China is no longer perceived as a socialist country, although traces of its revolutionary legacy remain. China’s integration into global capitalism has helped to solidify the process of capitalist globalization.
Modernization and revolution, as well as globalization and revolution, are presented as dichotomies, similar to the dichotomies of democracy versus authoritarianism, freedom versus autocracy, and state versus society. These dichotomies can be viewed as the extension of Cold War ideology into the politics of the 1990s, subtly embedded within the theories of “globalization” and “modernity.”
The Cold War legacy and the agrarian question: Ongoing dilemmas and dichotomies
The world remains confined by dichotomous thinking, which is the foundation for the intellectual and ideological continuity in the so-called “new Cold War”, and to a large extent also serves as the boundary between the Global South and Global North.
This way of thinking does the world a great disservice. And it undermines our understanding of China’s path of development toward socialist modernization and national sovereignty since the People’s Republic of China (PRC) was formed 1949.
It is essential to highlight the agrarian question and rural transformations within the context of China’s revolutionary history and the project of “Chinese-style modernization.” This process emerges from the global agricultural transformations of the 20th century, starting with the Soviet Union, and offers valuable lessons to other Global South countries searching for their own independent path of development.
Agricultural capitalism and the weaponization of food
Looking back at the 20th century, the failure of the Soviet agricultural model is the fundamental cause for the defeat of Soviet socialism. The last image that the Soviet Union left to the world was the long queue of citizens in front of the bakery.
Meanwhile, the agricultural capitalism of the United States played a crucial role in securing its victory during the Cold War.
In the aftermath of World Wars I and II, the United States gradually attained global hegemony through the strategic employment of “the weaponization of food.” This approach systematically dismantled the peasant economies of the Global South and exacerbated the polarization within the global economy.
In the wake of the collapse of the Soviet Union, Russia and Ukraine were swiftly transitioned towards agricultural capitalism in the 1990s, culminating in their emergence as significant global food exporters. However, this achievement resulted in significant “demilitarization” and “de-industrialization,” leading to a substantial decline in national strength.
Definition of the Global South
The definition of the Global South, both in geographical and political terms, has been crystallized amid the rapid progression of global wealth disparity.
It is worth noting that in recent years, internal contradictions and antagonisms within developed nations have been amplified, effectively giving rise to an “internal South” within the Global North.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels delineated the historical logic that makes “the country dependent on the towns… nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, [and] the East on the West.”
This logic has underpinned the expansion of imperialist hegemony by Western countries, led by Britain and the United States, since the 19th century.
The extent to which 21st-century socialist theory and practice can transcend and overcome this entrenched historical logic will ultimately shape the collective destiny of the Global South.
Two conditions of industrialization
A country’s industrial takeoff requires two conditions:
- capital accumulation
- access to the world market
Neither of these conditions can emerge spontaneously internally.
Since the 19th century, successful industrialization and modernization in Europe and America were built on foundations of imperialism, colonialism, and slavery.
The evolution of welfare capitalism and democratic socialism in Western nations following World War II hinged on the bourgeoisie’s concession to and assimilation of the working class during the Cold War, a process that concluded with the dissolution of the Soviet Union.
In the era of neoliberal globalization, the profit-seeking transnational capital eroded the domestic foundations of welfare capitalism, making the Cold War-era model of right-wing nationalist comprador “dependent development” in the Third World unviable.
How China transcends binary oppositions
When China is labeled as “authoritarian” by mainstream Western media, politicians, and scholars, and is portrayed in a binary narrative of good/evil, light/dark in contrast to Western “liberal democracy,” it signifies that the global ideological struggle has not disappeared with the end of the Cold War but continues to the present day.
To transcend the constraints of binary oppositions and contest the narrative framework established by the Cold War victors, it is imperative that we reexamine the historical context of the Global South as epitomized by the Chinese and Russian revolutions in the 20th-century.
China’s development path emphasizes a combination of independence and openness to the outside world. Specifically, China’s development aims to achieve industrialization and primitive accumulation while safeguarding its national sovereignty and addressing the challenges posed by foreign trade restrictions and sanctions.
China’s development path
In contrast to Russia’s reforms, China’s successful reforms are free from the significant foreign debt that plagued the former Soviet Union and Eastern European economies.
China’s development path emphasizes a combination of independence and openness to the outside world.
Specifically, China’s development endeavours to achieve industrialization and primitive accumulation while safeguarding its sovereign independence, as well as addressing the challenges posed by foreign trade restrictions and sanctions.
During the Mao era, China established an independent and relatively comprehensive industrial and national economic system, ensuring its autonomy. The economic reforms since the 1980s dramatically expanded China’s foreign trade, contributing to its remarkable economic growth and prosperity.
Revisiting the worker-peasant alliance and Chinese-style modernization
For late-developing countries, it is essential to carefully balance the relationship between industrialization and agriculture.
One of the most crucial experiences from the Chinese and Russian revolutions is the significance of a “worker-peasant alliance” as the foundation for a successful socialist path.
This insight comes from hard-earned historical lessons, which have shown that any deviation from the worker-peasant alliance leads to social and political crises.
China, in particular, has been compelled to continuously find new ways to navigate these challenges.
Over the past few decades, China’s development strategy has oscillated between left-leaning and right-leaning approaches, with the fulcrum of this oscillation being the “worker-peasant alliance.”
Diplomatic ties with the United States
From the Chinese perspective, the restoration of diplomatic ties with the United States represented a strategic maneuver, championed by Mao, aimed at destabilizing the prevailing bipolar hegemonic world order.
The dissolution of this bipolar paradigm subsequently presented China with the historical window of opportunity known as “peaceful development.”
Notably, the centrally planned economy that characterized Maoist China can be interpreted as a wartime economic continuity in the midst of unfavorable international circumstances.
The swift reintegration into the global marketplace unleashed latent productive capacities within China, exerting pressure on the country to embark on consequential reforms of its socialist system.
Today, China is also facilitating infrastructure development through the “Belt and Road Initiative” to support industrialization in developing countries, helping them overcome difficulties in the process of primitive accumulation.
This situation is reminiscent of China’s own experiences in the 1950s, when it overcame analogous difficulties with the support of its socialist system and cooperation with the Soviet Union.
1990s and societal crises
China’s pursuit of urbanization in the 1990s resulted in a series of societal crises.
These included the surge of job cuts resulting from state-owned enterprise reforms, issues pertaining to rural areas and the urban-rural divide, the developmental gap between the eastern and western regions, the emergence of protest “mass incidents” and the escalating corruption within the Party due to rent-seeking in the market.
These consequences are a common manifestation of capitalist globalization in the Global South and are the price paid by China for its entry into the WTO.
Criticizing capitalist globalization and this “developmentalism” forms the consensus among the global Left.
“Chinese-style modernization”
It is against this backdrop that we can better understand the concept of “Chinese-style modernization” that was introduced at the 20th National Congress of the Communist Party of China (CPC) in 2022.
“Chinese-style modernization” has its roots in the 1950s, initially formulated in 1954 during the First Session of the First National People’s Congress, where modernization based on a worker-peasant alliance was proposed.
This session ratified the first constitution of socialist China, declaring the PRC as a working class-led people’s democratic state based on the worker-peasant alliance. At the same time, in the Government Work Report, Premier Zhou Enlai named four priority areas:
- modernized industry
- agriculture
- transportation
- national defense
These foundational goals laid the groundwork for what would eventually evolve into “Chinese-style modernization.”
1978
By 1978, the CPC’s 11th Central Committee Third Plenum had shifted its focus towards addressing economic structural imbalances.
At this pivotal plenum, the decision was made to initiate rural reform, implementing the Household Responsibility System, redistributing land to households, and introducing independent accounting and responsibility for profits and losses, marking the commencement of China’s economic reform.
It is considered to have liberated the vitality of economic production in rural areas, meaning that China’s industrialization had moved out of the wartime economic model and no longer relies on agriculture extraction.
Subsequently, China adopted an export-oriented industrialization strategy, which facilitated rapid economic growth.
Mao period as a condition of reform
The introduction of the Household Responsibility System can be seen as a form of transformation, involving seven hundred million rural inhabitants, equivalent to 70% of the population, transitioning from collective to household-based production, swiftly increasing grain output and yielding dual benefits for both the rural and urban sectors.
It is important to note that the reforms were only made possible by, and were built upon, the achievements of Mao-era agricultural modernization.
Following US President Nixon’s 1972 visit to China, the country seized the opportunity to import four sets of chemical fiber and thirteen pieces of fertilizer production equipment, allowing for more land to be allocated to cereals. Simultaneously, widespread fertilizer use rapidly escalated grain production.
This relied on the substantial development of the petroleum industry during the Mao era in the 1960s.
Massive and productive oilfields such as Daqing Oilfield helped ensure petroleum self-sufficiency and surplus.
Yuan Longping’s 1975 hybrid rice, initially developed during the period of Mao, significantly increased crop yields per acre.
Shift away from primitive accumulation
As a result, the longstanding tension between inadequate arable land and a large population in China was considerably alleviated, leading to the resolution of challenges related to food and clothing.
Furthermore, this marked a successful shift away from primitive accumulation of capital in China, as it departed from the era of agricultural extraction known as the “scissors gap,” the economic crisis of the widening gap between industrial and agricultural prices triggered by the Soviet New Economic Policy in the 1920s.
It is important not to overlook the detrimental implications of these reforms.
The Household Responsibility System and export-oriented industrialization led to agriculture’s decoupling from industrial development.
Urban-rural divide
The withdrawal of state support for the agricultural sector resulted in a rapid urban-rural divide and an eastern-western regional development imbalance.
While coastal cities flourished, the rural economy deteriorated, leading to societal disintegration.
Chinese agriculture modernization witnessed prolonged stagnation and even regression, leading to a crisis in the peasant economy after a brief resurgence.
In 1984, despite bountiful harvests, China encountered challenges in the sale of grains produced by household farmers, marking the decline of food self-sufficiency, rural desolation, farmland abandonment, and a huge wave of rural-to-urban migration.
“Scientific Outlook on Development”
This is precisely why, in 2003, under the leadership of Hu Jintao, the CPC introduced the “Scientific Outlook on Development” in its decision titled “The Central Committee of the Communist Party of China’s Decision on Several Major Issues Concerning the Improvement of the Socialist Market Economic System.” This outlook emphasized the need for “coordinated urban-rural development, coordinated regional development, coordinated economic and social development, coordinated harmonious development between humanity and nature, and coordinated domestic development and external openness.”
In 2007, the CPC officially incorporated the “Scientific Outlook on Development” into the party constitution.
In 2004, the “Three Rural Issues” – concerning agriculture, rural areas, and farmers – was the focus of China’s “No. 1 Central Policy Document,” which outlines the key tasks for the country and is issued by the central government annually.
For over 20 consecutive years, work on agriculture and rural areas has been the main policy priority for China.
End of the Mao-era heavy industry-oriented economic structure
Following the economic reforms, the CPC’s understanding of the relationship between industry and agriculture underwent continuous changes, evident through adjustments in national policies.
The Central Committee of the CPC issued a series of Central Document No. 1 (zhongyang yihao wenjian) focusing on:
- agriculture
- rural areas
- farmers
The policy documents continued for five consecutive years from 1982 to 1986.
During this period, as the fifteen-year land contracting program was implemented, the long-standing unified state purchases and state quotas (tonggou tongxiao) of grains and other major agricultural products, in place for three decades, were abolished.
This marked the end of the Mao-era practice of extracting surplus from agriculture to fuel industrialization, as well as the heavy industry-oriented economic structure. At the time, the peasant’s motto was: Give enough to the country, keep enough to the collective, and the rest is all their own.
World Trade Organization
Another pivotal change in this era was China’s accession to the World Trade Organization (WTO) in 2001, which involved significant concessions in agricultural trade and had far-reaching consequences that we are still seeing today.
The resulting trade dynamics ultimately led to the widespread bankruptcy of small-scale farmers, sparking severe social and ecological crises.
Issues such as the urban-rural divide, exacerbated regional disparities between eastern and western provinces, and environmental and ecological challenges emerged, among others.
It was clear that these crises that China was facing could not be effectively addressed solely through Western developmental theories.
‘Agricultural Tax Regulation’
In 2005, a significant milestone was achieved when the Standing Committee of the National People’s Congress passed the document abolishing the “Agricultural Tax Regulation,” which eased the economic burdens on farmers and dramatically improved the social welfare of rural residents.
However, these efforts have not fully reversed the crisis. In which China’s food self-sufficiency rate continues to decline, rural areas are in desolation, land is abandoned, and the tide of migrant workers is surging, requiring China to identify the most suitable development path among various alternatives.
New era
In 2017, the CPC’s 19th National Congress reaffirmed the tasks of the “new era,” focusing on addressing the prominent issues of “unbalanced and inadequate development.”
They elevated the “Rural Revitalization Strategy” and the “Regional Coordinated Development Strategy” to national strategies.
The nationwide efforts in “targeted poverty alleviation” in rural areas saw the successful eradication of extreme poverty in the country in 2022.
However, this historic achievement was only a stepping stone to the next phase in rural development.
In 2022, the concept of “Chinese-style modernization” was introduced by the CPC, which aims to revitalize rural areas and bridge regional development disparities, against the backdrop of increased international pressures, the simultaneous presence of development opportunities and risks, and a growing level of unpredictability.
Robust worker-peasant alliance
Whether China can successfully address its agricultural issues that persist since the 1980s and reverse the deterioration of agricultural production becomes key in the strategic goal of narrowing the urban-rural divide and achieving “common prosperity.”
Not only domestically, how China resolves the agrarian question today plays a key role in countering the containment efforts of the “New Cold War” initiated by the United States and protecting national sovereignty.
“Chinese-style modernization” presents itself as a possible alternative developmental path to the Western capitalist model, especially important for Global South countries that are seeking to break free from the shackles of colonialism and imperialism.
China’s emphasis on “internal circulation” implies the need to reconstruct the reciprocal relationship between industry and agriculture and establish a favorable urban-rural mobility structure.
The “worker-peasant alliance” faced significant challenges in the 1990s when the reform of state-owned enterprises led to the unemployment of millions of workers, while hundreds of millions of farmers flocked to cities seeking employment.
Today, to restore a robust worker-peasant alliance, it is essential to rebuild the political, economic, and cultural foundations unique to rural areas.
Historical juncture
In 2022, President Xi’s compilation of writings, titled “On ‘Three Rural’ Work,” was published.
Some writings explicitly portray the current period as a “historical juncture for addressing the relationship between industry and agriculture, as well as rural and urban areas.”
During the process of modernization, how to handle the relationship between industry and agriculture, as well as the relationship between urban and rural areas, to a certain extent determines the success or failure of modernization.
As a socialist country led by the CPC, our nation should possess the capability and conditions to manage the relationship between industry and agriculture, as well as the relationship between urban and rural areas, in order to smoothly advance the process of socialist modernization in our country.
Since the 18th National Congress of the CPC, we have been determined to adjust the relationship between industry and agriculture, as well as urban and rural areas.
Conclusion: From a Global South perspective
Reshaping the urban-rural relationship and the relationship between industry and agriculture necessitates deep reflection on and adjustment of the development patterns since the 1980s. This represents a new challenge for socialist China.
The trials, tribulations, and vicissitudes experienced during the journey of “Chinese-style modernization” are, in fact, a microcosm of the various crises in the process of modernization in the Global South.
China’s ascent serves as an exemplary case of the Global South’s emergence, breaking through the unequal global order that had long been sealed and suppressed.
China’s development trajectory is intricately intertwined with the history of the 20th-century Chinese and Russian revolutions, Leninism, and the fate of the Soviet Union.
This stands as an essential historical fact, and the challenge lies in how to interpret this history.
Glimmer of hope
While socialism originated in Europe, “Chinese-style modernization” represents its successful implementation in China.
It explores how to break free from the grip of capitalist globalization and seeks a new path for human development.
“Chinese-style modernization” does not solely belong to China; it holds profound implications for global peace and development.
This exploration remains far from complete and encompasses both challenges and crises, along with a glimmer of hope.
Original article published in Peoples Dispatch.
