China, multipolarity and the rise of the Global South

We are pleased to publish below an article by Francisco Domínguez, secretary of the Venezuela Solidarity Campaign (Britain) and Friends of Socialist China advisory group member, based on a speech he delivered to our September 28 conference celebrating the 75th anniversary of the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The article begins by highlighting some of the parallels between the Chinese Revolution and the 20th century revolutionary movement in Latin America, particularly with regard to the role of the peasantry and the relative weight of the struggle against colonialism and imperialism. Francisco draws in particular on the work of Peruvian Marxist, José Carlos Mariátegui, in the 1920s.

Francisco goes on to outline the impact of Hugo Chávez’s strategy of regional integration and its complementarity with the global strategy of multipolarity – in which China plays a key role – as well as the blossoming economic and diplomatic relationship between Latin America and the People’s Republic of China.

The article concludes: “The rise of Latin America with the Pink Tide as a dynamic and active component of the Global South is a clear manifestation both of multipolarity and the region’s desire to play an leading role in building a Global Community of Shared Future.”

Introduction

The Chinese Revolution has reached 75 years and its extraordinary economic development has turned into the second largest economy in the world on the basis of impressive technological advances and becoming a highly beneficial hub to the Global South, which is the current manifestation of multipolarity. We examine how Latin America embarked on a process of progressive transformation and regional integration (known as the Pink Tide) leading, since about 1999, to enter into a growing collaborative and multifaceted relationship with the People’s Republic of China.

Significance of the Chinese Revolution

In 1957 Mao Zedong identified three key forces on a world scale: US imperialism engaged in policies and wars of aggression; other developed capitalist countries; and countries fighting for national independence and national liberation movements in Asia, Africa and Latin America. […] As for the oppressed nations’ liberation movements and countries fighting to gain national independence, the Party advocated giving them active support and developing extensive friendly relations with them. Regarding capitalist countries other than the U.S., the Party’s view was that China should also win them over and develop friendly relations with them. As to the United States, the Party advocated determined opposition to U.S. armed aggression and threats to China, on the one hand, while still striving for peaceful co-existence with the it and settling disputes between the two countries through peaceful consultation, on the other.[1]

The novelty of the Chinese Revolution, already a feature of the Russian Revolution, was an immense peasant base in a country where in 1949 there was hardly a working class. Well over 85% of the country was made of peasants and where the working-class movement had been destroyed by a combination of the Kuomintang’s brutal repression in 1925-1927, followed by the Japanese invasion (1931-1949). The proletariat had almost disappeared.

Thus, the Chinese Communist Party mobilised the peasantry endowing that mobilization with proletariat leadership and revolutionary dynamic, which, by demolishing its feudal structures, would lead to the accomplishment of the democratic tasks of the revolution. However, its consolidation required to move simultaneously to the undertaking of the socialist tasks by primarily start the construction of a proletarian state that rested on the power of the People’s Liberation Army under the leadership of the CCP. The latter gave the revolution its socialist character.

In this regard in 1959, Lui Shaoqi, a leader of the Revolution said, the Chinese revolution exerts a formidable “attraction for the peoples of backward countries that have suffered, or are suffering imperialist oppression. They feel that they should also be able to do what the Chinese have done.”[2]

A similar strategy had been put forward in Latin America by Peruvian Marxist, José Carlos Mariátegui as early as 1928.[3] He argued that due to its backward nature, the nations in Latin America had a weak, small and dependent bourgeoisie, subordinated to the landed oligarchy and imperialism, therefore, unable and unwilling to undertake the carrying out of the national democratic tasks to modernise society to fully develop capitalism. Thus, the only way to carry through the national democratic tasks was by a socialist revolution led by the proletariat enjoying hegemony over the majority peasantry for land reform as the sine qua non condition of its success.

Mariátegui posited that the peasantry could play a revolutionary role based on its traditions of primitive agrarian communalism. For him, proletarian leadership meant a Marxist party to lead the revolutionised peasantry and the working class to carry out a socialist revolution to accomplish the national democratic tasks (especially, land reform) and move simultaneously to the setting up a proletarian state.[4]

Two examples of the similarities of revolutionary socialist transformations in 21^st century Latin America with the 1949 Chinese Revolution.

1. Bolivia: no proletariat (it disappeared in 1985 with the closing down of all tin mines, Bolivia’s main export since 1900); the key social force is an indigenous (65% of population) displaced peasantry that emigrated to the cities where it ekes out a precarious existence as street sellers in the informal sector.
2. Nicaragua: almost no proletariat either, with a huge informal sector (between 60-80%), where the FSLN provides proletariat leadership to a broad social coalition of workers, peasants, informal sector workers, and street sellers (organised in coops and enjoying state pension and health systems).

Rise of multipolarity in Latin America – Regional Integration

The election of Hugo Chavez to the presidency of Venezuela in 1998 was a momentous development that represented a substantial break with the 30-years of neoliberalism inaugurated with the military coup against Salvador Allende in Chile. For the first time Latin American embarked on an unprecedented process of regional integration whose benefits had a positive effect on many social, economic and political spheres. Below its main features.

• The wave of progressive policies implemented by the Pink Tide governments between 1990 to 2015 led to a reduction of poverty from 48.4% to 29.2% and extreme poverty from 22% to 12%.
• Using the Yo, si Puedo Cuban method, Illiteracy was eradicated in Venezuela, Bolivia, Nicaragua, with substantial improvements in literacy in Mexico, Ecuador, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Colombia, Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Grenada. By 31 December 2021 the Yo si puedo system had taught nearly 6 million people to read and write in the region.[5]
• Due to persistent IMF Structural Adjustment Packages (SAP) the neoliberal period previous to the Pink Tide, between 1975-1980 Latin America’s external debt exploded by 210%. Worse, between 1970 and 2012 the debt multiplied 165 times with the region as a whole forced to transfer to creditors US$3,253 billion.[6] The countries most indebted were Argentina and Brazil and Chávez purchased US$2.4 billion of Argentina’s debt, leading to pay back US$9.6 bn, that is, its entire outstanding IMF obligation. It was followed by Brazil that paid back US15.5 bn also in outstanding obligations.[7]
• This led Hugo Chávez to propose the setting up of a Bank of the South intended to make the IMF and World Bank redundant. The commitment to set up the Bank of the South was signed in December 2007 by Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, Ecuador, Bolivia and Venezuela. Chávez intended the Bank to be an instrument to finance social policies that prioritise regional integration by breaking with the profit logic. At the time the project was endorsed by Nobel prize winner, Joseph Stiglitz who commented the new bank “would give a welcome shake up to western lending institutions.”[8] Chávez made it clearer, the BoS would “finance real development projects without the suffocating and constricting burdens of debt that come with IMF loans”.[9]
• Hugo Chávez pushed for regional integration on energy resources, thus leading to the creation of PetroAmerica in 2004, aimed at strong collaboration amongst state oil and gas companies. In 2004 Venezuela set up PetroCaribe, signed by 13 Caribbean nations, all of which have benefitted from highly favourable contracts and credits to purchase Venezuelan oil. In May 2005 PetroSur was jointly created by Argentina, Brazil and Venezuela. Also, Venezuela’s PDVSA signed collaborative agreements with state energy companies such as Petrobras (Brazil), Petroecuador (Ecuador), Cupet (Cuba), YPFB (Bolivia) and Petrotrin (Trinidad and Tobago). All aimed at joint commercialization of liquid gas, kerosene, asphalt, and lubricants. Regionally-integrated state-owned energy companies (gas and oil, primarily) would enhance domestic economic development and a more beneficial connection with world market forces.
• The Cuba-Venezuela agreement of 20,000 doctors for oil furnished Venezuela with a ready-made health system to about 20 million Venezuelans through the Barrio Adentro Mission. In 2013, Brazil signed a similar agreement with Cuba obtaining 18,000 Cuban doctors deployed in the poorest areas of the country providing medical attention to 63 million Brazilians. In 2013, Brazil had 4,000 municipalities without any SUS (Brazil’s NHS) doctor.[10]
• Then, Chávez persuaded some Latin American governments to establish Telesur, a regional counter-hegemonic telecommunications project (a TV channel) whose motto was “Our North is the South”, i.e., a view from the South about the South.[11] Despite a raft of difficulties, Telesur is still going and also broadcast in English and it is a counter to fake news.
• Then there is UNASUR (Union of South American Nations) and CELAC (Commonwealth of Latin American and Caribbean Countries), regional blocs, with the latter specifically excluding the United States and Canada. CELAC’s annual meetings are attended as a special guest, by China’s president Xi Jinping. In 2014 the China-CELAC Forum was established through which there is a wide range of areas of collaboration.[12]
• And it was Hugo Chavez who as early as 1999 sought a strong relationship with China by undertaking his first of six visits to the People’s Republic, thereby blazing the path for other progressive Latin American countries to enter into fruitful and mutually beneficial relations with the Asian giant.[13]

Latin America’s Strategic Partnership with China

In 1950 trade between China and Latin America was US$1.9 million which by 1960 had gone up to US$31.3 million and by 1990, about a decade after the beginnings of Deng Xiaoping’s economic reform, had increased further to US$2.3 billion. As the economic reform began to produce results, trade with Latin America went up to a staggering US$50 bn in 2005,year when China’s main Latin American trading partners were Brazil, Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Panama, Peru and Venezuela with Brazil having the lion’s share of 34 percent.[14]

Ever since, the trade relationship has gone through the roof. By 2023 – when the Pink Tide had had recovered to a Pink Tide 2 – it had gone up to US$480 billion. That is a 35-fold increase in 23 years.[15] Furthermore, China has signed free trade agreements with Chile (2005), Peru (2009), Costa Rica (2010), Nicaragua (2023), Ecuador (2023), and there are ongoing negotiations with Honduras, Uruguay, Panama to sign individual FTAs.[16] China elevated its relation with the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela to an “all-weather strategic partnership”, deemed of historical significance.[17] China is the main trading partner of South America and second to of Central America and Mexico, after the United States. And 22 out of 33 countries in the region actively participate in the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).[18]

The Economist (4 July 2024) expressed financial capital’s displeasure about this relationship – “The Asian giant’s presence is not just economic. Its ambassadors are well versed in Latin America, and speak good Spanish and Portuguese. The United States, by contrast, often leaves ambassadorial posts vacant because of political gridlock in Washington. Local officials, journalists and academics are offered free trips to China. During the pandemic China sent vaccines to Latin America much faster than did the United States or Europe.”[19] (the piece had an image mouse trap to signify China’s supposed intentions)

The United States depicts this relationship as a threat to its hitherto overwhelming economic, political and military hegemony over its ‘backyard’. Laura Richardson, commander of SouthCom, has repeatedly portrayed China’s collaboration with Latin American nations not only as competition and a threat but has depicted China as a “potential aggressor”. In March 2022, Richardson said that “China continues its relentless march to expand economic, diplomatic, technological, informational” influences in “Latin America and the Caribbean, and challenges U.S. influence in all these domains.”[20]

The problem is that what U.S. offers Latin America is interference, aggression, economic sanctions, coups d’etat, military threats, military bases, assassinations and worse. Conversely China offers investment, credit, technology, markets and peaceful win-win collaboration.

In conclusion, the rise of Latin America with the Pink Tide as a dynamic and active component of the Global South is a clear manifestation both of multipolarity and the region’s desire to play an leading role in building a Global Community of Shared Future.

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[1] A Concise History of the Chinese Communist Party, Foreign Languages Press, Beijing, pp. 588-589

[2] Liu Shao-chi, The Victory of Marxism-Leninism in China, in Ten Glorious Years, Foreign Languages, Beijing, 1959, p. 1.

[3] José Carlos Mariátegui, Seven interpretive Essays of Peruvian Reality (Siete Ensayos de Interpretación de la Realidad Peruana, 1928).

[4] Francisco Dominguez, Marxism and the Peculiarities of Indo-American Socialism, in Marx 2000, The Significance of Marxism in the 21^st Century, Praxis Press, 2019, pp.49-58.

[5] Salim Lamrani, The “Yo, Sí Puedo” literacy programme: a Cuban proposal to the problem of illiteracy worldwide, Open Edition Journals, 52, August 2022, https://journals.openedition.org/etudescaribeennes/26095

[6] Eric Toussaint, Daniel Munevar, Pierre Gottiniaux y Antonion Sanabria, Le deuda en el Sur, CATDM, 19 February 2015, https://www.cadtm.org/spip.php?page=imprimer&id_article=12976

[7] Venezuela Buys More Argentine Debt, Venezuelanalysis, 15 February 2006, https://venezuelanalysis.com/news/1617/

[8] Rory Carroll, Nobel economist endorses Cha2vez regional bank plan, The Guardian, 12 February, 2007, https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/oct/12/venezuela.banking

[9] Stephen Lendman, Venezuela’s Bolivarian Movement: Its Promise and Perils, 5 January, 2006, https://venezuelanalysis.com/analysis/1556/

[10] Daniel Giovanaz, Mil dias da expulsao dos Cubanos, Brasil de Fato, 9 August 2021, https://www.brasildefato.com.br/2021/08/09/mil-dias-da-expulsao-dos-cubanos-desmonte-do-mais-medicos-fez-do-brasil-alvo-facil-na-pandemia

[11] Iain Bruce, Caracas Venezuela sets up ‘CNN rival’, http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/4620411.stm

[12] Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the PRC, Xi Jinping Sends Congratulatory Letter to the First China-Latin American and Caribbean States Space Cooperation Forum, 24 April, 2024, https://www.mfa.gov.cn/eng/xw/zyxw/202405/t20240530_11332903.html

[13] https://socialistchina.org/2023/11/27/on-the-strategic-relationship-between-venezuela-and-china/

[14] Jiang Shixue, Una mirada china a las relaciones con América Latina, Nueva Sociedad 203, p. 70 (Professor and Deputy Director of the Institute of Latin American Studies of China’s Academy of Social Sciences).

[15] In 23 years bilateral trade between Latin America and China soared 35 times, MercoPress, 30 April 2024, https://en.mercopress.com/2024/04/30/in-23-years-bilateral-trade-between-latin-america-and-china-soared-35-times

[16] Jon Orbach, Explainer: China’s Free Trade Agreements in Latin America, AS/COA, 15 February, 2024, https://www.as-coa.org/articles/explainer-chinas-free-trade-agreements-latin-america

[17] China Daily, Ties elevated to all-weather partnership, 14 September 2024, https://www.chinadaily.com.cn/a/202309/14/WS65023ba7a310d2dce4bb593f.html

[18] Trade between China and Latin America reached US$489 billion in 2023, Fundación Andrés Bello, 16 February 2024.

[19] The Economist, China’s presence in Latin America has expanded dramatically, 4 July 2024, https://www.economist.com/the-americas/2024/07/04/chinas-presence-in-latin-america-has-expanded-dramatically

[20] David Vergun, Generals Say China, Russia Persist in Western Hemisphere Meddling, US Dept of Defense, 24 March 2024.