On the specific class character of China’s ruling bureaucracy and its transformation in the past decades

The rapid process of capitalist development in China and its rise as an imperialist power is one of the most important questions for Marxists today. Hence, we have elaborated a number of detailed studies in which we deal with this issue from a theoretical and analytical perspective and discussed its implication for the program of the liberation struggle.1

We have shown that the Stalinist regime initiated the restoration of capitalism in the early 1990s — after it brutally crushed the workers and student uprising in Tiananmen Square in June 1989. By imposing a series of pro-market reforms in the ’90s, it succeeded in introducing the capitalist law of value in large sectors of China’s economy. As a result of this process, a powerful domestic bourgeoisie, a sizable middle class and a labour aristocracy were created. At the same time, China massively expanded its production capacities which, on one hand, offered Western capitalists profitable opportunities for foreign investments and, on the other hand, resulted in the formation of huge domestic monopolies that increasingly competed with their rivals for their share of the world market. After having managed the consequences of the global 2008–09 Great Recession relatively successfully, China became an imperialist power and began to increasingly challenge the hegemonic role of the United States.

This essay will deal with the question of the relationship between the Communist Party of China (CPC) and the Chinese bourgeoisie, and its consequences for the nature of the ruling bureaucracy. We will survey how this relationship evolved in the course of the past three decades and how it transformed the class character of the Stalinist bureaucracy and its role in the state.

Some notes on the road to capitalist restoration

It is not our intention to repeat our analysis of the capitalist restoration process in China. Instead, we refer readers to other relevant works and shall limit ourselves to pointing out some features that are important to understanding the relationship between the party and the emerging bourgeoisie.2

China’s road to capitalism differed remarkably from that of the Soviet Union, in particular that of most Eastern European countries. While in the latter countries, the process of capitalist restoration went hand-in-hand with a collapse of the political regime, the CPC managed to retain political rule. However, in this it was no exception. Similar processes have occurred in Vietnam, Laos and Cuba. Furthermore, in several Central Asian countries, the Stalinist party just renamed itself but kept power with the same personnel at the top.

Why did the process of capitalist restoration evolve so differently in China compared with the Soviet Union? There are several reasons. First, while the Stalinist states rested on the same post-capitalist mode of production (bureaucratic planning based on a nationalised economy), they started from different levels of development of the productive forces. Compared to the Soviet Union, China’s economy was much more backward and had a substantially larger sector of agriculture. When Beijing started its market reforms in 1978, more than 82% of the population — almost 800 million people — lived in rural areas, and agriculture employed 70.5% of the labour force.3 In contrast, only 20% of the Soviet labour force worked in the agricultural sector in 1984, and nearly all these peasants had been employed in kolkhoz or sovkhoz (collectivised farms).4 As a result, there existed a much larger class of petty-bourgeois peasants in China, which created a more favourable environment for the restoration of capitalism.

Related to this is the fact that the CPC retained a larger historic legitimacy by the time of capitalist restoration because significant sectors of the population personally experienced the 1949-52 revolution — a profound event that ended foreign imperialist domination, decades of civil war, and the rule of brutal warlords, greedy land barons and corrupt bureaucrats.5 In contrast, there was hardly anyone in the Soviet Union who had personally experienced the October 1917 Revolution.

Furthermore, for specific historic reasons, there existed a sizable Chinese diaspora with a sizable capitalist class in Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan and other countries. These elements were an advantageous factor for the restoration of capitalism in China.

These objective factors were the basis for a very different policy of the regime. Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev tried to introduce several market reforms in the second half of the ’80s, which were not intended to introduce capitalism but rather as a kind of neo-NEP (New Economic Policy); that is a radical version of Nikolai Bukharin’s pro-kulak policy in the 1920s. Gorbachev sought the revitalisation of a private market without abolishing key elements of the post-capitalist mode of production (nationalisation of key sectors of the economy, foreign trade monopoly, planning). However, these reforms failed because the social preconditions did not exist and the Stalinist regime was already moribund.6

In contrast, the market reforms that the post-Maoist regime of Deng Xiaoping began to introduce in 1978 reflected the interests of sectors of the petty-bourgeois peasantry. Similar to Gorbachev, Deng did not intend to restore capitalism; he thought the regime could combine a neo-NEP with existing post-capitalist production relations. While some orthodox Maoists denounced Deng as a “capitalist roader”, we consider Deng’s pro-market policy as an (illusionary) attempt to combine a pro-market neo-NEP with Stalinist “socialism”.

While these reforms resulted in economic growth and succeeded in creating a kind of private market, they also exacerbated social and political contradictions and ultimately provoked the workers and student uprising in April-June 1989. To avoid its overthrow, the regime brutally crushed the revolutionary upheaval. After this, the Stalinist regime had to reconsider its policy. It did so not only because of the deep crisis of 1989 but in light of the collapse of the regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe — a fate it was determined to avoid. The result of this process of internal debate and faction struggle at the top of the CPC was Deng’s famous 1992 Southern Tour. It demonstrated the regime had decided to combine strict preservation of the party’s total political control with a decisive push to restore capitalism. This became evident in the following years: large sectors of the economy were privatised, state-owned enterprises were restructured according to the capitalist law of value, millions of workers were sacked, the famous "iron rice bowl" was abolished, foreign capital was welcomed, etc.

The emergence of the Chinese bourgeoisie

This development of capitalist restoration went hand-in-hand with the emergence of a huge class of millions of entrepreneurs and numerous large corporations. As a result, the share of small and large capitalists (including the self-employed) among China’s urban population increased from less than 1% of the population in 1988 to 12.3% in 2013.7

Consequently, the social composition of the urban elite (defined here as the top 5% in terms of income) underwent a qualitative change. In 1988, during the final phase of China as a degenerated workers' state, this elite was still dominated by members of the state apparatus (the bureaucracy) and the labour aristocracy. But 25 years later, the dominant groups were the capitalists and professionals. (See Table 1)

Table 1. Social composition of the urban top 5% of income (percentage of individuals)8

                                             1988           2013

Workers                                 37%            21%

Clericals                                27%             20%

Government Officials            12%             6%

Professionals                         20%           33%

Self-Employed                       3%              15%

Large Business Owners         0%              5%

The source of the elite’s income also changed. In 1988, elite income came predominantly from the state sector: almost four-fifths of elite income was derived from state and collective sectors, while the role of private sector was minimal (6% of elite income). By 2013, the private sector had overtaken the state sector as the dominant sector from which the elite drew its income.9

The creation and expansion of the Chinese bourgeoisie is also reflected in the huge growth of social inequality and concentration of income and wealth in the hands of the ruling class and the upper middle layer. Before the beginning of the reform process in 1978, the share of national income going to the top 10% of the population was 27%, equal to the share going to the bottom 50%. This changed massively in the following decades and by 2015, the income share of the bottom half was just below 15% while the share of the top decile had increased to 41%.10 The elite’s share of national wealth has increased even more. The top 10% own 67.8% and the top 1% own 30.5% (See Table 2).

Table 2. Income and wealth distribution in China, 202111

                                                               Income                                                              Wealth

                                  Avg. Income(PPP €)     Share of total (%)      Avg. Income(PPP €)     Share of total (%)

Full population                 17,600                               100%                           86,100                        100%

Bottom 50%                      5,100                               14.4%                            11,000                        6.4%

Middle 40%                     19,400                              44.0%                           55,600                      25.8%

Top 10%                          73,400                               41.7%                         583,400                      67.8%

Top 1%                           246,600                              14.0%                        2,621,300                     30.5%

As the research team around Thomas Piketty demonstrated in a recently published book, the level of private wealth in China is now at nearly the same level as in India and similar to that in North America and Western Europe:

China has had the largest increase in private wealth in recent decades. At the time of the “opening-up” reforms in 1978, private wealth in China amounted to just over 120% of national income; by 2020, it had reached 530%. Most of this increase was due to housing (which went from 50% private ownership to near 100% in that period), and corporate ownership (from 0% privately owned in 1978 to 30% today). These increases bring the overall level of private wealth in China, relative to national income, to levels similar to those found in the US and France.12

Likewise, the concentration of private wealth in China (as shown above, the top 1% own 30.5%) is similar to major capitalist countries. In India, the top 1% own about 33% of private wealth, in the US the share is 35%, and in Western Europe it is about 22%.13 Piketty, Yang and Zucman note in another paper that the Chinese top decile have a wealth share (67% in 2015) approaching that of the US (72%) and much higher than France (50%).14

It is therefore hardly surprising that China’s capitalist class has become strong enough to play a global role. Consequently, it is able to challenge the hegemonic position of its US rivals. (See Tables 3-5)

Table 3. Top 10 countries with the ranking of Fortune Global 500 companies (2023)15

Rank                Country                  Companies Share (in%)

1                  United States                         136 (27.2%)

2            China (excl. Taiwan)                     135 (27.0%)

3                       Japan                                    41 (8.2%)

4                    Germany                                 30 (6.0%)

5                      France                                   23 (4.6%)

6                South Korea                                 18 (3.6%)

7            United Kingdom                               15 (3.0%)

8                   Canada                                       14 (2.8%)

9               Switzerland                                     11 (2.2%)

10             Netherlands                                    10 (2.0%)

Table 4. Top 5 countries of the Forbes Billionaires 2023 List16

Rank                 Country                      Number of billionaires

1                   United States                             735

2          China (incl. Hong Kong)                     561

3                         India                                      169

4                    Germany                                    126

5                       Russia                                     105

Table 5. Top 10 countries of the Hurun Global Rich List 202417

Rank                    Country                      Number of billionaires

1            China (incl. Hong Kong)                       814

2                             U.S.                                      800

3                            India                                      271

4                United Kingdom                               146

5                       Germany                                    140

6.                  Switzerland                                    106

7.                        Russia                                         76

8.                         Italy                                           69

9.                      France                                         68

10.                       Brazil                                         64

How the CPC created a capitalist class and merged with it

From early on, the creation of a domestic capitalist class was closely related to the CPC bureaucracy and its policy. This was the inevitable result of two processes. First, the central leadership in Beijing decided to cut down the overblown bureaucracy, from the state level down to the regional and local level. Hence, many bureaucrats had to find alternative employment. The solution was the creation of state-owned, semi-public or private enterprises. According to one economist, in some areas of China, as many as 70% of state and party departments set up such businesses.18

In the 1990s, departments within the state administration in China have been setting up profit-seeking businesses to earn income for themselves and to employ their officials. These new state businesses differ from the state enterprises that existed under the command economy in terms of both their organization and their sources of investment, and they have been neither planned as part of the market reform program nor anticipated by central government policy makers. Rather, they are a spontaneous response by individual departments to the needs and opportunities that have emerged in the process of economic liberalization.19

Second, and related to this, it was crucial for new entrepreneurs to build close relations with the bureaucracy to get help from the latter. A group of economists summarised this process in 2007 as follows:

Almost non-existent in the late 1970s, China’s private sector has experienced rapid development. As a result, China’s economic system is gradually outgrowing state ownership. China’s private sector development can be divided into three phases. During the first phase from 1978 until 1984 private enterprises were restricted to small-scale private firms with no more than eight employees, the getihu. The private sector was merely tolerated as an experiment and only allowed to exist in sectors where large state firms had no presence. During the second phase lasting from 1984 until 1992, private enterprises grew in size and actual private firms (siying qiye) were sanctioned in 1988. However, even after official regulations on private firms were issued, many private entrepreneurs shied away from this ownership form. Private firms continued to face political uncertainty, discrimination and heavy restrictions, some of which were reinforced after the Tiananmen Incident in 1989. Consequently, entrepreneurs formed alliances with local governments and government-owned firms, creating a multitude of organizational forms. For example, many private entrepreneurs preferred to register their firms as collective enterprises, giving rise to the term “fake collectives.” In early 1992 Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Tour (nanxun) ushered in a renewed push towards market reforms, which generated over time a more tolerant environment for the private sector. One important legal move came with the promulgation of the Chinese Company Law in 1994. The implementation of this law generated the conditions for convergence among the governance structures of private and state-owned firms in China. Depending on their location and size, private firms started to switch from corporate structures with murky ownership to limited liability corporations. In this process stakeholders converted their informal ownership into shareholding capital. As limited liability corporations, private firms could acquire a stronger organizational identity with respect to their political and social environment. In fact, many of the “fake collectives” opted to openly convert into private limited liability companies. New initiatives starting in the mid-1990s under the policy of zhuada fangxiao (“to grasp the big and let go of the small”) and state enterprise gaizhi (“transformation”) also opened the door for private entrepreneurs to buy shares in state firms. Consequently, by the year 2001 most small scale state firms owned by county governments or below had been privatised.20

As a result, so-called political guanxi networks emerged built “around private entrepreneurs, local government officials, party cadres, and political representatives”. These networks “enable firms to influence policy making, gain timely information on policy changes, access bank credit, and create greater certainty in their business environments.”21

This process resulted in a sharp increase in the number of entrepreneurs in the CPC. During the late ’90s and early 2000s, the proportion of private entrepreneurs with party membership was within the range of 17–20%. When the leadership amended the party constitution to officially allow private entrepreneurs to join the CPC, this share doubled to 34%.

Particularly interesting for our study is the fact that very few private entrepreneurs joined the CPC during the process. The vast majority of these capitalists — about 90% according to a survey — had joined before starting their business: “The sharp increase in the number of ‘red capitalists’ was more the result of movement of party members towards business than the result of the party recruiting private entrepreneurs.”22 This strongly reflects the close relationship between the bureaucracy and the capitalist class.

Consequently, the share of such capitalists in leading institutions also increased. According to another study, the proportion of entrepreneurs who were deputies to the National People’s Congress rose from 10.3% to 18.2% during 1997–2004 and the proportion of entrepreneurs who were members of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference rose from 22% to 30.6%. Likewise, more and more private entrepreneurs took up positions at local party-related and government bodies. The proportion stood at 2.3% in 1997 and increased to 3.3% by 2002.23

Business leaders in the state-capitalist sectors are nearly always party members: 

In contrast to entrepreneurs from the private sector, a significant number of the business leaders from the state sector are represented in important Party fora such as the Central Committee. In 2002 they were for the first time admitted to the Central Committee as a distinct group sitting alongside representatives from central government and Party institutions, the provinces, the military and the academic world. Thus, 18 were elected, including two full members and 16 alternate members.24

The ‘Immortals’ and the ‘Princelings’

It would be mistaken to imagine that this process of fusion of bureaucrats and capitalists was a peripheral phenomenon that had no effect on the character of the party and the state leadership. The opposite is the case: from the very beginning, all layers of the bureaucracy — from the local to the national level — have been directly and massively involved in this transformation process. In fact, the central leadership of the CPC were among the first who started off this bourgeoisification process.

The central core of the CPC leadership — the group around Deng that took power after Mao’s death in 1976 and the removal of the “Gang of Four” — was often called the “Eight Elders” or “Eight Immortals”, an allusion to popular Chinese mythology. Since then, these old leaders have died and new central leaders have emerged. The descendants of these top bureaucrats are often called “Princelings”, as they are known to utilise their family connections for their personal advantage.

Detailed research of the role of these “Immortals” and “Princelings” shows they were very successful in exploiting market reforms from early on and accumulated enormous wealth and major business stakes. Deng’s family is an example of this. His daughter, Deng Rong, and son, Deng Zhifang, were among the first to enter real estate, even before new rules in 1998 commercialised the mainland’s mass housing market. In 1994, Deng Rong became head of a development in Shenzhen, with apartments at that time valued at up to US$240,000 each. Deng’s son-in-law, Wu Jianchang, an executive in a state-owned metals company, went on to become vice minister of metallurgy and head of the Chinese Iron and Steel Company. He and another of Deng’s sons-in-law, Zhang Hong, ran companies that teamed up to buy a key producer of material for rare-earth magnets from General Motors Co.25

The family of another one of the “Eight Immortals”, former military leader Wang Zhen, has also been very successful in business. According to Bloomberg, two of the sons have interests in tourism in a valley in north-west China. Wang Jun was a senior leader of the Citic Group Corporation, a major state-owned enterprise, and China Poly Group, a commercial entity linked to the military. Later, he became active as a golf course developer in China, and his daughter, Jingjing, is the owner of a US$7 million house in Hong Kong.

These are just two very prominent examples but there are many more. In 2012, Bloomberg published an analysis of the wealth of the “Eight Immortals” network. According to this study, out of the 103 descendants of these top eight leaders, 43 had their own companies or significant stakes in others, and 26 had a role in major Chinese state-owned enterprises.

The generations of leaders who came after the “Eight Immortals” followed the same model. Jiang Mianheng, son of Jiang Zemin who was a key leader between 1989–2002, became a major player in the telecommunication sector. The family of Li Peng, another key leader in this period, have significant interests in the energy sector. The family of Zhu Rongji, Prime Minister in the years 1998-2003, are highly active in the finance sector. In the above-mentioned literature, one can find many more examples about the capitalist business interests of the top CPC leaders and their families.

According to a report issued by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences in 2008, the 2900 sons and daughters of high-level officials have a collective wealth of RMB 2 trillion. In Guangdong, all 12 major property companies were led by or had links with children of high-level officials — usually officials who were members of the local political Standing Committees, or deputies of the national or local people’s congresses, or the local Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.

Hong Kong’s Zheng Ming Magazine reported in 2016 that, according to data from the Research Offices of the State Council, the Central Committee’s Party School, and the Academy of Social Sciences, 78% of the second-generation Princelings and their families and 83% of the third-generation Princelings and families are in business. 80% of the second and third generations of CCP leaders have become billionaires through business.

In summary, the fusion of bureaucrats and capitalists are not isolated examples but rather the general model of how the bureaucracy became bourgeois in its social character, transforming from a Stalinist bureaucracy dominating a degenerated workers state into a Stalinist-capitalist bureaucracy at the top of a capitalist state.

Xi Jinping’s policy of disciplining ‘unruly’ and ‘corrupt’ elements

Since Xi Jinping took power in 2012, the Stalinist-capitalist regime has undergone a process of strengthening its bonapartist character. While in the decades since Mao’s death the central leadership was a rather small group of leaders (like the above-mentioned “Eight Immortals” around Deng), Xi is now the sole undisputed leader. Xi has abolished term limits for Presidents and Prime Ministers so that he can rule for as long as he wishes.

There has been a massive process of bourgeoisification of the party and state bureaucracy. Most elite families have connections to private or state-capitalist businesses. Naturally, this has enormous centrifugal consequences since every capitalist (or elite) family first looks out for their own fortunes. The result of this has been a series of corruption scandals, which have caused public outcry and discredited the ruling party.

A key feature of Xi’s regime has been his attempt to reestablish discipline among the ruling elite. This has resulted in repeated purges of unruly elements and several trials against corrupt bureaucrats. Supporters of the Chinese regime refer to these purges as evidence that Xi wants to contain or even suppress monopoly capitalists. This is, however, a completely mistaken interpretation. It is in the self-interest of the ruling class — which includes the top bureaucracy and monopoly capitalists — to ensure the regime’s stable existence. China’s society is riven with social tensions and lack of political trust in the regime. The only way for China’s bourgeoisie to contain explosive class contradictions and continue its global expansion is by strengthening the bonapartist regime that suppresses the popular classes. Such a policy includes public condemnation and persecution of “disloyal” or “too greedy” elements.

This is typical for bonapartist regimes and contains not an inch of anti-capitalism, as supporters of the Chinese regime claim. The regime in a given state represents the interests of the ruling class as a whole and not that of some individuals. This has been the case throughout the history of class societies. That is why kings and emperors (including in China) killed their rivals, including even those from their own family. Likewise, fascist regimes persecuted certain groups of capitalists, either because they belonged to a discriminated minority (for example Jews) or because they opposed the regime for political reasons.

We have seen similar developments in the last decades, usually in countries ruled by bonapartist regimes. Russian President Vladimir Putin has persecuted several “disloyal” oligarchs (for example Vladimir Gusinsky, Boris Berezovsky, Mikhail Khodorkovsky, etc) and there are regular arrests of corrupt top bureaucrats (in reality they are all corrupt, but those who fall out of political favour can easily have their luxury mansions replaced with a prison cell). Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia has a record of persecuting rivals in his extended family. In Thailand, the military dictatorship overthrew and persecuted billionaire Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra in 2006 and did the same against his sister in 2014 when she was Prime Minister.

In short, the persecution of individual capitalists or bureaucrats does not mean that a given bonapartist regime has become anti-capitalist. It only means that it has to discipline unruly elements of the ruling class to defend the collective interests of this class. Furthermore, such purges reflect ongoing faction struggles within the ruling class. It is impossible for the CPC regime to turn against the capitalist class because that would mean the party and state bureaucracy turning against itself and their families. No ruling class to date has ever suicided.

Conclusions

To summarise our main findings and some conclusions.

1. After suppressing the revolutionary workers and students uprising in June 1989 and observing the implosion of the Stalinist regimes in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe, the CPC leadership decided in the early 1990s to combine the capitalist transformation of the economy with maintaining the political superstructure; that is, the Stalinist dictatorship. By aiming at the abolition of the social foundation of the degenerated workers state (nationalisation of the key sectors of the economy, foreign trade monopoly, planning), the regime transformed its character from a Stalinist one that bureaucratically defended a post-capitalist mode of production to a pro-capitalist and bourgeois-restorationist one.
2. In the following years, the CPC leadership imposed a series of reforms, including the liberalisation of the economy, the privatisation of large sectors of the economy, restructuring of state-owned enterprises according to the capitalist law of value, dismissal of millions of workers from these enterprises, the abolition of the famous “iron rice bowl”, the opening of the country to foreign investment, etc. These reforms successfully established a capitalist economy.
3. Naturally, this process went hand-in-hand with the creation of a new capitalist class. This class, consisting of private entrepreneurs and leading managers of state-owned corporations, dominates China’s economy today. It has also expanded globally and plays a leading role in the world market. Related to this is the rise of China as an imperialist Great Power.
4. From the very beginning, the emergence of such a capitalist class was linked with the party and state bureaucracy. Many capitalists were former bureaucrats, and their businesses were often dependent on good relations with officials. As a result, a number of political guanxi networks emerged, from the national to the local level, in which capitalists and party and state bureaucrats closely work together for mutual benefits. The descendants of many bureaucrats became capitalists and many families of CPC bureaucrats integrate both party and state positions with business interests. Such a process of social bourgeoisification of the Stalinist bureaucracy has also been reflected in the increasing representation of entrepreneurs in leading state institutions. We therefore speak about a Stalinist-capitalist regime because both their political as well as their social function are capitalist.
5. We can characterise the party and state bureaucracy as a bourgeois bureaucracy not only in a political but in a social sense. It is bourgeois not only because it has implemented a policy of restoring capitalism and building China as an imperialist Great Power, but also because its social character has been transformed. In the period of the degenerated workers’ state, its rule was based on political power resting on a post-capitalist economy; it lived from the privileges it obtained from such a leadership position. After capitalism was restored, the bureaucracy increasingly went into business and the families of many bureaucrats live from a combination of material privileges derived from leading party and state position, and profits derived from their capitalist business stakes. This becomes evident from an analysis of the families of the “Immortals” and the careers of the numerous “Princelings”.

6. The Xi leadership, which took over in 2012, created and consolidated a more bonapartist regime and consolidated it. Xi succeeded in this by:

   * increasing state support for China’s capitalists,

   * integrating the capitalist’s desire for expansion on the world market with centralised geo-political projects (for example the “Belt & Road Initiative”),

   * strengthening repression against workers and youth struggles (for example various local strikes and peasant protests, the uprising in Hong Kong 2019/20, etc) as well as against domestic critics, and

   * disciplining “unruly” and “corrupt” elements among the capitalists and bureaucrats.

7. The policy of disciplining “unruly” and “too greedy” elements is in no way anti-capitalist. Rather, it reflects the policy of a capitalist-bonapartist regime that represents the interests of the ruling class as a whole and not that of some individuals.
8. The key task of the working class and the oppressed in China is to prepare for a social and political revolution; that is, a revolution that overthrows the bonapartist dictatorship and expropriates the capitalist class in order to open the road to an authentic socialist future based on workers’ democracy.

Michael Pröbsting is a socialist activist and writer. He is the editor of the website thecommunists.net where a version of this article first appeared.

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  See: Michael Pröbsting: Anti-Imperialism in the Age of Great Power Rivalry. The Factors behind the Accelerating Rivalry between the U.S., China, Russia, EU and Japan. A Critique of the Left’s Analysis and an Outline of the Marxist Perspective, RCIT Books, Vienna 2019, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/anti-imperialism-in-the-age-of-great-power-rivalry/; “Chinese Imperialism and the World Economy”, an essay published in the second edition of The Palgrave Encyclopedia of Imperialism and Anti-Imperialism (edited by Immanuel Ness and Zak Cope), Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, 2020, https://link.springer.com/referenceworkentry/10.1007%2F978-3-319-91206-6_179-1; "China: An Imperialist Power … Or Not Yet? A Theoretical Question with Very Practical Consequences! Continuing the Debate with Esteban Mercatante and the PTS/FT on China’s class character and consequences for the revolutionary strategy", 22 January 2022, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/china-imperialist-power-or-not-yet/; "China‘s transformation into an imperialist power. A study of the economic, political and military aspects of China as a Great Power" (2012), in: Revolutionary Communism No. 4, https://www.thecommunists.net/publications/revcom-1-10/#anker_4; "How is it possible that some Marxists still Doubt that China has Become Capitalist? An analysis of the capitalist character of China’s State-Owned Enterprises and its political consequences", 18 September 2020, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/pts-ft-and-chinese-imperialism-2/; "Unable to See the Wood for the Trees. Eclectic empiricism and the failure of the PTS/FT to recognize the imperialist character of China", 13 August 2020, https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/pts-ft-and-chinese-imperialism/; "China’s Emergence as an Imperialist Power"; in New Politics, Summer 2014 (Vol:XV-1, Whole #: 57). See more documents here: https://www.thecommunists.net/theory/china-russia-as-imperialist-powers/.

• 2

  The author of these lines has analysed the process of capitalist restoration in two essays which are mentioned in a previous footnote. (“China‘s transformation into an imperialist power” and “How is it possible that some Marxists still Doubt that China has Become Capitalist?”) Our analysis is based on the works elaborated by Peter Main: "China: ‘socialism’ with capitalist characteristics” (in: Trotskyist International No. 11, 1993); "China: Stalinists draw near their capitalist goal” (in: Trotskyist International No. 22, 1997); "Restoring capitalism in China” (2000), http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/restoring-capitalism-china; "China: From Mao to the market” (in: Fifth International, Vol. 2, No.4, 2007); China and International Perspectives” (2006), http://www.fifthinternational.org/content/china-and-international-perspectives.

• 3

  Thomas Vendryes: "Land Rights in Rural China since 1978: Reforms, Successes, and Shortcomings", in: China Perspectives, 2010/4, p. 87

• 4

  William A. Dando and James D. Schlichting: Soviet Agriculture Today: Insights, Analyses, and Commentary, University of North Dakota, March 1988, p. 101

• 5

  See: Workers Power: The Degenerated Revolution. The origins and nature of the Stalinist states, Chapter: The Chinese Revolution 1982, pp. 54-59.

• 6

  See LRCI: The death agony of Stalinism: The Crisis of the USSR and the Degenerate Workers’ States, 4 March 1990, https://fifthinternational.org/death-agony-stalinism-crisis-ussr-and-degenerate-workers-states/; Keith Harvey: "Russia’s fast track to ruin", 30 March 1992, https://fifthinternational.org/russias-fast-track-ruin/; "Russia: The death agony of a workers’ state", 30 June 1997, https://fifthinternational.org/russia-death-agony-workers-state/. See also: Michael Pröbsting: "Russia as a Great Imperialist Power. The formation of Russian Monopoly Capital and its Empire – A Reply to our Critics", 18 March 2014, in: Revolutionary Communism No. 21, http://www.thecommunists.net/theory/imperialist-russia/

• 7

  Li Yang, Filip Novokmet and Branko Milanovic: From workers to capitalists in less than two generations: A study of Chinese urban elite transformation between 1988 and 2013, July 2019, WID.world Working Paper N° 2019/10, World Inequality Lab, p. 6

• 8

  Li Yang, Filip Novokmet and Branko Milanovic: From workers to capitalists in less than two generations, p. 23. To be precisely, the authors of the study, to which we refer, define the elite as the top 5% of the urban population in terms of their per capita disposable (after-tax) income.

• 9

  Li Yang, Filip Novokmet and Branko Milanovic: From workers to capitalists in less than two generations, p. 21

• 10

  Facundo Alvaredo, Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez, Gabriel Zucman: World Inequality Report 2018, pp. 107-108

• 11

  Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E., Zucman, G. et al.: World Inequality Report 2022, World Inequality Lab., p. 191

• 12

  Ibid, p. 77

• 13

  Chancel, L., Piketty, T., Saez, E., Zucman, G. et al.: World Inequality Report 2022, World Inequality Lab, pp. 93-94

• 14

  Thomas Piketty, Li Yang, and Gabriel Zucman: "Capital Accumulation, Private Property, and Rising Inequality in China, 1978–2015", in: American Economic Review 2019, 109(7), p. 2489, https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.20170973

• 15

  Fortune Global 500, August 2023, https://fortune.com/ranking/global500/2023/ (the figures for the share is our calculation)

• 16

  Forbes: Forbes Billionaires 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2023/04/04/forbes-37th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-facts-and-figures-2023/?sh=23927e7477d7 

• 17

  Hurun Global Rich List 2024, 26.03.2024, https://www.hurun.net/en-US/Info/Detail?num=K851WM942LBU

• 18

  Jane Duckett: "Bureaucrats in Business, Chinese-Style: The Lessons of Market Reform and State Entrepreneurialism in the People's Republic of China", in: World Development Vol. 29, No. 1, p. 23

• 19

  Ibid, p. 25. See also: “The new companies which were carved out of the old state structure in this way were often manned with former bureaucrats who merely changed their bianzhi status from administrative bianzhi to the bianzhi of industrial enterprises.” (Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard: Politics and Business Group Formation in "China: The Party in Control?" in: The China Quarterly, No. 211, September 2012, p. 627)

• 20

  Christopher A. McNally, Hong Guo, and Guangwei Hu: Entrepreneurship and Political Guanxi Networks in China's Private Sector, East-West Center Working Papers, Politics, Governance, and Security Series, No. 19, August 2007, p. 3

• 21

  Ibid, pp. 4-5

• 22

  Jin Yanga, Jian Huanga, Yanhua Deng, Massimo Bordignon: "The rise of red private entrepreneurs in China: Policy shift, institutional settings and political connection", in: China Economic Review 61 (2020), pp. 6-7

• 23

  Ming Lu and Hui Pan: Government-Enterprise Connection. Entrepreneur and Private Enterprise Development in China, Peking University Press, Singapore 2016, p. 35

• 24

  Kjeld Erik Brødsgaard: "Politics and Business Group Formation in China: The Party in Control?" in: The China Quarterly, No. 211, September 2012, pp. 639-640

• 25

  The information about “Immortals” and “Princelings” are from the following sources: Kerry Brown: The New Emperors Power and the Princelings in China, I.B.Tauris & Co. Ltd, London 2014; Wing-Chung Ho: “The New ‘Comprador Class’: the re-emergence of bureaucratic capitalists in post-Deng China”, in: Journal of Contemporary China, 2013, Vol. 22, No. 83, pp. 812–827, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/10670564.2013.782128; Bloomberg: Heirs of Mao’s Comrades Rise as New Capitalist Nobility, 26 December 2012, https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2012-12-26/immortals-beget-china-capitalism-from-citic-to-godfather-of-golf; Lei's Real Talk: Xi Jinping’s tumultuous relations with the CCP princelings, 11 January 2024, https://leisrealtalk.com/xi-jinping-tumultuous-relations-with-princelings/