Reviewed by Roger Keeran

February 10, 2026

 

L’Odyssée Chinoise (The Chinese Odyssey) by Bruno Guigue.  (Editions Delga, Paris, France, 2025. 394 pp. 25 Euros)

 

Whither China? Is China a socialist country?   No question is more hotly contested  by the left today than this.  Those who argue against the idea of Chinese socialism point to the existence of Chinese billionaires and Chinese capitalists, the exploitation of Chinese workers and the workers of Chinese firms in Africa and elsewhere.   For some, the Chinese are not only capitalists but imperialists, and the world today like that of World War I is characterized by inter-imperialist rivalry, led by China on the one side and the U.S. on the other.

Others argue that the Chinese system remains socialist, or at least that it is too early to make a judgement.  In this spirit, some recall that in 1972  Chou Enlai reportedly replied to a question about the impact of the French Revolution by saying, “It is too early to say.”  Though the story is apocryphal,  it symbolizes the Chinese habit of taking the long view.

As a collective, MLToday.com has taken no position on the question of Chinese socialism and has published material reflective of different points of view.   A recent book by Bruno Guigue, L’Odyssée Chinoise (The Chinese Odyssey) [2025] provides important information and ideas relevant to this debate.

Guigue is a visiting professor at the School of Marxism, South China Normal University, and the author of three previous Delga books on imperialism, liberalism and communism.  The current book, a 394-page study, surveys the Chinese revolution from Mao to Xi Jinping.  The book is notable not only for the frankness with which it deals with the challenges and setbacks of the Chinese revolution but also for its reliance on Chinese as well as western source material.  The author is sympathetic to the Chinese project, and the book’s strongest contribution is its description of  the revolution’s accomplishments and the ideas of the Chinese Communists.

Guigue devotes a great deal of the book to recounting the accomplishments of the Chinese revolution, particularly since the 1970 “opening up” reforms under Deng Xiaoping.   These reforms were designed to open China to foreign investment and western technology and to gain access to western markets and fuel economic growth, all with the goal of building a strong and prosperous socialist country.  This strategy had many components, among them the abolition of many state monopolies and the establishment of special economic free enterprise zones, and the insistence that foreign investment be accompanied by massive transfers of technology.  The strategy succeeded.   Between 1992 and 2021,  a 40 percent increase in Chinese exports occurred, and China became the world’s largest exporter.  From a country once cut off from world commerce, China became the economic partner of 130 countries.

A decisive step in the process of economic reform occurred in 1992 with the adoption of a program of a socialist market economy.  This meant using the mechanisms of the market, essentially profitability, to determine the allocation of resources. This led the dismantlement of thousands of public enterprises and the privatization of enterprises in light industry, commerce and services.  In the 1990s, this program caused the loss of 40 million jobs.  All of this had the aim of boosting economic growth and ultimately the living conditions of Chinese workers.   Deng Xiaoping said this had to be done because  “socialism was not pauperism.”

In 2013 Xi Jinping noted that some commentators inside and outside China suggested that these reforms meant that China was becoming a socialist capitalism, or state capitalism, or bureaucratic capitalism.   Deng said this was “completely false,”  and that China would always remain on the path to Chinese socialism.  In 2022  at the XXth Congress, Party declared that these policies had succeeded in producing a country of moderate affluence that was on its way to becoming a modern, powerful and prosperous socialist country by 2049, the centenary year of the revolution.

The opening produced unquestionable economic growth averaging 10 percent a year between 1980 and 2014.  It improved the quality of life of the vast majority and eliminated extreme poverty.  This was no mean feat in a country like China that represents one fifth of the world’s people.

The most widely used indicator of human development is the Human Development Index (HDI) that incorporates life expectancy, gross national income per capita and schooling.  The HDI shows that between 1990 and 2022, China’s attained not only spectacular but an exceptional level of development.  It was the only country that passed from the category of “weak”  to that of “elevated” human development. The best single indicator of the quality of life is life expectancy.  In 2022, life expectancy in China reached 78.2 years, above that in the United States at 76.1 years. On other indices such as infant mortality, and the extent and quality of education, China also scored high.

The most striking evidence of the progress of socialism with Chinese characteristics is a comparison with India, the world’s most populous country. In 2014, Narendra Modi’s Bharatiya Janata Party came to power with the promise of  an ambitious program of economic development.   According to a recent article by Christopher de Bellaigue (New York Review of Books,  January 15, 2026), Modi’s program has abysmally failed.  In the decade after Modi came to power economic growth averaged 6 percent annually, less than growth under the previous Indian government and much less than China’s average of 10 percent annually.   Since the Modi government no longer collects statistics on poverty, it is impossible to assess the extent of poverty accurately.  Nonetheless, while China was in the process of ending extreme poverty, experts estimate the number Indians living in poverty in 2022 represented between 9.9 percent and 26.4 percent of the population, while the unemployment rate ranged from 7 percent to 35 percent.

For years, China’s economic growth came with the unfortunate cost  of heightened pollution of the air, water and land by carbon emissions, but recently China has made tremendous gains in reducing and reversing this damage and protecting the environment. China remains responsible for about  28 percent of worldwide carbon emissions, but it is also the world’s leading exporter of solar panels, batteries and electric cars.   Moreover, it is the world’s leading investor in renewable energy.

China’s achievements, however impressive, do not directly respond to the question of whether China is socialist.   To his credit, Guigue directly addresses this question.  He compares China’s performance on seven criteria of socialism proposed by the writers, Rémi Gerrera and Jean-Louis Andréan. These criteria are as follows:  First, a socialist society should have strong system of economic planning.  Second, it should have a system of democracy that assures that economic policies reflect the interests of the people and improve their conditions of life.  Third, it should have a strong system of public services with regard to transportation, education and health. Fourth, even where diverse forms of property exist, under socialism public property should remain predominant.  Fifth, under socialism the general orientation should promote the increase of wages and social justice aiming toward egalitarianism.   Sixth, socialism should aim at the preservation of nature. Seventh, a socialist country should follow a foreign policy of win-win toward other countries that means respecting their sovereignty, non-interference,  and economic cooperation.  Guigue argues that China meets these criteria.

Guigue’s argument engages in a bit of question-begging, or circular reasoning.  He essentially defines socialism as what the Chinese have accomplished or are doing, and then argues the Chinese meet the definition.

Guigue’s criteria themselves are open to question.   Marx and Lenin never set up detailed criteria of what socialism meant.   The closest they came to doing this was Marx’s Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) and Lenin’s elaboration on Marx’s ideas in The State and Revolution (1917).   First,  Lenin stressed that for Marx the essence of socialism was that the “means of production are no longer the private property of individuals,” but became the property of the whole society,  and that workers would be paid according to the amount of work they contributed.  Second, Lenin said socialism would be characterized by a dictatorship of the proletariat,  a state that would govern in the interests of the vast majority, the workers and peasants, rather than in the interests of the few, the property owners.

Before returning to Marx’s and Lenin’s ideas, it is necessary to point out a problem with Guigue’s critieria.  Guigue does not include working class internationalism as one of the criteria of socialism.  For that matter, in his discussion of Marx’s views of socialism, Lenin also did not include internationalism.  Nevertheless,  Lenin clearly expected socialism to exemplify working class internationalism.  In 1917, the same year he discussed Marx’s idea of socialism, Lenin discussed socialist internationalism.  In The State and Revolution, Lenin said:  “There is one, and only one, kind of real internationalism, and that is — working whole-heartedly for the development of the revolutionary movement and the revolutionary struggle in one’s own country, and supporting (by propaganda, sympathy, and material aid) this struggle, and only this, line, in every country without exception.”  Lenin clearly expected socialism to exhibit this kind of internationalism.

The Soviet Union provided a singular model of socialist internationalism.  The Soviet Union provided sustained material support for socialist and national revolutions in eastern Europe, Vietnam, Cuba and Africa.  This kind of internationalism has been woefully absent in the Chinese model, an absence painfully obvious during the current economic crisis facing Cuba.

In place of the kind of internationalism advocated by Lenin, the Chinese Communist Party has developed its own internationalism that Xi Jinping has called win-win.   This internationalism involves encouraging the peaceful development of other countries while respecting their sovereignty and not interfering in their internal affairs.

Chinese internationalism is exemplified by the so-called Belt and Road Initiative.  The essence of this initiative is that China invests in the infrastructure of other countries building ports, airports, railroads, and hospitals, while gaining for itself access to raw materials and markets.  Between 2013 and 2022, China invested 932 billion dollars 2,300 projects in 147 countries.  Unlike the United States and the International Monetary Fund,  China has not demanded that these countries privatize enterprises or make other concessions.  In Africa alone, in twenty years, China constructed 20 ports, 13,000 kilometers of roads and railways, 170 schools, 130 medical centers, 80 electrical stations, 45 industrial parks, and cultural centers.  With the exception of a base in Djibouti, China has not established foreign military bases as part of its investments.

China’s internationalism has not lacked faults.  Win-win did not work out too well for American workers who lost millions of jobs when American capitalists relocated to take advantage of low-cost labor in China.  Plus, during the Angolan civil war of the 1970s, China gave military support to the dubious movement known as UNITA as opposed to the more legitimate anti-colonial movement, the MPLA, backed by the Soviets and Cubans.   Moreover, in February and March 1979 China engaged in a brief but controversial border war with Vietnam.

Aside from the cases noted,  the Chinese have followed an international path of peace and mutual respect that contrasts sharply with American imperialism. On the one side, the Chinese have engaged in a few, short military actions. On the other side, the U.S. has engaged in an unbroken series of wars, military interventions, economic sanctions and blockades against other countries,  as well as threats, sabotage, assassinations, and CIA-sponsored regime change.  On the one side, China has built one military base abroad.  On the other side, the United States has built 750 to 877 military bases in 80 to 95 countries.

Guigue points out that while Chinese firms abroad have sometimes mistreated workers, China has also acted to respect local laws and  local sovereignty.  In 2021, the government of Democratic Republic of the Congo accused Chinese corporations of illegally exploiting miners, the Chinese government responded immediately by fining the companies and demanding that they leave.

In short, to say that China has abandoned internationalism or that its economic behavior abroad is equivalent to American hegemony and imperialism would be grossly misleading.  Still, the internationalism practiced by China is far more transactional than that of the Soviet Union.  With the Soviet Union, internationalism meant giving aid and support to liberation movements and fraternal socialist countries because it was the right thing to do.  Under win-win, China expects to get something and does get something in return for its investments.  For a country, bereft of natural resources, like Cuba, this means little can be expected of China, and in contrast to the generous support that the Soviets provided Cuba, only a pittance of Chinese aid has been forthcoming.

Both Marx and Lenin regarded the abolition of private property and thus the elimination of exploitation as the key element of socialism.  Neither appears explicitly in Guigue’s criteria.   If they did,  Guigue would have to modify his conclusion. Guigue notes that in 2018 French economist, Thomas Piketty observed that China was a country with a mixed economy, where about 70 percent of enterprises are privately owned and 30 percent are publicly owned. Of course, not all enterprises are the same. When the Soviet Union briefly allowed private enterprises to flourish under the New Economic Policy (1922),  Lenin said that state must still occupy the strategic heights of the economy, the key sectors.  Apparently, Lenin believed that permitting private enterprise below the strategic heights would not negate Soviet socialism.  In a similar spirit,  Guigue says that China remains socialist since the Chinese government still controls 80 to 90 percent of the strategic sectors: heavy industry, oil, electricity, nuclear, telecommunications, transport and armaments.  In any case, China is a partially socialized society, or as Piketty says, a country with a mixed economy, or a socialist country that continues to have large capitalist sector.

Lenin stressed a second feature of socialism, namely  the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Socialism has a strong state that operates in the interests of the vast majority instead of in the interests of the propertied minority.   Guigue does not make the role of the state, or the dictatorship of the proletariat, an explicit part of his socialist criteria, though his account makes plain that in China the state fulfills this role.  It wields decisive power on behalf of  the interests of the majority. Most importantly, Guigue argues that state planning remains decisive.  It is, however, no longer implemented by quotas imposed by the state but by economic incentives.  The state remains the key player in the economy by its control and allocation of capital in land, industry and finance. Though land may be leased for periods to private businesses,  all land remains owned by the government.  The public controls between 85 and 90 percent of banking assets.

Moreover, the state can use and has used its power against the interests of private capital.  Guigue offers the example the case of Jack Ma, the onetime head of Alibaba and once one of the richest men China.  Ma’s wealth did not translate into political power.  When he challenged the policies of Chinese banks and hence the policies of the government, the government responded by levying huge fines, breaking his company into four entities, and forcing Ma into retirement.

The Chinese Communist Party could use its unquestionably dominant power to renationalize or socialize more or all private enterprises.   So, the real question of Chinese socialism is determining in what direction China is moving or will move in the future.   Will China remained a mixed economy or will the state move in the direction of more private enterprise or more state ownership?  At this point, the Chinese leadership gives no indication that it is interested in a fundamental change of course.

In the immediate future no fundamental change is in the cards. Guigue submits, however, that under Xi Jinping, China is undergoing a clear shift of policy toward greater state control and regulation of private corporations.   For thirty years China allowed great freedom to capitalist enterprises in order to attract capital and new technology, but now Chinese leadership had changed the emphasis to achieving “harmonious development” which means bringing to heel and severely regulating the giants of industry.   This has led to  forbidding monopoly practices, imposing restraints on the collection of personal information, and sanctioning companies that do not make sufficient contributions to social welfare or do not respect regulations with regard to work hours.  It has also meant restrictions on the use of video games by minors, and much else including a crackdown on corruption in the army and elsewhere.

Socialism with Chinese characteristics differs greatly from the socialism of the Soviet Union. In fifty years, the Soviet Union achieved sustained economic growth and transformed a backward peasant society into an advanced industrial nation.   Though the Soviet Union did not build a powerful economic rival to the United States, in many ways its achievements were even more impressive.   The Soviet accomplishments occurred without opening the country up to foreign investment and without opening the Communist Party to capitalists.

The Soviet achievements occurred not only in the face of a virtual economic blockade, but also in the face of sustained economic sabotage and subversion, and the challenge of waging a civil war, fighting a war against fascism, rebuilding after that war and then surviving the Cold War.  The Soviet Union eliminated private property not just in the commanding heights but throughout the society.  Plus, it provided a greater level of social and economic equality and a great level of social welfare (in terms of housing, education, health care, pensions, reduced working hours, and vacations) and a more generous working class internationalism than the Chinese have managed.

The achievements of the Soviet Union do not mean that it provided the only model and path to socialism, nor does it diminish the achievements of socialism with Chinese characteristics. Chinese socialism, however partial, has been unquestionably benefiting the people of China and the rest of the world.  It has provided a path to development, different than the capitalist model of the West.  It has raised living conditions.  It has largely avoided military adventurism and interference in other countries.  It has promoted the economic and cultural development of the fifty-four national minorities that comprise the nation. It is leading the way in protecting the world’s environment.   As long as the Chinese Communist Party and state remain strong and remain committed to these values, the future of socialism and humanity remains promising.