China and socialism
“In the modern history of China, 1 October 1949 represents the moment when night became day, when the red sun rose in the east and shed its rays, banishing forever the cruel darkness of starvation, humiliation and subjugation.
Although the Chinese is one of the oldest civilisations in human history, China’s modern history is held to begin in 1840. At that time, the decadence of its feudal rulers left the country at the mercy of every rapacious imperialist pirate and scoundrel. With the first Opium War of 1840-42, British imperialism led the charge to subjugate and partition China. Recalling this period, in his 1 July 2001 speech marking the 80th anniversary of the founding of the Communist Party of China, the party’s then general secretary, Comrade Jiang Zemin, described it as one where, “the feudal rulers surrendered the country’s sovereign rights under humiliating terms, the whole society was thrown into utter chaos caused by wars, the country became impoverished and weak and the people lived in hunger and cold”.
Faced with this grim situation, the Chinese people waged one heroic struggle after another, at the cost of many millions of lives, and enlightened people strove to find a way to rejuvenate the nation and lift the masses of people out of their wretched condition. But all these attempts ended in failure. Hope returned to the Chinese people only with the liberating science of Marxism-Leninism.” Lalkar 2009
Socialist countries in the present economic crisis
Further Reading!
Didn’t Mao kill millions during the Great Leap Forward?
The position of imperialism towards China today