‘China Changes Everything’ – A review of a powerful new book
The bourgeoisie was shocked by the end-of-year news out of China. The business section of the New York Times on Dec. 14 used a 1.5 inch headline type — four times bigger than usual — to report that, “China’s trade surplus for the first 11 months of 2025” was $1.08 trillion. The trade deficit of the United States was $52.8 billion for the same period.
Chinese manufacturing prowess
While sales of Chinese manufactured goods declined in the United States because of the feckless tariffs President Donald Trump has imposed willy-nilly, China has expanded “its sale of goods, including cars, consumer electronics and solar panels across Africa, Asia and Latin America.” Shifting the final assembly to other countries has helped preserve some of China’s markets in the U.S.
China’s trade surplus is not the only shocking news. The Economist points out: “China’s share of the world’s manufacturing value added exceeds one-third, giving it the power to disrupt global supply chains overnight. In green technology, Chinese firms supply the materials, components and finished goods for 60-80% of solar panels, wind turbines and electric vehicles. DeepSeek showed what China can do in artificial intelligence.” (economist.com, Dec. 18)
The Economist goes on to say: “Two decades ago Western firms invested in China to take advantage of its cheap producers and huge market. Today they build laboratories there.”
It is clear that the efforts of the Trump administration to weaken China’s economy in preparation for military actions have not succeeded.
Below is a review of those parts of the book, “China Changes Everything,” that examine how China is building socialism. (The chapters examining China’s response to U.S. threats and its financial and propaganda attacks are not covered here.)
Background: People’s Republic of China founded
When Mao Zedong, who was chair of the Communist Party of China (CPC), proclaimed the People’s Republic of China (PRC) on October 1, 1949, the country was reeling from decades of civil war and foreign occupation. In addition, 10 million to 20 million people in China were addicted to opium, a legacy of imperialist impact on China and two wars with Britain in the 19th century.
The U.S. supplied billions of dollars worth of economic and military aid to the Kuomintang (KMT), the party leading the opposition to the CPC, during World War II and after. The U.S. even ferried KMT troops among the different theaters of this conflict and provided logistics support.
The U.S. efforts were of no avail. The KMT had to retreat to Taiwan, an island province of China, in 1949, after the victory of the CPC.
How did China leave poverty behind?
“China Changes Everything” — a collection of 31 articles written by journalists, commentators and social justice activists — doesn’t explicitly say what led to China becoming a prosperous world leader. It does point to some general features and examines some issues, such as “green technology,” in detail.
Sara Flounders, who coordinated the book’s collection, gave a general answer to the “how did China do it” question in her article.
In the United States, almost all resources are owned by a handful of billionaires and exploited for their profits.
By contrast, Flounders writes: “In China, the overwhelming bulk of resources — oil, gas, coal, gold, gems, rare earth minerals and water — are socially owned and used for the development of the whole society.” While there are Chinese millionaires (and a few billionaires), their activities are directed by a centralized, five-year plan that is designed to serve the needs of the people and overseen by a communist party.
In the chapter “Communist Principles and Culture Drive China’s Development,” Jacqueline Luqman describes how China runs its economy for the benefit of its workers. Her article goes into details.
Luqman explains: “The CPC owns and operates state-owned enterprises (SOEs), which are large corporations that dominate key industries. … The CPC manages those industries and establishes industrial priorities through economic planning. The CPC’s social priorities are factored into how its economic plans are shaped, what is produced, marketed and sold and how the profits are used to benefit the people.”
Socialist economic planning also governs how enterprises not owned by the CPC make their decisions. Luqman states, “The CPC’s social housing policy is a key component of its social welfare system, designed to provide affordable housing for low- and middle-income individuals and families.”
China’s national housing program, which combines local initiatives and national goals, was an important factor in raising 850 million people out of absolute poverty.
Is China building socialism?
The second section in “China Changes Everything” is a detailed analysis of what the CPC has done to move China away from the vast devastation imposed by imperialism, centuries of feudal rule, man-made famines, life expectancy as low as 24 years in rural areas and warlord rule in the 1920s. Sydney Loving makes the point: “Capitalism is just not capable of that kind of project. They [China] did it through central planning and mass mobilization.”
Progress in infrastructure
China in the past 76 years has built a society and an economy that is prosperous and powerful. “Even smaller cities are high-tech and increasingly green, life expectancy is over seventy-eight years, and of course, over 800 million people have been lifted out of extreme poverty.”
In his chapter “Between the Rust Belt and the Model City,” Paweł Wargan makes the point, “Jiayuguan [a model, iron-producing city in western China] offered proof that the images of decay and despair that many have come to associate with industrial cities in Eastern Europe were not products of their socialist past but symptoms of their capitalist present.”
There are two chapters on China’s public transportation, which “is considered one of the most important services a city offers and one that should have the public’s trust in the government, since everyone needs to use it for work or travel.” Betsey Piette and Lee Siu Hin both cover it, pointing out that China has built five of the 10 largest metro networks in the world beginning in 1969. Besides its extensive metro systems, China has implemented nearly 25,000 miles of high-speed rail lines between all major Chinese cities.
Universal health care
In her chapter, “China Can Provide Universal Health Care, Why Can’t the United States?” Margaret Flowers — a physician with hands-on experience in multitudinous health care systems — makes the point, “China spends less than 3% of what the U.S. spends per capita, while providing nearly universal coverage and improving health outcomes.”
China ahead in green technology
Lyn Neeley, in her chapter “China Outpaces the World in Energy Production and Green Technology,” writes: “China’s gains in renewable energy production have skyrocketed … [C]lean energy technology accounted for 40% of its gross domestic product expansion last year.”
China’s leadership is not just in manufacturing green technology. “The number of clean energy patents filed by China rose from 18 in 2000 to over 700,000 in 2024, over half the world’s total.”
The book “China Changes Everything” is a useful tool in dispelling the myths and lies about socialist China.
Order a discounted copy of “China Changes Everything” at the IngramSpark website, https://tinyurl.com/3kekcp2n
