The Relevance of the Future of China to Australia

Ned K.

The changes in economic policy of the Chinese Communist Party since Deng Xiaoping became “paramount leader” of the Party and State after the death of Mao Zedong have had a significant impact on the Australian people.

Their policy changes enabled multinational corporations and even local capitalists operating in Australia to close down manufacturing plants and relocate them to China which was undergoing a very steep industrialization curve on the back of internal migration of peasants to the factories on the eastern coastal provinces of China.

This contributed to thousands of industrial workers being thrown out of what they thought were relatively secure jobs.

The Chinese Communist Party's change in policies also saw a massive increase in the export of consumer goods that were way below the price of Australian-made goods. These cheaper goods in K-MART, Target, Harvey Norman and countless other retail outlets are now a part of everyday life for the Australian people.

While cheap consumer goods flooded in, massive amounts of iron ore and other minerals left Australia for processing and utilizing in manufacturing in China. This breathed life in to the unpredictable and unstable capitalist economy of Australia and many other developed countries as well.

However overproduction and the drying up of internal migration in China from countryside for cheap labor in factories is contributing to a decline in the rate of growth of the Chinese economy. The drop in demand for iron ore by China is just one recent example of how the Chinese economy impacts on Australia. Thousands of mining industry jobs in Australia disappear. Governments at state and federal level get less money from the mining industry.

Some elements of big business in developed countries including Australia are worried about the decline in growth of the Chinese economy. They are putting forward their "advice" to the Chinese Communist Party through their mouthpieces like the Murdoch press.

For example in the Australian on 26 January 2015, an article in the Business Section by Peter Cai reports that China's productivity growth between 1999 and 2006 increased by 4.4. points and between 2007 and 2012 by 2.7 points. For the same periods the average global productivity growth was 1.3 and 0.5 respectively. Cai sees that the solution to China's economic slowdown is for the ruling Communist Party to eliminate investments in "non-economical projects" and privatization of state owned enterprises. Cai claims that this will increase return on assets from 5.4% to 10.4%, expanding GDP by 20% which is $1.9 trillion.

Implicit in the "advice" of the big business mouthpieces of the developed countries is that the Chinese Communist Party must continue down the road of cementing capitalism in China. Some commentators, such as Dr Kerry Brown from Nottingham University in the UK go further and argue that China must make fundamental change politically to reflect the expanding capitalist Chinese market economy and the competing class forces to which this has given rise.

Brown argues in "Friends And Enemies, The Past , The Present and The Future Of The Communist Party Of China" that China will move away from a one Party state and that it is the role of the Communist Party to achieve this as its best way of survival. The alternatives Brown puts are that China will see breakaway provinces and a splintering of the Peoples Republic of China or the rise of a reactionary nationalism.

The other alternative not contemplated by the spokespersons for developed capitalist country ruling classes is that the 76 million strong Communist Party Of China members restore the revolutionary path laid down by the leadership of Chairman Mao as the dominant trend within the Party and steer the Chinese people along the socialist path based on proletarian internationalism rather than global economic expansionism (commonly known as imperialism)!

Brown makes the point in her book that the Communist Party has been extraordinarily resilient and has overcome great difficulties internally and externally in the past.

The Australian people, through the Whitlam Government’s recognition of China in the early 1970's, have previously supported the revolutionary road taken by the Chinese people. They no doubt will do so again in the future.