The
Marxist
Volume: 15, No. 04
Oct.-Dec. 1999
The
Difference
Between
the
Chinese
and
the
Indian
Situations
Prabhat
Patnaik
The
Chinese
Revolution
is
one
of
the
outstanding
events
of
the
past
millennium,
a
gigantic
step
in
mankind's
march
towards
freedom.
On
the
occasion
of
the
fiftieth
anniversary
of
this
event,
while
we
reflect
on
the
background,
the
nature,
and
the
subsequent
course
of
the
Chinese
Revolution,
we
cannot
help
asking
the
question:
why
has
the
trajectory
of
development
in
our
own
country
been
so
different
from
that
in
China?
There
clearly
is
no
single
answer
to
this
question.
But
an
important
component
of
any
complex
set
of
answers
must
be
the
fact
that
India
was
a
totally
subjugated
colony
of
an
imperialist
power
while
China
was
never
fully
subjugated
in
the
same
manner.
It
remained
a
semi-colony.
The
Japanese
attempt
to
colonise
it
completely
not
only
did
not
succeed,
but
ended
up
leaving
the
revolutionary
forces
in
the
ascendancy
within
the
Chinese
society.
China's
not
being
fully
colonised
was
the
result
of
a
certain
specific
world
situation.
While
trade
with
China
by
the
European
companies
had
started
earlier,
the
use
of
military
might
against
her,
which
is
the
usual
precursor
of
colonisation,
began
with
the
Opium
Wars
of
the
1840s.
Precisely
around
that
time
however,
each
of
the
imperialist
powers
became
preoccupied
with
a
particular
crisis
of
its
own.
Between
1853
and
1856
Britain
and
France
(together
with
Ottoman
Turkey)
were
fighting
Russia
in
the
devastating
Crimean
war,
which
claimed
a
total
of
half
a
millon
lives,
almost
equally
distributed
between
the
two
combating
sides.
Barely
had
the
Crimean
war
ended
when
Britain
had
to
face
the
1857
Revolt
in
India
which
kept
her
fully
occupied
for
several
years
to
come.
The
United
States,
whose
budding
imperial
ambition
was
manifested
in
Commodore
Peary's
"opening
up"
of
Japan
in
1854,
became
involved
in
her
own
devastating
Civil
War
(1861-65)
which
again
claimed
half
a
million
lives.
France,
after
the
Crimean
war,
was
preoccupied
with
Louis
Bonaparte's
project
of
foisting
Maximilian
as
the
Emperor
of
Mexico
(1864-67);
this
venture
ended
disastrously
for
France
with
the
execution
of
Maximilian,
and
represented
a
severe
set
back
for
the
French
colonial
drive.
As
a
result
of
these
crises
faced
by
colonial
powers
at
this
particular
historical
juncture,
countries
"opened
up"
at
this
moment
escaped
the
fate
of
being
fully
colonised:
Japan
proceeded
to
have
her
own
"Meiji
Restoration"
(which
was
an
imposition
of
a
domestic
bourgeois
order
from
the
top),
and,
even
though
she
had
to
sign
"unequal
treaties",
she
went
on
to
emerge
as
a
major
capitalist
power
in
her
own
right.
China,
which
did
not
have
such
an
imposition
of
a
domestic
bourgeois
order
from
the
top
and
continued
with
her
old
feudal
set
up,
also
had
to
sign
"unequal
treaties"
but
ended
up
being
a
semi-colony.
Different
colonial
powers
reached
a
sort
of
equilibrium
among
themselves
and
carved
up
China
into
"spheres
of
influence"
under
the
nominal
suzerainty
of
the
Emperor,
instead
of
any
one
of
them
trying
to
appropriate
the
whole
of
China
as
a
colony
for
itself.
We
in
India
therefore
have
some
cause
for
satisfaction
in
the
fact
that
our
fighters
in
the
1857
Revolt
were
responsible
to
some
extent
for
Japan
and
China
not
being
reduced
to
the
status
of
pure
colonies
(or
being
partitioned
into
pure
colonies).
While
no
single
imperialist
power
controlled
China,
they
jointly
ruled
the
country
with
the
help
of
the
feudal
landlord
class
and
the
comprador
bourgeoisie,
turning
her
into
a
market
for
their
manufactured
goods
(thus
imposing
deindustrialisation
on
her),
and
a
supplier
of
primary
commodities.
Imperialist
penetration
destroyed
the
basis
of
China's
old
order
but
thwarted
the
emergence
of
a
vigourous
domestic
capitalism,
leaving
her
as
a
semi-feudal,
semi-colonial
economy.
The
primary
contradiction
in
this
society
was
between
the
imperialist
powers
with
their
domestic
allies
on
the
one
side,
and
the
overwhelming
mass
of
the
people
of
China
on
the
other.
Among
the
different
classes
opposed
to
imperialism,
however,
the
weight
of
the
national
bourgeoisie
was
not
only
small,
but
even
relatively
smaller
than
that
of
the
working
class,
since
the
latter
also
comprised
workers
employed
in
enterprises
owned
by
foreign
capital.
The
struggle
against
the
rule
by
imperialist
powers
in
semi-feudal,
semi-colonial
China
therefore
had
to
take
the
form
of
a
democratic
revolution
under
the
leadership
of
the
working
class.
The
invasion
by
Japan
was
an
attempt
to
convert
the
whole
of
China
into
a
direct
colony.
Japan
succeeded
in
occupying
parts
of
China
which
thereby
came
under
direct
Japanese
colonial
rule.
It
gave
Chinese
society
an
even
more
mosaic
character,
namely
that
of
a
colonial,
semi-colonial,
and
semi-feudal
society.
It
brought
to
the
forefront
the
task
of
national
liberation
from
imperialist
rule,
especially
that
of
Japanese
imperialism,
and
hence
the
urgency
of
interlinking
the
democratic
and
the
national
revolutions.
Revolution
thus
came
firmly
on
the
agenda.
Liberation
from
imperialism
was
the
most
urgent
task
before
the
Chinese
people.
This
could
not
occur
without
the
mobilisation
of
the
peasantry,
which
in
turn
meant
an
advance
of
the
democratic
revolution
against
the
landlords.
The
urgency
of
national
liberation
also
meant
therefore
the
urgency
of
the
democratic
revolution.
The
only
force
capable
of
providing
unflinching
leadership
in
the
national
struggle
was
precisely
the
force
capable
of
leading
the
democratic
revolution,
namely
the
Chinese
Communist
Party.
The
Chiang
Kai-shek
regime,
representing
a
dictatorship
of
the
landlords
and
the
big
bourgeoisie,
vacillated
in
its
opposition
to
the
Japanese
aggressors,
since
it
feared
the
democratic
revolution
through
which
the
peasantry
fighting
Japanese
aggression
would
liberate
itself
from
landlord
oppression.
The
unique
position
of
the
Chinese
Communist
Party
arose
therefore
from
the
very
objective
conditions
of
China.
The
Xian
incident
when
an
unwilling
Chiang-Kai-shek
was
forced
to
sign
an
agreement
with
the
Communists
to
fight
Japanese
aggression,
to
the
relief
of
millions
of
patriotic
Chinese,
underscored
this
unique
position
of
the
Chinese
Communist
Party.
This
unique
position
of
the
Chinese
Communist
Party
could
at
all
arise
however
because,
in
China,
armed
revolution
was
already
confronting
armed
counter-revolution,
i.e.
a
red
army
already
existed.
Because
China
did
not
have
a
single
centralised
authority,
with
whom
the
big
bourgeoisie
could
have
entered
into
diect
negotiations,
and
which
could
have
made
concessions
to
the
big
bouregoisie
to
keep
the
level
of
armed
conflict
low,
while
making
separate
arrangements
to
decimate
the
Communists,
it
was
necessary
for
the
big
bourgeoisie
to
seek
partnership
with
the
Communists.
The
Kuomintang
had
to
seek
Soviet
aid;
it
accepted
Communists
as
members
of
its
own
organisation.
Chiang
Kai-shek
expelled
Communists
from
responsible
posts
within
the
Kuomintang
in
March
1926.
He
massacred
the
Shanghai
workers
in
April
1927.
And
yet
several
more
years
were
to
pass
before
Chiang
Kai-shek
could
launch
a
major
attack
on
the
Kiangsi
soviet,
and
it
was
only
in
October
1934
that
the
Kiangsi
base
was
abandoned
and
the
Long
March
set
out
for
North-Western
China.
These
were
years
of
contention
for
authority,
not
just
between
the
forces
of
Chiang
Kai-shek
and
the
Red
Army,
but
between
these
and
several
warlords
as
well.
The
big
bourgeoisie
in
China
did
not
receive
authority
from
a
centralised
colonial
state;
it
had
to
establish
its
authority
over
a
large
number
of
powerful
and
warring
feudal
lords,
who,
in
their
disunity,
inherited
bits
and
pieces
of
the
collpased
Manchu
empire
which
had
been
crumbling
for
long
in
semi-fedal
and
semi-colonial
China.
It
sought
to
establish
this
authority
for
a
while
in
co-operation
with
the
Communists
and
afterwards
in
opposition
to
them.
But
this
very
situation
permitted
the
Red
Army
to
exist
and
operate,
some
times
growing
in
strength
and
at
other
times
losing
strength.
The
fact
that
China
was
not
a
centralised
colonial
state,
ruled
by
one
particular
colonial
power,
but
a
semi-colony
marked
in
its
last
stages
by
a
furious
struggle
for
authority,
permitted
the
Communist
Party
to
remain
in
contention
and
to
lead
the
Chinese
Revolution
to
fulfill
both
its
national
and
democratic
tasks.
In
India
by
contrast
British
imperialism
was
firmly
and
exclusively
entrenched.
The
centralised
colonial
state,
which
of
course
sustained
itself
through
an
alliance
with
the
feudal
elements,
negotiated
with
the
bourgeois
leadership
of
the
national
movement
to
ensure
that
the
struggle
did
not
become
"too
militant",
or
"get
out
of
hand".
The
Communists
faced
repression,
and
made
immense
sacrifices
for
the
cause
of
freedom;
but,
though
allowed
to
join
the
Congress,
they
could
not
succeed
in
establishing
either
a
rival,
powerful
centre
of
authority
or
any
kind
of
hegemony
over
the
national
movement.
And
this
in
turn
meant
that
the
democratic
revolution
in
our
country
remained
seriously
incomplete.
What
underlies
the
difference
in
the
experience
of
the
two
countries
therefore
is,
in
a
basic
sense,
the
difference
in
their
colonial
histories.
To
be
sure
one
can
cite
several
mistakes
of
strategy
and
tactics
in
the
Indian
case.
But
to
attribute
the
divergent
experience
of
the
two
countries
solely
to
these
mistakes
would
be
a
serious
error
and
an
abandonment
of
the
materialist
position.
In
fact
Comrade
Mao
Zedong
himself
drew
attention
to
this
basic
difference
between
the
two
countries
in
some
remarks
he
once
made
about
the
Indian
Revolution.
It
is
important
to
remind
ourselves
of
this
because
the
celebration
of
the
Chinese
Revolution
must
not
be
allowed
to
become
a
denigration
of
our
own
revolutionary
tradition.
The Nature of the Chinese Revolution
The
Chinese
revolution
was
unique
in
human
history
not
just
because
of
the
size
of
China,
or
the
scale
of
mass
participation
it
entailed.
In
addition
it
was
a
revolution
of
an
altogether
different
type,
a
Peoples'
Democratic
Revolution.
To
be
sure,
at
the
end
of
the
Second
World
War,
Peoples'
Democracies
had
come
up
in
a
number
of
Eastern
European
countries,
but
their
emergence
was
possible
because
of
the
presence
of
the
Soviet
Red
Army.
(Even
Yugoslavia
where
the
Communist
partisans
captured
power
on
their
own
rather
than
with
the
help
of
the
Red
Army,
owed
its
survival
to
the
fact
of
Soviet
support
initially,
in
the
absence
of
which
it
might
have
gone
the
way
of
Greece).
The
Chinese
revolution
was
overwhelmingly
a
peasant
revolution,
but
it
differed
from
all
preceding
peasant
revolutions
in
human
history
in
that
this
peasant
revolution
had
the
imprint
of
working
class
leadership.
Many
have
missed
the
significance
of
this
fact,
and
have
interpreted
the
Chinese
revolution
superficially,
as
merely
a
peasant
revolution,
though
admittedly
under
the
leadership
of
the
Communist
Party.
The
fact
that
Party
leadership
was
the
mechanism
through
which
proletarian
leadership
was
imprinted
on
the
Chinese
revolution
is
underplayed
in
all
such
interpretations.
But
the
superficiality
of
this
reading
is
obvious
from
two
basic
facts:
first,
peasant-based
national
liberation
struggles
were
successful
in
many
countries,
Algeria
being
a
notable
example.
But
in
none
of
these
countries
except
where
the
Communist
Party
gave
the
lead
(such
as
Vietnam),
did
the
subsequent
trajectory
of
development
even
remotely
resemble
that
of
China.
Secondly,
many,
including
self-professed
Marxists,
had
thought
that
when
the
Chinese
Red
Army,
being
essentially
a
peasant
army,
would
enter
the
cities,
it
would
encounter
the
hostility
of
the
proletariat;
nothing
of
the
sort
however
happened.
Not
only
did
the
Chinese
Communist
Party
embody
the
proletarian
outlook
while
leading
the
revolution
in
the
countryside,
but
the
Chinese
proletariat
accepted
the
Communist
party
as
its
vanguard
despite
the
latter's
physical
presence
being
confined
mainly
to
the
countryside
after
the
early
years.
The
proletarian
leadership
of
the
revolution,
or
the
peoples'
democratic
character
of
the
revolution
(i.e.
a
democratic
revolution
led
by
the
proletariat)
was
therefore
indubitable,
and
constituted
a
novel
and
unique
phenomenon.
This
novel
phenomenon
however
was
not
just
something
that
happened;
it
had
been
conceptualised
by
the
Communist
movement
long
before
it
was
actually
realised.
The
concept
of
the
peoples'
democratic
revolution
is
an
outstanding
innovation
of
the
Communist
movement.
It
is
also
a
complex
concept.
As
a
democratic
revolution
directed
against
feudalism,
colonialism
and
semi-colonialism,
it
creates
the
conditions
for
thorough-going
bourgeois
development.
At
the
same
time
the
leadership
of
the
proletariat
over
this
revolution
seeks
to
ensure
that
it
goes
beyond
the
bourgeois
stage
to
socialism
without
interruption,
i.e.
without
giving
rise
to
a
historical
period
of
bourgeois
consolidation.
The
complexity
of
this
revolution,
which
has
thus
the
character
of
both
promoting
as
well
as
negating
bourgeois
development,
implies
that
its
pursuit
is
beset
by
twin
dangers
arising
from
twin
deviations:
on
the
one
hand
if
promotion
of
bourgeois
development
is
emphasised
to
the
exclusion
of
the
need
to
transcend
it,
then
the
revolution
is
threatened
by
capitalist
restoration;
on
the
other
hand
if
the
need
to
negate
bourgeois
development
is
overemphasised,
then
the
revolution
is
threatened
with
isolation
and
a
shrinking
of
its
base.
Charting
the
course
of
the
revolution
between
these
two
deviations,
the
first
a
Right
deviation
and
the
second
a
Left
deviation,
is
not
easy.
Typically
there
would
be
zigzags
and
oscillations;
the
important
thing
is
to
rectify
the
deviations
before
they
threaten
the
revolution
itself.
The
Chinese
revolution
too
has
experienced
these
oscillations
and
has
progressed
through
these
oscillations.
To
think
of
only
one
phase
in
this
oscillating
journey
as
the
"true"
revolutionary
line
is
to
view
the
matter
one-sidedly.
A
correct
(dialectical)
approach
to
the
revolution
must
be
based
on
an
understanding
of
the
dialectics
of
the
revolution
itself.
Interpretations
of
the
course
of
the
Chinese
revolution,
however,
are
almost
invariably
based
on
such
one-sided
readings.
This
is
particularly
true
these
days
since
imperialism
has
a
vested
interest
in
spreading
the
canard
that
China's
recent
economic
success
has
nothing
to
with
its
revolution
but
is
a
result
exclusively
of
its
recent
phase
of
policy,
the
phase
of
"economic
reforms".
The Foundations for Economic Prosperity
China's economic progress since 1949 is among the most significant phenomena of this century, a source of hope for the wretched of the earth that their lot too can improve dramatically within a short span of time. True, China has not been alone among underdeveloped countries in experiencing rapid economic progress, but her case is unique because of her size: her development makes a substantial difference to world poverty.
Imperialism however is interested in delinking this achievement from China's revolutionary course. Imperialist media are full of remarks such as "China should be celebrating twenty-five years of reforms rather than fifty years of communism".
This entire view is completely wrong: the contrast between a pre-reform period devoid of progress and a post-reform period marked by great achievements is factually incorrect; and the interpretation of the post-reform economic performance is fundamentally flawed.
China overcame poverty (as defined in third world countries such as ours) before she embarked on "market reforms". China instituted a universal public distribution system, which gave every citizen a certain minimum amount of essential commodities, before she embarked on "market reforms". China' stupendous achievements in terms of social indicators occurred before she embarked on "market reforms". And China, despite having an adverse land-man ratio (far more adverse than India's) managed to record significant increases in food production (both absolute and per capita) through the construction of impressive water management systems under collective ownership, by mobilising locally available surplus labour, before she embarked on "market reforms".
Even more important however is the fact that the perception which attributes post-reform high growth to the so-called "virtues of the market", actually misinterprets this growth experience. China's remarkable post-reform growth was made possible either because of the achievements of the pre-reform economic regime or because of the continuation of certain features of that regime.
There are at least four ways in which this happened. First, the achievement of near-universal literacy, and the improvement in the educational and health status of the work-force, which were some of the legacies of the earlier years, were important contributory factors to the dynamism that China has experienced in the more recent period.
Secondly, there can be little doubt that inequalities in China, both inter-regional as well as inter-personal, have increased in the "reform" years, which has been a major problem associated with the "reform" process. Now if these increases in inequalities, which have accompanied high growth, were superimposed on an already highly skewed income and wealth distribution, then, notwithstanding such high growth rates that China has been achieving, social tensions would have become difficult to manage. The surfacing of these tensions in turn would have made these growth rates impossible to sustain. Thus China was able to sustain her post-reform growth because she started with a relatively egalitarian base, and that was a contribution of the earlier regime.
Thirdly, to call China a neo-liberal "model" is a travesty of the truth. China's success during the reform years has sprung precisely from the fact that she has managed to combine in an altogether novel way the virtues of "centralisation" together with those of "decentralisation", or, putting it differently, the advantages of a command economy alongside the flexibility imparted by the functioning of markets. It has been a command economy at one remove. In periods of runaway inflation, for instance, price controls have been clamped down with ease rather than resorting to drastic deflation with high social costs (as would happen under capitalism), because a large part of the economy continues to be state-owned and hence amenable to intervention by the Party. Likewise foreign exchange management, a potential source of serious problems in any third world capitalist economy, has been handled with greater ease because the old system of Party directive to enterprises continues to be effective. In short, China has had the advantage of being able to supplement the usual instruments of state intervention available in a capitalist market economy with other instruments which it has retained from its pre-reform years. In this sense drawing a sharp contrast between the pre- and post-reform periods is altogether misleading.
Finally, the high agricultural growth witnessed in the early reform years, which provided the bedrock for the reform experiment, was made possible because the regime of collective ownership and management of the irrigation systems was not abandoned. Here again China reaped the advantages of the old collective system in terms of the irrigation works it bequeathed, and continued to reap the benefits of collective ownership of such works, even while breaking up the communes and privatising agricultural operations.
The new regime in other words was erected on the shoulders of the old one, but not by wholly dismantling or destroying the latter. There was, and still is, a peculiar symbiosis between the new and the old which characterises the Chinese economy, which is why lauding China as a "neo-liberal model" is a travesty of the truth. The current economic regime in China is yet another phase in the unfolding course of the Chinese revolution.
At the same time however the contradictions of the current phase must not be lost sight of. The very fact of high growth under the present arrangement brings about changes in the domestic social structure, in the class-configuration of society, which poses a threat to the revolution. Mention has already been made of the increasing inequalities, both personal and regional. This would tend to throw up powerful forces working towards capitalist restoration. What is more, this changing social structure would also work in the direction of bringing about an atrophy of growth. Over the years for example as agriculture has come under the sway of private ownership the collectively -owned irrigation works, which, as mentioned earlier, were an important contributory factor towards China's rapid advance, have tended to atrophy. In other words the changing class configurations resulting from China's rapid growth tend to upset the very premises underlying the rapidity of that growth.
The second source of threat to the Chinese revolution, and to the rapidity of China's economic advance arises from the pressures emanating from world capitalism. The ascendancy of finance and its globalisation is a crucial feature of the contemporary capitalist world. This has two obvious effects. On the one hand it is responsible (among other causes) for the slowing down of the world economy, since Keynesian demand management which worked so well in the post-war period becomes difficult to undertake in a world of extreme financial fluidity. On the other hand globalised finance capital tries to break down the insulation which particular economies enjoy from its movements. It attempts to suck every country into the vortex of its movements.
Now, the success of the Chinese economy in recent years owed much to two factors: first, it had managed to increase its exports to the world market quite substantially, and secondly, it had kept itself insulated from the movements of speculative international finance. The importance of this second factor was underscored by Comrade Jiang Zemin himself when he said that China managed to avoid the East Asian crisis, because she did not have a convertible currency and had not carried out any significant financial liberalisation (it is owing to these two factors that her economy had remained insulated from international financial flows).
In a situation where the slowing down of the world economy might affect the growth of China's exports adversely, the external pressures, exerted through the IMF and the World Bank, to open up China to global financial flows would mount; the domestic bourgeois elements which have grown in strength during this period of high growth would also add to this pressure. But if China does succumb to this pressure to open her economy to flows of speculative finance capital, then that would have a serious adverse effect on the course of the revolution.
In
short,
the
Chinese
people
and
the
Chinese
Party
have
big
challenges
in
front
of
them.
Revolutionaries
all
over
the
world
must
wish
the
Chinese
Party
all
success
in
mobilising
the
people
to
meet
these
challenges
and
carry
the
revolution
forward.