1 October 2024 marks the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, when Mao Zedong declared that “the Chinese people have stood up”.
Friends of Socialist China celebrated the extraordinary achievements of the past 75 years with two conferences, in London and New York City. Attendees at the London conference each received a copy of the Morning Star – the only English-language socialist daily newspaper in the world – with a special Friends of Socialist China supplement featuring articles from Zhang Zeguang (China’s ambassador to the UK), Keith Bennett, Rob Griffiths, Andrew Murray, Jenny Clegg, Carlos Martinez, Roger McKenzie, Micaela Tracey-Ramos and Kenny Coyle.
We republish below the contribution by Friends of Socialist China co-editor Keith Bennett. This article presents a broad overview of China’s socialist development, contextualising it in the overall history of the exercise of state power by the working class and its allies and the original road taken by the Chinese communists led by Mao Zedong, which represents a major contribution to the theory and practice of revolution.
The article highlights China’s transformation from poverty to moderate prosperity, examining three major phases of its development: the early period of socialist construction; the era of reform and opening up from 1978; and the new era, starting with the commencement of Xi Jinping’s leadership, characterised by the rapid development of new, high quality productive forces; a strong focus on environmental protection; a merciless campaign against corruption; much improved healthcare and pensions; and a program of common prosperity, ensuring that all sectors of the economy work in the overall interests of the people and of the pursuit of socialism.
Keith concludes: “Whilst China remains, in its own words, in the primary stage of socialism, the overall goal is now to build a modern socialist country in all respects by 2049, when the People’s Republic will celebrate its 100th anniversary. This is truly something that will change the world.”
The PDF of the full Morning Star supplement can be downloaded here.
Although China was the world’s biggest economy for most of the last two millennia, since Britain launched the first Opium War in 1839, the country was reduced to a semi-colonial, semi-feudal society. Not for nothing is the ensuing period known by the Chinese as the “century of humiliation,” marked by unequal treaties, foreign aggression, civil wars and ultimately a victorious revolution.
When the People’s Republic of China was founded in 1949, China was one of the poorest societies on Earth. Illiteracy was as high as life expectancy was low.
The subsequent political trajectory of the People’s Republic essentially falls into two distinct phases, the second commencing with the launch of the policy known as “reform and opening up” from the end of 1978.
The first period is often described as one of following the Soviet model.
There is some truth to this, just as contemporary China still draws on it to some extent, but it is far from the whole story.
For example, even in its most radical phases, the Chinese revolution never completely rejected a role for the national bourgeoisie.
This in turn meant that rather than a single party system, as in the Soviet Union, China retained, and retains, a multi-party, consultative system, based on acknowledging and upholding the leading role of the Communist Party.
Significantly, the peasantry (with some deviation during the period known as the Great Leap Forward, 1958-62), was not taken as a source of what might be termed “socialist primitive accumulation” to benefit the cities and the promotion of heavy industry.
Rather, policies tended to reflect the fact that the peasantry constituted the majority of the population and, even more that, they were the bedrock of the revolution.
The achievements of the Mao era should not be underestimated or denigrated. They were among the most stupendous in human history.
Despite the terrible years of 1958-62, and the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, life expectancy in China grew by one year for every year that Mao was in power.
From being practically the poorest country on Earth, Mao’s China solved the basic problems of feeding, clothing, housing and educating almost a quarter of the world’s population, provided basic medical care to the whole population, brought literacy to the overwhelming majority, massively improved the social position and role of women, and so on.
Why then was it necessary to make such a radical turn in 1978?
For all its progress, China remained at the time of Mao’s death in 1976 a very poor country, although the basic necessities of life were more or less guaranteed.
Whilst famine had been eliminated, food was still strictly rationed. Xi Jinping, when recalling his young days working with farmers in an old revolutionary base area, has often said that his dream was that one day the villagers would be able to eat meat and eat it often.
Although disparities and inequalities remained, China under Mao may be considered to have been one of the most equal societies on Earth, but to a considerable extent, it was a “socialism of shared poverty.”
Continue reading People’s China at 75
