One wonders, while sitting in front of the television watching the amazing show presented by the Chinese army on the occasion of the sixtieth anniversary of the establishment of its communist revolution: would “Great Teacher Mao Zedong” have recognized the China he left behind, had he had the opportunity to be among the leaders standing on the podium at the Gate of Heavenly Peace (Tiananmen Square), saluting their troops on this occasion? China has moved from one age to another over the past thirty years since Mao's death (1976). Current leaders, such as President Hu Jintao and Vice President Xi Jinping, were not responsible for such a shift, in spite of what credit they claim for it. The real Chinese reformer is small-built modernist Deng Xiaoping, who decided to keep Marxist-Leninist pamphlets away from economy and society, and who walked – and took his country down – a path which was at the time described as blasphemy against the principles of the Cultural Revolution. The paradox which faced the modernization process was: can a communist party with the known work tools – based on the rule of a single party, on embracing a single ideology, and on planned economy – coexist with the requirements of capitalist development, and the rules of individual freedom that govern it, especially in its economic aspect, without it leading to the fall of this party's unified leadership, and thus to its end and to the end of the revolution with it? China's experience has proved that this was possible. Not only that, but the experiment has proved to be a success it now prides itself in. China's Ambassador in Britain, Fu Ying, in an article she published yesterday in the British newspaper The Guardian on this occasion, says: “In 1949 China's GDP was $18 billion or $50 per capita. In 2008, total GDP reached $4.3 trillion and $3,260 per capita”, adding that “in the past 30 years, China's trade increased from $20.6 billion to just under $2.6 trillion, a more than hundredfold rise”. More numbers follow: “Thirty years ago, foreign direct investment in China was virtually nonexistent. In 2008 it grew to $92.4 billion, ranking first place among developing countries. As of the end of 2008, China has invested $150 billion in 170 countries and regions”. All of this with the Communist Party still ruling, its red flag decorating China's squares. Nevertheless, China under its rule has become the world's second economic giant (after the United States), and has managed to invalidate the ideological theory stating that economic progress can only be achieved under a capitalist system. And yet… what kind of communism is ruling China today? Is it the communism of Karl Marx, who considered that Asian models, which he described as “backward”, would not be able to stop the advance of the capitalist economy? Or is it the communism of Lenin, whose successors, thanks to their stringent party administration and economic narrow-mindedness, were able to do away with the experiment of the first communist state and to turn it and its allies in Eastern Europe into test fields for economic poverty and political impotence? Rather, it is a form of socialism with Chinese features that rules in Beijing today. More accurately, in the words used by British magazine The Economist, it is “a non-communist country ruled by a communist party”. This country is the one that must be taken into account today in any international decision, whether regarding the G20 economic forum, the Iranian crisis or international oil markets. It is a country that does not seek to exercise its regional influence through bygone soviet means, but rather through dialogue and commercial exchange. This is how China has become the main player in resolving the nuclear crisis with North Korea, and this is how its voice has become the loudest among those calling for excluding sanctions as a means of resolving the disagreement with the Iranian regime. And Beijing deals with its border disputes with Japan or with India in the same way. When it is said that China is the next world superpower, this is not essentially due to its communist ideology, as there are communists elsewhere on this earth, nor to its size, as there are larger countries, but rather to its ability to adapt to the age, to remove the Maoist garment and dress in a freer and more open fashion. * Al-Hayat, 2009-10-02
