The Shifting Tide of Chinese Sentiment--A Nationalist "Maoist" Movement in China?

The Shifting Tide of Chinese Sentiment
A Nationalist “Maoist” Movement in China?

by Joe Tougas 


June 4th is the 20th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre, what my friend in Beijing cautiously refers to in public as “that thing that happened in 1989.” In the context of that bloody day and the economic crisis, China is re-examining the merits of capitalism versus communism in a pivotal moment in the country’s history.

For the past six years, there’s been a political movement in China called Wu You Zhi Xiang, which roughly translates to “Utopia” in English. However, it should be noted the translation is very loose due to the absence of a completely correlating word that fully expresses the sentiment of this organization’s Chinese name.

With images of Mao Zedong, Che Guevara, and the Chinese flag at the meetings, where on can hear songs from the Cultural Revolution playing before the speakers get started. Utopia is critical of the United States, and the right wing of the Chinese government, particularly with regard to China’s neoliberal capitalism and economic involvement with the U.S. It also conveys a message through its literature that China should replace the U.S. as the world leader. Whether Mao Zedong would have agreed with these sentiments or not, there is a banner on the wall that says “we miss Mao” in Chinese.

It should be noted that his image and legacy are used by the government to promote everything from capitalism itself to various leaders within the halls of power in Beijing. But Utopia seems to be the only organization calling for a return to communism in its literature, lectures, and the words of it’s members.

This movement also demonstrates the power still held by the communist party, which constitutes the left wing of the Chinese government. Just as the Cultural Revolution received the support of Mao, Utopia receives the support of the communist party, which protects it from the type of brutal repression seen in Tiananmen Square in 1989. Nevertheless, photography is strictly controlled at its events and publicity is restricted to its website, suggesting some desire to keep a low profile. However, Al Jazeera was allowed to film video recently at a Utopia event where the five authors of China’s most heavily discussed book, Unhappy China, spoke. So far there are no English translations of the book, but a Chinese member of the Utopia movement told me the book calls for a return to Maoist ideology, renewed nationalism, and a repudiation of the United States and the neoliberal capitalism it has forced upon the world with disastrous results. The authors argue for a departure from the U.S. dollar, which would no doubt reduce the value of almost $2 trillion of U.S. Treasury bonds held by China. But China is already investing that capital in more stable assets like gold, bringing on the possibility of such a departure. Unhappy China, which also makes the point that Beijing should be a world leader, is now selling at a rate far beyond expectations in China, with more than a quarter million copies sold and no slowdown in sight.

This model of people organizing from below under the umbrella of power and political backing from above was also seen in Martin Luther King’s collaboration with President Lyndon Johnson, and the 2005 Bolivarian Revolution in Venezuela, where indigenous peasants rose up with the support of President Hugo Chavez in defiance of the capitalist aristocracy. These examples also have shown an effect of co-opting movements that have the potential of being more independently controlled by the people, and more circumventive of the government. In other words, governments have historically preserved their grip on power by dulling the revolutionary edge of such movements through co-optation. What is not clear is what the members of Utopia think about a party that expelled Mao publicly aligning itself with his image and legacy. All that being said, there are still questions about how Utopia can affect Chinese economic and foreign policy, especially as it pertains to United States capitalism.

On Saturday, May 24, 2009, I attended a weekly meeting in downtown Beijing held by Utopia, featuring a lecture by University of Massachusetts economics professor David Kotz. With a translator at his side, Mr. Kotz delivered a three hour explanation of the current economic crisis, showing how it is caused by a systematic meltdown created by neoliberal capitalism—a subject analyzed in his new book, Contemporary Capitalism and Its Crises: Social Structure of Accumulation Theory for the Twenty-First Century.

Attending the lecture were about 40 people, only two of which were foreigners like myself, of whom several were women. There was a question and answer session afterwards, with those doing the asking insisting on speaking English and translating for the rest of the audience themselves. These folks--consisting of students, professors and other professionals demonstrated a strong grasp of Marxist ideology and spoke from that perspective. One of the questions asked was where do things go from here in the U.S.? Mr. Kotz responded that there are a few possibilities, one being further worsening of the situation fueled by more capitalism, or some moderate relief of the situation domestically through the Keynesian economic policies seen in the New Deal, or a repressive corporatist state in the U.S., and finally a popular uprising against capitalism in the U.S. and the system that maintains it.

Due to the difficulty of translation and limited time, Mr. Kotz had to paint broadly the picture he was trying to describe, but it was clear the politically minded Chinese Marxists were really interested in learning more about what is happening in the U.S. and how China can avoid the same economic fate. In Mr. Kotz’s closing statement, he described a future in which capitalism is a relic of the past to be observed in a museum, where children will ask their parents what this thing called capitalism was. In Mr. Kotz’s stated vision, the children would balk in shock and amazement at the idea of a capitalist society and ask their parents, “how did people live that way?” The room erupted in applause.

I spoke with a few Utopia members after the lecture and they were interested to know my views on capitalism, socialism and the current crisis from a North American perspective. Over and over, I was told that the last thirty years have proven that capitalism can’t provide for China’s masses and Maoist communism should be revisited. (It was not made clear how nationalism fits into a Maoist agenda in light of his internationalist statements.) Although one gentleman I spoke to acknowledged there was suffering under communism by asking me what I thought about it, I didn’t observe any criticism of what many Maoists regard as Mao’s mistakes.
Utopia members also told me how many Chinese have typically viewed the United States as “heaven” and now they are realizing this is not the truth, which is being revealed by this crisis that has even surpassed the Great Depression in some of its aspects.

None of this can be to the pleasure of the right wing of the Chinese government, which favors neoliberal capitalism because its members and constituents—the new Chinese upper class minority--are enriched greatly by it while the masses suffer in poverty. Neoliberal capitalism in China has eliminated the universal healthcare and education enjoyed by those growing up in the socialist state of China’s past more than thirty years ago. Human intelligence gathered in the form of talking to people in the city and the countryside indicates people who are poor now in China were poor back then, but now they have much less access to healthcare and education to name but a few differences between now and the past. But the minority driving Mercedes and BMW’s on Beijing’s increasingly congested streets couldn’t care less.

In 2009, following about 30 years of capitalism and 30 years of communism--Utopia’s existence seems to indicate a conflict within the Chinese government. Until recently, there was another organization in Beijing called Niu Bo, or Bull Blog, representing the capitalist interests in China, and the government’s right wing. However, the Bull Blog website has been blocked by the government, whereas the Utopia website is still fully accessible. Which part of the government would block the capitalist Bull Blog while allowing the socialist Utopia website to remain? Most likely it is the left wing of the Chinese government. If this is the case then it says something about which element of the political infrastructure has the most power right now in the midst of the capitalist financial crisis. Historically, around the world power has shifted to the hands of socialists in the midst of economic crises under capitalism, so it is perceivable that such is the case now with the current crisis. This notion is also borne out in the statistics cited by Mr. Kotz who referred to a Gallup poll in the U.S. showing greater support for socialism, especially for those under the age of thirty (almost 50%). If this is the going trend in the world’s most capitalist nation, then what is the sentiment in a nation with 1.3 billion citizens also feeling the effects of the current crisis? This question is especially relevant considering these folks have a heritage and history of socialism and greater equality than seen today in China.

Although the size of the Utopia movement has grown over the past six years, and the website is accessible all over the country, its physical presence is still concentrated in Beijing, China’s political epicenter. The question remains to what degree will this movement continue to spread and become a vehicle for the migrant workers, farmers, and other members of the working class in China already getting the short end of the stick under the neoliberal capitalism taking greater hold in their country since 1976. It also remains to be seen how much influence it will have on China’s foreign and economic policy. The evidence seems to indicate that if Utopia had its way, China would break with the U.S., and return to socialism, rocking the capitalist world.

Were true communism/socialism to completely dominate Chinese politics, the implications this would have for the U.S. are obviously enormous. For this would mean a closing of the Chinese market, where things like U.S. made government subsidized tofu, for example, have greatly displaced that of poor Chinese farmers to their severe detriment. It would also mean an end to the constant flow of cheap Chinese exports to the U.S. consumer. For these reasons, a truly communist China devoid of capitalism could further erode the buffer between the rich and poor in the U.S.—that buffer called the middle class, which is already losing some of the relative comfort it has enjoyed as a result of the current crisis. As I write this, there is an accumulating backlog of Chinese made products that are now unaffordable to consumers in the U.S. Such products are now being sold in China, and since a product can only be sold for the price the market will bear, these products are going for less than 10% of the price they would be in the U.S. As an example, high quality clothing products coming from The North Face, Columbia, and Hi-Tec are lingering in China where the companies now have no choice but to sell them for prices unseen in the United States. If the ability of the American consumer to buy products from China continues to dwindle, the Chinese economy could lose hundreds of billions of dollars in exports to the U.S. per year. In 2008 alone, China exported $338 billion in products to the U.S., according the Chinese Ministry of Commerce. If exports to the U.S. continue to decline, the losses could surpass the amount accumulated in China’s U.S. Treasury bonds over time. The possibility of this scenario leaves China with a choice between two paths: cut losses and increase stability through socialism and protectionism, or suffer greater losses, maintain its capitalist policies, and deal with the social unrest that choice would bring.