The Ultimate Cause of China’s Rise

Published: Feb 29,2024

Prof. Qingjie XIA

Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to discuss the ultimate cause for the rise of China. After China gradually fell into semi-colony in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, facing the exploitation, oppression and aggression of the Western imperialist, China roughly had two schools of thought on how to save the country, the “Restoration School” and the “Westernization School”. Neither the “restorationists” nor the “wholesale westernizationists” share Lenin’s judgment that the world in the age of imperialism was divided into colonies and semi-colonies controlled, exploited and oppressed by the imperialist powers, let alone Lenin’s great experience of organizing the Bolsheviks (Communist Party) to overthrow the bourgeois regime in Russia and establish the first socialism state in the world. With the support and help of the Communist International under Lenin’s leadership, the Communist Party of China (CPC) was established to follow the Leninist path. The CPC drew on Lenin’s experience in building the party and gradually build the CPC into a party that was more organized and adhered more thoroughly to Leninism, which this paper argues is the ultimate cause of China’s rise.

1. Introduction

Standing on the land of China at the beginning of 2024, we can say that China has finally stood up in the world! In 2023, China surpassed Japan to become the world’s number one exporter of automobiles. China is already the world’s second largest economy, the world’s largest shipbuilding country and the world’s largest ship exporter, China’s high-speed rail and locomotive manufacturing also belongs to the world number one, China also has a Beidou space navigation system at the same level of the U.S. GPS, China is the world’s second largest aerospace country, China’s large aircraft manufacturing has also taken off, China is the world’s number one producer and exporter of pure electric vehicles, lithium battery, the world’s largest solar photovoltaic panel producers and exporters.

China’s high-speed rail transportation system is the most advanced in the world, China’s ports are also the most efficient in the world, China’s telecom communication system is almost the most advanced in the world, China’s e-commerce services are the most developed in the world, and China’s annual number of college and university graduates is the highest in the world, and China’s stock of college and university graduates will be 200 million by 2025, which also makes China the largest college and university graduates stocking country in the world. With a middle class of 400 million people, China is the largest middle-class country in the world. As a result, China’s domestic market is also the world’s largest market, which is extremely attractive to international manufacturers. Looking back, we cannot help but ask: What is the ultimate cause of China’s rise? In this paper, we would like to discuss the ultimate causes of China’s rise, starting from the end of the Qing Dynasty when China became a semi-colony of imperialism.

2. The Greatest Change in the Last Three Thousand Years

After Columbus discovered the New World of America in 1492 and Da Gama reached India around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, the development of European capitalism gradually involved the Americas, Africa, and Asia in the capitalist world market, and Africa, America, and India and Southeast Asia were gradually colonized by European countries. European capitalists, supported by the force of their respective countries, used the silver seized from the Americas to buy silk, porcelain, tea and other luxury goods from China and shipped them back to Europe to earn high profits, purchased cotton textiles from India, and then exchanged them for African slaves in Africa, and then sold the African slaves to plantations in the Americas, and then sold the products of the plantations in the Americas to Europe, so as to earn huge profits. At the end of the 18th century and the beginning of the 19th century Britain realized the Industrial Revolution for the first time, replacing India as the world’s largest producer of cotton textiles. As a result, British cotton textiles replaced Indian cotton textiles in the Atlantic Triangular Trade, and thus Britain gained huge profits from the Atlantic Triangular Trade.

After the British Industrial Revolution, European countries and the United States of America also carried out industrial revolutions. In Asia, Japan also followed the example of the European countries in the Industrial Revolution starting from the Meiji Restoration in 1868. After the Industrial Revolution, the European, American and Japanese countries developed absolute technological and military superiority over the colonial and semi-colonial countries. For almost two thousand years, from the unification of China by Qin Shi Huang in 221 B.C. to the end of the Ming Dynasty and the beginning of the Qing Dynasty, China was the most politically, economically and culturally powerful country in the world. But China became ignorant and backward because it did not catch the wave of European industrialization that began in the 18th century. Even so, China still did not need any European products until the middle of the 19th century, and thus European trade with China was in deficit. In order to solve the problem of trade deficit with China, British merchants sold opium to China, which aroused the dissatisfaction of the Chinese Qing government, which began to boycott the opium trade. Thus, the British, who had strong ships and guns, initiated the Opium War against China, and the Qing government was defeated and forced to sign a treaty to open ports and trade. From then on until 1911, when the Qing government collapsed, the Western imperialist powers invaded China many times, and the Qing government ceded land and made reparations, and signed a series of humiliating and degrading treaties with the Western powers. From then on, China became a semi-colony of the imperialists.

Like the Ottoman Empire, Iran and other countries, with effective state power and military organization, the Western powers did not have the means to directly occupy China, but could only turn China into a semi-colony. At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the whole world could be divided into the dominated countries of Europe, the United States and Japan in terms of industrialization, and the dominated countries of colonies and semi-colonies in Asia, Africa and Latin America.

3. Taking the Leninist Road

According to the Marxism, Lenin pointed out after the beginning of the First World War that the industrialized countries of Europe and America at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century had been transformed from free-competitive capitalist countries into imperialist countries dominated by financial monopoly capital and industrial oligarchies; the imperialist countries, using their mastery of high-technology industries and backed up by their powerful military forces, oppressed and exploited the people of the colonies and semi-colonies; if the colonial and semi-colonial countries want to get rid of the state of being oppressed and exploited, they must be anti-imperialist and anti-colonial and achieve political independence, so that they can develop independently of the imperialist countries. Even Germany and the United States, which developed later, needed to take trade protection measures against the import of British products in the 19th century.

After completing its bourgeois revolution in 1848, Germany, the later developer of European industrialization, adopted the policy of trade protectionism and tariff protection based on the ideas of the economist Franz Liszt, in order to protect its infant industries. The United States, after the Civil War, also erected trade barriers against European industrial products to protect its developing industrial enterprises. Even today the U.S., in an effort to re-industrialize, has erected solid trade barriers against Chinese products. Lenin was not only a theorist, but also a practitioner.

Lenin first founded the Russian Bolsheviks (Communist Party) and formulated the political and organizational lines of the Communist Party, i.e., the Communist Party was the vanguard of the proletariat, the Communist Party was a well-organized team, and within the Communist Party the individual was subordinate to the organization, and the party as a whole was subordinate to the central committee of the party. At that time, Russia had a low level of industrialization and was at the weakest link of imperialist control, thus making it possible to establish a separate socialist state. Taking advantage of the fact that the imperialist countries were busy fighting each other in the First World War, Lenin led the Russian Bolsheviks to overthrow the old bourgeois regime in Russia in October 1917 and established the first socialist state in the world. After Lenin’s death, the Russian Bolsheviks (Communist Party), under the leadership of Stalin, seized the opportunity of the Great Western Crisis of 1929-1933 to import Western technology, equipment and capital, and built the poor and backward Russia into a socialist and industrialized power of the Soviet Union.

4. The controversy of the “Restoration School” and “wholesale westernization”

As early as the end of the Qing Dynasty in China, the foreign affairs school had engaged in the foreign affairs movement, with a view to industrial and military salvation. However, the corrupt Qing government and army were still defeated by the Japanese imperialists. Later, Dr. Sun Yat-sen founded the Nationalist Party to overthrow the Qing Dynasty. However, due to the weakness and incompetence of the Nationalist Party, China was then plunged into warlords and fragmentation. China became a backward country on the periphery of the capitalist-imperialist world system and was exploited and oppressed by the imperialist countries. In the early twentieth century, many schools of thought were formed on how to save China. The “Restorationists”, led by Koo Hung-ming, advocated that China should be governed entirely by “Confucianism”.

The “Westernization School”, led by Hu Shi, advocated that China should adopt the “liberal democracy” of the United States and Westernize China completely. The “Restorationists” completely failed to understand the “great change not seen in 3,000 years” that China faced since the industrialization of the West in the 18th century, i.e., the gradual decline of China from the most economically powerful country in the world before the 17th century to a semi-colonial country controlled, exploited and oppressed by Western imperialism after 1840. The “total westernization school” only saw the “modern”, “civilized” and “rich” side of the imperialist countries, and believed that if they followed the western path completely, they would be able to achieve the “modern”, “civilized” and “rich” side of the world. They believed that China would be as developed as the Western countries in the future as long as it followed the Western way of development completely. However, the “total westernization school” simply failed to see that the bright side of the imperialist countries was supported by the monopoly profits gained from the exploitation and oppression of the colonial and semi-colonial countries, and that semi-colonial old China had already become a vassal under the control of the imperialists, with its national politics controlled by the imperialists, and with its national strategic industries, national defense and diplomacy, and its financial and monetary systems all under the control of the imperialists, and it could only ever serve as a place of sale of commodities and a source of raw materials for imperialism; in a word, the old China would always be in the position of being exploited and oppressed by imperialism and could never stand up.

Compared with Marxist-Leninist theories, neither the “Restorationists” nor the “Westernizationists” had Lenin’s judgment of the international political and economic situation of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in which imperialism oppressed and exploited the colonial and semi-colonial countries, nor did they have Lenin’s practical experience in founding the Communist Party and building the first socialist country, and therefore were unable to guide the Chinese revolution under the international situation of the oppressive exploitation of colonial and semi-colonial countries.

5. Leninism and the Chinese Communist Party

With the help and support of the Communist International, which was under the guidance of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded in 1921, with anti-imperialism and anti-feudalism, and the establishment of China as a socialist, industrialized and powerful country as the goal of its struggle. Under the leadership of Mao Zedong, the CPC drew on the political and organizational lines of the Soviet Union to sinicize Marxism-Leninism and build the CPC into a more organized and political party. However, China was at the periphery of the early Communist International system centered on the Soviet Union and the later socialist camp, and the CPC under Mao Zedong courageously refused to take orders from the Communist International and the Soviet leaders.

During the anti-Japanese war, the CPC formed a “united front” with the Kuomintang to fight against Japan, and the Communist International demanded that the CPC “obey the united front in all matters”. The CPC under the leadership of Mao Zedong resolutely opposed this instruction, and independently carried out guerrilla warfare in the mountains and opened up the rear battlefields. It was precisely because of its adherence to the independent approach to the war of resistance that the CPC and its army were able to grow and expand during the war of resistance against Japanese aggression. In the latter part of the War of Liberation from 1946 to 1949, the CPC opposed Stalin’s proposal to “divide China along the Yangtze River”, which hindered China’s unification, and resolutely and completely drove the Kuomintang reactionaries to Taiwan, basically unifying China. In the early 1960s, as the Soviet Union, claiming itself to be the supreme power of the socialist camp, attempted to engage in the development of intelligence facilities at the expense of China’s sovereignty, the CPC under the leadership of Mao Zedong firmly opposed the Soviet Union’s infringement on China’s sovereignty. From then on, Sino-Soviet relations broke down, and the Soviet Union withdrew its experts assisting China and stopped its aid programs to China. However, the new China relied on its own scientific and technological strength to produce the “two bombs and one star” in the mid- to late 1960s, turning China into a nuclear power.

6. State-Owned Enterprises and heavy industrialization

After the founding of New China in 1949, the Chinese government under the leadership of the CPC carried out a thorough political and economic social revolution, i.e., confiscating the land of the landlord and capitalists and distributing it to the peasants equally, thus completely eliminating the bourgeoisie serving imperialists and breaking China’s ties with imperialism, and through the elimination of the landlord class, China was able to cut its ties with feudalism, which had been in existence for more than 2,000 years. From the very beginning of the new China, the Chinese government started to gradually build up its own nine-year compulsory education system, higher education system, and a system of state-owned science academies, with the aim of training talents for the socialist construction of China, as well as scientific and technological research and development. At the time of the founding of New China, China was still a backward agricultural country, seriously lacking in capital and technology, and heavy industry was capital- and technology-intensive.

In order to develop heavy industry, China adopted the capital accumulation method of subsidizing urban state-owned industrial enterprises with agriculture. Together with 156 heavy industry projects assisted by the former Soviet Union (technically relying on the USSR), China initially built its own state-owned heavy industry system and national defense industry system by the mid-1960s. In the face of the breakdown of Sino-Soviet relations, the new China relied on its own scientific and technological strength to produce the “two bombs and one star” independently in the mid- to late 1960s, and its status as a nuclear power made China an important force in maintaining world peace.

7. Industrialization under reform and opening-up policy, and market economy

After the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union were in long-term confrontation. In 1974, Chairman Mao put forward the theory of “three worlds”, i.e., the Soviet Union and the United States as the first world, Western Europe, Japan and other industrialized countries as the second world, and China and other developing countries as the third world. From the early 1970s, China took advantage of the confrontation between the U.S. and the Soviet Union to initiate contacts with the developed countries in the West, and the establishment of diplomatic relations between China and the U.S. in 1979 not only initiated the normalization of Sino-U.S. relations, but also led to the normalization of China’s relations with Japan and the Western Europe.

It was the normalization of relations with the West that enabled China to open its doors to the outside world and implement its “open door” policy in the late 1970s. At the same time, an “economic reform” was launched in China. A strong administrative system was used to promote the construction of a market economy, and industrialization based on the market economy was gradually realized. At the same time, China opened up to the outside world in a rhythmic and selective manner, so as to avoid a situation in which large multinational corporations would completely overwhelm local Chinese enterprises and thus take control of China’s strategic industries. Specifically, at the beginning of the reform and opening-up period, China opened up to the outside world mainly through the establishment of “special economic zones”, where wholly foreign-owned enterprises were allowed to invest in China in special economic zones such as Shenzhen and other cities, but not in the vast non-special areas.

If in the 1980s the U.S.-led Western countries wanted to draw China in as a counterweight to the Soviet Union, then after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, the U.S. and Western countries were still willing to maintain political and economic contacts with China, partly because of the greed of European and American financial monopoly capital for the Chinese market, and partly because China’s economic and technological strength in the 1990s had not yet aroused the alarm of the Western countries.

In the early 1980s, when the reform and opening-up process was underway, the idea of “total westernization” was a pervasive one, which finally erupted in 1989, and after the storm of 1989, the “leftist” trend of opposing the reform and opening-up process was in full swing. In 1992, Deng Xiaoping’s Southern Talk on China’s unswerving commitment to socialism and reform and opening-up restarted the reform and opening-up process.

After Xiaoping’s Southern Talk, the pace of China’s reform and opening up accelerated, with the 14th National Congress of CPC in 1992 breaking through the confines and proposing the construction of a “socialist market economy” in China, and the accession to the WTO in 2001, which led to a comprehensive push for internationalization and the joining of the international economic and trade system dominated by the United States. After joining the WTO, foreign direct investment flooded into China, and China’s economy grew at a rapid pace in the first decade of the 21st century, making China’s total economic output surpass that of Japan to become the world’s second-largest economy in 2010.

The second decade of the new century witnessed the rise of China’s homegrown high-tech companies, with Huawei, DJI, Alibaba, Chenguang Biotechnology, Ningde Times, BYD, Tencent, and Baidu representing more than 300 thousand high-tech enterprises. Today, China’s economy is dominated by capital- and technology-intensive enterprises, and its exports are dominated by medium- and high-grade electromechanical products, such as automobiles, computers, cell phones, electric vehicle batteries, photovoltaic panels, railroad locomotives, large-scale ships, drones, and other intermediate inputs in the manufacturing industry.

China’s technological advances have caused alarm in the United States, starting with the Trump administration’s trade war against China and the Biden administration’s technological siege against China. As China controls its own strategic industries (transportation and communications, energy and power, education and healthcare), financial and monetary banking, defense industrial system, and a strong military force, it is able to develop its own high-tech industries. In the face of China’s strength, the United States do not have full sway to oppress China.

Since the new century, the process of Chinese enterprises going abroad has been accelerated. In 2006, Brazil, Russia, India, China established the “BRICS” organization; in 2011, South Africa joined BRICS; in 2015, the New Development Bank (NDB) of BRICS based in Shanghai (China) was established; and in 2024, five countries, including Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Iran, and Ethiopia, join BRICS. Today, BRICS has become a formidable force in the world. In addition, all BRICS countries except India have joined China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which was put forward by China in 2013, and the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) was established in 2015.

After 10 years of development, the “Belt and Road” initiative has already borne many fruits. ⁱIn 2023, China’s exports to the “Belt and Road” countries accounted for almost half of the total value of China’s exports. Since the new century, the rapid development of developing countries, especially China, has made the third world countries start to compete with the western developed countries. However, the international development of the third world countries led by China is mainly in the field of “infrastructure” or “connectivity”, which aims at promoting the economic development of the third world countries. China is committed to the principle of “Confucius improvement”, i.e., “to achieve what one wants, one has to first help others achieve”.

8. Conclusion

After the Opium War in 1840, China was gradually reduced to a semi-colony. At a time when China was debating whether to follow the old path of “restoration” or the path of “wholesale westernization”, Lenin put forward the essence of the imperialist-centered state order, the exploitation and oppression of the colonial and semi-colonial countries by imperialism, and pointed out the direction of revolution in the colonial and semi-colonial countries. Through his personal practice, Lenin formed the Bolshevik Party in Russia, overthrew the Russian bourgeoisie and established a socialist state, which provided an organizational method and a direction for the revolutions of the people of the colonial and semi-colonial countries, and through the founding of the “Communist International”, he provided guidance and assistance to the anti-imperialist revolutions of the colonial and semi-colonial countries.

With the help and support of the Communist International, China established an anti-imperialist and anti-feudalist Communist Party independent of the imperialist world system; and the Communist Party of China led by Mao Zedong courageously rejected the instructions and interference of the Communist International and the Soviet Union and maintained its independence within the socialist camp. It was this independence from the imperialist world system, the Communist International and the later socialist camp that guaranteed China’s independent development. Since the reform and opening up, China has vigorously promoted the construction of a market economy on the one hand, and vigorously attracted foreign investment on the other, on the basis of adhering to the socialist road. Over the past 40 years or so since the reform and opening-up, China has successfully achieved industrialization and made great strides in the field of high technology.

After World War II, with the independence of the vast number of colonized countries and nations, the Western developed countries have changed their strategy of controlling the developing countries. The Western countries, led by the United States of America, want the developing countries to maintain their “free” and “democratic” institutions, mainly to facilitate their political and economic control over the developing countries by controlling the political parties that meet their intentions to come to power. Specifically, the main purpose is to control the strategic industries, finance, currency, banking, arms supply and other national lifelines of the developing countries, so that the developing countries will not be able to develop their own high-tech industries and will always serve as the place of sale of the products and the place of origin of raw materials of the Western developed countries, and will always maintain their status as developing countries. After World War II, the organizational structure of the developed countries in the West has changed dramatically. They changed the habit of acquiring each other’s colonies and product markets through mutual wars, and changed to organizing political and military coordinating bodies under the leadership of the United States, such as NATO and the Group of Seven, to coordinate the contradictions and conflicts among the developed countries in the West, and to maintain a unified political, economic and military power over the developing countries. In the event that any developing country does not comply with the intentions of the developed countries of the West, the developed countries of the West, led by the United States of America, act jointly to suppress that developing country by force, and in this way maintain the international order of the developed countries of the West.

The lesson of China’s rise for the vast number of developing countries in Asia, Africa and Latin America is that it is necessary to gain political independence, change the situation in which key areas such as strategic industries, finance, currency and banking, and defenses and diplomacy are controlled by Western countries, and gradually achieve industrialization. Only then can developing countries truly rise.

i^ The “Belt and Road” projects undertaken by Chinese enterprises have been completed one after another, such as the Yavan High Speed Railway in Indonesia, the China-Laos Railway between Laos and Yunnan Province of China, the Monnet Railway in Kenya, the Ajij Railway in Ethiopia, the Peljesac Cross-Sea Bridge in Croatia, the Padma Bridge in Bangladesh, the Port of Bire Dwarfs in Greece, the deep-water port of Laiki in Nigeria, etc. There are also a number of high-speed railways and other infrastructure projects under construction.

The Author: Qingjie XIA （夏庆杰）, is a Professor in Economics at School of Economics, Director of Center for Human and Economic Development Studies (CHEDs), Peking University（北京大学）, Beijing, China.