Understanding China’s Relations with the Latin American and Caribbean Countries

Political Ideology and China’s Foreign Relations

The leaders of the ruling Communist Party of China (CPC) continue to view the world from a Marxist perspective. As Roland Boer (2014) argues, “to make sense of modern China, you simply can’t ignore Marxism.” While many foreign observers “continue to dismiss Marxism in China” as either “a repressive and inadequate ideology or as empty words in which no one believes any longer,” this is, as Boer points out, “a great mistake and risks neglecting what is arguably one of the most important factors for understanding China.” Boer contends that most foreign observers do not understand Chinese Marxism and as a result tend to ignore or dismiss it as a primary factor in China’s foreign relations. There are, to be sure, progressive foreign commentators and scholars who have made an effort to understand Chinese Marxism (see Ware, 2013), but they are rarely given credence in the mainstream media or in most progressive intellectual circles outside of China. Boer (2014) says: “I have yet to find a ‘mainstream’ foreign commentator who is even partly aware of the nature of Chinese Marxism,” since this requires a careful study of the meaning of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” in all its complexity and apparent paradoxes as well as an understanding that “in China a Marxist entrepreneur is not a contradiction in terms.”

The same applies to the leadership’s commitment to socialism. According to China’s top leaders and party theorists, the justification for initiating China’s economic reforms at the end of the 1970s was the contradiction between the country’s backward forces of production and its relatively advanced culture, revolutionary socialist regime, and socialist ideology (Sun, 1995). China’s political leaders believe these economic reforms were necessary to modernize the country’s forces of production, rapidly improve the material conditions of the Chinese people, and build a socialist society adapted to China’s particular historical conditions. At the Thirteenth National Congress of the CPC in 1987, the secretary general, Zhao Ziyang, stated clearly for the first time that the party was committed to building “socialism with Chinese characteristics” through the “integration of the fundamental tenets of Marxism with the modernization drive in China” (Chan, 2003: 187–188). Zhao’s definition of “socialism with Chinese characteristics” is frequently used today by party leaders. It is no accident that the PRC’s current head of state, Xi Jinping, has a doctorate in Marxist theory and political thought from China’s top institution of higher education, Tsinghua University (Dim Sums, 2012). Since he became the party’s secretary general and president of the PRC in 2012, Xi has insisted that the party leadership and the top officials in the government strengthen their commitment to Marxism (Boer, 2014; Huang, 2015). He has also publicly reaffirmed his commitment to Marxism on various important occasions.

As reported in China Daily (2012), at the conclusion of the Eighteenth National Congress of the CPC on November 14, 2012, Xi, presiding over the first meeting of the new Political Bureau of the CPC, “called for efforts to uphold and develop socialism with Chinese characteristics” and called on “the whole party to firmly adhere to this theme.” He continued:

People both in and outside China are keeping a close eye on the first steps of the new leadership after the 18th CPC National Congress, and this meeting on the study and implementation of the congress spirit is our first step. . . . The report to the 18th CPC National Congress outlined a blueprint for China, under new circumstances, to complete the building of a moderately prosperous society in all respects, advance socialist modernization and win a new victory for socialism with Chinese characteristics. . . . The report serves as a political manifesto and an action guideline for the Party to unite and lead people of all ethnic groups in China to follow and walk the path of socialism with Chinese characteristics.

At this meeting of the party’s top leadership, Xi also emphasized that

socialism with Chinese characteristics is the underlying achievement gained by the Party and the people through a long time of practice, and is the banner under which the Party and the people unite themselves, strive and win. . . . This banner should be held high and adhered to in the country’s efforts to build a moderately prosperous society in all respects, advance the socialist modernization and realize the great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation. . . . Socialism with Chinese characteristics should be regarded as an incorporation of the socialist system, path and theories with Chinese characteristics. . . . Party members [should] be fully aware the basic reality is that China is still in the primary stage of socialism.

The party leadership believes that China’s “primary stage of socialism” requires both private and public ownership of the means of production and both market relations and centralized state planning to regulate the socialist modernization of the country. This is the essence of China’s “socialist market economy.” The leaders reject the idea that the fundamental difference between capitalism and socialism is central planning versus free markets. Under their leadership, China’s socialist state encourages “market forces to play a decisive role in resource allocation” but at the same time maintains “the dominance of the public sector and continues to strengthen the economic vitality of the state-owned enterprises” (China Daily, 2013). ¹

Xi has repeatedly called for the party to develop a “profound understanding of the requirements in winning the new victory for socialism with Chinese characteristics,” and he has urged its leaders “to ensure that the Party remains at the core of leadership in advancing the cause of socialism with Chinese characteristics by firmly keeping the closest ties with the people, maintaining the health of Party organs, continuously improving the Party leadership and governance capacity and enhancing the Party’s capability to combat corruption and moral degeneration” (China Daily, 2012). President Xi and the party’s top leadership have launched a wide-ranging anticorruption campaign that has led to the arrest of high-level party cadres in the central government, state enterprises, the provincial governments, and the armed forces. According to Xi, corruption, weak commitment to the party’s main principles, and lack of discipline in the party and the government are the biggest threat to the continuance of the CPC’s 65-year rule of China (Sanderson and Shi, 2014).

Even a cursory review of Xi’s public statements reveals he sees the world divided into two opposing historical camps—socialist and capitalist, but not in the old cold war view of the world. Xi and the other top leaders believe these two camps have no rational choice but to coexist. Thus they believe China must pursue a peaceful path in international affairs and learn what it can from capitalism to advance the development of its socialist market economy, which remains firmly under the control of the CPC’s 86.7 million members (Sanderson and Shi, 2014).

While the Marxist political ideology of China’s leaders influences their worldview and their political strategies, the government does not draw strict ideological lines in the PRC’s trade relations with other countries. The PRC’s official position is that “various social systems and development models should coexist harmoniously in the world,” and as a result “China is committed to developing friendly relations and cooperation with all countries on the basis of sincerity, friendship, equality, mutual respect, and their common development” (Aho, 2011).

Nevertheless, in Latin America and the Caribbean and elsewhere, it is clear the PRC has more friendly and supportive relations with the countries that have leftist regimes with political ideals that are closer to those of China’s leaders (Alvaro and Minay, 2015), such as Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Cuba, Ecuador, and Venezuela, and somewhat less friendly but still respectful relations with Colombia and Mexico, which are led by more conservative, pro-US regimes. Of course, the PRC does not have diplomatic relations with the countries in Central America and the Caribbean that continue to maintain diplomatic ties with Taiwan.

Leftist Criticism of Socialism with Chinese Characteristics

There is a considerable and evolving body of critical leftist literature on contemporary China produced by critics inside and outside the PRC. The scope of this critical literature encompasses the political ideology and practices of contemporary China’s current and former political leaders, the country’s political regime and economic system, its social structure and social problems, its foreign policy, and its political, economic, and cultural relations with the rest of the world.

The focus and intensity of leftist criticism of China vary considerably depending upon the particular ideology and the political agenda of its critics. As a result, there are substantial differences between the critical views of intellectuals and activists who are social democrats, democratic socialists, Marxist-Leninists, orthodox and Neo-Maoists, Trotskyists, anarchists, eco-socialists, Christian socialists, postmodernists, etc. Some of these critical views are basically constructive and even optimistic, but most are negative or hostile. Andre Vltchek’s (2014: 3–4) indictment of the Western left’s prejudiced hostility toward the PRC and other socialist countries such as Venezuela and Cuba appears to apply to much of the leftist criticism of China in the West. In his recent article entitled “The Anti-Socialist Left: Do Western Leftists Hate Socialist Countries?” Vltchek (2014: 3–4) says:

Racism against the Chinese people is hardly ever pronounced in Western “progressive” circles. It is there, inside all that biased set of “analyses.” But it is never admitted. All is covered up by the “objective criticism.” It begins with “can you imagine what would happen to our planet if every Chinese were to have his or her own car and television set, like us in the West?” and ends with “The Chinese are as brutal as we are and they have the same imperialist tendencies.” While China’s transformation into a middle-class socialist society is clearly a miracle . . . perhaps the single greatest success on our planet in the last 100 years, the Western Left mumbles something about what has happened is actually not pure, that it is not really Communist, and that in many ways it is all extremely sinister.

He goes on to say that “from their point of view, only what is designed and implemented in the West can be trusted” and that “the arrogance and self-righteousness of the Western Left is infuriating and as a result there is very little working relation now between the European/North American left-wing movements and the PRC.” He continues: “The Europeans will say, this is because China is not left-wing enough, but that is rubbish—ask Fidel Castro whether China is socialist, ask the governments of Venezuela or South Africa. . . . The main problem actually is that the Western Left is not internationalist enough, or not internationalist at all [and] internationalism is the essence of true socialism!” (8).

Left-right political distinctions and critical perspectives take on a different meaning in the contemporary Chinese political and cultural context. Thus, there is an important group of critical intellectuals and their supporters who are called the New Left, but this group is fundamentally different from the new left of the 1960s and 1970s in the West (Wang and Khong, 2014). Although there is considerable diversity of views among the members of this group, in general they criticize and oppose the PRC’s market and privatization reforms and favor more socialist policies and stronger state intervention in favor of greater social justice, the political mobilization of China’s growing working class, and a concerted effort to protect the environment (Wang and Lu, 2012). In particular, they criticize and oppose neoliberalism and the privatization of state-owned public property, which they blame for the spread of corruption, the country’s growing social inequality, the extreme wealth of the new business elite, and the widespread environmental pollution in China. As one astute Western observer has noted, China’s New Left wants to put socialism back into “socialism with Chinese characteristics” (Cohen, 2014b). In contrast to the new left in the West during the 1960s and 1970s, China’s New Left is committed to working within the existing political and economic system and is generally not associated with the PRC’s political dissidents or political exiles overseas.

Probably the best-known member of China’s New Left is Wang Hui (Cai and Yuan, 2013). Wang was involved in the Tiananmen Square protest movement in 1989 and is now a professor at Tsinghua University specializing in Chinese intellectual history. Wang is known for advocating the expansion of the state’s power as a cure for China’s corruption and social injustice and “mass democracy” as the proper form to mobilize the political participation of China’s population at the grass roots without involving competing political parties. He is also known for his opposition to neoliberal globalization and the Westernization of China, which he believes amounts to surrendering to American hegemony and the loss of China’s national dignity (Wang, 2003). According to Wang, the institutional basis for corruption in China “flows directly out of the private ownership of state-owned enterprises” and “corruption is not only about the corruption of individuals but also the process of privatization through which many who are in power, together with investors, can shift money from public property into private pockets and get rid of the state’s responsibility for the working class,” which he stresses “is the biggest working class in the world” (Wang and Khong, 2014). His criticism of neoliberalism in contemporary China is cited extensively in David Harvey’s A Brief History of Neoliberalism (2005), which contains a chapter on “Neoliberalism with Chinese Characteristics.”

China’s New Leftists (many of whom are not comfortable with this label) are for the most part critical intellectuals like Wang Hui. They are located in China’s universities and research institutes or middle-level government positions, and they conduct themselves in a manner similar to those who have been called public intellectuals in the West (Cai and Yuan, 2013). They speak out publicly on a wide variety of political, economic, and social issues through their participation in online journals, intellectual forums, and Internet chat rooms and blogs. They criticize the neoliberalism and pro-market reformism of the intellectuals and government economists with whom they have maintained a continuing intellectual debate since the 1990s. The latter are generally referred to as “liberals” or “neoliberals,” and they contend the New Left’s criticism of China’s modernization and opening up to neoliberal globalization is based on their ignorance of contemporary historical conditions and an obsession with China’s single-party state (Cai and Yuan, 2013). But New Left intellectuals like Wang reject the idea (entertained by some liberals) that liberal democracy and parliamentary elections are effective means for preventing the monopoly of power by ruling political parties and state bureaucracies, arguing that these institutions are always co-opted by powerful and wealthy elites. According to Wang, “if you announced that China would have a multi-party system with elections tomorrow, parliament would immediately be taken over by China’s big capitalists” just as it has been in Russia and India, where there are multiparty political systems and elections “monopolized by the powerful and the wealthy” (Wang and Khong, 2014). This is a view shared by most of China’s political leaders.

As one knowledgeable observer of the Chinese New Left, David Cohen (2014a), contends, “the intellectual debates between the New Left and the liberals/neoliberals have become part of the political process in China, and these debates appear to have expanded the ideas and policy options that are considered by China’s top decision makers.” Some observers believe President Xi’s recent speeches and the official explanations of his speeches in the party journals and media outlets suggest the party leadership’s vision of China’s future has been influenced at least to some extent by China’s New Left intellectuals (Cohen, 2014a), especially his strident and increasingly wide-ranging campaign against corruption within the party and the state sector of the economy (Cohen, 2014a; 2014b; Huang, 2013).

China, Globalization, and the Developing Countries

Although they acknowledge that globalization has developed as a result of the global expansion of capitalism, China’s political leaders believe that it is not an intrinsically capitalist process. They believe that, like market relations, globalization does not necessarily have only one class character. Even though the globalization process is at present dominated by neoliberalism and transnational corporate capitalism, they believe the PRC can develop its socialist market economy by participating in the globalization process on China’s own terms, taking advantage of the most useful elements in this process, such as the diffusion of advanced technology, foreign capital investments, and the expansion of world trade (see CPC, 2012; Hu, 2012; and Huang, 2013; and 2015).

China’s political leaders view the general thrust of their domestic and foreign policies as successful and effective in the current historical conjuncture of world affairs. President Xi recently made this clear in his address to the Central Conference on Foreign Affairs on November 28–29, 2014. The purpose of this important high-level working conference was to clarify the guidelines, basic principles, strategic goals, and major mission of China’s foreign policy (Xinhua.net, 2014). Xi told the top party and state officials at this conference the PRC has now entered a crucial stage in the achievement of the Chinese Dream, which is the great renewal of the Chinese nation and its return to greatness. However, he emphasized that as China’s international influence expands, the overarching goals of its foreign policy must remain “promoting peaceful development and national renewal.”

Xi and the other CPC leaders believe the successful pursuit of these foreign policy goals will create the kind of international environment that will enable China to realize the “two centenary goals” set forth by the Eighteenth Congress of the CPC in 2012. These two centenary goals are (1) doubling both the country’s 2010 GDP and the per capita income of its urban and rural residents so that it is a “well-off society” by 2020 (when the country will celebrate the centenary of the founding of the CPC in 1921) and (2) turning China into “a modern socialist country that is prosperous, strong, democratic, culturally advanced and harmonious by 2050” (when the country will celebrate the centenary of the founding of the PRC in 1949) (Xinhua.net, 2014).

At this important conference of China’s foreign policy makers, Xi underlined the importance of pursuing China’s win-win cooperation strategy in its relations with other countries. He said: “We should continue to follow the win-win strategy of opening-up and a win-win approach in every aspect of our external relations in the political, economic, security, and cultural fields” (Xinhua.net, 2014). In this regard, it is important to recognize that engaging in win-win cooperation as opposed to capitalist win-lose competition is a key strategy in China’s foreign policy, and it is meant to distinguish China’s foreign relations from that of the USA and other capitalist countries that pursue a win-lose/zero-sum approach. It is is also based on the CPC leadership’s Marxist view of the international division of labor and the increasingly interconnected nature of the global economy. They believe mutually beneficial cooperation is the way international economic relations need to be conducted in the increasingly interdependent and integrated world economic system (Ross, 2014 and 2015).

China’s successful economic performance during the global financial crisis and the severe economic recession that followed has confirmed the leaders’ faith in their strategy and their belief that globalization will lead to the ultimate triumph of socialism. For example, in February 2014, President Xi publicly affirmed his belief in the inevitability of socialism and said that “the countries that have ideological prejudices” against China are beginning to question their faith in capitalism as a result of the financial crisis and the severe economic recession it created: “Their theory that capitalism is the ultimate has been shaken, and socialist development has experienced a miracle. Western capitalism has suffered reversals, a financial crisis, a credit crisis, a crisis of confidence, and their self-conviction has wavered. Western countries have begun to reflect and openly or secretively compare themselves against China’s politics, economy and path of development” (quoted in Buckley, 2014).

But China’s political leaders also believe the PRC must avoid a major conflict with the USA (Knight, 2008: 102–103) and develop increasing international support for the establishment of a multipolar world order that appropriately represents the interests of the vast majority of the world’s population in the developing countries of Africa, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. For example, in a speech President Xi gave in April 2014 while he was on a state visit to Europe, he said, “There are two contrasting models in today’s world: multipolar cooperation and peace versus world domination and war” (Zhao, 2014). He explained to the audience that China would never be a hegemonic power: “China’s rise is peaceful and its pursuit of peace is rooted in its national character. China has never engaged in colonialism or aggression. It maintains no military bases abroad. And it pursues a foreign policy of friendship with all countries, large or small, strong or weak.” He contrasted China’s foreign relations with those of the USA, referring to “America’s predatory capitalism” and its “pursuit of super profits” in its foreign relations. Xi reminded his European audience that, in contrast to the USA and its allies, China has no foreign military bases and is not engaged in any foreign wars and that it was “Wall Street that gave the world the financial crisis of 2008” (Zhao, 2014).

Xi and the Chinese leadership in general have drawn five conclusions about long-term trends in world politics: “first, there is the trend toward a multipolar world; second, there is the trend of globalization: third, there is the trend of peace and development; fourth, there is the trend of reform in the international system; and lastly, there is the trend of growing prosperity in the Asia-Pacific region” (Chen, 2014). In the light of this assessment, they believe the current conjuncture in world affairs gives China a strategic opportunity that will benefit the country’s overall development and its rising importance in international affairs. With time, they believe the model of multipolar cooperation and world peace promoted by China and other countries around the world will prevail over the model of world domination and war practiced by the USA and its allies among the advanced capitalist countries. China seeks as many allies as possible among the developing countries to support this model of a new international order. This is an important goal of its foreign relations with the Latin American and Caribbean countries, as is clearly indicated by its 2008 policy paper.

Final Considerations

As Zhu (2015) indicates, the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence have guided Chinese foreign policy since the early 1950s, and peace and development have been the primary strategic goals of China’s foreign relations since the late 1970s. In the 1980s the Chinese government launched a new strategy based on the policy of yin jin lai (welcoming in) Western technology and foreign investment and the policy of zou chu qu (going out) with Chinese investment and trade around the world (Zhu, 2015). Since then China’s foreign policy goals have remained basically the same. They involve safeguarding China’s national independence and state sovereignty, creating an international environment favorable to its policies of gaige kaifang (reform of the economy and opening up to the outside world), maintaining world peace and promoting common development with other countries (Zhu, 2015). The pursuit of these goals is the main reason it seeks to foster long-term economic cooperation and political solidarity with the Latin American and Caribbean countries, especially with regimes that share economic and political interests with the PRC.