December 24— How do we understand the protests in China against its government’s “Zero-Covid” policy?
China’s capitalist rulers abruptly abandoned “Zero Covid” just weeks after promising to continue it. Perhaps they saw the protests as an opportunity to lift restrictions that hobbled the economy while deflecting blame for the result. Maybe it was an attempt to defuse calls for top party leaders to step down.
Either way, now they must manage the rapid spread of Covid without adequate preparation. Hospitals are overwhelmed, and thousands are dying daily.
Capitalist rulers? Isn’t China ruled by the Communist Party of China (CPC)? Yes. But the CPC has been communist in name only for decades. It’s capitalist to the core.
The 1960s and 70s saw a huge internal struggle within the CPC between open “capitalist roaders” and the opposing faction that favored socialism. Smaller groups of students and workers organized around a line of moving directly to communism. They were suppressed, but their brave, principled efforts still inspire us.
The open capitalist-roaders won. Their 1978 “economic reforms” privatized land and other means of production. Within ten years, the state had sold the assets of almost all its enterprises to private investors. Most of those investors were CPC leaders or their close allies.
Does anything remain of the communist principles and goals that inspired masses to collectivize production and distribution in the 1950s and 60s? To revolutionize gender relationships, education, and more? To mobilize mass public health campaigns?
Not so many Chinese people today remember those days. But we are confident that many there, as elsewhere, believe in a society where all contribute what they can and will. Where all share according to need. They have seen that capitalist relationships – realized in a market economy – corrupt everything they touch.
We are confident that when we find ways to bring Red Flag to the Chinese masses, the ICWP will take root and grow there.
Meanwhile, if you have any connections who can help us understand the recent Chinese Covid protests, please share what you can. Translating Red Flag articles into Mandarin or other Sinitic languages would help.
Here’s what we know:
In mid-November, hundreds of migrant textile workers in Guangzhou, a manufacturing hub, broke through lockdown barriers, breached checkpoints, marched through the streets, and fought with local health authorities.
Foxconn factory workers protested massively against strict measures that affected the wages and living conditions of newly hired workers. The company founder, one of China’s biggest foreign investors, warned Chinese leaders that its Covid policies were hurting China’s global supply chains amid a slowdown of economic growth.
Weeks later, a fire in Urumqi, capital of the predominantly Muslim Xinjiang region, killed at least ten. This sparked the main wave of protests across China as many believed that the victims had been trapped by a Covid lockdown.
Many protesters in Shanghai and elsewhere belonged to the majority Han Chinese ethnic group. Their solidarity across the rulers’ ethnic and religious divisions showed an understanding that the systematic repression of the Uighur Muslim minority will affect everyone. The rulers know this is a big threat to their divide-and-rule tactics.
Working-class leadership and anti-racist solidarity signal a qualitative difference between the Covid protests in China and those we’ve seen in the US and western Europe. And the Chinese masses have shown, over three years, their commitment to the collective good – unlike the individualism rampant in the west.
Some demonstrations of overseas Chinese, and some forces inside China, seem to be trying to discredit the Chinese capitalists to support their US imperialist rivals in the name of “democracy.” In China, as everywhere, workers and youth must reject all capitalist-imperialists and mobilize for actual communism.
The Covid protests in China – like the continuing rebellion in Iran – show that censorship and violent crackdowns cannot keep the masses down indefinitely. But reform struggles don’t lead to revolution, whether or not they achieve their immediate goals.
And 20th century Chinese history shows that even communist-led revolution doesn’t automatically lead to a communist society unless that is what the masses are organized to fight for and build.
The International Communist Workers’ Party must organize everywhere for just that. Unlike the Communist Party of China, we are a mass party that is open to everyone who wants to work collectively to fight for, win, and build communism. When masses grasp and act on communist ideas, they will be unstoppable.
Read our article series on Class Struggle and the Cultural Revolution in China, Available here
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