New Chinese translation of ‘China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution’ available now!

The following is the new preface to the new Chinese translation of China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution released by Wellred Books in 2016. The entirety of the Chinese edition is available for free on marxist.com, which you can access here.

[Get your copy of the original English version of China: From Permanent Revolution to Counter-Revolution here]

The present work was first published in February 2016. It provides a Marxist account of the history of China in the modern era, which has now become one of the most important countries from the standpoint of world revolution. The scope of the original work is vast, beginning from the end of the Qing Dynasty in the early 20th century and continuing all the way to Xi Jinping’s first term as the country’s supreme leader.

Throughout this historical overview, the book explains how China finally managed to throw off the shackles of backwardness, landlordism and imperialist domination through the Chinese Revolution of 1949, which was not achieved by the initiative of the national bourgeoisie, but through a winding and contradictory process that produced the state of the People’s Republic of China, led by a Communist Party that expropriated capitalism and established a nationalised planned economy.

The process by which this was achieved confirms Marxist theory, and above all – albeit in a distorted manner – Leon Trotsky’s theory of Permanent Revolution, which stated that the problems of the colonial peoples could not be solved within the narrow confines of capitalism. The Chinese Revolution liberated millions of toilers from the exploitation and subjugation of landlordism, capitalism and imperialism on a historic scale. That is why Marxists hold this revolution to be the second most important event in human history after the Russian Revolution of 1917.

However, Marxists also understand that the state that was produced by this revolution was modelled not after the workers’ democracy seen in early Soviet Russia under the leadership of Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky, but after the deeply bureaucratised regime of Joseph Stalin, where the working class was robbed of its political power by a self-interested caste of state bureaucrats who commanded the planned economy.

This book outlines how, despite the original intentions of the leaders of the revolution, above all Mao Zedong, who envisioned a coalition government with the “patriotic, progressive” elements of the Chinese national bourgeoisie, events quickly compelled the new regime to overthrow capitalism and institute measures that put in place a planned economy, to ensure the revolution’s survival. This was concrete proof that the Chinese Revolution could not limit itself to the bourgeois democratic ‘phase’. If the regime had not moved in the direction of expropriating capitalism, then the alternative would have been the return to a regime similar to that of Chiang Kai-shek, rather than the development of bourgeois democracy.

In the process, however, for various subjective and objective reasons that this book details, the People’s Republic of China followed the path of the USSR under Stalin, with all its strengths and important deficiencies. But the achievement of a nationalised planned economy, a fundamental task to transition towards socialism, in defence of a revolutionary regime, in and of itself validated Trotsky’s theory of the Permanent Revolution, hence the title of the book.

The planned economy freed millions from the shackles of centuries of landlord servitude. It brought forth industrialisation on a scale unseen before the revolution and dramatically eliminated unemployment, illiteracy, and backwardness throughout a continent-sized country. It broke all the chains that were holding back China from entering into the modern era. It threw off decades of humiliation and imperialist domination and allowed the country, which had always been pregnant with enormous potential, to stand up as a major force on the world stage.

The achievements of the 1949 Chinese Revolution were in turn a major stimulus in the wave of revolutions seen around the world after the end of World War II / Image: public domain

The achievements of the 1949 Chinese Revolution were in turn a major stimulus in the wave of revolutions seen around the world after the end of World War II, and inspired generations of revolutionaries who were also living under imperialist domination to throw themselves into the struggle to liberate their nations from capitalism.

However, the leadership around Mao and the CCP inherited two major theoretical weaknesses from the Stalinist USSR. One was the perspective of ‘socialism in one country’, which in practice neglected the task of actively preparing a world party for socialist revolution – a genuine communist international – to spread international revolution into the advanced capitalist countries, to end capitalism on a world scale. The other – which flowed from the rise of a bureaucracy standing above the working class – was the lack of workers’ democracy and the subsequent subsuming of the workers’ state under the domination of a single party.

In his seminal work The Revolution Betrayed written in 1936, Trotsky explained that the socialist transformation of society, although it can start in one country, can only be truly consolidated when socialism replaces capitalism as the dominant world system. If the political leadership of a workers’ state continued to limit the revolution within its national borders, it would subject the revolution to constant counter-revolutionary pressures from capitalism. And if the workers’ state continued to prevent the workers from democratically running society from the bottom up, then the inefficiencies, corruption, and subjective flaws of a small handful of bureaucrats would at some point become an absolute fetter to the development of the planned economy, and at that point risk the weakening and destruction of the revolution.

Importantly, Trotsky offered three potential outcomes for the USSR. One was that the workers would stage a political revolution to overthrow the bureaucratic dictatorship, thereby ending the contradiction between nationalist, bureaucratic planning and revitalising the planned economy and renewing the world revolution. The second was that such a political revolution might not happen, and the state – under the weight of bureaucratic defects – would ultimately succumb to a counter-revolution that would restore capitalism. The third perspective was that, within the bureaucracy itself, a growing layer would come to see restoring capitalism as a means to escape from the contradictions of a bureaucratised planned economy, while maintaining their own interests and privileges.

Decades later, Trotsky’s Marxist prognosis would be confirmed by history. The regimes of the USSR and Eastern Europe first witnessed a drastic slowdown in economic growth, and then finally suffered one collapse after another. To this day, the masses there continue to suffer the consequences of the restoration of capitalism.

China, also plagued by the problems of bureaucracy in its planned economy, which are outlined in this book, followed the third prognosis of Trotsky, where the CCP regime under Deng Xiaoping’s leadership inaugurated the ‘Reform and Opening Up’ policy that eventually led to the dismantling of the planned economy and all its gains, while the CCP has continued to maintain a firm grip over the state apparatus.

Although the party-state still controls many major state-owned enterprises and banks, the economy is no longer driven by an economic plan, but by the core features of capitalism: the anarchic market, the profit-seeking motive, and private ownership of the means of production.

The present text analyses the above process in detail, which includes major events that transpired during the time of Mao Zedong’s leadership, such as the Korean War, the Great Leap Forward, the Sino-Soviet Split and the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution. It also covers how, subsequently, Deng Xiaoping’s attempt to resolve the internal contradictions of Mao’s time ended up restoring capitalism. The fact that the counter-revolution did not take place as one single act, with the overthrow of the bureaucracy, but was achieved under the control of the bureaucracy itself, gradually through a series of successive steps, has confused some on the left. Nonetheless, this is what happened. Marxists should always take account of the real living process, and not seek to superimpose on reality one’s own preconceived view of how ‘things should be’.

The book then traces the development of capitalism within the People’s Republic of China up to almost the end of Xi Jinping’s first term, who took up leadership in 2012. Today’s CCP regime likes to point to the dramatic economic development after their turn towards capitalism (or what they call the “socialist market economy” or “socialism with Chinese characteristics”) as proof of their success.

The truth is concrete, however, and this book explains how such development was fueled mainly by China’s integration into the world capitalist economy, which gave western capitalists, who were in dire need of new investment opportunities, a new and profitable field of investment, thereby prolonging the life of capitalism as a world system for a period.

This book also shows that, although a period of rapid economic growth appeared to paper over contradictions within society, the typical capitalist contradictions such as inequality, unemployment, suppression of workers’ interests and above all overproduction, were nevertheless growing in the background, which in turn has led to the rise of class struggle under a one-party, totalitarian capitalist regime.

China has developed economically from having a deeply symbiotic relationship with western investments, into being a primary competitor with the West for world market share and influence / Image: UN Geneva, Flickr

Since its publication eight years ago, there have been some qualitative changes in China’s development which need highlighting, and which are of decisive significance for the perspectives for world revolution today. Even though many of these processes were in an incipient stage at the time this book was published, they have since developed into important elements that have changed China’s position. These changes are what this new forward aims to deal with.

One key element is the fact that China has developed economically from having a deeply symbiotic relationship with western investments, into being a primary competitor with the West for world market share and influence. While its economy remains heavily dependent on the export of commodities, China has gone from being primarily an importer of foreign direct investment (FDI) to the third largest exporter of FDI in the world.

According to fDi Markets, a subsidiary of the Financial Times, as of 2023, China’s outward investment reached a new high of $162.7 billion USD, and the ratio between its outbound investment and inbound investment is 82.1 percent to 17.8 percent. While a significant portion of Chinese investments go into Southeast Asia, they have reached well beyond its borders into all continents of the world, with investments towards the Middle East and Latin America growing particularly fast in 2023.

This development is compelled by the growing strength of China’s domestic capital as well as western capital’s exit from China. FDI Intelligence summarised the change in the following manner:

“China’s FDI profile thus appears to be undergoing a significant shift, from capital importer to capital exporter. For decades, China’s economic growth strategy relied heavily on attracting inward FDI to leverage foreign capital and technology. As the Chinese economy evolves and develops its own national champions, its need for FDI – particularly in manufacturing – eases down. Meanwhile, attracting FDI into high-added-value services, which has been prioritised by the government, is proving harder than expected.”

At the same time, the Chinese state coordinated with private Chinese enterprises and recipient governments of their investments to build enormous infrastructure projects. This is what is known as the Belt and Road programme.

Many of these investments provided domestic infrastructure for the recipient countries in exchange for the latter opening up to Chinese investments in other areas of the economy.

Laos, for example, was gifted by the Chinese with a high-speed railroad that would connect it to China and the rest of Southeast Asia. In exchange, Laos would allow Boten, a small town near the border with China and one of the stops of the high-speed rail, to be incorporated into a ‘special cooperation zone’ where Chinese investors are allowed to own 100 percent of businesses and properties.

Other projects have a transnational character that aim to streamline the export of goods from within China to the rest of the world market. In Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Peru, China has signed deals to fund the construction of megaports that would become alternatives to the existing sea trading routes, with the provision that these ports and their adjacent areas be placed under direct Chinese management. The above-mentioned high-speed rail in Laos was part of a greater plan for Southeast Asia which would connect Kunming in China to Singapore, a major regional port. These projects are part of a plan to create strong competitive pressure on trade routes such as the Malacca Strait that is under greater western influence.

Along with this was the move towards high-tech industries and the creation of gargantuan private tech companies that now rival those in the West. This was unseen until the latter half of the 2010s, and meant a significant move towards independence from the technology of the West.

China became the biggest producer of electric vehicles (EVs) in the world in 2022, when it produced 64 percent of the world’s EVs. It has made significant progress in domestically-produced drone technologies, artificial intelligence, microchip manufacturing, smartphone operating systems and more. These efforts are all encouraged by state policy with subsidies to private enterprises, with the aim of ending China’s dependence on western-supplied components and competing with them on the world market.

China became the biggest producer of electric vehicles (EVs) in the world in 2022, when it produced 64 percent of the world’s EVs / Image: Taotop, Wikimedia Commons

All of these developments within the Chinese capitalist economy – the rise of huge monopolies, the dominance of finance capital, and the intensifying drive to export capital to gain a bigger share of the world market – point to the classic definition of imperialism that Lenin outlined in his work Imperialism: the Highest Stage of Capitalism.

A clash with US imperialism, the ageing dominant imperialist power in the world, was inevitably being prepared. It indeed burst to the fore through the election of Donald Trump in 2016. Although the US had already previously used underhand manoeuvers against China, the Trump administration rapidly escalated this into an open trade war. The hitherto superficial, cordial and collaborative relations between the two powers were no more. Instead, a new and intensifying rivalry between the US and China emerged.

This rivalry in turn became a defining axis around which a new epoch of world relations was coming into being. As US imperialism entered into relative but notable decline, its desperate attempts to cling onto its dominance compelled it to adopt adventurist policies to deter all of its perceived adversaries, above all China.

The Biden administration that succeeded the first Trump presidency not only did not ease relations, but in many ways escalated the conflict beyond the economic field, with ever more attempts to pressure China on the military front by cynically using the question of Taiwan. The war in Ukraine, which was largely provoked by the US and NATO, was also an attempt to deter China through defeating its ally Russia, a message that was not lost on Beijing.

The Biden administration’s design decisively backfired, however. The US’s behaviour not only failed to defeat Russia, but actually strengthened it as a military power. It also weakened its traditional allies in Europe economically – especially Germany – and contributed to a growing rift within the EU. It also pushed all its adversaries in different regions closer together, especially China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea. Among these, China is the natural candidate for leader of a new bloc. Indeed, BRICS, with China at its head, is beginning to expand its membership in an attempt to challenge the world capitalist order hitherto dominated by western imperialist countries. It remains a coalition of countries with different interests – some of them still allied to US imperialism, such as India for example – but nonetheless it reflects the changing balance of forces between the major powers

In addition to this, the new epoch of open trade wars inaugurated by the first Trump term also ceded the US’s role as the world’s leading proponent of free trade to China. This fits the conditions of each party’s capitalist development. The US is a senile force desperate to try anything to stem its inevitable relative decline in the world. China is still a burgeoning newcomer to imperialism that is desperately seeking ways to export its overproduced commodities and capital.

Thus unlike what the ‘left’ apologists for China around the world tend to claim, the character of the present conflict between the US and China is not one between two different social systems. The US confronts China not as a champion of capitalism desperate to stamp out a burgeoning new socialist society that could overthrow it, with all its historical progressiveness and vitality, but as a rival in the same game of poker. Both are trying to gain the upper hand, with the US losing and China gaining, yet both are committed to staying in the game. But the casino is on fire. As world capitalism sinks in terminal decline, the destiny of Chinese capitalism is tied to it.

The account presented in this book, which covers developments up to 2015, allows one to clearly see that the furious developments in China fueled by foreign investments were already showing classical signs of a coming crisis of overproduction. This in turn produced all the same symptoms seen in the West: the gaping abyss between rich and poor, the rising cost of living that wages never seem to catch up with, the ever-wilder cycle that swings between booms and busts, the accelerating growth of public and private debt, and the mother of all capitalist conundrums – economic slowdown. This is now a pained refrain of all Chinese economic commentators: “insufficient domestic demand.”

Along with this, innumerable social contradictions manifested themselves within Chinese society. Responsibility for these fell on the shoulders of the sole player in the political sphere that could attempt to mitigate them: the CCP party-state. Unlike bourgeois democracies, which can confuse and temporarily assuage class anger from below through the election of different parties or coalitions – all of which fundamentally defend capitalism – class anger can only be channelled in one direction in China, and that is towards the Communist Party of China itself.

The new epoch of open trade wars inaugurated by the first Trump term also ceded the US’s role as the world’s leading proponent of free trade to China / Image: GovernmentZA, Flickr

The Deng generation’s attempt to achieve the best of all worlds, i.e. to restore capitalism without upending the political dictatorship of the Party, went from being a solution for the bureaucracy to a serious problem for them. The CCP restored capitalism by promising that as long as the party retained political power there would be everlasting growth in the economy and in the standard of living. The regime is now confronted with the contrary, experienced by hundreds of millions of workers.

This howling contradiction and the growing ferment from within the ranks of society in turn explains the evolution of the Xi Jinping regime.

When he took office as successor to the Hu Jintao leadership, Xi was a scarcely known figure at home and abroad. As one of the children of the grandees of the revolutionary era, Xi’s path towards the top was buttressed more by his pedigree than his actual achievements in various levels of office.

Xi is unlike Jiang Zemin, who comfortably spoke English and Russian to foreign press interlopers, in order to present China in a certain light for its own interests. Xi is also unlike Hu Jintao, who felt at ease appearing among the masses, especially in times of natural disasters, with a candid, compassionate facade. Xi is endowed with neither competence, charisma nor affability. How, therefore, did he become the man widely considered to be the most powerful CCP leader since Mao Zedong himself?

The answer lies in his specific ability to see in advance the dangers facing the whole bureaucracy. In observing the mass mobilisations of the Arab Spring in 2011, he could see how things might pan out in China in a moment of severe crisis. He therefore concluded that a preemptive tightening of control was necessary for the whole regime to survive.

Xi was one of the first notable officials to sound the alarm that the fate of the dictators of the Middle East could be replicated in China if something was not done to alter the image of the CCP as a regime deeply eroded by corruption. This anti-corruption campaign became his signature policy, to the extent that he broke a long-established rule by imprisoning Zhou Yongkang, a former top leader hitherto considered untouchable.

This was not done to genuinely quell corruption, as all layers of the bureaucracy now draw their privileges not from a planned economy, but from capitalism. It was done to hoodwink the working class, whose anger was approaching a dangerous fever pitch.

Then, there was the problem of squaring the circle of an economy which by now had become completely dominated by the forces of the anarchic market, as well as the powerful bourgeoisie that emerged from it. These bourgeois elements had essentially been nurtured by the bureaucracy, but since it is the nature of the bourgeois class naturally to seek out greater profits, this in turn led some among them to adopt measures that could destabilise the social situation within the country.

What happened to Ma was a typical example of the CCP state under Xi’s leadership / Image: World Economic Forum, Flickr

None exemplified this more than Jack Ma, who used to be a close ally of Xi when the latter was the governor of Zhejiang Province. Jack Ma was a homegrown bourgeois who went from being an English teacher to a billionaire owner of the Alibaba conglomerate and a CCP member.

When Ma’s business empire spread into the finance sector, he attempted to introduce a scheme that would grant cheap loans to millions of people at a speed unheard of in the West, which risked producing a serious bubble that could threaten the stability of the economy. This was done under the Ant Group. The state attempted to intervene to slow down Ma’s plans, and he later publicly complained about “excessive state intervention,” for which he was eventually removed from ownership of the enterprise by the state, with the company placed under heavy state scrutiny.

What happened to Ma was a typical example of the CCP state under Xi’s leadership. His strategy is to ramp up the supervision of the biggest enterprises, preventing them from engaging in the excesses seen in the West that could trigger economic crises and provoke social anger. At the same time, Xi wishes to refrain from outright control of the economy and defend the capitalist market economy at all costs. To do this, a strengthening of the party-state bureaucracy was necessary. This is what Xi called for, which won him support from a decisive portion of the bureaucracy, which allowed him to concentrate more power in his own hands.

The bureaucracy under Xi believes that, through the wise and powerful stewardship of the state, a capitalist system can be navigated away from all its fundamental contradictions. They believe that workers’ revolts can be put down with heavy repressive measures, while individual capitalists that risk destabilising the system as a whole can be kept in check by the state. The idea is to maintain a form of capitalism without crises.

This, however, is a pipedream. You cannot have capitalism without its cyclical crises, which in turn prepare a serious downturn at some point. The laws of capitalism do not change simply because one has a powerful and entrenched bureaucracy in power. What China produces must be sold on the world market. China’s development of an advanced and competitive productive apparatus inevitably leads to greater and sharper conflicts with the other major capitalist powers, in particular with the United States.

China needs to conquer larger shares of new markets globally if it is to maintain a high rate of economic development. The country’s development has produced a constant migration to the cities, something we have seen in all countries which go through the process of industrialisation and urbanisation. This requires the creation of tens of millions of jobs each year, in order to maintain social stability. The slowdown of the world economy, combined with the growing tendency towards protectionism on a global scale, means China will face growing internal instability.

As long as the Xi regime could guarantee growth and improved living standards, social cohesion could be maintained. But once this is no longer the case, unemployment begins to appear, and this is already evident among the youth, where the rate of unemployment went above 20 percent as of 2023. Inflation is still low compared to most of China’s competitors, but it is slowly creeping upwards. While wages have still been growing, the rate of growth has started to slow down. There is also the important phenomenon of unpaid wages, which has already led to protests by workers. Nominal wages may go up, but if the workers are not paid, where is the material benefit?

We can see where this is heading. At some point, the pressure to hold down wages will increase as Chinese capitalism tries to maintain its competitive edge. Combined with this we will eventually see the effects of the massive accumulation of debt within the Chinese economy. In December 2023 China's national debt had reached the figure of $4,230 billion. According to the figures of the IMF produced in 2025, China's government debt to GDP ratio now stands at over 90 percent, an all-time high, while the average from 1995 to 2023 was just under half of that. In three years this is projected to exceed 100 percent. At some point, this level of debt will lead to rising inflation.

Everything outlined here points to an inevitable eruption of class struggle at some point, which will destabilise the regime. The potential for mass protests and mobilisations was expressed in the huge movement that forced the regime to end the COVID-19 lockdown. Such was the pressure from below that the regime was forced to loosen up from above, for fear of unleashing an even wider and uncontrollable wave of mass protests. This provided a glimpse of what the workers and youth of China are capable of and it was a warning to the people at the top of the regime.

This explains why Xi Jinping has concentrated powers in his hands. It is the classic rise of a Bonapartist who is attempting to run China in the general interests of the capitalist system. This can involve making some concessions to the working class, such as forcing companies to pay back wages, while at the same time striking blows against individual capitalists whose actions risk endangering the interests of the system as a whole, as the case of Jack Ma quoted above exemplifies.

This also explains the regime’s attempts to direct the attention of the masses outwards, raising the threat of attack from other powers, in particular the United States. The arrival of Trump on the scene will of course facilitate this for the regime. Trump has serious plans to squeeze China in the world market. This started some years ago when he was first in office, was continued under Biden, and we can expect this policy to be massively ramped up during Trump’s second term.

China’s expansionist policy is highlighted by the growing tensions over Taiwan / Image: Kremlin.ru, Wikimedia Commons

China has become a rising imperialist power that has been spreading its influence around the world with a huge export of capital, as we have explained above. But with economic might, at a certain point, military might becomes necessary. In fact, China, with an estimated $296 billion in military spending in 2023 – ten times what it was 25 years ago – was second only to the United States with its $916 billion.

China’s expansionist policy is highlighted by the growing tensions over Taiwan. On the one hand this reflects the regime’s real desire to expand and strengthen its spheres of influence, and Taiwan is seen by it as being an integral part of China. On the other hand, it is a useful diversion from its domestic problems. When a ruling class is facing growing internal, economic and social problems, which inevitably lead to tensions between the classes, to be able to focus on the ‘external threat’ is a means of whipping up nationalist sentiment.

The fact that Xi Jinping has been paying some attention to how western sanctions have impacted the Russian economy after the Ukraine war broke out is an indication of China’s determination to keep Taiwan within its sphere of influence. China has more than $3.3 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, which are the largest in the world. They saw how the US, together with its allies, were able to freeze Russian assets abroad. To avoid such a scenario in the case of a serious crisis over Taiwan, the regime has been looking at how to diversify its reserves held abroad.

However, whatever the regime may do to strengthen its position and build defences against such sanctions, it would not avoid the general impact of these on the world economy as a whole. The kind of sanctions the US and its western allies would impose on China in such a scenario would mark the beginning of a generalised trade war, which would push the whole world economy into a deep depression. This in turn would massively impact the Chinese economy. China needs to increase its exports to maintain growth and stability. Such a scenario would achieve the very opposite.

The reason why China is so dependent on exports is because, like all capitalist economies, it would inevitably run up against the crisis of overproduction, which is visible everywhere. Together with this we have the accumulated effects of all the policies that have been applied to stimulate the Chinese economy, namely Keynesian state spending. This has produced another effect: the accumulation of debt.

All this is leading to the inevitable slowdown of the Chinese economy. Officially, annual growth stands at around 5 percent at the present time, which is already significantly lower than the glory days when we saw 13 and 14 percent annual growth. It was always an accepted idea that if China could maintain at least 7-8 percent annual growth rates, it would be able to maintain internal stability, creating around 20 million new jobs each year. That process has ended, but growth is destined to slow even further, below 4-5 percent, down to 2-3 percent, and at some stage we could see a real economic recession.

This is all contributing to an inevitable change in consciousness, one where hundreds of millions of Chinese workers and youth begin to see that under capitalism they have no future. This explains the desperate attempts of the Xi regime to maintain stability. It does this in two ways. On the one hand it seeks ways of expanding its export markets, but we see how this is coming up against the limits of the world market. On the other hand, the regime is adopting more repressive measures. History, however, shows that you cannot govern by the sword alone.

Everything points to a serious crisis in the economy at some point. This will reduce the regime’s room for manoeuvre, and a crisis within the regime itself will flow from this. From the present, apparently stable regime, with power centred right at the top in the hands of Xi, we will begin to see cracks emerging, with different factions within the bureaucracy coming into conflict with each other over the question of how to manage the system. Once that happens, the road will be open for the masses to enter the scene. Class struggle will erupt on a scale never seen before in the history of China. And the beauty of the situation is that the past decades of rapid development of the economy has had one very positive effect: it has created a modern, advanced proletariat. The latest available figures show that the vast majority of over 470 million urban wage earners in China are workers, and 30 percent of whom are industrial workers.

Objectively speaking, that means the balance of class forces in China has become enormously favourable for the working class. Once such a class moves, no power on earth could stop it. What is required is a party that can lead such a class to a victorious socialist revolution. Back in 1921, a handful of communists launched the Chinese Communist Party as a section of the Communist International. In its early years, it adhered to the revolutionary ideas of Lenin. In 1926 it grew very fast as the revolution unfolded. That moment gave us a glimpse of what would be possible today.

The purpose of this book is to bring out the real history of the class struggle in China over the past one hundred years. Now history has come full circle, but on a much higher level. Chinese society is moving towards a crisis which will unleash all the potential of the Chinese working class. The task of Marxists is to bring out the full lessons of past experiences in order to not repeat the mistakes of the past and to outline the correct path ahead for today’s generation of revolutionary communists in China.