“America’s Head Servant?”

An article in the recent issue of New Left Review (Nov-Dec) authored by Hung Ho-Fung demonstrates the fragility of the Chinese rise. The author singles out two major factors that fuelled this rise:

1) Stagnant industrial (especially manufacturing) wages for the last three decades;

2) An urban-biased approach to development leading to a “prolonged ‘limitless’ supply of labour”.

By bankrupting the rural economy, China has pumped up its urban industrial growth, trade surplus and financial capital.

This is how China lured global capital, even from other East Asian economies, which consequently put China at the helm of East Asian capitalism. But the same strategy has made China dependent on the ups and downs of the global (esp., American) economy. Cheap labour and rural bankruptcy, which constitute the basis of Chinese growth, cannot provide a viable domestic demand structure for the growth to sustain during a global recession. Further, the rise of the Coastal bourgeoisie and their cohorts within the Communist Party will not allow demand stimulus which brings about structural changes challenging their political-economic hegemony.

The “capitalist roaders” in China are fully entrenched within the State and Party, so “class struggle within the party” will not be enough, a new full-fledged Chinese Revolution is what is called for.