Reganoff2 [none/use name]
China has that gig economy because that is precisely the sort of model that can help to fill in the gaps in its evolving political economic structures since the 1980s. No more iron rice bowl and cooperatives means meaningful employment for everyone is impossible, and likewise foreign investment + indigenous bourgeoisie all thrive on the constant availability of cheap and ‘flexible’ labor. Tbh even before the internet and apps took this to another level, the hukou system in conjunction with massive construction projects often meant that day laborers and migrants from rural areas would get absolutely shit-tier jobs doing important, necessary work, only to be given very little stability/financial security in return.
This isn’t even like ‘CIA propaganda’ either, in fact there is a whole genre of modern Chinese literature (migrant literature - see this https://madeinchinajournal.com/2020/05/07/proletarian-nora-discussing-fan-yusu/) that is about the struggles and disappointments that migrant labor faces.
Thanks for posting this. So many people on Chapo continue to insist that any story that showcases the neoliberal aspects of Chinese political economy is just CIA bait, mostly because (I would guess) they do not speak Chinese and are not particularly familiar with how the CCP’s has routinely treated striking workers and rural migrants. Instead, they just see a red flag, a ‘vanguard’ party, and state-owned enterprises, and assume that all contradictions between capital and labor have disappeared.
While you are correct to be wary of Western propaganda against China re: Xinjiang (particularly as Xi has himself noted that he is borrowing US-led frameworks on the ‘War on Terror’ anyway), I wouldn’t use ‘diplomats from Muslim-majority countries’ as proof of anything. Most Muslim countries also stood by India when they removed the special legal protections from Kashmir and intensified their military occupation. Muslim countries are not somehow bound by oath to protect the ummah, I mean they will sell out for the sake of getting access to a big market (like India, China, etc) if they need to without any hesitation. Any insistence that because Muslim officials say something is okay it must be is I think built on the sadly outdated notion that religious solidarity is going to trump socio-economic gain.
GMD and CCP are usually much more common. KMT is generally almost only exclusively used to refer to the party as it exists in Taiwan at the moment, though this is a somewhat recent change. I’ve actually never read a historian that uses CPC instead of CCP, poli sci people are somewhat different however.
I would be open to it, but tbh I sometimes find talking about it here a little exhausting. It is not that I think people have bad intentions, but there is often just a lot of bad faith interpretations of China from both demsoc AND tankie positions that navigating all the fraught politics of all and arguing with everyone becomes really tiring. But I’ll think about it!
My view of history as someone who practices and cares deeply about it is that history is meaningless without also thinking about the potential paths that were lost. The CCP actively debated, molded, and changed its minority policy. They themselves admit it was not inevitable and was a conscious decision that they took. Just studying other comparative revolutions tells us that yes, other policies could have been taken and that yes we can and should be able to make judgement calls.
National sovereignty is reactionary, but it is also the only route that polities have in the face of imperialism. This is why national liberation movements often had a combination of socialist and progressive nationalist forces. Similarly in Tibet following the end of the Qing, there were struggles between different factions of ‘nationalists’ but also a reluctant acceptance that China is big enough tha Tibet would also be tied to it somehow. The ‘somehow’ in that story is important. China made the call ultimately not to pursue Soviet autonomous policies (which, to be fair, very rarely actually produced real meaningful autonomy ie look at Soviet Kazakhstan) because they considered Tibet too important due to its water resources and its sheer size. Without its minority areas, China would be 40% smaller. So national defense made annexations necessary, and perhaps I don’t even disagree but it does mean we have to reckon with the fact that this was not really about spreading communism. The early CCP said as much - revolution was the thing that the Han would do, and if necessary they would do it to others. And as Zhou Enlai himself noted, much of that chauvinism had its roots in Soviet and British ethnic studies. I wouldn’t call it imperialist, yes, but there was a certain imperious attitude to it that we do have to have a little introspection about. Similarly, peasants would complain about this all the time - that Party cadres would never try to understand them. This is something that the mass line corrects, imo, and without it I am very unsure as to what revolution would really look like in the long term.
Furthermore, if you spread revolution without any sort of mass support in the country you invade, you will defang any potential for local progressive forces and empower the reactionaries, thus you get Afghanistan. In the fight against reactionary tendencies, conflict itself will never be enough and I frankly do not think interventionism will ever beget lasting change. America certainly has proven that and even if you believe a communist country would act differently (though we must note that it has been rare for existing communist parties to take over an entirely different country and actually create a lasting new regime), I think we must genuinely try and understand what we want revolution to be. Does revolution mean one vision of progress that is imposed on all? Or does it mean creating novel paths for people depending on their socioeconomic and cultural structures? To me the answer is clear.
The Soviets forced the GMD to make concessions in 45 with their friendship treaty, particularly in Manchuria. They gave weapons to the CCP but then ordered them to retreat because they didn’t want rail lines to warm water ports in the region to be damaged.
Again, as I’ve already quoted, the Soviets discouraged conflict with the GMD, wanted a united front government, and didn’t believe Mao could win. The archival evidence is all there.
Regarding the ETR, the Soviets had already been holding sway in Xinjiang before via Sheng Shicai. The ETR was an attempt to perhaps encourage the province to have close relations with Soviet Central Asia. The ccp denounced the ETR and in fact essentially dismantled it. And then designed their whole policy around discouraging any Soviet influence in the region.
Interesting that you say this as Mao argued that vanguardism was somewhat faulty in the sense that it encourages the Party to become separate from the people, thus his railing against bureaucratism in the 60s. The mass line is necessary, and the mass lines also means understanding local sensibilities and needs. The PRC attempting to take former imperial holdings and make them part of a single polity I think was a policy based not on the mass line but a belief that minority regions could not be lost.
I do not necessarily thing the CCP was wrong to take the path it did so but yes I do believe that revolution could have been encouraged in a more grassroots fashion, and that doing so would have meant that separatism would have never really emerged as an actual problem.