Chinas Imperialism

A lesson concerning − old and new imperialism − a socialist alternative and its mistakes − the birth of a capitalist class-society − the rise of a new major power Preliminary remarks When China entered the WTO in November 2001, the general public in the Western hemisphere took more or less astonished note that the most heavily populated nation of the world, a former socialist developing country, had turned in recent years into an industrial state and a respectable export nation. By 2010, even such information is already obsolete: meanwhile China is the third largest national economy of the world and has replaced Germany as the world export champion. So of course, there is a lot of talk about China – but what kind? The leading point of view of the China reports among the bourgeois public involves the question of what the rise of this country means for “us”. China's entrance into the free world market is welcomed and the opening of its market with 1.3 billion customers makes “us” very optimistic; on the other hand, a new “yellow peril” is looming. Because this time, China steps up as a strong economic competitor that not only takes parts of global business away from “us” with its low wages, but has long sounded the organised attack on “our” sanctum, the technical know-how of companies throughout the US and Europe. This ambivalence is reprised politically: The political and economic elite of the West promises itself absolutely plenty from the restrengthened Asian power and the good relations they are maintaining with it. On the other hand, it is recorded in London, in Berlin and especially in Washington that one is increasingly dealing with a self-confident great power that refuses to be simply incorporated in a foreign order. It is noted with dismay that the Chinese leaders are a collection of “still” rather obstinate communist minds occupied with refusing their people democracy and the Dalai Lama “his Tibet”. Sealed off from the public, the leaders are occupied with...