Workers' Liberty
China is responsible for over 30% of GHG emissions. It is responsible for more emissions than the next 5 highest emitting countries combined (USA, India, Japan, Russia, and Germany). However, China’s population is two-thirds the combined population of those countries and its GDP is 32% of their combined GDPs. Is there something special about China’s economic model that makes this the case? This is the conundrum that Richard Smith tries to answer in China’s Engine of Environmental Collapse.
The book was written in 2020 and covers the extent of China's environmental destruction, with a focus on the past 20 years. Richard Smith covers how from 1978 China has ramped up its emissions. He covers a range of topics from pollution of soil and rivers to excessive building and construction, to the inner workings of the CCP. The book was published before the Covid-19 pandemic and so does not cover the period of China’s ultra-lockdowns.
China is now fully integrated into the world economy. It has played an ever-increasing role in the renewable technologies market. Since 1978, China’s economy has grown on average 10% per year. Its rapid growth and growing share of world manufacturing (now at around 30%) has been due in no small part to its ever expanding capacity to burn coal. Coal plays a massive role in China’s economy not only in its energy supply but also in its iron and steel production. China leads world production in the latter and is the third largest producer of iron-ore after Australia and Brazil.
A significant part of the left cheer on China and play down its authoritarianism. Smith’s book is a useful antidote for anyone who needs a reminder of the extent to the Chinese state suppresses national minorities, intimidates and elilinatesn political opponents, leads the world in executions, and regularly crushes dissent with police violence - whether this to repress Uyghurs, Hong Kongers, Tibetans or to attack and crush the labour and other progressive movements.
Smith paints a vivid picture of China’s environmental destruction. He describes at length China’s excessive construction projects that have led to entirely redundant office blocs, railway stations, airports, districts of cities, and even so-called “ghost cities” that lie completely empty. In its populated cities, Smith describes the extent of the air pollution, the heavy use of cars and massive multilane motorways that nonetheless have not abated China's massive traffic and congestion issues. China’s rivers, lakes and soils are massively polluted and in large part this due to a combination of unenforced but existing environmental and health and safety legislation, corruption within the CCP bureaucracy, and of course a rapacious drive to grow the economy at nearly any cost.
Since 2017 Xi Jinping has announced his intention to make China into an “ecological civilization”. This has included promoting the State Environmental Protection Agency to ministerial rank, which gives the agency more powers to intervene and the real steps being taken to tackle small polluters, limit combustion vehicles, tackle issues of plastic and e-waste, and bring in more protections for natural reserves. Yet as Smith argues even if Xi Jinping were serious about tackling environmental issues, he runs a state and economy where it is near impossible to decarbonise without a massive overhaul of the political system. As Smith puts it Xi Jinping “runs a politico-economic system characterized by systemic growth drivers which are, if anything, more powerful and more eco-suicidal than those of “normal” capitalism in the West.”
Smith’s explanation of what drives China’s internal growth and environmental destruction is in parts clear and in other parts confused and contradictory. In his earlier writing Smith argued that China was a bureaucratic-collectivist. He has since revised this position to argue that it is some mix of bureaucratic-collectivist and capitalist. And he breaks down the drivers of China’s emissions as being: intra-bureaucratic competition, nationalist and imperialist ambitions, employment maximisation, consumer maximisation, and corruption. These are all major drivers, however, an important aspect of China’s growth that Smith leaves out (or at least understates) is its integration into the world capitalist economy.
Moreover, at various points in the book Smith seems to be at pains to say that the mix of the economy being both bureaucratic-collectivist and capitalist provides a more potent mix when it comes to growth and environmental destruction than if it was just capitalist or just bureaucratic-collectivist. Broadly speaking Smith argues that there is something qualitatively different about China’s political-economic system from that of capitalist states in the rest of the world.
I am not convinced there is something qualitatively different about China, so much as the world is more capitalist and more capable of driving development from a low starting point - and China provides a prime example of this.
Much of what Smith claims about China being uniquely different from capitalism does not stand up to scrutiny. For example, Smith argues that Xi can’t stop his party subordinates and other officials from wasting resources and polluting because if he did, he would have to challenge their economic interests. Do we not have this in the West and nearly any capitalist economy? If states try to impose regulations on waste and pollution they get push back from sections of capital and reactionary political forces. Smith does not account for why the supposed bureaucratic-collectivism in China makes this so qualitatively different.
On a different occasion Smith argues that the main driver for growth under capitalism is competition. The only limit to growth is if profits can't be made. So far so good. Smith goes on to argue that this is not the case for China. He maintains that because China is a hybrid of bureaucratic-collectivist and capitalist, the system is “largely exempted from the laws of capitalism”. He argues that exemplary of this is that not one SOE has gone bankrupt or failed. Smith seems to have blinded himself to all the ways in which companies and banks under capitalism are regularly kept afloat, subsidised and saved by the state - in fact it is something distinct about how how a capitalist state acts. If anything, China under the rule of the CCP does this aspect of capitalism better than other countries. And if anything its combination of lack of regulation in health and safety and the environment and its willingness to keep SOEs going at any cost, along with China’s nationalist ambitions to be dominant on the world stage, account very well for why it has outdone itself in economic growth and environmental destruction.
Smith’s book is a great primer on China’s environmental and economic record. While I think Smith’s analysis of China in part is confused and the analytical conclusions he draws are mistaken, his insights into how the CCP functions and what ambitions drive it are valuable. Anyone who wants to learn more about China and the environment should make time to read and discuss this book.
Anyone interested in socialism in the twenty-first century must take into account what is happening in China seriously. It’s future economic supremacy will either shape global capitalism, which socialists worldwide will have to respond to or the future of socialism will be determined by China’s planned transformation toward a socialist economy — Jan Turowski [1]
China has achieved what is perhaps the most spectacular modernization in the history of the world in timespan and scale, accomplishing in decades what took centuries elsewhere… it has developed productive forces in agriculture, industry, technology, science and culture. It has raised millions from poverty to prosperity. It has integrated into the world system, for better or worse. It manufacturers much of what the rest of world consumes. It leads the world in green energy and other scientific and technical advances necessary for global survival. It is a force for peace in a mad world where the drums of war are beating more dangerously than ever. Because of this, I see China as the hope of the world. — Helena Sheehan [2]
The Communist Party of China (CPC) was founded in Shanghai in July 1921. At its inception the CPC had only 50 members ( 100 million today) and came to power in 1949 after 28 years of revolutionary struggle. Mao Zedong reminds us that “Revolution is not a dinner party or writing an essay or painting a picture or doing embroidery. It cannot be so refined, so leisurely and gentle, so temperate, kind, courteous and restrained and magnanimous. A revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence by which one class overturns another.”
The Communist revolutionaries, freed China from foreign domination and defeated the virulently anti-communist Chiang Kai-shek’s Kuomintang. They attempted to meet the immediate basic needs of the people while operating under extremely debilitating circumstances. China was an immense, semi-feudal, semi-colonial country and the new government encountered problems that were both challenging and often sui generis. They needed to find answers in order to continue the socialist transformation of the country, the historical mission begun in 1949.
The ideal of “Common Prosperity” had its origins in the CPC’s founding and was made official policy in December 1953 in a report drafted by Mao Zedong. The phrase then appeared in the September 25 issue of the semi-official People’s Daily in an article entitled, “The Path of Socialism is the Path to Common Prosperity,” and again in December 12, 1953. It’s important to clarify that the term envisioned an egalitarian, mutual aid type society in which resources would be held in common. In 1956, the CPC understood that the primary contradiction facing China “was between the need for building a modern industrial society and the reality of a backward agricultural economy,” and further, “the needs of the people for rapid economic and cultural development and the failure of current economic and cultural supplies to meet these needs.” [3]
All the evidence suggests that in the period following the Revolution, China saw gains in the material living standards of peasants and workers, including extending life expectancy, literacy rates improving from 20 to 93 percent, land reform initiated, women liberated, a decline in infant mortality and “Barefoot doctors” insured that basic medical care reached a population that was 99% peasant in composition. Unquestionably, impressive strides were accomplished — until things began to stall.
Later, Deng Xiaping was to characterize the Mao Zedong period as 70% good and 30% bad and that has been the common formula adopted to this day in China. The Chinese people still revere Mao and view his errors as “the errors of a great proletarian revolutionary.” Although Mao’s contributions are seen as far exceeding his errors, Deng’s 30% includes both the Great Leap Forward (1958-1961) and the Cultural Revolution which set back China in serious ways. There are still debates among respected scholars about those two events but there is agreement that China remained at a very low level of development, lagging decades behind Western nations in terms of technology, science and services.
Without in any way disparaging the heroic gains cited earlier. I don’t think Hua Bin overstates his assessment of the Maoist period when he writes, “The CPC in the first thirty years of its rule was a revolutionary party led by people who didn’t understand modern economics, science and technology. So it imported a rigid system from the USSR — we can call it Marxism with Russian characteristics. Obviously, the result was disastrous.” [4]
The socialist market economy eventually chosen by the CPC remains controversial in some quarters but as China specialist Carlos Martinez asserts, had there not been genuine improvement in the standard of living, the CPC’s socialist project and socialism itself would have lost legitimacy. In that sense, we can interpret Deng’s statement about Maoism’s shortcomings as necessary to differentiate his new “pragmatic” path in 1978 from what preceded it.
The link between egalitarianism and common prosperity was officially severed on April 15, 1979, when the People’s Daily carried an article, “A Few Get Rich First and Common Prosperity.” In Deng Xiaping’s words, “in encouraging some regions to become prosperous first, we intend they should inspire others to follow their example and that all of them should eventually help economically backward regions to develop. The same holds true for some individuals.” From that point onward, the path was all about maximizing the development of productive forces because China was decades behind the advanced countries, especially in science and technology.
Deng was acutely aware of the dangers of polarization that could result and said, “As long as public ownership occupies the main position in our economy, polarization can be avoided.” It’s important to note that this new path was to be temporary, an expedient but absolutely necessary stage in what would ultimately achieve common prosperity via a comprehensive national strategy. Trial and error was not discouraged and in Deng’s words it involved “crossing the river by feeling the stones.”
Here we should be mindful that in China, Marxism has been adapted to the country’s concrete material conditions. Again, quoting Martinez: “Marx wrote that the development of the productive forces of social labor is capitalism’s ‘historic mission’ and justification. For that very reason it unwittingly creates the material conditions for a higher form of production. The CPC replaced “unwittingly” with “purposely”: using capital with strict limits and under heavy regulation, to bring China into the modern world.” [5]
China opened the door to transnational capital in order to obtain access to technology and science on behalf of economic development. Martiniz continues, “Deals with foreign investors were drawn up such that foreign companies trying to expand their capital in China were compelled to share skills and technology and operate under Chinese regulation.” This was all in sync with the state’s development planning and although there was resistance from investors, it was the price of “gaining access to the vast and growing Chinese market.”
China incorporated market mechanisms but they operate under the socialist state which is controlled by the CPC, not private capitalists as is the case in the United States. Deng Xiaping put it this way: “In order to realize communism, we have to accomplish the tasks set in the socialist stage. They are legion, but the fundamental one is to develop productive forces so as to demonstrate the superiority of socialism over capitalism and provide the material basis for communism.”
Yes, millionaires and billionaires exist in China (some are even party members) but the CPC does not allow them to constitute a capitalist class. They’re prevented from establishing their own political parties or organizing their own media. Further, the ‘commanding heights’ of the economy remain under the stringent control of the party, including heavy industry, energy, transport, aviation, communications and foreign trade. China’s ‘big four’ banks are majority owned and accountable to the government, not shareholders.
In their socialist market economy, 71% of China’s Forbes 500 companies are state-owned enterprises (SOEs). There are some 360,000 SOEs in China and they dominate the economy. For our purposes, it’s imperative to note that in keeping with “socialism with Chinese characteristics” they are required to operate in accordance with the government’s macro-economic plan. They answer only to the Communist Party’s leadership.
The New Era, began in 2012, with Xi Jinping as Chairman of the Communist Party and his use of Mao Zedongs’s words, “carrying the revolution to its completion.” After first publicly uttering the phrase on December 30, 2012, President Xi has reiterated it over one thousand times. For him, it’s quintessential Marxism. And in 2017, the new principle contradiction was, “between unbalanced and inadequate development and the people’s ever growing need for a better life.
Common Prosperity, when employed in the Xi era, means reducing income inequality, enhancing welfare and curtailing excessive wealth. There will be both incentives and pressures for charitable giving and also crack downs on tax evasion. In 2012 the CPC specified that by 2035, “substantial progress” toward common prosperity would be achieved. This means narrowing regional, urban-rural and income disparities. It does not mean, “robbing the rich to help the poor “ or sharing everything equally. Nor does it mean imitating the Nordic welfare state model. The goal is that the “middle income group” — neither rich nor poor — will be significantly expanded. A recent, authoritative, data-based study found that China is fully capable of achieving common prosperity by 2035, including providing assistance to low-income people in difficult situations (200 million to 300 million people.) [6]
It also means guarding against, as Xi has often mentioned, party officials becoming part of a privileged elite and departing from the socialist project. Further, it entails dealing with corruption which is openly acknowledged by the government. Officials caught being involved in graft have been made examples in keeping with the Chinese adage, “kill a chicken to scare the monkeys.” President’s Xi’s well-known, ongoing anti-corruption campaign is highly popular with ordinary Chinese citizens, including his recent actions against the high tech sector, the gaming industry and for profit private tutoring companies.
Going further, Hua Bin writes that the campaign has, “Taken down hundreds of thousands of officials at national and local levels, including members of the Politburo, defense minister, foreign minister, railroad ministers, provincial governors, mayors of many cities, bank CEOs, state owned company executives, military procurement officials, hospital administrators and countless others. Chinese corruption is about corrupt individuals. Corruption is illegal and highly punishable. It may never go away as human defects won’t go away but it is risky for the corrupt individuals. Corrupt officials can steal a lot of money, but they run a risk of being shamed and losing everything, including their lives (the railroad minister was executed).” [7]
It’s a well-known fact that by 2021, the hundredth anniversary of the CPC founding, China had eradicated “extreme poverty” (the poverty reduction miracle) 10 years ahead of schedule. By 2022, 1.346 billion people were covered by basic medical insurance and 1.1 billion by basic pension insurance, an increase of 24 million from the previous year. In 2023, the “middle income group” already constituted almost 25 percent of China’s population. It rose from 10 million in 2002 to 336 million in 2023. [8] China projects that its middle-income group will increase to 800 million in the next 10 years, creating an olive-shaped distribution chart. This will occur as the government “invests more in people” and spends more on human capital and social safety nets.
This higher stage of socialist development or “advanced socialism” will also entail increased government control over resource allocation. In a sense, the inevitable inequality which accompanied the introduction of private capital to China, must be deconstructed. There will be resistance to these efforts and the CPC will need to employ appropriate responses. Socialism with Chinese characteristics or “Common Prosperity” must coexist within a global capitalist system for the foreseeable future but the goal for 2049, the centenary of the Chinese revolution, is to have built, “a great modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and beautiful.” The exact term is “advanced socialism.”
Further, Xi has often spoken about the need to “build a world of common prosperity through win-win cooperation” and “a shared future for mankind”. China’s Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) embodies this vision and Beijing has committed more than $1.3 trillion to the BRI since 2000. A recent report found that over 79% of leaders in the Deep South viewed Beijing as actively supporting their countries’ development. Without naming the United States, the report also noted “heavy handed attempts by the PRC’s strategic competition to vilify Beijing’s contributions as entirely bad for local economies are likely to ring hollow.” [9]
Finally, constructing socialism is a long term historical process and nothing I’ve suggested here guarantees that China will move on to Marx’s higher form of production, to “advanced socialism,” by 2049. There are forces both within and especially outside China that will attempt to subvert or even doom further efforts. However, to affirm their achievements so far, the Chinese have adopted the English proverb, “the proof of the pudding is in the eating” or shortened, “the proof is in the pudding.” At this juncture, it’s safe to conclude that they’re correct.
[1] Jan Turowski, “How the Chinese Talk About Socialism,”Rosa Luxemburg Stifling.
[2] Helena Sheehan, “Exploring the Chinese Revolution Today,” Monthly Review, Vol.77, No.6 (November, 2025).
[3] For details, see, Roland Boer, Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners (New York: Springer, 2021).
[4] Hua Bin, “Making Sense of China’s Meteoric Rise, “The Greanville Post, December 11, 2025. This was a response to interview questions posed by Mike Whitney and was originally on Hua’s Substack. There are, of course, analyses that interpret this period more sympathetically and some dismiss Mao’s critics as capitalist roaders.
[5] For these quotes and his compelling explication, I’m indebted to Carlos Martinez’s book, The East Is Still Red (Glasgow, Scotland: Praxis Press, 2023)
[6] Angang Ha and Shaoje Zhou, China in 2025: Toward a Society of Prosperity for All: London: Palgrave Macmillan,2024). See, https://researchgate.net January 20247]
[7] Hua Bin, “Corruption in the US and China — A Comparative Analysis,” The Unz Review, December 4, 2004.
[8] See, Terry Sinclair, Xiune Yang and Bjorn Gustafson, “China’s Middle-Income Class, Macroeconmic Growth, and Common Prosperity,” China Leadership Monitor, CLM, November 30, 2024.
[9] Sarina Patterson, “The BRI at 10: A Report from the Global South, AIDDATA, March 26, 2024. I wrote about this in my piece, Gary Olson, “China’s BRI: Toward a Hybrid International Order with Chinese Characteristics,” Left Turn, #13, Summer, 2023.
