Socialist Appeal - International Marxist Tendency
Marxism. Socialism. Revolution.
At the recent 19th Congress of the Chinese Communist Party, President Xi Jinping took the opportunity to let the world know that China is a “mighty force” soon to reclaim its rightful position on the world stage. Behind all the bluster, however, one could detect an unease at the prospect of growing internal instability within China, which flows from the impending crisis of capitalism.
Less than a quarter of an hour after opening, the Chinese stock market was closed by an automatic shutdown. This "circuit-breaker" mechanism was imposed by the government only five months ago after equally dramatic losses. This reveals how nervous the Chinese government is of the underlying economic instability.
To add to the turmoil of Greece and the Euro Crisis, there is now the sudden collapse of the Chinese stock market, which has been so vast that even the mighty Chinese government is incapable of controlling it. The world economy is tottering, and these latest events in China are yet another sign of the diseased economic system that is capitalism.
Newly released figures show that the Chinese economy in 2014 experienced its lowest economic growth since 1990. Such figures illustrate the beginning of the end for China’s 'miraculous' boom, as the reality of capitalist crisis is seeping through to the world’s largest exporting economy.
Despite all the Keynesian experiments and the monetary stimulus, China has failed to escape the global economic crisis. Chinese workers are experiencing the economic slowdown in terms of the closures of factories and non-payment of wages. The result has been a surge in the number of strikes and the organisation of the working class in China.