By MARLON DE SOUZA*

Mao Zedong points out in the report that the Chinese people's revolutionary war had reached a crucial point, “the turning point from growth to the end of more than 100 years of imperialist tyranny in China.”

The People's Republic of China (PRC) of 2024 can only be understood if its proclamation on October 1, 1949 is considered as a result of the Chinese Socialist Proletarian Revolution, after years of insurrections, prolonged people's war, decades of civil war, strikes, combat against the invasion of Japanese fascists and the occupation of its territory by the American Army, capture of power by the proletariat, rupture of the previous capitalist State established by the Kuomintang (Nationalist Party) (1912/1949) and construction of institutions of a socialist character such as the State led by the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

Upon completing 75 years of the People's Republic of China, in an official event commemorating the date, the President of the People's Republic of China Xi Jinping, who is also General Secretary of the Communist Party of China and Head of the Central Military Commission, in a pronunciation to more than three thousand national and international guests, he reaffirmed that “to advance Chinese modernization, it is imperative to unswervingly follow the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”

Xi Jinping's speech expresses that the path of transition to socialism established in 1949 in the People's Republic of China has never been interrupted. Even with the Reform and Opening-up in the years since 1978, there was no rupture. There were updates, but the economic opening initiated by Deng Xiaoping, which is mobilized again by President Xi Jinping, is a strategy for more socialism, for developing the capitalist productive forces to overcome the capitalist system itself.

This is a classic Marxist political economy guideline for the socialist economic system; there is no change in the socialist program here. On the contrary, the course of the People's Republic of China, as President Xi Jinping stated in his speech today, is the "unshakable path to socialism."

The strategy and pattern of economic development of the People's Republic of China is a demonstration to the Global South that there is a distinct path of economic development other than that of late, dependent capitalism, based on the export of raw materials, relegated to the global value chains, the international division of labor and subordinated to US imperialism. This economic success for the benefit of workers can even be achieved through the electoral process, through a process without abrupt ruptures, it can be achieved peacefully and democratically, but, nevertheless, the People's Republic of China proves that for this to happen, reform of the capitalist state is unavoidable.

The People's Republic of China, under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), has achieved in 75 years what some countries took centuries to achieve. In 1949, when the Communist Party took power, China was a semi-feudal country (Brazil had already industrialized in the 1930s). In 2024, the People's Republic of China is the world's largest manufacturing power, the largest trader of goods, and holder of the largest foreign exchange reserves. It is already the world's second largest economy.

The result achieved by the Chinese Proletarian Socialist Revolution provided significant contributions of the PRC to global development. From 1979 to 2023, China's average annual contribution to world economic growth reached 24,8%, with an average of over 30% from 2013 to 2023.

For 12 consecutive years, China’s outward direct investment in foreign countries has ranked among the top three globally, holding more than 10 percent of the global share for eight years. China’s “new three items” – electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and solar cells – are helping the world accelerate its green and low-carbon transitions, while its infrastructure projects span more than 190 countries and regions worldwide.

The International Economic Policy of the New Silk Road – or Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – English translation Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) – the People’s Republic of China’s BRI promotes the development and revitalization of countries in the Global South. By the end of 2023, China’s direct investment in BRI participating countries had exceeded US$300 billion. The development of the People’s Republic of China is inextricably linked to global progress.

The People's Republic of China is today the most successful socialist economic experiment in world history and a reference for every legitimate socialist.

In an international context with several regions under tension due to belligerent actions, it is important to highlight that the PRC has always contributed to peace throughout its 75 years and has never invaded or occupied a single inch of foreign territory. Today, at the center of the global stage, the People's Republic of China is the main contributor to the peaceful development of humanity.

The establishment of the People's Republic of China

The establishment of the PRC came from years of political resistance by the people led by the Communist Party against oppression. The first president of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Hu Qiaomu (1912-1992), a revolutionary, Marxist sociologist and former member of the CCP Politburo and permanent member of the Central Consultative Commission, recounts in The Third Revolutionary Civil War, the Founding of the People's Republic of China, and the Period of Economic Recovery how exhausting and arduous the struggle was until the construction of the People's Republic of China.

Hu Qiaomu says that in the 2nd World War:

“During the War of Resistance, the Kuomintang reactionaries, representing the big landlords and the big bourgeoisie, pursued a policy of passive resistance to Japan and active opposition to the CCP, hoping to undermine the latter's strength and preserve their own strength, so that after Japan was defeated by the USSR, Britain, the United States and the Chinese people, represented by the CCP, they could capitalize on the merits of victory and thus launch an anti-communist war of annihilation and establish a brutal tyranny throughout the country.”

According to Hu Qiaomu, to this end, all the weapons supplied to the Kuomintang by foreign countries that were used in the war against Japan were stockpiled to be used against the Communists. Thus, the entire Chinese people were under threat of another civil war since the War of Resistance had already ended, and the entire Chinese people were still under threat of another civil war.

“After Japan’s capitulation, the U.S. imperialists attempted to move into the position previously occupied by Japan in China, to gain control over the major Chinese markets and to convert the country into a U.S. colony. To this end, the U.S. had to help the Kuomintang in its efforts to annihilate the CCP, because the latter constituted the greatest obstacle to the achievement of its aims. The Kuomintang also needed to rely on U.S. aid in waging the anti-communist civil war. On this basis, the collusion between the imperialists and the Kuomintang became even stronger, and they made active preparations for launching an all-out offensive against the liberated areas. They imagined that the numerical and material superiority of the Kuomintang armed forces over the CCP's People's Liberation Army (PLA), both in terms of population and resources in the regions occupied by the Kuomintang in relation to the liberated regions, together with the economic, political and military aid provided by the US government, would enable them to achieve their malevolent and shameless purposes.”

The sociologist describes that this civil war against the people was a lucrative business for the big bourgeoisie – the bureaucratic bourgeoisie of the Kuomintang. According to Hu Qiaomu, after the Japanese capitulation, the Four Great Families of Chiang Kai-shek, Soong Tse-ven, Kuang Hsiang-hsi and Chen Li-fu resorted to unprecedented plunder and usurpation under the pretext of a “recovery”. In the course of the new war, they “sucked the blood of the people through inflation, tax increases, grain requisitions and other forms of economic control”. The fortunes of these families increased to about $20 billion.

After many years of war, the people of all classes unanimously wanted peace so that the country's already severely damaged productive capacity could be rebuilt. The people demanded that national independence and political democracy be achieved after the victory of the War of Resistance. The peasants wanted land.

Hu Qiaomu reports that the Kuomintang not only denied all these things to the people, but also decided to plunder them even more through the exploitation generated by the civil war and economic bankruptcy. The Kuomintang granted all kinds of privileges to the US in order to obtain US aid, and as a result, domestic industries and commercial enterprises in the Kuomintang-occupied regions were subjected to the dual oppression of US capital and Kuomintang bureaucratic capital. They went bankrupt one after another, and many workers were laid off. The US military personnel in China insulted and mistreated the Chinese people. The Kuomintang secret service agencies persecuted the people and democratic elements using the method of terror.

However, in order to preserve peace until the last minute and fully educate the people, the CPC, after the end of the War of Resistance, made great efforts and showed great patience to lead the people throughout the country and seek a way to avoid war and achieve peace and unity.

After the conclusion of the War of Resistance, the CPC Central Committee on August 25, 1945 launched the Statement on the Current Situation, which expressed the CCP's desire for peace, democracy and unity. In order to realize this desire, CCP leader Mao Zedong went to Chungking on August 28 and held conferences for more than a month with Chiang Kai-shek (general and president of the then Republic of China) and the Kuomintang. 

On October 10, the results of the conference were made public. They contained many agreements on measures to safeguard internal peace. Qiaomu records that the CCP was sincerely ready to abide by these agreements and had already begun to implement them. But Chiang Kai-shek, for his part, saw these agreements as nothing more than a ruse and a way to buy time to disguise his plans to start a war. He imagined that after the conclusion of these agreements, the CCP would lower its vigilance and that with a surprise attack, it would achieve victory over the CCP. As soon as the agreements were published, Chiang Kai-shek immediately launched an offensive against the areas liberated by the PLA. The CCP was already on alert, and Chiang Kai-shek’s military offensive was crushed.

Hu Qiaomu also recounts that during that period, Chiang Kai-shek needed to quickly seize the cities and communication lines occupied by the CCP’s PLA in order to transport millions of troops to various fronts of the civil war. To support Chiang Kai-shek in such actions, US troops were stationed at various points along the Chinese coast to ratify the Japanese surrender. And to prevent the PLA from seizing the coast, the US provided all the weapons confiscated from the Japanese Army to Chiang Kai-shek. The imperialists used aircraft and naval fleets to transport more than a million men from the Kuomintang army to points located near the regions liberated by the PLA.

In order to gain time, Chiang Kai-shek accepted the demands of the CPC, the Chinese people, and various democratic parties and groups in words, and on January 10, 1946, he signed a truce order and convened a Political Consultative Conference of all parties and groups. At that time, the US government also advocated the truce in words, and sent George C. Marshall to replace Patrick J. Hurley as the “mediator” in the Chinese civil war, with the purpose of supporting Chiang Kai-shek in making his war preparations under the guise of “conciliation.” Shortly after the truce was announced, Chiang Kai-shek ordered attacks against the PLA. From July 1946 onwards, Chiang Kai-shek completely broke the agreement and the resolutions of the Political Consultative Conference, and mobilized all his armed forces in an all-out offensive against the liberated areas.

During this period, the CPC conducted a comprehensive and effective ideological education campaign among the people throughout the country, gradually awakening them from their illusions about peace and weakening their illusions about Chiang Kai-shek and the US government, so that the people could understand that in order to achieve peace, democracy and the right to existence, it was necessary to overthrow the Kuomintang reactionaries. On the one hand, the CPC completely isolated Chiang Kai-shek and the imperialists politically, and on the other, it led the PLA in a huge effort to crush the enemy's offensive.

In order to defeat Chiang Kai-shek's attacks, Mao Zedong established a correct military policy, the main objective of which was to annihilate the enemy's men, not to defend cities or towns. In order to sweep away the enemy, each battle must be thoroughly prepared so that victory can be assured; a vastly superior force, many times greater than the enemy's, must be assembled to carry out operations to encircle and completely annihilate the enemy.

In May 1947, students all over the country held demonstrations against famine, civil war and persecution. Workers and peasants in various places also led struggles against the Kuomintang. All these events demonstrated that the US imperialists and the Kuomintang reactionaries had completely isolated themselves, while the United Front for New Democratic Revolution led by the Communist Party of China was broader and more consolidated than ever. Both military and political conditions were favorable for the Chinese people's nationwide victory. On October 10, 1947, the PLA issued a declaration calling on all Chinese people to overthrow Chiang Kai-shek and build a new China.

To strengthen the PLA's fighting capacity and promote democracy in the countryside, the CPC has carried out a consolidation campaign at all levels of the Party, to raise the level of class consciousness in the PLA and to correct the composition of Party organizations as well as the working methods.

Founding of the People's Republic of China

To prepare for a new victory, a conference was called in North Shensi in December 1947 by the CPC Central Committee. At this conference, Qiaomu recounts that leader Mao Zedong made the report About the Current Situation and Our Tasks. Mao Zedong points out in this report that the Chinese people's revolutionary war had reached a crucial point, “the turning point from growth to the end of more than 100 years of imperialist tyranny in China.”

Mao Zedong made a thorough analysis of the military, economic, agrarian and united front problems that would confront the CPC when the revolutionary war entered the offensive stage. Regarding the deviations committed that caused damage to industry and commerce during the agrarian reform movement, Mao, in his report, sharply criticized some officials within the CPC who adopted an excessively leftist policy with economic elements of the petty and middle bourgeoisie. Mao pointed out that the gigantic state economy was socialist in character, that it would “arise from the confiscation of bureaucratic capital and control the economic arteries of the entire nation, and would certainly be of decisive significance and play a leading role in the economic life of the people’s state.”

From July 1946 to June 1950, the PLA annihilated more than 8,07 million men of the Kuomintang armed forces and captured 54,4 artillery pieces, 319 machine guns, 20 tanks and armored cars, XNUMX vehicles, and large quantities of other weapons and equipment.

On October 1, 1949, the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China was established. The Central People's Government was elected by the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, which was composed of 662 delegates from various nationalities, democratic parties and groups, people's organizations, regions, armies, and invited democratic figures.

The Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference held its first plenary session from September 21 to September 30, 1949. The Conference adopted the Common Program of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, the Organic Law of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China, and the Organic Law of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference. The Conference elected Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Central People's Government, elected Chu Teh, Liu Shaoqi, Soong Ching-ling, Li Chi-shen, Chang Lang, and Ao Kao Kang as Vice-Chairmen, elected 56 people as members of the Central People's Government Council, and selected Beijing as the capital of the People's Republic of China.

The situation across the country was entirely different from that period in which Mao Zedong's articles were published; On New Democracy and Coalition Government. It was necessary to explain the questions raised by the conditions created by the victory of the People's Democratic Revolution: what kind of state was the People's Republic of China? What were the positions and relations of the various classes and the various sectors of the national economy? What is the future of such a state? To such questions, Mao's articles published on July 1, 1949 and the Common Program, adopted by the first plenary session of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, gave comprehensive answers to these questions.

In these aforementioned articles Mao Zedong defines the People’s Republic of China as a people’s democracy “led by the working class (through the Communist Party) and with the alliance of workers and peasants as its basis.” Explaining the meaning of this formula, Mao Zedong wrote:

“Who are the ‘people’? At the present stage, the people of China are made up of the working class, the peasant class, the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. Under the leadership of the working class and the Party, these classes have united to form their own state and choose their own government (…) over the lackeys of imperialism – the landlord class and bureaucratic capital – in order to crush them and tolerate their actions only within certain limits, so as not to allow them to go beyond this limit either in word or deed. If they try to go beyond this limit in their words or deeds, they will be forbidden to do so and will be punished immediately. The democratic system must be implemented among the people, giving them freedom of speech, assembly and organization. The right to vote is granted to the people.”

The founding of the People's Republic of China was the glorious culmination of the Chinese people's struggles of the last century against imperialism and feudalism, and especially their struggle of the previous 28 years under the leadership of the Communist Party of China.

The People's Republic of China was founded.

On October 1, 1949, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, composed of delegates from democratic organizations across the country, promulgated the ordinary law of the Central People's Government of the PRC and elected Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Central People's Government of China.

It is possible to identify the unity of President Xi Jinping's international policy with the inaugural speech of the newly elected President Mao Zedong at the founding of the People's Republic of China:

“Since the reactionary government of Chian Kai-shek and the Kuaomi Tang betrayed the motherland and colluded with imperialism and launched an anti-revolutionary war, the Chinese people have been plunged into suffering. Fortunately, the People's Liberation Army, supported by the entire nation, has fought heroically and selflessly to defend the sovereignty of our motherland and protect the people's lives and property, to relieve the people's suffering and fight for their rights, and finally to eliminate the reactionary troops and the reactionary government—the Nationalist government.

Now the National Liberation War has been won and the majority of the people of the country have been liberated. On this basis, the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, composed of delegates from all over the country, democratic organizations in China, the Liberation Army, people of various regions and nationalities in the country, Chinese living abroad, and other patriotic elements, joined together to represent the whole nation and promulgated the ordinary law of the Central People's Government of the People's Republic of China electing Mao Zedong as Chairman of the Central People's Government of China (…). The Central People's Government Council has resolved and hereby declares to all governments and all countries that this government represents all the people of the People's Republic of China. This government is willing to establish diplomatic relations with any foreign government, and is willing to accept the principle of equality, mutual benefit, territorial integrity and sovereignty.”

*Marlon D'Souza, journalist, is a master's student in world political economy at UFABC.

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