“We want to do business.” Quite right, business will be done. We are against no one except the domestic and foreign reactionaries who hinder us from doing business. Everybody should know that it is none other than the imperialists and their running dogs, the Chiang Kai-shek reactionaries, who hinder us from doing business and also from establishing diplomatic relations with foreign countries. When we have beaten the internal and external reactionaries by uniting all domestic and international forces, we shall be able to do business and establish diplomatic relations with all foreign countries on the basis of equality, mutual benefit and mutual respect for territorial integrity and sovereignty. - Mao Zedong
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/selected-works/volume-4/mswv4_65.html
this quote is, no pun intended, a deal-breaker for a lot of baby leftists lol
Read the date. This is 4 years after the liberal government withdrew to Taiwan. At this stage, the main issue was not establishing socialism at full speed, but recovering from nearly a decade of civil war, brutal Japanese occupation, widespread famines and epidemics, warlords ruling the countryside, and already being 3 years into the Korean War.
The CPC had to make a lot of concessions to create a semblance of governance over such a vast country as China. At this point, Mao needed the capitalists to build him an industry, while he focused on establishing control over the country, and land redistribution among farmers.
5 years after this (1958), the Great Leap Forward plan was implemented which finally created an adequate industrial base in China to support the transition to socialism.
Then 13 years after this (1966), the Cultural Revolution began, whose aim was exactly to get rid of the last vestiges of capitalism and feudalism in the country. We can talk about how successful or damaging the Cultural Revolution was for China, but it certainly proves Mao never aimed to leave China as a “state capitalist” society.
I have a bit of an issue with you using CCP instead of CPC.
You are right. Corrected!
