I support the CPC.

Heard this accusation recently:

China takes part in imperialist plunder by outsourcing all labour intensive tasks to poorer countries to exploit cheap labour, and only the final assembly is done in China anymore.

What is our party line on that?

Edit: thank you all for the answers! I’m far from being an economist and don’t feel confident enough to immediately demand sources something might well be a common knowledge.

I was now given this source: https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/74902/1/dp205.pdf

In particular:

more than half of China’s export value in 2005 corresponds to that of imported inputs that are merely assembled in China.

only thirty four percent of the value of China’s processing exports in 2005 was domestic content, while the other two thirds corresponded to the value of the imported inputs.

in the high-tech category, it consistently amounts to approximately 90 percent of total high-tech exports

  • Kaffe
    19·
    1 month ago

    I don’t have the book on hand but Jonathan Ross has calculations in the book China’s Great Road that show China’s labor terms of trade (how much labor-time does China give to trading partners vs how much does it receive, a ratio of 1 would mean equitable trade).

    China from the 50s to the early 2000s had terms of trade <1 (net exporting labor) with nearly all countries, as China started as the poorest on earth per capita. China was giving other global south countries more labor than it consumed from them.

    Starting in the 2000s China was taking in more labor from some countries in the GS than it received, but this can be due to the fact that China was able to keep a some of its own dead labor (MoP) due to its socialist economy (and socialist bloc trade), shifting more of its labor toward new domestic production because production in socially important sectors became less labor intense with automation. China is still net exploited by the Imperialist bloc.

    However, China is not comfortable with this relationship, which is why it has been exporting capital to the poorest countries to free labor-time in the GS in sectors like Cobalt and Lithium that are extremely labor intense unless an Imperialist corp has coerced state, or has been allowed private, security over investments, i.e. only western owned mines are allowed heavy machinery. China is rather selling the machinery to the country instead of purchasing the rights to consume the resources directly as the West does. Some will think “but capital exports (in this case machinery, loans) are Imperialist”, but you’ll actually see even in Lenin’s time that Imperialist states invested predominantly in trade partners bound by military pacts, the US exports mostly to other Imperialists bound through NATO, OCED, and defense pacts in TW, ROK, Japan, or if it’s in the GS they ensure they are able to exercise sovereignty over purchased land from them.

    This is not without contradictions. China’s investments in the GS are often benefiting the existing anti-worker, anti-Indigenous, classes’ interests. Such is the case in Latin America and many African states such as Congo. Again though, often the 3W state has to relocate people (not a pretty process, and is class warfare) to expropriate land because it is easier to take from their own citizens than from the Imperialist countries who bought or stole existing mines/factories/farms due to Colonialism.