: to present itself to the entire nation as a “new model” of development, regulating and creating more “harmonious” relations within the city, between city and countryside and between humans and nature. 

In the city that aims to become the new Shanghai there is constant reference to Mao Zedong. This is not only homage to the great protagonist of the national liberation struggle of the Chinese people — the founder of his country whose face not coincidentally stands in Tiananmen Square as well as on banknotes. It also takes seriously the reference to “Mao Zedong Thought” enshrined in the Statutes of the Communist Party of China. In Chongqing one gets the distinct impression that the debate and, presumably, the political struggle in preparation for the Congress scheduled in two years has already begun. 

At this point, it would be a good idea to immediately clear the field of any possible misunderstanding: There is no debate over the policy of reform and openness enshrined more than 30 years ago by the Third Plenary Session of the XI Central Committee (Dec. 18-22, 1978). In the CPC Statute is enshrined also the reference to “Deng Xiaoping Theory” and the “important idea” of the “Three Representations” [Chinese: san ge dai biao; on the importance of the Communist Party in modernizing the nation — the party represents advanced production forces, advanced Chinese culture and the basic interests of the people – tr], although the category of “thought” implies a greater strategic importance than the category of “theory” (which refers to a particular conjuncture, even if it’s a long-term period) and the category of “idea” (which, no matter how “important” it is, designates a contribution on a particular aspect.) Above all, nobody wants to return to the situation in China where there was “equality” only in the sense that the two trains of the metaphor I used were both still standing at the “underdeveloped” station or moving away from it slowly. 

No, at this point everyone has assimilated the lesson that socialism cannot be the equal distribution of misery, especially since this “equality” is entirely illusory and indeed may turn into its opposite. Where poverty has reached a certain level, it can lead to the danger of death by starvation. In that case, the piece of bread that allows the most fortunate to survive, modest and small though it may be, still provides an absolute inequality, the absolute inequality that exists between life and death. 

Before the introduction of the policy of reform and opening to the West, that is what was seen during the most tragic years of the PRC, as a consequence of the catastrophic legacy of imperialist plunder and of the destructive Western embargo, as well as of serious mistakes made by the new political leadership. Therefore the central task of developing the productive forces remains a given, but this centrality can be interpreted in significantly different ways.  

 Fifth generation of revolutionaries

5. Bo Xilai, a brilliant minister of foreign trade, has been called upon to direct Chongqing. This event allows us to reflect on the process used to train and develop those who are the ruling executives of the nation in China. A representative of the central government who has distinguished himself in carrying out his duties and won prestige at the international level, he was sent to the province for a task of a different nature, one of gigantic proportions. 

Striking out broadly at the roots of corruption and proposing a “new model” of government both in theory and actual practice, a model committed to forging ahead in eliminating the inequalities that have become intolerable for carrying out the implementation of the “harmonious society,” Bo Xilai has aroused national debate. It is easy to foresee him taking a prominent position in the leadership that will emerge from the upcoming XVIII Congress of the CPC, although it would be a mistake to assume that the outcome of the debate (and the political struggle) in progress is already decided. 

Thus, at the end of a period of uncertainty, conflicts and grievances, the first generation of revolutionaries with Mao Zedong at the center was followed by the second generation of revolutionaries with Deng Xiaoping at the center. Following them have been the third and fourth generations of revolutionaries at the center, Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao, respectively. At the next Party Congress, the fifth generation of revolutionaries will emerge. This perspective was laid out during his period by Deng Xiaoping, which thus confirms his foresight and his clarity in building the party and the state: the concentration of power in individual persons and the cult of personality have been overcome; a process put into effect for the selection and training of those in the leadership bodies has led to excellent results so far. 

Is ‘market socialism’ socialist?

6. But to what extent can we consider the “market socialism” theorized and practiced by the Communist Party of China to be really socialist? Within the heterogeneous delegation that arrived from the West, there were doubts, concerns and openly expressed criticism. An open and lively debate developed, once more encouraged by our hosts. There is no doubt that along with the emergence of political reform and transparency, there has been a narrowing of the state’s portion of the economy and the area of the private sector has expanded. Are we witnessing a process of restoration of capitalism? 

The Chinese Communists made it clear that the state (and the Communist Party) is holding onto the leadership and the central role. Can that be so? The social and economic landscape of China today is characterized by the coexistence of diverse forms of ownership: state ownership, public property (in this case the owner consists not of the central government but, for example, a municipality); companies in which the state-owned or public property holds the absolute majority or a relative majority or a significant proportion of the shares; cooperative property and private property. Under these conditions, it is very difficult to calculate precisely what proportion of the property is state or public. 

When I got back home, I found an important item in the International Herald Tribune that contained a calculation made by a professor at the prestigious Yale University, Chen Zhiwu to be exact, who is an American of Chinese origin and is writing perhaps under ideal conditions for analyzing the economy of that great Asian country. He calculated that “the state controls three-quarters of China’s wealth.” (IHT, July 7, 2010, p. 18) To this we must add a fact that is generally neglected: land ownership in China is entirely in state hands. The farmers may cultivate their land and may sell the right to use that land, but they don’t have the ownership of the land. As regards industry, other calculations give a smaller proportion to the state. 

In any case, anyone who thought that a gradual and irreversible process of withdrawal from the state economy was going on would be completely off the mark. A July 12, 2010, Newsweek article by Isaac Stone Fish draws attention to the “state-owned firms that increasingly dominate the Chinese economy.” “In any case,” the U.S. weekly magazine reaffirms, “in the development of [China’s] West [which is now emerging in all its breadth and depth – DL] the role of private enterprise will be much smaller than that played earlier in the development of the East.” 

The Chinese comrades pointed out to us that by introducing strong elements of competition, the private economic sector has ultimately contributed to strengthening the state and public sectors, which were forced to shake off bureaucracy, indifference, inefficiency and favoritism. In fact, thanks to the reforms of Deng Xiaoping, today the state or state-controlled companies have a strong international competitiveness unprecedented in the history of socialism. 

This point can be illustrated by referring to an editorial in The Economist (July 10-16, 2010), which I bought and read comfortably in the Beijing airport while waiting to leave for Italy. The editorial stresses that four of the most important 10 banks worldwide are now Chinese. These banks, unlike the Western banks, are in excellent health and “make money,” but “the state owns a majority stake, and the Communist Party appoints the top brass, whose pay is a fraction of that of their Western peers.” Moreover, these managers “are beholden to a higher authority than the stock market,” and that is the state authority led by the Communist Party. 

The prestigious British financial weekly was unable to wrap its head around this new and strange development; it hoped and bet that things would change in the future. For now there remains a fact obvious to all: the state and public-run sector of the economy is not synonymous with inefficiency, as the champions of neoliberalism claim, nor need the banks pay their executives fabulous sums to be competitive domestically and internationally. 

U.S. embargo against China

7. It is likely that the private sector meets additional needs. In this period, it makes it easier to introduce more advanced technology from capitalist countries. Do not forget that on this point the U.S. is still trying to impose an embargo against China. But there is another point that I realized when visiting Weifang’s advanced industrial park. In some cases Chinese expatriates were the ones establishing private companies; they had studied abroad (especially in the U.S.), achieving excellent results and sometimes accumulating some capital. Now they have returned home, making a decision that is disturbing for those in countries where they had settled: how can high-ranking intellectuals abandon “democracy” to return to “dictatorship”? 

Apart from the patriotic appeal, inviting them to participate in the collective effort of a whole people for China to reach the later stages of development, technology and civilization, these overseas Chinese are also attracted by the prospect of making their talent and experience contribute to the universities as well as the private high-technology companies that they have opened. In other words, we are witnessing the continuation of the policy of united front that Mao theorized and practiced not only during the revolutionary struggle, but even for several years after the founding of the PRC. 

But finally, we must consider these privately owned companies. With or without overseas Chinese, they have great surprises in store for us. Those who came to meet with us were primarily members of the Party Committee, whose photographs are well highlighted in different departments. From their stories emerge almost casually the constraints that weigh on private property. 

They are urged or compelled to reinvest a substantial portion of profits (sometimes up to 40 percent) in technological development. Another part of the profits, whose proportion is difficult to calculate, is used for general welfare (for example, the construction of vocational schools subsequently donated to the state or to a municipality or for relief of victims of natural disasters.) If one considers that these private companies depend largely on credit extended by the state-controlled banking system, and you also reflect on the presence within them of both Party and the union organizations, a conclusion is inevitable: even in the private companies, the power of private property is balanced and limited by a kind of countervailing power. 

But what is the role of the Party and the union? The responses we received failed to satisfy all the members of our delegation. Some, echoing a widespread tendency in the Western left, focused their attention exclusively on wage levels. Our Chinese discussion partners, however, suggest that, beyond the improvement of living conditions and employment of the workers, they are concerned with what contributions their companies can make to the economic and technological development of the entire country. 

From this exchange of ideas, we can see emerging a contrast between the two points of view similar to that stated in Lenin’s “What Is to Be Done?” The representatives of the Western left, who call upon the Chinese workers to reject any compromise with the state in their struggle for higher wages, believe themselves to be radical and even revolutionary. In fact, they are trailing the reformists, or worse, the corporate “secretary of any ordinary trade union,” whom Lenin criticized for losing sight of the struggle for emancipation in its various national and international forms even while sometimes becoming a supporter of “a nation that exploits the whole world” (at that time England.) 

The revolutionary “People’s Tribune,” said Lenin, behaves otherwise. Certainly, compared to 1902 (the year “What Is to Be Done” was published), the situation has radically changed. Meanwhile, in China, the “People’s Tribune” has the support of those holding political power; the fact remains that the revolutionary must build on the teachings of Lenin and envisage all the political and social relations at a national and international level. 

A significant increase in wages is needed and is already taking place, encouraged or promoted by the central government (as the major international press has recognized.) Beyond the improvement of living conditions and employment of workers, the plan aims to increase the technological content of industrial products and thus to strengthen the Chinese economy as a whole, also making it less dependent on exports. The (well justified) immediate wage demands should not compromise the achievement of the strategic goal of strengthening a country that increasingly, with its economic development, is already tying the hands of imperialism or of “hegemonism,” as most of our Chinese discussion partners prefer to say, using a more diplomatic expression. 

8. Finally, the last piece of the scandal: a few years ago, in tribute to the important idea of the “three representations,” even entrepreneurs were allowed to enter the Communist Party of China. This again brought out the concerns and anxieties of some members of the European delegation: are we witnessing the bourgeoisification of the leadership of the party, whose task is to ensure the socialist direction of the market economy? 

At the outset the Chinese partners pointed out that the number of employers admitted into the ranks of the party (after the conclusion of a rigorous process of verification and selection) is quite insignificant when compared with the mass of party activists, amounting to just under 80 million; in other words, it is a symbolic presence. But that explanation is inadequate. We have seen that some of these entrepreneurs play a patriotic role in the economy in some areas, eliminating or reducing dependence on foreign technology in China; at times not only in their objective role but in a conscious way some of them have put themselves in the forefront of the struggle already begun by the Communist Party in 1949, the struggle to defeat imperialism by extending the conquest of political independence to reach economic and technological independence. 

In a world increasingly characterized by a knowledge-based economy, what may happen is that the Stakhanovite work hero of Stalin’s USSR takes the form of a completely new technical super-specialist opening a business with high technological value, while making an important contribution to the defense and strengthening of the socialist homeland. We can make an additional consideration. In the wake of “market socialism,” a new bourgeois layer is now rapidly expanding. By co-opting some of its members within the Communist Party, this leads to a political decapitation of this new layer the same way that, in a bourgeois society, working-class or people’s organizers can be co-opted by the ruling class, leading to the decapitation of the lower classes. 

Conclusions

9. The time has come to draw conclusions. I exposed my lame English when the occasion arose at some banquets, and especially just before our journey home at the dinner with, among others, Huang Huaguang, director general of the Bureau for Western Europe of the International Department of the Central Committee of the CPC. All participants in our delegation were called upon to speak frankly. In my intervention I tried to open up a discussion also with the other members of the Western European delegation, and perhaps especially with them. 

In claiming to be only at the primary stage of socialism and stating that this stage will last until the middle of the 21st century, the Chinese Communists indirectly acknowledge the burden that capitalist relations continue to impose on their vast and varied country. On the other hand, it is plain for all to see that the monopoly of political power is held by the Communist Party (and the eight smaller parties that recognize its leadership). A careful observer should be sure to be aware of the fact that, because they are placed in a position of economic, political and social subordination, the private companies themselves, rather than being driven by the logic of maximizing profits, are encouraged, pushed and pressured to respect a different and superior logic: that of an increasingly widespread and widely diffused domestic economy, as well as strengthening national technology. 

In the final analysis, through a series of mediations, the same private companies are subject or subordinate to “market socialism.” Thus the moralizing sermons that some in the Western left never tire of making to the Communist Party of China are on the one hand redundant and unnecessary, on the other hand unfounded and inconsistent. 

Obviously, it’s completely legitimate to express doubts and criticisms about “market socialism.” But on one point I think the left should be able to reach a consensus. The reform and opening policy Deng Xiaoping introduced has not at all meant the merging of China with the capitalist West, as if the whole world was from then on characterized by a still calm. In reality, starting in 1979, a struggle developed that may have escaped the vision of the more superficial observers but whose importance is being demonstrated with greater and greater evidence. 

The USA and its allies hoped to impose an international division of labor in which China’s part was limited to producing low-priced goods with little technological content. In other words, they hoped to conserve and increase the Western monopoly of technology. Under this plan, China, like the entire Third World, would have had to continue to play a dependent role with respect to the capitalist centers. 

It is now well understood that the Chinese Communists have interpreted and carried out a continuation of the struggle for national liberation in order to cause this neo-colonial project to fail: there is no political independence without economic independence. At least those who declare themselves Marxist should understand this truth clearly! Thanks to the desired maintenance of technological monopoly, the U.S. and its allies intended to continue to dictate the terms regarding international relations. With its extraordinary economic and technological development, China has opened the road to democratizing international relations. This result should please not only Communists but also all authentic democrats: There are now better conditions for the political and economic emancipation of the Third World. 

At this point it is convenient to eliminate an error that makes it difficult to have clear communication between the Communist Party of China and the Western left in its entirety. Even in the midst of oscillations and contradictions of various types, since its foundation the People’s Republic of China has been involved in a struggle not against one but against two types of inequalities, one of an internal character, the other international. In presenting his argument on the necessity of a policy of reform and opening that he supported, in a conversation on Oct. 10, 1978, Deng Xiaoping drew attention to the fact that the technological gap with respect to the more advanced countries was widening. Those countries were developing “with tremendous speed,” and China risked remaining more and more left behind. (Selected Works, vol. 2, p. 143) 

If China should have missed its appointment with the new technological revolution, it would have found itself in a weakened condition, similar to that which had rendered it helpless at the time of the Opium Wars and in confronting imperialist aggression. Had it missed this appointment, besides hurting itself, China would have caused enormous damage to the cause of the emancipation of the Third World in its entirety. It should be added that, exactly because it had understood how to drastically reduce the inequality (economical and technological) on the international arena, China today is in a better position, thanks to the economic and technological resources it has in the meantime accumulated, to confront the problem of the struggle against inequalities internally. 

The “century of humiliation” of China (the period from 1840 to 1949, and thus from the first Opium War to the conquest of power by the CPC) coincided historically with the century of the deepest moral depravity in the West: the Opium Wars with the destruction inflicted on the Summer Imperial Palace in Beijing and the plunder of the works of art contained in it, colonial expansion and a reliance on slavery and genocide practices with harm toward alleged “inferior races,” imperialist wars, fascism and Nazism, with capitalist, colonial and racist barbarism reaching its apex. 

Through the way in which the West knows how to deal with the rebirth and return of China, it will be possible to evaluate if the West has decided to really put an end to the century of its deepest moral depravity. At least the left should know how to interpret the most advanced and the most progressive components of Western culture!  

The Italian-language original can be found at: domenicolosurdo.blogspot.com  

Translated into English by John Catalinotto.