Trip to China -

trip to china

13/05/2023

China • Authors

By JOÃO PEDRO STÉDILE*

Trip report taken from April 12 to 24, 2023

Presentation

During this period, many meetings were held with various sectors of the party, the federation of trade unions, universities and conversations with researchers and intellectuals from the Chinese left. We also carry out visits to factories and rural communes.

The notes have no order or priority, they were taken from the meetings and conversations, I just tried to systematize them by major themes and now shared so that our popular militancy in Brazil, have some elements about the Chinese reality, still little known in Brazil.

Economy

The Chinese economy has been marked by several periods in its history. With an economy based on agriculture and the local market. The first period from 49-57 was marked by the implementation of a base industry (energy, steel, base industries) with the transfer of technology from the USSR, which transposed entire factories. The first Chinese tractor was manufactured in 1956, copying a Soviet model. The second period of 1957-76 represented a stage of a closed economy focused only on the domestic market, meeting the needs of the population and the beginning of consumer industries.

In the 29-year pre-reform and opening-up period (1949-1978) under the leadership of Mao Zedong until 1976, China's life expectancy increased by 32 years. In other words, for every year after the Revolution, more than a year was added to the life of an average Chinese person. In 1949, the country's population was 80% illiterate, and in less than three decades illiteracy was reduced to 16,4% in urban areas and 34,7% in rural areas; enrollment of school-aged children increased from 20% to 90%; and the number of hospitals tripled.

This process included establishing secondary schools for workers and peasants and sending millions of health agents to the countryside. Significant advances have been made in women's participation in society, from abolishing patriarchal marriage customs to increasing access to education, health care and child care. From 1952 to 1977, the average annual growth rate of industrial production was 11,3%.

The third period, 1976-2013, was marked by the alliance with the US, and then the adoption of neoliberal policies and the search for foreign markets. It was the period when China became the world's factory, with the implementation of alliances with foreign companies, which brought their machines and industrial technology to take advantage of cheap Chinese labor, which transferred more than 100 million workers to cities. .

One of the bases of industrialization was the automobile industry, in which they partnered with large transnational groups to bring technology and then China expanded the technology, such as the adoption of electric cars and buses. In the year 2000 they produced 1 million cars a year. Last year they produced 3 million cars. The other basis for prolonged economic growth was investment in civil construction, millions of new homes and urban infrastructure. Subways, roads, and high-speed trains. China spent, in less than ten years, more cement and iron than the USA during the entire 20th century!!

From 2000 onwards, new changes are underway, in which China is industrialized, has 40% of its economy turned to the foreign market, and now controls neoliberal policies and prioritizes investments in technology, seeking high productivity.

In this last period there was the reactivation and strengthening of state-owned companies, the increase in workers' income (the average wage in industry is now higher than in Brazil and Mexico), and the absolute control of financial capital. Every financial system that controls finance is made up of large state banks, even though there are private banks.

Today the economy is formed by five sectors of capital: State, private companies (especially in civil construction and commerce) collective companies of workers, mixed companies, between public and private and foreign companies.

The private sector accounts for: 60% of China's GDP, 70% of innovation, 80% of urban jobs and 90% of new jobs. In the 1990s, faced with declining profits and competitiveness, the central government adopted a policy of letting private capital into many sectors, but leaving the most important sectors in state hands (e.g., energy, banking, mining, transport air and rail, telecommunications and other strategic sectors). For example, of the 109 Chinese corporations in the Fortune Global 500, 85% are publicly owned. The four largest banks in the world are Chinese – and five of the top 10 banks in the world are Chinese (assets $5 trillion), all state-owned (ICBC, CCB, ABC, BoC, CMB).

In every big city there are 20 to 30 state-owned companies that control production and the economy. The private sector is in charge of distribution, commerce, services and civil construction.

In 1991, there were no private companies involved in civil construction (roads, housing, etc.). In 1993, with the neoliberal reform, 553 private companies emerged. And throughout the process today there are 122.706 private companies, 189 foreign capital companies, 3.920 state-owned companies, and 1928 workers' cooperative companies.

Chinese GDP grew by 8,4% in 2021 and 3% in 2022, as a result of COVID restrictions. In the coming years, the forecast is for annual growth of 5%. China needs to grow at least 5% a year, according to the government, in order to generate the necessary jobs for the population. Every 1% of GDP growth generates 2,2 million jobs. And they need to create 11 million jobs a year.

The current inflation rate is 2% per year and the interest rate is 4% for any loan, i.e. a 2% per year real interest rate.

The average working day is about 48 hours a week! But there are still many workers who work 60 hours a week. And family income is divided into 40% of basic consumption and 60% is converted into savings.

Families generally invested in housing (around 65% of household assets are in real estate), and now save resources to ensure quality education for their children. But they are also starting to invest in shares of state-owned and mixed companies and in gold.

The biggest problem in the Chinese economy today is the unemployment rate of 5%, and 19% among young people aged 18-24 (March 2023). Another challenge for the Chinese economy is how to absorb skilled labor versus manual labor. There are 9 million young people who graduate every year from universities and are not being absorbed by the job market.

There is a shortage of labor in the industry. Migration from the countryside has stopped, and young university graduates don't want to go to the factory. But they also no longer want to go to the West or study. There is a lot of expectation to work in large state-owned companies. Vacancies are disputed like real contests (there was a company that offered 20 vacancies and 20 thousand young people applied).

The government's plans are to increase investments in industry (decrease investments in civil construction and infrastructure that was the hallmark of growth in the previous period. And at the same time increase the local market, to the detriment of dependence on the foreign market. Most of of investments are from state-owned companies, and the government is looking for ways to channel household savings into investment in industries (in the previous period, families bought houses…).

The strategy at the external level, which combines economics with geopolitical strategies, is the construction of New Silk Road ( Belt and Road Initiative) which implies a lot of investment in infrastructure and transport in the countries it travels through in Asia, Africa, Latin America and even Europe. And these foreign investments are made in the local currency of the countries which helps the local economies.

China's economic achievements and results are fundamentally due to the socialist economy component, sharing the wealth produced with the workers. If it abandoned this policy of prioritizing the well-being of the population, as neoliberal sectors and Chinese private companies want, it would certainly collapse economically and politically.

China has been encouraging numerous initiatives to combat the hegemony of the dollar. It has already made an agreement for trade and investment without the use of the dollar with 25 countries and regions (as recently as Brazil). She also leads important initiatives to create alternative funds to the IMF – such as the Chiang Mai Initiative, with ASEAN countries + Japan and South Korea – and the Contingent Reserve Agreement (BRICS). The yuan has been increasingly used as a reference currency among different countries.

The current government of President Xi Jinping has stimulated and strengthened state-owned companies, which operate in strategic areas, in research, industry, etc., and are the most powerful. It seeks to combat the concentration of wealth among billionaires, who were formed in the previous period. Yet in the country the rich pay relatively little income tax and there is no property tax. But the control is political, to prevent – or minimize – the oligopoly of sectors and prices. This is the clear policy to combat the strengthening of the new bourgeoisie and the emergence of social inequalities.

The current situation of the struggle for global geopolitics, brought as a contradiction that Chinese businessmen have lost confidence in the US and are only looking to expand trade.

Chinese society is now experiencing the experience of having the first generation of Chinese capitalists and therefore the resurgence of an industrial, commerce and service bourgeoisie.

China has historically been an “exporter” of labor with many Chinese people migrating every year. Now its economy is attracting migrants, 1,5 million a year, from the Philippines and Southeast Asia to work in Hong Kong and Shanghai, mainly in industries and services.

The perspectives of the investment policy for the future are in the direction of replacing the current energy matrix based on 60% in coal, and in the next 20 years, reducing it to 30% and investing in renewable energies, such as wind, solar, hydrogen, and also invest in new forms of nuclear energy (whose technology China dominated in 2021).

There are also many investments and new technologies, the company Huawei will introduce 6G in a few years, for example. It also begins to be concerned with biotechnologies and agroecology.

Agrarian economy and rural environment

The basis of Chinese society in rural areas was constituted by the agrarian reform of 1949-1950 that destroyed the landlords, the feudal lords, and distributed all the land to the peasants. There were 555 million people in the countryside, representing 88% of society. Each family received on average less than one hectare. And the main result is that they stopped working for local farmers and solved the problem of hunger (the popular measure used in the country is MU = 0,15 hectares, in Chinese agrarian literature only MU appears).

The first agrarian reform destroyed the agrarian bourgeoisie and guaranteed land to all families. However, in the 1960s, the collectivization of agricultural work was forced. This disorganized production, and even brought a period of famine. In the 1990s there was a new agrarian reform, in which rural communities that had land use concessions were allowed to “sell” the concession to companies to set up industries. And at the same time, the country's industrialization plan led to the migration of more than one hundred million young people from the countryside to the cities, attracted by jobs and wages.

But the industrialization plan also brought the mechanization of the countryside, based on small machines that peasants and their associations could buy and use. There are more than 8 agricultural machinery factories in the country, distributed throughout the country, and practically in all municipalities or districts.

This field mechanization process, over the last thirty years, has led to the fact that today there are 21.730.000 tractors used in agriculture, in its 120 million hectares. (In Brazil we have almost the same amount of land used in agriculture, and only 1,3 million tractors!!). Of the existing machines in agriculture, 16 million are small tractors, 4 million are medium machines, generally used by cooperatives and only 700 machines are used in large production units.

In the last 20 years, and basically under Xi Jinping, there was a priority to eliminate poverty, which basically appeared in the countryside. And in this period they applied policies that lifted more than 100 million people out of poverty. It was the largest poverty eradication program in the world.

To draw up the plan, the government moved more than 3 million Party members to the countryside, who went to live in poor communities, paid by the government. In these communities, they were trained to diagnose the situation of poverty, the main family and collective needs. And based on this survey, they held debates at the local party level, with their leaders to design what policies the government should apply to eradicate poverty. (And worse, among the militants sent, 1.800 of them died during the mission, as a result of accidents or serious illnesses!).

This was the work of two to four years, and then the government began to apply the necessary measures, which were adapted to each region. On February 25, 2021, the government announced that extreme poverty had been overcome in China. Since the economic reform, 850 million Chinese have been lifted and lifted out of poverty; that is, 70% of the total reduction of poverty in the world took place in China.

In the most recent "targeted" phase, which began in 2013, the government spent 1,6 trillion yuan ($246 billion) to build and tar 1,1 million kilometers of rural roads, bring internet access to 98 percent of poor villages in the country, renovate homes for 25,68 million people and build new homes for another 9,6 million. Since 2013, millions of people, state and private enterprises, and broad sectors of society have been mobilized to ensure that – despite the pandemic – China's remaining 98,99 million people in 832 counties and 128 villages are lifted out of absolute poverty.

The poverty eradication plan since the Xi Jinping presidency combined several initiatives, such as: (a) special funding for cooperatives and local associations to increase the production of food and goods (on average, 2 million reais were invested by cooperatives at subsidized interest ); (b) state-owned companies from other regions were induced to place factories in those regions, and/or buy their products; (c) construction and/or improvement of houses; (d) construction of collective bathrooms in communities; (e) electricity and internet guarantee; (f) organization of free apps for families and communities to offer their products in society and nearby cities; (g) encouragement to set up fruit and vegetable industries and flour mills; (h) paved road infrastructure to reach communities; (i) improved access to collective drinking water; (j) support in the construction of secondary schools closer to the villages.

(l) in some communities families were induced to move to nearby districts and cities, where they received housing, training for urban and industrial work; (k) and groundwork. In 2014, around 3 million Party members were organized to visit and survey every household across the country, identifying 89,62 million poor people in 29,48 million households and 128 villages. More than two million people were tasked with verifying the data, later removing misidentified cases and adding new ones. Most notably, three million carefully selected cadres were sent to the poor villages, forming the 255 teams that resided there. Living in humble conditions for one to three years at a time, teams worked alongside poor farmers, local officials and volunteers until each family was lifted out of poverty.

After this period of eliminating poverty, now the government's plan is to ensure that the 550 million people who live in rural communities remain in the countryside and have the same living conditions as in the city. For that, they are organizing a plan called rural revitalization. China's urbanization rate was 64% in 2020, and is expected to reach 70% by 2030.

The main lines of the government plan for rural revitalization are:

Give more incentives to new agro-industries; apply a reforestation plan. They are planting trees everywhere. China was a global leader in reforestation and accounted for 25% of the world's total leaf area growth between 1990 and 2020, driven by 15 years of “clear waters, green mountains” policy; ensure the promotion of new technologies for agriculture, which increase the productivity of work and areas; tax cuts and more government incentives for necessary investments.

Increased training to adopt more agricultural mechanization; use technologies to control tractor performance, consumption, etc. 1,5 million tractors are already monitored in real time by satellite, on how they are working, performance, consumption, etc.; stimulate the potential of women's work, in various productive activities; stimulate internal rural tourism activities (with improvement of facilities to receive visitors); they created a plan by app that migrant workers can invest their savings in productive investments of rural cooperatives; renovate the empty houses in the countryside, to rent them out to visitors; program to protect rivers and lakes to improve the environment, financing these activities for communities.

Encouraging the production of medicinal herbs; there has been a vertiginous growth, in recent years, of the practice of selling agricultural products (often organic) to the inhabitants of the nearest cities, through lives (Tik Tok in China, called Douyin, has most of its revenue there); encouraging the production of goods that can be sold on the Silk Road. They are training all local party leaders so that they are better prepared to apply these policies.

To implement this plan, they changed the method. Previously, all policies were coordinated and passed on to the presidents of cooperatives and community associations. They centralized and often had corruption. Now, it is the party collective in the commune that is responsible for implementing the rural revitalization policy. In other words, agrarian policy left the Ministry of Agriculture and is now coordinated by the party, at national and general level.

They have dubbed this policy in the field “how to dance with the wolf! That is, how to encourage greater investment in capital, greater organic capital, without, however, putting people out of work, so that they remain in the countryside.

As for the policy of reforestation and environmental protection, they have adopted the motto of “Green mountain and clear waters”, which seems to use Chinese culture, phrases and poetry, which reflect the spirit of political objectives.

society and politics

Chinese society is made up of classes and class fractions that lead to permanent class struggle. Today, the majority of the population belongs to the urban working class, which operates in factories, commerce, services, and public service. And 500 million people remain in the countryside who live as peasants, organized in communes, associations and cooperatives. But there is a new industrial and commercial bourgeoisie, albeit very concentrated in billionaires (which would be easy to control!!!); and there is a petty bourgeoisie in the cities formed by small traders and the youth who graduated from Universities, who in the past received a lot of influence from American neoliberalism, which led to an exacerbated individualism. And there are nine million civil servants, who although they are affiliated with the party, many of them behave like petty bourgeoisie.

In 2022 China will have 65% of the population living in cities and 35% in the countryside, where 550 million people still live. It has 167 cities with more than one million inhabitants each, and more than 30 cities with more than 10 million inhabitants each. Shanghai is its largest city with 28 million inhabitants and Beijing has over 20 million inhabitants.

In the countryside, everyone owns their homes. In general, people work in companies in the city with approximately 100 workers, companies with more than a thousand workers are rare.

In the days of the revolution and Mao, there were 40 million people organized in the party, of which four million were soldiers and served in the army. Out of a total population of 500 million people. Today Chinese society has 1,4 billion people, and the party organizes and has 97 million members as members. Of these, only 10 million would be militants with a Marxist background. In recent years, four million members have been purged for embezzlement and corruption, many of whom have been arrested.

There are 40 party cadres who run key positions in state-owned companies and in control of government instances in the provinces.

Chinese society is hegemonized by the ideas of Confucius (551-479 BC) who, as a philosopher, ordered a series of values that are adopted by society and even today guide the behavior of people and the collective. It is not a religion, it is norms and values of behavior.

The ideas of socialism have been heavily attacked since thirty years ago when western ideas and neoliberalism influenced broad sectors of society, especially universities, the media and youth. Today, President Xi Jinping clearly says that an effort must be made to recover the socialist spirit in Chinese society, and that the party must be the example and caretaker of this policy.

The political direction of the party by President Xi Jinping represents a resumption of socialist ideals and the role of the party. Faced with the degeneration of the party, corruption and the influence of the Americans, it was the social bases of the countryside that recovered the party.

In China, the party controls the armed forces. And President Xi Jinping's political line has total hegemony in the cadres that work in the armed forces, which are millions of officers and soldiers in the three weapons and in military technological research.

At the 1990 party congress about 50% of delegates considered themselves capitalists. Since the election of President Xi Jinping and the changes and purges of the party, at the last congress it is estimated that only 15% considered themselves capitalists. In the past, there was the presence of capitalist entrepreneurs even in the central committee.

President Xi Jinping has argued that the party needs to improve its functioning a lot and learn from the people, and return to being humble in order to become stronger and continue directing the state and the government in the direction of the well-being of all people.

The method of collective leadership of the instances of the party was recovered. And the strengthening of the four major training schools for party cadres. The promotions process is carried out every four years, and follows rigorous criteria for evaluating each member. And there is a policy of compulsory retirement from positions at age 65.

The working class is satisfied with the improvement in their living conditions, which has improved a lot in the last ten years. Although health is not yet fully socialized, education is more than 90% public, including universities.

The government and the party have performed very well in combating pollution in cities, which was already unbearable ten years ago, and in treating and protecting COVID. With that, the population in 90% supports the party and the government.

There are still many cases of embezzlement and corruption, especially in the instances of provincial governments, which, however, are denounced by the population itself. A few years ago, social networks spread and fought the party and generated division within the government. But that failed. Today, with the party's policy under President Xi Jinping, of eliminating poverty, increasing wages and improving living conditions in cities, the working class and broad sectors of youth have started to defend this policy and the party.

In the period of neoliberalism and pro-Western reforms, around 90% of the Chinese media, including official media, were right-wing. The party cadres still fall short of the needs to efficiently carry out the programs of agitation and propaganda of China's results, both for the Chinese people, and even more so for the international working class, which could be an ally of these policies. .

There is still a class struggle in the ideological field. A minority elite formed by big businessmen, part university professors and part youth, criticize the current line and dream of the American model. But they are largely in the minority.

There is also a generational conflict within the party's militancy. Those aged between 40 and 55 are the result of the reform and remain mostly neoliberals and bureaucrats. The current generation leading the process to revitalize socialism is between cadres over 60 and younger cadres. And the socialists' hope is that President Xi Jinping's tenure will go on until he is replaced in the presidency and central committee by this younger generation. For many, the ideal would be for President Xi Jinping to remain for another term beyond the current one, until 2032.

The role of unions in China is different from that of the Western world, where they have always played an active role in the class struggle. In China, its role is related to organization in the workplace, especially organizing cultural, leisure and cultural activities, and spaces for collective, social action.

Since the 1949 revolution, a political working method has been adopted that persists to this day, in all work units. In the first hour before the start of the shift, all workers in the session, stand up, and in meetings lasting up to 30 minutes, daily, they analyze what is wrong and what we should improve. It is a very interesting method of criticism and self-criticism, and this process is followed in a disciplinary manner and coordinated by the party leader in the working session (I saw some of these meetings and it is impressive!).

The current party leadership is recovering the “mass line” policy. That is, to strengthen the organizations of the people and the struggle of the masses, and summon them whenever necessary for disputes in the class struggle. The Party has also recovered a historical method of work, when they want to make a change in economic policy, in the organization of production and in political application, they first apply it to a region or district as a pilot project. They analyze the pros and cons and then apply them at a national level.

Geopolitics

China is at the center of the world class struggle dispute. Passed through the Hundred Years of Humiliation (1840-1949) devoted himself to overcoming poverty from 1949-2020; and now being the world's greatest economic power, it rose in the dispute for the new world order. The foundations of the current world order, hegemonized by the USA and Europe, as a result of the Second World War and the defeat of the USSR, came to an end.

The USA had a strategic, historic and fantastic victory in defeating and destroying the USSR. First, they defeated it economically by inducing an arms race that implied prioritizing military spending to the detriment of improvements in the living conditions of the Soviet population, advances in industrial technology, which would improve the productivity of production in general. Then they attacked politically in the alliances and co-option of Gorbachev, who despite the good intentions of combating the deviations of the party and the democratization of society, surrendered to western cantilever.

Now the US is using the same tactics to try to defeat China. It continues to attack the economy, creating blockages and imposing conditions on the advancement of technology, as they tried with 5G and blocking Chinese companies' access to the most advanced technology chips. However, today the American economy depends more on China than their China, and this contradiction prevents them from waging a real economic war.

In politics they tried to create adherents among the members of the Central Committee of the party, but without success. Just as they tried to transform the region of the Uighurs (Xinjiang) and Hong Kong's dissidence, as if it were a serious internal political problem in China, which could build a mass opposition movement. But since it had no real social base, it did not prosper.

In international geopolitics, the US provoked Russia and used NATO and the puppet government of Ukraine to wage war. But his goal was to erode Russia economically, and bring China into the war. However, neither of the two situations happened. The people of Ukraine and the European economy are paying a heavy price for the imperialist policy of the Americans, which will certainly have consequences, as seen in the visits to Beijing by the governments of Germany and France. And in the rear China has economically given Russia, without getting involved in the war.

Now they are trying to create military conflict around Taiwan. But China has shown that it will not succumb to military provocations and risk entering a war. The US has provoked a contradiction in Chinese politics, the more it attacks China internationally, the more it weakens its internal allies, the business elites and academic sectors that previously supported them internally. Thus, it also made a possible capitalist counterrevolution in China unfeasible.

China has adopted a series of initiatives in international politics, which have strengthened it, such as: (i) strengthening the BRICS as an economic and political articulation space, forming an economic bloc, more powerful than the US; (ii) built an Iran-Saudi Arabia alliance, which politically defeated US interests in the Middle East; (iii) China is organizing several productive chains, based on high technology, in alliance with Russia; (iv) China has expanded its political ties with African countries.

China needs to change its policy with the global South, to make partnerships of mutual help, for the reindustrialization of the region. Abandon the policy of only buying agricultural and mineral commodities. Above all, China needs to change its policy and build alliances with the working class and peoples of the south. China's real defense will come from the global South, not the governments of the North. This challenge is seen as an enigma to be solved, by intellectual sectors of the party, in an increasingly accentuated way.

In the coming years, or decades, we will witness the construction of a new world order, now founded on other principles and certainly will be multipolar, with the participation of many countries, from the global North and South.

Challenges for the next period

The Chinese economy has a mixed economy base between the Chinese path to socialism and capitalist private enterprise. This process also leads to the concentration of wealth and class inequality. In the medium term, contradictions and class struggle within Chinese society will increase.

“Common prosperity” refers to both a vision and a cycle of government-initiated reforms aimed at reconciling economic efficiency with strengthening welfare mechanisms. It is also part of the effort to combat the “three mountains” of high education, housing and healthcare costs faced by the Chinese today. The objective is to address the growing inequality between the countryside and the city, social classes and regions through development and income distribution, tax reforms and social welfare and philanthropy.

In 2022, the wealth of Chinese billionaires fell by 18%, the biggest drop in 24 years, and there was an 11% reduction in the number of billionaires, largely due to government measures that limited monopolies and the tech sector. But China still has over 800 billionaires, surpassing the United States.

China is becoming an aging society, with a low population growth rate, and had the first population decline in absolute numbers in 2022 (since the national census began in 1961). There are 300 million elderly people over 60 years old, which brings problems of a shrinking workforce, less taxes for pensions, a large social security deficit and pressure on health care.

China has been relating to the global South in search of agricultural and mineral commodities that support its development needs. However, this model represents in the global south an alliance and the strengthening of local bourgeoisies. Increasing exploitation of workers and environmental crimes. On the other hand, in the international class struggle and in the construction of a new world order, China will need the support of the populations of the global South. The bourgeoisies of the global south, on the other hand, have always been US allies, and will continue to do so, despite selling to China.

The US is already in a cold war against China, even though it doesn't want to. In this war, he will adopt all possible methods, be it economic, commercial, media and ideological. For China to defeat the US, even without falling for its provocations, it will necessarily need to adopt an anti-imperialist political line, it will no longer be able to coexist, sleeping with the enemy that wants to defeat it.

The US has always used the dollar as an economic weapon to exploit all peoples and countries. And now in crisis, the currency has an even more relevant role. China will have to accelerate its policy of changing the use of the dollar at the international level and create conditions at the level of the BRICS or other alliances to have other currency parameters in international trade.

The current stage of the class struggle at local and international level is fundamentally the ideological struggle, the battle of ideas, about the future of humanity. The US has used the media, culture, social networks in this ideological war. However, it seems that China is not prioritizing this field of action, especially in its relationship with the peoples of the global South.

The capitalist mode of production in crisis has prioritized, with its imperialist companies, a true offensive against the goods of nature, privately appropriating and plundering reserves worldwide. This has caused environmental crimes, with serious consequences that appear in climate change and the disappearance of many, thousands of plant and animal life forms, which could endanger human life on the planet. China has taken steps domestically to tackle pollution and seek alternative energy sources. But China would have enormous possibilities to use its technological advances and help the people of the South, to look for energy alternatives, to combat environmental crimes and to rebuild the defense of the environment throughout the planet. This would bring fantastic ideological results for a global project of socialism.