Adrian Budd - China: Rise, Repression and Resistance

A recent Science article discussed an interesting conundrum. Asking "Have China's carbon emissions peaked?" it analysed the impact of China's economy on the environment. China is the single largest national emitter of carbon dioxide, "leads the world in firing up new coal-fueled plants" but is also the biggest installer of renewable energy. The article is unable to answer the question, because that depends on how long the Chinese state continues to support and use coal plants. But hidden in the article is a telling comment. Ending coal use faces a number of barriers, "including pressure from Chinese energy companies to keep coal plants producing revenue as long as possible."

China, after all, is supposed to be a socialist state. It is ruled by the Chinese Communist Party, and surely, one might argue, the revenue interests of Chinese energy companies should not be a barrier to this state meeting its emissions targets. 

Adrian Budd's new book, China: Rise, Repression and Resistance offers us a clear explanation of this seeming contradiction. In fact, it is no real contradiction at all, for as Budd argues throughout the book China is not a socialist state, in fact it is a "State Capitalist" society, whose economic logic is determined by the state's need to continuously engage in capital accumulation due to China's position within a global neoliberal capitalist system. While Budd's book engages in many aspects of China's current political situation, from its environmental impact, to its repression of LGBT+ people, women and national minorities, as well as the resistance to this national project, it is worth looking a little further at what Budd says about China's State Capitalism, as the rest of his analysis flows from this position. 

After positioning the book within a historical framework, Budd argues that contemporary China acts as it does because it has adapted to the changing global economic circumstance. It is both the workshop of the world, and a global imperialist force that is fighting to shape its own global market. Budd writes:

The structures of Chinese state capitalism have changed over the last four decades, and perhaps it even deserves a new label such as 'open state capitalism' or 'state-orchestrated capitalism'. But whatever the label, the Chinese economy is part off, and shares the general hallmarks of, the global capitalist system.

China's economic ascent has been accomplished by its ability to adapt its economy to the rules of global neoliberalism (using FDI [Foreign Direct Investment] and domestic companies to become the world' sindustrial workshop and largest exporter) while simultaneously interpreting and bending those rules to protect and dvelop its own industrial base and wider economy. State influence over borrowers and lenders allows Beijing to delay proelbmes, which would be less possible in more market-driven system, by instructing banks to lend, including to zombie companies. But if reduced dependency on inward FDI and exports proides a degree of insulation from the problems in the wider global economy, China cannot escape the economic laws of motion of capitalism that Marx discovered 150 years ago and its economy is now showing considerable signs of strain.

This last part is important. The laws of capitalist motion determine not just how China relates to other foreign powers, but to how its companies and state act in its interior. This means that China subordinates people and the environment to the logic of capital accumulation, driving both exploitation and natural degradation. This means that China is prone to the the consequences of these actions, including the resistance of workers, oppressed minorities and social movements. Xi Jinping's "mission" in Budd's wods, "is to protect the state-capitalist economy, and the interests of its ruling class, from the mounting problems it faces."

This is why, to respond to the Science article mentioned above, China simultaneously has the largest growth in renewables, yet is also beholden to the interests of its coal companies. The logic of capitalist accumulation drives the onward use of these resources, in the interest of profit. 

Budd's book discusses how the Chinese ruling class justifies this. A mix of repression and regime legitimisation is the strategy of Xi. This means stopping internal dissent, partly through violence and imprisonment and partly through trying to challenge key social issues. One of these, the rampent corruption at every level of society, is a significant barrier to China, both in terms of legitimising the rule of its leaders and in terms of social discontent. A few high profile trials aside, it is notable that Xi's response to corruption is in part to reduce the power base of his own rivals and to severally punish corrupt officials. Both of these are linked to a wider project of increasing authoritarianism within the state. Budd notes that this has close links to the intensification of nationalism as a tool to bind groups to his wider economic and political plans.

There is, however, hope. The book's final chapters look at resistance, both of social movements like those of the LGBT+ community and wider, often localised groups fighting over specific demands such as environmental issues. He has a deep focus on the workers' movement and explores some of the powerful strikes waves that have taken place. Despite the heavy repression of these, and the limitations imposed by Covid lockdowns etc, Budd does note promising signs of "a new generation of workers and acivists" inside workplaces. China has a long history of workers' struggle, and revolutionary struggle based on mass working class movements, that point to potentially transformative struggles far from the parroted "socialist" ideas of China's rulers.

In conclusion Adrian Budd's book is a brilliant dissection of China today. It places this in the context of historical class struggles, imperialist competition, framed by an understanding that human liberation and an end to China's environmental destruction can only come from a struggle against a system based on the logic of capital accumulation. In this sense the struggle of China's workers is identical to that of those in every other capitalist nation. "Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains".

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