From the Portal of Celestial
Peace in Peiping, Mao Tse-tung on October 1, 1949, proclaimed
the People’s Republic of China. Military operations had not
yet come to an end on that date. Canton, metropolitan center of
Southern China, did not fall until 15 days later. Chungking was
occupied at the end of October and Kunming, capital of Yunnan,
last province of the south-west to be liberated, was taken
December 10. Nevertheless, October 1 can well be considered as
the date all of China came under a new central power dominated
by the Chinese Communist Party. Mao Tse-tung proclaimed the
People’s Republic of China in the name of a pre-Parliament,
the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Council, which met
in Peiping from September 21 to December 1 and adopted a
governmental platform and a provisional Constitution. The
Consultative Council was a body set up from above by the Chinese
CP through the various mass organizations it controls, together
with the other political parties participating in the
government. In fact it is a coalition government – officially,
the Central People’s Government Council – which today reigns
in China. This government is periodically accountable, not to
the People’s Political Consultative Council, a top heavy body
of 576 members, but to the 149 members of the National Committee
of this Council. Mao Tse-tung, as Chairman of the Republic,
Chairman of the Central People’s Government Council and
Chairman of the National Committee of the People’s Political
Consultative Council, combines within his person all the
legislative and executive powers of the Chinese People’s
Republic.
It must not be assumed by any
means that the present coalition government simply represents
stage scenery set up to hoodwink the public while the real power
remains with the CP. Among the political parties participating
in the government with the Chinese CP are two which can be
considered genuine representatives of social classes other than
the proletariat or poor peasants: The Democratic League of
China, banned October 13, 1947 by the Chiang Kai-shek
dictatorship, is composed of numerous teachers, professionals
and petty bourgeois intellectuals as well as some generals of
“liberal” renown. It represents the cultured middle classes
of the cities and has some 50,000 members. [81]
The Revolutionary Committee of the Kuomintang,
primarily a regrouping of generals in Southern China who
deserted Chiang Kai-shek, must be considered as representing the
interests of a section of the Chinese bourgeoisie of the South.
Among the “great” of People’s China there are, in fact, a
number of former Kuomintang dignitaries whose hands were often
red with the blood of workers and farmers. Thus the Vice
President of the Central Government, Marshal Li Chi-sen, is
known as the butcher of the 1927 Canton Commune. General
Chen-chien, butcher of the Hankow workers and the farmers of
Hunan province in 1927, is today head of the provincial
“People’s” government of Hunan. General Lu-han, Kuomintang
governor of the province of Yunnan until December 1949, and
General Liu Wen-hui, once known as the butcher of the farmers of
Szechwan, are members of the National Committee of the
People’s Political Consultative Council. This integration of
former reactionary cadres is not at all limited to instances in
top government circles. In the city of Tsinan, capital of the
province of Shantung, 75 to 80 percent of the functionaries kept
their places. [82] This
phenomenon, duplicated throughout the country [83]
is a source of corruption of the Spartan ways of the Chinese
Communist leaders. [84]
It is highly characteristic that in the cities a good part of
the police force was taken over by the new authorities, with
results that might well have been foretold:
“To a considerable degree,
vestiges of the traditions of the former reactionary police
force have contaminated our public security corps where a part
of the former personnel have had to be reintegrated.” [85]
Nevertheless, in the
countryside the transformation of power was radical and is in
fair way to be completed. Wherever the agrarian reform was
carried out, the former political regime disappeared with the
former property relations. The Peasants’ Associations,
embracing tens of millions of members, carry out the agrarian
reform and are in fact invested with all power on a local scale.
The People’s Courts, genuine revolutionary organs of
the insurgent peasantry from the beginning, are developing in
Central and Southern China where the agrarian reform is only
beginning to be carried out. They are composed half of members appointed
by the district authorities (including the chief Judge and the
assistant Judges), and half of members elected from
below by peasant organizations. [86]
The higher bodies (district and cantonal authorities) are
likewise beginning to be elected. It is only when we pass to the
level of the province that we find authorities exclusively
appointed from above. This likewise holds for mayors of the
large cities, directly subordinated to the central power. From
the point of view of form, the Chinese People’s State
appears as an agrarian democracy capped by a political
dictatorship exercised primarily by the CP.
The Struggle
Against Economic Chaos
At the time the People’s
Central Government was constituted, the collapse of the
Kuomintang’s power had brought to a climax all the factors of
economic decomposition that had characterized Chinese society
for a number of decades. Runaway inflation raged. Barter had
replaced commerce. Industry was paralyzed. The middle classes
were ruined. Relations between the cities and the countryside
were broken. The productive forces had fallen into ruin. Floods,
famine, epidemics added their ravages along the road of retreat
of Chiang Kai-shek’s armies.
Of the three fundamental tasks
of the bourgeois revolution remaining to be achieved in China
– solution of the agrarian question, elimination of the
predominate influence of foreign imperialism, completion of
genuine national unification – the third was needed the most
urgently to overcome the economic chaos which sapped all the
living forces of the nation. Without genuine central
administration, there could be no serious collection of taxes,
no standardization of money and no genuine struggle against
inflation. Without reconstitution of a unified system of
national transport, no genuine revival of commerce and no
revival of industry was possible in the big coastal cities that
remained cut off from the agrarian hinterland. Without the
combination of an effective central administration and a unified
system of national transport, there could be no genuine struggle
against famine. Such a struggle demands the creation of a nation-wide
market of food products, replacing the hundreds of
autonomous markets of provincial, departmental, district and
even county-wide size that permitted famine to develop in
isolated areas, within 300 miles of an abundance of food.
Consequently the new central government has devoted its major
efforts to the actual realization of national unity and it is in
this field that it has achieved the most rapid and most
remarkable successes.
The struggle against inflation
was not at all easy and victory was far from assured at the
beginning. The necessity of financing the enormous Liberation
Army, whose forces tripled within a year, forced the new power
to continue printing a considerable amount of paper money. As a
consequence, the new monetary unit, the “People’s Dollar,”
underwent rapid depreciation. The index of prices in Peiping
rose from 100 in June 1949 to 407 in October; to 1,107 in
November; to 1,454 in December and doubled once again between
that date and March 1950. In Chungking, liberated later, prices
tripled between January and March 1950. [87]
At the same time, speculation raged, provoking scarcity of many
prime necessities.
Measures to
Check Inflation
The reaction of the new power
to all this, prepared by a conference of financial specialists
in Peiping in February 1950 was, however, made easier by a
sensible measure taken at the beginning which acted as a strong
check to the havoc of inflation. Instead of imposing an
artificial market price on the “jen min p’iao”
(People’s Dollar) and thus aggravating the ruin of all those
with fixed incomes, the Chinese government applied the sliding
scale to all wages, salaries and bank accounts. A “parity
index” called the FEN was set up, equal to the average
wholesale price of eight pounds (six catties) of rice or millet
in the six largest cities of China. [88]
The purchasing power of the bulk of the urban population,
expressed in this “parity index,” was stabilized, thus
permitting an early commercial and industrial revival which
limited the effects of inflation and speculation.
Then the government set about
drastically reducing the budgetary deficit. In the
first place, taxes were increased and above all centralized.
On one hand this eliminated at a single stroke the principal
source of corruption under the Kuomintang regime whereby the
land owner himself was most often the village tax collector, not
paying anything himself and letting the biggest part of the
taxes squeezed from the peasants disappear in his own pockets.
On the other hand, it reestablished the fiscal equality
of city and countryside by levelling numerous surtaxes on luxury
products (wines, liquors, cosmetics, custom cigarettes, etc.,
from 60% to 120%). In the second place, considerable income was
derived from the big industrial, commercial and banking
institutions of the State. Thirdly, a forced loan was levied,
called the “Victory Loan,” which the Communist functionaries
extracted often not without brutality [89]
from owning circles in the cities and countryside. Normal
revenues of the State now cover 80% of the expenses (against 33%
in 1949!). The Loan in turn must have absorbed close to
two-fifths of the remaining deficit, the balance being covered
by the printing of bank notes. [90]
These measures prepared the ground for the final assault against
inflation. Due to the important industrial sectors which it
controlled, the government like the private merchants had
retained enormous stocks of finished products during the
inflationary period. With the collection of taxes, considerable
quantities of grain were likewise concentrated in its hands –
taxes paid in kind predominate in fact in most of the
agricultural regions of China. Now began an enormous
stabilization operation that created at one stroke a unified
market in China. To the regions deficient in food products, the
government services sent huge quantities of grain and rice.
During the first three months of the year, more than 20,000
carloads, amounting to more than 600,000 tons of grain, were
shipped from Manchuria to Eastern China. In the following
months, more than 200,000 tons from Manchuria and more than
300,000 tons from Southern China were likewise sent to deficit
regions. [91] The result
of this operation was a successful struggle against famine in
regions hit by natural catastrophes in 1949 [92]
and the abrupt halt of price rises in the cities. At the same
time, the government dumped on the market the masses of consumer
goods stocked during the preceding period. At once, the
merchants and speculators began to unload their stocks too in
fear of seeing them depreciate in the fall of prices, and
inflation was arrested. [93]
In Shanghai prices fell 10% within a month, in other large
cities even more: in Canton an average of 35% from March 13 to
April 13; in Hankow the price of rice fell 25%, etc. [94]
The arrest of inflation created
the preliminary conditions for industrial revival. But only the
preliminary conditions, since the whole heritage of the past
continued to weigh heavily on the economic life of China. A big
part of the industrial equipment remained idle. Even in
Manchuria where the revival had been under way for a year,
industrial production at the end of 1949 stood at only 29% of
the level of 1943. [95]
The productive forces revived slowly, profiting first from the
restoration of agriculture, the transport system, and above all
from the first year of genuine internal peace China had known
for a half century.
The
Structure of Industry and Commerce
The victorious struggle against
inflation constituted not only an indispensable precondition for
industrial revival in China. It also permitted the central
government to modify perceptibly the relations between the State
sector and the private sector in industry, and above all in
commerce.
In decreeing expropriation
without compensation of “bureaucratic capital” belonging to
the four monopolist families of the Chinese big bourgeoisie [96],
the People’s Political Consultative Council in September 1949
gave the State the key position in the national economy.
Although opinion varies on the exact weight of the State sector,
the most moderate estimate puts its weight in the various
industrial branches of China south of the Great Wall as follows [97]:
Metallurgy |
60% |
|
|
Electrical |
62% |
Oil |
53% |
Paper |
72% |
Textiles |
55% |
Cement |
37% |
Machine Tools |
70% |
Chemicals |
89% |
As for Manchuria, the
North-East Inspection Commission sent into that region by the
Shanghai bourgeoisie after the liberation of the city estimated
the weight of the state sector in industry at 87.5%. For China
as a whole it is certain that nationalized capital represents
between two-thirds and four-fifths of the industrial capital. To
appreciate this figure at its true value, however, the fact must
be taken into account that Chinese industry does not produce
more than 10% of the country’s national income.
Consequences
of the Stabilization
The measures taken at the
beginning of 1950 in the struggle against inflation brought
about the ruin of numerous private industrial enterprises. First
of all, the forced loan was often imposed without regard to the
real status of the treasury. Next, enforcement of the new
legislation compelled industrial companies to continue paying
wages to their employees and workers even when production was
halted. Then came the bankruptcy of numerous firms, above all
the foreign ones in Shanghai when the Nationalist blockade cut
off supplies of raw materials for many an industry. [98]
Finally, stopping inflation likewise meant stopping the race for
products of all kinds and the reestablishment of the normal
functioning of the laws of the market. It then appeared that
many industries had enjoyed false prosperity due to speculative
buying during the inflationary period; their markets abruptly
disappeared. In the same way it turned out that many firms had
abandoned all concern for productivity during the period when
“anything sold”; among them too many shut-downs occurred.
The first consequence of financial stability was consequently
the closing of a great number of plants, above all in Shanghai,
where out of 4,671 plants in 41 branches of industry, 3,205 were
functioning in April 1950, a decline of 30%. [99]
Finally, the social changes occurring in the country brought
about a redistribution of purchasing power which rendered
obsolete the industrial structure of the big coastal cities.
Actually these had turned in the first place toward satisfying
the luxury needs of the old owning classes, and not
toward satisfying the needs of the immense peasant population of
China. [100]
More important still were the
modifications the government struggle against inflation brought
about in the structure of trade. Already in Manchuria in 1949,
34% of retail trade and the greater part of wholesale trade
passed through the State stores and cooperatives. [101]
To combat inflation effectively, the central government at the
beginning of 1950 took a series of far-reaching measures. On
March 14, six State trading companies were set up to
control the entire trade in food products, textiles, salt, coal
and construction materials, farm products, and miscellaneous
goods. Branches of these centralized companies were established
in all the big cities and provinces. These bodies were in fact
entrusted with the management of State trade and the “giving
of directives to the private commercial companies aimed at
stabilizing the local markets”. [102]
Following these measures, the network of State stores and
cooperatives spread rapidly. In August 1950 there were 38,000
cooperatives with 20 million members, ‘a fourth in Manchuria
alone. In one year, the number of cooperative members in
Northern China rose from one to six millions and four million
new members were recruited in Eastern China. [103]
Alarmed by
Their Success: A NEP Follows
It goes without saying that at
the same time, the government established trading companies to
control foreign trade, representing a stage toward the
establishment of a monopoly over this trade. In fact a monopoly
was established over the export of a certain number of products:
pig bristles, tung oil, hides, furs and minerals. [104]
The complete statization of the
industrial means of production, however, requires a certain
level of development of the productive forces to meet the
criterion of economic efficiency. Hadn’t the Chinese CP
leadership understood this in advance of the conquest of power?
Hadn’t it sought in the low level of development of the
productive forces in China the reason why socialism, in its
opinion, cannot be built now, China having to pass through a
period of mixed economy, half-Statist, half-capitalist, the
so-called “new democracy”? Hence, the Chinese government
itself appeared alarmed at the radical results of its struggle
against inflation. At the meeting of the Central Committee of
the Chinese CP early in June 1950, several days before the
session of the National Committee of the PPCC (People’s
Political Consultative Council), Mao Tse-tung sounded the alarm
and dexterously outlined the retreat under the form of a
veritable NEP. The slogan of this NEP, developed more fully in
the reports to the National Committee of the PPCC, was
“readjustment of the relations between the State sector and
the private sector of the economy.” The two principal
corollaries were: the beginning of a new “course toward the
rich” peasant of the countryside,” and the opening of an
energetic struggle for the reduction of State expenses,
particularly through the demobilization of a big part of the
Army.
Beginnings
in Planning
This new economic policy was
not long in producing its effects. The State granted generous
credits and handed out huge orders to private industry, which
visibly recovered from its slump. The production of cotton goods
in private industry in Shanghai rose 70% from March to August;
paper production increased seven fold in the same period. [105]
The number of State stores and bazaars have been reduced and not
permitted to sell more than six different products. [106]
Even in the export field private initiative has been encouraged.
In Manchuria the State abandoned its monopoly on export of soya,
cotton and peanut oil established the year before, and even sold
back to private firms, for commissions of one to five percent,
products which had been reserved to the monopoly. [107]
At the same time, strict
relations were established between the Communist directors of
economy and the representatives of the industrial and commercial
bourgeoisie. Early in June 1950 a conference was held in Peiping
between the principal heads of State and private industry.
Proposals made by the private sector, such as the prohibition of
the sale of certain products by the State stores, were
ostentatiously adopted with great publicity. [108]
In his report mentioned above, Chen-yun, Chairman of the
Financial and Economic Commission of the Chinese government,
openly declared:
“In China, a country poorly
exploited from the industrial point of view, the development
of industry and industrial investments undertaken for a long
time by the national capitalists, if they remain progressive
in character, will be useful to the State as well as to the
people. Although Chinese commercial capital causes inflation
in the big cities, we take into account that China is a vast
country where small, dispersed production plays a predominant
role and the existence of private traders is inevitable.” [109]
In order to prevent this
revival of private trade and industry from shortly reproducing
the chaos from which the country had just emerged so painfully,
measures to organize the economic life were taken which
represent the first rough draft of future planning. A first
national conference of heavy industry was held in mid-July 1950
to elaborate a series of “control figures” for certain
branches of industry such as steel, smelting, machine tools and
chemicals. The fundamental aim of this conference was to
re-orient the development of Chinese industry so as to modify
its essentially colonial structure of a producer of raw
materials. [110] The
incorporation of private industry in this planning operates
through the distribution of State orders. These measures were
reinforced by the decision of the regional government of
Manchuria [111] to
start a unified and planned distribution of ten essential raw
materials in order to avoid seasonal production slumps,
particularly in the coal mines. [112]
Although the Chinese authorities strongly insist on the
necessity “of not. exaggerating the possibilities of planning
at the present stage” [113],
it is clear that we are dealing here with a series of
experiences that will facilitate the preparation of integrated
national planning at the opportune time.
Agrarian
Reform Continues
The new economic policy
inaugurated by Mao Tse-tung in June 1950 opens, we have said, a
“course toward the rich peasant.” In his speech of May 1,
1950, cited above, Liu Shao-chi criticized the too brutal
fashion in which the Communist cadres had imposed the Forced
Loan on the rich peasants. But the real problem of the attitude
to be taken toward the village bourgeoisie arose in a sharp form
the moment the government prepared to continue the agrarian
reform south of the Yangtze, which had been stopped in 1949. The
manner in which this agrarian reform was approached and carried
out is highly characteristic of the transitional stage through
which China is passing today and of the contradictory elements
in the politics of the Communist Party.
The CP leadership sought to
postpone as long as possible carrying out the agrarian reform in
Southern China, for economic as well as political reasons. From
the point of view of production, the agrarian reform inevitably
provoked, if only for one harvest, supplementary difficulties
through the overturns of all kinds which accompanied it in the
village. From the point of view of a revolutionary movement fighting
for power, these difficulties cannot be considered as
anything but overhead expenses of the revolution. In history up
to now it has not been possible to achieve any revolution
without provoking a temporary setback of the productive forces,
a setback which appears inevitable even from the viewpoint of
the subsequent development of these productive forces. The
Chinese Communists by contrast found themselves in the unique
position of having already conquered power while the
revolution which they headed had not yet been effected over the
major part of the national territory! The fundamental aims which
this position posed were not only social but of an economic
nature; it was a question of conquering famine and inflation and
along this road anything that could diminish agrarian
production, even one harvest, appeared harmful. This point of
view exerted its weight not only in the delay and hesitations
with which Mao Tse-tung decided on the development of the
agrarian reform in Southern China. It also stamped its seal on
the very methods of the reform.
In thus taking the economic
point of view on the agrarian problem, the leadership of the
Chinese CP at the same time chose in full consciousness a
definite political and social orientation. The desire to
“limit casualties,” to “maintain a maximum of stability in
the countryside” went against the aspirations and desires of
the poor peasants who had waited for decades for their
liberation from the yoke of the land owners, the money lenders
and tax collectors. Now, in Southern China, as we have already
indicated, the urban bourgeoisie represented the predominant
element among the land owners in many provinces. [114]
The present orientation of the Chinese CP, however, is that of
making a “bloc” with this “national bourgeoisie” whose
representatives sit beside the Communist leaders in the Central
Government of People’s China. Agrarian reform in the South
thus risks undermining the very base of this bloc. Concern not
to cut this alliance prematurely no doubt enters heavily into
the delay with which the agrarian reform has been launched in
the South.
Nevertheless, absolute
necessity forced the CP to carry out the reform; and the factors
which had delayed its execution ended up by influencing above
all the form of its application. Without agrarian
reform in South China, richest and most advanced part of the
country, no unified national market for the industrial products
could be created and all the plans for industrialization of the
country would miscarry. Without continuation of the agrarian
reform in the South, the CP risked, in addition, loss of support
from the Southern peasantry at the very moment when the first
enthusiasm of the peasants of the North for the agrarian reform
carried out there began to calm down. The relation of forces in
the government itself would have become modified from this
viewpoint; the bourgeoisie would have regained confidence,
economically and politically, in its future and the South would
have become the base of operations for the counter-revolution.
In fact, it is in this part of the country that the Kuomintang
bands have maintained their activity without cease since the end
of the war on the mainland. [115]
To cut the ground from under their feet through the agrarian
reform was certainly not the least important objective sought by
the Chinese CP in following this policy. And the existence of
real peasant pressure for the reform was frankly admitted by
authoritative Communist sources. [116]
Yielding to
Pressure of Masses
To prepare the reform and
contain the impatience of the peasants until after the first
harvest of 1950, the government on February 28, 1950, published
“directives on lowering the rate of taxes and on collecting
taxes in kind in the newly liberated zones”. [117]
In accordance with these directives Various cuts in the tax rate
were granted by the different regional and provincial
authorities. In the region of Eastern China a limitation of 35%
maximum of the farm crop had already been granted several weeks
previously. [118] At
the same time, the government was concerned above all with not
diminishing its own revenues. Since some land owners did not
dare claim payment of the tax from the peasants, they found
themselves without means of covering their obligations to the
state. [119] Because
of this the directives insisted that taxes be paid regularly and
that the land owners and peasants fulfill their obligations. In
fact, the directives prescribed that “the number of those
obliged to pay taxes in kind shall not be less than 90% of the
total rural population” (by district).
Announced by Mao Tse-tung in
his speech before the Central Committee of the Chinese CP June
7, 1950 (“100,000 cadre elements are ready to launch the
agrarian reform in the newly liberated regions”), the Law on
Agrarian Reform was presented by Liu Shao-chi before the
National Committee of the Political Consultative Council June 14
and finally adopted June 28, 1950. The text of this speech as
well as the text of the Law makes clear the important limits of
the reform which we have summarized in the formula “course
toward the rich peasant.” It represents a considerable step
backward in comparison to the manner in which the agrarian
reform was carried out in Northern China. Liu Shao-chi declared:
“In the period between July
1946 and October 1947 in many regions of North China, Shantung
and Northeast China, the peasant masses and our rural
militants were not able (!), in carrying out the agrarian
reform, to follow the directives published May 4, 1946 by the
Central Committee of the Chinese CP, directives laying down as
inviolable in the main the land and property of the rich
peasants. They did it according to their own ideas and
confiscated the land and property of rich peasants as well as
the big land holders.” [120]
He explains at the same time
that the CP was obliged in this period to tolerate these
“excesses” to obtain the support of the village poor:
“... we authorized the
peasants to requisition the land and excess property of the
rich peasants, and to confiscate all the property of the big
land owners to satisfy in a certain measure the requirements
of needy peasants so that the peasants would join with greater
revolutionary enthusiasm in the people’s war of
liberation.” [121]
To block confiscation of the
land is not only an economic necessity; it is also a means of
limiting the revolutionary activity of the masses in the
countryside:
“If the peasants take the
initiative in undertaking the agrarian reform, it is necessary
to dissuade them ... we must not let disorder be established
and we must no longer tolerate the deviations and disorder for
long without remedying them ... The implementation by the
People’s Government of a policy of maintaining the holdings
of the rich peasants will enable us generally to neutralize
them and it will thus be possible to better protect the middle
peasants and to bring to an end the useless agitation among
the peasants ...” [122]
And if these admonitions were
still not sufficiently clear, they were accompanied by an open
threat:
“If, in certain regions,
deviations and a certain disorder appear when the agrarian
reform is begun, deviations and disorder which are not
susceptible to rapid liquidation, it will be necessary to halt
realization of the agrarian reform in those regions in order
to correct these deviations ...” [123]
Naturally the speech of Liu
Shao-chi as well as the text of the Law on Agrarian Reform state
flatly that all commercial and industrial enterprises belonging
to land owners, urban bourgeosie and rich peasants must be left
untouched. The Law does not even broach the question of
cancelling the debts and mortgages which in Southern China more
than elsewhere constitute the main component of the misery of
the poor peasant.
As for the rest, the Law
continues the essential forms on carrying out the division of
the land in force since the agrarian reform in the North.
Confiscated land is to be taken over by the Peasants’
Association and distributed “in a rational, uniform and
equitable manner among the poor peasants who possess little or
no land and lack other means of production”. [124]
Draft animals and tools are confiscated along with the land. Big
forests, irrigation works, extended reaches of uncultivated
land, salt-marshes, ore bodies, lakes, rivers, ports are to be
nationalized. Big tea plantations, mulberry cultivations, etc.,
already worked according to large scale methods can be
nationalized in certain cases. Finally, this limited agrarian
reform as a whole is to be applied gradually in the winter of
1951 and even 1952. It should be underlined that in certain
provinces where the “interlacing” of the old Kuomintang
cadres and Communist cadres is farthest advanced (Yunnan,
Szechwan, etc.), the reform is postponed until 1952.
A Condition
of Dual Power
We shall examine later the
economic consequences of this reform; but the political and
social consequences are clear. Whether it wished to or not, the
government found itself compelled to institute a genuine dual
power in Southern China. On the provincial and district
level, the majority of the old cadres remain in place; on the
local level their class enemies, the poor peasants of the Peasants’
Associations, bid fair to seize all the actual power in
carrying out the agrarian reform. In vain the central government
tries to block the present stage of the development of the class
struggle in the countryside. Despite the government, the class
struggle manifests itself in all the regions of China. Even
while Liu Shao-chi spoke against all “useless agitation”
among the peasants, the New China News Agency reported
in its daily bulletin of June 11, 1950 that the peasants of
Hupeh province had imposed a radical change in the tax
structure:
Formerly |
In 1950 |
Owners as a whole paid |
3.2%. |
They paid |
50%. |
Rich peasants paid |
7.9%. |
They paid |
8%. |
Middle peasants paid |
29.0%. |
They paid |
15%. |
Poor peasants paid |
61.0%. |
They paid |
8%. |
At the same time, the poor
peasants complained that in this province alone no taxes had.
been paid on 2,520,000 acres of unregistered land held by, land
owners and rich peasants. We dare say these various changes have
“agitated” the villages of Hupeh not a little despite what
Liu Shao-chi might have desired ...
It was by basing itself on the
peasantry that the Chinese CP was able to conquer power, and
that is why the nationwide extension of the agrarian reform was
inevitable. But what happened when the peasant armies entered
the big industrial cities of Eastern China? To properly answer
this question it must be understood that these peasant armies
were headed by a party that in program as well as political
perspectives, tradition, consciousness and tempering of cadres
did not issue from the peasantry but remained for close to three
decades the main spokesman of the Chinese proletariat. To be
sure, this party fought for the bloc of “four classes,” it
came out in favor of collaboration with the “industrial
bourgeoisie,” with the representatives of which it constituted
a coalition government. But it affirmed at the same time that
“the working class has become the ruling class of the
nation” and that it is only a question of time until the
construction of a socialist society can be undertaken in China.
The Working
Class and the “New Democracy”
These contradictory aspects of
the policy of the Chinese CP are faithfully reflected in its
attitude toward the workers and in the reactions of the workers
toward it. On the one hand, with its entrance into the big
cities, the Peoples’ Army of Liberation promised complete
protection of private property. It repressed all disorders and
attempts of the workers to create on their own initiative the
“big overturn” announced by the Chinese CP. [125]
But at the same time it lifted all restrictions on trade union
action and favored a rapid rise of the trade union movement that
thoroughly upset the relation of forces between employers
(Chinese and foreign) and workers. The struggle, organization
and development of class consciousness of the workers likewise
received an immense impulse on the arrival of the Communist
armies, since the workers took at their word the CP leaders who
talked about the “leading role of the working class.”
Quickly disappointed by the passive attitude of the Communist
leaders toward them, they have since then fallen back into an
attitude of cautious expectancy toward the regime, an attitude
all current observers have noted. [126]
The two most important
concessions the workers received from the new power were
establishment of a genuine sliding scale of wages based on
purchasing power in kind, and enactment of the first social
insurance and health laws to. be generally imposed on all
factories. The rest, they conquered themselves through the
stormiest economic action. Thus official statistics show in
Shanghai 9,027 labor disputes between May 1949 and May 1950. [127]
Avenging their past miseries and humiliations, the Shanghai
workers forced payment in particular of enormous back wages,
ruining certain foreign firms. [128]
In certain cities, above all in Shanghai itself, these gains
were however in large measure neutralized by the agonizing
development of unemployment. Out of an industrial proletariat of
1,200,000 persons in Shanghai, 350,000 were listed without work
in December 1949–January 1950. [129]
The evacuation of part of Shanghai’s industries and the
ensuing dispersion of the vanguard of the city’s
proletariat-were certainly not unrelated to the fear the leaders
of the Chinese CP must have felt before these workers, militant
and strongly conscious of their own class interests.
The anxiety of the CP not to
alienate at one blow the sympathy or even the goodwill of the
workers seems however to have been sufficiently strong during
the first period after the constitution of the People’s
Central Government to prevent any measure tending to run counter
to the proletariat. It was not until the government felt itself
firmly stated in power, after the successful stabilization of
its money, that it began to harden its attitude toward the
working class.
Attitude to
Workers’ Struggles
Li Lisan speaks of the
exaggerated demands of the workers, of the necessity
“... of correcting the
workers’ persistent (habit) of occupying themselves
exclusively with their own interests without taking into
account the general interests ... of correcting (the error) of
workers who in their own narrow interests make exaggerated,
inadmissible demands.” [130]
These remarks, repeated by
other government officials, culminated in the setting up of
“consultative commissions of Labor and Capital” which
established a general system of compulsory arbitration. [131]
These commissions do not grant the workers any right of
management or control over private industry, but do allow
measures tending especially to increase production. Decisions
cannot be made except by common agreement, and in important
decisions, the entire staff of the concern must be consulted.
Within the framework of the new economic policy inaugurated by
Mao Tse-tung in March 1950, the measure in fact lays down the
principle in Chinese private industry of “producing first,
demanding better conditions later”; and represents a serious
setback for the Chinese labor movement in comparison with the
rising militancy from the spring of 1949 to the spring of 1950.
Neverthless, while marshalling
demagogic arguments to implant the idea that increased
production in private industry represents the common interests
of workers and capitalists, Li Li-san insisted in his speech on
the legitimacy of a certain limited militancy on the part of the
workers:
“... The Department of
Labor cannot, naturally, eliminate altogether the conflicts
existing between labor and capital. In fact, so long as
private capital exists, conflicts between labor and capital
will continue to exist ... (it is necessary) to extend
everywhere the system of collective agreements ... etc.,
etc.” [132]
In the same fashion, the new
trade union law, reflects the contradictory elements of this
labor policy of the Chinese CP at the present stage. For the
first time in China, the law recognizes the right of
wage-earners, including government employees, to organize. At
the same time, the following clause limits this newly conquered
labor right:
“Every union upon being
organized must apply to the Chinese General Confederation of
Labor ... so that, after examination and approval, the Chinese
GCL ... files for its registration with the People’s
Government of the place where it has been established ... All
other groupings which are not constituted in accordance with
the requirements (cited above) ... cannot be called trade
unions or enjoy the rights provided in this law.” [133]
In practice this establishes
the absolute monopoly of the Chinese CP, since it can, through
the GCL, dissolve or force into illegality any union which
disagrees with this or that aspect of its labor policy, thus
clearly demonstrating that the party leadership fears such
reactions from the working class.
Workers’
Role in Nationalized Industry
In nationalized industry, where
the biggest part of the industrial proletariat is concentrated,
factory councils have been created. Contrary to the Stalinist
theory prevailing in the USSR as well as in the “people’s
democracies” with the exception of Yugoslavia, the Chinese
Communists have not refurbished the pernicious myth of “the
identity of interests between the management of (nationalized)
enterprise’s and the workers.” In the report cited above, Li
Li-san explicitly declares:
“In the State enterprises
there is no longer a conflict of classes, but other conflicts,
partial or general, still exist ... Certain people deny the
existence of such conflicts; they hold that the head-foreman
acts in the name of the State, his instructions are equivalent
to a law or ruling which no one can oppose. This point of view
is false ...” [134]
And in an article commenting on
the trade union law, the same author, a specialist of the
Chinese CP on labor questions, writes:
“In the State enterprises,
the policy (to be followed) must consist of taking into
account public and private interests, and the unions have the
duty of protecting the interests of the mass of workers.” [135]
This conception, half-way
between the Stalinist bureaucratic conception and Leninism, is
expressed quite fully in the statute on factory councils, which,
according to the provisional Constitution, possess the “right
of control over production” but in practice have only a
consultative function and are presided over by the heads of the
enterprises. The Yugoslav Communists say on this subject:
“... the People’s
Republic of China has begun to introduce workers’ councils
and management committees, and this only in the nationalized
enterprises. The system of management in the People’s
Republic of China is in fact a compromise between the Soviet
principle of bureaucratic-administrative management and the
principle of Marx, ‘the factories to the workers.’ The
management committee is dominated by the manager ... and the
latter possesses greater and more decisive powers than the
organs elected by the worker collectives.” [136]
Other Yugoslav sources report
that a Soviet magazine held the Chinese legislation on factory
councils to be too “liberal.” Kao-kang, head of the regional
government of Manchuria, reported that in some factories the
unions have a tendency to completely replace the manager, which
is a strong indication of the pressure toward workers’
management pure and simple [137].
He also extols Stakhanovism, but in terms which seem almost a
criticism of the Stalinist system:
“It is necessary however to
understand that increased output is, after all, a function of
human capacity. Any output exceeding human capacity is
incorrect. This means that in the movement for the
establishment of new records we demand a rational output
according to average human capacity and the technical
conditions at our disposal at present. We must at the same
time stimulate and encourage the initiative of the workers and
specialists ... This will permit all the workers to attain
certain new records which up until now have been made only by
a minority.” [138]
The Economist
(November 18, 1950) asserts that Chinese Stakhanovism operates
at the expense of industrial equipment, which is not in
contradiction with the concept outlined by Kao-kang.
Among all these contradictory
tendencies, the Chinese CP tries to maintain an intermediate
position, basing itself on the working class in order to keep
the bourgeoisie in hand; limiting the action of the workers so
that it can continue the present stage of collaboration with
private capital.
Soviet
Bureaucracy and the Revolution
We can thus assume that on a
certain number of problems of political and organizational
orientation, the Chinese CP has not simply copied or imitated
the “solutions” and institutions of the Stalinist
bureaucracy in the USSR, but has tried to elaborate its own
conceptions, corresponding to its own experience. In fact, the
very victory of Mao Tse-tung over the rotten Chiang Kai-shek
regime is due in large measure to the fact that even before the
war the Chinese CP began to work out its own political
orientation and does not seem to have been guided by directives
coming from the Kremlin.
The fundamental conception of
the politics of the Chinese CP was elaborated in Mao
Tse-tung’s book, The New Democracy, published
in 1940 when direct relations between Moscow and Yenan were
interrupted. It looked like a public insult when Chen Po-ta, in
an article celebrating Stalin’s contributions to the victory
of the Chinese revolution on the occasion of the 70th birthday
of the “Father of the Peoples,” candidly explained:
“It was only after the 1942
movement of ideological reorientation that Stalin’s numerous
works on China were systematically published by our party ...
Many comrades of our party who in fact led the Chinese
revolution never had occasion to make a systematic study of
Stalin’s numerous works on China. Among them was Comrade Mao
Tse-tung.” [139]
In fact, the new statutes and
program of the Chinese CP adopted in May 1945 did not even
mention the name of Stalin [140]
but openly declared that the programmatic foundation of the
party was represented by “Marxism-Leninism and the Thought of
Mao Tse-tung.” It is difficult to believe that many present
leaders of the Chinese CP, who either participated intimately in
the leadership of the party during the great revolution of
1925-27 or lived abroad for long periods since then, can be
ignorant of the real role played by the leadership of the
Communist International, and especially by Stalin, in the
organization of the great defeat. In their official writings,
they continue the tradition inaugurated by Stalinism, of making
Chen Tu-hsiu, General Secretary of the Chinese CP from 1921 to
1927, the scapegoat for all the opportunist mistakes committed
under direct orders of the Kremlin. But they must know that a
week before Chiang Kai-shek began to massacre the Communists in
Shanghai, Stalin declared in a speech in Moscow, April 5, 1927:
“Chiang Kai-shek is
submitting to discipline. The Kuomintang is a bloc, a sort of
revolutionary parliament (!), with the Right, the Left, and
the Communists. Why make a coup d’etat? Why drive away the
Right when we have the majority (!) and when the Right listens
to us? ... Chiang Kai-shek has perhaps no sympathy for the
revolution, but he is leading the army and cannot do otherwise
(!) than lead it against the imperialists.” [141]
Recent
Hostile Acts of Stalin
They cannot fail to note,
especially if they study all of Stalin’s works on China, how
for years the leadership of the Communist International defended
a position diametrically opposed to the one they themselves
advanced beginning in 1940, in regard to the impossibility of
carrying out the bourgeois-democratic revolution under the
leadership of the bourgeoisie in China. Above all, they cannot
forget that coinciding with the Japanese debacle in the summer
of 1945, when they began to move toward the rapid occupation of
northern China, Stalin sprung a surprise agreement with Chiang
Kai-shek, recognizing his government as the only legal
government of China and stabbing the Chinese Communists in the
back! [142] They
cannot forget that at the beginning of the civil war in 1945-46,
the Kremlin helped Chiang Kai-shek install Kuomintang
functionaries in Manchuria by prolonging Russian occupation of
Manchurian centers, on express demand of the Chinese marshal,
until the arrival of Nationalist reinforcements. Nor can they
forget the evacuation of Harbin, when the Russian troops took
with them the hated Kuomintang functionaries, giving them
safe-conduct to Nationalist territory [143];
nor that in 1947, on the eve of their great offensive to
liberate the whole northern plain of China, Stalin counseled
them not to attack the big cities but to continue their
guerrilla struggle.
They cannot forget that upon
the popular uprising in the province of Sinkiang. the Soviet
bureaucracy helped Chiang Kai-shek to dissolve the new
insurrectional power and return a part of the old feudal rulers
to power in a coalition government which the people had to
overthrow a second time. [144]
Belden even affirms that he heard many Chinese Communists
declare that in the USSR the farmers are “serfs of the
State”. [145] The
Yugoslav example shows us how important these experiences are
for determining the future course of the Chinese revolution,
even if at the present stage the Chinese Communists abstain from
delimiting themselves publicly from the Kremlin.
Present
State of Sino-Soviet Relations
Nevertheless, a break between
Peiping and Moscow in the near future would be a surprise.
Powerful objective forces still make such a break highly
improbable. The intervention of the Soviet bureaucracy in
People’s China is different in form and substance from that in
the European “buffer zone.” Unlike the mixed companies set
up by the Kremlin in eastern Europe, all of which represent
simple exploitation by the Soviet bureaucracy of the already
existing industries and manpower, the mixed companies
established in China (Sino-Soviet oil company, Sino-Soviet
company for the development of rare and non-ferrous metals in
Sinkiang, Sino-Soviet civil aviation company) involve a real
investment of capital on the part of the USSR that favors early
development of the productive forces, objective No.1 of the
Chinese Communists. [146]
And if the Sino-Soviet treaty,
concluded by Mao Tse-tung in Moscow after lengthy negotiations
testifying to the independent spirit of the Chinese, imposes on
the People’s Republic of China the payment of indemnities to
the USSR for expenditures on the Chinese railway construction in
Changchun, Port Arthur and Dairen, the return of these Soviet
enclaves to China represents a satisfaction, as the agreement
openly states, “to the national honor and dignity of the
Chinese People”. [147]
Moscow drew some conclusions from the break with the Yugoslav CP
and is trying not to irritate the Chinese Communists by a
condescending attitude on secondary questions. The Kremlin’s
distrust of Peiping is, however, indicated by the fact that
deliveries of modern arms, particularly jet planes, are made in
such a way that control of the materiel remains in Soviet hands,
and by the fact that the USSR seems to have established military
bases in Sinkiang. [148]
As long as the Chinese retain
essential control of the Communist movement in a series of
Asiatic countries (Indo-China, Malaya, etc. – as demonstrated
by the exclusively Chinese leadership of the conference of
Asiatic and Australasian unions held at Peiping from November 16
to December 3, 1949), and thereby clash directly with
imperialism, they will have to maintain close relations with the
Kremlin. As long as imperialism maintains its factual blockade
of China as to the principal raw materials and so-called
“strategic” equipment, the restricted economic aid which
they can obtain from the USSR will seem all the more
appreciable. And above all: as long as the revolutionary forces
independent of the Kremlin are unable to appear as an important
political factor in Asia or elsewhere, the Chinese CP, drawing
conclusions in turn from the current evolution of the Yugoslav
affair, will essay only with extreme caution to draw away from
the Kremlin.
In the long run, however, the
social forces of the Chinese revolution and not the political or
economic considerations of its leaders will determine relations
between Peiping and Moscow. The development of the rural
bourgeoisie, the eventual difficulty of maintaining industrial
equipment, the eventual modification of the international
relationship of forces in favor of imperialism, the appearance
of capitulatory Rightist tendencies in the Chinese CP, could,
under a condition of prolonged passivity and feebleness of the
proletariat, bring about a reversal of Chinese foreign policy.
An attempt, not yet excluded, by the Kremlin to reach an
understanding with the State Department at the expense of China,
could have similar results. Contrariwise, a new development of
the Chinese revolution, an upsurge of the labor movement, a
leftist orientation of the CP, the favorable development of
revolutionary forces in the world, above all in India, Japan and
western Europe, could bring about at a later stage a break “to
the left” between Chinese Communism and the Kremlin. To be
realized, however, the two possibilities require rupture of the
new class equilibrium in China today, the equilibrium on which
the Chinese CP bases its power.
Role of the
CP
This equilibrium is not the
product of accident alone in China’s historic process. It was
consciously prepared during long years by the CP of that country
in the course of an ideological evolution which led it to
reconsider the fundamental problems of the Chinese revolution.
In the fall of 1936, Mao
Tse-tung, summing up the experiences of the revolution and civil
war, wrote a small book called The Strategy of the
Revolutionary War in China in which, without basing
himself on a Marxist analysis of class relations in Chinese
society and drawing only the empirical lessons of the past
struggles, he reached the following conclusion, a complete
revision of Stalinist conceptions of China:
“The enemy of the
revolution has been not only imperialism but also the regime
of the big bourgeoisie allied with the big land owners. The
national bourgeoisie has become an extension of the big
bourgeoisie, leaving only the Chinese CP to lead the
revolution. Complete command in the hands of the Communist
Party is the basic condition for ability to guide the war to a
successful conclusion.” [149]
In the same work he assigns a
negligible, secondary role to the proletariat in the Chinese
revolution and arrives at the conclusion that a revolutionary
victory in China is impossible without a victorious war of
peasant armies led by the CP.
Only a few copies of Mao’s
book were printed at the time and it did not at all influence
the immediate strategy of the party. Quite the contrary: In 1937
Mao made a “bloc” with the Kuomintang against Japanese
imperialism in which he openly abandoned all struggle for
agrarian reform in the liberated regions. Up to now he has not
been able to name a single advantage of this coalition with the
land owners in northern China. Moreover, it must be added that
this bloc was broken only under the pressure of the masses, who
began to divide the land themselves in 1946 without waiting for
directives from the CP [150].
In the meantime, however, reconsideration of the character of
the Chinese revolution by the leaders of the Chinese CP has
progressed considerably. Beginning in 1940 in his book, The
New Democracy, published in printed form several months
before The Strategy of the Revolutionary War
(which appeared in March 1941), Mao characterized the revolution
as follows:
“This stage of the Chinese
revolution ... by its social character is a bourgeois
democratic revolution of a new kind; it is not yet the
socialist revolution of the proletariat, but it already
constitutes a part of the world socialist revolution of the
proletariat ... This first stage cannot be the construction of
a bourgeois society under hegemony of the capitalist classes
in China, but the creation of a new, really democratic society
through union of the various revolutionary layers of China
...” [151]
Several years later, speaking
before the Seventh Congress of the Chinese CP, Liu Shao-chi
declared still more clearly:
“... because the
fundamental motor forces of the Chinese revolution are the
masses of the people, with the peasantry as principal force
and the proletariat as guide, the Chinese revolution cannot be
either a bourgeois-democratic revolution of the old type nor a
proletarian socialist revolution, of the new type ... In this
revolution, the principal motor forces are the proletariat,
the peasantry and the petty bourgeoisie.” [152]
Finally, reviewing after the
event: the development of the victorious military campaign, the
Central Committee of the Chinese CP thus defined the character
of the third Chinese revolution:
“The people’s democratic
dictatorship, led by the working class, based on the alliance
of workers and farmers, demands that the Communist Party of
China seriously unite the whole working class, the whole
peasantry, the revolutionary intelligentsia as the guiding
forces and as the basic forces of that dictatorship.” [153]
It was with this conception
that the armies led by the CP were launched toward victory in
1947 on a formidable wave of peasant insurrections. To carry out
the tasks of the bourgeois revolution completely through
conquest of power by the Communist Party without touching a
single one of the tasks of the proletarian revolution – this
appeared to be the program of the Chinese CP which permitted it
to achieve victory in the first stage of the revolution. This
victory was possible only because in practice the CP dropped the
Stalinist idea of carrying out the bourgeois revolution in a
fifty-fifty bloc with the “national” bourgeoisie and even
under the periodic hegemony of the “national” bourgeoisie.
Contradictions
in Policy Revealed in Practice
But with the conquest of power,
the limitations of this program became apparent. The CP wished
to construct a “democratic” capitalist economy, but
three-fourths of industry was already nationalized. It wished to
halt the struggle against the “national” bourgeoisie for a
period, but realization of agrarian reform in the south
constantly placed this struggle on the order of the day. It
wished to avoid all planning for the time being, but the task of
industrializing the Chinese mainland appeared immense and
planning seemed to be the only means of getting it going. It
wished to leave the road to accumulation open to the rich
farmers of the countryside, but despite its intentions, the
class struggle blazed up more vigorously than ever The whole
logic of the situation pointed to the conclusions of the
Trotskyist theory of the permanent revolution. The present
equilibrium of forces cannot last. In the near future the CP
will have to decide to sharpen the struggle against the urban
and village bourgeoisie, basing itself on the proletariat and
“poor farmers, if it does not wish to capitulate before the
enormous bourgeois pressure which the beginning of peasant
“prosperity” is preparing. Will it know how to make this
choice?
Is a Left
Turn Possible?
Many reasons permit us to hope
for such a development. More than any other Communist Party, the
Chinese CP has been obliged to keep a less bureaucratic and
centralized structure, to maintain a constant metabolism between
its own aspirations and preoccupations and those of the masses.
The objective situation pushes it along this road. The party
cadres became habituated for years to the regime of Kung Kie
Tche (guaranteed food, housing, clothing), a Spartan
egalitarianism. In his report cited above (p. 75), Liu Shao-chi
says that in 1945 half the villages of the liberated regions did
not have a single member of the CP! Under such conditions how
could the agrarian reform be carried out without permitting
relatively free development of the initiative of the masses? The
vastness of the Chinese mainland and the extreme density of its
population does not at all permit the rapid establishment of
bureaucratic control over the awakened masses. The formidable
power of this awakening, of peasants freed from the tyranny of
the land owners, of women liberated by the new marriage code, of
youth finally given a future of hope, of masses avid for
education and culture [154],
make such control all the more difficult. Thus it was no more
than an expression of this objective situation when Liu
Shao-chi, submitting the CP statutes to the Seventh Congress,
affirmed again and again the party’s “faith in the
self-emancipation of the people” (op. cit.,
p.56), rejecting the whole idea that “the cadres decide
everything” and even insisting on the rights of minorities
within the party, the majority possibly being wrong during
political debates! (Op. cit., pp.83-4). In 1945
such remarks could never have been heard in a party linked to
Moscow for a long time. Of course, they have only a formal
value. In 1931 and particularly in 1937, on the occasion of two
“turns to the right,” the leadership of the Chinese CP
organized violent campaigns “against counterrevolutionary
Trotskyism.” But Belden tells how a Communist newspaper in the
“liberated regions” publicly criticized the too moderate
directives in the application of the agrarian reform. (Op.
cit., p.503). And all observers are unanimous on the
extreme “liberalism” at present of the Communist power, the
restricted limits of any political repression, the absence of
Stalinist-type control of the revolutionary forces in the
countryside. If it remains alert to the voice of the masses, a
new turn to the left by the CP is not at all excluded. It is
fails to heed that voice, its bureaucratization and its course
toward the right will signify at the next stage a course against
the masses.
Straws in
the Wind
To estimate the chances of such
a turn to the left, we must not forget the fact that the
leadership of the Chinese CP, contrary to the affirmations of
some people, has never ceased to consider itself as a proletarian
leadership. True, the party is composed of an overwhelming
majority of petty-bourgeois peasant elements. Its rapid growth
(30,000 members in 1937, 1,200,000 in 1945, 4,000,000 at
present) signifies an extremely low ideological level. But at
the Seventh Congress, when the party was still cut off from the
cities, it did not cease insisting on the proletarian character
of the party, on the necessity of the non-proletarian members
assimilating the proletarian ideology; they even inscribed in
the statutes different conditions for admission of workers, poor
farmers, .middle farmers and intellectuals, etc., increasing the
difficulty of their entrance into the party to the degree their
mode of existence departs from that of the proletariat. [155]
Nevertheless, a certain number of rich peasants succeeded in
infiltrating into the party and caused it to deviate from its
class line in regard to the village. The Central Committee
reacted violently to this danger with its February 22, 1948 Directives
on the agrarian reform and the reorganization and purge of the
party in the formerly liberated regions. [156]
And when the People’s Army of Liberation reached the big
proletarian centers, the same Central Committee made a resolute
change in its attitude toward the relative importance of the
working class:
“On account of the
disproportion between the popular forces and those of the enemy
after the defeat of the Great Revolution of 1927 up to now, the
center of gravity of the revolutionary struggle of the Chinese
people has been the rural sector, gathering together the rural
forces ... to encircle and take the cities ... The period when
this way of working had to be adopted is now ended ... The
center of gravity of Party work must be placed in the cities” [157]
This turn found its logical
conclusion in the halting of peasant recruitment to the
Communist Party, which from now is concentrating on winning the
industrial workers. The difficulties on this road will remain
numerous as long as the Party leadership has nothing to offer
the workers except the perspective of increasing production. On
this plane likewise, a future turn to the left would correspond
to the main concern of the Communist leaders and alone permit
the party to become the principal force among the proletariat.
Whither
China?
The first stage of the Chinese
revolution ended with the overthrow of the power of Chiang
Kai-shek. It carried out most of the tasks of the
bourgeois-democratic revolution, particularly emancipation from
imperialist domination (even though foreign capital has not yet
been completely expropriated) and the realization of national
unification. It has not yet resolved the agrarian question to
the degree demanded in the south, or carried out the
expropriation of the urban bourgeoisie and, above all, the
cancellation of debts and mortgages. The coming stage, in
definitively solving the agrarian question and in order to
realize the conclusive victory and consolidation of the
revolution, will sharply pose the solution of the proletarian
tasks, certain of which have already been outlined. That is why
China is still passing through a transitional period
between the downfall of the old and the definitive establishment
of the new regime. Politically it is a Workers and Farmers
Government still maintaining a coalition with certain
elements of the big bourgeoisie. The alliance between the
proletariat and the peasantry is in brief the revolutionary
alliance with the poor farmers in the North, in the Center the
temporary alliance with the rich peasantry and in the South the
uncertain alliance with the urban exploiter elements
who dominate agriculture. Dual power, existing on the village
scale, is also reproduced on the national scale in the
opposition between various zones and inside the government
itself by the presence of bourgeois ministers in its ranks.
The future of China is in the
first place the future of 90 million peasant holdings. [158]
To the degree that agrarian reform is achieved, the immediate
future appears brilliant. Under the old regime, rent and taxes,
not to mention interest on loans and other supplementary
charges, took, on an average, more than 50% of the peasant’s
crop; in certain prosperous regions, the percentage even reached
75%. [159] Today taxes
take only an average of 17% of the farm income, and taxes are
based on an average yield per acre, so that an increase in yield
lowers the proportion of the levy. [160]
The Chrinese peasantry suddenly sees its purchasing power
enormously increased, and industry, particularly the textile
industry, sees an unlimited market opening before it. In
Manchuria where the agrarian reform was carried out first, the
levy on the peasantry reached a total of 2.3 million tons of
food products in 1949 against 8 million tons under the old
regime. [161]
Consequently in 1950 they were able to buy 9 million bolts of
cotton goods as against 3 million in 1949 and 0.8 million in
1947 (before the reform). [162]
The cause of the defeat of agrarian revolts of the past – the
need to crush the peasantry under a burden of taxes in order to
construct a centralized state apparatus – seems to have been
checked in People’s China thanks to the elimination of
corruption, to the frugal ways of the new government, to local
self-administration, and above all, to the development of the
productive forces.
Only when the agrarian reform
is completed throughout China, will a new differentiation of
social forces appear in the village on the basis of the private
accumulation and the competition of millions of small peasant
enterprises. The Mao Tse-tung regime will then experience its
first serious test. Before this first crisis is reached, several
years remain in which to concentrate on developing industry and
raising the standard of living, consciousness and organization
of the proletariat. On success in these two domains as well as
on the aid the international revolution can give People’s
China, depends the future fate of the Chinese revolution.
The victory of Mao Tse-tung
smashed the bases of the century-old imperialist domination of
Asia. Driving the H.M. Amethyst under artillery fire
from the Yangtze in 1949, then driving the proud Yankee army
from North Korea in 1950, the Chinese People’s Army overturned
the relation of forces on which the capitalist world has been
based for a century. It has avenged the victims of the Taiping
and Boxer rebellions, the Shanghai workers of 1927, the peasants
of Kiangsi and the millions of other victims of imperialist
savagery in Asia. From now on China will no longer develop under
the stigma of bandits and opium; modern industry will advance in
giant strides and these strides will resound like a death-knell
in the ears of the industrialists in Manchester, Bombay and
Osaka. [163] It is not
only through the revolutionary forces which it is unleashing in
all of Asia that the Chinese revolution is undermining the world
domination of imperialism; it is likewise dealing a mortal blow
to the economic foundation of its existence which is rooted in
the exploitation of the backward, under-developed countries.
The wofkers of the advanced
European countries and the United States as well as the
proletarians of Japan, India, Ceylon and Indonesia are not
compelled to follow the tortuous road of Mao Tse-tung – 23
years of mass suffering in his country before smashing the
enemy. Lenin’s road remains all the more on the order of the
day while the revolutionary forces of the masses continually
grow on a world scale: decisive blows, and audacious strategy
make possible today, as in October 1917, an early victory. But
they can achieve this victory only if they make their own –
without any sectarianism and despite all the reservations due to
the opportunism of the leadership of the Chinese CP – the
cause of the great Chinese revolution. For a fourth of humanity
this revolution sings, and will sing for many years, the
Carmagnole of the people in arms and the Marseillaise of the
workers.
December 10, 1950
Notes
81.
Jean Jacques Brieux, La Chine du Nationalisms au
Communisme, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1950. p.411.
82.
New China News Agency, March 1, 1949.
83.
May 1, 1950, speech of Liu Shao-chi, Vice-President of the
Government and member of the Political Bureau of the Chinese
Communist Party. In New China News Agency, daily
bulletin, Prague edition, May 1, 1950, p.13.
84.
Report of Chen-yun before the National Committee of the
People’s Political Consultative Council, June 15, 1950. In La
Situation Interieure de la Chine, published by La
Documentation Francaise, October 21, 1950.
85.
Kiai Fang Je-Pao (Liberation),
Shanghai daily official organ of the Chinese CP, August 10,
1950. In La Situation Interieure de la Chine,
published by La Documentation Francaise, October 21,
1950.
86.
New China News Agency, daily bulletin, July 26, 1950.
p.2.
87.
Problemes Economiques, November 14, 1950.
88.
Problemes Economiques, April 25, 1950.
89.
Speech of Vice-President Liu Shao-chi, op. cit.
90.
Problemes Economiques, April 25, 1950.
91.
New China News Agency. Daily bulletin, June 6, 1950.
92.
The Chinese Communist press acknowledged that great natural
catastrophes had hit certain provinces of eastern China in 1949,
Shantung, Kiangsu and Anhwei. According to an editorial in Kiai
Fang Je-pao, March 9, 1950, more than 15 million
victims suffered from famine in these three provinces.
93.
New China News Agency, September 20, 1950.
94.
Problemes Economiques, June 20, 1950. Most of
the reports on China printed by this review edited by La
Documentation Francaise, come from France’s commercial
adviser in China.
95.
Report of Kao-kang, head of the government of Manchuria, to the
regional Congress of the CP, March 13, 1950. In La
Situation Interieure de la Chine II (La
Documentation Francaise).
96.
See part I of this article in the Fourth International,
September-October 1950.
97.
Tsu Ti-tsin, La Voie Economique de la Chine.
98.
See Neue Zürcher Zeitung, October 1, 1950. Le
Soir, September 2, 1950, etc.
99.
La Situation Interieure de la Chine II, p.28.
100.
Speech of Liu Shao-chi, May 1, 1950, op. cit.
101.
Report of Kao-kang, op. cit.
102.
Problemes Economiques, June 13, 1950.
103.
New China News Agency, daily bulletin, August 15, 1950.
104.
Problemes Economiques, December 5, 1950.
105.
The Times, London, June 7, 1950. New China
News Agency, daily bulletin, October 27, 1950.
106.
Report of Chen-yun before the National Committee of the PPCC,
June 15, 1950. In La Situation Interieure de la Chine I,
p.25.
107.
Problemes Economiques, December 5, 1950.
108.
New China News Agency, daily bulletin, June 5, 1950.
109.
Report of Chen-yun before the National Committee of the PPCC. In
La Situation Interieure de la Chine I, p.24.
110.
New China News Agency, daily bulletin, July 21, 1950.
111.
At present there are six administrative regions and one
autonomous region (Inner Mongolia) each of which has a regional
government.
112.
Ibid., August 19, 1950.
113.
Ibid., July 21, 1950.
114.
See Part I of this article.
115.
See the government declaration in the New China News Agency,
December 6, 1950.
116.
La Situation Interieure de la Chine II, p.20.
117.
La Situation Interieure de la Chine I, p.9.
118.
Ibid., p.15.
119.
La Situation Interieure de la Chine I, p.9.
120.
Pour une Paix Durable ... (Cominform paper in
French) July 21, 1950.
121.
Ibid.
122.
Ibid.
123.
Ibid.
124.
Text of the Law on Agrarian Reform in La Situation de
Chine I, pp.11-18.
125.
It appears nevertheless that cases are strictly limited where
the Army repressed movements of the workers by violence. These
were only due to the initiative of certain “field
commanders” and not to directives of the CP. In these cases
the peasant nature of the Army came into collision actually with
the opening of the proletarian development of the revolution.
126.
Among others: Jack Belden, China Shakes the World;
Economist, September 16, 1950. Jean-Jacques
Brieux in his book La Chine du Nationalisme au
Communisme (p.392) speaks flatly about the present
“unpopularity” of the government among workers. This is all
the more remarkable since he espouses in general all the
propaganda theses of the Chinese CP and is strongly influenced
by Stalinism in all his views on the labor movement and Marxism.
127.
Report of the deputy-mayor of Shanghai. In La Situation
Interieure de la Chine II, p.23.
128.
The Neue Zürcher Zeitung of October 1, 1949,
mournfully describes how the workers and employees of the
American and British general consulates in Shanghai used similar
“methods of blackmail.”
129.
Li Li-san gives the total number of workers in Shanghai in an
article reprinted in the New China News Agency,
September 22, 1960. The figures on the unemployed are derived
from the statistics on employment published in La
Situation Interieure de la Chine II, p.25
130.
Speech, March 8, 1950, at the first conference of the Chinese
Department of Labor. In La Situation Interieure de la
Chine I, p.37.
131.
New China News Agency, May 12, 1950.
132.
La Situation Interieure de la Chine I, p.37.
133.
Ibid.,, p.32
134.
Op. cit., p.37.
135.
New China News Agency, daily bulletin, July 9, 1950.
136.
Dr. Jovan Djordjevic, New Management System, in New
Yugoslav Law, No.2-3, 1950, p.27.
137.
La Situation Interieure de la Chine II, p.9.
138.
Ibid., p.10.
139.
China Weekly Review, January 21, 1950.
140.
Reprinted in On the Party by Liu Shao-chi
(Foreign Languages Press, Peiping, 1950, pp.155-204).
141.
Cited by Harold Isaacs, The Tragedy of the Chinese
Revolution, London 1938. Seeker and Warburg. p.185.
Isaacs tells how this speech was suppressed in the official
publications of the USSR after events had so cruelly
contradicted Stalin ...
142.
Jack Belden, China Shakes the World, Harper
& Brothers, New York, 1949, p.69.
143.
Ibid., p.375.
144.
Tanjug Bulletin, April 4, 1950.
145.
Belden, op. cit., p.68.
146.
New China News Agency, bulletin, Oct. 2, 1950.
147.
Pour une Paix Durable... (Cominform paper in
French) Feb. 17, 1950.
148.
See the revelations of Kyril Kanov in The Reporter
for Sept. 26 and Oct. 10, 1950, published in The
Militant, Oct. 16, 1950. Also see the articles by C.
Sulzberger in the N.Y. Times, May 5, 1950 and
by Eric Downton in the London Daily Telegraph,
June 19, 1950.
149.
Mao Tse-tung, Le Strategie de la Guerre Révolutionnaire
en Chine, Paris 1950. Editions sociales. p.33.
150.
Belden, op. cit., p.169.
151.
Reprinted in J.J. Brieux, op. cit., p.329.
152.
Liu Shao-chi. On the Party, op cit.,
p.37.
153.
New China News Agency, bulletin, March 29, 1949.
154.
This note is missing – MIA.
155.
Liu Shao-chi, On the Party.
156.
Cited in Le Developpement du Communisme en Chine II,
pp.28-9. (Edited by La Documentation Francaise,
June 29, 1950).
157.
Resolution adopted by the Central Committee of the Chinese C.P.,
March 1949, New China News Agency, March 29, 1949.
158.
According to the 1934 statistics republished in Le
Developpement du Communisme en Chine II, p.45.
159.
Quatrième Internationale, May-July, 1950.
160.
New China News Agency.
161.
Ibid.
162.
Ibid., Sept. 22, 1950.
163.
Highly characteristic of the transformation of China: it is no
longer raw materials, but semi-finished products and cotton
goods which today head the exports of Tientsin, China’s
foremost port. Problemes Economiques, Dec. 5,
1950.
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