Capitalism under the Red Banner: Seventy Years of the People's Republic of China
Seventy years ago, on 1 October 1949, the People's Republic of China was proclaimed by Mao. Here we reproduce an article which originally appeared in Communist Review 8 (January 1990), published by the ICT (or IBRP as it was then) in the aftermath of the suppression of the Tiananmen Square protests.
Class Struggle in China
The role of China in the imperialist pecking order has been covered many times on our website (leftcom.org). Here we deal with China’s evolution from a largely agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse which has also created the world’s largest working class – and what comes with that is, of course, simmering class conflict.
The Chinese revolution 1925-1927
A short account of the mass struggles in China from 1925 up to the Shanghai insurrection of 1927 and its crushing by the nationalist forces of Chiang Kai-shek. Chiang Kai-Shek's Kuomintang was supported by the USSR, and was in a united front with the Chinese Communist Party up until the point of the massacre.
The Other Cultural Revolution
An anarchist in love with Mao’s China - Herbert Read’s ‘letters from China’ ... Plus a list of dubious accounts of ‘successful’ revolutions, from Russia to Rojava
In the second year of the Great Leap Forward famine – in which perhaps 30 million died, anarchist Herbert Read visited China on an official delegation. Read’s acceptance of a knighthood for his literary achievements had already discredited him amongst many anarchists. But, at the time of his visit in 1959, he was still the most prominent anarchist in Britain and his published writings had considerable influence on, amongst others, Murray Bookchin.†
The mythology of the great proletarian cultural revolution and the Chinese ultra-left - Donald Parkinson
Whither China? - Sheng-wu-lien
The most famous text from 1968 by the Hunan Provincial Proletarian Revolutionary Great Alliance Committee (Sheng-wu-lien), the most influential of the ultra-left currents which developed during the Chinese Cultural Revolution. While it is politically problematic in some areas, for example despite being opposed to Mao's policies it does not escape the framework of Maoism, it does put forward a working class perspective.
Wild Lily - Wang Shih-wei
Written in 1942 at the Communist base camp in Yenan, Wang Shih-wei criticises the hierarchical structure and privilege of the nascent Maoist bureaucracy in the camp. The article makes clear that the hierarchy was well established long before the 'Communist' Party came to state power in China in 1949. Wang was the most piercing, outspoken and unrepentant of the several literary critics who wrote articles with similar themes. This sealed his fate; the Maoist regime later executed Wang Shih-wei.
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