The Poverty of Roland Boer’s Philosophy About Chinese Socialism (Book Review)
Review of Roland Boer, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners, Gateway East, Singapore: Springer, 2021
A spectre is haunting the Asia-Pacific - the spectre of war between the United States and China, with Taiwan being the most likely flashpoint.1 How should socialists in Aotearoa/New Zealand respond? Opposition to the New Zealand government joining the Anglo-American capitalist imperialist AUKUS alliance is ongoing and socialists must support such opposition as part of our broader revolutionary anti-imperialist politics.2 However, the question of how socialists should view China, the world’s second largest economy by nominal Gross Domestic Product/GDP, the world’s largest economy by Purchasing Power Parity/PPP and whose government claims to be socialist, still remains.3 China’s rise has been accompanied by an increase in literature defending China as a socialist country, such as the book Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners by Roland Boer.4 This review will critically evaluate this book’s arguments to help answer how socialists should understand and relate to China now and going forward.
To provide some context for this book, its author, Roland Boer, will be briefly explored.5 An Australian son of a Presbyterian minister, Boer’s academic career began with a Bachelor of Divinity degree at the University of Sydney in the 1980’s, during which he took a course in political and liberation theology, where he read Karl Marx’s writings on religion.6 Boer then got a PhD at McGill University, Canada, after which he became professor in the Faculty of Education and Arts at the University of Newcastle/UoN, where he engaged in research on Marxism, theology and the relationship between the two as well as Marxist analyses of early Christianity and the political economy of ancient Israel.7 Such research culminated, while he was Director of the University of Newcastle’s Religion, Marxism and Secularism research group, in his five-volume book series The Criticism of Heaven and Earth, the fifth volume of which, In the Vale of Tears, won him the Deutscher Memorial Prize in 2014.8 During his academic career, Boer created and wrote posts for the Stalin’s Moustache blog and became a Communist Party of Australia member.9 Another area of research for Boer is studying the Chinese government and other Soviet-type societies and writing books and articles defending them as socialist, which has led to the Chinese government media outlet Xinhua praising him as “the world’s top Marxism expert”.10 Boer now teaches in China at the Dalian University of Technology's School of Marxism Studies, with him being the first non-Chinese citizen employed as a lecturer and researcher by such a school.11 The book that this article reviews is a product of Boer’s current research.
The book aims to demonstrate to a non-Chinese audience that contemporary China is a socialist society.12 It does this through ten chapters and a conclusion. In the first chapter, it is argued that Marxist theory and practice is the Chinese nation’s special skill. In the second chapter, Deng Xiaoping Thought13 is outlined and its Marxist credentials are upheld. In the third chapter, contradiction analysis14 is elaborated upon and it is argued to be the philosophical basis of Chinese Marxism. In the fourth chapter, it is argued that the process of Reform and Opening-Up15 is Marxist and has renewed socialism in China instead of bringing about the restoration of capitalism. In the fifth chapter, it is argued that China has a socialist economy that combines markets and planning. In the sixth chapter, the economic development concept of xiaokang (or a moderately well-off/prosperous society)16 is explained. In the seventh chapter, the Chinese Marxist approach to human rights is outlined and defended against Western human rights approaches. In the eight chapter, it is argued that China’s political system is democratic due to its combination of representative democracy, consultative democracy, grassroots democracy, preferential national minorities policies, the rule of law and the Communist Party of China/CPC’s leadership. In the ninth chapter, it is argued that China’s socialist democracy is grounded in classical and contemporary Marxist theory. In the tenth chapter, it is argued that Xi Jinping Thought17 is Marxist through an engagement with Xi’s writings. In the concluding chapter, it is once again argued that China is socialist and that Chinese Marxist theorists are developing their cultural confidence in defending it against non-Chinese audiences.
The book’s principal virtue is that it compiles in a single text the main arguments made by the Communist Party of China/CPC and its supporters that contemporary China is socialist. This is very helpful, it illustrates how these arguments are not solely about China’s economy and political structure but also extend to include its theories, philosophies, social and economic development, law, human rights, national minorities and ecology. Through doing this, the book shows how the arguments for contemporary China being socialist are about Chinese society more broadly, which means that critically evaluating these arguments merits and issues requires recognising how these arguments are interconnected to each other as a theoretical whole that aims to understand Chinese society in its totality. The book also comprehensively outlines the theoretical and philosophical presuppositions that serve as the foundations for these arguments. This is very helpful because it allows readers to critically evaluate the presuppositions, propositions, premises, conclusions, inductions, deductions and inferences behind the arguments for China being socialist in order to ascertain if they’re correct or incorrect, true or false and valid or invalid. In addition, the book extensively cites historical and contemporary Chinese Marxist philosophy in the footnotes and in the references. This makes the book an excellent introduction to Chinese Marxist philosophy and a great jumping-off point to learn more about such philosophy and theory through further investigation of the books and journal articles cited. Overall, if you want to examine in-depth the arguments made for contemporary China being socialist as well as the theories and philosophies behind these arguments, then this book is a great resource to accomplish this task.
This is where the book’s virtues end, as it has many issues. Its biggest is that it fails to demonstrate that China has a socialist system. On page 311, Boer summarises how he defines China’s socialist system: “The third part of my answer concerns the specific features that make the system socialist. Here I would like to copy the points listed earlier (see Sect. 5.4.2): (1) the system contains a multiplicity of components, but public ownership remains the core economic driver; (2) while both state owned and private enterprises must be viable, their main purpose is not profit at all costs, but social benefit and meeting the needs of all people—in short ‘people-centred [yi renmin wei zhongxin]’; (3) it deploys the old socialist principle of from each according to ability and to each according to work, limiting exploitation and wealth polarisation, and seeking common prosperity; (4) the guide for action always remains Marxism; (5) the primary value should always be ‘socialist collectivism [shehuizhuyi de jitizhuyi]’ rather than bourgeois individualism (Huang 1994, 5).” Regarding (1), as Marx and Friedrich Engels repeatedly pointed out, state ownership on its own is not inherently socialist and is compatible with capitalist social relations, as illustrated by examples that they gave in their own lifetimes as well as by subsequent examples of state capitalism.18 Regarding (2), state and private enterprises having objectives besides making profits is not incompatible with capitalism, as illustrated by the social enterprise sector, triple bottom line accounting, corporate social responsibility and other examples.19 Regarding (3), the book does not demonstrate that this distributive principle or the form that Marx proposed for it to be realised through labour vouchers is in operation in China today and the book fails to recognise that Marx’s support for this distributive principle was to end exploitation and wealth polarisation, not limit them.20 Regarding (4) and (5), such ideologies and values are, following the historical materialist proposition that social being determines consciousness, only evidence of a socialist system existing if a society has socialist relations, which, as detailed above, the book fails to demonstrate, so on their own, such ideology and values are not evidence of China’s socialism.21 Moreover, Boer’s definition of socialism excludes two major aspects of socialism theorised by Marx and subsequent Marxists. The first is the proletariat becoming a ruling class through a revolution and taking measures to end capitalism.22 The second is this revolution creating a stateless, classless, moneyless and marketless world society, where there is common ownership of the means of production, production for use and distribution according to need.23 In contrast, analysis of contemporary China that uses Marxist theory has demonstrated that it is capitalist, as it has generalised commodity production and market exchange, investment of capital with a view to profit, exploitation of wage labour to produce surplus value, production regulated by the competitive struggle for profits, the economy being embedded within the capitalist world market, a class structure consisting of a capitalist ruling class, landlords, the middle-class, workers and peasants and struggle between these classes.24 Therefore, the foundational problem with this book is that its argument that China is socialist is not supported by the evidence and Marxist theory, which reveals that what exists is capitalism with Chinese characteristics.
The book’s problems don’t end here though, as its second issue is that its argument that the Chinese has a socialist democracy is unpersuasive. This is because evidence from the grassroots reveals that local urban and rural committees are undemocratic institutions that are controlled by local capitalist, landlord, party and patriarchal elites, who use these institutions to exert local rule and mobilise the community against higher-level government institutions.25 At the higher levels, China has a People’s Congress system, but the upper three levels are indirectly elected by the lower two levels’ delegates.26 Such a system has a systemic tendency to result in undemocratic one-party rule, as in the Soviet Union.27 This also occurred in Maoist China post-1949 Revolution, which facilitated a bureaucratic ruling class that owned the means of overall societal decision-making coming to power and ruling through de facto one-party rule within a formal multi-party system.28 Chinese workers and peasants resisted the bureaucratic ruling class and called for a substantive socialist democracy along the lines of the Paris Commune and other forms during the Hundred Flowers movement, the Cultural Revolution, the Democracy Wall movement, the Tiananmen Square uprising and beyond, with the Chinese bureaucratic ruling class using repression, co-optation, concessions and reforms to perpetuate their rule during the Maoist and now capitalist period.29 Therefore, Boer’s argument that China has a socialist democracy has no merit, as what exists is an undemocratic capitalist state that is portrays itself as having a “whole-process people’s democracy” to increase its legitimacy amongst Chinese workers and to intensify its soft power internationally as part of a state-building project to perpetuate long-term capitalist class rule.30
Such arguments around China’s political structure bring us to the book’s third issue, which is that its argument that the Chinese state’s conception of sovereignty is anti-colonial is unconvincing. This is because the situation in Xinjiang/East Turkestan, Tibet and Hong Kong demonstrates that the Chinese state is colonial. Regarding Xinjiang/East Turkestan, during the 1949-1976 Maoist period, the Chinese government engaged in Han settler colonisation of the region to secure China’s borders, resettle military veterans and engage in economic development.31 China’s post-1978 transition to capitalism transformed this settler colonialism into a racial capitalism with Chinese characteristics, with the Chinese state engaging in dispossession, institutional domination and settler occupation against the non-Han indigenous Uyghur, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Tartar and Tajik ethnicities through forced assimilation, mass incarceration, surveillance capitalism, mass Han resettlement, forced labour, state-sanctioned Islamophobia and other means.32 Regarding Tibet, since it was annexed in 1951, during both the Maoist and the capitalist periods the Chinese state has engaged in settler colonialism against Tibetans using many of the means used in Xinjiang and through segregation, language oppression, congregation and negation.33 Regarding Hong Kong, since its transfer from Britain to China in 1997, the Chinese ruling class has allied with the Hong Kong capitalist class to ensure Hong Kong remains a global financial and commercial centre and have used and further refined the British colonial-era Hong Kong state apparatus’ most anti-democratic aspects to crush democratic struggles and the union movement.34 Therefore, Boer’s argument that the Chinese state is grounded in anti-colonial sovereignty has no foundation, as China has a colonial state, illustrating how we must reject eurocentrism in order to fully understand settler colonialism.35
This book’s problems don’t just involve what is in it but also what isn’t included, with there being an absence of any analysis of the relationship between socialism with Chinese characteristics and gender. This is perplexing, given CPC chairman Mao Zedong’s oft-quoted phrase that women hold up half the sky and Marx’s analysis of gender.36 As Boer does not provide this, a brief outline will be provided to demonstrate the existence of patriarchy in contemporary China. During the Maoist period, women won substantive political, economic and legal improvements due to the Maoist regime’s nominal commitment to women’s liberation as well as women workers and peasants organising.37 However, due to the perpetuation of the patriarchal gender division of labour within workplaces and in the home, the enforcement of sexual relations solely within heterosexual marriages and women workers and peasants engaging in the double shift of wage labour and unpaid reproductive labour, patriarchy and cisheterosexism was reconfigured rather than abolished during the Maoist period.38 Cisheteropatriarchy was reconfigured even further through the transition to capitalism from the late 1970’s onwards as well as through the Chinese government’s one-child policy, leading to the subourdination of women workers and peasants reproductive labour to the dictates of Chinese and transnational capital.39 This combination of cisheteropatriarchal domination and capitalist exploitation led to the rise of feminist and LGBT+ movements that resisted through various forms of physical and digital collective actions, which the Chinese cisheteropatriarchal capitalist state suppressed through repression, co-optation and pro-natalist policies in order to revive traditional patriarchal family forms.40 Therefore, Boer’s supposedly gender-neutral account of contemporary Chinese socialism invisibilises cisheteropatriarchal capitalist domination in China today.
The deficiencies in this book’s arguments are not only present when it discusses contemporary Chinese society but also when it discusses the relation between Chinese society and the rest of non-human nature. This is because the book praises the Chinese government’s philosophy of “ecological civilisation” as well as its environmental policies around afforestation, renewable energy, ecological living spaces and air purification in Beijing and other cities. The problem with this rosy picture is that it’s contradicted by the Chinese government’s environmental record, which reveals that China’s transition to capitalism from the late 1970’s onwards was based upon fossil fuel use and extractivism, despite calls from economists like Deng Yingtao to adopt an ecological development model due to fossil capitalist-caused climate change.41 China still has a fossil capitalist model, as while China has massively expanded its renewable energy generation capacity, its growth in fossil fuel use exceeds renewable energy sector growth and most of China’s energy use is fossil fuels-based.42 This has led to rising carbon dioxide/CO2 emissions, air pollution, a water crisis, soil erosion, intensified heatwaves and an unsustainable ecological footprint that will lead to ecosystem collapse.43 In addition, China’s capitalist agriculture and integration into global capitalist agribusiness has led to the capitalist commodification and destruction of nature that allowed COVID-19 to transfer to humans and become a global pandemic.44 When workers and peasants have protested against such environmental harms, the Chinese capitalist state has responded through various forms of repression and co-optation.45 Therefore, the available evidence refutes the book’s argument that contemporary China has an ecological civilisation and demonstrates that the Chinese capitalist state is contributing to global ecocide.
This now brings us to the last issue with this book, which is that this book’s theory isn’t Marxist. This is not only because this book’s theory is deployed to engage in apologetics for a capitalist, non-democratic, settler colonial, cisheteropatriarchal and ecocidal regime, as demonstrated above. It is also because this theory, which today consists of Xi Jinping Thought, argues that socialism amounts to the Chinese state developing the forces of production until an indeterminate point in the future when the conditions will be created for a communist society.46 Such a theory reduces socialist theory and practice to being about the Chinese capitalist state engaging in pro-growth and productivist economic development.47 It also jettisons Marx’s foundational theory of class struggle by the proletariat against the bourgeoisie within states and throughout the capitalist world system, culminating in a global proletarian revolution which annihilates capitalism and the state and creates a global stateless communist society.48 Such jettisoning allows this theory to serve as the last refuge for the Chinese bourgeoisie as they aim to construct an ideology to legitimise their long-term rule over the Chinese proletariat.49 When this is understood, it is not difficult to see why Chinese intellectual Jiang Shigong, who advised the Hong Kong government as they repressed workers and democratic struggles, has deployed Nazi theorist Carl Schmitt and Confucian conservative thought to defend such repression in Hong Kong in particular and uphold Xi Jinping Thought more broadly.50 Therefore, when viewed with sober senses, it’s clear that, contra the book’s arguments, Xi Jinping Thought is an anti-Marxist theory that exists to ideologically defend the Chinese capitalist state nationally and globally.
To conclude, while this book is a useful compendium of arguments for contemporary China being socialist, as an actual analysis of contemporary China it is beyond useless, as it is an example of Chinese capitalist state propaganda, so readers interested in finding out about contemporary China should look elsewhere.51 The above critiques provide an answer for how socialists should view contemporary China, as they demonstrate that China today is a capitalist society. Further evidence also refutes arguments that the Chinese state is anti-imperialist and demonstrate that it is more plausible to conceive of the Chinese state today as being either imperialist or a non-hegemonic empire in formation.52 Such analysis highlights the need to build a socialist movement among workers and the oppressed in the Asia-Pacific and globally. Such a movement must reject both the US and Chinese-led capitalist camps and vanquish the spectre of a US-China war through world revolution.53
1 https://fpif.org/whats-going-to-happen-to-taiwan/
2 For more on this, see: https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/resist-aukus-protect-hawaiki/ and https://e-tangata.co.nz/comment-and-analysis/siding-with-the-us-sells-out-our-pacific-family/
3 https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/weo-database/2023/October/weo-report?c=924,&s=NGDP_R,NGDP_RPCH,NGDP,NGDPD,PPPGDP,NGDP_D,NGDPRPC,NGDPRPPPPC,NGDPPC,NGDPDPC,PPPPC,PPPSH,PPPEX,NID_NGDP,NGSD_NGDP,PCPI,PCPIPCH,PCPIE,PCPIEPCH,TM_RPCH,TMG_RPCH,TX_RPCH,TXG_RPCH,LUR,LP,GGR,GGR_NGDP,GGX,GGX_NGDP,GGXCNL,GGXCNL_NGDP,GGSB,GGSB_NPGDP,GGXONLB,GGXONLB_NGDP,GGXWDG,GGXWDG_NGDP,NGDP_FY,BCA,BCA_NGDPD,&sy=2021&ey=2028&ssm=0&scsm=1&scc=0&ssd=1&ssc=0&sic=0&sort=country&ds=.&br=1
4 https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-1622-8
5 https://roland-theodore-boer.net/
6 https://web.archive.org/web/20221128055330/https://www.newcastle.edu.au/highlights/our-researchers/education-arts/humanities-social-science/left-of-his-field
7 A collection of Boer’s publications can be found here: https://web.archive.org/web/20170628023035/http://www.newcastle.edu.au/profile/roland-boer#highlights and https://roland-theodore-boer.net/selected-publications/ Such work by Boer also included a visit to Aotearoa/New Zealand in 2015 to provide a lecture at the University of Auckland on the relationship between Marxism and religion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fOmT5nRSCeE
8 For more on In the Vale of Tears and the Deutscher Memorial Prize that Boer won in 2014, see: https://brill.com/display/title/16948, https://brill.com/display/package/9789004261358, https://www.newcastle.edu.au/newsroom/college-of-human-and-social-futures/uon-theologian-awarded-deutscher-memorial-prize and https://vimeo.com/171804887
9 https://web.archive.org/web/20200620010923/https://stalinsmoustache.org/ and https://cpa.org.au/guardian_tag/roland-boer/
10 https://www.theaustralian.com.au/opinion/columnists/rowan-callick/karl-marx-is-big-again-in-xi-jinpings-china/news-story/8fe4e85e2c1c63e0a943af9daabe88a6?amp=&nk=799f05ab6148b2d7e24b21e47b0ed7dd-1707107152
11 https://marx.dlut.edu.cn/English.htm
12 The author has written a summary of each of the book’s chapters here: https://rolandtheodoreboer.files.wordpress.com/2021/02/socialism-with-chinese-characteristics-synopsis-1.pdf
13 https://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/d/e.htm#deng-xiaoping
14 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-1/mswv1_17.htm
15 https://www.pandorarivista.it/articoli/china-economic-reforms-isabella-weber/
16 https://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/n5354/pdf/ch09.pdf
17 https://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/7872
18 For quotations from Marx and Engels see: https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/video-the-incoherence-of-transitional-society.html For contemporary discussions of state capitalism see: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1024529419881949?icid=int.sj-full-text.similar-articles.2
19 For critical analysis of each of these, see: https://milski360.medium.com/getting-political-marxism-and-social-entrepreneurship-67ce45beb334, https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1045235423000035 and https://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/document?repid=rep1&type=pdf&doi=1443cf485d5d63d440e60260ba1e3911fcc20f3c
20 For Marx’s outlining of his proposal for labour vouchers, see: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm For a contemporary interpretation of Marx’s proposal, see: https://www.scienceopen.com/hosted-document?doi=10.13169/jglobfaul.9.2.0107 For a reformulation of Marx’s proposal, see: https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s43253-022-00091-6 For critiques of Marx’s proposal for labour vouchers, see: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-the-wage-system, https://www.socialiststudies.org.uk/marx%20labvouch.shtml , endnotes.org.uk/articles/8 and https://libcom.org/library/3-leninism-ultra-left
21 https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm
22 For more on Karl Marx’s theory of revolution, please see: https://monthlyreview.org/product/karl_marxs_theory_of_revolution_vol_i/, https://monthlyreview.org/product/karl_marxs_theory_of_revolution_vol_ii/, https://monthlyreview.org/product/karl_marxs_theory_of_revolution_vol_iii/, https://monthlyreview.org/product/karl_marxs_theory_of_revolution_vol_iv/
23 For a reconstruction of Marx’s conception of a socialist/communist society, please see: https://ecommons.luc.edu/luc_diss/204/ and https://www.theoryandpractice.org.uk/publication/alternative-capitalism/
24 Space precludes a substantial defense of this position, but for further resources and evidence in support of the argument that contemporary China is capitalist, please consult the following: https://chuangcn.org/2022/03/china-faq-capitalist/, https://spectrejournal.com/why-china-is-capitalist/, https://www.gongchao.org/en/the-communist-road-to-capitalism/, https://www.gongchao.org/en/china-from-below/, https://chuangcn.org/journal/two/, https://www.worldscientific.com/worldscibooks/10.1142/8712, https://www.elgaronline.com/edcollbook/edcoll/9781783470631/9781783470631.xml, https://www.isabellaweber.com/book, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3D9EN11YJTA&list=PL6JRfkdlcGYU2QWTdEmKPGsqjX9TRLoEV&index=2, https://global.oup.com/academic/product/disenfranchised-9780190052607, https://apjjf.org/-Yingjie-Guo/3181/article.html, https://www.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev-soc-073018-022516, https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745335384/china-and-the-21st-century-crisis/, https://www.routledge.com/Profit-Accumulation-and-Crisis-in-Capitalism-Long-term-Trends-in-the/Li/p/book/9781032337074 and https://lausancollective.com/2021/china-anti-communism/
25 For more information on this, see “Local Organs of Government” in: https://chuangcn.org/books/social-contagion/ch4/
26 For more on contemporary China’s political system, see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JfVUGdgQGiA&list=PL6JRfkdlcGYU2QWTdEmKPGsqjX9TRLoEV&index=3
27 For the theoretical reasons why indirect elections result in one-party rule, see: https://eprints.lse.ac.uk/51148/1/__Libfile_repository_Content_Machover,%20M_Machover_Collective_%20Decision_Making_Machover_Collective_%20Decision_Making.pdf For how this happened in the Soviet Union, see: https://libcom.org/article/soviets-russian-workers-peasants-and-soldiers-councils-1905-1921-oskar-anweiler, https://libcom.org/article/russian-revolution-retreat-1920-24-soviet-workers-and-new-communist-elite-simon-pirani and the articles contained here: https://piraniarchive.wordpress.com/the-russian-revolution-in-retreat/
28 For more on the concept of the means of overall societal decision-making and its alienation from the rest of society being the material foundation for the existence of states in class societies, see: https://monthlyreview.org/product/beyond-leviathan/ For more on the political structure of the Maoist era, see the chapter “Buildup of socialism until the mid-1950’s” in: https://www.gongchao.org/en/the-communist-road-to-capitalism/
29 For more on the Paris Commune, see: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/ch05.htm For more on political and economic class struggles in China and the Chinese government’s response during the Maoist and capitalist periods, see: https://www.gongchao.org/en/the-left-in-china/, https://libcom.org/article/cultural-revolution-margins-chinese-socialism-crisis, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/12/01/proletarian-china/, http://column.global-labour-university.org/2012/10/how-direct-are-direct-elections-of.html, https://library.fes.de/pdf-files/iez/14633.pdf#page=65, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/00221856211052070, https://homepages.warwick.ac.uk/~syrbe/pubs/CollectiveConsultation.pdf, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/03066150.2020.1826452 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oozxsKFYiY0&list=PL6JRfkdlcGYU2QWTdEmKPGsqjX9TRLoEV&index=4
30 For an explanation of whole-process people’s democracy, see: https://chinamediaproject.org/the_ccp_dictionary/whole-process-democracy/ For more on the Chinese capitalist state-building project, see: https://chuangcn.org/journal/two/an-adequate-state/, https://chuangcn.org/books/social-contagion/ch4/, https://link.springer.com/book/10.1057/978-1-137-50429-6, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14747731.2016.1207935 , https://madeinchinajournal.com/2016/12/26/the-neglected-side-of-the-coin-legal-hegemony-class-consciousness-and-labour-politics-in-china/ and https://content.csbs.utah.edu/~mli/Economies%205430-6430/Hui-Putting%20the%20Chinese%20state%20in%20its%20place.pdf
31 For more on this, see https://chuangcn.org/journal/two/spirit-breaking/, https://positionspolitics.org/maoist-settler-inheritance-and-native-claims-in-northwest-china/
32 Space precludes a further elaboration and defense of this argument, but for the overwhelming preponderance of evidence in support of this argument, see: https://thechinaproject.com/2021/09/01/why-xinjiang-is-an-internal-settler-colony/, https://chuangcn.org/2023/09/itc-new-preface/, https://globalreports.columbia.edu/books/in-the-camps/, https://www.dukeupress.edu/terror-capitalism, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2019/07/09/good-and-bad-muslims-in-xinjiang/, https://www.afronomicslaw.org/journal-file/racial-capitalism-chinese-characteristics-analyzing-political-economy-racialized, https://briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/china-the-canadian-left-and-countering-state-capitalist-apologia, https://cup.columbia.edu/book/eurasian-crossroads/9780231204552, https://press.anu.edu.au/publications/xinjiang-year-zero, https://www.thenation.com/article/world/china-xinjiang-genocide-denial/, https://xinjiangdocumentation.sites.olt.ubc.ca/files/2020/12/Darren-Byler-Spirit-Breaking-Uyghur-Dispossession-Culture-Work-and-Terror-Capitalism-in-a-Chinese-Global-City.pdf , https://westminsterresearch.westminster.ac.uk/download/22ecf918c7a040ad5f6d5869bd7e332b9cfbb9fda0ee59a3f34ec2a4c845445b/127869/China%20Colonial%20Question%20Final%20Sep%202018%20With%20Author%27s%20name.pdf and https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3965577,
33 For more on Chinese settler colonialism in Tibet, see: https://ecommons.cornell.edu/items/e00cbb8f-b4d6-4a11-8d18-e746a32664d1, https://journals.library.columbia.edu/index.php/cja/article/view/10012, https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/315/oa_edited_volume/chapter/2657741, https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0097700421995135, https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/0031322X.2019.1662074, https://www.ejournals.eu/SAACLR/2015/2(2015)/art/6788/, https://rowman.com/ISBN/9780739134399/The-Disempowered-Development-of-Tibet-in-China-A-Study-in-the-Economics-of-Marginalization, https://www.iai.it/sites/default/files/iaip2317.pdf, https://www.cornellpress.cornell.edu/book/9780801478321/taming-tibet/ and https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/21622671.2020.1840427
34 For more how Chinese rule over Hong Kong has continuities with British colonial rule over Hong Kong and resistance to it, see: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-981-16-4659-1, https://lausancollective.com/2022/queen-elizabeth-no-friend-to-hong-kongs-democratic-struggle/, https://lausancollective.com/2021/camp-land/, https://lausancollective.com/2020/beijings-new-national-security-laws-and-the-future-of-hong-kong/ and https://lausancollective.com/2021/global-labor-movement-learn-from-repression-of-hk-unions/
35 For more on this, see: https://aeon.co/essays/settler-colonialism-is-not-distinctly-western-or-european
36 For Mao’s quote, see: https://vc.bridgew.edu/jiws/vol1/iss1/3/ For Marx’s remarks on the connection between women’s social position and social development, see: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/comm.htm For Marx’s analysis of gender and the family, see: https://monthlyreview.org/2014/06/01/marx-on-gender-and-the-family-a-summary/
37 On women workers organising and the patriarchal domination that they were subjected to during the Maoist and capitalist periods, see the relevant chapters in: https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/12/01/proletarian-china/
38 For more on this, see “Maoist Patriarchy” and the texts cited in this section in: https://www.gongchao.org/en/the-communist-road-to-capitalism/
39 For more on this, see “Generational and Social Cohorts of Women*” and the texts cited in this section in: https://www.gongchao.org/en/the-communist-road-to-capitalism/
40 For more on patriarchal capitalism in China and feminist and LGBT+ struggles against it, see “Women*’s Struggles Against Patriarchal Regimes” in: https://www.gongchao.org/en/the-left-in-china/ as well as http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/75196/7/Meng_Patriarchal%20capitalism.pdf, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AbfzLl3o9Mo&list=PL6JRfkdlcGYU2QWTdEmKPGsqjX9TRLoEV&index=1, https://madison-proceedings.com/index.php/aehssr/article/view/1474, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/07/15/unfinished-revolution-an-overview-of-three-decades-of-lgbt-activism-in-china/, https://read.dukeupress.edu/positions/article-abstract/26/4/561/136727/Socialist-Feminism-in-Postsocialist-China, https://uppingtheanti.org/journal/article/22-socialism-from-the-grassroots, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2021/09/15/online-self-censorship-on-feminist-topics-testimony-of-a-metoo-survivor/ and https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/68654144/Song2021_Chapter_Straightly_Chinese-libre.pdf?1628409306=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DStraightly_Chinese_The_Emergence_of_Syst.pdf&Expires=1707547905&Signature=DhwdnPBke9s3EcM9bKZLSSwV7ovixfzRDe~OHOitgsCr6oKZ1tsCL3tb4Y8phOcFUDPoDgJmJvfcmVflxMpEjBV9qW633lPuFil8M08mz1nplSD-kmKLlXLUOMozLv8Z4uwIojYXz7i5kg7D0KKzjPVIKb29KJEr-OzN0-veIffwlNMjY7AY4t4xr~BEj1rwO~mH8cpGu8VFYnh843uZr2vzdrpL960F20W9Hdx14kVBZkTwIBb0pF2MTBN3EfeSXp74OokJQfXin9~Oz~xLXDWdw2vpRqAMrez---6ta2gRGRLPlN-FMDnwoRCJl7IbWgC0yS3kGAnKsoeaQmmj~A__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA
41 For more on this, see: https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2023/11/27/the-china-shock/, https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2020/04/30/chinas-coal-fuelled-boom-the-man-who-cried-stop/, https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2020/04/30/china-reform-economists-who-sought-the-road-not-taken/ and https://www.routledge.com/A-New-Development-Model-and-Chinas-Future/Yingtao/p/book/9781138079199
42 For more evidence regarding this, see: https://peopleandnature.wordpress.com/2021/04/13/chinas-co2-emissions-are-soaring-but-in-monthly-reviews-world-they-are-flattening/, https://madeinchinajournal.com/2023/01/05/why-china-cannot-decarbonise/, https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745341576/chinas-engine-of-environmental-collapse/ and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LHm2jHnziiw&list=PL6JRfkdlcGYU2QWTdEmKPGsqjX9TRLoEV&index=6
43 https://monthlyreview.org/2023/07/01/degrowing-china-by-collapse-redistribution-or-planning/
44 For more on the interconnections between the COVID-19 pandemic and other viral pandemics to capitalism in China as well as global capitalist agribusiness, see: https://chuangcn.org/books/social-contagion/ch1/, https://monthlyreview.org/product/dead-epidemiologists-on-the-origins-of-covid-19/, https://monthlyreview.org/2020/05/01/covid-19-and-circuits-of-capital/, https://monthlyreview.org/product/big_farms_make_big_flu/ and https://monthlyreview.org/product/the-fault-in-our-sars/ For more on how Chinese workers responded to the COVID-19 pandemic and how the mass volunteer work by millions of Chinese workers and not the Chinese capitalist state’s policies were why China’s response to COVID-19 was so successful for so long, see: https://chuangcn.org/books/social-contagion/ch2/, https://chuangcn.org/books/social-contagion/ch3/ and https://chuangcn.org/books/social-contagion/ch4/
45 For more on environmental protests in China, see: https://d1wqtxts1xzle7.cloudfront.net/63231740/Zhang._2020._Broker_and_Buffer_Why_Environmental_Organizations_Participate_in_Popular_Protests_in_China-libre.pdf?1588879417=&response-content-disposition=inline%3B+filename%3DBroker_and_Buffer_Why_Environmental_Orga.pdf&Expires=1707548263&Signature=gj3XeVT1qA65m6jjFSn0f~Tqc0YNrT-7OClUS47Sg-U4V8CJXCohiOi6tCQ5J5IcxHxPLv6Uiyh4ulBt4dgf4umxC21WydIIPjBRiOfS3yiqQz25aD2Jeb6r4CL8H90cK8IOsV1Wsy4NNjWVuVYdTUXpoCw-DloDFwvnl86PjqorvYthuaxNq0fOVeB0mCl~G7sWmyuGid4Q76IQv0KjWxPgew4nuUcM6r5sX-I8IaP0lLfRsNXWMtGb-LaXbqiAopEwWgfOfUCOlcMTFmUpUOgWjWhK02GEeeCREBGDFMUaNXYcPouKlbACg7NXum4KcsXxgBA0jBII0C-j0vBn3Q__&Key-Pair-Id=APKAJLOHF5GGSLRBV4ZA, https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/76459865.pdf and https://journals.openedition.org/chinaperspectives/6537
46 https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/making-china-marxist-again-xi-jinping-thought/
47 https://chuangcn.org/2022/04/china-faq-socialist/
48 For a rational reconstruction of Marx’s critique of capitalism, its overcoming through social revolution and his conception of communism, see: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-031-06353-4 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRXvQuE9xO4
49 On the phrase “last refuge of the bourgeoisie”, see: http://isr.press/paul-mattick-marxism-last-refuge-of-the-bourgeoisie.pdf
50 For more on this, see “Autonomy and Bureaucracy” and “The Philosophy of the Coming State” in: https://chuangcn.org/books/social-contagion/ch4/
51 For resources on contemporary China, Hong Kong and Taiwan, please refer to the books, articles and videos in the prior references as well as the following websites: https://chuangcn.org/resources/, https://criticalchinascholars.org/resources/, https://newbloommag.net/, https://lausancollective.com/, https://madeinchinajournal.com/, https://www.gongchao.org/
52 For arguments that China is imperialist, see: https://newpol.org/issue_post/chinas-emergence-imperialist-power/ and https://spectrejournal.com/against-multipolar-imperialism/ For an argument that China is a non-hegemonic empire in formation, see “Chapter Two: Imperialism and Revolution” in: https://counterpower.info/docs/platform/imperialism-and-revolution
53 Space precludes a further elaboration of what an anti-war and anti-campist revolutionary socialist politics looks like but for materials that could contribute to the construction of such a politics, see the following: https://twitter.com/CommunalFreedom/status/1753645252941123676, https://www.theindiaforum.in/politics/multipolarity-mantra-authoritarianism, https://www.angryworkers.org/2023/04/18/thoughts-on-revolutionary-defeatism/ and https://buttondown.email/Fightback/archive/a-telescope-to-a-communist-future-review-of-anton Such analysis highlights the need to build a socialist movement among workers and the oppressed in the Asia-Pacific and globally. Such a movement must reject both the US and Chinese-led capitalist camps and vanquish the spectre of a US-China war through world revolution