The Chinese Revolution Achieved a Synthesis Between Different Social Forces, All Animated by The Same Desire to Build a Fairer and More United Society
- Cet article est une traduction de :
- La Révolution chinoise a réalisé une synthèse entre les différentes forces sociales, toutes animées du même désir de construire une société plus juste et solidaire [fr]
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1A graduate of the École Normale Supérieure and the École Nationale d’Administration, Bruno Guigue is a researcher in political philosophy who served as a senior civil servant for nearly twenty years. He later devoted himself to research in political science and has published ten books as well as numerous articles translated into several languages. He is currently a visiting professor at South China Normal University in Guangzhou and a lecturer at the Confucius Institute of Réunion. He is regarded as one of France’s foremost specialists on China.
2In his latest book, L’Odyssée chinoise, de Mao Zedong à Xi Jinping (The Chinese Odyssey: From Mao Zedong to Xi Jinping), he retraces the unique historical experience of the People’s Republic of China and analyzes the strategy implemented by its leaders to lift the country out of underdevelopment and achieve a Human Development Index comparable to that of the world’s most advanced nations. Now the world’s leading economy in terms of purchasing power parity, and the foremost industrial and commercial power, China today is building infrastructure in nearly 150 countries.
3In these conversations, Bruno Guigue revisits the history of China. He looks back at the country’s situation prior to the Maoist Revolution of 1949 and discusses the life of Mao Zedong and the founding of the Chinese Communist Party. He details the seizure of power and the major stages of the revolutionary process. He clarifies the distinctive features of Chinese socialism, emphasizing that the state maintains control over the three main sources of capital. He also highlights the fight against extreme poverty, while acknowledging the persistence of inequalities – mitigated by a highly protective social security system.
4Bruno Guigue then examines several major issues: demographic trends, the real estate crisis, and environmental protection. He does not shy away from controversial subjects such as democracy, elections, freedom of expression, human rights, the Uyghurs, and political prisoners. Finally, he addresses China’s status as a “peaceful power,” its role on the international stage, its relations with the United States, the Belt and Road Initiative, its ties with the Global South, and the question of Taiwan.
Salim Lamrani: What was the reality of China before the Maoist Revolution of 1949?
Bruno Guigue: Before 1949, China was a country completely devastated by war. Following the collapse of the Qing dynasty in 1911, a series of upheavals shook the nation: clashes between warlords, Chiang Kai-shek’s attempt to establish a stable state during the famous “Nanjing Decade” from 1927 to 1937, the first civil war between Nationalists and Communists, the creation of a united front in 1937 to wage the common struggle against the Japanese until 1945, and finally, the resumption of the civil war between Communists and Nationalists from 1946 to 1949, when Chiang Kai-shek refused to share power.
During the war against Japan, the Communist Party gained influence by rallying the poor peasantry to its cause. In 1945, China was still an overwhelmingly agrarian society, with 90% of the population living in rural areas under conditions of extreme poverty. Some peasants were even forced to sell their daughters or wives because they could not feed them. Nearly 85% of the Chinese population could neither read nor write, despite belonging to a civilization thousands of years old in which writing had always played a central role. All infrastructure lay in ruins. Agriculture was in a deplorable state, lacking equipment, tools, and seeds, while industry had been reduced to nothing.
In short, China’s situation in 1949 was catastrophic. The newly founded United Nations estimated that per capita income was lower than that of sub-Saharan Africa, and even below that of India, which had gained independence in 1947. China was then the poorest country on the planet – and it would only rise from its ashes thanks to the socialist revolution initiated by the Chinese Communist Party. This was a long and painful process, marked by a winding path toward liberation, led by Mao Zedong since the founding of the CCP in 1921.
SL: What do we know about Mao Zedong? What was his personal and political background before coming to power in 1949?
BG: Mao Zedong came from a middle-peasant family in Hunan province. His relationship with his father was complex: his father wanted him to take over the family farm, but Mao aspired to a different future.
He soon became a revolutionary activist. After moving to the capital, he worked as an assistant librarian at Peking University. It was there that he met the great communist intellectual Li Dazhao, who would become one of the founders of the Chinese Communist Party.
Within the Party, Mao distinguished himself through the originality of his analyses of Chinese society. In 1927, he wrote a famous report on the peasantry of Hunan, in which he demonstrated that it was the peasants – immersed in extreme poverty – who would constitute the true driving force of the coming revolution, rather than the industrial proletariat, which was still in its infancy in China at the time. His revolutionary strategy thus rested on this immense rural mass, which he regarded as the revolutionary class par excellence, waiting for the Communist Party to provide the leadership that would allow it to take control of the nation’s destiny and steer it toward socialism.
The genuine Maoist revolution was therefore a revolution within Chinese communism itself. Mao freed it from the rigid model promoted by the Communist International. He did not oppose Moscow – which began to support him from 1935 onwards – but asserted his independence by proposing a path adapted to China’s specific realities. At first, he struggled to convince his comrades, who regarded the peasantry as a backward social class, forgetting the crucial role peasants had played in popular uprisings throughout Chinese history. Mao often recalled that the great Ming dynasty, for example, had been founded by a man of peasant origin.
In this way, he reinterpreted the revolutionary role of the peasantry in Marxist terms, reconnecting with an ancient tradition of millenarian uprisings from the imperial era. For him, the peasantry represented the essential driving force of the proletarian revolution.
SL: In what historical context was the Chinese Communist Party founded in 1921?
BG: The Chinese Communist Party was founded in the French Concession of Shanghai, at a time when several major Chinese cities were controlled by Western powers that had established veritable enclaves there. The entire center of Shanghai was then under international jurisdiction, dominated mainly by the British and the French.
Within this French Concession, the founding members of the Party managed to secure premises and held their inaugural meeting there, in the presence of a representative of the Communist International, who played a key role by providing ideological and technical support. The new Party naturally joined the Third International.
In 1921, China was deeply fragmented: warlords divided the country and waged endless battles for control of the provinces. Chinese revolutionaries aspired simultaneously to social revolution and national renewal. They therefore decided to organize and create a movement capable of taking charge of the nation’s destiny and freeing it from a double yoke: that of what Mao Zedong and the Party described as “semi-feudalism” – the oppressive social system based on the ruthless exploitation of the peasant masses by landowners – and that of imperialism, meaning the invasive and authoritarian domination of predatory powers, mostly Western but also Japanese. It should be recalled that Japan had seized part of China as early as the Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.
This dual aspiration – social and national – forms the very DNA of Chinese communism. This is why Mao Zedong emphasized the notion of “Chinese communist patriotism,” insisting that there is no contradiction between patriotism and internationalism.
SL: How did the conquest of power unfold?
BG: The path was a long one, marked by the famous Long March, from October 1934 to October 1935. The Chinese Communists were forced to retreat from Jiangxi to Shaanxi, undertaking an epic journey of more than 10,000 kilometers at the cost of immense human losses.
The Long March became a metaphor for the trajectory of Chinese communism, from its birth in 1921 to its final victory in 1949. In its early years, the Chinese Communist Party was something halfway between an intellectual club, a literary circle, and a secret society. It then transformed into an urban party organizing hundreds of thousands of workers, particularly during the period of the United Front with the Guomindang, the Nationalist Party. The Party made gains in the cities – especially Shanghai and Guangzhou – but remained distant from the majority of Chinese society, which was overwhelmingly rural. Even Chinese Marxists were hesitant to accept the idea that the peasant masses could become the driving force of revolution.
It was Mao Zedong who led them down this path, following Chiang Kai-shek’s brutal break with the Communists in 1927. Forced to withdraw into the countryside, the Communists found refuge in China’s most remote and impoverished regions. This shift enabled a synthesis between the ancient revolutionary tradition of millenarian peasant uprisings and modern Marxism, inherited from Marx, Engels, and Lenin. Lenin, in particular, played a major role in shaping the ideological formation of the Chinese Communists. For Mao, Lenin had grasped that revolution would not necessarily erupt in the most industrialized countries but in those considered “backward.”
Mao elevated this Leninist insight and made it the very foundation of Chinese communism. He recognized that China possessed an extraordinary latent revolutionary force: the peasants, over-exploited yet bearers of a long tradition of struggle. The Party thus became both a political and a military organization. These were the two major lessons of Maoism: the revolution would be peasant-led and military in character, because the Nationalist adversary was determined to annihilate the Communists. Alongside Chiang Kai-shek’s troops were the warlords, equally ruthless. Mao therefore understood that the Party needed its own army.
The Party evolved accordingly: from an urban intellectual circle organizing workers in the 1920s, it became an armed force composed of thousands of peasant-soldiers, guided by revolutionary intellectuals and former officers such as Zhu De, who played a decisive role in forming the People’s Army. It was this army that, in 1949, took control of the country and secured the Communist victory.
SL: What were the major stages of the Chinese Revolution?
BG: The phase of seizing power extended from 1921 to 1949, through many twists and turns. In 1949, the Communists gained control of the country thanks to the support of the poor peasant masses, the industrial proletariat, numerous intellectuals, part of the petty bourgeoisie, and even a segment of the “national” bourgeoisie – patriotic and committed to China’s rebirth and economic development.
From 1949 onward, a new process of transformation began, which Mao Zedong called New Democracy. This phase brought together all social classes that were not hostile to the Revolution. At first, policy remained relatively flexible. But beginning in 1953, the movement radicalized with the First Five-Year Plan (1953–1957), which launched industrialization and collectivization while waging vast campaigns against illiteracy and disease. China recovered rapidly, undergoing a profound social transformation and eradicating the most brutal aspects of the old order that had oppressed peasants and women.
It is worth remembering that Mao Zedong’s earliest writings dealt with the emancipation of women. He was behind the first law enacted by the People’s Republic of China, in 1950, which abolished patriarchy, established equality between men and women, and authorized contraception and, in certain cases, abortion. The law also banned arranged, paid, and child marriages, paving the way for a more egalitarian society – both in terms of class and gender relations. This was a remarkable advance, and women, whatever their circumstances, gave decisive support to the Revolution, fully aware that it was the engine of their liberation.
The Chinese Revolution was thus a tremendous surge of a poor and oppressed people who broke the chains of servitude. They realized that lasting liberation required economic development – through industrialization and the reorganization of agriculture. This reorganization, conducted on a collectivist basis – since small-scale ownership could not sufficiently stimulate production – continued until the late 1970s, when Deng Xiaoping launched his major reforms.
SL: Can China still be described as a socialist state today?
BG: According to its constitution, China is a socialist state led by the proletariat in alliance with the peasantry, joined by the petty bourgeoisie and the national bourgeoisie. The Chinese flag itself reflects this spirit: the red background symbolizes both celebration and revolution, while the five stars represent the social structure. The largest star stands for the Communist Party – the leading vanguard of the state and society – and the four smaller stars represent the proletariat, the peasantry, the petty bourgeoisie, and the national bourgeoisie.
This symbolism was established in 1949, long before Deng Xiaoping’s decision in the 1970s to reintegrate the bourgeoisie into the national economy in order to provide the country with the capital, technology, and expertise needed for its development.
The Chinese Revolution thus achieved a broad synthesis among the various social forces, all animated by the same desire to build a more just and united society.
SL: Has China eradicated extreme poverty?
BG: China launched a vast poverty-reduction program in 2002 under Hu Jintao, which was reinforced by Xi Jinping from 2013 onward. In 2021, the country officially announced that it had eradicated extreme poverty – a claim confirmed by the UN, the IMF, and the World Bank in several reports. The United Nations even hailed this achievement as exemplary, since very few countries have eliminated extreme poverty in so short a time and on such a vast scale. From this perspective, China is a model.
A remarkable aspect of Chinese socialism is its ability to mobilize both public and private actors – within a mixed economy – to confront major challenges and devise solutions.
Today, every citizen enjoys five basic guarantees: food, clothing, housing, education, and healthcare. The destitution that persisted for millennia, and even into the 1970s, disappeared by the end of the Maoist period. The remaining challenge – extreme poverty – has now been overcome.
China now posts a very high rate of home ownership: 89% in urban areas and 100% in rural areas. Agrarian reform granted every peasant family a hereditary right to use the land. Only China and Vietnam have implemented such a system. All homes are connected to electricity. The share of households with reverse-cycle (heating/cooling) air conditioning has risen from 30% ten years ago to 70% today. Average living space per person has tripled in twenty years. These figures are confirmed by the UN and the World Bank.
Destitution and the stigmas of underdevelopment have therefore disappeared: there are no slums. Of course, there are still some aging dwellings in both cities and the countryside, but they are marginal. Socialism is not just a slogan; it takes shape in concrete improvements to living conditions. The average urban wage has doubled in ten years and quadrupled in twenty, now reaching about €1,500, with a cost of living far lower than in Western countries. Rural conditions differ, but people in the countryside own their homes.
Overall, disposable income per capita has been rising by an average of 5% a year, allowing even the least well-off to gradually improve their standard of living.
In transport, China is a striking example, with 48,000 kilometers of high-speed rail. A 600-kilometer trip on a high-speed train costs around €20.
The country’s priority remains to guarantee decent living conditions for the entire population. Admittedly, some groups have become considerably wealthier and inequalities have widened, but extreme poverty no longer exists. This is a core dimension of Chinese socialism: the constant, broadly shared improvement of living conditions.
SL: What about the means of production?
BG: The Chinese state controls the three major concentrations of capital.
First, it controls land capital: the state, through local authorities, allocates plots for agriculture, housing, or infrastructure, while remaining the ultimate owner of the land. No private actor can appropriate land or subsoil resources.
Second, the state controls industrial capital. China has roughly 320,000 state-owned enterprises, including 97 giants that dominate strategic sectors: heavy industry; energy (oil, gas, nuclear); telecommunications; infrastructure; transport; and defense. These key sectors thus remain under public control. Overall, at least 55% of corporate assets in China are state-owned. This does not mean everyone is a civil servant: the country has 32 million companies, of which only 320,000 are public. But those public firms occupy the strategic commanding heights. Most jobs are provided by the self-employed and by private-sector employees. Still, it is the state that holds the “strategic heights of the economy,” to use Lenin’s phrase, and that steers development through planning.
Finally, the state controls financial capital, since 80% of the banking sector is public. Chinese banks are state-owned, including those operating internationally – particularly under the “New Silk Roads” – by extending loans.
China thus appears as a socialist state combining two dimensions: improving living conditions and controlling the principal means of production.
Socialism also means continuous progress in education and culture. The OECD ranked China’s education system first in the world in its 2018 PISA survey. China’s performance in higher education, research, and technology is now undeniable. No Chinese regime before the advent of communism ever gave the population such access to culture, science, and innovation.
SL: What about social inequality?
BG: Social inequalities do exist in China. Under the Maoist system, state-owned enterprises provided workers with what was called the “iron rice bowl”: lifetime employment, virtually free housing, and basic social services. That model was dismantled with the introduction of a mixed economy in which the state retained control of strategic sectors while others were entrusted to private, cooperative, or mixed initiatives. The Chinese economy thus became highly complex, articulating several forms of ownership.
The privatization of entire sectors led to rapid enrichment for some and a loss of security for others. Some public employees lost lifetime tenure and had to retrain in the private sector. In the 1990s, these changes generated considerable social tension. However, the exceptional growth of the period allowed the population to adapt, and economic dynamism helped raise overall living standards.
Today, Chinese society is traversed by contradictions: some workers toil hard for modest but decent wages, while others live off capital income. The Chinese Communist Party accepted this rise in inequality as a price of development but strives to contain the risk of social polarization. Its goal is to raise the earnings of working-class households, notably through a proactive policy of wage increases over the past decade.
From 1990 to 2005, inequality surged in China. Since then, it has tended to decline, thanks to the eradication of extreme poverty, steady wage growth, and a relentless anti-corruption campaign. All those who enriched themselves illegally by diverting state resources have been severely punished. Under Xi Jinping, the Party is uncompromising with those who serve themselves instead of serving the people.
SL: Is there a social security system in China?
BG: During the Mao Zedong era, there was an extremely protective system, though it was adapted to a relatively poor economy and a frugal society. This was the famous “iron rice bowl” system. To put it simply, one was either a worker in a state-owned enterprise in the city – with free housing and other benefits – or a member of a people’s commune in the countryside, working for the collective while still cultivating a small personal plot of land. It was an egalitarian and frugal system in which no one was left behind: everyone was poor, but everyone had enough.
In the long run, maintaining this system would have led to national stagnation, particularly in the scientific and technological fields. Deng Xiaoping sought to avert this risk by launching, from 1978 onward, his major reforms, accompanied by a degree of openness. In this context, the existing social protection mechanisms – health insurance, pensions – were dismantled. Naturally, this caused social unrest, as such a transformation is always difficult. The transition period, which broadly corresponded to the 1990s, was rather painful, even if high growth rates partially cushioned the immediate effects.
From the 2000s onward, the system stabilized into a mixed economy, with a strong public sector, a vast private sector, a cooperative sector, and the predominance of family farming. It thus became necessary to completely rethink the social protection system – especially since, as everywhere else, the aspiration for a better life led to rising healthcare costs, while an aging population created new demands for pensions.
To meet these challenges, since the 2000s China has completed the establishment of a comprehensive social protection system, covering both healthcare – 95% of Chinese citizens are insured – and pensions, which cover roughly 90% of the population, in both urban and rural areas. Rural zones still lag somewhat in some indicators, but China today is predominantly urban, with 66% of its population living in cities, compared with only 20% in the 1980s.
Today, basic health insurance covers the entire population. The number of hospital beds has quadrupled in twenty years, even though the population has grown only slightly over that period. Healthcare spending as a share of GDP has risen sharply, alongside the construction of numerous community health centers complementing the large public hospitals. General practitioners – the equivalent of neighborhood doctors as known in France – remain rare in China, except in traditional medicine. For biomedicine, people typically turn to these centers, whether public or private.
China’s progress in healthcare – initiated in the 1960s with the “barefoot doctors,” who worked under rudimentary conditions – has been extraordinarily rapid. Today, life expectancy exceeds 78 years. Since 2020, Chinese citizens have even lived, on average, longer than Americans, largely due to more effective management of the COVID-19 crisis. The overall health of the population has improved dramatically.
SL: The Western press has spoken a great deal about the real estate crisis. What is the situation today?
BG: That crisis has now passed: for the past five years, the real estate sector has stabilized.
To understand why, we need to look back. China once operated under a state-administered economy directed by the State and the Party: in the cities, state-owned enterprises provided housing, while in the countryside, people’s communes fulfilled the same role. In this collectivist and egalitarian framework, everyone had a roof over their head, in a context of broadly shared frugality.
Later, the country transitioned to a more modern, developed, and prosperous mixed economy – but also a more unequal one. Living standards continued to rise, and the market was liberalized, allowing people to buy their own homes. This triggered a real estate boom driven by strong demand: incomes were rising by around 10% a year, and property was seen as the safest investment. In China, it should be remembered, purchasing a home is often a prerequisite for marriage.
Many middle-class households – around 400 million people – bought a second or even third property in the hope of making a profit upon resale. This speculation naturally led to soaring prices. But as in any market system, the rise eventually hit the limits of supply and demand. Excess supply led to the suspension of numerous projects and the emergence of ghost neighborhoods in some major cities. Households, in turn, realized they would not grow as wealthy as expected once prices began to fall.
The government then intervened with a series of measures to stabilize prices and clean up the sector, notably by sanctioning unscrupulous developers such as the Evergrande Group – the country’s largest private real estate firm – whose executives were imprisoned. The assets of these groups were taken over by local authorities, which repurposed them to expand the supply of affordable housing. A policy of support for homeowners also ensured that families who had invested did not lose their homes.
Thus, unlike the United States during the subprime crisis – when thousands of families were evicted and forced to live in their cars after defaulting on loans – China avoided such a social catastrophe. The state intervened to protect its population. Today, the real estate crisis in China is largely a thing of the past.
SL: China is known, among other things, for its large population. What is the demographic situation of the country today?
BG: China was long the most populous country on Earth, but it ceded first place to India in 2022. The Chinese population now stands at 1,409 billion, and it has been stagnating for several years. This is logical: China has now completed its demographic transition.
The stages of this transition are well known. First, a sharp decline in mortality, combined with a high birth rate, led to rapid population growth under the socialist regime. Under Mao Zedong, the Chinese population doubled while life expectancy increased by 36 years: in 1950, it was just 36; by Mao’s death in 1976, it had reached 64; today, it exceeds 78 years. The fall in mortality thus allowed the population to double, even triple, before stabilizing around 1.4 billion.
The birth control policy, introduced in 1978 and maintained until 2015, is estimated by demographers to have prevented some 400 million additional births. However, this policy was painful for certain families who would have liked to have more children. Ethnic minorities were exempt: the Uyghur population, for instance, has quadrupled since the founding of the People’s Republic of China and doubled since the introduction of the policy.
Today, mortality remains very low thanks to the healthcare system, but the birth rate is also very low, due to rising living standards, longer education, high female participation in the workforce, and rapid urbanization. As elsewhere, fertility rates plummet once a certain level of development is reached. China’s fertility rate is just 1.18, compared with 1.21 in Japan and 0.72 in South Korea.
In short, China now mirrors the pattern of highly developed East Asian countries – much smaller in population but historically twenty years ahead in demographic terms. This evolution has brought about rapid population aging, a source of concern. Today, local authorities actively promote childbirth: some cities even offer financial or material incentives for having children.
SL: Let’s now turn to the central concern of our time: protecting the planet. How is China meeting the environmental challenge?
BG: Over the past thirty years, China has pursued a policy of accelerated industrialization – sometimes at the expense of ecological balance. It missed the industrialization wave of the 19th century, which benefited Western powers, because the Qing Empire – then one of the world’s leading economies – was weakened by foreign incursions.
Today, China is the world’s largest emitter of greenhouse gases. That is hardly surprising: it has become the leading industrial power, accounting for 20% of global GDP and 18% of the world’s population. Yet, on a per capita basis, China ranks behind the United States, Canada, Germany, Saudi Arabia, and several other wealthy nations. The responsibility must therefore be placed in context: China does emit heavily, but only recently – whereas Western countries have been doing so for two centuries. China’s cumulative historical emissions thus remain lower, which of course does not absolve it of its present and future responsibilities.
Over the past decade, China has implemented a determined environmental policy, particularly after the “atmospheric apocalypse” that struck Beijing in 2013. In 2015, Xi Jinping established a central inspection commission to monitor polluting industries. These inspections are rigorous, penalties are severe, and enforcement is exceptionally strict. Draconian measures have been taken against all reducible forms of pollution – air, soil, and water. For example, in this country rich in rivers and lakes, 90% of surface water is now considered safe. Tremendous efforts have also been devoted to improving air quality.
Energy policy forms another cornerstone of this transition. In 2023, China became the world’s largest investor in renewable energy, accounting for 66% of global investment. It is the leading producer of electric batteries, solar panels, and wind turbines. The country hosts vast solar and wind farms – some located in desert regions – capable of powering entire cities of hundreds of thousands of inhabitants. China is also the global leader in hydroelectric power, with the Three Gorges Dam on the Yangtze River – the largest in the world – and an even more ambitious project under way in the Himalayas.
This vast program of energy transition mobilizes both public and private sectors. Its objective is clear: to gradually reduce dependence on fossil fuels and accelerate the shift toward renewable energy.
In sum, China is part of the problem – but it is also a major part of the solution, which cannot be said of the United States. Europe, more attuned to environmental issues, could well develop partnerships with China on this front, where genuine cooperation rather than rivalry is possible.
Finally, regarding nuclear power, Europe remains influenced by a strong anti-nuclear sentiment that sometimes prevents a realistic view of the facts. Yet modern nuclear energy – with third- and fourth-generation reactors, and soon fifth-generation models using lithium and hydrogen – represents a key sector of the future. Coal-fired power plants must be replaced by nuclear ones, a transition China is pursuing, unlike Germany, for example. Beijing aspires to become the world’s leading power in civilian nuclear energy.
SL: Let’s talk politics now. China regularly sparks controversy in the West. How does the Chinese electoral system work?
BG: China’s electoral system operates across several tiers – townships/municipalities, counties/districts, prefectures/provinces, and finally the national level – each with elected people’s congresses. These bodies are deliberative: they handle the affairs within their territorial remit.
China counts roughly three million elected representatives and 98 million Communist Party members. A significant share of those elected are not Party members. Since 1949, eight other legally recognized parties have also sat – alongside the CPC – within the united front and are represented in the National People’s Congress. Their influence is limited, but they do play a role and provide space for alternative viewpoints.
At the grassroots level, candidates can be put forward directly by residents: if ten people endorse a candidate, they may stand for direct election by universal suffrage. Basic requirements are straightforward: Chinese nationality and a clean criminal record. At higher levels, elections are indirect: lower-level deputies elect the next tier up. In all cases, voting is by secret ballot.
As you move up the hierarchy, the Party’s role becomes more central to ensure alignment with broad policy orientations. It is not a power-competition model like Western liberal, pluralist democracies. In China there are no rival parties waging media-driven, big-money campaigns; the media does not structure the electoral arena.
Chinese officials speak of a “people’s democracy,” to which Xi Jinping has added “whole-process,” underscoring that elections exist at all levels and that deputies’ proposals feed into policymaking. But all of this operates within a one-party, party-state framework: the CPC claims to represent society as a whole and co-administers each territorial level with the people’s congresses and local, regional, and provincial executives.
The CPC is both a cadre pipeline and a meritocratic selection mechanism: those who excel in mid-level posts can advance upward. Xi Jinping, for example, followed this step-by-step path before becoming state president and general secretary; he also spent eight years during the Cultural Revolution in “sent-down” re-education in a remote village.
In short, it is a bureaucratic-meritocratic system in which the CPC forms the state’s backbone and governs society according to guidelines set by the National People’s Congress and the Party Congress.
SL: How do you explain one-party rule in China? Can there be democracy with a single party?
BG: In Habermasian terms, democracy is a public sphere where diverse opinions circulate freely and help select those deemed most aligned with the people’s interests. If one equates democracy exclusively with that idealized – some would say mythical – Western model, then no, China is not a democracy. One can argue that such a system exists mainly in the imagination of its theorists, in the rhetoric of politicians who profess it, and among voters who increasingly doubt it. And even if it has existed at certain moments, is it the only possible form of democracy?
The Chinese response is clear: they acknowledge the Western model but consider it ill-suited to China’s historical trajectory. They prefer what they call a “whole-process people’s democracy,” which they judge more consonant with national realities.
The CPC sees itself as carrying a historic mission. After three decades of struggle for power, it built a system that, in its view, has proven itself by results. The vast majority of Chinese do not seek a regime change. In China, public policies can be revised in the name of the general interest without overturning the power structure.
In the West, political systems are often dominated by liberal oligarchies or plutocracies: governments change, policies rarely do. Real power lies with economic-financial elites who set the outer limits of politics. In France, for instance, it is commonly said that if Jean-Luc Mélenchon came to power, capital flight and market pressure would immediately constrain his room for maneuver.
In China, real power is political. To “do politics” is to join the CPC and contribute to the collective project. In France, real power is economic-financial: regardless of who is elected, the macroeconomic line tends to persist. As Margaret Thatcher put it, “There is no alternative.”
China indeed offers no alternative to one-party rule. But it does offer genuine alternatives in policy choices. Under Xi Jinping, for example, we have seen strong priorities: eradicating extreme poverty, a systematic anti-corruption drive, and bringing major private conglomerates to heel – ordering them to invest in strategic high technologies for the national interest and to stay outside the political sphere. In China, the Communist Party is the sole holder of political power.
SL: Can people freely express dissenting opinions in China?
BG: It depends on what we mean by dissenting opinion. It should be remembered that freedom of expression has limits, even in Western democracies – and that having freedom also presupposes access to means of expression.
Broadly speaking, the situation is comparable in China. People can voice dissenting views on social media, sometimes quite sharply, even though the state exercises surveillance and control. But that is also true in our Western democracies. In practice, there is a certain freedom of tone.
In the media, the situation is different. The notion that democracy consists in the sometimes brutal clash of opinions and competition for power does not apply in China. The purpose of public debate there is not to win power, but to deepen shared understanding. Chinese civilization – several millennia old – values knowledge and merit. Public debate is not organized as in France, where everyone comments on everything without necessarily being a specialist. Media chatter, constant controversy, electoral brawling, pointless polemics, and aggressive exchanges hold little interest for the Chinese. Such disorder, like social unrest, is alien to their cultural sensibility. Just as they prize public security, they also appreciate calm and order in the media.
That said, divergent opinions do exist in China. Intellectually and ideologically, several currents coexist.
Neo-Confucians, very active in academic, political, and media circles, advocate a return to traditional values: family spirit, filial piety, and Confucian principles in general. They wish this heritage to serve as a shared moral foundation, without any transcendent religious dimension.
Liberals are influential in certain economic and political circles. They call for greater market freedom, more privatization, and an orientation closer to Western oligarchic models. This current had considerable influence in the early 2000s, after Jiang Zemin’s term in office, but it is no longer dominant. Under Xi Jinping, the private sector continues to play a role – but under the guidance of a strong state that sets the direction.
Nationalists advocate regaining control of Taiwan and adopting a firmer stance toward U.S. provocations in the South China Sea. They defend a hard line centered on sovereignty and strength.
The New Left was highly influential in the 1990s and 2000s. It opposed massive privatization, the dismantling of Mao-era social protections, growing inequality, and the precarious conditions of migrant workers. It called for a return to socialist fundamentals and social reform. In many respects, this current has fulfilled its historic mission, having won the ideological battle: recent major developments – the universalization of social protection, the 2008 pro-labor law, and campaigns against poverty and corruption – have all gone in its direction.
In China, even the powerful – Party officials or private entrepreneurs – are not above the law. It is one of the few countries where billionaires have been imprisoned or even executed, as happened in 2021. The state asserts its authority, and no one is beyond the reach of justice.
As a Chinese author put it: “Socialism saved China under Mao Zedong; today, China has saved socialism as an idea that continues to inspire hope.”
SL: What about the human rights situation in China?
BG: International human rights organizations such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch regularly publish reports on this issue. They do document certain violations – for example, prison sentences for disturbances to public order.
However, these realities must be placed in perspective by comparison with what happens elsewhere, including in Western countries. In France, during the gilets jaunes movement, many people with no criminal record were also sentenced to prison. Some lost their lives or were maimed during police interventions. From a comparative standpoint, the notion that repression in China is uniquely or exceptionally harsh does not hold up to close scrutiny.
The Chinese also emphasize that human rights are not limited to freedom of expression. For them, the first fundamental right is the right to a decent life, followed by respect for national sovereignty. On both counts, they consider their country to be ahead of many others.
Of course, there are limits to freedom of expression in China – but that is true everywhere. The criteria are simply different. In China, it is forbidden to call for the president’s removal, to challenge the political system, to incite insurrection against the government, or to advocate the secession of ethnic minorities.
SL: In the West, there is often discussion about the situation of the Uyghurs and the discrimination they are said to face. What is your view on this issue?
BG: Xinjiang has a population of about 26 million, including 12 million Uyghurs. The region has long harbored a nationalist movement with separatist tendencies, which already emerged at the end of the 19th century and was repressed by the Qing Empire. The upheavals following the fall of the empire in 1911 encouraged a revival of this movement, which later waned until the late 1990s.
Thanks to Beijing’s policies, the Uyghur population grew from 3 million to 12 million within a few decades. But this demographic boom also fueled separatist ambitions, sustained by hopes of independence.
The Islamist wave that swept across the Middle East and Central Asia did not spare Xinjiang, which borders Pakistan and Afghanistan. Fighters who had passed through Afghanistan crossed into the region, and this movement flared up in 2009 during the Urumqi riots, when hundreds of jihadist Uyghur separatists attacked and killed Han Chinese civilians – 191 people died. Subsequent attacks multiplied, culminating in the Kunming train station massacre, where 31 passengers were stabbed to death.
Confronted with this Uyghur separatist and jihadist terrorism, the Chinese state acted firmly to prevent a scenario similar to Syria’s. The armed police dismantled terrorist cells, and the courts sentenced around 30,000 people to penalties ranging from fines to long prison terms. Of these, 13,000 were incarcerated. Sentences varied according to the severity of the offenses: propaganda was not punished like terrorism. Internment centers also housed individuals considered terrorists or would-be terrorists.
This policy was widely supported by Chinese public opinion, including a large segment of the Uyghur population, particularly in response to the Turkestan Islamic Party, the Uyghur branch of Al-Qaeda.
Alongside repression, a preventive component was introduced. Beijing set up semi-closed vocational training and re-education centers, where young people followed months-long programs with regular leave. The Western press described them as “concentration camps” after U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused China of pursuing a “genocidal policy.” This rhetoric is completely absurd: these centers have since closed after achieving their deradicalization goals.
Today, Xinjiang has regained stability. Muslims there freely practice their religion: there are 23,000 mosques – out of 35,000 nationwide – flights connect the region to Mecca for pilgrimage, and halal restaurants are numerous. China has never had a problem with Islam as a faith, but rather with radical organizations directed from abroad – such as Al-Qaeda, created with CIA backing, which supported the founding of the Turkestan Islamic Party to destabilize the region. This strategy was articulated by Zbigniew Brzezinski, who saw the Muslim “green belt” south of Russia and China as a weak point through which to spread Wahhabi and jihadist ideology in order to undermine those powers.
SL: Are there political prisoners in China?
BG: That depends on what we mean by “political prisoners.” If we mean people convicted by Chinese courts for serious disturbances to public order or threats to national security, then yes.
Liu Xiaobo is often cited – he appears in Amnesty International reports as a political prisoner. One may regret that an intellectual was jailed for his writings, but we should recall the tenor of some of his statements. He asserted that the Chinese were “subhuman” and that, for them to become “human,” Westerners would have to recolonize China for three centuries. He also wrote that China should be divided into twenty countries because it was ungovernable. He supported the war in Iraq and welcomed U.S. military intervention in Korea, claiming that China had been “on the wrong side” at the time – though some 300,000 Chinese soldiers died in the Korean War.
Despite these positions, he received the Nobel Peace Prize. For the Chinese state, which is extremely attached to national sovereignty, such remarks were intolerable. Few sovereign states would let comments of this kind pass without responding.
SL: Let’s talk now about China’s place in the world. Is China a peaceful power?
BG: China has not waged a war since 1979. The last was the border conflict with Vietnam – after Vietnam intervened to end the Khmer Rouge massacres, which Beijing then supported. In a moment of political transition, Chinese leaders sought to demonstrate strength with an offensive along the Vietnamese border, but they ran into the 92nd Vietnamese Division, battle-hardened by victories over the French and later the Americans. Clearly, it was a bad idea.
Since then, Chinese doctrine opposes war. Beijing refuses to project power by military means. China has only one overseas military base, in Djibouti – versus roughly 800 for the United States.
China’s official position remains the peaceful settlement of disputes. This is the line it advances on the Russia – Ukraine conflict, the Israeli – Palestinian conflict, and in tensions between Iran and the United States.
SL: What is the current state of relations between China and the United States? Is a war between the two countries possible?
BG: Conflict is always possible, but it is unlikely. China has been a nuclear power since 1964. For the United States – also a nuclear power – confronting China would entail the risk of mutual destruction: the very logic of nuclear deterrence.
China has no intention of going to war with the United States. The only plausible scenario for a limited military clash would concern Taiwan, if the island were to declare independence. Beijing considers that a casus belli. In such a case, China would likely impose a blockade, which the United States would try to counter. In Taiwan itself, there are two camps: the pro-independence forces, currently in power, and those who favor dialogue with Beijing.
The real confrontation between China and the United States is playing out on the economic front – and there, the Chinese have already taken the lead.
SL: Tell us about the “One Belt, One Road” initiative.
BG: It’s a global partnership already implemented on a large scale. Launched by Xi Jinping in 2013, it has mobilized about one trillion dollars to finance some 14,000 projects, a third of which have been completed or are underway. These are civilian infrastructures: industrial parks, rail lines, power plants, stadiums, hospitals, highways, and ports.
Such infrastructure both stimulates trade and equips developing countries for industrialization. Beijing wants these countries to advance, because they make stronger partners than if they lag behind.
It’s a win-win partnership: China gains more robust partners with whom it deepens trade, and the participating countries benefit from accelerated development. In short, it’s a worldwide co-development project.
The model is more attractive than Western offers. Loans come from Chinese state banks at favorable rates – they have no private shareholders to reward and think in the long term. Projects are carried out by Chinese firms, public and private, in partnership with local companies, which creates jobs and fosters technology transfer.
These partnerships cut across geopolitical divides. In Latin America, for example, China works with Venezuela, Colombia, and Chile alike. In Europe, fourteen countries also participate.
In under a decade, Beijing has built a vast global partnership centered on civilian infrastructure, in the interest of the many – and, of course, its own. Unlike the United States or the International Monetary Fund, which tie aid to austerity and the precepts of the Washington Consensus (privatization, sweeping liberalization, dismantling of the welfare state, etc.), China offers cooperation without political strings attached. It does not interfere in domestic politics. That is why the initiative has been so successful.
SL: What are China’s relations with the Global South?
BG: China is primarily connected to the Global South through its global partnership initiative, the Belt and Road. But it has also woven a network across the South through the BRICS, which now includes eleven countries and about ten applicants. Membership requires unanimous consent, which sometimes leads to vetoes.
The BRICS are not a political, economic, or military alliance, but an informal platform for exchange. Their shared goal is to pursue development along their own paths, without exclusion or interference in one another’s domestic choices. It is a rising coalition of sovereign nations that are increasingly cooperating – and often de-dollarizing their bilateral trade, as seen between China and Russia, and between China and Brazil. The more members the BRICS admit, the freer global trade will become from dependence on the dollar.
China also sponsored the BRICS’ New Development Bank (NDB), now chaired by former Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. This institution is set to become a major source of financing for projects within the latest phase of the Belt and Road Initiative.
Beijing is also emphasizing telecommunications, notably through the rollout of 5G across the African continent. In the long term, it plans to build nuclear power plants in several countries of the Global South. One such project had been agreed with Argentina before being frozen by the new president, Javier Milei. Chinese nuclear technology is poised to establish itself globally for two reasons: it is as efficient as its Western counterparts, but considerably cheaper. The same holds true for renewable energy, thanks to China’s immense financial resources, technological expertise, and industrial capacity.
In short, China is becoming the principal financial engine of co-development across much of the world – pursuing a peaceful logic aimed at shared prosperity.
SL: One final question to conclude this fascinating conversation: why does China claim Taiwan?
BG: Taiwan is part of China. Beijing therefore does not need to “claim” this territory – it is Chinese. Asserting ownership over what is already yours is legitimate. Taiwan has long been a province of China. Historically, the island was fully integrated into the Qing Empire in the mid-18th century, having already been under Chinese control earlier. It was later seized by Japan through the unequal Treaty of Shimonoseki in 1895.
After Chiang Kai-shek took refuge there following the civil war, Taiwan became a secessionist entity. But since 1971 – when the United Nations recognized the “One China” principle and transferred China’s seat to the People’s Republic of China – Taiwan has had no legal existence. Today, only six or seven micro-states still recognize it officially. Even the United States, which provides military support to the island, does not recognize it as an independent state.
It is therefore a de facto secession, a historical anomaly that is likely to disappear within the next decade. For several years, the Chinese military has been conducting naval exercises around the island, always rehearsing the same scenario: a blockade. Beijing is waiting for one thing – for Taiwan’s leaders to make an irreversible mistake, such as proclaiming independence. In that case, the blockade would be enforced. And no one would truly attempt to break it – not even the Americans.
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Référence électronique
Salim Lamrani, « The Chinese Revolution Achieved a Synthesis Between Different Social Forces, All Animated by The Same Desire to Build a Fairer and More United Society », Études caribéennes [En ligne], 15 | Novembre 2025, mis en ligne le , consulté le 14 novembre 2025. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/etudescaribeennes/37870 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/15371
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