China: The Revolutionary Myth

Gwynne Dyer, a London-based freelance journalist, has penned an exceptional article on the canard that China’s success story if proof of how marvelous its 1949 revolution was – a canard recently repeated with gushing enthusiasm by a popular (in his country) leader.

Arriving in Beijing on 23 August for his third China visit in five years, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez praised the country’s Communist leaders to the skies for having rescued China from a ‘practically feudal’ situation and made it one of the world’s largest economies in less than half a century. It was an entirely predictable remark by the firebrand Venezuelan leader. It was also entirely wrong.

Dyer goes on to demolish the myth point by point in a manner that will no doubt infuriate today’s die-hard Marxists. I’ll just give one more snippet, and encourage everyone to read it all.

So here we are again, with the Chinese Communist regime taking credit for all the improvements in China since they won the civil war in 1949, and foreign leftists like Hugo Chavez holding out China as an example of what wonderful things can be accomplished under ‘socialism.’ But what would China be like now if the Communists had not won power in 1949? Much richer, much freer, and not much less equal, either.

The right comparison is not between China in 1949 and China now. It is between China’s economic progress since 1949 and that achieved by its neighbors that were in a roughly similar state of development at that time. The two closest parallels are South Korea and the ‘other China,’ Taiwan. Both had been Japanese colonies for decades before 1945, so they were a bit ahead of the mainland – but then Taiwan’s population grew overnight by almost forty percent in 1949 as Nationalist refugees from the lost civil war flooded in, and Korea was devastated by the war of 1950-53.

Both Taiwan and South Korea were ruled for the next three decades by oppressive and ruthless military regimes. Neither country adopted raw free-market capitalism – the state protected infant industries and nourished them with low-interest capital – but at least they weren’t tied to Marxist economics. By the 1980s both countries had achieved economic takeoff, and democracy came soon afterward.

Expect to hear the usual chorus: But China is different…but China has so many people…but China need a tough ruler who can pull the country up by its bootstraps….but….but…but…. All those things might be true. But none of those things justifies the horrors prepetrated against China’s citizens by their own rulers, the beloved CCP.

Dyer’s closing remarks devastate.

They may be closet capitalists these days, but if they don’t have the myth that the revolution was beneficial, how can they justify their own monopoly of power?

Well, they can’t, actually.

No, they can’t.

The Discussion: 10 Comments

Interesting article. But it does remind me of a somewhat snide comment heard a few years ago as I walked through Beijing’s old Sanlitun Nanjie with a Chinese colleague. Witnessing the bars and drunk foreigners and the drug dealing and the men pawing Chinese girls he turned to me and said tongue-only-partially-in-cheek: “This is what all China would look like if Jiang Jieshi had won the war.”

September 1, 2006 @ 3:10 am | Comment

At first I was fond of Chavez and thought him to be a populist with the cajones to stand up to American hegemony. More and more I find opportunism and ignorant grand-standing to be his dominant characteristics.

September 1, 2006 @ 5:33 am | Comment

It’s hard not to admire Chavez at least for standing up to Lord Bush the way he has. But the ironic fact remains, he’s only deliriously popular because Bush’s illegal war jacked up the price of oil obscenely, so Chavez is swimming in cash. Without that, he’d be an utter and miserable failure,

September 1, 2006 @ 7:30 am | Comment

Yes it’s an interesting concept. How would China have developed if Mao had been run over by a bus in 1937? And what would Tibet be like without the Chinese invasion? I fondly imagine it would be like Bhutan. Meanwhile, back to reality.

September 1, 2006 @ 7:46 am | Comment

The two closest parallels are South Korea and the ‘other China,’ Taiwan. Both had been Japanese colonies for decades before 1945, so they were a bit ahead of the mainland –

Yes, but most of the infrastructure built during the Japanese colonial period was bombed to smithereens during the Korean War. The real difference lies in the period from the mid-1960s to the late 1970s. China spent most of those years destroying its institutions during the Cultural Revolution. South Korea transformed itself into Korea, Inc. under the leadership of Park Chunghee, whose economic policies favored large export businesses.

September 1, 2006 @ 5:33 pm | Comment

I bought his book Future:Tense at Termini station in Rome as I was going to the airport. Tremendous book, devastating conclusions, and matter-of-fact analysis comparing the world today with that leading up to WWI.

September 1, 2006 @ 9:22 pm | Comment

Other people are talking about Korea…now I’m going to have an identity crisis

September 1, 2006 @ 11:15 pm | Comment

Hello Dyer,

You do not think Geroge Bush, Bill Cliinton take credit for its economic sucess? Where have you been? What do you think western politicians do? Give credit to someone else?

Western systems is notororus for this type of practices. Taking credit is how they get their votes.

So how is the Chinese gov’t different from that of US and Brisiths? Hello! where have you been?

September 2, 2006 @ 12:57 pm | Comment

Hello Dyer,

You do not think Geroge Bush, Bill Cliinton take credit for its economic sucess? Where have you been? What do you think western politicians do? Give credit to someone else?

Western systems is notororus for this type of practices. Taking credit is how they get their votes.

So how is the Chinese gov’t different from that of US and Brisiths? Hello! where have you been?

September 2, 2006 @ 12:57 pm | Comment

These are the right comparisions to be made. Indeed, if one were to reduce the economic growth China has achieved under what is essentially capitalism to that which it achieved under Communism, one would really see how good the revolution was.

September 3, 2006 @ 9:28 am | Comment

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