On the 50th anniversary of the founding of the People�s Republic of China
Central Committee
Communist Party of the Philippines
On the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the founding of
the People�s Republic of China, we celebrate the victory
of the Chinese people in the new-democratic revolution
against foreign monopoly capitalism, domestic feudalism and
bureaucrat capitalism.
Victory was won because the revolution was led by the
proletariat through the Communist Party of China, under
the guidance of Marxism-Leninism and under the great
leadership of Comrade Mao Zedong. In this regard, we
honor all the martyrs and heroes of the revolution, the cadres
and members of the Communist Party of China, the Red
commanders and fighters of the People�s Liberation Army and
the entire Chinese people of various nationalities for all their
efforts and sacrifices towards founding the People�s Republic of
China.
We likewise celebrate all the victories of the Chinese people
in socialist revolution and socialist construction and the Great
Proletarian Cultural Revolution since the founding of the People�s
Republic of China. At the same time, we condemn the overthrow
of the proletariat and the capitalist restoration that followed the
death of Comrade Mao and we decry the bitter consequences of
the betrayal of socialism.
1. The People�s Republic of China: 1949-76
The founding of the People�s Republic of China constituted a
great victory of the proletariat and people of the world. It signaled the
greatest social revolution in the second half of the 20th century, with
the new-democratic stage of the Chinese revolution passing on to the
socialist stage. A quarter of humanity liberated itself from the shackles
of imperialism and the local exploiting classes of big compradors and
landlords through a protracted people�s war under the leadership of
the revolutionary proletariat.
The nationwide seizure of political power meant the basic
completion of the new-democratic revolution and the end of
semicolonial and semifeudal conditions. The Chinese proletariat and
people proceeded to carry out socialist revolution and construction,
with due attention to the necessary periods of transition for
reconstruction and rehabilitation and for the basic socialist
transformation in the ownership of the means of production.
Even as the state took the form of the people�s democratic
dictatorship, on the basis of the worker-peasant alliance, the main
political factors of socialism were the class leadership of the proletariat
through the CPC in the state and society and the main component of
state power being the People�s Liberation Army (PLA) under the
command of the CPC. The class dictatorship of the proletariat was at
the core of the people�s democratic dictatorship.
The main economic factors of socialism were the state-owned
sector of the economy (as a result of the confiscation of industrial
enterprises, banks, major sources of raw materials and lines of
distribution from the imperialists and the bureaucrat bourgeoisie), the
cooperative enterprises, the establishment of new state-owned
industries and the development of agricultural cooperation in stages.
In leading the socialist revolution and construction, Comrade Mao
was ever mindful of class struggle as the key point and consistently
pursued the line of trusting and relying on the masses. On the eve of
the total victory of the Chinese revolution, he reiterated Lenin�s teaching
that socialism would take a whole historical epoch and that the class
struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie would continue
and intensify in various forms in socialist society.
Comrade Mao upheld the revolutionary principles of the
proletariat in the Communist Manifesto and the lessons learned from
the Paris Commune of 1871 and Soviet experience, from the period
of socialism to that of modern revisionism.
He learned from the teachings of Marx on the problems in socialist
society, such as the vestiges and adverse influence of the defeated
bourgeois class and the contradictions between the working class and
the peasantry, between town and country and between manual and
mental work. He also learned from Lenin�s teachings on the temporary
concessions to middle and petty producers and traders in a period of transition, petty commodity production
engendering the bourgeoisie, the
persistence of old ideas, customs and habits
and the influence of the international
bourgeoisie on the domestic bourgeoisie.
Under the leadership of Comrade
Mao, the Communist Party of China
exercised vigilance against corruption in the
period of reconstruction and rehabilitation.
After the basic socialist transformation of
the ownership of the means of production,
he called for the diminution and elimination
of the concessions to the patriotic
bourgeoisie and for availing of the masses�
revolutionary enthusiasm for accelerating
the building of socialism.
Self-reliantly, China succeeded in
building her industrial foundation,
collectivize agriculture, make a big
headway in agricultural mechanization and
provide for the basic needs of the toiling
masses of workers and peasants. The
basic framework for socialist construction
involved developing basic and heavy
industry as the leading factor, agriculture
as the economic base and light industry as
the bridging factor, for the purpose of
serving the immediate social needs of the
people and accumulate the capital
requirements for development.
In a series of five-year plans, China
made gigantic achievements in socialist
construction. The Great Leap Forward
was crucial in accelerating socialist development in an all-round way, building
industry in a balanced way and raising the
level of agricultural cooperation through
the people�s communes, and in
overcoming the difficulties posed by
imperialist embargo, Soviet revisionist
betrayal and natural calamities and the
sabotage by the domestic phony
communists, who were Bukharinites and
revisionists trying all they could to enlarge
the privileges of the bourgeoisie and the
rich peasants.
It was relatively easy to identify the
counterrevolutionaries who actively fought
the revolution, punish severely only the
very few who had incurred blood debts
and remained unrepentant. It was also
relatively easy to investigate, prosecute
and try the criminals during the
anticorruption campaign. But most difficult
for the proletarian revolutionaries to struggle against were persons in authority in the Party and the state
who opposed the revolutionary line of building socialism. These
revisionists were headed by Liu Shaochi and Deng Xiaoping.
These representatives of the bourgeoisie wished to prolong the
privileges of the bourgeoisie, feathered their own nests or built
independent kingdoms, espoused the consolidation or full development
of a bourgeois economy prior to socialism, pushed the mechanistic
notion that building socialism was merely a matter of developing the
productive forces and proclaimed the dying out of the class struggle.
The class struggle was continuous between the proletarian
revolutionaries and the bourgeois renegades within no less than the
Central Committee of the CPC. At the 8th Congress of the CPC,
Mao was ridiculed behind his back as a know-nothing in economics
by so-called experts. In fact, he was most outstanding in understanding
Marxist-Leninist political economy, the Chinese social and economic
situation and the lessons from the Soviet experience. He was subjected
to the most vicious attacks by the Rightists and by the covert revisionists
up to the time of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution.
The Party persons in authority taking the capitalist road used the
trickiest tactics in opposing Mao�s socialist line in the Great Leap
Forward. They pushed hard their Rightist line. When their Rightist line
was rebuffed, they whipped up an ultra-Left line to sabotage and discredit
the correct line and policy. When Mao called for adjustments, they
claimed credit for these in order to further attack him. He consistently
applied his materialist dialectical view of theory and practice advancing
wave upon wave.
He always fought back in a principled way, drawing from his
profound and comprehensive study and practice of Marxism-Leninism
and relying on the masses and on democratic debate and persuasion.
He called for a socialist education movement and identified the ranks
of revisionist bureaucrats as the most dangerous breeding ground of
the bourgeoisie. But the socialist education movement fell short of its
objectives because of sabotage and self-promotion by the revisionist
renegades.
Comrade Mao recognized that parts of the Communist Party
and the socialist state had been taken over by the bourgeoisie and that
there was an urgent need to wage class struggle against the capitalistroaders
and to ensure the consolidation and continuity of socialism.
Thus, he put forward the theory and practice of continuing revolution
under proletarian dictatorship through the Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution in order to combat revisionism, prevent the restoration of
capitalism and consolidate socialism.
The purpose of the cultural revolution was to uphold class struggle
as the key link in building socialism, promote the primacy of the socialist
relations over the forces of production and revolutionize the
superstructure in order to realize the cultural hegemony of the working
class and serve the socialist revolution and construction. In brief, grasp revolution and promote production.
The greatest achievement of Comrade
Mao is his theory and practice of continuing
revolution under proletarian dictatorship. It
grew out of his study of the teachings and
experience of his great communist
predecessors, from the rich revolutionary
history and circumstances of the Chinese
people and from his criticism and repudiation
of modern revisionism and the betrayal of
socialism by the Communist Party of the
Soviet Union.
The Great Proletarian Cultural
Revolution aroused, organized and
mobilized hundreds of millions of the
Chinese people. It was democracy on the
most extensive scale, unprecedented in the
entire history of mankind and was a process
whereby the workers and peasants
exercised their democratic right to uphold,
defend and advance socialism. It struck
against the bourgeois headquarters within
the Communist Party, brought the Party closer to the people, made the conduct and remuneration of cadres
in accordance with the standards set by the Paris Commune and
took away the remaining excessive privileges of the old bourgeoisie.
It gave revolutionary experience and training to the youth and
weakened the influence of the petty bourgeoisie as the biggest social
base of modern revisionism in socialist society. It sent the youth to
the workers and peasants in order to learn from them. It promoted
revolutionary education and created exemplary cultural works and
artistic productions. It trained health workers in large numbers to
serve the people, especially in the countryside.
It established revolutionary organs of political power combining
the representatives of the Party, the masses and the people�s army
and balancing the proportions of the young, middle-aged and elders.
It also created a new system of factory leadership which combined
the representatives of the Party, the workers and the experts who
were rotated to work on the bench. It sought to increase the effective
scope of the commune to the level of the county.
The GPCR succeeded in carrying out its objectives for 10
years, from 1966 to 1976. In its own period, it succeeded in
revolutionizing both the social base and the superstructure of Chinese
society. And it raised the level of industrial and agricultural production,
so much so that the revisionist renegades would raise the demagogic
and economistic clamor for enjoying the fruits of initial prosperity.
Without the cultural revolution, the proletarian revolutionary line of
Mao would have been earlier defeated by the bourgeois renegades.
While the cultural revolution was going on, some people could
not believe that persons like Liu Shaochi and Deng Xiaoping could
be revisionist renegades because of the high positions that they had
gained in the CPC. But the correctness of Mao in posing the problem
of revisionism and in conducting the cultural revolution is thoroughly
confirmed by the actual restoration of capitalism after his death.
The theory and practice of continuing revolution under proletarian
dictatorship is so far the highest level of development of Marxist-
Leninist theory and practice. Like the Paris Commune of 1871, the
cultural revolution succeeded only for a certain period but laid down
the basic principles and methods for further development to win greater
and more lasting victories in building and defending socialism until the
attainment of communism.
Certain errors undermined the cultural revolution and led to its
reversal after the death of Mao. We can mention some of the major
errors. Both the Right and ultra-Left opportunists whipped up
factionalism. The dictatorship of the proletariat was not exercised
effectively to permanently retire the Rightists and prevent them from
combining with the centrists against the Left. However, these errors
do not invalidate the theory and practice of continuing revolution under
the dictatorship of the proletariat.
Thanks to Comrade Mao, we have a lasting weapon to wield and
improve upon in order to defeat the revisionist renegades that will surely
arise in socialist societies that the workers and people will build in the
future. Right now, we have a clear answer to the taunts of the imperialists
and local reactionaries that socialism cannot solve and stop capitalist
restoration.
Under the leadership of Comrade Mao, the People�s Republic
of China adopted a socialist foreign policy. This was guided by the
overriding principle of proletarian internationalism. It distinguished and
correlated the revolutionary movements of the people and the
implementation of the five principles of peaceful coexistence in the
diplomatic relations of states. Comrade Mao led the genuine communist
and workers� parties in combating modern revisionism, including
Khrushchov�s general line of peaceful coexistence and Brezhnev�s blatant
social-imperialism.
China gave the highest importance to extending moral and material
support to the international communist and workers� movement and to
the wars of national liberation against imperialism in Asia, Africa and
Latin America. At great sacrifice, China acted as a powerful rear and
extended all the support it could to the people of Korea and Indochina
who waged wars of national liberation against US imperialism.
2. Capitalist Restoration: 1976- Present
As we celebrate the glorious achievements of the People�s Republic
of China up to 1976, we must condemn the overthrow of the proletariat
and the restoration of capitalism under the deceptive slogan of reforms
and the reintegration of China into the world capitalist system under the
equally deceptive slogan of opening up. The antisocialist
counterrevolution has gone on since 1976 and indubitably so since the
Third Plenum of the 10th CPC Central Committee in July 1977 under
the sway of the capitalist-roaders headed by Deng Xiaoping.
After seizing political power, the Chinese revisionists restored
capitalism in a faster and more brazen way than the Soviet revisionists
had done. The leading role of the proletariat in economic planning and
in the management of enterprises was removed. The 3-in-1 combination
of representatives of the Party, the workers and the experts comprising
factory leadership was broken up.
The bourgeoisified bureaucrats and experts became overlords.
They engaged in self-aggrandizing cost-and-profit accounting and
acquired the power to hire and fire workers and to buy and sell equipment
and products as they deemed profitable for their isolated units. Organs
and units of the Party and the people�s army were encouraged to own
and run enterprises for their narrow benefit and were thus corrupted
and converted to capitalism.
The old bourgeoisie received huge amounts of capital in various
ways and was allowed to set up private enterprises and borrow funds
from the state banks. Bureaucrats privatized rural industries at first under the legal fiction of management
lease. The people�s communes were
dismantled under the retrogressive slogan
of household responsibility system. This
meant the destruction of the base of the
self-reliant socialist economy and the
rapid emergence of the rich peasants at
the expense of the majority of the
peasants.
Under Deng�s big comprador
concept of modernization and bourgeois
liberalization of the economy, investment
and trade privileges have been extended
to both foreign and domestic big
bourgeoisie on the argument that the way
to develop China is to gain access to
foreign investments, technology and the
world capitalist market. Thus the
imperialists and domestic bourgeoisie
have Taiwanized the Chinese economy.
This has become subject to the policy dictates of foreign monopoly capitalism and such multilateral agencies
as the IMF, World Bank and WTO.
The export of low value-added semimanufactures to the imperialist
countries and the import of consumer goods from said countries have
gained such high importance that they influence the patterns of investment
and consumption in China as in any neocolony. The state-owned heavy
and basic industries have been undermined, subordinated to both the
private and bureaucrat capitalists and have become subject to
privatization and closure as in the former Soviet bloc countries.
The worst evils of pre-revolutionary China are back. Conspicuous
are the growing mass unemployment, coolie labor, inflation, arbitrary
levies, bureaucratic corruption, usury, vagabondage, drug pushing, street
begging, prostitution, buying and selling of women and children and
female infanticide. China is now a country that is extremely polarized
between exploiting and exploited classes. While only a few flaunt their
wealth, the overwhelming majority of the people suffer poverty and
misery. Social unrest is widespread.
The social stratification of pre-revolutionary China is back. The
big compradors, big landlords acting as merchant-usurers, and the
corrupt bureaucrats are riding roughshod over the people. An
intermediate section of middle and petty bourgeoisie and rich peasants
has arisen. More than 90% of the people are workers and peasants
who suffer the oppression and exploitation that make it possible for the imperialists to take out
superprofits and the domestic bourgeoisie to
enrich themselves �gloriously� ahead of the
people.
The seizure of political power by the
Chinese revisionists meant the overthrow of the
proletariat and the advent of the class dictatorship
of the bourgeoisie. But the new bourgeois rulers
of China occasionally call her �socialist� in order
to deceive the people. At other times, they blame socialism for the pain and suffering that they themselves have inflicted
on the people. Thus, they discredit the term socialism by their own
oppressive and exploitative policies, especially by the widely perceived
and intensely hated Guomintang-style bureaucrat capitalist corruption.
The ruling party, the Communist Party of China, is swamped with
political degenerates who are not at all communists but are corrupt
bureaucrats, businessmen and sheer careerists. It uses the name of the
communist party to legitimize the rule of the new bourgeoisie. It is
divorced from the masses and it acts against their rights and interests.
It fears and seeks to prevent the revolutionary mass movement. It acts
as a bureaucratic one-way top-down device for relaying orders.
The bourgeois liberalization of Chinese politics has steadily
developed. The only question that remains is when the bureaucrat
bourgeoisie itself would decide to cast away the signboards of socialism and the communist party, as in the Soviet
Union. Thus, the US policymakers have
cleverly advised the most rabid Chinese
anticommunists to avoid any violent
challenge to the Chinese authorities and
to allow the peaceful growth of capitalism.
Likewise, the authorities in Taiwan
are confident that the capitalist character
of the Chinese economy will inevitably
lead to the full Taiwanization of China�s
political system. With this, they
precondition reunification with China. The
Chinese authorities themselves know that
the multiplication of private capitalist firms
will eventually lead to the multiplication
of political organizations outside and
against the nominal and corrupt
communist party.
The capitalist restoration has
resulted in violent social turmoil in more
than 80 cities in 1989 and in many
peasant uprisings and workers� strikes in
the decade of the 90s. All these
overshadow all
the mass uprisings,
from the Hungarian
uprising of
1956 to the Polish
Solidarity strikes
of the �80s, that
foretold the end of
socialist pretenses in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union
in the 1989-91 period.
The social turmoil and violent events
of 1989 in China did not involve the
struggle between socialist order and those
who wished to put up a bourgeois
republic. It was a struggle between socialfascism
and the aggrieved masses
protesting against such manifestations of
capitalist restoration as mass
unemployment, inflation and corruption,
even if among the masses there were a
few petty bourgeois anticommunists who
clamored for bourgeois democracy.
The bourgeois rulers in China
continue to pay lip service to Marxism-
Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought,
although they have already cast this away.
They flaunt the Dengist theory and
practice of capitalist counterrevolution.
The bourgeois
liberalization of
China�s culture is
conspicuous in the
recrudescence of
pro-imperialist, big
bourgeois, petty
bourgeois and
Confucian feudal
ideas and values.
China has become
the biggest consumer of cultural junk from the US, Taiwan and
Hongkong.
The educational system, the mass
media and entertainment productions have
become thoroughly bourgeoisified.
Antisocialist cynicism and contempt for
the workers and peasants (especially for
their poverty and lack of formal
education) are being propagated. The
high costs of education have prevented a
high proportion of children and youth of
school age from getting formal education.
This is now a privilege of the few. So are
health care and decent housing.
If from 1949 onwards, quite a
number of Chinese students who studied
in the Soviet Union imported revisionist
ideas and would become the technocrats
and rulers of China, so do now a far bigger
number of students who have studied in
the US and other imperialist countries
bring into China antisocialist and proimperialist
ideas and become the
technocrats of unabashed capitalism.
The Chinese proletariat and people
themselves can take their destiny into their
own hands and solve their own problems.
They have the socialist legacy of Comrade
Mao. They can use Marxism-Leninism-Maoism to guide them on the road of revolution against those who
have restored capitalism. There is a high potential for a genuinely
revolutionary communist party in China today.
In the spirit of proletarian internationalism, the genuine communist
parties of the world must expose and condemn the bourgeoisie in China
for misappropriating and misusing the name of the communist party and
the term socialism to serve the malicious purpose of restoring capitalism and practicing social-fascism.
Real communists have suffered enough the historical
phenomenon of revisionists in power who destroy
socialism and yet continue to misrepresent capitalism
as socialism.
By criticizing and repudiating modern revisionism
and capitalist restoration in China, the Communist
Party of the Philippines has endured and prevailed
over the propaganda of the imperialists and
reactionaries that socialism is futile and hopeless, as
supposedly proven by the fall and disintegration of the ruling revisionist parties in the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe
and by the unabashed integration of China in the world capitalist system.
The Communist Party of the Philippines resolutely continues to
criticize and repudiate the restoration of capitalism in China and hopes
for the rise of a genuine communist party under the guidance of Marxism-
Leninism-Maoism. But the CPP is always open to political relations
with China, its patriotic and progressive organizations and the people
along the line of the international united front on issues raised against
imperialism.
China has a foreign policy of collaboration and contention with
US imperialism. On its part, the US also pursue | 
