Is “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” really just socialism?

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So called “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” is leading to confusion among many comrades. There is a harsh debate going on about it for many years already between revisionist apologists and Marxist-Leninist critics. Let us look into the facts.

Xi Jinping claimed in January 2013 in a study session in front of the back then newly elected 18th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China:

“Socialism with Chinese characteristics is socialism and nothing else. The basic principles of scientific socialism must not be abandoned; otherwise it is not socialism.”¹

Is that remark true? Is “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” really “socialism and nothing else”? The short answer is: No. But that short answer is no explanation for anything and will not satisfy the search for knowledge at all.

Socialism is built on a dictatorship of the proletariat under the guidance of a Marxist-Leninist vanguard party, economically based on a planned economy rooted in public and collective ownership.

How is the situation in China? Are these conditions still applying? Let us start with the economic basis before talking about the political superstructure.

How are the productive relations of the Chinese economy?

On 1st November 2018 Xi Jinping boasted in a speech that over 50% of tax revenue, over 60% of the GDP, over 70% of technological innovation, over 80% of job creation and over 90% of enterprises of China are contributed by the private sector². Isn’t it obvious that this means the dominance of private ownership? Already under Hu Jintao´s rule, in 2005, it was estimated that private capital held a share of about 70% of the Chinese economy³. Therefore, what Xi said is not even a very recent development.

The remaining state enterprises fell victim to reforms that allowed private property owners to buy shares of them, turning them into “mixed ownership”. Xi announced this policy in November 2013 on the 3rd Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC⁴. Still, state ownership was not fully abolished nor seen as “unnecessary”. Instead Xi called to “separate government administration from enterprise management”⁵.

Xi said in March 2016: “The public and non-public sectors of the economy should be mutually reinforcing and beneficial; there is no need for conflict or strife.”⁶ Why is that the case? Because the state sector produces the raw materials and provides the infrastructure the private sector can build up on. He indirectly admitted this fact in October 2016 by saying:

“If it were not for the important material foundation laid by SOEs over the years, we would not have achieved economic independence, national security, and a steady improvement in people’s lives. Neither would China enjoy its current international standing as a steadfast socialist country in the East.”⁷

Statistics from 1984 (so during the Deng era) prove this fact – and they also show that under Mao Zedong there already has been a massive economic growth⁸. When even looking at these Dengist statistics, the necessity of the capitalist Reform and Opening Up policy in act until today can be questioned.

Still there are people who want to deny the dominance of the private sector in China, especially revisionists. Instead of listening to the official speeches of Xi, as they usually do, they suddenly start to believe unproven Western claims just because they suit their false subjectivist narrative. This is not the way to analyze a country in a dialectical-materialist way but instead is led by idealistic wishful thinking.

Jiang Zemin said on 1st July 1991 on the 70th anniversary of the CPC: “If public ownership of the means of production were to lose its dominant position, the economic foundation of socialism would be weakened.”⁹ This scenario became the reality in China and the ruling party leaderships of Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping ignored and ignore the blatant contradiction to the necessities of socialism in the ownership relations.

China´s agriculture used to be collectivized and therefore organized in cooperatives under Mao Zedong. But how is it today? The cooperatives have been gone for over four decades already. On 31st May 1980 Deng Xiaoping announced that the cooperatives should be based on quotas for the single households¹⁰, which effectively undermined the entire cooperative. When everyone in a cooperative only works for himself, what is the cooperative then more than a formality on paper?

It is therefore obvious that socialist ownership in China has ceased to exist long ago; capitalist ownership prevails. Corresponding the productive relations in China are capitalist as well.

Today’s China is a market economy, pro forma a “socialist” market economy¹¹. That term is an oxymoron in itself. Some revisionists and opportunists claim that this step by the CPC would be only “temporary”. They ignore all statements coming from China for this wrong assessment. Xi Jinping said unambiguously on the 23rd May 2020: “The practices in reform have made us realize that we must under no circumstances turn our back on addressing blindness of the market, and we must not return to the old path of a planned economy.”¹² Is there a misunderstanding possible? I think not. And even last year, in September 2024, Xi Jinping made clear: “We will formulate a private sector promotion law and foster a favorable environment for the development of the non-public sector.”¹³ This policy won’t end, as it should be obvious from the quoted examples. Now back to the main topic:

What is a market economy? Another term for commodity production. What is commodity production? Lenin delivers the following answer: “Pure capitalism means commodity production. And commodity production means work for an unknown and free market.”¹⁴ The condition is that demand and supply work in an anarchic way due to the existence of private property. Those single private property owners cannot work based on a plan due to differences in their profit interests.

Marx said:

“Only such products can become commodities with regard to each other, as result from different kinds of labour, each kind being carried on independently and for the account of private individuals.”¹⁵

Engels said as well:

“With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation.”¹⁶

Stalin noted about this quote by Engels, that the condition behind is the seizing of all means of production in the hands of the socialist state¹⁷. This is true. Commodity production alone is not sufficient to indicate capitalism. The revisionist countries, like the USSR under Khrushchev and Brezhnev, were engaged in commodity production instead of planning de facto, despite not yet restoring capitalist ownership relations like under Gorbachev.

Stalin also wrote about this matter:

“It is said that commodity production must lead, is bound to lead, to capitalism all the same, under all conditions. That is not true. Not always and not under all conditions! Commodity production must not be identified with capitalist production. They are two different things. Capitalist production is the highest form of commodity production. Commodity production leads to capitalism only if there is private ownership of the means of production, if labour power appears in the market as a commodity which can be bought by the capitalist and exploited in the process of production, and if, consequently, the system of exploitation of wageworkers by capitalists exists in the country. Capitalist production begins when the means of production are concentrated in private hands, and when the workers are bereft of means of production and are compelled to sell their labour power as a commodity. Without this there is no such thing as capitalist production.”¹⁸

We already saw that China has restored private property and is running a market economy, therefore commodity production is prevalent.

What about employing wage labor? Does that condition exist in today’s China as well? The answer is: It does. Especially the decollectivization created a massive reserve of so-called migrant workers who left their home villages to seek work in the cities. In 2016 their number was estimated to be over 280 million people¹⁹.

Xi Jinping promised in March 2013 that China would double its GDP of 2010 by the year 2020²⁰. The goal was reached and even surpassed by growing from 6,138 billion to 15,103 billion US-Dollars, though the years 2021 to 2024 almost show a stagnation with only a growth from 18,190 billion to 18,749 billion US-Dollars²¹. Maybe this is related to what Xi said in July 2017 about China’s corporate sector? He said the following back in the day:

“China´s corporate sector has the highest debt to GDP ratio among major economies in the world, standing at 165 percent, with ´zombie enterprises´ as the primary culprit.”²²

This fact would explain these issues by some logic, but without insider information it is hard to make a precise judgement.

The income situation in China in 2019 was like this:

Income Category	Size (% of China´s Population)	Monthly Income
Ultra-Low	560 million people (39.7%)	< 1,000 Yuan (145 US-Dollars)
Low	690 million people (48.9%)	Between 1,000 Yuan (145 US-Dollars) and 5,000 Yuan (724 US-Dollars)
Middle	120 million people (8.5%)	Between 5,000 Yuan (724 US-Dollars) and 100,000 Yuan (14,500 US-Dollars)
High	31.1 million people (2.2%)	Between 100,000 Yuan (14,500 US-Dollars) and 5,000,000 (724,000 US-Dollars)

(Steve Tsang/Olivia Cheung “The Political Thought of Xi Jinping”, Oxford University Press, Oxford 2024, p. 136)

This means that, despite the rapid economic growth, there is much potential for improvement, to say the least. As in every capitalist country, GDP growth mostly improves the profits of the big companies.

In today´s China all three conditions Stalin mentioned are applying. To sum it up briefly: Today’s China’s economy is a capitalist one. Calling their capitalist system “Socialism with Chinese characteristics” and, as Xi claims, “based on the principles of scientific socialism” just slanders the actual scientific meaning of the term of socialism. Hu Jintao even said in 2008: “Establishing and optimizing the socialist market economic system is a historic contribution of our Party to Marxism and socialism.”²³ It is obvious that in China Marxism and socialism as terms have lost their meaning already decades ago, not just recently.

Now since we went through the economic basis of China, let’s now continue with the superstructure.

How is China’s superstructure today?

Can today’s China be still called a dictatorship of the proletariat? In China this term got replaced again by the term “people’s democratic dictatorship” which was used in the transitional phase from capitalism to socialism under New Democracy and effectively had the same meaning. Why renaming it then? Because in the transitional phase the national bourgeoisie existed, which has been completely abolished by 1966 after buying it out beginning from the VIIIth Congress of the CPC in 1956.

The national bourgeoisie was an ally during the new democratic phase of the revolution (in Uganda it would be called: national-democratic revolution), but had to be abolished because it was a class based on exploitation. Mao stressed several times that the contradiction between the working class and the national bourgeoisie became the principal contradiction in China after the victory against the Kuomintang²⁴. Zhou Enlai said in June 1952 unambiguously: “One of the characteristics of the Chinese national bourgeoisie is that from the period of New Democracy to the period of socialism it is both our friend and a class that will be abolished.”²⁵ It is therefore obvious that socialism and the existence of the bourgeoisie are incompatible like fire and water.

In January 1979, immediately after seizing power in December 1978 on the 3rd Plenum of the XIth Central Committee of the CPC, Deng Xiaoping started to restore the existence of the bourgeoisie and therefore a capitalist sector²⁶. This sector did not become dominant for a couple of years, but he did everything to let it grow on the expense of socialism until socialism was effectively abolished on the economic sphere. This is why China kept its “socialist shell” while being completely capitalist nowadays.

On the 80th anniversary of the CPC on 1st July 2001, Jiang Zemin delivered a speech for this occasion. In this speech he spoke out in favor of entrepreneurs to be allowed to join the party. He said: “We cannot simply judge people’s political orientation simply by whether they own property or how much they own.”²⁷ This is in fact ignoring the class character completely. Mao rejected to only look at the class background, ignoring the personal performance and class standpoint; despite that he saw that the class background in the general case is accurate when it comes to the class outlook²⁸. It is obvious that someone from the bourgeois class first of all has a bourgeois class interest unless he has out of ideals changed them for the proletarian class standpoint, like Engels did. As a German saying goes: “Exceptions verify the rule.” If all people from the exploiting classes would just surrender in that way, capitalism would be long gone for good. But this is not the case.

This step by Jiang Zemin caused dissent by 14 high-ranking senior officials of the CPC who in 2001 wrote the so-called “Letter of the Fourteen” to Jiang Zemin, where they accused him of turning the CPC into a “party of the entire people” like it happened in the revisionist Soviet Union to the CPSU²⁹.

At the XVIth Congress of the CPC Jiang Zemin delivered the political report on behalf of the Central Committee. In this speech he made further statements into the direction of a “party of the entire people”:

“During the course of building socialism with Chinese characteristics, the fundamental interests of the people of the whole country are the same, and on this foundation, specific interests and internal conflicts can be adjusted.”³⁰

“Entrepreneurs and technicians working in non-public scientific and technological enterprises, managers and technical personnel employed at overseas-funded enterprises, the self-employed, private entrepreneurs, employees in intermediary bodies, freelance professionals and members of other social strata have all emerged in the course of social change, and they are all builders of socialism with Chinese characteristics.”³¹

This is in essence the complete denial of class struggle which would later lead to Hu Jintao announcing the “harmonious socialist society”, which was officially enshrined since the XVIIth Congress of the CPC in October 2007³². Denying class struggle in a class society is very obviously nonsense. In fact it serves the interests of the bourgeoisie and sees their class outlook as the only possible one.

In September 1956 Deng Xiaoping spoke out against admitting exploiters (which were the back then still existing national bourgeoisie) into the ranks of the party at the VIIIth Congress of the CPC³³. It is obvious that since the era of Jiang Zemin this does not longer apply. Even a big bourgeois like Jack Ma is allowed to be a member of the CPC³⁴. Obviously the CPC has lost its proletarian class character long ago. The CPC would deserve the name Capitalist Party of China since it is capitalist like the country itself.

Hypocritically Xi Jinping said on the 100th anniversary of the All-China Federation of Trade Unions on 29th April 2025:

“Regardless of how the conditions of the times and social groups develop and change, the position and role of the working class in our country must be unswervingly upheld; the fundamental policy of relying wholeheartedly on the working class must be unswervingly upheld; and the nature and functions of our trade unions must be unswervingly upheld.”³⁵

Not the working class is in charge in today’s China but the bourgeoisie. The China of today is a capitalist country, a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. A capitalist country will, under the conditions of imperialism, either become imperialist or turn into a (semi-)colony.

Has China become an imperialist country?

The revisionists and renegades among the communist parties around the world don’t want to see it, but they have to face the truth: Today’s China is not just capitalist, it became imperialist already three decades ago. While Deng restored capitalism with his Reform and Opening Up policy, Chinese companies under Jiang Zemin started to expand to other countries. In December 1997 Jiang Zemin said in a speech:

“Not only do we need to actively attract foreign enterprises to invest and set up factories in China, we also need to actively guide and organize strong domestic enterprises to ‘go global’ by investing and building factories in foreign countries and making use of their markets and resources.”³⁶

In exactly this time the NRM government of Uganda under president Museveni privatized most of the state-owned enterprises and sold them to Chinese companies. Therefore Uganda is among the first countries that got affected by Chinese imperialism.

The Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) is China’s approach to create a bloc of economically dependent states around itself. It was Xi Jinping who launched it on a state visit in Kazakhstan in September 2013³⁷ on the land route and in October 2013 in Indonesia³⁸ on the sea route. Of course the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (founded in 2001 when Jiang Zemin was still in office) laid the foundations, but the BRI is the try to expand the Chinese sphere of influence beyond these limited borders of closely allied countries.

Now, more than a decade later, the BRI can be said to have had some successes from the point of view of Chinese imperialism as well as a couple of setbacks that could be seen as major defeats. The BRI might still exist, but as a smaller project than before after European countries participating in it quit the format (such as Italy³⁹) as well the breaking apart of the Central and Eastern European format associated with the BRI with the Baltic states quitting their participation⁴⁰. Therefore: The BRI is not at its end, but lost the initiative.

Still, China´s foreign direct investments (FDI) grew from 28 billion US-Dollars in the year 2000 to 2.9 trillion US-Dollars in 2023, making China one of the largest direct investors in the world⁴¹. We can therefore say that China is not just some imperialist power but the imperialist superpower only second to the USA.

The ideological regression of the CPC

I already have shown on hand of the capitalist restoration in China that the CPC turned into a pro-capitalist party. What I have not covered yet, is the amount of ideological regression the CPC went through.

Xi Jinping addressed that issue quite openly on 5th January 2013 in the very same speech from which I quoted on the beginning of this article:

“In recent years there have been some voices, both in China and abroad, questioning the nature of Chinese socialism. Some define it as ‘capitalist socialism’, and some simply call it ‘state capitalism’ or ‘new bureaucratic capitalism’.”⁴²

Of course he rejects these assessments. Still, that he was forced to address these speaks for itself. The reason behind it can be found in the very superficial ideological reasoning of the “socialist” market economy.

Xi Jinping claimed on the 200th birth anniversary of Karl Marx on the 4th May 2018: “There is no orthodox, fixed version of socialism.”⁴³ This is both true and wrong in many ways which need explanation. It is true that there is no “orthodox, fixed version” in the sense of a model to be copied from A to Z; what is wrong, that there would be no relatively “fixed version” in the sense of general characteristics that need to apply. I mentioned these already in my introduction to the article.

Xi Jinping tries to make excuses why socialism would have no general characteristics.

For example he spoke these words in November 2013 on the 3rd Plenum of the 18th Central Committee of the CPC:

“Marx and Engels had no practical experience in the comprehensive governance of a socialist country, as their theories about a future society were mostly predictive. Lenin, who passed away a few years after the October Revolution (1917) in Russia, was unable to explore this question in depth. The Soviet Union tackled this question and gained some experience, but it made serious mistakes and failed to resolve the problem.”⁴⁴

Xi ignores Stalin completely here, though Mao was orienting on socialism in the USSR as it was under his era. Instead Xi speaks very vaguely about the Soviet experience and does not tell us where in his opinions “serious mistakes” appeared (it almost reads like he means the Stalin era).

In December 2021 Xi Jinping claimed in a similar manner:

“Karl Marx and Frederick Engels did not envisage the possibility of a market economy under socialism. Thus they could not anticipate how socialist countries should treat capital. Though Vladimir Lenin and Joseph Stalin led socialist development in the Soviet Union under a highly centralized planned economy they did not encounter significant problems caused by capital.”⁴⁵

This is so wrong in many ways. First of all it is ridiculous that the authors of Das Kapital (Engels edited the 2nd and 3rd volumes and therefore became de facto a co-author) would lack knowledge about how to handle the issue of capital. Secondly, Lenin and Stalin paid much attention to the accumulation of means of investment. They did not call it “capital” because capital is a term for the use of means of investment and production to exploit the proletariat; under socialism exploitation is abolished, so talking about capital would be unsuitable. It is obvious that Xi Jinping relatively openly breaks with Marxism-Leninism here.

The reasoning of the “necessity” of a “socialist” market economy by Xi Jinping is therefore built on weak foundations.

The flawed logic behind the “socialist” market economy is already found among its founders. Chen Yun, Deng Xiaoping´s chief economist, already formulated the so-called “bird cage theory”: The market should be regulated so that it plays the prescribed role⁴⁶. This means effectively: You implement a market economy and, because you know that it doesn’t work as it should, you use regulation measures. Why not just keep economic planning and improve its mechanisms instead? It is obvious that this step only made sense with the intention of restoring capitalism.

The CPC still claims to be a Marxist party, as we all know. The issue is that the CPC does not only uphold Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought, which is the hard core of scientific socialism, but also revisionist rubbish. Xi Jinping listed all components of the CPC party ideology enshrined in the statute on the 100th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China on 1st July 2021:

“On the journey ahead, we must continue to uphold Marxism-Leninism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Theory of Three Represents, and the Scientific Outlook on Development, and fully implement the Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era.”⁴⁷

The last component is officially enshrined as “Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era”, but for Xi Jinping himself it would sound odd to mention his own name.

Effectively Deng Xiaoping Theory, the Three Represents, the Scientific Outlook on Development and Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese characteristics for a New Era are just Dengism – also known as Deng Xiaoping Theory officially – because the basic course of the CPC did not change since the seize of power by Deng.

Deng Xiaoping claimed in June 1984 that “socialism still prevails” in Shenzhen⁴⁸. Shenzhen was just a small fishing village before the founding of the Special Economic Zone Shenzhen, which turned it due to foreign capital inflow into a capitalist big city. Therefore Deng’s words show blatantly that his “socialism” is just capitalism. This is the continuity in Chinese politics and ideology until today.

Anyways, Deng Xiaoping claimed to be a layman on several fields:

“I am a layman in the field of economics.”⁴⁹

“I am a layman in science.”⁵⁰

And this is the man who is enshrined as a classic of the CPC party ideology and founder of Deng Xiaoping Theory? His Selected Works, especially the later ones, mostly consist of random talks (often to foreign guests). Chen Yun was not much less revisionist than Deng Xiaoping but he was at least an economist by profession and he put at least a bit more effort into his Selected Works. Calling Deng Xiaoping Theory a “scientific system”⁵¹ is therefore a ridiculous exaggeration for thought of someone who admittedly was a layman in both economics and science, who is, ironically, getting quoted a lot until today in China to justify the economic policy of Reform and Opening Up. The claim of “scientificity” of Deng Xiaoping Theory is therefore built on sand.

To hide the break of the CPC with Marxism-Leninism since the Deng era Xi Jinping claimed in May 2014: “Russia’s October Revolution in 1917 influenced China, but our Party did not turn to Soviet socialism.”⁵² The issue is that this claim is not backed up by Mao Zedong and not even by Deng Xiaoping, who is Xi Jinping´s factual mentor.

Mao Zedong said in June 1949⁵³:

“It was through the Russians that the Chinese found Marxism. Before the October Revolution, the Chinese were not only ignorant of Lenin and Stalin, they did not even know of Marx and Engels. The salvoes of the October Revolution brought us Marxism-Leninism. The October Revolution helped progressives in China, as throughout the world, to adopt the proletarian world outlook as the instrument for studying a nation’s destiny and considering anew their own problems. Follow the path of the Russians – that was their conclusion.”⁵⁴

Mao might have criticized Soviet revisionism of Khrushchev and his successors, but he never broke with socialism as Lenin and Stalin practiced it in the Soviet Union. Instead he developed it further.

Deng Xiaoping said in February 1987:

“At one time we copied the Soviet model of economic development and had a planned economy. Later we said that in a socialist economy planning was primary. We should not say that any longer.”⁵⁵

It is obvious that Deng admitted a shift in policy. Xi Jinping tries to deny that such a shift happened because he wants to portray it as if the CPC always acted like it does today to legitimize his own course. But this stands in a stark contrast to the actual historical truth.

Not just that the Marxist-Leninist theory and terminology became meaningless for the CPC, also its moral values rooted in Marxism-Leninism became meaningless.

Xi Jinping individualizes systemic symptoms of decline by saying:

“Why are some officials becoming corrupt, ending up as criminals? In the final analysis, it is because they are not firm in their ideals or convictions. I have often said that ideals and convictions are as essential for a Communist as calcium is for bones. To be firm in our ideals and convictions will harden our bones, while an absence of ideals and convictions or wavering in our ideals and convictions will lead to fatal moral weakness.”⁵⁶

The capitalist material conditions bear all the ills of capitalism obviously. They cannot be “prayed away” by the church nor “convicted away” by some hypocritical lipservices towards the revolutionary past of the CPC. To eradicate corruption, its material source must be eliminated: The private property of the means of production that enables some exploiters to corrupt politicians and officials in their favor.

In the same idealist way Xi Jinping also spoke these words:

“Some people think that communism is beyond our reach and even that it is illusory. This opinion involves a choice between historical materialism and historical idealism. Some of our colleagues think our ideal is unattainable and thus waver in their conviction. The fundamental reason is their lack of faith in historical materialism. We must educate and guide Party members and officials to work towards both the common ideal of Chinese socialism and the high ideal of communism with faith and dedication. With firm ideals and convictions, they will have a clearer perspective, broader vision, and a more open mind. Thus they can maintain the right political direction and avoid complacency or imprudence in times of success, and despondency or wavering in times of adversity. They can emerge victorious from trials of risk and difficulty, resist the corrosive influence of corrupt ideas, and forever preserve the political character of Communists.”⁵⁷

There is a proverb in the Bible: “Let us not love in word or in tongue, but in deed and in truth.”⁵⁸ For Xi the “commitment to communism” is mere words, not deeds. This is turning communism from a scientific world outlook and guide to action into a mere secular faith. It’s obvious that on that way nothing in the world is going to improve. The history of Christianity delivers enough examples for this. In this sense CPC can also mean Church Party of China – rituals, which had meaning under socialism, now stand there as empty shells, devoid of their former meaningful content. With the introduction of the Reform and Opening Up policy in 1978 this eroding of meaning has started.

The harsh truth is that Reform and Opening Up means to abandon socialism and already meant so decades ago. Of socialism in China only an empty carcass is left without all its organic content. Xi Jinping claimed a year ago: “Reform does not mean abandoning our socialist system.”⁵⁹ But this claim is not new. Jiang Zemin already said in October 1989 towards Richard Nixon: “Chairman Deng’s reform and opening up policy keeps to the socialist road and will not lead to capitalism.”⁶⁰ Isn’t it obvious that these are mere empty words? These promises are as worthless as those of Museveni!

The opportunist and revisionist elements, the outspoken and hidden renegades among the communist movement might dislike my criticism of today’s China. But I can only say like Pontius Pilate: “What I have written, I have written.”⁶¹ To sum all the written up:

What can we learn from today’s China? We can learn from it where revisionism ends up: In capitalism. Deng Xiaoping claimed in a talk with Julius Nyerere in November 1989: “So long as socialism does not collapse in China, it will always hold its ground in the world.”⁶² As we can all see, this is not the case. Capitalism has been restored in China under Deng Xiaoping and his policies were continued by Jiang Zemin, Hu Jintao and Xi Jinping. Is that a reason to lose hope? Definitely not. The existence of capitalist exploitation ensparks class struggle and the necessary outcome of it is either socialism and communism or doom. Except for the DPRK there is no socialist country in the world anymore when looking at the economic basis. Back in 1871, when the Paris Commune was erected, how many socialist countries were there in the world? Zero! Back in 1917, when the Russian working people seized power in the October Revolution, how many socialist countries were there to support them? None!

Therefore we shall not lose hope over the restoration of capitalism in China and instead fight for the buildup of socialism in our Ugandan fatherland and be a solid base of socialism in Africa and the world.