China good? China bad? The struggle sessions have failed to come to a productive conclusion as both positions are tied to a vision of a China as a static and monolithic polity. This couldn't be farther from the truth. Over the last hundred years, China has been the site of the most rapid and tremendous transformation in the world, in terms of both the economy and the society. The late Qing dynasty could be compared to Ancien Regime France, where economic and social stagnation reached a limit which could only be overcome through political revolution. Marxism-Leninism gave China a voice for the first time since the first Opium War, ushering the country into modernity through nationalism and a united vision of the future. Like the USSR, the PRC was from the very beginning put to the test of building a modern industrialized nation out of the scattered remnants of the old feudal system. Mao's ambition to overtake the USSR as the leader of global revolution led to a series of massive transformations, including the land reform movement, the first five year plan, and the great leap forward (the second five year plan). These projects must be seen as material successes to a great extent as China rose to the status of a super power in its own right, geopolitically carving out its own destiny independent of the Soviet Union in the late cold war. However, these successes came at great costs, fracturing the CPC over Mao greatest ambition, the Cultural Revolution. In the end, the Cultural Revolution must be seen as a failure, from the perspective of both the Maoists, who ultimately lost power after Mao's death and the arrest of the Gang of Four, and of the Dengists, for whom the attempted radical transformation of society put China off the track towards economic prosperity.

The legitimacy of the CPC has always depended to a significant extent on its ability to accomplish tangible things for the Chinese people, in contrast with the KMT whose corruption and inability to do land reform turned the masses against them. Similarly, the renewed development of the capitalist mode of production in China, beginning with Mao's reestablishment of diplomatic ties with the US and later the development of Deng's Socialism with Chinese Characteristics, has justified itself to the Chinese people by tremendously improving quality of life. Now that capitalism in China has been allowed to develop for several decades without significant opposition, we can see more clearly than ever how new classes, new forms of social relation with the means of production, are developing. On one hand there are the high bourgeoisie, among which hundreds of billionaires, and on the other hand a working class that is increasingly proletarianized by the rapid development of the rural countryside. The quality of life for this working class has grown at a tremendous rate as a billion people have been lifted out of poverty and extreme poverty becomes a thing of the past. Although income inequality has skyrocketed as well, even to levels comparable to the US, Dengism has been able to quell resistance to market reforms by offering workers a significant share of overall economic growth. A comparison could be made to the way that the militant labor movement was bought off in the US with the prosperity of the post-WWII era. However such a state of affairs depends on spectacular rates of growth. Sooner or later China's growth will start to slow down and China's high capitalists will be faced with a choice: Accept lower rates of profit or drive down the cost of labor. In the US, where a similar crisis appeared in the 1970's, the class character of the state was such that the capitalists could shove neoliberal reforms down the throats of the people without significant resistance. However, the situation in China is not so clear cut, as the CPC has maintained a great deal of structural autonomy from bourgeois interests.

The transformation of China is far from over, and the next 50 years will see renewed class conflict over control of the state as explosive growth is no longer capable of absorbing the existential conflict between the bourgeoisie and the working class. China is poised more than ever to deliver the conditions most ripe for revolution in orthodox Marxism. We should endeavor to understand the history and perspective of the Chinese people themselves as they enter a new era and maybe even a resurgence of revolutionary forces.