Is China communist?

Today, China is neither communist nor a workers’ state on the road to communism. The 1949 Chinese Revolution abolished capitalism and landlordism and led to the creation of a deformed workers’ state controlled by a privileged bureaucracy. But that same bureaucracy restored capitalism through a long process, beginning in the 1970s.

Communism is a stateless, classless, moneyless society devoid of artificial national borders. Under communism, goods and services will be produced to meet human needs, not to be sold for profit on the market.

The first step towards building communism is for the working class to wage a revolutionary struggle to seize political power from the capitalists, establish democratic control over the economy, and build a new workers’ state. This proletarian state will serve the needs of the working-class majority and repress any attempts by the wealthy minority to retake power. Over time, social classes themselves will cease to exist and the state—with no class enemy left to repress—will wither away altogether.

In contrast, the Chinese state ensures that Chinese capitalists can amass vast fortunes by exploiting the world’s largest working class. In 2024, according to the Hurun Global Rich List, China had more billionaires than any country in the world—814 compared to 800 in the US.

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) lives off the prestige of the revolution. In an attempt to deceive the masses, they pay lip service to “socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

What did the Chinese Revolution achieve?

The 1949 Chinese Revolution was the second-greatest event in human history, surpassed only by the 1917 Russian Revolution. Half a billion people threw off the yoke of imperialism, capitalism, and landlord servitude.

China became a workers’ state. Its centrally planned economy allowed for rapid industrialization and development of the productive forces. The country eliminated unemployment and illiteracy. Women and oppressed nationalities made massive strides towards full equality. China “stood up,” emerging as a major force on the world stage.

Despite these stunning advances, China was never a communist society. In fact, the CCP didn’t even intend to abolish capitalism. They held the Stalinist “two-stage” theory, arguing that backwards countries like China needed to pass through a protracted period of capitalist development before beginning the transition to communism. Mao predicted this might last for 100 years. But after expropriating China’s four wealthiest families and 83% of all foreign capital, the state already controlled 80% of heavy industry. China was on its way to becoming a workers’ state.

Contrary to the two-stage theory, it was impossible to develop the Chinese economy on a capitalist basis. The CCP’s only options were to remain a backwards country dominated by imperialism or abolish capitalism entirely. By the early 1950s, they had established a nationalized, centrally planned economy with a state monopoly on foreign trade.

Why was the Chinese workers’ state deformed?

The Chinese Revolution started where the Russian Revolution ended: as a bureaucratically deformed workers’ state without a shred of genuine workers’ democracy. This deformation ultimately allowed for the restoration of capitalism decades later.

The early CCP’s membership was mainly working class. That changed when the party was forced into the countryside after the failed Chinese Revolution of 1925–27. By the 1930s, the CCP was largely composed of peasants and other petty-bourgeois elements. By 1949, the CCP had already degenerated into a bureaucratic Stalinist party.

Workers didn’t play a leading role in 1949. The revolutionary struggle was not waged through mass working-class action, and unlike in the Russian Revolution, there were no workers’ councils or other organs of working-class rule. Instead, the CCP rode to power on the back of a peasant army, the People’s Liberation Army (PLA). The top-down, military command structure of the PLA was grafted onto the new Chinese workers’ state.

Like the Russian Stalinists, the CCP rejected proletarian internationalism and embraced the false doctrine of “socialism in one country.” Instead of integrating the Chinese and Soviet economies, the two bureaucracies split over narrow, national disputes. This left China isolated, leading the CCP to support anti-Soviet counterrevolutionaries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America.

Despite its relative isolation, the planned economy achieved spectacular results. Between 1949 and 1957 the economy grew an average of 11% a year. From 1957 to 1970, industrial production grew at 9% per year—far higher than in the capitalist world.

But a planned economy needs workers’ democracy like the body needs oxygen. Without input from the working masses, the bureaucratically planned economy suffered from mismanagement, inefficiency, and corruption. As the productive forces developed and the economy became more complex, the bureaucracy could not micromanage every detail, and sclerosis began to set in.

How was capitalism restored?

There were two possible ways to overcome the problems of national isolation and bureaucratic inefficiency. One was the path of genuine Marxism: founding a new communist international to help spread the revolution worldwide and building a real workers’ democracy to plan and administer the economy.

But this option was politically unacceptable to the bureaucracy. Instead, they chose to open China’s economy to world capitalism. Not only would this break China out of its national isolation, but the market would, to some degree, act as a check on bureaucratic mismanagement and inefficiency.

Mao’s successor, Deng Xiaoping, set up “special economic zones” open to foreign investment on China’s southern coast in 1979. At first, the state maintained tight restrictions on foreign capital, but to attract more investment, regulations were gradually loosened.

Deng also dismantled the system of collectivized agriculture. Starting in 1978, peasant families could lease land from the state. These leases run for 30-years and can be passed down from parents to children. Technically, agricultural land is still state owned, but in practice, it’s treated as private property.

This revival of small-scale agriculture led to social differentiation in the countryside. As Lenin explained, “Small-scale production engenders capitalism and the bourgeoisie continuously, daily, hourly, spontaneously, and on a mass scale.” Some peasants enriched themselves, while millions lost their livelihoods and were forced off the land. This massive influx of cheap labor served as the basis for the development of capitalism in the cities.

The process took on a logic of its own. Over decades, China further opened up to foreign investment and privatized many state owned-enterprises. Now, only around 40% of the economy is in the hands of the state, and many of them produce for profit, rather than to meet human needs. In 2001, China joined the World Trade Organization, abandoning the state monopoly on foreign trade.

Is China “more socialist” than the US?

Unlike in the USSR, the Chinese bureaucracy did not collapse under its own weight. Instead, capitalist counterrevolution was carefully managed under the bureaucracy’s control, and the CCP maintained a firm grip on the state.

The state still plays a central role in the economy. This is the secret to China’s remarkable economic rise. But this doesn’t make China “more socialist” than the US. All it proves is that capitalism is long past its sell-by date. Chinese industry now outcompetes the US on the world market precisely because its strong, centralized state encouraged substantial long-term investments that individual corporations chasing a quick buck would never make.

As a result, China is no longer a “developing” nation. It’s a major imperialist power competing with American imperialism for influence and domination.

Initially, China took advantage of large reserves of low-paid labor to flood the globe with cheap textiles and toys. Now, it’s a technologically advanced capitalist powerhouse with a dominant position in high-tech industries like EVs, renewable energy, 5G infrastructure, and more.

The US leads the world in net outflow of Foreign Direct Investment (a proxy for the export of capital) with $454 trillion, while China comes second at $287 trillion. The four biggest banks in the world are Chinese, and over 100 countries are in debt to China.

Should US workers side with China or the US?

As imperialist tensions intensify, the US ruling class continues churning out anti-China propaganda. They want to stir up national chauvinism to distract us from inflation, unemployment, declining living standards, and other wretched hallmarks of their dying system. Make no mistake, the enemy of American workers isn’t in China; it’s “our own” ruling class at home.

The Chinese working class is exploited and oppressed just like us. Workers in both the US and China must fight the class enemy’s poisonous nationalism with proletarian internationalism.

In the inter-imperialist conflict between the US and China, some on the “left” consider Chinese imperialism the “lesser evil.” But who should we support when Chinese workers take to the streets and struggle against the Chinese capitalists? There is only one answer: we must stand in solidarity with our working-class brothers and sisters in China.