A snapshot of China’s place in the New World Disorder was provided by a BBC news report on October 13th that the Dutch government has taken control of Nexperia, a Chinese-owned chipmaker based in the Netherlands. According to the Dutch government, “The Chinese company posed a threat to the continuity and safeguarding on European soil of crucial technological knowledge and capabilities." Nexperia manufactures microchips for cars and consumer electronics in Europe. These are Chinese manufactured microchips, not American nor Taiwanese chips which are prohibited for export to China under US sanctions. Therefore, this is a Dutch theft of intellectual property by any definition of bourgeois corporate law. The plunder goes hand in hand with US and EU sanctions and embargos on imports of any advanced technology into China.

After the illegal theft of all of Russia’s international assets worldwide We have a familiar patten unfolding and it’s called the unravelling of the post war liberal international order.

That post war order which gave birth to the United Nations and to a rules-based framework of international law is no more.

This was not a global order created by heavenly angels. The main participants in its inception in 1945 were colonialist imperial powers alongside the exterminators of humanity in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. They would go on violating the rules they had created but for over 50 years from 1945 it was important for every imperialist power to be seen to be compliant with the international rule of law. The war time Soviet leader Josef Stalin endorsed and signed up to the new international frameworks, even though many of the global institutionswere beholden to US power. For Stalin the new global liberal framework was preferable to yet another world war, since the USSR was totally devastated and impoverished by the second world war.

But the flip side was that the new liberal global order was specifically created because of the Soviet Union. Capitalist leaders perceived the victorious Red Army which had just swept into half of Europe as the general staff of international labour and anti-colonialist liberation movements. This perception was true in the sense that a labour movement anywhere or an anti-colonial freedom movement anywhere, had somehow benefited, whether one hated the Kremlin, loved the Kremlin or were indifferent to the USSR. The fear of Western leaders was that you might side with the USSR and the socialist camp or had received assistance from the socialist camp. That’s partly why the liberal rule based international order had a democratic social dimension in many countries with considerable concessions gained by the working class.

The Implosion of the USSR between 1988 and 1992 began the demise of the post war liberal order. First the social democratic dimension of the post war order was attacked and dismantled. The ruling classes had come to a collective conclusion that the socialist alternative to capitalism was by then discredited enough to withdraw earlier concessions to the vast majority of their citizens. Under the neoliberal version of globalisation capital was released from the democratic obligation to please the nation state and most of its citizens.

Capital was now free to roam where the labour force was cheaper and less organised, and taxes were lower or non-existent. Theoretically at least, the global labour force also became free to roam from poorer nations to richer ones, fulfilling the same objective for capital - to crash wage demands by organised labour and increase profits.

The transfer of wealth from the workers over to the wealthiest segments of all societies on earth was also proceeded by mass privatisation of every segment of the economy, including essential public services and in the case of Third World countries, privatisation of healthcare, education and other social services. Poorer Third World countries that refused to comply with impoverishing their citizens were severely punished by Western institutions, leading to an increase in the price of their national debt and orchestrating a run on their national currencies that further weakened their ability to service debt. This was to be followed by political upheaval to replace unfriendly governments with leaders that were more willing to obey every order from Washington, Brussels, the IMF and the World Bank.

The next phase came with the neocon assault on international law following the 9/11 atrocity. The neocons in Washington set out to dismantle any semblance of international law through global rendition, kidnapping suspected opponents to concentration camps, to the illegal occupation of Iraq based on fake charges of weapons of mass destruction. Washington had initiated the slippery moral slope to the current Western backed genocide in Gaza, a mass extermination campaign conducted with collective North American and European government support.

The domestic political dimension of murderous global lawlessness in the West has been augmented by the rise of white nativism across the United States and Europe. Unlike apartheid South Africa, white nativism doesn’t even bother to provide privileges to ordinary white people duped by racist lies. Instead, the role of the populist right is to distract public attention away from the biggest transfer of wealth from the vast majority of citizens over to the hyper wealthy 1%. Every misery and social failure in Western countries is projected on to the Muslims; Chinese exports; the Russian war machine; the immigrants; the Africans; the Somalis; Pakistani men and so on and so forth. When the German Chancellor was asked, why he wants to deport immigrants, Merz replied, “Ask your daughters”, implying that every rapist in Germany is an immigrant of darker complexion. The German government never asked the daughters of Gaza before supplying the weapons that murdered them.

The Chinese leadership saw this aggressive new posture by the West coming for years, in fact they started getting more and more nervous about Washington from the beginning of War on Terror. Xi Jinping became general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) straight after Obama’s Pivot to Asia – with Obama’s stated policy that China had become the main rival and danger to the West instead of terrorism of non-state actors.

In 2013 Xi submitted to the Party a policy paper entitled Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for the New Era. Strangely for someone who intended to launch a new era, Xi began by focusing on the demise of the USSR and its relevance to domestic ideological battles in China in 2013. Xi made it clear that he’s relaxed about learning from the mistakes of Stalin and Mao or other leaders of 20th Century Socialism.

But what Xi Jinping can’t abide is what he calls nihilist approach to revolutionary history. Basically he says one can’t pretend that you speak an objective truth that is independent from the main dialectical contradictions in the world. There are multiple global conflicts and contradictions at any given time, but[GN1] for Xi Jinping the main contradiction for humanity remains the struggle between capitalism and socialism. Any Chinese communist militant, who can’t effectively defend the accomplishments of 20th Century Socialism will be crushed by the enemies of the Revolution because these comrades become unwitting tools to distract from the most important demands of the masses and will rapidly lose their support.

I’m going to quote Xi‘s remarks but it doesn’t mean that I agree with his position. I think it is important that we follow the thought process of the Chinese leadership ahead of the new era policy formulations back in 2013.

Xi asked the Central Committee audience, why did the Soviet Union disintegrate? Why did the Communist Party of the Soviet Union fall to pieces?

“An important reason is that in the ideological domain, the competition is fierce. To completely repudiate the historical experience of the Soviet Union, to repudiate the history of the CPSU, to repudiate Lenin, to repudiate Stalin was to wreak chaos in Soviet ideology and engage in historical nihilism. It caused Party organisations at all levels to have barely any function whatsoever. It robbed the Party of its leadership of the military. In the end the CPSU — the great a Party of Lenin as it was — scattered like a flock of frightened beasts. The Soviet Union — the great a socialist state as it was — shattered into pieces. This is a lesson from the past.”

He went on to draw direct parallels with China, as a warning about the ideological weaknesses in the CCP which had to be surmounted. He predicted in 2013 that the new era will demand the most challenging transformations of Chinese society and its economy, which will result in domestic and international backlash from hostile forces.

Chiefly Xi highlighted the mortal threat facing China’s security and the need to overcome China’s biggest weaknesses.

The party must move the country towards economic self-sufficiency and self-reliance by the creation of new, quality forces of production, by upskilling industry with the most advanced technology. It is very important for us to note that between 2012 to 2016 it was a domestic Chinese decision to upgrade technology at home that set Western leaders into a global confrontation with China. It was never about flooding Europe and the US with cheap Chinese bathroom and kitchenware, toys or consumer electronics. We must debunk the far-right myth that China is destroying our industries in the West through unfair state subsidies. The evil portrayal of China’s rise plays neatly into the white nativist narrative about us in the West being under attack by foreign races on all fronts. Even the leader of the French Left Jean Luc Mélenchon denounced China as the viper in America’s nest. Mélenchon claims that it was America that made China rich and now China had turned against the Americans. That’s totally fake history.

When China started instigating market economy reforms in 1979, the United States slowly lifted trade sanctions and restrictions throughout the 1980s. There was no American Marshall Plan to finance China’s industrialisation. In fact American private sector investments in search of profits amounted to a very small fraction of direct foreign investment.

In reality the bulk of China’s finances for modernisation came from the diaspora Chinese bourgeoisie in Taiwan, Hong Kong and broader East Asia in partnership with the Chinese state and its strategic investments through the 5 year plans. They were closely followed by Japanese capitalists as more junior partners.

Furthermore, the Chinese government was never responsible for loss of industrial jobs in North America and Europe. When huge sectors of American heavy industry were closed down in the Reagan and Bush Senior years, China wasn’t even a global competitor to American and European car firms or steel firms and shipbuilders. In the 1980s and 1990s, deliberate neoliberal, de-industrialisation policies were predicated on the assumption of eternal global American technological superiority, under which the Third World became the industrial assembly plant, whilst the West held on to the higher end of the manufacturing value chain, that required more technologically sophisticated levels of production to make the most expensive products.

After 40 years of being told that government is a total failure in running businesses and public services we are now being told by the same neoliberals that the entire private sector of the capitalist world is hopelessly uncompetitive against the Chinese public sector. Goodbye Milton Friedman.

Now for a quick look at contradictions that propel the Chinese growth engine and at the same time disrupt and destabilise it. In my opinion, the chief contradiction is a Chinese constitution that was originally designed for the dictatorship of the proletariat during the middle of the last century is now a constitution that currently governs the most digitally enabled market economy on the planet. A tiny portion of the constitution is displayed on the Chinese flag, representing the revolutionary vanguard of workers, peasants, the intelligentsia and the military forces that protect from the class enemy.

But who represents the bloated elephant in the market economy - the bourgeoisie? Are Chinese billionaires disfranchised? Hardly. In the superstructure of Chinese civil society capitalist interests are well represented – from business lobby groups, to stock exchanges to industry associations and mass media groups.

So what is the role of the revolutionary vanguard party? Apart from effectively administrating the market economy? According to Xi Jinping the role of the party is to keep up the spirit of “vigorously carrying the revolution through to its completion.” This is an incendiary political phrase in China because it comes straight from Mao Tse Tung. The “completion” being bringing about a communist society. Mao’s efforts to vigorously advance to communism are not remembered fondly by everyone.

But Xi makes it clear that at this stage of China’s development party militants act as a vanguard by fighting a revolutionary battle of ideas. The task of communists is to subordinate civil society institutions to the social interests of the vast majority of the people. Literally to whisk these institutions away from operating along the logic of capitalism. Which prioritises the accumulation of surplus capital as the primary objective of society.

According to Xi the party must fight to achieve an ecologically safe planet, a fairer international order free from hegemonic abuse of poorer and weaker nations, and in China the party must prioritise full employment, universal healthcare and education, reduce inequality and increase living standards. To plan a future over and above the needs of capitalist accumulation.

But as we all know talk is relatively cheap in politics - slogans are relatively cheap unless successfully applied in practice. So let’s take a look at three policies that were vigorously implemented and the outcomes.

1) The Ecological Civilisation, is the most recent example of the Chinese state focus on the welfare of people and planet against mindless capitalist accumulation.

The industrialisation of China during the 1990s was on a bigger scale and faster pace than had ever been accomplished in the history of our planet. Side effects of this breakneck speed industrialisation accelerated fossil fuel emissions in China and no doubt contributed to pollution and global warming.

The 14th five-year plan (2021-2025) of the CCP set the concept of ecological planning at the heart of social and economic development. Beijing poured hundreds of billions of dollars into the clean tech sector, both to state-owned developers and the private sector, almost five times as much as the US and fifteen times as much as Japan. The spectacular acceleration in global renewable investment became, in fact, a story about one country: China. In 2023 and 2024 approaching two thirds of newly installed wind and solar capacity was accounted for by China alone. China is more or less unique in having seen substantial growth in wind power. Compared to the geriatric manoeuvring of Europe and America’s static energy systems, China is attempting a power slide, steering, breaking and accelerating the most massive energy system the world has ever seen. Chinese companies now lodge around 75% of global clean energy patent applications. In 2000, the figure was just 5%.

Cheaper Chinese technology has enabled 25% of emerging markets to leapfrog the USA in end-use electrification and 63% have leapfrogged it on share of solar generation.

2) Developing new, quality forces of production is a commitment to close the high technology gap with the USA, which is crucial for China’s security concerns. In the face of strict US technology sanctions over the last 6 years, China has made spectacular strides to close the tech gap

An article in the October issue of Foreign Affairsis titled the Real China Model. According to the magazine, China’s most subtle piece of deep infrastructure is its more than 70 million-person industrial workforce—the largest in the world.

“Thanks to the country’s intense buildup of complex manufacturing supply chains, Chinese factory managers, engineers, and workers have decades of “process knowledge”—hands-on knowledge, gained from experience—about how to make things and how to make them better. This process knowledge enables iterative innovation, or constantly tweaking products so that they can be made more efficiently, at better quality, and with lower costs. It also enables scaling. Chinese factories can rally a large, experienced workforce behind making almost any new product. Finally, and most important, process knowledge allows China to create entire new industries. A factory worker in Shenzhen might assemble iPhones one year and Huawei Mate phones the next and then move on to build drones for DJI or electric vehicle batteries for CATL. Process knowledge in the Chinese workforce may be Beijing’s greatest economic asset.”

The first thing that came to mind reading this is, was that the labour law of value applies in a commodity exchange economy no matter how advance we get in automation and even advanced robotics.

But crucially the CCP commitment to upskill technical levels of education and improve living conditions, has been seriously pushed forward in real life, not in political spin propaganda.

3) Finally what matters the most in the longer term is the effects of these policies on the rest of the world.

In March 2013, President Xi Jinping proposed a vision of a global community with a shared future; the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI has seen cumulatively over $1.175 trillion in Chinese engagement since 2013, with a record $121.8 billion in 2024 through construction contracts and investments. Key figures include a recent surge in energy-related projects, a growing focus on high-tech areas like solar and EV batteries, and continued investments in metals and mining. 150 countries signed up to the BRI. It has accomplished of over 3,000 infrastructure projects like railways, industrial park projects, and livelihood projects such as schools and hospitals, which span Asia, Africa, and Latin America, including some developed countries.