China Turns Towards Maoism

This is an interesting article about a turn to the Left among some factions of the CCP in China, particularly a revival of Maoism. Though the article, as usual for Asia Times, has an anti-Mao bent, it’s nevertheless good news. Interestingly enough, much of the movement is coming from younger cadre. Another faction is the sons and daughters of the veterans of the Long March.

The turn towards Maoism takes many forms, and many are not necessarily economic. It’s interesting that in China now, privatization is working backwards. That is, state firms are swallowing up many private firms. And most of last year’s stimulus went to state firms.

What most people don’t realize is that much of China’s economic revival is being led by public firms of one type or another. These firms are often owned at least nominally by local municipalities, often smaller ones, and labor collectives.

The #3 manufacturer of televisions in the world, maker of TV’s for many multinational TV makers, is a publicly owned firm. At root is a Maoist practice whereby many or most public firms are actually formally owned by the workers, including this TV firm. Management is still relatively autonomous, but the profits from the firm go straight into the worker’s pockets as paychecks. However, my understanding is that they are required to reinvest 90-9

Firms run by small cities have been extremely successful. Cities compete with each other and build homes and other amenities for workers. The best firms make lots of money and the workers as formal owners get to take home a chunk of it. The most successful firms have long lists of workers wanting to move to these prosperous cities. Much of this manufactured material is also exported.

What’s funny is that that Made In China product you bought at the store may well have been made by a public firm. Oh, the horrors of socialism!

Although hardline Maoists decry China’s present economic project, saying that they have abandoned socialism for capitalism, that’s not really true.

If you go outside the cities into the rural areas, such as the wild areas, all of that land is owned by the state. Although the state has had problems in the environmental arena, in many cases the state stewards wildlands well. If that land were all privately owned, I assure you most of it would be developed with an eye towards profit or habitation. China’s wildlands and wild species would be in much worse shape than they are now, and on a worldwide scale, China is not a center of mass extinctions or endangered species.

It is capitalist countries, mostly rainforest ones, such as Brazil, Colombia, Indonesia, Philippines, Madagascar and Mexico that are leading the extinction and endangerment epidemic, not China.

The Nepalese Maoists have gone to China’s rural collectives and come back with smiles on their faces. Compared to Nepal, China seems like a socialist paradise. The same could be said for India. China’s people are much better off than India’s in a socialist manner of speaking.

Nevertheless, it is simply outrageous that in China, people are dying because they cannot afford healthcare. That’s really disgusting. The state has been trying to extend insurance to the masses, and state insurance is for sale that covers 8

Much of the progress in education that was made during the Cultural Revolution, especially in the rural areas (and incredible progress was made) has, incredibly, been in a process of reversal. Schools are being shut down in rural areas all over China. This is the damned economic miracle you capitalist-lovers are raving about. Tastes more like crow to me.

Furthermore, China continues to support North Korea, and North Korea is the source of most of Iran’s missiles. This blog supports the efforts of both North Korea and Iran to obtain nuclear weapons as deterrents, but hopefully not to use them.

North Korea’s nukes are the subject of a lot of misinformation. Yes they have a working nuclear device, but I think it is only a small one, maybe 1

People don’t understand nuclear missiles at all. First, it’s hard as Hell to make one. Next, it’s very hard to make good rockets that go 1000’s of miles with good accuracy. Third and most important, once you get the bomb, it is a whole matter altogether to figure out how to stick the thing onto a missile in such a way that it detonates on landing when firing the rocket. This is called weaponizing the warhead. It’s a whole new ballgame. Many states have had nuclear programs that have aborted or run aground at one or the other of these phases.

All in all, the movement towards Maoism in China is great news!

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5 thoughts on “China Turns Towards Maoism”

  1. Dear Robert
    Never mind preserving the wetlands. The real challenge for China is to prevent loss of cropland. Already the ratio of population to cropland is extremely high in China, and industrialization threatens to make it even higher because industrialization is accompanied by urban expansion, which gobbles up farm land. Over 90% of China’s population lives in the Eastern half, which of course is also the half where nearly all of China’s cropland is located.

    Combining economic growth with conservation of cropland should be China’s top priority. Expansion of industrial output is pointless when the population can no longer be fed. Small countries can import most of their food, but China can’t.

    Regards. James

  2. I didn’t give any evidence for the statement that NK is the source of Iran’s missiles with my item, which merely dealt with China’s reaffirmation of its close military link to NK, because I had done so a few weeks ago, and I tend to assume everyone who reads my tiny blog is a regular and will recall previous posts. In fact, I cannot deny that Iran has done a lot of its own development work on missiles, but the original source of the technology is NK, as one can confirm by looking at wikipedia’s history of the Iranian missile program.

    “Solid fuel program: The foundations for this were laid with the Oghab and Shahin-II missiles. These would lead the way for a number of other rocket artillery systems including Fajr, Nazeat, and Zelzal. The initial effort in this area relied heavily on technical help from the People’s Republic of China in the form of assembly and manufacturing contracts during 1991 and 1992. Iran was quick to surpass the Chinese level of assistance and became self sufficient.

    “Liquid fuel program: After the war, Iran’s experience of liquid fuel missiles had purely focused on the reverse engineering of Scud-B missiles. However, with the post war reorganisation the focus of the effort quickly changed and focused on assembly and maintenance. A domestic version of the Scud-B, known as Shahab-1, was developed and manufactured. This led to its successor the Shahab-2, a variant of the Scud-C, and finally the Shahab-3. All these programs relied heavily on Russian and North Korean assistance. In recent years, Iranians developed multi-stage Shahab-4(now apparently shelved), and reportedly also Shahab-5 and Shahab-6, which are said to be derivations of North Korean Taepodong. Iranian engineers participated in the North Korean Taepodong-2 missile launch on July 4, 2006.”
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran%27s_missile_forces#Short_range_missiles

  3. list three REAL reasons why you dislike public firms. Then list three reasons you want public firms. If you don’t know, look it up.

  4. I think the capitalists have been crowing too soon. Nearly 1/3 of the world’s population was brought up with Marxist ideas, and they can’t help but have noticed that things have got worse for them since their rulers ratted on communism. There is still a big seed that can grow again. Of course, the elites won’t be happy until even the idea of communism has been forgotten, and they may be prepared to wipe out most of the Chinese to further that. I think there’s a big flash-point developing over Siberia. The Chinese are running out of land (and with global warming it will soon get critical, and Siberia may get more habitable) and the Russians are running out of people. The Western elites will not be happy with the Chinese supplying anything but slave labour for international capital, and will probably go to any length to stamp on any move by the Chinese to pursuing independent policies in the interests of their people. Can the Chinese people take back control of their nation? That’s the best hope remaining for mankind, I feel – socialism in the USA is not going to come without a big external impetus. But would the Western elites be prepared to irradiate a big part of what little part of the world still remains habitable, to stamp out the seed of communist ideas? Probably, unfortunately.

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