IN THE PAST TWO DECADES, the economy of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has become one of the world’s two largest and the key node of global manufacturing. PRC companies are leading in core sectors or investing heavily in other countries. The governing Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has tried to use this economic weight to expand its global political standing and has entered a political and economic rivalry with the ruling classes of the United States and other countries. This rivalry dominates world politics today.
Does this mean, the PRC ruling class is imperialist? Some on the Left think so; others assume that it is a noncapitalist force “against US imperialism”; still others consider it capitalist or imperialist but think it is, at least, “better” than its US counterpart. The lack of a consistent understanding of imperialism complicates the issue.
Some analyses of contemporary imperialism focus on one dimension, such as military occupation or value exchange.1See, for instance, Li Minqi, “China: Imperialism or Semi-Periphery?” Monthly Review, July 1, 2021, doi.org/10.14452/MR-073-03-2021-07_4. Others are more concerned with proving the continued validity of certain theories of imperialism, such as Vladimir Lenin’s, rather than engaging with the concrete manifestations of today’s imperialist relations.2This applies to several interviews of these series documented at “Imperialism Today Series,” Links, links.org.au/topic/imperialism-today-series.
It may be useful to critically review concepts of imperialism such as those formulated by Lenin or Rosa Luxemburg in the 1910s, Franz Fanon or Walter Rodney during decolonization in the mid-twentieth century, or David Harvey in the 2000s on the neoliberal period.3For a critical discussion, see, for example, Salar Mohandesi, “The Specificity of Imperialism,” Viewpoint, February 1, 2018. This article, however, is not concerned with testing past theories. Instead, it sketches out a concept for examining and comparing imperialist relations and class actors today with a focus on the PRC’s ruling class.
This concept views imperialism as a set of hierarchical relations between disparate nation states’ ruling classes which compete with each other while collaborating in exploiting the world’s working classes. Imperialist relations are shaped by the historical legacy of previous eras of capitalism’s colonial expansion that have structured the world into relatively stable hierarchies of center, semiperiphery, and periphery.
In short, this article proffers a notion of imperialism as class struggle across borders, rather than accepting the common geopolitical frame that simply aggregates the interests of a nation state’s ruling and subordinate classes. The first section looks at the broader context and proposes a relational, dimensional, and historical framework to understand imperialism’s features and trajectories; the second analyzes those imperialist relations the PRC ruling class dominates; the third summarizes the scope and limitation of these imperialist relations; and the fourth discusses the implications of this systematic approach to imperialist relations for anti-imperialist strategies.
Class Relations across Borders
The concept of imperialism is needed to grasp economic and political processes on the level of the global capitalist system of nation states—that is, capital-driven expansion and domination or class relations across borders that the concept of capitalism alone does not capture. Preparing the discussion of the PRC ruling class’s involvement in imperialist relations, this section develops a relational, a dimensional, and a historical perspective on imperialism.
Relational Perspective on Global Class Struggle
Imperialism describes a relation of domination. The ruling class of a country dominates economic transactions, political affairs, or class relations of another country—a form of class struggle across borders over control, exploitation, and dispossession. Such a relation is created by particular actors—that is, the ruling classes, or its parts such as the political leadership or capital factions.
This emphasis on the ruling class is distinct from two other positions. The first conflates actors within imperialist relations to the image of “one country versus another.”4See my critique of the geopolitical framing of imperialist conflict with regard to Taiwan. Ralf Ruckus, “What Everyone on the Left Should Know About Taiwan (at the Minimum),” Spectre, June 17, 2025, doi.org/10.63478/YRUCYOAP. This common conflation is misleading and reproduces nationalist narratives. The second assumes that capital is no longer rooted in specific nation states but forms a “transnational capitalist class.”5See William I. Robinson, “Debate on the New Global Capitalism: Transnational Capitalist Class, Transnational State Apparatuses, and Global Crisis,” International Critical Thought 7, no. 2 (2017): 171–89, doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2017.1316512. However, despite the global scope of their activities and cooperation, the leaderships of large corporations are still anchored in the class structures of particular nation states because they rely on those states to maintain conditions under which their capitalist enterprise can reproduce and expand.6The interests of capitalists and state actors regarding, for instance, territorial expansion or profit maximization are not identical and can even be contradictory, leading to (temporary) conflicts within and between ruling classes.
Furthermore, imperialist relations involve competition between capital classes of different nation states, but often also “antagonistic cooperation.”7See Promise Li, “Imperialism as Antagonistic Cooperation,” Spectre, October 15, 2024, doi.org/10.63478/VPNQAXVH. This not only reflects the shared interest of capitalist classes in a bloc of nation states vis-à-vis other blocs, but also the collective interest of the capitalist classes of all nation states in upholding and expanding capitalist relations globally and checking working-class resistance.8Competition and collaboration on the global level between capitalist classes of different nation states mirrors competition between capitalists within one nation state and their collaboration in the defense of capitalist structures and the suppression of working-class struggles.
Imperialist relations are organized hierarchically, with different levels of domination and submission. The ruling class of one nation state can both dominate and be dominated. Described as subimperialism, such hierarchy is manifest, for instance, in present-day South Korea or Germany. Their ruling classes are to a certain extent dominated by the US capitalist class, but they dominate imperialist relations with other countries’ ruling classes.9On sub-imperialism, see Adrián Sotelo Valencia, Sub-Imperialism Revisited: Dependency Theory in the Thought of Ruy Mauro Marini (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2017), doi.org/10.1163/9789004319417.
Imperialist relations also amplify the spatial and social differentiation “on both sides.” Dominated ruling classes often benefit from collaboration with the dominating foreign ruling class in terms of appropriating wealth and securing domestic rule; and (parts of) the working class in capitalist centers can benefit from imperialist relations as in, for instance, lower prices for commodities or care labor due to the low wages of migrant workers and workers in dominated economies.
Finally, imperialist relations are fluid. They are shaped by the history of colonial conquest and oppression, racism, exploitation, and slavery, and they change with the altering of global capitalism, class composition, and the system of nation states. Examples of such shifts are the decolonization and setup of new nation states in the mid-twentieth century, or the rise of the PRC economy from periphery to capitalist center from the 1980s on. Ruling classes can be imperialist actors and lose that role, or vice versa.
Dimensional Perspective on Imperialist Relations
Imperialist relations are created and reproduced in various ways. Looking at different dimensions that shape such relations is vital to assess or compare them. This article proposes seven interrelated dimensions that change over time and depend on regional context.
The first dimension of imperialist relations, economic capacity and power, involves economic activity across borders characterized by value transfer or theft. Among them are the exploitation of workers in workplaces set up or controlled through direct investments, joint ventures, shareholding, or subcontracting; extraction through mining or the dispossession of raw materials; trade involving unequal exchange with different price levels and currency values that make commodities cheaper for actors in dominating economies than for those in dominated; logistical infrastructure that is controlled by capital from another country; and the control over financial institutions, trading centers, and central banks and how they deal with credit, stocks, bonds, or currencies. Together, the imperialist organization of these activities and institutions leads to economic benefits or forms of value transfer from dominated to dominating economies.
The second dimension, racialized exploitation of migrant labor—a form of class division and profit maximizing—is often interconnected with a sexist division of labor and, for instance, the exploitation of migrant care workers along the global care chain. The ruling class of capitalist centers creates and builds on racialized categories that underpin the separation of migrants from local workers.
Migrant workers from semiperipheral or peripheral countries receive temporary work and residence permits, and they risk deportation if they fight exploitation or lose their job. Using the lower wage level and reproduction costs in migrants’ countries of origin, capitalist employers try to cut their wages and worsen their working conditions.
The third dimension, technological capability and control, stands for the ability to develop, access, and utilize advanced technologies for economic or military purposes. Access to advanced technology in central sectors determines the ability of a ruling class to create dependency and dominate counterparts in other nation states. Measures to secure and defend a leading position include investment in education and research, control over norms and patents, and trade restrictions or sanctions.
The fourth dimension, control over ecological impacts, is the ability to externalize environmental costs. This is done, for instance, through environmental destruction caused by resource extraction in other countries, garbage export, or the relocation of polluting industries. The effects of (accumulated) pollution of a country’s enterprises on the climate and related ecological disasters in other countries also falls into this category.
The economic, racializing, technological, and ecological forms usually define the imperialist relation between different ‘national’ capitalist classes.
The fifth dimension, geopolitical influence or power, describes how governments or other institutions controlled by the ruling class of one country dominate political decision-making in another country. This domination can be based on economic, technological, or military superiority and submission. It can be institutionalized in multilateral organizations, or it can take the form of direct pressures as in, for instance, the threat of trade sanctions or military action.
The sixth dimension, military capability and power, stands for the capability to use military forces for the interests of a country’s ruling class. That ability depends on the quality and number of weapons, troop size, and battle experience. It can be used to dominate allies relying on protection or adversaries by threatening or carrying out military attacks or occupation.
The seventh dimension, ideological domination or discourse power, is the ability of the ruling class of one country to dominate public debates, discourses, and narratives in other countries and to present a certain form of economic, political, cultural, or social structure as the superior model. Ideological domination builds on media organizations, foundations, or NGOs that help to assert narratives on the superiority of the hegemonic popular culture or form of governance.
Weighing up these dimensions, the economic, racializing, technological, and ecological forms usually define the imperialist relation between different “national” capitalist classes. The dominating capitalist class uses its position to pressure dominated capitalist classes to accept an inferior role in economic relations, preferred access to land, the extraction of resources, environmental destruction, and the racialized exploitation of labor.
Imperialist relations are recreated, strengthened, or defended by political intervention to ensure geopolitical subordination and, in certain cases, by military measures to enforce subordination or even the surrender of territory. Ideological means are deployed to stabilize, amplify, or justify imperialist relations.
Historical Perspective on Imperialist Periods and China’s Trajectory
Over the past centuries, imperialist relations transformed along the geographical expansion of capitalist relations and changes in technologies, production regimes, and class composition. Various dynamics led to ruptures or gradual change, including cycles of crisis and boom, and waves of struggle from below drawing countermeasures from above—or, in a Polanyian interpretation, a back-and-forth of market regulation and deregulation.10Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001).
This article focuses on changing imperialist relations starting in the second half of the nineteenth century, a period preceded by the conquest and colonization of what was called “the new world” that had shaped global capitalist development since the sixteenth century. Soldiers, settlers, and missionaries sent by the European ruling classes carried out territorial expansions throughout the world that led to occupation, dispossession, extractivism, slavery, exploitation, and genocide. The violence of these processes set the background for all successive periods of imperialism up to the present day.
The periodization of imperialist relations suggested in this article—and in parallel, China’s historical trajectory—largely corresponds to Arrighi’s cycles of global hegemonic powers: the hegemony of Britain’s ruling class until the First World War, the hegemonic contention (or “systemic chaos”) until the end of the Second World War, the hegemony of the US ruling class until the early twenty-first century, and the present period of a new hegemonic contention.11Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (London and New York: Verso, 1994).
The period of empires (1870s to 1910s), which gave imperialism its name, was characterized by the colonization of regions—mostly in Africa and Asia—by the global hegemonic ruling class of Britain and its counterparts in other imperial states, such as France, Germany, or the United States.
The long recession running from 1873 to 1896 and workers’ struggles against exploitation placed increasing pressure on these ruling classes. Competing with each other and subduing resistance “from below” in the colonies, they tried to further expand their imperial reach in order to exploit raw materials, land, and labor in the colonies as inputs for the continued industrialization, lowering of production costs, and profit maximization in the imperial center.
China had a largely agrarian economy at the time and was still under the rule of the Qing dynasty which, on one hand, was the colonial occupier in places such as Xinjiang and Taiwan (which it lost in a war with Japan’s military in 1895) and, on the other hand, was subject to colonialist pressure and the local occupation of “concessions” by colonizers from Britain, France, Germany, the United States, Russia, Japan, and others.
The period of disorder (1910s to 1940s) saw intensified imperialist rivalry and state intervention to secure “national” imperial interests. Germany was, at the time, a rapidly industrializing imperial latecomer. Its ruling class’s aim to expand its colonial access to land and labor and challenge the hegemony of Britain’s ruling class eventually led to two world wars.
Meanwhile, the Russian Revolution of 1917 established a socialist regime in the Soviet Union that threatened expansionist capitalist regimes elsewhere. The US ruling class pushed for its own imperial expansion and joined both world wars late, ensuring the defeats of the German military.
It reacted to the Great Depression of the 1930s and massive workers’ struggles by introducing Keynesian policies and the New Deal. During the Second World War, the US economy benefited from largescale investments in wartime production and the weakening of competitors in Europe through war destruction. After the war, the US ruling class was able to end the global hegemony of Britain’s ruling class and to apply the model of Keynesian policies for its own interests beyond US borders.
In China, the 1911 Revolution ended the rule of the Qing dynasty. The new republic entered a period of instability due to conflicts between local military power factions (“warlords”) while the semi-colonization of the “concessions” persisted. The CCP and the KMT (Nationalist Party) evolved as the main opposition to Japan’s military occupation of parts of China in the 1930s and 1940s. After the defeat of Japan’s military, the CCP defeated the KMT in the ensuing civil war.
In the Cold War period (1940s to 1980s), the US ruling class dominated other countries’ economies and politics through its control over financial institutions, the US dollar’s status as the global currency, and its military’s ability to intervene anywhere in the world. Its main adversary, the ruling class of the Soviet Union, expanded its sphere of domination by installing socialist regimes in countries occupied during the Second World War in Eastern Europe.
It was further strengthened through the victory of the CCP in China’s civil war in 1949 and the rise of anticolonial movements it supported. The US ruling class launched “anticommunist” campaigns in former colonies while generally supporting decolonization since it paved the way for US capital to expand in postcolonial states.12Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World (New York: Public Affairs, 2020); Nandita Sharma, Home Rule. National Sovereignty and the Separation of Native and Migrants (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2020), 121–30,
org/10.1515/9781478002451.
Subsequently, postcolonial ruling classes maintained the provision of “cheap” labor and raw materials to capitalist centers while remaining dependent on their industrial goods. Meanwhile, struggles of working classes in the capitalist centers coincided with the anticolonial struggles and student or youth movements around 1968.
Rising wages and low profits rates pushed the postwar economic order into another crisis in the 1970s. The capital classes in the United States, Europe, and Japan reacted by relocating or outsourcing manufacturing capacities to peripheral countries, offering “cheap” labor as in, for example, Mexico’s maquiladoras and factories in Taiwan or South Korea.
Founded in 1949, the PRC remained a largely agrarian country despite the socialist industrialization program. The Sino–Soviet Split in the late 1950s ended the collaboration of the CCP with the ruling class of the Soviet Union. Internal class contradictions and social struggles during the 1960s and 1970s, as well as the presumed threat of military bloc confrontations, provoked the CCP to approach the US government in 1971 and initiate market reforms from 1978 onwards.13Ralf Ruckus, The Communist Road to Capitalism. How Social Unrest and Containment Have Pushed China’s (R)Evolution since 1949 (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2021).
In the period of neoliberalism (1980s to 2010s), the US ruling class used its control over financial markets and institutions to create a debt crisis in postcolonial states, forcing governments to curb state subsidies and remove import restrictions. This led to “food riots” in many countries.
The geopolitical balance, already affected by the rapprochement of US government and PRC leadership, tipped further toward the US ruling class when the Soviet Union’s ruling class could not keep up with military upgrades and increased spending. Economic and social crises triggered popular uprisings in the Eastern Bloc, and most socialist regimes finally collapsed after 1989.
Shock therapies downsized post-socialist economies, further integrating them into the global capitalist economy. The CCP’s market reforms and its own shock therapy in the mid-1990s eventually opened the PRC economy for the relocation of manufacturing capacities from capitalist centers, turning it into the capitalist “factory of the world.”
During the 1990s and most of the 2000s, capital from the United States and allied countries could push up their profit rates through the exploitation of low-wage labor in the PRC. The cheap goods produced there also enabled them to keep wages low at home and run austerity policies.
Meanwhile, conflicts linked to poverty, exploitation, and repression in peripheral states, as well as subsequent competition between regional elites about profits and power, led to regional military clashes. The US ruling class, in an attempt to secure its hegemonic position, invested in military and wars, such as the “war on terror” in Afghanistan and Iraq.
However, while maintaining its position as the only power capable of intervening militarily across the globe, it could not even end these wars as planned. Economically, the lack of profitable investment opportunities and the liberalization of the financial sector led to a massive expansion of speculation in the 1990s that created turbulence on financial markets and, eventually, the Global Financial Crisis in 2007.
A wave of uprisings, general strikes, and square occupations in North Africa, West Asia, North America, South America, and Europe followed. Crisis and upheavals weakened the “antagonistic cooperation” of core states’ capital classes that had strengthened in the 1950s and continued during the period of neoliberalism.
The current phase sees intensified imperialist rivalry, protectionism, and state intervention in the midst of escalating crises.
The current phase, another period of disorder (2010s and ongoing), sees intensified imperialist rivalry, protectionism, and state intervention in the midst of escalating crises.14On increased state intervention, see Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), doi.org/10.1093/9780198925224.001.0001. After the Global Financial Crisis starting in 2007, PRC capital intensified its attempts to expand globally.
This “spatial fix” was driven by overaccumulation at home (the result of vast state subsidies to overcome the 2007 crisis) and by the PRC government’s will to gain more control over global transport routes, supply chains, and industrial infrastructure.15Zhang Xin, “Chinese Capitalism and the Maritime Silk Road: A World-Systems Perspective,” Geopolitics 22, no. 2 (2017): 322, doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2017.1289371. The PRC government tried to strengthen economic and political ties with other ruling classes around the world while PRC state and private capital increasingly cut into market zones that were previously dominated by capital from core states such as the United States or Japan.
Since the 2010s—as both economic crises and the rise of its new rival put increasing pressure on the US ruling class—succeeding US governments have tried to defend the country’s global dominance against its apparent decline. US governments have imposed tariffs or sanctions and launched campaigns to control or keep out PRC competition, influence, or investment.
These measures culminated during and after the so-called “trade war” in 2018, when the US government launched tariffs and other trade barriers against the PRC. The effects of the Covid–19 pandemic in the years after 2020, especially the disruption of transport from the PRC to other countries, provoked intensified efforts by ruling classes in the United States and allied states to lessen the dependency on the “factory of the world” and redirect or diversify supply channels. They introduced further measures to block the sale of advanced technology (such as the latest generation of semiconductors) to the PRC and formed new military alliances to contain the PRC ruling class’s expanding influence.
While the US ruling class retains its military hegemony, its control over financial institutions and markets, and its technological leadership in core sectors for the time being, all these fields are increasingly contested. While the geopolitical rivalry with the PRC ruling class stands out, its increasing tension is also rooted in the domestic crises of accumulation and social reproduction, the loss of political legitimacy, and the conflicts within ruling classes about how to deal with all this.
In sum, the five periods of imperialism included periods of strong antagonistic cooperation during economic booms and periods of less cooperation during periods of crisis. During the former, capitalist classes and governments pushed for concerted imperialist expansion and free trade, while they pushed for nationalist, protectionist policies against imperialist rivals during the latter.
Over the whole period since the late nineteenth century, despite changes of imperialist relations, the global economic and geopolitical order shows a relatively stable hierarchy between capitalist core, periphery, and semiperiphery. The assets that determine a region’s or country’s position have accumulated over time from colonialism to today’s reconfigured imperialist relations, shaping nation states through the processes of anticolonial struggles, postcolonial state formation, and class recomposition.16On the accumulation of imperialist assets over time, see Sven Beckert, A Global History (New York: Penguin Press, 2025). In fact, only a few national economies did step up to the semiperipheral or even core level, most prominently, those of nation states in Southern and Eastern Europe, the Tiger States in East and Southeast Asia, and, notably, the PRC.
The PRC Ruling Class’s Creation of Imperialist Relations
Two main factors led to the global expansion of PRC capital in the past two decades. First, migrant workers’ struggles pushed up wages in the 2000s and culminated in a strike wave in 2010. Higher wages undermined the model based on “cheap” labor for domestic and foreign capital, and both reacted with further precarization of labor relations, automation, and relocation to the PRC hinterland and abroad.
Second, the crisis after 2007 and the subsequent massive state subsidies not only increased public debts but also created industrial overcapacities. Supported by the CCP government, PRC capital tried to alleviate the effects by pushing its global expansion from the 2010s on. It followed the trade paths it had established while managing the “factory of the world” and used Chinese diaspora communities to establish a capitalist network for investments in logistics, extractive industries, and production around the globe.
To what extent is this expansion imperialist? The next sections discuss the current position and practices of PRC capital and the PRC state with regard to the seven dimensions of imperialist relations outlined above: economy, migration, technology, ecology, geopolitics, military, and ideology.
PRC Capital and Economic Imperialism
In the past two decades, PRC capital moved from providing the “factory of the world” that depended largely on foreign investments to being an increasingly potent economic player with companies dominating key sectors globally—as in, for instance, solar panels, batteries, or electric cars. It remained the leading manufacturer of goods such as electronics and automotives and controls the key hub of global supply chains. PRC capital is the biggest trading partner for most countries.17Esteban Ortiz-Ospina et al., “China Is the Top Import Partner for Most Countries in the World,” Our World in Data, December 9, 2025, ourworldindata.org/data-insights/china-is-the-top-import-partner-for-most-countries-in-the-world.
Investments in extractive industries in Southeast Asia, Africa, and South America gave PRC capital access to resources for its manufacturing base.18An example is Indonesia’s nickel industry, which is largely controlled by Chinese enterprises. See Alfian Al-Ayubby and Y. Wasi Gede Puraka, “Chinese Investments and Labor Struggles in Indonesia,” in China from Below: Critical Analysis and Grassroots Activism, ed. Ralf Ruckus et al. (Berlin: gongchao.org, 2023), 142–57, tinyurl.com/ycxw568m. PRC capital tapped into labor reservoirs elsewhere through foreign direct investments (FDI), joint ventures, shareholding, or the setup of Special Economic Zones—usually in opposition to forms of workers’ self-organization.
It engaged in production, logistics, construction, and energy generation. PRC companies like BYD (electric cars) and CATL (batteries), have acquired or built production facilities worldwide, partly pushed by tariffs and trade sanctions.
PRC capital moved from providing the ‘factory of the world’ that depended largely on foreign investments to being an increasingly potent economic player.
As a consequence, PRC capital extracts value through direct exploitation of labor in other countries. The extent and profitability of this value extraction is contested.19Using different calculations, Carchedi and Roberts see the PRC as a net loser, while Işıkara and Mokre see the PRC as a net earner. Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, Capitalism in the 21st Century: Through the Prism of Value(London: Pluto Press, 2023), doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv33mgb41. Güney Işıkara and Patrick Mokre, Marx’s Theory of Value at the Frontiers: Classical Political Economics, Imperialism and Ecological Breakdown (London and New York: Routledge, 2026), doi.org/10.4324/9781003398929. It receives raw materials or agricultural goods from peripheral states while delivering manufacturing goods—a configuration that leads to deindustrialization in the latter and mirrors imperialist relations dominated by the ruling classes of the United States or Britain, amounting to a “neo-colonial mode of underdevelopment.”20Patrick Bond, “The Elusive Rainbow at the End of the Belt and Road: Chinese Investment, Finance and Trade Controversies in Southern Africa,” in The Material Geographies of the Belt and Road Initiative: Infrastructures and Political Ecologies on the New Silk Road, ed., Elia Apostolopoulou et al. (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2026), 163.
PRC financial capital and the financial institutions set up as part of the BRI or BRICS+ support PRC trade and investments. Their loans to peripheral governments for construction or infrastructure projects increase financial dependency on PRC capital. This follows a similar logic of financial dependency other imperialist players from the United States or elsewhere use to discipline governments in other countries.
However, PRC capital’s global economic capabilities have thus far remained constrained. The PRC’s domestic economy still partly hinges on investments and trade controlled by capitalists from other countries, and PRC capital’s global investments are often based on collaboration with corporations from elsewhere. The global financial system is still dominated by capital from the United States and its allies, and the US dollar remains the global currency.
The PRC ruling class’s attempts to create alternative financial structures have only had partial success, and their financial operations are often intertwined with institutions dominated by the US government and its allies. Finally, since the mid-2010s, the PRC economy’s growth substantially slowed. Despite currently booming manufacturing exports, it is unclear whether PRC capital will retain its dominant role in trade, increase productive investments, or improve its economic and financial standing globally.
Racialized Exploitation of Migrant Labor
During the transition to socialism in the 1950s, the CCP leadership installed a system—the hukou or household registration—that divided the population into a large rural and a small urban segment. Surplus was extracted from rural labor to finance the socialist industrialization program, including wages and welfare of urban workers that were much better than those in the countryside.21Ruckus, Communist Road to Capitalism, 27–34.
The exploitation of this racialized domestic migrant labor force of three hundred million migrant workers is still the pillar on which PRC capitalism rests.
This exploitative system was adapted during the market reforms in the 1980s and 1990s. Migrants, racialized as “uncivilized” outsiders, kept their rural hukou and provided “cheap” labor for domestic and foreign capital while being denied the same conditions and welfare provisions entitled to urban citizens.22Han Dong, “Policing and Racialization of Rural Migrant Workers in Chinese Cities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 33, no. 4 (2010): 593–610, doi.org/10.1080/01419870903325651.
The exploitation of this racialized domestic migrant labor force of (nowadays) three hundred million migrant workers—among them thirty-five million women employed as care workers—is still the pillar on which PRC capitalism rests.23Zhao Yimeng, “Around 300m Migrant Workers in China,” China Daily, May 20, 2025; Mei Ruo, “China’s 35M Domestic Workers, Silent No More,” Sixth Tone, July 22, 2020. The ruling class has not launched any similar system for masses of foreign migrant labor within PRC borders.
Experiments with the exploitation of foreign migrant workers at the borders to Myanmar and Vietnam have not been extended to other regions in the PRC, yet.24Adam Huang Chuling, “Striking a Balance: How Did China Manage Its Guestworker Program?” Made in China Journal, February 12, 2024. This might happen in the future given the PRC’s persistently low fertility rate and its effects on the supply of labor.25Ralf Ruckus, “China’s Other Crisis: How Declining Fertility, Disrupted Social Reproduction, and Women’s Resistance Undermine CCP Capitalism,” Spectre, November 11, 2025, doi.org/10.63478/O17F8F7E.
Ambition for Technological Leadership
The technological dimension of imperial relations determines a ruling class’s capability of establishing such relations in its own favor. The picture for the PRC ruling class is mixed. The CCP leadership started to allow foreign technological imports in the early 1970s to restrengthen its industrialization efforts through foreign knowhow.
In the 1980s and 1990s, some foreign investments were tied to collaborations with domestic companies to facilitate technology transfer. The state expanded academic facilities for engineering and similar faculties, subsidized research and development departments, and supported the transfer between universities and private or state companies.
In 2015, the CCP regime launched “Made in China 2025,” a plan to reach global technological leadership in high-tech industries. The policy was partially successful. PRC universities reached higher academic standards and recently occupied most of the ten top spots in the university ranking of publications in top academic journals.26Centre for Science and Technology, “CWTS Leiden Ranking Traditional Edition,” CWTS Leiden Ranking Traditional Edition, Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), October 29, 2025, traditional.leidenranking.com.
In 2025, PRC researchers and engineers registered the largest number of patents, many in high-tech sectors like robotics and green energy.27World Intellectual Property Organization, “World Intellectual Property Indicators 2025: Highlights – Patents Highlights,” 2025, tinyurl.com/4a5w6hfa PRC capital gained technological leadership in sectors such as batteries and electrical vehicles, and it is close to the most advanced technology in areas such as artificial intelligence.
PRC researchers and companies are still behind in sectors such as the semiconductor industry, which is dominated by tech leaders from the United States, Taiwan, and South Korea. Still, strong research departments and state funding will likely close these gaps sooner or later. And compared to most nation states—with the exception of the few tech leaders—PRC capital is technologically more advanced and already dominating markets for tech products globally.
Ecological Destruction and Greenwashed Capitalism
While the CCP government presents itself as a promoter of “green” technologies and is celebrated by claqueurs for creating the first “electrostate,” PRC capital and the CCP government share responsibility for environmental exploitation and destruction both at home and abroad from investments in infrastructure projects, energy production, manufacturing, resource extraction, or agriculture.28For an example of claims that the PRC is an “electrostate,” see “Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War” (video), YouTube, 124:49, posted by “London Review of Books,” January 16, 2026, youtube.com/watch?v=gLnxzkiB-GI.
The PRC is the biggest carbon dioxide polluter worldwide.29“Global CO₂ Emissions by Country 2024,” Statista, December 3, 2025, statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-selected-countries. A large proportion of energy production still depends on fossil fuels despite massive investments in renewables and the promotion of “green development.”
Like its counterparts in the United States and other countries, the government does not cut emissions sufficiently or take responsibility for the environmental effects of those emissions around the globe (especially in peripheral states).30“China,” Climate Action Tracker, June 30, 2026, climateactiontracker.org/countries/china. It is also complicit in greenwashing continuing pollution through its “carbon trading scheme.”
The PRC government promoted the relocation of “dirty” industries from eastern cities to the PRC hinterland and abroad (for instance, to Southeast Asia) and PRC companies continued the construction of fossil fuel power stations (for instance, in Indonesia and Zimbabwe).31See Guanie Lim and Goh Chun Sheng, “In Indonesia, Chinese Financing for Coal-Fired Power Plants Grows Faster than That for Renewables,” ThinkChina, July 4, 2022; Patrick Bond, “Africa Deindustrializes Due to China’s Overproduction and Trump’s Tariffs,” Counterpunch, December 30, 2025.
PRC capital is involved in mining and the processing of raw materials in countries in Africa and Southeast Asia with destructive effects on the environment.32“Timeline: Africa’s Critical Minerals – Rights, Eco Damage Taint China’s Image,” BBC Monitoring, June 26, 2025. And the PRC’s massive demand for agricultural goods has led to monocultures and environmental destruction, as in the case of largescale soya or grain farming in South America.33Isabel Hilton, ed., Tracking China’s Soy and Beef Imprint on South America (London: Diálogo Chino, 2019.
Geopolitical Alliances and Interventions
The geopolitical dimension includes strengths and weaknesses of the PRC ruling class on a global scale. Its dominant role in global trade and production allows the PRC government to pursue economic interests or political aims by exerting pressure on the ruling classes of other countries through negotiations or threats. An example is the pressure on governments to end diplomatic relations with the government of Taiwan, the autonomously governed island the CCP considers part of the PRC.34Ruckus, “What Everyone on the Left.”
Based on its economic weight and political standing, the PRC government has shaped special relationships with other governments opposed to the hegemony of the US ruling class, such as those in Iran, Venezuela, or Russia. Rather than a formalized structure, what is described as bloc-building—or an axis between the governments of China, Russia, Iran, Belarus, North Korea, and other countries—is a form of political and economic collaboration in the face of hostile politics or sanctions.
In order to strengthen its global position, the PRC government has formed alliances with other governments, including those considered allies of the US ruling class, through initiatives like BRICS+, the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), and the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI).35BRICS+, formed in 2009, today includes the governments of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The membership of Saudi Arabia’s government remains unclear. The BRI started in 2013 and has more than one hundred and fifty member governments today. Orchestrated by the PRC government, it is supposed to secure PRC capital’s access to markets, resources, or labor. The security alliance SCO was founded in 1996. Today’s members are the governments of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus. The CCP government plays a dominant role in these structures without openly declaring leadership. Rather, it promotes the term “multipolarity” to hide its dominance and ostensibly practices noninterference into the domestic affairs of other nation states.
Irrespective of any purported pretensions to global hegemony, the PRC ruling class still lacks the geopolitical capacity (and military means) to fill such a role. It does have sufficient capabilities to stand its ground in the face of trade sanctions, as it did in 2025 when it used its vital position in rare earth mining and processing to win concessions on tariffs imposed by the US government.
And it possesses sufficient capabilities as a regional power to exert substantial pressure for its “reunification” with Taiwan and to claim most of the South China Sea despite opposition from the governments of the Philippines, Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia. However, it lacks the power to decisively solve such conflicts or assert its interests in other conflicts around the globe, such as during the recent attacks of the US military in Venezuela and Iran.
Military Upscaling and Threats
Through large investments and restructuring projects, the PRC ruling class has expanded its military–industrial complex and upgraded its military capacity—particularly its naval forces and nuclear arsenal—in the past two decades. The military budget was increased regularly. In 2025, its $336 billion budget lagged only behind the United States’s at $954 billon.36“Military Spending by Country Worldwide 2025,” Statista, April 28, 2026, statista.com/statistics/262742/countries-with-the-highest-military-spending.
The immediate aims of these armament policies lie in the protection of PRC territory through deterrence and the demonstration of military capabilities to increase the pressure behind its territorial claims in Taiwan, the South China Sea, and border regions with India. Sooner or later, the CCP regime wants the military capacity to secure transport routes or investments abroad. For that, it needs more access to local ports or military posts but, so far, its military reach is largely limited to bordering regions and, especially, the Western Pacific, where it is stronger than the military forces of all neighboring countries and challenges US military power.
While the US military operates about seven hundred and fifty bases around the globe, and many in the Western Pacific around PRC shores, the PRC military has only sixteen.37“The Facts about US Military Bases Overseas,” Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition, August 2025, overseasbases.net/facts.html. In the past decades, the US military has regularly engaged in military campaigns pursuing imperialist interests, its PRC counterpart has basically no such experience apart from participation in UN peace forces.
The question is whether the CCP government will go to war over Taiwan and risk military escalation beyond the region. The effects of recent purges in the military leadership remain unclear, but they could have weakened capabilities and slowed down preparations for a possible military confrontation over Taiwan.38
David Pierson, “Xi’s Military Purges Show Unease About China’s Nuclear Forces,” New York Times, November 12, 2025.
Ideological Blurring and Justification
The CCP government has tried to improve its global political image through various channels. It has relied on the CCP’s United Front Work Department, a structure established in the 1920s that promotes its policy goals outside the PRC in Chinese diaspora communities and beyond. Since 2004, the government has created Confucius Institutes in many countries to promote “Chinese culture” or to fund projects sympathetic to the CCP’s aims. And it created or expanded government-controlled newspapers and TV stations such as CGTN (launched in 2016) to spread CCP perspectives in foreign languages. Such entities are meant to show the alleged superiority of the PRC’s economic and social developments and disseminate CCP narratives like the “China Dream,” the “abolition of poverty,” or the “whole-process democracy.”39“China: Democracy That Works,” State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, December 4, 2021, english.scio.gov.cn/whitepapers/2021-12/04/content_77908921.htm.
The CCP leadership wants to present itself as a positive force, interested in global development and “win–win” solutions. It positions itself against foreign “hostile forces,” “Western” ideology, or simply “the West,” thereby fostering a form of reverse orientalism by invoking a foreign “other” and emphasizing cultural or political difference. Nationalist narratives on the CCP’s “China’s way” or “socialism with Chinese characteristics” ultimately aim to legitimize the CCP leadership and serve to justify the PRC ruling class’s capitalist and imperialist strategies.
CCP narratives have taken root to a certain extent in public discourses on the Right and on the Left, more in peripheral states and less so in capitalist centers.40According to a recent poll, public opinion in many countries turned away from the US and towards the PRC. This is due to the unpopularity of the current US government, though, not the popularity of the PRC government. See “China and Xi Jinping Seen More Favourably than the US and Trump in Poll of Major Countries,” Guardian, July 15, 2026. The impact of these narratives depends on the reach of local liberal or right-wing “anti-China” agitation that has expanded since the “trade war” in the late 2010s and further intensified since the wave of open anti-Chinese racism during the Covid–19 pandemic in the early 2020s. On the Left, the spread of CCP perspectives hinges on the respective strength of local groups that promote them and others that criticize them and highlight capitalist relations, labor struggles, feminist activism, or colonialism in Xinjiang.
The Limitations of the PRC Ruling Class’s Imperialist Strategies
When looking at all dimensions, it is clear that the PRC ruling class dominates imperialist relations with ruling classes—and working classes—in many other countries. Its role remains partially constrained, though.
Its economic influence based on productive capacities and trade is strong around the globe, but its financial capacities remain limited. It exploits domestic racialized migrant labor but hardly makes use of racialized migrant labor from other countries.
It is technologically dominant in some sectors but remains weaker than its rivals in others. It externalizes environmental damage and destruction, especially to peripheral states. Geopolitically, its economic standing enables it to withstand foreign pressures and dominate ruling classes, especially, in peripheral states, but its influence on political affairs beyond bordering states and the Western Pacific is limited.
The PRC ruling class dominates imperialist relations with ruling classes—and working classes—in many other countries, but its role remains partially constrained.
This has to do with its relatively limited military capabilities, which despite growing substantially in past decades render it only a regional, rather than a global, military force in terms of conventional arms. Finally, it strengthened its institutional ideological capability to spread CCP perspectives abroad, but, while these are increasingly accepted by some, they are rejected by others.
Since the PRC ruling class dominates imperialist relations in some aspects more than in others, it could be defined as semi- or sub-imperialist. It still participates in the global political and economic system dominated by ruling classes of the United States and its allies, transfers substantial value to other capitalist centers and—according to economic indicators such as GDP per capita—should still be rated as semiperipheral.
However, the PRC ruling class has already established itself as a leading global player in both economic and political terms and is not submissive to the US ruling class as the global hegemon despite the latter’s economic, military, and political might. The “sub” in sub-imperialist, therefore, does not adequately capture the actual role of the PRC ruling class.
It qualifies as imperialist regarding most dimensions in relation to the global periphery and regarding all dimensions in relation to the Western Pacific region. Moreover, the economic and political weakening of the US ruling class has accelerated in past years, limiting its global influence. This could further strengthen the role of the PRC ruling class and provoke its ambition to become a leading global force.
The situation is fluid, though, and could also take the opposite direction. Since the PRC economy has lost steam, the PRC ruling class’s ability to dominate imperialist relations might shrink. This capacity also depends on political stability—that is, on the development of class struggles and movements in the PRC, which remains a perennial topic of concern for the CCP.
Anti-imperialism without “National Liberation”
What does this systematic approach to imperialist relations and the scope and constraints of the PRC ruling class’s imperialist powers imply for left-wing anti-imperialist strategies? The focus here is on the role of ruling classes—from the United States’s to the PRC’s—and how they exploit workers or extract resources in other countries while dominating and collaborating with the local ruling class.
In this class struggle across borders, ruling classes use national border regimes to dominate, divide, and suppress workers, peasants, and migrants from other countries. Therefore, anti-imperialist struggles need to not only attack imperialist and sub-imperialist relations (no matter which ruling class dominates them) but also border regimes.
However, two problems characterize today’s left-wing anti-imperialist currents. The first problem is that some of them oppose only the imperialist relations dominated by the US ruling classes (or its allies). They ignore or downplay the PRC’s ruling class’s exploitation, dispossession, depletion, pollution, and repression around the world. It is no coincidence that the same groups tend to downplay the fate of workers, peasants, women, and other groups within the PRC and their movements against capitalist exploitation or patriarchal rule.41Other currents, often embedded in political parties, unions, or NGOs, do the absurd opposite: they criticize imperialist relations dominated by the PRC ruling class while siding with the US or EU ruling classes and defending their bourgeois democracy, capitalist economy, and imperialist relations.
Yet, in places around the world where PRC capitalists collaborates with local capitalists to exploit workers, destroy the environment, steal raw materials, or support local authoritarian and pro-capitalist forces, it provokes social struggles and left-wing resistance—grassroots organizing of workers or peasants; strikes and everyday forms of labor resistance; protests against racialized and gendered forms of exploitation; or resistance against extractivism, displacement, and environmental destruction. These need to be acknowledged and included in anti-imperialist strategies of initiatives and movements elsewhere.
The second problem is that most anti-imperialist currents support “national liberation” and, implicitly, border regimes.42For a similar critique, see Ralf Ruckus, “Review of China in Global Capitalism,” Spectre, September 9, 2024, doi.org/10.63478/Z9TA7NSY. Nationalism has been part of socialist theory and practice, at least, since Lenin’s 1914 concept of national self-determination and Joseph Stalin’s promotion of “socialism in one country” soon after.
The PRC itself was set up by the CCP in 1949 with the intention to “liberate China” from imperialist oppression and “unify” it as a nation state. “National liberation” and “socialism in one country” led to the transition to capitalism under CCP rule, rather than communism. Other projects of socialist “national liberation” have suffered a similar fate.
During decolonization, socialist forces promoted the creation of new nation states in which new ruling classes formed, often within borders set by colonial powers. They weakened left-wing movements, established exploitative relations, and used state institutions to secure their rule. Nationalist campaigns were meant to provide the social glue that holds together local elites, workers, and peasants, linking them to a certain territory, and mobilizing them against migrants or “foreigners.”43See Sharma, Home Rule, ch. 1.
Campaigns against today’s imperialist relations—or related cases of occupation or colonization such as in Palestine, West-Papua, or Xinjiang—still refer to “national liberation” or the right to national self-determination. However, if the Left wants to break the cycle of defeats that nationalist strategies entail, the concept of self-determination needs to be separated from the construction of nations or nationalism and reconnected with class relations and class struggles for the end of capitalist rule.44See Nandita Sharma and Ralf Ruckus, “The Revolution Nationalists Cannot Join,” Ill Will, June 21, 2026.
In other words, national borders and nationalism need to be abolished to prevent the further division of the global working class and to open a chance to overcome exploitative, repressive, and imperialist relations.45For ways how border abolition can be realized, see Fabian Georgi, Grenzen und Bewegungsfreiheit: Eine kritische Einführung [Borders and Freedom of Movement. A Critical Introduction] (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2025), pt. IV. ×
Notes & References
- See, for instance, Li Minqi, “China: Imperialism or Semi-Periphery?” Monthly Review, July 1, 2021, doi.org/10.14452/MR-073-03-2021-07_4.
- This applies to several interviews of these series documented at “Imperialism Today Series,” Links, links.org.au/topic/imperialism-today-series.
- For a critical discussion, see, for example, Salar Mohandesi, “The Specificity of Imperialism,” Viewpoint, February 1, 2018.
- See my critique of the geopolitical framing of imperialist conflict with regard to Taiwan. Ralf Ruckus, “What Everyone on the Left Should Know About Taiwan (at the Minimum),” Spectre, June 17, 2025, doi.org/10.63478/YRUCYOAP.
- See William I. Robinson, “Debate on the New Global Capitalism: Transnational Capitalist Class, Transnational State Apparatuses, and Global Crisis,” International Critical Thought 7, no. 2 (2017): 171–89, doi.org/10.1080/21598282.2017.1316512.
- The interests of capitalists and state actors regarding, for instance, territorial expansion or profit maximization are not identical and can even be contradictory, leading to (temporary) conflicts within and between ruling classes.
- See Promise Li, “Imperialism as Antagonistic Cooperation,” Spectre, October 15, 2024, doi.org/10.63478/VPNQAXVH.
- Competition and collaboration on the global level between capitalist classes of different nation states mirrors competition between capitalists within one nation state and their collaboration in the defense of capitalist structures and the suppression of working-class struggles.
- On sub-imperialism, see Adrián Sotelo Valencia, Sub-Imperialism Revisited: Dependency Theory in the Thought of Ruy Mauro Marini (Leiden and Boston, MA: Brill, 2017), doi.org/10.1163/9789004319417.
- Karl Polanyi, The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001).
- Giovanni Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power, and the Origins of Our Times (London and New York: Verso, 1994).
- Vincent Bevins, The Jakarta Method: Washington’s Anticommunist Crusade & The Mass Murder Program That Shaped Our World (New York: Public Affairs, 2020); Nandita Sharma, Home Rule. National Sovereignty and the Separation of Native and Migrants (Durham, NC and London: Duke University Press, 2020), 121–30,
org/10.1515/9781478002451. - Ralf Ruckus, The Communist Road to Capitalism. How Social Unrest and Containment Have Pushed China’s (R)Evolution since 1949 (Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2021).
- On increased state intervention, see Ilias Alami and Adam D. Dixon, The Spectre of State Capitalism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2024), doi.org/10.1093/9780198925224.001.0001.
- Zhang Xin, “Chinese Capitalism and the Maritime Silk Road: A World-Systems Perspective,” Geopolitics 22, no. 2 (2017): 322, doi.org/10.1080/14650045.2017.1289371.
- On the accumulation of imperialist assets over time, see Sven Beckert, A Global History (New York: Penguin Press, 2025).
- Esteban Ortiz-Ospina et al., “China Is the Top Import Partner for Most Countries in the World,” Our World in Data, December 9, 2025, ourworldindata.org/data-insights/china-is-the-top-import-partner-for-most-countries-in-the-world.
- An example is Indonesia’s nickel industry, which is largely controlled by Chinese enterprises. See Alfian Al-Ayubby and Y. Wasi Gede Puraka, “Chinese Investments and Labor Struggles in Indonesia,” in China from Below: Critical Analysis and Grassroots Activism, ed. Ralf Ruckus et al. (Berlin: gongchao.org, 2023), 142–57, tinyurl.com/ycxw568m.
- Using different calculations, Carchedi and Roberts see the PRC as a net loser, while Işıkara and Mokre see the PRC as a net earner. Guglielmo Carchedi and Michael Roberts, Capitalism in the 21st Century: Through the Prism of Value(London: Pluto Press, 2023), doi.org/10.2307/j.ctv33mgb41. Güney Işıkara and Patrick Mokre, Marx’s Theory of Value at the Frontiers: Classical Political Economics, Imperialism and Ecological Breakdown (London and New York: Routledge, 2026), doi.org/10.4324/9781003398929.
- Patrick Bond, “The Elusive Rainbow at the End of the Belt and Road: Chinese Investment, Finance and Trade Controversies in Southern Africa,” in The Material Geographies of the Belt and Road Initiative: Infrastructures and Political Ecologies on the New Silk Road, ed., Elia Apostolopoulou et al. (Bristol: Bristol University Press, 2026), 163.
- Ruckus, Communist Road to Capitalism, 27–34.
- Han Dong, “Policing and Racialization of Rural Migrant Workers in Chinese Cities,” Ethnic and Racial Studies 33, no. 4 (2010): 593–610, doi.org/10.1080/01419870903325651.
- Zhao Yimeng, “Around 300m Migrant Workers in China,” China Daily, May 20, 2025; Mei Ruo, “China’s 35M Domestic Workers, Silent No More,” Sixth Tone, July 22, 2020.
- Adam Huang Chuling, “Striking a Balance: How Did China Manage Its Guestworker Program?” Made in China Journal, February 12, 2024.
- Ralf Ruckus, “China’s Other Crisis: How Declining Fertility, Disrupted Social Reproduction, and Women’s Resistance Undermine CCP Capitalism,” Spectre, November 11, 2025, doi.org/10.63478/O17F8F7E.
- Centre for Science and Technology, “CWTS Leiden Ranking Traditional Edition,” CWTS Leiden Ranking Traditional Edition, Centre for Science and Technology Studies (CWTS), October 29, 2025, traditional.leidenranking.com.
- World Intellectual Property Organization, “World Intellectual Property Indicators 2025: Highlights – Patents Highlights,” 2025, tinyurl.com/4a5w6hfa.
- For an example of claims that the PRC is an “electrostate,” see “Adam Tooze: Electrostates, Petrostates and the New Cold War” (video), YouTube, 124:49, posted by “London Review of Books,” January 16, 2026, youtube.com/watch?v=gLnxzkiB-GI.
- “Global CO₂ Emissions by Country 2024,” Statista, December 3, 2025, statista.com/statistics/270499/co2-emissions-in-selected-countries.
- “China,” Climate Action Tracker, June 30, 2026, climateactiontracker.org/countries/china.
- See Guanie Lim and Goh Chun Sheng, “In Indonesia, Chinese Financing for Coal-Fired Power Plants Grows Faster than That for Renewables,” ThinkChina, July 4, 2022; Patrick Bond, “Africa Deindustrializes Due to China’s Overproduction and Trump’s Tariffs,” Counterpunch, December 30, 2025.
- “Timeline: Africa’s Critical Minerals – Rights, Eco Damage Taint China’s Image,” BBC Monitoring, June 26, 2025.
- Isabel Hilton, ed., Tracking China’s Soy and Beef Imprint on South America (London: Diálogo Chino, 2019).
- Ruckus, “What Everyone on the Left.”
- BRICS+, formed in 2009, today includes the governments of Brazil, Russia, India, China, South Africa, Egypt, Ethiopia, Indonesia, Iran, and the United Arab Emirates. The membership of Saudi Arabia’s government remains unclear. The BRI started in 2013 and has more than one hundred and fifty member governments today. Orchestrated by the PRC government, it is supposed to secure PRC capital’s access to markets, resources, or labor. The security alliance SCO was founded in 1996. Today’s members are the governments of China, Russia, India, Pakistan, Iran, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Belarus.
- “Military Spending by Country Worldwide 2025,” Statista, April 28, 2026, statista.com/statistics/262742/countries-with-the-highest-military-spending.
- “The Facts about US Military Bases Overseas,” Overseas Base Realignment and Closure Coalition, August 2025, overseasbases.net/facts.html.
- David Pierson, “Xi’s Military Purges Show Unease About China’s Nuclear Forces,” New York Times, November 12, 2025.
- “China: Democracy That Works,” State Council Information Office of the People’s Republic of China, December 4, 2021, english.scio.gov.cn/whitepapers/2021-12/04/content_77908921.htm.
- According to a recent poll, public opinion in many countries turned away from the US and towards the PRC. This is due to the unpopularity of the current US government, though, not the popularity of the PRC government. See “China and Xi Jinping Seen More Favourably than the US and Trump in Poll of Major Countries,” Guardian, July 15, 2026.
- Other currents, often embedded in political parties, unions, or NGOs, do the absurd opposite: they criticize imperialist relations dominated by the PRC ruling class while siding with the US or EU ruling classes and defending their bourgeois democracy, capitalist economy, and imperialist relations.
- For a similar critique, see Ralf Ruckus, “Review of China in Global Capitalism,” Spectre, September 9, 2024, doi.org/10.63478/Z9TA7NSY.
- See Sharma, Home Rule, ch. 1.
- See Nandita Sharma and Ralf Ruckus, “The Revolution Nationalists Cannot Join,” Ill Will, June 21, 2026.
- For ways how border abolition can be realized, see Fabian Georgi, Grenzen und Bewegungsfreiheit: Eine kritische Einführung [Borders and Freedom of Movement. A Critical Introduction] (Berlin: Bertz + Fischer, 2025), pt. IV.