The unfinished Chinese revolution

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The October 1984 plenum of the Central Committee of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) marked an important deepening in the course toward capitalist restoration undertaken by the reform faction of Deng Xiaoping. In the boldest move since the party reinstituted individual farming in 1978, the CCP decided to heavily curtail central planning by allowing approximately one million state-run enterprises to compete for survival in the growing parallel market system. At the same time, Chinese officials declared that the "Reform of the Economic Structure" measures "will affect 200 million people in the cities" and "complete the economic transformation by doing for industry what the 1978 measures did for agriculture. "

Western diplomats applauded the October decree. One declared, "This is the first step in a very exciting direction. If they don't trip and fall, the Soviet model is In this issue of Forum, Ralph Schoenman examines the origins of the CCP's current policies and underlines the mounting tension and inequities stemming from the course embarked upon by the CCP under the helm of Deng Xiaoping. Schoenman pays major attention to the Special Economic Zones (SEZ), which are a limited version of what the October reform measures intend to apply on a national level. His study of the SEZ's provides great insight into the sharp economic contradictions and political confrontations that can be expected in China in the coming years.

Schoenman has visited China on numerous occasions and has written extensively on this subject. In 1965, after witnessing the Indonesian coup, he left with the Chinese mission for Peking, where he remained for a brief period.—THE EDITORS state price subsidies were drastically reduced dead in China. "

The public perception of the Chinese revolution, particularly in the West and notably among the left, has a curious dimension. There is little if any correspondence between the actual theory and practice of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP)-both before assuming power and after-and the way in which the party's role has been discussed within socialist circles abroad.

Part of this curious romance between left public opinion abroad and the CCP has been the acceptance at face value of the version of that party's history which it has chosen to present.

The Long March, to take an extreme example, served throughout the period of radicalization in the United States as a model of revolutionary strategy and a symbol of the perspicacity and extraordinary leadership of Mao Tse-tung.

The Long March began in southern Kiangsi after encircling attacks by the Kuomintang forces of Chiang Kai-shek had forced Mao's troops to abandon millions of peasants in Kiangsi, Fukien, Anhwei, and Hupeh. The repression which followed took nearly 500,000 lives.

Of the 300,000 people who began the Long March, only 30,000 remained alive when the march ended one year later in Yenan. Ninety percent had been killed.

This was a calamitous defeat, the seeds of which had been sown in the Chinese revolution of 1927. The Chinese party abandoned its independent organization to enter the Kuomintang, only to be turned upon and slaughtered by Chiang.

Yet within a year of the Long March, this same leadership was still pursuing the policies laid down by Stalin, this time at the Seventh World Congress of the Comintern, when the line of the popular front was declared.

After Chiang's own junior officers captured him and wanted to execute him for failing to resist the Japanese attack on Manchuria, Chou En-lai negotiated the release of Chiang as the party leadership again sought to subordinate itself to the Kuomintang. Mao and his colleagues appealed to Chiang "to lead the struggle against Japan" and, in exchange, undertook to abolish the Red Army, the "soviets," and the agrarian revolution.

Coalition government

As late as three months before the collapse of Chiang's armies, Mao had sought to persuade him again to enter into an alliance. Literally weeks before the third Chinese revolution assumed power on Oct. 1, 1949, the Mao leadership had attempted to share this power with Chiang. But the disintegration of the army of the Kuomintang did not prevent Mao from setting up the Consultative Conference to organize a "coalition government of four classes."

Bourgeois property was preserved and the land reform was postponed.

The declared purpose of this coalition government was to persuade the United States that Mao Tse-tung's "New Democracy" could satisfy American aspirations in the region. The U.S. rulers answered Mao within eight months with the Korean war, in which SOCIALIST ACTION in mid-construction as Soviet and Eastern-bloc technicians were withdrawn and supplies were cut off.

The Mao leadership, isolated from the Soviet Union and unable to realize its aspirations of entering into an "understanding" with the capitalist West, pursued a two-tiered policy. At the level of rhetoric, the Mao leadership denounced the Soviet Union for abandoning the revolution. In practice, however, the attitude of the Chinese party itself toward struggles abroad remained barely distinguishable from the Soviet policies against which it polemicized.

Indonesia and Chile

Perhaps the most shocking application of the Maoist version of "peaceful coexistence" took place in Indonesia in 1965. The Indonesian Communist Party was Maoist. It was also the largest party outside of the Communist bloc with 3 million members and 15 million supporters.

Yet the Indonesian party under direction from Mao pursued a policy of the parliamentary road to power, peaceful coexistence, and total subordination to the nationalist leadership of Sukarno. Mao pressured PKI leader Aidit to take no steps to arm the peasants or to challenge the Indonesian regime with whom Mao sought close state relations.

In the inevitable coup that followed, the U.S. 7th Fleet was in Javanese waters as U.S. jets flew overhead. The generals took power without a street demonstration, a strike, or an act of organized resistance. The slaughter echoed that ordered by Chiang Kai-shek in Shanghai in 1927, as nearly 1 million Indonesian workers, peasants, and students were killed in a period of three months.

But perhaps the lowest point of such politics occurred during the 1973 coup in Chile. Leftists fled to the Chinese embassy in Santiago to escape the goons of counterrevolution. Instead of finding (continued on page DECEMBER 1984

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"The Mao faction had all the accoutrements of a ruling caste...speclal shops, sumptuous houses, chauffeurs, and even private screenings of Hollywood films." ...China refuge, they were turned over to the authorities by the embassy of Mao Tse-tung. It was, therefore, more than a symbolic act that the sole regime in the world to fly its flag at half-mast upon the death of Mao Tse-tung was the fascist government of Pinochet.

In place of Marx's aphorism "revolutionary in content, moderate in form?" the Mao leadership pursued class collaboration in practice, concealed by confrontation in words.

A ruling caste In a remarkable series of interviews with an American journalist sympathetic to Maoism, Jian Qing, the wife of Mao Tse-tung, revealed that for all the denunciations of "capitalist roaders," bureaucracy, and privilege, the Mao faction had all the accoutrements of a ruling caste. There were special shops, sumptuous houses, chauffeurs, and even private screenings of Hollywood films.

Throughout all the gyrations of economic policy from 1949 to the present, party functionaries have been able to acquire substantial material benefits. All factions of the party, therefore, have a stake in preventing popular involvement in decision-making.

At first the party sought to industrialize by emulating the Soviet Union. Agricultural production was to be extracted from the countryside both to feed the workers needed for planned industry and to provide the capital investment necessary to launch industrial growth. In China, usable agricultural land is extraordinarily limited. Much of China is either desert or unterraceable mountainside.

A consequence of the large population combined with the small amount of agricultural land has been concealed unemployment and under-employment. The temptation is to gravitate to the cities where the possibility of jobs and economic betterment beckons.

Since popular discussion and involvement in decision-making were ruled out by the party, the planning was neither explained to the people, nor did it reflect popular commitment. To prevent underemployed farmers from coming to the cities and forming an army of slum dwellers and unemployed, the Great Leap Forward was launched.

Agriculture and industry

From 1958 to 1962, underemployed peasant labor was confined to rural communes, which were mini-production centers. Steel factories in cities were created in miniature through backyard blast furnaces in which tools were made, cement was produced, and the work force was substituted for technology.

Under this Maoist scheme, any attempt by workers or peasants to fight for a larger portion of the surplus was denounced as "materialism."

The very functionaries who so denounced the workers enjoyed privileges beyond the fantasy of Chinese toilers.

By the late 1950s, urban workers had not had a raise in 20 years. Workers, whether technically skilled or not, had no role in plant decisions. The "shopfloor committees" of Maoist legend consisted of party functionaries and police. Where token workers were included, they were not consulted. The sole task of these committees was to pass on decisions to the ranks and to coerce reluctant workers to work overtime without pay.

There were many instances of worker refusal. "No" votes led to disappearances to labor camps. The restiveness was so severe that the party sought to loosen up. The brief declaration of "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let a hundred schools of thought contend" produced an avalanche of criticism, protest, and SOCIALIST ACTION denunciations. The party panicked, and the lid was hurriedly put back on-with mass arrests to punctuate the point.

From 1962 to 1966 Liu Shao-chi and Deng Xiaoping relegated the Mao faction to minority status as popular resentment built toward an explosion. The giant communes were abandoned. Centralized planning had failed to provide reliable criteria for production decisions, because workers and peasants dared not voice opinions for fear of reprisal. Therefore, it was modified.

Peasants were now allowed to sell part of their production on the free market, and efforts were made to modernize industry. But China suffered from the coordinated blockade of the Soviet Union and the capitalist West. Investment capital was absent. Technological help was non-existent. Thus, productivity was condemned to levels of growth that could not keep pace with the population expansion. The effort to break out of isolation by catering to the national bourgeois leaderships in developing countries led to the further isolation of China.

Cultural Revolution With the pressure growing within the party to find a route toward rapprochement with the Soviet Union and with criticisms of Mao becoming open after the disaster in Indonesia, the Cultural Revolution unfolded. The Red Guards were a device as much designed to attack opponents of the Mao faction as they were a crude solution to the explosive danger of youth unemployment in the cities.

To gauge the magnitude of the repression and chaos unleashed by the Cultural Revolution, it is necessary to appreciate the fact that 20 million youths were deported during the late '60s and early '70s. The entire university system was shut down for 10 years. The skills of an entire generation were lost.

Covert efforts by Chou En-lai and Deng Xiaoping to break out of the impasse of mass dislocation, chaos, and the tangible hatred for the party among the masses were enhanced by the new openings to the West which brought Nixon to Peking. Technology began to be imported, and an introduction into the private market of the agrarian surplus left in the hands of peasants occurred. But these attempts were punctuated by reversion to the purges and disarray of the Cultural Revolution.

China after Mao

Only with Mao's death in October 1976 did the minority around Chou Enlai and Deng Xiaoping strike at the Mao faction. They staged a military coup against the "Gang of Four, which all DECEMBER 1984 Chinese understood to be the Gang of Five-with the unspoken addition of Chairman Mao.

An explosion of popular rage was unleashed against the party upon the death of Chou En-lai, who was looked upon as the one figure in the central leadership who had tried to slow or reverse the terrible period of the Cultural Revolution.

His funeral inspired a mass outpouring of sentiment in enormous demonstrations, notably the rally in Tien An Min Square. Banners attacking the party's repression and the militancy of the demonstrators frightened all factions of the party and the bureaucracy.

The regime sought to calm mass anger by giving voice to the criticisms which were once grounds for imprisonment and even death. Party leaders attacked abuses, but tried to confine these to the period of the Cultural Revolution.

For nearly a year all China erupted in wall posters, spontaneous mass meetings, leaflets, and group discussions in an atmosphere reminiscent of Paris during the May events of 1968.

Democracy Wall was born. Posters listing grievances and calling for social and political change appeared daily Huge crowds assembled to read and debate them. People came fron great distances just to photograph the wall posters and to join in this unofficial popular assembly. Every morning there were new posters, leaflets and impromptu meetings. Every factory had its wall posters.

The popular explosion mounted and the party leaders temporized, speaking openly of the danger of mass revolt. Only the absence of an organization to formulate mass demands, to press them upon the authorities-and through which a mass leadership could crystalize—allowed the regime to stall, maneuver, and ride out the storm.

After the popular explosion in Tien An Min Square, three factions emerged in the party. One was composed of functionaries of the Cultural Revolution led by Hua Guofeng. Within two years they were forced out.

The second faction, known as the "moderates, ran the army and administrators and was led by President Li Xiannian. They sought to revert to the party life of the 1950s and to prevent drastic changes in economic policy.

The third faction, led by Deng Xiaoping, includes party Chairman Hu Yaobang and Premier Zhao Ziyang. This is the "reform group."

The moderates attempted a 10-year plan in 1978 entailing investment on a large scale in heavy industry with centralized planning and a wage freeze. The result was the emergence of an open worker and student opposition to the party's policies but also to its role in the political life of China.

The reform faction supported the crackdown on dissent but sponsored a return to individual farming. The peasants have responded to the return to individual farming with enthusiasm because the heavy hand of the party bureaucracy was stayed. Grain production shot up. Farmers' markets burgeoned in the cities.

But as agriculture reverted to private production, the gap between entrepreneurs and hired hands grew wide. Some large farmers earned as much as $12,000 a year-an unheard of amount in China. The farmer without skills, with many dependents or unproductive land has, however, been pauperized. The social support system for the disadvantaged has disappeared.

In the cities, factory ownership remains in state hands. The unemployed are urged to start small businesses and can hire workers. The number of unemployed said to have been generated by the Cultural Revolution was 26 million. Restaurants and shops have sprung up on a profit-making basis.

The housing shortages in the cities have been vastly increased and éxacerbated. Cheap rent is disappearing.

The Special Economic Zones Perhaps the most dramatic expression of the use of the free market to use price mechanism as a guide to production while seeking to obtain foreign investment is the creation of 14 "Special Economic Zones."

The declared objectives for these zones, known as "SEZ's" include the securing of overseas direct investment, technology, and equipment. The development of managerial skills, obtaining of experience in international business, and the use of the SEZ's as experimental models for the larger economy have been proposed.

The establishment of enterprises that can hire on the free labor market in order to reduce urban unemployment is a further task ascribed to the SEZ's. The expansion of foreign trade, increases in foreign exchange, and entry in greater degree into the world market were sought.

It is assumed that these steps will raise the standard of living in the SEZ's. But they are also expected to result in a fundamental change in the economic system. Production costs, including wages, rent, and costs of raw materials and energy will be lower in the SEZ's than in Hong Kong and other competing Asian nations.

Between 1979 and 1982, according to a recent study, the Chinese government built four SEZ's in Shenzhen (including the Shekou Industrial Zone), Shantou, Zhuhai, and Xiamen. By the end of 1981, the Chinese State Council reported that these four SEZ's had received direct overseas investment of $1.73 billion, which was 60 percent of (continued

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the total direct investment in China.

By 1982 these four SEZ's alone had signed 1500 contracts with foreign cOTporations. In the hope of raising the standard of living in the SEZ's and thereby gaining popular support, the government also declared its intention to lure both Taiwan and Hong Kong into close economic integration with China.

By January 1983 the government allowed corporations in the zones to negotiate their own wage systems— either piece-rate, hourly, daily, or monthly wages. If the bonus system is more flexible than elsewhere in China and there is a better welfare program than in non-zoned China, wages in the zones still constitute only 50 percent of wage levels for comparable work in Hong Kong.

All enterprises in the 14 zones have wide autonomy. They do not have to follow the state plan. They make their own decisions on what, how much, and in what manner they produce. They set prices for their products. Management systems govern. Technicians have replaced political cadre as managers. Material incentives have wholly replaced political criteria in inducing hard and efficient work.

Increasing dependence.

Most of the zone businesses sell in the international market. The government counts on this to expand China's foreign trade and to increase its foreign exchange earnings. According to Wei Yuming, deputy minister of Foreign Economic Relations and Trade in Peking, 80 percent of sales are now in the international market and only 20 percent in the domestic market. The dependence on the international market is decisive.

It is true that when products are shipped to the domestic Chinese markets, their prices are controlled by the government, but the market mechanism within the zones depends on supply and demand in the world market.

There are various political consequences resulting from the 14 new economic zones. The loosening of bureaucratic and governmental controls in the SEZ's has resulted in Western political and cultural impact on Chinese youth, who were wholly alienated by the Cultural Revolution. The average income in the zones is 40 percent higher than outside them. Management outside the zones is inefficient, productivity lower, and bureaucratic harassment far more severe. The restiveness with official ideology is fueled by the presence of the zones.

One response of an alienated population has been "economic crime."

Smuggling, bribery, tax evasion, and theft have increased rapidly.

The relationship between the market mechanism of the zones and China's planning structure is increasingly complex and problematic. Commodity prices in the zones are determined by the international market, but many commodities come from the rest of China into the zones. It is increasingly difficult for the government to control the marketing relationship between the zones and the national economy.

Attempts to re-centralize planning and to centralize allocation of financial resources come up against the inflationary impact of the zones. Food prices in the zones are twice the national level, and prices of production and consumer goods are higher. Living standards have declined due to inflation.

Many projects planned by the government are now being built in the zones outside of the plan. But the demand for raw materials, energy, and equipment is high. Prices rise. Foreigners with greater purchasing power enter, causing consumer goods to become costly. Taxes are lower so prices are approaching international levels. At the same time wages are half those in Hong Kong. If the government increases wages in the zones it will widen the income gap in the rest of China.

But above all, the financial prospects of the zones flow from the international political and economic climate, particularly in the Western Pacific. The Southern China Sea has oil potential comparable to that of Saudi Arabia. Western oil companies are already drilling and pumping, and U.S. banks have provided the loans to the Chinese government for this exploration.

Although this development opens the door to large amounts of foreign exchange with which technology can be bought, it also intensifies the interdependence of the Chinese and Western economies.

•..increasing disparities It is not the zones alone which are causing fissures in the planning system. The disparity between the free market in agriculture with its decentralized character and the centralized industrialized sector is widening. By now the entire agricultural sector is virtually a free market except that a small percentage of agricultural production is sold to the state at a fixed price.

At the same time, this market freedom does not translate into political freedom or social mobility. As late as 1970 a peasant could not move to a city. And peasants still cannot move to urban areas as residents. Neither jobs nor housing are provided.

Chinese workers can only move from one place to another if they can find a job in advance and on their own, and this is very difficult. In practice, workers can neither change jobs nor move. Only if they swap jobs with a friend can they move about and this is rarely done. There is no real job market.

With money you can buy commodities but at fixed prices determined by planners increasingly unable to control the elements of their plan. Supply and demand changes, but the price structure is not flexible. The market economy is not real under such conditions. It operates in the countryside, but in cities price structures are fixed, and major markets are separated from each other.

There is no real way of knowing how plant directors make decisions. All decisions made at the top by planning commissions depend upon statistics collected, but there is no check on their accuracy. These plans are then handed down to bureaucrats and managers to implement uncritically. So the plan at the top is increasingly arbitrary.

Plans are made for oil development where reserves do not exist, and none are made where they do. Complaints of this nature constantly surface. Recently, China attempted to use Leontieff inputoutput models, but China lacks the computers for such calculations. And the computers depend, in any event, on accurate data collection.

If prices are fixed but unconnected to supply and demand-or to productivity-there 'is a problem. If prices do not reflect a gap in productivity in different sectors—as with the zones and the nonzones-chaos results. Chinese economists have tried to use "shadow price" mathematical models to calculate prices which are closest to actual prices. They simulate what supply and demand should be and estimate the price on this basis.

It is evident that the bureaucratic state is caught on the horns of a dilemma. The planned sector is unable to obtain reliable data because the participation of the workers and the population in decision-making is precluded. But the market mechanism which brings more reliable criteria also renders planning increasingly difficult.

There is the problem of inflation with prices going up. The prices of consumer goods used to be wholly controlled; now they are flexible. Peasants can raise prices and material conditions improve. But peasants then hoard to raise prices. Meanwhile, workers and intellectuals are on fixed incomes. But inflation outruns extra pay.

Bleak prospects for youth Although the zones attract investment there is not enough investment to increase production and augment the number of factories across China. Only 5 percent of high-school graduates in both urban and rural areas are able to pass examinations for college. Only 10 percent can pass two-year technicalschool exams. So 80 percent of high-school graduates cannot get jobs after high school.

Rural students go back to work on farms. Urban students try to find something themselves. They open small restaurants, hotels, shoe repair shops, and enter service trades. Street peddlers abound, and the poor and lumpen fill the cities.

Today in China young people have to wait two years after high school before they can get jobs. They must stay with their parents. This results in youth delinquency and crime. Workers used to be able to keep jobs once they got them, but this too is changing. There is now an army of unemployed who never get jobs.

In the countryside, however, where between 80 and 85 percent of the population lives, the loosening up of bureaucratic controls has occurred under the slogan "Enrich yourselves!" Indeed, some have gotten rich. Many are doing well. Some can earn $5000 to $6000 a year. Peasants who went hungry for a long time now buy trucks and go to Japan as tourists. Some have even bought airplanes for agriculture. But this is an uneven process, and the emergence of rich peasants and entrepreneurs puts different pressures on the regime.

Worker income has not kept pace with the rising inflation. By mid-1980, the rate of inflation was at 7 percent, and Business Week reported that by the end of 1980 the real rate of inflation in China was between 15 and 20 percent. Forty percent of income goes for food, and it is food which suffers the highest rate of inflation.

There is a simmering restlessness just beneath the surface of Chinese life that is politically explosive. In this situation, a change of leadership—in a society where succession is always a crisis-may be a critical juncture.

Perhaps the most serious aspect of the reform movement's attempts to SOCIALIST ACTION Deng Xiaoping.

modernize China through opening up to the West and relying on the market is, as in Poland, the increasing dependence on the capitalist cycle itself. The Far Eastern Economic Review estimated on Sept. 26, 1980, that if China maintained the pace of modernization projected, it would accumulate a debt on the level of Poland's or that of Brazil. The trade deficit with the capitalist countries rose from $1.25 billion in 1977 to $3.5 billion in 1978 to $4.5 billion by 1979.

By July 1980 the U.S. Department of Commerce had forecast that China's gross external debt of $3.5 billion would rise to $16 billion by 1985 with debt service of $3.2 billion. The leadership had to cut back development to avoid this.

By 1980 unemployment was acknowledged at 5 million-figures which were heavily understated. But in 1981 the regime was acknowledging 7 million unemployed. Now, with the threat of dismissal hanging over the heads of 100 million wage earners, unemployment is a major source of concern for Chinese workers. This becomes particularly explosive as profits of businessmen approach 10 times the level of the average industrial worker's wage.

But the continuing source of danger, notwithstanding the loosening of controls in the countryside, is the hidden rural unemployment where peasants cannot come to the cities and private production cannot employ them. This unemployment has been projected as high as 50 percent of the 300 million agricultural producers. Should the international economy go into decline, the ramifications in China will be profound, and the reversion to severe repression in the countryside will be inevitable.

The new constitution These realities are also reflected in the legal system. The Fifth National People's Congress met in Peking in February and March of 1978 to approve changes in the government and in the constitution.

The new constitution included a chapter on the Fundamental Rights and Duties of Citizens. It guarantees fundamental rights such as "freedom of speech, correspondence, the press, assembly, association, procession, demonstration, and the right to strike."

The right to strike, however, was abolished in a 1983 modification of the constitution.

Closer examination reveals that the changes are not in the direction of protecting rights of citizens but rather in guaranteeing the institutional control of the state apparatus.

Amnesty International reported that 10)

DECEMBER 1984

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"We have a new landmark since we started our experiments with capitalism... and 1979 the worker-student associa- Dear editor:

What are the implications of the British miners' strike in Britain and for workers fighting to defend their right to work everywhere? How are the Nicaraguan revolutionaries responding to the worldwide propaganda campaign and the threats of direct imperialist intervention against them? How have the Polish workers continued to organize since the 1981 military crackdown?

What is the response of revolutionary socialists to these events?

International viewpoint carries reports and analysis of all these events, through on-the-spot reports, major analytical articles, and interviews with leading figures of the workers' and socialist movements. It reports on the activity of members of the Fourth International in the workers' movement, in campaigns against repression and attacks on human rights, and as political International Viewpoint is a biweekly review of news and analysis published under the auspices of the United Secretariat of the Fourth InternaWe offer a special introductory offer of three issues for $3. subscription is $22, and one year of International Viewpoint is $42. Subscribe now! Write to Box 80B, 2520 N. Lincoln Ave., China (continued from page 9)

although thousands of people labelled "rightists" since 1957 were rehabilitated, and over 10,000 victims of the Gang of Four were also rehabilitated in Shanghai alone, many posthumously, people who criticize the regime today do not fare better.

Eight people were executed in Hangzhou, capital of Zhejiang province. They were said to be leaders of 13 "counterrevolutionary groups."

They were labelled counterrevolutionary because they "spread propaganda aimed at undermining the socialist system."

One of these political offenders, He Chunshu, was executed in Canton. A 45-year-old teacher, he was sentenced to death for writing and distributing a leaflet critical of party leaders. He had "persistently refused to admit his crimes" according to the notice of the People's High Court of Quandong province.

In a report from Shanghai, dated Dec. 12, 1982, The New York Times reporter Christopher S. Wren gave a detailed account of the new legal system established by the government.

A Shanghai attorney, Dai Manming, told Wren that during the Cultural Revolution the whole legal system was damaged. A defendant had no right to obtain a lawyer to defend him or her. "Under the Gang of Four, he said, "people like us had nothing to do. We were forced out into other jobs, to factories, to the countryside, and to remote parts of the country."

Now Mr. Dai practices law in a government-run legal advisory office among 200 full-time lawyers with 40 part-time lawyers. This is in Shanghai, which has a population of 12 million. In China as a whole there are 5500 fulltime and 1300 part-time lawyers—in a population of over 1 billion.

Guilty until proven innocent But what do lawyers do? They are "an important force for upholding the legal system of the state, Mr. Dai tells us. "The lawyers' regulations stipulate that our task is first to protect the rights of the state and to safeguard the implementation of laws."

There is no legal presumption of innocence until proven guilty. Trials never take place before the defendant VIEWPOINT 1 year ($42) trial subscription -3 issues ($3)

organizations.

tional.

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10 SOCIALIST ACTION has during pre-trial tion.

Huang Huoqiang, China's chief prosecutor, told the National People's Congress that 99.97 percent of the criminals prosecuted during the first nine months of 1981 were found guilty.

The defense lawyer's task is never to suggest that his client is innocent but to look for circumstances that may merit a lighter sentence. He cannot visit his client without government permission.

Ma Rongjie, the lawyer assigned to defend the Gang of Four, never met them because, he tells us, "There was no need to talk to them."

Jiang Hua, president of the Supreme People's Court, states, "In cases of educational significance, sentences are passed at mass rallies where the defendant is sentenced, crowds cheer, and the defendant is led off to execution."

It is instructive to note how the law can be applied subjectively, for political offenses receive very different treatment. The Canton telecommunications director was convicted of using his position to speculate in luxury goods smuggled from Hong Kong. He received two years. Wei Jing Sheng, a member of the democracy movement, received 15 years for "agitation."

Ji Dechun, a former official in Liaoning province, served five years for his role in the Cultural Revolution. But when he was considered insufficiently repentant, he was given a further sentence of 20 years.

Between July 1983 and January 1984, over 6000 people were executed for A six-month available for Chicago, IL DECEMBER 1984 It's the Great Mall of China.

"common crimes" flowing from unemployment, such as petty theft and even unpaid debt.

It is also worth noting that the new constitution was adopted under a regime in which the entire leadership had been victims of purges. Virtually every current leader of the Chinese Communist Party spent eight to 10 years in prison or rural labor camps. Deng Xiaoping's son was crippled for life through incessant beatings at the hands of Mao Tse-tung's Red Guards. Hu Yaobang, the party's "reforming" national secretary, spent the period of the Cultural Revolution cleaning a stable and sleeping with the horses.

The Democracy Movement Repression has been the fate of the Democracy Movement that flourished in early 1979. The workers who were active in this movement were among the hardest hit. An independent trade-union movement was formed in Shang Yang. All of its leaders were put in prison where they remain. In Taiyan, workers who tried to organize their own trade unions were all put in prison.

The same thing occurred in Shanghai from 1978 to 1980. In 1979 Fu Shenqi, a 22-year-old worker in a construction materials factory, started an association of students and workers and published a journal called The Voice of Democracy. He was later to become chairperson of the Association of Chinese Unofficial Publications—a nationwide organization formed at the end of 1980. Every member was imprisoned. Fu Shenqi was sentenced to seven years. Nevertheless, The Voice of Democracy continues to be published in Hong Kong.

Despite the repression, during 1978 tions spread to every major city. Fu describes himself as a Marxist and describes his basic political position to be that of socialist democracy. He ran for the local delegation to the People's Congress in 1980 before his imprisonment.

There is no direct electoral system in China. Elections, in fact, are a farce. Fu, however, stated that the elections offered a historical opportunity to exploit the charade of an election to explain to people how they were disenfranchised.

In his factory, where he ran, there were 1600 workers and two stages to the election. Election law requires that any candidate receive 50 percent of the vote. Fu received 700 out of the 1600, the largest vote of the four candidates— over 40 percent.

The price of dissent During the period between phase one and the run-off, party officials warned all workers that anyone who voted for Fu would be condemned as a counterrevolutionary. He was then arrested and imprisoned.

Wang Xizhe was a worker in a chemical factory in Canton. He was very famous during the Cultural Revolution as a leader of the Red Guards. In 1973 he co-authored with friends a critique of the Cultural Revolution and of Lin Biao and Mao Tse-tung. He was imprisoned from 1973 to 1976.

After Mao's death in 1976, Wang was released. He continued to write articles and to organize until 1978, when he was again imprisoned—this time for 14 years.

Wang, like Fu, describes himself as a Marxist. He gave critical support to the reform faction of the party but published a demand for an independent workers' movement in China. He was involved with the worker-student associations which published an enormous volume of material expressing every point of view.

The majority of articles and demands focused on: 1) removing the bureaucratic system; 2) political democracy; 3) free expression; 4) a re-evaluation of Mao Tse-tung; 5) a public re-examination of the history of the Chinese Communist Party; 6) a public hearing on the events of the Cultural Revolution; and 7) economic reform.

It is not difficult to understand why Deng Xiaoping sent letters of support to General Wojciech Jaruzelski when martial law was declared in Poland. Like Poland, China has relied enormously upon expansion based upon the investment and purchases of the world capitalist economy. Like Poland, agriculture is privatized while heavy-handed attempts at planning founder on the twin poles of unreliable data and the exclusion of the population from every aspect of the decision-making process.

Like Poland, the attempts at reform of the bureaucratic centralized system result in economic inequity amidst privilege and repression. And like Poland, the workers and students have reached out to each other in a climate of unemployment and uncertainty.

Poland, of course, has one-thirtieth the population of China and is a major industrial producer. For China, socialist democracy is not merely a moral imperative which is seizing the consciousness of a new generation of workers and students. It is a minimum prerequisite for economic survival in a society presided over by a bureaucracy as discredited in the eyes of its masses as it is dependent upon the captains of capital for continued growth. The fourth Chinese Revolution will unfold over the next decades and it will shake the earth.

I am writing to inform your readership of the recent death of Connie Stancliff, my longtime friend, comrade, and the mother of my 18-year-old daughter. Connie died Nov. 15, 1984, after losing a courageous battle against lung cancer.

Connie was 45 years old the Saturday before her death. I met Connie when we were both music students at San Diego State University in 1962. We got married and dropped out of school. As the Vietnam War heated up, Connie and I got involved in the activities of a series of antinuclear, antiwar, peace, and radical groups. In 1967, while I was again a student, we joined the YSA and then the SWP.

Connie left the SWP sometime during the early 70s. However, Connie was a feminist, antiwarrior, gay-rights partisan, and revolutionary socialist until the day she died. She had full confidence in the socialist revolution and the potential of the U.S. working class.

Messages of condolence can be sent to Wendy Hayes, Sara Stancliff, and/or myself. If desired, a donation can be made to a favorite charity or antiwar group in her name.

Alan Stancliff Oakland, Calif.

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Connie Stancliff: 1939-1984