A review of China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity against Imperial Rivalry 

Ben Rosenfield reviews Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, and Ashley Smith’s China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity against Imperial Rivalry, which argues that China is a capitalist state, not a socialist alternative, and calls for international solidarity from below.

In China in Global Capitalism: Building International Solidarity against Imperial Rivalry, Eli Friedman, Kevin Lin, Rosa Liu, and Ashley Smith set out to answer questions which will impact the trajectory of the international left for decades to come: Is China capitalist? If so, what implications does this have for how we relate to that state and the movements within and against the Chinese state? How should the international Left, and particularly the U.S. Left, make sense of China’s role in global capitalism today? Should we, as U.S. leftists, critically support the Chinese state, because it is coming into increasing conflict with our main enemy at home, the U.S. state? Last, what politics should the U.S. and international Left develop in order to strengthen an international, revolutionary Left, whose aim is to smash the capitalist system?

The above questions have become so urgent for the U.S. and international Left because China is now an international superpower in competition with the U.S. Accordingly, China’s domestic and international politics profoundly impact not only global politics generally, but also the Chinese and international working class. Given China’s increasingly powerful role in the global capitalist system, the Left must develop clarity regarding China’s role in that system and how we as a Left should relate to it. This is precisely what the authors set out to do in China in Global Capitalism.

Differing politics on the Left regarding China

Today, China occupies a central role in mainstream U.S. politics. Democrats and Republicans , and the capitalist class both parties represent, view China as a threat—economically, militarily, and politically. The authors note that “as Joe Biden’s record has demonstrated, the Democrats are equally, if not more, committed to great power rivalry with China than the Republicans” (169). Whereas there is an increasingly vocal and influential isolationist wing of the Republican party, the Democratic party is more unified in its commitment to antagonistic engagement with China.

As U.S. leftists, we must reject and combat the nationalist approach of both of our capitalist parties. We also have to build power and solidarity against the nationalist rhetoric and policies which have given and will continue to give rise to Sinophobia here in the U.S. The U.S. is still the world’s leading capitalist, imperialist power, and as U.S. leftists our main enemy is at home. Crucially, though, this reality does not imply that we should either critically or uncritically support the Chinese state, or simply turn a blind eye to it and focus solely on the U.S. Given that China now plays a central role in the global capitalist system, it behooves us as leftists to evaluate and grapple with the reality of China today. This requires an examination of its structural position in the global capitalist system, its politics, and an understanding of which side of the class struggle the Chinese state is on.

In the Introduction to the book, the authors outline several categories into which the broad Left fall in relation to China.

First are the mainstream liberals, including self-proclaimed progressive and social democrats. This group has “allied with the right to advance Cold War-style rhetoric and policies,” making it the “most powerful, and therefore potentially dangerous” group, because it “imagines the U.S. state as the defender of global freedom and democracy pitted against a rising authoritarian tide led by China (but also including Russia, Iran, North Korea, Venezuela, and others)” (3). Any political position which views the U.S. as a defender of freedom and democracy is necessarily bankrupt.

The authors describe the second group as practicing a “unidimensional anti-imperialism” (3). This contingent “combines currents from both the left and the right . . . opposition to the US federal government.” Those who are a part of this pole singularly focus on “social problems that derive from the actions of the American hegemon. While they are generally not avowedly pro-China (or pro-Russia), they shy away from judgment of the oppressive actions of the U.S.’s geopolitical rivals” (3).

There are parallels in logic between this group and those who advance a politics of ‘lesser evilism’ in the electoral realm. The unidimensional anti-imperialists solely criticize and reject the politics of the U.S. and its allies, ignoring the anti-Left politics of anti-U.S. states and blocs. These politics range from repression of independent parties and working class organizations to extractivism, neocolonialism, and imperialism. Similarly, there are many in U.S. domestic politics who criticize the Republicans while largely ignoring the problems with the Democrats in the name of a ‘lesser evil’ or of “harm reduction.”’ As we know from the domestic sphere, the logic underlying such politics only leads to accommodating right wing politics, the abandonment of our principles, and the foreclosure of radical anticapitalist alternatives.

The final contingent the authors identify is “a small group of avowedly pro-CCP (Chinese Communist Party) socialists or communists.” In contrast to the unidimensional anti-imperialists, this group “actively support[s] the Chinese state and believe[s] that it is building a postcapitalist society that has resulted in genuine human flourishing.” This group is composed of “diasporic ethnonationalists, various sectarian leftists, and a vocal online community.” While the authors acknowledge that “there is much to be learned from China’s twentieth century revolutions and understand the symbolic appeal of a self-proclaimed socialist state actively challenging the U.S. empire today,” they conclude that “the argument that China is building an emancipatory socialist outside of capitalism is not grounded in reality” (4).

I would argue that the latter two groups above—unidimensional anti-imperialists and pro-CCP socialists/communists—represent two parts of a single group, as each falls under the ‘campist’ umbrella. In the most general sense, two of the central characteristics of campism are 1) the belief that the enemy of my enemy is my friend and 2) the elevation of geopolitics over class struggle. In the last instance, the politics of both of these poles understand the state as the primary “actor capable of exercising agency,” which leaves us with a “bleak choice of picking one side of the capitalist rivalry: Washington or Beijing” (5).

International solidarity from below

“Many leftists—perhaps most,” according to the authors—“do not fall squarely into any of these groups, but rather are genuinely curious about how to interpret China’s rise in a way that is consistent with their values” (5). Accordingly, the authors propose an alternative politics; namely, internationalist solidarity from below. In contrast to the liberal position, this position identifies the U.S. for what it is— a capitalist, imperialist power whose central aim is to uphold the global capitalist system which is responsible for profound misery across the world. Crucially, however, a position of international solidarity from below refuses to equate opposition to the U.S. with support for China. The authors, arguing in favor of international solidarity from below, identify China as a powerful capitalist and imperialist state, noting that our solidarity must be with those engaged in class struggle against the Chinese state.

The authors argue that “a clear approach of building international solidarity from below against both imperial states and their ruling classes” represents the only viable political solution to the current conjuncture (163). Supporting China instead of the U.S. is just “great power nationalism in reverse, of supporting another capitalist state with imperialist ambitions” (167).

Why international solidarity from below? Analyzing the current political conjuncture

In the Introduction, the authors argue that the current international political conjuncture is characterized by multipolarity and interimperial rivalry (2). In other words, the capitalist system is no longer singularly dominated by the U.S. The U.S. is still the foremost capitalist, imperialist power, but as its status as world superpower has begun to fade, “other powerful actors in global capitalism (including China) are increasingly responsible for ongoing human suffering” (4). The authors identify four developments which led to the end of U.S. unipolar domination in the post-Soviet era: 1) neoliberalism’s restructuring of global capitalism; 2) the political and economic consequences of the U.S.’s disastrous War on Terror; 3) the Great Recession of 2008; and 4) the pandemic and global recession it triggered (106-107).

The end of U.S. unipolar domination of the global capitalist system has given way to an asymmetrical, multipolar order characterized by interimperial rivalry, in which “China and Russia as well as increasingly assertive regional powers . . . are all jockeying for advantage in an increasingly conflict-ridden state system” (107-108).

This context is key in order for us to be able to clearly make sense of China’s role in global capitalism today. Unfortunately, China in Global Capitalism lacks a theoretical framework and definition of imperialism, which would have further strengthened the authors’ analyses of the current conjuncture. For example, while the authors do explore examples of China and imperialism in Parts II and III of the book—particularly in chapters 5 and 6, “China’s National Questions” and “The U.S. v. China: The Twenty-First Century’s Central Interimperial Rivalry”— they never provide a rigorous definition of what constitutes an imperialist state.

However, the authors do provide a rigorous argument that contemporary China is capitalist, a reality which only deepens the need for international solidarity from below. China is home to “vast transnational supply chains” and is deeply embedded in the global capitalist economy. It is a member of the World Trade Organization (WTO) and insists that it is a market economy, in addition to being home to the world’s second most billionaires and one of the most unequal countries in the world (13).

Social reproduction and survival in China require that people sell their labor power as a commodity. In other words, the necessities of life—healthcare, food, housing, etc.—are commodities. The state does own a larger portion of the means of production than do other capitalist states, but as the authors argue and as I will discuss in the next section, state ownership does not necessarily imply socialism or increased worker power.

Part I: The rise of Chinese capitalism

Understanding that China is a capitalist state is central to the authors’ arguments that internationalist solidarity from below represents the only viable political path forward for the international Left. Accordingly, Part 1 of the book, “The Rise of Chinese Capitalism,” is dedicated to demonstrating why China is capitalist and how this came to be.

As the authors show, China’s economy has undergone profound growth as a result of its massive manufacturing sector and the exploitation of hundreds of millions of workers, for the benefit of both Chinese and global capitalists. In this sense, China’s growth in recent decades constitutes a capitalist success story rather than a communist one.

A central element of China’s socioeconomic system is its “hukou” system of household registration. Once someone leaves their official hukou, they become a part of the country’s domestic migrant labor force, becoming second class citizens and forfeiting rights they were previously entitled to in their official hukou. Nearly 300 million people currently live outside of their official hukou, making this difficult choice “because they cannot survive in the impoverished rural areas and are compelled by market forces to seek work in the urban centers” (15).

After leaving their hukou, these migrant laborers enter a highly unregulated and informal labor market. The 1994 labor law provided the legal framework for this commodified labor market. In China, workers without contracts have no legal protections, and as of 2016, only 35.1 percent of workers were covered by contracts. To add to the situation, social insurance (health insurance, pensions, unemployment, etc.) is employer-based for these domestic migrant workers (15-16). Thus, the hukou system creates a two-tiered system in which hundreds of millions of people become an easily exploitable workforce. This group has served as the engine for the rapid development of Chinese capitalism.

The challenges do not end there for Chinese workers. The only legal union in China is the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which is controlled by the CCP. The ACTFU “ensures labor peace for corporations,” and “it is standard practice for enterprise HR managers to be appointed as the chair for the company level-union” (18). Workers have no right to build autonomous organizations in their workplaces or to self-organize in civil society. Furthermore, the right to strike was removed from the constitution in 1982.

As noted above, the Chinese state does own a large portion of certain industries and companies (also known state owned enterprises, or SOEs). The existence of state ownership, however, does not imply socialism. The authors note that “before the current neoliberal period in which privatization became common, SOEs were a common feature of many capitalist societies” (20). To that point, “late developing capitalist economies have always used state ownership and state protectionism in attempting to establish capitalist corporations and to ensure their competitiveness” (21).

Just as state ownership does not imply socialism, it similarly does not imply that workers have more power or democratic control over production. The authors write that:

SOE workers are now equally subordinate to management as in an equivalent private firm. SOEs have been just as intolerant of independent unions as their private counterparts, and workers have no capacity to supervise or influence decisions in production. These firms are in no sense public property—they belong to and are controlled by an unaccountable state bureaucracy. (22)

Finally, the CCP allows capitalists into its ranks. By the 1998-2003 session of the National People’s Congress (NPC), workers made up just 1 percent of representatives while entrepreneurs constituted 20.5 percent. In 2018, the 153 wealthiest members of the NPC and Chinese People’s Political Consultative Congress (two central government bodies) had an estimated combined wealth of USD $650 billion (19). These figures highlight the fact that the state and the CCP do not operate outside of the capitalist system; rather, like any state in the global capitalist system, the Chinese state exists to serve the needs of capital. The state and capital are, as always, mutually imbricated.

In Part II, particularly chapters 3 and 4 (“Class Struggle in the Countryside, Cities and Workplaces” and “Feminist Resistance and the Crisis of Social Reproduction,” respectively), the authors implicitly demonstrate that the CCP does not present workers with real substantive opportunities for engagement in decision-making processes, much less control over them.Given this, the book would have benefitted from a more thorough analysis of the CCP. For those of us without much prior knowledge about the CCP, a discussion of how the party functions—its structure, decision making processes, levels of engagement and participation—would have helped to paint a fuller picture. The question of the party, grassroots engagement, and popular organization and mobilization is of particular importance to the perspective of international solidarity from below.

Parts II, III, IV

The argument that China is capitalist in Part I provides the foundation for the remaining parts of the book: Part II, “Class, Social, and National Struggles in China,” delves more deeply into the struggles of working-class and oppressed groups against the Chinese state. Chapters in Part II examine the struggles of migrant, rural, and urban workers; feminist and social reproduction struggles; and Han nationalism and other national questions, including those of Tibet, Xinjiang, Hong Kong, and Taiwan. Part III, “Imperial Rivalry and Crises of Global Capitalism,” examines the U.S.-China rivalry in the 21st century, as well as China’s role in the global ecological crisis and pandemics in an epoch of imperial rivalry. It is precisely through the framework the authors provide in Part I—namely, the capitalist nature of the Chinese state—that we can situate and make sense of the arguments and examples they put forth in Parts II and III. In Parts II and III, the authors provide examples of militant struggle from below, including; strikes, land struggles, worker uprisings, student and feminist activism, direct action, and more. Finally, in Part IV, “International Solidarity from Below,” the authors discuss the history of and roots of Chinese diasporic struggles in the U.S.

The greatest strength of Parts II and III is the authors’ ability to identify serious issues across multiple sectors of Chinese society, and, importantly, to root these issues in the Chinese state’s embrace of capitalist social relations. While the chapters that make up Parts II and III of the book illuminate the problems and challenges these pose for leftists—both in China and internationally—these chapters are less compelling when it comes to detailing examples of concrete struggles against the Chinese state.

For example, the majority of Chapters 4 and 7  are dedicated to outlining very real issues regarding gendered oppression, social reproduction, and the ecological crisis. Each chapter then contains a shorter part, which discusses the struggles—in recent history and today— that have emerged or are emerging from below in response to the respective crises. In Chapter 4, “Feminist Resistance and the Crisis of Social Reproduction,”the authors provide examples of China’s new feminist movement by citing the emergence of a new formation, “Youth Feminist Activism,” as well as the Chinese #MeToo movement and a couple of recent landmark sexual assault cases against prominent Chinese figures. In Chapter 7, “China and Global Capitalism’s Ecological and Climate Crises,” the authors cite the protests of two young high school students inspired by Greta Thunberg , as well as “local, collective struggles against toxic incinerators and chemical plants in cities across the country”  as examples of environmental struggles (133-134). My argument is not by any means that these struggles are insignificant, but rather that they feel lacking, as if they were added as an afterthought or forced into the chapter.

The authors similarly cite the role of NGOs in chapters 3, 4, and 7, but their analysis feels incomplete. While they do briefly acknowledge well-known issues with NGOs (their nonmembership structure (57), the fact that they’re often run by professionals and financed by international funding agencies (71)), they do not explicitly discuss the relationship between NGOs and struggle from below in China. As leftists in the U.S., we understand the contradictory, reformist, and often insidious role that nonprofits and NGOs play in relation to radical social change and transformation. Given that the authors cite NGOs in multiple chapters, a brief explanation of their relationship to radical struggle from below would have been useful in helping readers develop an in-depth understanding their role in contemporary China

All of that said, it is unclear whether the authors could have provided more thorough analyses of struggle from below, or if the sparseness of these discussions is a reflection of the fragmented, embryonic nature of these struggles. It may well be that the Chinese state’s repression and surveillance of activists has created an extremely challenging environment for the development of independent political organizations and struggle from below. The authors do acknowledge that “overwhelming surveillance and repression have kept class struggles in China fractured and politically subordinated,” (48) and that the Chinese state “has gone out of its way to contain and co-opt the struggle from below” (133). Moreover, at the beginning of Chapter 5, “China’s National Questions,” they write that protests within China’s core have been common, and often, militant, but remain highly fractured and largely refrain from articulating explicit political aims” (77).

So while the authors do explicitly identify some of the challenges movements face in China, these comments only amount to a handful of scattered sentences. It would have strengthened their overall arguments had the authors began Part II by discussing the current state of the movements and the factors which inform that reality. Without such context, many of the examples of struggle from below often feel underdeveloped.

Ultimately, then, the book shines more at the theoretical level: by insisting on and analyzing China’s capitalist character, China In Global Capitalism dispatches arguments that the Chinese state or the CCP provide any kind of anti-capitalist or anti-imperialist alternative to other capitalist and imperialist states. In Chapter 7 of Part III, “China and Global Capitalism’s Ecological and Climate Crises,” the authors highlight the capitalist nature of the Chinese state, on one hand, and the need for our solidarity to be with those struggling against it, on the other, by centering the Chinese state’s complicity in ecological crises. As they make clear, the Chinese capitalist state—like the U.S. or any other capitalist state—will not provide the answers or solutions to the ecological crisis for which it is responsible.

As the authors tell us, China “became the world’s largest single emitter in 2006,” and “by 2019, China’s annual CO2 emissions were already double those of the U.S. and accounted for 27 percent of the world’s total” (126-127). These developments cannot be understood without reference to capitalist social relations. China’s emissions have spiked exponentially in the post-Mao era, a “direct result of . . .  vast new capitalist development, industrialization, and urbanization” (127). China presented a “spatial fix for the advanced capitalist countries’ ecological crisis,” which “relocated many of their ‘dirty industries’ to China where environmental regulation was and is lax” (127).

Now that China has climbed up the capitalist ladder, it is following the same course, “displacing the epicenter of its ecological crisis onto other countries around the world.” For example, China is cutting down on coal production within its own borders by moving it to other states; the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) represents one such project through which China is offshoring its coal production. Currently, more than 70 percent of all coal plants built in the world rely on Chinese funding (128).

Part IV is the final and shortest part of the book. It consists of two chapters—Chapter 9, “China in the U.S.: The Roots and Nature of Diasporic Struggles,” and the book’s Conclusion. Chapter 9 identifies Chinese international students in the U.S. as representing a strong existing link between the U.S. and China, which could contribute to building international solidarity from below. Noting that Chinese students “constitute more than one-third of all international graduate students, and 16 percent of all students in STEM programs at the graduate level,” the authors argue that Chinese students in the U.S. both already are and can become increasingly engaged in campus activism, including unionization campaigns and BLM (158-9). This chapter seemed to be the least developed in the book and would have benefitted from an engagement with additional historical and contemporary organizing and political projects in which the Chinese diaspora in the U.S. has been involved.

Conclusion

China in Global Capitalism is a timely intervention into a pressing political question for the Left, particularly in the U.S. As leftists in the U.S. we must vigorously organize against the capitalist, imperialist U.S. state. As internationalists, however, it is also essential that we are in active solidarity with the international working class and revolutionary organizations throughout the world. Accordingly, and as the book makes clear, we must avoid the “pitfall of supporting China as some kind of socialist alternative or anti-imperialist state” (167). To do so is to support a powerful capitalist state against the workers and oppressed struggling against it. Thus, to side with the Chinese state is not only a betrayal of those involved in these struggles, but also a discrediting and weakening of the international working class movement of which we are a part. A weaker Left in China means a weaker Left internationally.

The struggle between the U.S. and China, which will only continue to sharpen in the coming years, is not one between socialism and capitalism. As the authors of China in Global Capitalism tell us, to interpret it as such will only “lead to analytical dead ends” (11). China does not represent an emancipatory alternative to U.S. domination; rather, it is a growing imperial power vying with the U.S. and other capitalist powers for the top spot in the global capitalist system. As leftists, our question cannot be which capitalist, imperialist power we want to run the world. No capitalist state will save us; only international solidarity from below can.

Featured Image credit: Pixabay; modified by Tempest.

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