China has outpaced the US to become the first country in the world with more than 1,000 billionaires, according to the newly released 2021 Hurun Global Rich List.
 . . .
Zhong Shanshan, founder of Nongfu Spring, became the first Chinese entrepreneur to make it to the top 10 of the world’s wealthiest people list with 550 billion yuan ($84.96 billion) in personal wealth.

Ma Huateng, CEO of Tencent, ranks second on the list of China’s wealthiest people with an 70 percent of increase of his wealth to 480 billion yuan. Huang Zheng, founder of Pinduoduo, surpassed Jack Ma and ranked third on the list of China’s wealthiest people with 450 billion yuan. ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming’s wealth tripled last year, and he was ranked on the top 5 of China’s wealthiest people for the first time with 350 billion yuan. Lei Jun, founder of Xiaomi, doubled his wealth to 204 billion yuan and entered the top 50 of the world’s wealthiest people list.
  # # #

1. Peterb1953 asks: “Whose interests does the Chinese government serve?”
My answer: Like all governments, the Chinese regime has a stake in preserving its own authority and legitimacy and that of the apparatus through which its authority is exercised. In China, in my opinion, these pillars of legitimacy rest in the identification of the regime and the Communist Party of China with the ideals and social gains of the great Chinese revolution that gave birth to this government.

2. Richard Fidler states: “The relation between the party and the capitalists is not fundamentally antagonistic, they collaborate closely in their economic and political roles notwithstanding many understandable tensions.”
My answer: Richard’s assertion is hedged and qualified to the point where it has little content. To test his underlying thought, we must search for instances where the Chinese government acted harshly and persistently to increase the mass of private profits in a manner that seriously damaged working-class interests.

One event stands out: the transition toward a largely market-based economy beginning about 1980. Like the analogous New Economic Policy introduced in Soviet Russia in 1921, the market reforms and partial denationalization increased the social weight of private profits and heightened social inequality. (See especially speeches by Clara Zetkin and Leon Trotsky at the 1922 Communist International Fourth World Congress, available at Marxists Internet Archive.)

But this shift proved temporary. China reasserted its course toward a largely government-directed economy – a policy that was a major factor in a reversal in Washington’s China policy. The U.S. set aside efforts to assimilate the People’s Republic into the capitalist world system and launched a “new cold war” against it to hinder China’s development.

My article on China highlights two major government-initiated social campaigns that entailed a commitment of national wealth and popular energy that has never been witnessed in capitalist societies short of all-out war: the effort to eliminate extreme poverty and the mobilization to reduce to a minimum the incidence of Covid-19 infection. Such campaigns help expand the economy in the long run, but initially they run counter to the law of profit maximization.

3. Richard also proposes that “Chinese workers and peasants will have to contend with and ultimately overcome the autocratic, repressive opposition of the Chinese CP leadership and its capitalist allies.”

My answer: By inserting the word “ultimately,” Richard projects the imagined day of revolution into the distant future and severs its connection to present-day reality. He is not proposing any course of action today – he is just making a long-range prediction.

There are significant forces within world imperialism that seek to weaken the Chinese government and challenge its legitimacy in the here and now. These enemies of People’s China are led and inspired above all by the U.S. ruling class and its allies. Richard and I are in full agreement in opposing U.S.-led anti-China policies.

However, a call for anti-government revolution in China’s far distant future can have a negative impact today in dividing forces seeking to defend China against imperialist threats. This website rejects such appeals.

Richard’s prediction could be seen as argument from analogy – that China cannot escape the fall into stagnation and decay that led to the Soviet Union’s collapse. In fact, all evidence indicates that China’s leaders are keenly away of this danger and are determined to avoid it.

I completely agree with Richard Fidler’s critique. China’s bonapartist statism clashes with the idea that China is a workers’ state or that it is on the road to socialism. For Marxists, what is fundamental is the relations of production. In China, capitalist property relations exist, i.e. the expropriation of surplus value by individual capitalists. Chinese workers are deprived of the right to independent trade unions. If state control of the economy were the criterion for socialism or a workers’ state, then Egypt, with the military state’s massive control of the economy would be a workers’ state.

John does not make a convincing argument in support of either proposition, in my opinion. For example, he does not consider the ample evidence that many of China’s millionaires, and even billionaires, are themselves members of the CCP, which agreed a few years ago to admit capitalists to party membership; many of them accepted the invitation, of course. The relation between the party and the capitalists is not fundamentally antagonistic, they collaborate closely in their economic and political roles notwithstanding many understandable tensions. The CCP’s current embrace of “common prosperity” as its theme is clearly designed to reinforce its legitimacy, especially important in a country where the party exercises monolithic authority and not only prohibits the formation of revolutionary groups critical of the government (the reason why “we do not see many reports of revolutionary anti-government groups,” as John notes) but severely restricts if not outlaws the functioning of independent trade unions and peasant organizations.

Of course, the social system has its unique features, call it “state capitalism,” “capitalism with Chinese characteristics,” or whatever. John seems to think that the CCP’s hegemony serves to counter the country’s growing social inequality. He acknowledges the “relatively frequent” workplace revolts by workers, but dismisses them as “a testimony to the health of Chinese society” – a beguiling way to describe class struggle. And he turns a blind eye to many other features of China’s class structure, such as the government’s longstanding persecution and repression of minority nationalities.

John states that “China’s future will surely be decisively influenced by the evolution of global politics.” Yes, and the global left must work to counter the massive and dangerous offensive against China being mounted by the imperialist powers, designed to counter its sovereign state independence won in 1949. But no less decisive to China’s future is the course of its internal class struggle. To recover their own leading role in the country’s evolution, the Chinese workers and peasants will have to contend with and ultimately overcome the autocratic, repressive opposition of the Chinese CP leadership and its capitalist allies.

Only in that sense will it be correct to say, as argued by the Manifesto recently published by the group in which John claims membership (see his note 6) that China is “the indispensable nation in humankind’s struggle for socialism, offering aid and inspiration as a worthy example of a country pursuing socialism….”

BEIJING, Aug. 26 (Xinhua) — Common prosperity China is pursuing means affluence shared by everyone, both in material and cultural terms, but not egalitarianism, a senior official said Thursday.

Han Wenxiu, an official with the Central Committee for Financial and Economic Affairs, made the remarks at a press conference while expounding on the topic of common prosperity which had been widely discussed.

China has completed the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects. On that basis, efforts are needed to make a bigger pie that will be shared in a fairer way, Han said, stressing the need to promote high-quality development, raise the income of urban and rural residents, narrow the gap of income distribution, and prevent wealth polarization.

Hard work is the fundamental pathway to common prosperity, Han said.

“We allow some people to become well-off first, who then inspire and help the latecomers. We will not opt for a robbing-the-rich-for-the-poor approach,” he said.

He stressed creating conditions that are more inclusive and fair for people to get better education and improve their development capabilities, as well as shaping a development environment that provides chances for more people to become wealthy.

The official called for efforts to make basic institutional arrangements on income distribution, featuring coordinated primary, secondary and tertiary distribution.

Tertiary distribution through the leverage such as taxation and social security will be conducted on the voluntary basis, he said, adding ways such as charitable donations should be encouraged to improve the income distribution structure.

Han highlighted the importance of being fully aware that achieving common prosperity will be a long-term, arduous and complicated task that needs to be promoted in a gradual and progressive manner.