On the 50th anniversary of the victory of China�s democratic revolution
October 1, 1999. The Chinese people and proletarian revolutionaries the world over celebrated the 50th anniversary of the great victory of the democratic revolution in China against imperialism, feudalism and bureaucrat capitalism. The national and social liberation of 600 million Chinese people comprising one-sixth of the world population has been the most important victory in the world proletarian revolution since the 1917 October Revolution in Russia. This earthshaking event left a gaping hole in the imperialists� hegemony in the East and brought the oppressed nations and peoples in the colonies and semicolonies solidly onto the path of anti-imperialist and socialist revolutions.
Inspired by the Chinese revolution and by the giant strides achieved by revolutionary movements around the world after the Second World War and spurred by the worsening crisis of imperialism, the armed revolution in the Philippines advanced vigorously. However, the very favorable internal and external conditions and the armed and mass strength accumulated by the Party rapidly dissipated with the worst Right and �Left� opportunist errors of the Lavas and Tarucs who never understood the line of two-stage revolution, the new democratic revolution experienced in China through protracted people�s war and its appropriateness to the Philippines based on the prevailing objective conditions.
For more or less 25 years after nationwide victory, the Chinese proletariat and people waged socialist revolution and construction led by the Communist Party of China and Comrade Mao Zedong. Through this, the victory of the revolution was defended and consolidated. Step by step�through self-reliance and painstaking struggle, faith in the revolutionary cause and daring to go against the tide�the old oppressed, backward and starving China was transformed into a free, developed and powerful nation. China achieved historical and hitherto unsurpassed advances in terms of national unity, people�s democracy, industrial and agricultural production, science and technology, education and culture, health and other fields.
The Communist Party of China and the Democratic Republic of China firmly fought imperialism, revisionism and all forms of reaction and served as a solid fortress of proletarian revolution and anti-imperialism. Despite the relentless imperialist encirclement and threats of armed assault, the Communist Party of China upheld and actively supported the struggle against imperialist aggression such as in Korea and Indochina. The People�s Republic of China also led in uniting and collectively mobilizing the countries of the Third World to oppose and fight colonialism and neocolonialism.
Led by Comrade Mao, the Communist Party of China upheld Marxism-Leninism and persevered along the path of socialist revolution and construction and unrelenting revolutionary transformation in the fields of politics and culture despite grave hardships and internal and external threats. It struggled against Kruschovite revisionism which prevailed in the Soviet Union after the death of Stalin, as well as against the attempts by the revisionist Soviet Union to sabotage, constrict and foment various disturbances in, China. It faced internal struggles which flared and intensified in connection with the heightened struggle against the revisionism of some key leaders of the Communist Party of China. These struggles were related to the major changes that resulted from waging socialist revolution and construction. In these struggles, which were much more complicated and difficult compared to the revolutionary struggle against the semicolonial and semifeudal system, Mao formulated the theory and line of continuing revolution in the period of proletarian dictatorship.
Mao launched and led the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in 1966 in order to mobilize the Party and Chinese people to expose and oppose revisionism and the revisionist bourgeois elements who penetrated the leadership of the Communist Party and upheld the capitalist line. For 10 years, it successfully mobilized the people in their hundreds of millions in order to defend the proletarian dictatorship against revisionism and continually raised the economic level of, and quality of life in, China. Despite being defeated in the end when the revisionist Deng clique prevailed after Mao�s death, the correctness of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the theory and line of continuing revolution in the period of proletarian dictatorship was thoroughly proven by the rapid deterioration and eventual dismantling of Soviet revisionism, as well as by the restoration of capitalism in China and its return to the morass of neocolonialism and oppression under the revisionist regime.
For the past 25 years, more or less, the revisionist Deng clique and its heir, the bureaucrat capitalist Jiang Zemin leadership, have remorselessly demolished the most important victories and main pillars of socialism in China.
Like many counteroffensives against the revolution, the antisocialist demolition campaign of the Deng clique waved the red flag to bring down the red flag. It shamelessly appropriated for itself and utilized the prestige of the Communist Party and Mao to proclaim | NOTWITHSTANDING THE TWISTS AND TURNS IT HAS GONE THROUGH, THE CHINESE REVOLUTION HAS TRANSFORMED, NOT ONLY CHINA�S HISTORY AND SOCIETY, BUT THAT OF THE WHOLE WORLD. |
its fraudulent �socialism with Chinese characteristics� which is nothing but bureaucratic corruption, bourgeois comprador exploitation and collaboration with imperialism.
The antisocialist demolition campaign immediately targeted the socialist agricultural system in order to encourage bourgeois and petty bourgeois production in agriculture, strengthen the social base for the return of capitalism and destroy the foundations, not only of socialist industrialization, but of any type of self-reliant industrialization.
The promise of rapid modernization and the individual freedom to enrich oneself were used to consolidate the bourgeoisie�s power, completely revoke socialist revolution and construction and fully embrace capitalism and neocolonialism. The accumulation of capital for heavy industry was repudiated in favor of the policy of relying on foreign capital and one-sidedly directing production towards light consumer goods and commodities for export.
Foreign monopoly capital has resumed with a vengeance its exploitation of labor power and scramble for dominance over the Chinese market. The dismantling of communes and cooperatives in the countryside immediately created an ocean of hundreds of millions of displaced unemployed peasants who sell their labor power at very cheap rates. Year after year, millions more join the reserve army of labor due to landgrabbing, land conversion and because of the basic inability of agriculture and industry to absorb and provide employment to new entrants to the labor force. One can find in China�s �export processing zones� conditions of labor that can be considered as among the worst in terms of wages, working hours, health and safety and union rights.
To boast of the �advantages� of capitalism, Western media often feature new capitalists and the profligate spending and excessive lifestyle of the handful who comprise the new affluent class. But their reports ignore the fact that Chinese society is wracked by a rapidly deepening socio-economic crisis and widespread discontent among the people that have led to armed and other popular uprisings by workers, peasants and other common folk.
The bloody suppression of the people�s protest in Tienanmen in 1989 only temporarily silenced the people�s expression of anger and condemnation of rampant corruption and degenerate officials and of the worsening conditions of the people while a few indulged in luxury. In wide areas of the countryside, conditions are rapidly ripening for reigniting the people�s armed resistance.
Although the worst effects of the crisis that slammed East Asia in 1997 did not hit China, it continues to be threatened with collapse. Its main exports, composed of low-technology cheap consumption products, are experiencing difficulties in competition because of the overproduction of such commodities in the global market, especially from backward neocolonial countries. There was big decline in exports in the first months of 1999 (almost 25% in the case of textiles) and this has resulted in an overall decline in production and of the entire economy.
The inrush of foreign investments which China relied on primarily in its export-oriented industrialization from 1992 to 1997 has stopped since 1998 and is not expected to resume in many years to come. The main centers of the import-export economy, especially Southern China, which was opened to the free influx of foreign monopoly capital, are suffering from overconstruction, overcapacity and growing incidents of bankruptcies. At the same time, in the central and northern provinces of China, industries are rotting and agricultural production is dwindling due to neglect by the central government.
Most of the state-owned corporations and banks are staggering due to the enormous amounts of bad debts that are estimated to be 30% of the banks� total exposure. To liven up the sluggish production and market, the government has embarked on deficit spending.
As time passes, China is sinking ever deeper into foreign indebtedness. With the complete degeneration of the Communist Party of China, the re-establishment of a revolutionary party and movement depends on the genuine proletarian revolutionaries outside of, and fighting, the ruling party. In the face of the further worsening global crisis of imperialism, of the intensifying crisis within China and intensifying oppression of Chinese workers and peasants, the need to restrengthen the proletarian revolutionary movement and struggle in China becomes ever important.
Notwithstanding the twists and turns it has gone through, the Chinese revolution has transformed, not only China�s history and society, but that of the whole world. And despite the big defeats suffered by the Chinese revolution, its most important legacy to the world proletarian revolution will never fade away�the theory and line of Maoism that raised Marxism- Leninism to a new and higher level now serve to illumine the proletarian revolutionaries the world over in the painstaking effort to restrengthen themselves and advance anew along the great path of socialist proletarian revolution.
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