Comrade, I appreciate you taking the time to write this out, but you are deviating heavily from dialectical materialism, towards metaphysics. Allow me to explain, as I don’t want this accusation to hang un-backed and un-correctable.

However, a crucial one - your claim that China isn’t deviating from Marxism-Leninism: I will try to resolve this one through a continous line of argument. I think that deviation is essential for China’s development, but correction is crucial for its future.

The underlying principles of Marxism-Leninism were applied by Deng. The shift towards Reform and Opening Up was made with Marxist-Leninist analysis, and is not to be “corrected,” but to continue to be followed through. You’re treating the presence of private capital in China as something created by Deng, rather than by the material conditions of the underdeveloped industries in China. As a consequence, you erase the centralization of markets as a key observation of Marx, and miss the connecting line between the private sector being gradually subsumed by the public. This mistake of yours is highlighted in your statement here:

However, I think that expansionist strategy itself failed to successfully understand the logic of contradictory capitalist expanse with the falling rate of profit co-existing with rising organic composition of capital.

The CPC knows that markets trend towards socialization and that the rate of profit tends to fall. As this happens, industries are gradually folded more into the public sector of the economy. Markets are useful in preparing the ground for socialized production.

What I argue is that the Reform and Opening up ushered in capitalist ownership to accelerate the rate of development - with a crucial blindspot with regards to China’s position itself: a position where expansion itself is contradictory, as the limits to growth are dictated by the Imperialist forces of the global north. China cannot become the core. China cannot become the imperialist. China will, as long as capitalism persists, never seriously challenge the global North. [Good source on the topic: https://vuir.vu.edu.au/37770/]

But, Dengist policies were an attempt to do exactly that. Therefore, the capitalist road was taken, where expansion has to come through exploitative, extractivist relations with some portions of the global south. That in itself is the price of capitalist development of a peripheral state.

There are a few key errors here.

1. Private capital existed pre-Deng, and its expansion in secondary industries and via foreign investment did not impact the large and key industries, which remained public, nor the sole proprietorships and cooperatives, which remained as such from before.

2. China is not trying to become the core, the empire, to become imperialist. China is not capitalist to begin with, because public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. You confuse the presence of private capital for the dominance of capitalism, but private ownership is not principle, nor does it govern the financial sector.

3. China is already undermining the global north. Through win-win economic development, the global south is becoming less captured by the imperialist global north. An alternative to the IMF and austerity is rising, which is what is propelling the death of the US Empire, forcing the west’s sharp rightward turn as austerity is turned inward.

So, the answers were: overinvestment, a trade surplus, etc.: all but bandages to this problem. Do you believe they are sustainable? I believe that the only solution is the acceleration of full nationalisation of not only key, but also investment portions; and the full abandonment of profit incentive.

The CPC is already pivoting towards domestic consumption over trade surplus. “Full nationalization” is a long, protracted process, where it is critical for the large firms and key industries to be nationalized, and gradual appropriation of the small and medium firms as they themselves are socialized by market forces is the CPC’s strategy. The world is not static, but your analysis that nationalization is not a priority for the CPC because the small and medium firms are largely private treats it as such, metaphysically. The CPC already agrees that full nationalization is necessary, and abandoning the profit motive. See Cheng Enfu’s diagram of the “Stages of Socialism:”

BRI in itself is not set up as an extractive policy. That is correct. The schema infrastructure-for-minerals, for example, is in theory exactly that - mutual development. But it is exactly due to the fact that private investment is an integral part of BRI, that the schema leads to unsatisfactory arrangements.

Private capital is involved not because it is superior to SOEs, but because they fill in gaps left by SOEs. SOEs are superior, and deliver superior results, but collectivization of production and distribution is a gradual process that takes time to build.

China is deviating from Marxism Leninism by following an unsustainable development path that is hitting the limits of the capitalist world system. This is indicative of secular stagnation. Capitalism generates more surplus than it can profitably reinvest. This is not a conjunctural crisis but a systemic overaccumulation problem.

You’re confusing China’s present proportions of private/public capital as a static ratio, and are ignoring that private capital is relegated to small and medium firms, where markets facilitate growth, and the large firms that dominate the economy are public. You’re asking China to shift towards a plan they are already on, that being one of gradual nationalization. The level of development of the productive forces determines what can be effectively nationalized, not sheer willpower, and so this process is gradual and proceeds dialectically.

Maoist China did not have the same issue - because capital was not the dominant form of production. Here, about the role of money: https://monthlyreview.org/articles/renminbi-a-century-of-change/

Private ownership isn’t the dominant form of production in the PRC today either, public ownership is. China’s development under Mao was positive, but uneven, introducing foreign capital in strategic areas made growth more even and more positive:

The US will not go peacefully, and China will not “carry out socialism” in the existing configuration of the global economy by remaining passive and reactive. Its role is not predetermined, It can still turn to socialism, but it will not be a passive process because the tendencies of capital are too strong. It has to be combated. Socialism has to be the path of active political decision.

Again, the PRC is already socialist, public ownership is the principle aspect of the economy. The economy is socialized gradually with respect to the level of development of the productive forces. The “tendencies of capital” are subjugated to the public sector. The rubber factory has control over the rubber ball factory, so to speak. By maintaining control of the large firms and key industries, socialism is maintained, and socialization continues.

It is essentially correct with regards that cadres with capitalist investment at stake have strong roles in the party. That doesn’t mean that the bourgeoisie holds political control - it doesn’t. The PRC is esentially handling it, as you point out with the anti-corruption campaigns. But internal dynamics of the Party are not as linear as we would hope. A lighthearted joke would be that this is Mao’s ontological error - not all contradiction is infinite. It is capital that displays this, with its active negation.

Contradictions do exist, and ideologically impure cadre with class interests in favor of capitalist restoration do exist within a party of 100 million. These, as you say, do not hold power.

I believe they are not proceeding steadily. I think that essentially multipolarity was always present under a veener of “peaceful hegemony” of the US. The US is sliding into fascism, but that doesn’t mean that its power is steadily diminishing, or that its imperialist grip is lessening.

The US Empire is sliding to the right because its power is diminishing. Austerity is necessary domestically to cover for the weakening of the empire, and it is using its current millitary advantage to try to solidify control in its hemisphere to try to buy time as it loses in Africa. Europe is being demoted to periphery as we speak.

It is precisely here that the transition from Deng to Xi must be situated: an effort to reassert state control over capital after marketization had fulfilled its developmental function. The presence of private capital itself under these conditions does not by itself indicate its political dominance - however, it points to the limits imposed by China’s continued integration into the global capitalist economy. It can only proceed by shifting away from capital.

The PRC is already gradually shifting towards further socialization with respect to development, state control already dominates the economy. Markets are still fulfilling their role, as are the firms that grow to more entrenched state control, as are the large firms and key industries. The PRC is actively shifting away from export-focused to consumption-focused. China must remain integrated within the international system to continue undermining imperialism.

Essentially, in short, your analysis is metaphysical because you see the composition of production and distribution as fixed, not as a moving and transformative process where socialization increases with respect to development of the productive forces. Dialectical materialism shows its true nature.