Does China have an Internationalist Foreign Policy?

A number of observant commentators have raised questions about Peoples’ China’s Belt and Road Initiative and more broadly, the foreign policy of the PRC. 

Reliable left observers like Ann Garrison, writing in Black Agenda Report, have voiced concerns about Chinese investments in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, based on Siddharth Kara’s book, Cobalt Red, How the Blood of the Congo Powers Our Lives. Kara contends that Chinese are engaged in a brutal competition to acquire a raw material essential to battery manufacturing, participating in the highly exploitative practice of artisanal cobalt mining. 

More recently, Razan Shawamreh has challenged the PRC’s economic engagement with Israel. Writing in Middle East Eye. Shawamreh cites three different Chinese state-owned companies heavily invested in Israeli firms servicing or operating in illegal settlements-- ChemChina, Bright Foods, Fosum Group-- that own or have a majority stake in an Israeli corporation. She charges Peoples’ China of hypocritically publicly denouncing Israeli policies while quietly aiding the cause of Israeli settlers.

On May 22, Kim Petersen posted a thoughtful, well reasoned piece on Dissident Voice, entitled Palestine and the Conscience of China. Petersen persuasively lauds the many achievements of Peoples’ China. It is easy to forget the century of humiliation that this once proud, advanced society suffered at the hands of European imperialism. After 12 years of fighting Japanese invaders and enduring a bloody civil war costing tens of millions of casualties, China’s advance since-- under the leadership of the Communist Party of China-- has been truly remarkable. 

As Peoples’ China celebrates meeting its goal of becoming a “moderately prosperous” society, it is important to see how far it has come from 1949. When Western apologists for the market economy brag of the aggregate economic gains that global markets have brought to the developing world, they are largely talking about China (and, more recently, Vietnam and India). 

By any measure of citizen satisfaction with their government by international surveys, the PRC consistently ranks at or near the top.

At the same time, Petersen raises questions about the seeming inconsistency of the Chinese government’s vocal criticism of Israel’s genocidal policies in Gaza and Peoples’ China’s continuing economic engagement with Israel. The PRC accounts for over 20% of Israeli imports. 

Petersen quotes Professor T. P. Wilkinson: “Non-interference is China’s top principle — business comes first. If there is any morality it only applies in China.” And it is precisely China’s moral conscience that Petersen finds wanting.

Nick Corbishley, writing on June 6 in Naked Capitalism adds:

However, not everyone is trying — or even pretending — to distance themselves from Tel Aviv right now. The People’s Republic of China, for example, is actually seeking to strengthen its ties with Israel.

After initially siding with Palestine (and Hamas) following October 7, Beijing is now looking to rebuild ties with Israel. Just four days ago, as Israel’s Defence Forces were unleashing coordinated attacks on aid depots, China’s ambassador to Israel Xiao Junzheng discussed “deepening China-Israel economic and trade cooperation” with Israel’s Minister of Economy and Industry, Nir Barkat.

Still others ask why Peoples’ China, a self-described socialist country, has failed to replace the Soviet Union in guaranteeing the economic vitality of tiny socialist Cuba-- a country starved by a US blockade and harsh sanctions upon anyone defying that blockade. It is difficult to reconcile the PRC’s modest economic aid to Cuba with China’s $19 billion dollars of annual exports to proscribed Israel. 

China’s Foreign Policy in Retrospect

China’s foreign policy is a direct reflection of the political line of the Communist Party of China, a line changing often in the Party’s history. At the 10th National Congress (August, 1973) -- the last before Mao’s death -- Zhou Enlai delivered the main report. He affirmed that:

In the last fifty years our Party has gone through ten major struggles between the two lines… In the future, even after classes have disappeared… there will still be two-line struggles between the advanced and the backward and between the correct and the erroneous… there is the struggle between the socialist road and the capitalist road, there is the danger of capitalist restoration… The Tenth National Congress of the Communist Party of China (Documents), p. 16 [my emphasis]

Zhou explains that the opposition in the last two Congresses-- led by Liu Shaoqi and Lin Biao-- advocated that the main contradiction facing the party was “not the contradiction between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, but that ‘between the advanced socialist system and the backward productive forces of society’”. In short, the two lines continually challenging the Party, as explained at the tenth congress, were that of the “productionists” --those giving priority to the development of the productive forces-- and that of the class warriors-- those giving priority to political struggle. 

The CPC’s failure to simultaneously advance the productive forces and, at the same time, carry out a consistent, comprehensive class line accounts for its often inconsistent foreign policy.

Since the “opening” -- the Deng reforms, beginning in 1978-- the productionist line has held sway in the Communist Party of China.

From the time of the rebuilding of the Party based on the rural peasantry after the destruction of its urban working-class base in 1927, Mao had sided with the class warriors. 

Even in the era of the united front against Japanese aggression, Mao wrote in On New Democracy (1940) of the necessity of a cultural revolution, a focus on political and cultural struggle over other forms:

A cultural revolution is the ideological reflection of the political and economic revolution and is in their service. In China there is a united front in the cultural as in the political revolution… and the cultural campaign resulted in the outbreak of the December 8th Movement of the revolutionary youth in 1935. And the common result of both was the awakening of the people of the whole country… The most amazing thing of all was that the Kuomintang's cultural "encirclement and suppression" campaign failed completely in the Kuomintang areas as well, although the Communist Party was in an utterly defenceless position in all the cultural and educational institutions there. Why did this happen? Does it not give food for prolonged and deep thought? It was in the very midst of such campaigns of "encirclement and suppression" that Lu Hsun, who believed in communism, became the giant of China's cultural revolution… New-democratic culture is national. It opposes imperialist oppression and upholds the dignity and independence of the Chinese nation. It belongs to our own nation and bears our own national characteristics… [my emphasis]

The centrality of cultural revolution likely comes from the class base shaping the trajectory of Chinese Communism. Because the Kuomintang wiped out the CPC’s urban working-class centers in 1927, the Party became based in the rural peasantry, as Mao freely concedes in On New Democracy: 

This means that the Chinese revolution is essentially a peasant revolution.... Essentially, mass culture means raising the cultural level of the peasants… And essentially it is the peasants who provide everything that sustains the resistance to Japan and keeps us going. By "essentially" we mean basically, not ignoring the other sections of the people, as Stalin himself has explained. As every schoolboy knows, 80 per cent of China's population are peasants. So the peasant problem becomes the basic problem of the Chinese revolution and the strength of the peasants is the main strength of the Chinese revolution. In the Chinese population the workers rank second to the peasants in number…

On New Democracy suggests that Mao places primacy of place in the struggle for the support of the peasantry, a struggle that is cultural in form and national in scope. While Mao locates the Party’s battles within the world revolutionary process, he doesn’t see it as an immediate fight for socialism, but apart from it, for China’s national liberation:

This is a time … when the proletariat of the capitalist countries is preparing to overthrow capitalism and establish socialism, and when the proletariat, the peasantry, the intelligentsia and other sections of the petty bourgeoisie in China have become a mighty independent political force under the leadership of the Chinese Communist Party. Situated as we are in this day and age, should we not make the appraisal that the Chinese revolution has taken on still greater world significance? I think we should. The Chinese revolution has become a very important part of the world revolution… [my emphasis]

The separation between the proletariat's role in the capitalist countries and the Party’s “independent” role in shaping a multi-class force could not be clearer.

Absent from the 1940 statement of Mao’s vision is any endorsement of the Communist International’s broad principles of solidarity. Instead, the Party operated under the Three Principles of the People, the CPC’s revision of Sun-Yat Sen’s original Three Principles. On New Democracy defines them as:

Three Great Policies of alliance with Russia, co-operation with the Communist Party and assistance to the peasants and workers. Without each and every one of these Three Great Policies, the Three People's Principles become either false or incomplete in the new period…

Thus, “alliance with Russia” (USSR) became central to China’s foreign policy and expanded to alliance with other socialist countries. After liberation in 1949, the PRC practiced that line by aiding the Democratic Peoples’ Republic of Korea, especially in repelling the US and its allies as they invaded DPRK territory. The PRC military fought in the DPRK until the armistice of 1953. Over 183,000 Chinese died resisting the invasion of the North.

The CPC established ties with various liberation movements after the Korean War, with Peoples’ China offering military aid and training to many movements in Asia and Africa. At the same time, the PRC adopted Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence to lead foreign relations: respect for territory and sovereignty, non-aggression, non-interference in internal affairs, equality and cooperation for common benefit, and peaceful coexistence.

The Five Principles were strikingly similar to the natural-law doctrines adopted by the early mercantilist theorists of bourgeois international relations; they constituted an even less robust version of the eight points of the 1941 Atlantic Charter crafted by Roosevelt and Churchill. Nonetheless, they were enshrined in the constitution of Peoples’ China:

China pursues an independent foreign policy, observes the five principles of mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, mutual nonaggression, mutual noninterference in internal affairs, equality and mutual benefit, and peaceful coexistence, keeps to a path of peaceful development, follows a mutually beneficial strategy of opening up, works to develop diplomatic relations and economic and cultural exchanges with other countries, and promotes the building of a human community with a shared future. [my emphasis]

By the end of the 1950s, The CPC had rejected the first of the “three great policies”: the “alliance with Russia”. The PRC had embarked on a period of bitter conflict with the USSR, culminating with a split in the unity of the World Communist Movement. It is source of great irony that many of the charges the CPC made against the Soviets in the Mao era were and are features of China today that have drawn the same charges from some on the left: The Chinese attacked the Soviet policy of peaceful coexistence with the US, taunting the US as a paper tiger; they accused the Soviets of being “social-imperialist” intent on global hegemony; they claimed a restoration of capitalism in the Soviet Union; they accused the Soviet Party of revising Marxism-Leninism. All charges that resonate for some in current policies of Peoples’ China. 

It is difficult to reconcile the Five Principles with the PRC support for the US proxies in the former Portuguese African colonies. For over a decade, the PRC sided with South Africa, Israel, the US, and bogus liberation movements in Angola, Mozambique, and Guinea-Bissau, delivering weapons, training, and material support to surrogates fighting the internationally recognized freedom fighters. It was left for thousands of Cuban internationalists to give their lives to finally close the door on this ugly chapter and open the door to the fall of Apartheid.

It is difficult to reconcile the Five Principles with the PRC 1979 invasion of Vietnam, ostensibly in response to Democratic Vietnam’s overthrow of the Khmer Rouge-- an intervention, if principally motivated, that cannot be squared with the PRC’s vocal denunciation of the Warsaw alliance’s engagement in Czechoslovakia in 1968.  

It is difficult to reconcile the twists and turns of Peoples’ China’s foreign policies with its once radical denouncement of Soviet foreign policy as “social-imperialist.” The late, estimable Al Szymanski-- a scrupulous researcher-- met those charges in great detail (Soviet Socialism and Proletarian Internationalism, in The Soviet Union: Socialist or Social-Imperialist?, 1983), showing that Soviet “export of capital” outside of the socialist community was minimal, largely limited to establishing enterprises that expedited trade. Soviet assistance was limited almost entirely to countries outside of or escaping the tyranny of global markets. Soviet trade was minimal-- Szymanski argued that it was the world’s most self-sufficient system (no doubt often through forced isolation). Its importing of raw material was minimal: “In short the Soviet economy, unlike those of all Western imperialist countries… has no… need to subordinate less developed countries to obtain raw materials.”

Also, the Soviet Union frequently paid higher prices for imported goods than market prices. Citing Asha Datar, “[O]f the 12 leading export commodities studied…, six were consistently purchased by the USSR at higher than their world prices, three usually purchased at prices higher than those paid by the capitalist countries, and two purchased on a year to year basis sometimes above and sometimes below the world market price.”

Suffice it to say, the Soviet Union substantially subsidized trade with fraternal countries, especially within the socialist community (CMEA), Cuba receiving especially generous terms of exchange.

It would be interesting to compare the PRC’s current foreign policy with the internationalist standards set by the former Soviet Union.

Nonetheless, Peoples’ China-- since the victory of the productionist line under Deng’s leadership-- has largely been a force for stability in international relations. Over the last thirty or so years, the PRC has sought to maintain a peaceful stage for its trade-based economic expansion while the US and its capitalist allies have engaged in one bloody, imperialist adventure after another. Entry into the global market and acceptance into its market-based institutions has been well served by its Five Principles foreign policy.

But it has been naive to expect capitalist great powers to respect the high-minded, Enlightenment values of the Five Principles and simply stand by while the PRC rises to challenge their dominance of the world economy. Since Engels’ early writings, Marxists have understood that competition is the motor of the commodity-based economy. And since Lenin, Marxists have understood that competition between monopoly capitals and their hosts have spawned aggression and war. 

It is equally naive-- or disingenuous-- to equate the Five Principles with the proletarian internationalism, class solidarity that has been embraced by the international Communist movement throughout the twentieth century. From Comintern activity, to the internationalist sacrifices made for democratic Spain, to the generous support for liberation movements, and the aid to the people of Vietnam, militant, principled internationalism differs fundamentally from the neutrality embodied in the Five Principles. The Five Principles serve a world with no injustice, a world without class struggle, a world without aggression and war.

Indeed, the solidarity advocated in the PRC constitution-- “China consistently opposes imperialism, hegemonism and colonialism, works to strengthen its solidarity with the people of all other countries, supports oppressed peoples and other developing countries in their just struggles to win and safeguard their independence and develop their economies, and strives to safeguard world peace and promote the cause of human progress”-- is inconsistent with the neutrality and non-intervention of the Five Principles, in any realistic sense.

Where neutrality may have borne few negative consequences during the PRC’s isolation from global markets, China’s profound economic relations with virtually every country in the twenty-first century, do have consequences, consequences of enormous moral impact. 

Like other countries that engage economically or refrain from engaging economically (sanctions, tariffs, boycotts, blockades, etc.), the PRC must be judged by that engagement. 

With the daily slaughter of Gazan civilians, the brutal actions of Israel cannot be separated from its trading partners: China, the US, Germany, Italy, Turkiye, Russia, France, South Korea, India, and Spain, in descending order of dollar volume of exports to Israel.

And now with the brazen, unprovoked Israeli attack on its putative “friend” Iran, the neutrality of the Five Principles is even less defensible. The “win-win” strategy of many CPC leaders and their allies is a utopian dream that social justice cannot afford.

Greg Godels 

zzsblogml@gmail.com