Understanding Contemporary Chinese Society through the Historical Lens of the Revolution, the Communist Party, and Social Development

These discussion notes are an expanded version of a report presented at the “Study and Discussion Meeting on Re-examining Imperialism Theory: Considering Chinese Imperialism in East Asia,” held in August at the initiative of the Fourth International Japan Section Council.

At the International Committee meeting held in February, 2026, “Re-examining the theory of imperialism” was taken up as an agenda item, featuring both reports and discussions. In my opinion, two main factors prompted us to discuss this issue; (1) While the Marxist concept of imperialism originally stemmed from an analysis of its economic aspects—specifically Lenin’s definition of imperialism as “the highest stage of capitalism”—and although the military dimension gained emphasis following the two World Wars, that framework proved insufficient for understanding phenomena such as the rise of Chinese imperialism; furthermore, the imperialism system has entered a new phase with the advent of Donald Trump and the rise of the far-right and neo-fascism;

(2) A “campist” perspective—viewing China and Russia as our “allies” or “friends” simply because they oppose US imperialism—has been spreading across various countries, particularly among the younger generation; this created a need to clearly define Chinese and Russian imperialism within a revised conceptual framework of imperialism. The Japan Section also contributed to the discussion (Note 1).

In light of these discussions, the Japan Section has affirmed that re-examining the theory of imperialism—and specifically analyzing China—is part of our mission as an organization operating in East Asia. The aforementioned study and discussion meeting was organized as an interim step in this process.

China as a Capitalist and Imperialist Nation

Our initial shared understanding, which served as the premise for our organizational discussions, consisted of two points: “China is a capitalist society” and “China is pursuing imperialist (external) policies.”

Furthermore, the two reports presented to the International Committee meeting emphasized the need to approach the concept of imperialism not merely from military or diplomatic perspectives, but fundamentally from an economic standpoint—specifically by returning to Lenin’s definition of imperialism as “the highest stage of capitalism,” characterizing the nature of capitalism in the 20th century. In this sense, major capitalist powers are generally classified as imperialist states, and China is no exception.

There are two points that must be kept in mind when considering the process by which current Chinese capitalism was established. These are (1) how to understand Chinese society since the victory of the Chinese Revolution in 1949, and (2) how to consider the unique characteristics of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), which actually controls Chinese society, and its relationship with the Chinese people.

In 1949, CCP expelled Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang (KMT) forces from mainland China, and Mao Zedong declared the establishment of the People’s Republic of China from atop Tiananmen. However, Mao Zedong himself positioned this revolution as a “New Democratic Revolution” (based on a united front with the progressive national bourgeoisie). Furthermore, even after the defeat of Japanese imperialism in 1945, Stalin was still collaborating with Chiang Kai-shek’s

Kuomintang government, believing that the Chinese revolution was only a democratic revolution and that the Chinese Communist Party should be within the framework of the Second Kuomintang–Communist Alliance.

“Stalin and his followers declared that socialism was” not in the plan for the time being and was an “uncertain prospect for the future,” and that their aim was “not to build a state on the model of the Soviet Union, but to build a mixed economy.”

However, Michel Pablo, who was leading the Fourth International at the time, predicted that the Chinese revolution would move in an anti-capitalist direction due to its own dynamism. “The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has come to power independent of Moscow on the basis of a victorious peasant revolt, and after its victory aims to defeat the domestic bourgeoisie, implement egalitarian agrarian reform, nationalize industry, and begin building a state-owned economy.”

What made the evolution of the Chinese revolution in an anti-capitalist direction decisive was the outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 and the intervention of the “Chinese People’s Volunteer Army” in it. By confronting US imperialism directly on the Korean Peninsula, the Chinese Communist Party dissolved its nominally united front with the progressive bourgeoisie and set out to dismantle the former ruling class of the urban bourgeoisie and rural landowners. At the same time, it was a process that entailed bureaucratization and strengthening of the authoritarian system (Mao Zedong’s cult of personality), and the crushing of all “opposition” forces or tendencies, including leftists (the arrest of all Chinese Trotskyists in 1952, The Anti-Rightist Campaign in 1957, etc.). What is clear here is that today’s capitalist China would not exist without the independence, industrialization, independent technological development, and high average educational standards achieved by the Chinese Revolution.

The Distinctive Maoist Character of the Chinese Communist Party

In the 1920s, under the direction of the Comintern (the Third International) and within the framework of the First Kuomintang–Communist Alliance, the Chinese Communist Party focused on organizing the working class in major cities; however, it lost its urban strongholds due to the counter-revolutionary repression led by Chiang Kai-shek, which culminated in the Shanghai coup of April 1927. Subsequently, as the Comintern shifted toward a policy of “ultra-leftist adventurism,” the Party launched several reckless uprisings in rural areas—such as the Nanchang Uprising and the Autumn Harvest Uprising of 1927. All of these failed, forcing Mao Zedong and his forces to retreat to the Jinggang Mountains. Because these defeats stemmed from the Comintern’s directives, Mao and his associates—following fierce factional struggles against the pro-Moscow faction (a process that included abandoning the Chinese Soviet base areas and undertaking the “Long March” from southern China to Shaanxi Province)—gradually established a stance relatively independent of Stalin and the Comintern. Initially taking the form of outward compliance while inwardly resisting, this dynamic escalated into open conflict—the Sino-Soviet split—following the victory of the Chinese Revolution.

However, in waging factional struggles against the pro-Moscow faction, Mao Zedong devoted himself anew to the study of Marxism. The fact that he relied heavily on the works of Stalin in doing so might well be called a historical irony.

The Class Structure of Pre-Reform Chinese Society

Given that Mao Zedong defined pre-revolutionary Chinese society as “semi-feudal and semi- colonial” and aimed for a revolution to overthrow that order, the anti-imperialist character of the Chinese Revolution was evident in both principle and practice. Furthermore, as Pablo had predicted, the Chinese Revolution evolved in an anti-capitalist direction. However, the new social system that

came into being as a result was by no means something that could be called socialism; rather, it was something that could be called a transitional society, in which there was no mechanism driven by grassroots initiative to guide progress to socialism. Above all, socialist democracy—worker democracy—which is the most crucial element, was nonexistent. Although the Chinese Communist Party took root among the urban working class for the first time in decades following its defeat in the late 1920s, the working class—particularly in state-owned enterprises—was politically subordinate to CCP and could not become such a driving force.

The Failure of the Great Leap Forward and the Cultural Revolution

Meanwhile, Mao Zedong embarked on an ambitious, high-risk endeavor to realize his vision of “socialism.” This was the “Great Leap Forward” policy, launched in 1958. While the Great Leap Forward aimed to achieve a socialist society rapidly through an explosive increase in industrial and agricultural output, its policies—driven by subjective and arbitrary decisions that ignored reality (and led to the purge of Peng Dehuai, who criticized them)—ended in catastrophic failure. Subsequently, “readjustment” policies were implemented by figures such as Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping.

The Cultural Revolution, which began in 1966, was—contrary to its name—a “struggle to seize power” from the pragmatic party bureaucrats (represented by Liu Shaoqi and Deng Xiaoping) whom Mao labeled “those in authority taking the capitalist road.” To this end, Mao encouraged young people to join the “revolution” as Red Guards. This call for mass mobilization effectively opened Pandora’s box, precipitating the collapse of the Chinese Communist Party, government institutions, and the administrative apparatus during the Cultural Revolution. Faced with the urgent need to restore order, Mao mobilized the People’s Liberation Army—the only force remaining at his disposal—to ruthlessly re-establish control, even going so far as to enforce a “bloody crackdown” on the radical factions within the working class and the Red Guards who had previously formed his support base.

This sequence of events led to a breakdown in the relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the masses. In short, the Party lost the support of the intelligentsia during the “Hundred Flowers Campaign” and the subsequent “Anti-Rightist Campaign,” lost the backing of the peasantry due to the failure of the Great Leap Forward, and finally severed its ties with the youth and the working class during the closing stages of the Cultural Revolution. Ultimately, the Cultural Revolution caused a decisive rupture in the bond between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people—a bond forged in the wake of the Chinese Revolution—thereby accelerating the bureaucratization of the Party. It thus paved the way for the completion of the bureaucratic counter- revolution and created the political preconditions for a bourgeois counter-revolution. The death of Mao Zedong and the fall of the Gang of Four (1976), along with Deng Xiaoping’s third return to power in 1977, served as symbolic manifestations of this process.

Deng Xiaoping’s restoration and the beginning of the bourgeois counter-revolution

Deng Xiaoping’s third rehabilitation was built on the imperative mission of reconstructing both the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese economy. In terms of party reconstruction, Deng introduced a degree of collective leadership at all levels of the party. This was rooted in his own experience during the Cultural Revolution—where he became a target of concentrated attacks by the Red Guards as “another person in authority taking the capitalist road”—and he was acutely aware of the dangers of unleashing a cult of personality (the Mao cult) as well as the destructive methods used to exploit it. In 1983, he ensured that term limits for the state presidency were explicitly codified in the constitution.

On the other hand, at the Third Plenary Session of the 11th Central Committee of the Chinese

Communist Party in December 1978, the Reform and Opening-up policy was proposed, and concrete implementation began the following year. The aim was to revive the capitalist market economy, dismantling People’s Communes in rural areas and introducing a production responsibility system, establishing special economic zones in urban areas, actively introducing foreign capital to foster export industries, and introducing price liberalization. State enterprise reform led to worker layoffs and increased unemployment. As a result, capitalist reforms came into conflict with the working class of state enterprises, and in some cases violent repression of workers’ resistance struggles occurred. This situation became the background for workers to participate in the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square.

Workers’ participation in the democracy movement in Tiananmen Square and the Communist Party’s repression

The 1989 democracy movement in Tiananmen Square was initially led by students, but gradually the participation of workers became more prominent. Although the students had high hopes for the “reformists” within the Communist Party and did not challenge the Communist Party itself, many workers joined the movement, raising demands that the Communist Party could never tolerate: the formation and recognition of independent labor unions. The Chinese Communist Party was deeply horrified by the appearance of the Beijing Workers’ Self-Governing Federation in Tiananmen Square, and the expansion of voluntary union formation across the country (Shanghai, Changsha, Hangzhou, Hefei, Hohhot, Jinan, Nanchang, Lanzhou, Nanjing, Xi’an, Zhengzhou, etc.). Therefore, the main target of the repression after June 4 was not the students, but the progressive part of the working class that was trying to create independent workers’ organizations.

Integration of the Chinese economy into capitalist globalization

In 1980, factories for labor-intensive export processing industries were established in special economic zones along the coast (Shenzhen, Zhuhai, and Shantou in Guangdong province, and Xiamen in Fujian province, and later in Hainan province) along with the introduction of foreign capital, and a large number of workers (mainly young female workers) from rural areas were established as workers there. In the 1990s, huge numbers of “rural migrant workers” moved to urban areas and engaged in China’s export industry and construction industry. As a working class responsible for the primitive accumulation of capital in the Chinese economy, they were subjected to harsh working conditions, low wages, and long working hours.

Imperialist countries believed that by investing in and expanding into China, they could develop Chinese capitalism and bring it under their control. Deng Xiaoping took advantage of this “misunderstanding” among imperialist countries and modestly promoted China’s integration into capitalist globalization. Under Deng Xiaoping’s successor Jiang Zemin, China joined the WTO in 2001. This line of Deng Xiaoping was continued by Jiang Zemin and Hu Jintao.

Organic ties between the Party and the new capitalist ruling class after Reform and Opening up

The Chinese Communist Party sought to control capitalist society by linking up with the emerging capitalists in the private sector and the “bourgeois” bureaucratic class within the state apparatus. Although many former bureaucrats who had turned into capitalists and private capitalists had already joined the Communist Party, the party’s constitution was amended at the 16th Party Congress held in 2002 to officially confirm this status quo. They added “advanced people from other social strata” to the qualifications for joining the party. It should also be noted that in ensuring the integration of the two components mentioned above into a single overarching system of class rule, the important role played by what the Chinese term “relationships” (guanxi), especially family ties, plays.

Chinese economy and society after Xi Jinping coming to power

Xi Jinping came to power in 2012 not because he represented the most powerful faction, but because his support base was weak and was chosen as an acceptable compromise between factions.

In short, by the 2000s and 2010s the party-state faced multiple converging economic as well as domestic and global political forces pressing for a peaceful evolution to capitalism and democracy. Seen in this light, the Party’s “180 degree turn” back to a state-centered SOE [state-owned enterprises] dominated economy and retro-totalitarian politics was not so surprising. In 1978 the collective senior party bureaucrats tapped Deng to restore capitalism to save the Communist Party. While that succeeded spectacularly it also posed new existential threats to the Party. So in 2012 the old guard tapped Xi Jinping to save the Communist Party from capitalism and bring back the old- time religion. (Richard Smith, “Introduction to the Japanese edition” of his “China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse”)

The Chinese economy had already begun to slow down in the mid-2010s, shortly after Xi Jinping became president of the country. In other words, the Chinese economy had reached its peak around 2014 before the COVID-19 pandemic, and since then, the Chinese economy has experienced a dramatic slowdown in growth.

China’s economy has been slowing since 2012, long before Trump imposed tariffs, due to a rapidly aging population, a shrinking workforce, declining birthrates, a slowing global economy, and ever- increasing local debt. In the 1980s and 1990s, China’s economic growth was driven by a seemingly endless army of young farmers and workers. In 2012, the working age population began to shrink. It was an inevitable result of the one-child policy enacted in 1979. China is now facing an aging population and a shrinking workforce, and therefore losing the factors which have sustained the country for the past several decades. The extremely low labor costs that once attracted the world’s low-cost assembly jobs to China are also a thing of the past.

The “tacit social contract” between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people and its turmoil

“Reform and Opening up,” which was temporarily halted due to the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, the economic sanctions that followed, and the rise of “conservatives” within the Party, was once again accelerated with Deng Xiaoping’s so-called “Southern Tour Lectures” (1992) to promote a “Socialist Market Economy.” During this process, a so-called “tacit social contract” was formed between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people. In other words, in exchange for the Communist Party guaranteeing economic improvement to the people (at least some of them), the people accept the Communist Party’s rule and do not openly challenge it. Under these circumstances, “freedom” of expression and the press was tacitly accepted within certain limits (within a range that did not touch on the Communist Party rule).

However, the economic slowdown mentioned above (especially the economic recession after the coronavirus pandemic) has shaken up the “tacit social contract” between the Chinese people and the Chinese Communist Party, and as a result, has paved the way for Xi Jinping to thoroughly strengthen his authoritarian regime. Specifically, they used the Chinese Communist Party as the only channel of power in the entire country, fought for power under the name of “anti-corruption struggle”, changed the one-party dictatorship to a system run by a single dictator, blocked the expansion of the influence of private companies and foreign capital (so-called “state advances, private sector retreats”), and thoroughly crushed the rise of civil society by raising awareness of “communism” and closing down democratic spaces. The final touch was the destruction of the

democracy struggle in Hong Kong.

A similar relationship existed between the Chinese Communist Party and private capitalists. In other words, “Chinese businesspersons have had a tacit contract with the Communist Party for decades: “Let us earn money, and we will ignore how the Party uses its power.’” However, “the tacit understanding that we had relied on is crumbling before our eyes” (“Xi Jinping regime prioritizes security over economy, ‘completely over’, laments Chinese business elite,” Asahi Shimbun GLOBE+, December 7, 2022).

The Potential for Resistance in China

Xi Jinping has dramatically intensified attacks on civil society, labor movements, and feminist movements—particularly since entering his second term in 2017—thereby accelerating the establishment of an increasingly authoritarian regime. In 2018, workers at the Shenzhen Jasic Technology Company (JASIC) attempted to form an independent trade union, but the authorities suppressed the ensuing support activities carried out by the workers themselves and by students from Marxist study groups at numerous universities.

China’s economic downturn is, in a sense, structural; it forms the backdrop for the frequent outbreaks of resistance seen in local communities and workplaces since the “A4 Revolution (White Paper Movement).”

“Profit margins in key economic sectors have collapsed due to crises of overproduction and fierce competition among related enterprises. The real estate crisis, fueled by massive debt, has bankrupted many small-scale savers who had invested their savings in home purchases. Opposition to the regime was kept in check as long as parents held onto the hope that their children would lead better lives than they did. Today, that is no longer the case (a phenomenon not limited to China). Forms of social resistance have emerged—ranging from passive and widespread to, at times, active. Despite government calls—made in the name of patriotism—for people to have more children and consume more, birth rates remain low, the proportion of the elderly is rising, and people are saving money in anticipation of a difficult future.” (Pierre Rousset, “Revolution and Counter-Revolution in China: An Analytical Chronicle”—from lecture notes at the Asia Regional School, July 2026)

(Note 1) Statement made by the Japanese section at the International Committee meeting

It is worth reiterating here that the Chinese system is one of state capitalism dominated by the Chinese Communist Party—a Stalinist party. The goal of this Stalinist party remains the indefinite preservation of its own dominant position. Consequently, they tenaciously pursue their own goals, even at the cost of violating market principles or the rule of profit maximization. Therefore, analyzing Chinese imperialism requires an examination of the operational principles of the Chinese Communist Party as a Stalinist party.

At the same time, one must observe the changing relationship between the Chinese Communist Party and the Chinese people. Since 1989, the two have maintained a kind of social contract: the Party guaranteed economic growth and the distribution of wealth—at least to some segments of the population—while the people, in an implicit understanding, refrained from entering the political arena. However, this relationship is now being undermined by the slowdown of the Chinese economy. This situation could influence the future trajectory of Chinese imperialism.