 So, in his speech to the 20th Chinese Communist Party Congress this year, Xi Jinping warned the delegates and the nation of, and I quote, a grim period, sorry, a grim and complex international situation, which meant that Chinese Communist Party members must be more mindful of potential dangers, be prepared to deal with worst case scenarios, and be ready to withstand high winds, choppy waters, and even dangerous storms. And as if right on cue, of course, we have just seen in a relatively short period of time after that Congress, the biggest protests across China, really since probably since 1989. And as I'm sure you know, these were sparked by the repressive zero COVID policies and the lockdowns that are coming with that consistently, but into these protests that we saw, I think was poured all of the frustration, the anxiety and the sense of injustice that is building up, particularly amongst the youth in China. And indeed the zero COVID policies, the lockdowns that are rolling across China, I think in many respects encapsulate all of those problems, because the anger associated with them is obviously a lack of freedom, but also against corruption and bureaucracy, the arbitrariness of some of these measures, and the class injustice, which is also involved in them. And this kind of gloomy backdrop that Xi Jinping referenced in his speech is really also the key to understanding his regime and the direction that it is going in, which is of course baffling Western liberals who thought for ages that China was going to become more like the West as it traded more with the West as it became more capitalist, because they thought naively that capitalism means liberal democracy and is just generally a fantastic thing. And the fact that China not only hasn't gone like that, but in fact seems to be moving away really from a kind of liberal policy and from being close to the West, is baffling them and it's causing a bit of an identity crisis for such liberals as are many other phenomena in the world such as Trump and populism. And they're really asking themselves, well, what on earth is China actually? And what is the regime of China? Maybe capitalism doesn't always produce nice liberal democratic regimes as they see them. Or maybe actually China never was capitalist and we all just allowed ourselves to be tricked. And it was just a very clever game played by the Chinese Communist Party. And it's now coming to its end. Well, to really understand what the regime is in China, and where it is going, we have to understand, of course, its history, and we have to use the tools of Marxism to understand that history. Now, obviously, the regime was created in the 1949 revolution, one of the greatest events in human history. But it was a peculiar revolution. Because for reasons I don't have time to go into, it didn't take place in the classical Marxist sense of an urban proletarian uprising, a stab overthrowing the state, the bourgeois state, and establishing a workers state in its place. Instead, it took place in the form of a civil war, and a rural armed struggle. And the cities were, you know, surrounded by the Red Army from the countryside. Nevertheless, despite that, they did abolish capitalism in China, which was a huge step forward. It modernized China in many ways. Of course, it's not something you hear about in the West or you hear about as the horrors of Mao. But actually China was, it was freed from basically a century of imperialist domination, which had been holding it down and impoverishing China, as well as humiliating it. And, you know, China became more urbanized, the economy was generally more in that became more industrialized, living standards actually rose, particularly with health care. You know, the life expectancy wrote like pretty much doubled in about eight years. A whole host of progressive reforms have passed as well, regarding, for example, the rights of women, education improved massively, etc. This was a step forwards. However, the regime that was established because of the way in which it was established by military means from the countryside, it was what we call a Bonapartist regime. And that is to say, it was really ruled by the sword, the state dominated society dominated all that's what Bonapartism in Marxist terminology. Bonapartism means when the state becomes independent or relatively independent from the contending classes, even from the ruling class, and it leans upon the different classes, used playing them off against each other and dominate society. And that really characterizes the nature of the regime. We call it a proletarian Bonapartist regime, too, because it wasn't capitalist. Nevertheless, it was a form of Bonapartism in which the state, a state, a heavy state bureaucracy was formed in the image of Stalin's Russia, of course. And the lack of workers, democracy workers control over that state, which was not possible, of course, because, you know, the workers hadn't taken power, the workers hadn't created their own organizations of struggle, and fought for power, and therefore created their own democratic structures that never took place. And so the workers were relatively passive. And then they were confronted by this very powerful red army that came in from the countryside. And that meant that there was a lack of workers, democracy workers control over the process. And in the in the long run, that important fact meant that the restoration of capitalism would ultimately be inevitable, unless the workers fought to take power. Because a planned economy, which we defend and support and we support the planned economy that China had at the time, but a planned economy that is run, not with workers democracy, not with the right to criticize, not with the right to to remove officials and elect different ones, but one that is managed in a bureaucratic top down way. It's not just perhaps not very pleasant in some ways. But it is also one that ultimately stifles the planned economy, as we saw most graphically in the Soviet Union, where after a period of breakneck growth, the economy ground to a halt and there were shortages and queues, etc. And that stifling of the economy ultimately would would mean that capitalism, they would turn to capitalism as a source of growth. Now in Marxist understanding, of course, a planned economy is a higher, more advanced kind of society than capitalism. But that's only in principle concretely, in the circumstances of the Chinese revolution, the planned economy that was established was established on the basis of an impoverished society, right, of an undeveloped capitalism of a largely rural economy, mainly based on a peasantry, not on a large industrial powerful working class, of course. And therefore, the productivity of labor was always far below that of the capitalist countries that they were competing with that they were struggling with on a global stage, who had obviously the benefit of hundreds of years of capitalist development, and of more advanced technology. And that fact really dominated the whole process, not just for China, but for the Soviet Union as well, of course, the Cold War is obviously a very important factor factor in 20th century history. And the combination of that of being surrounded by more advanced, more powerful capitalist economies, and the bureaucracy, bureaucracy tending to depress their economy or to stifle their economy, because the lack of the right to criticize, to innovate, to, to remove bad managers and all of those sorts of problems. The combination of those two things meant that sooner or later, the Chinese bureaucracy would tend to want to reintroduce capitalism. Indeed, under Mao, there was always an ongoing struggle with the so-called capitalist rotors. And almost as soon as Mao died, you saw Deng Xiaoping, one of the, you know, purged capitalist rotors was immediately brought back in, within two years was brought back in to lead the country, which shows that there was a desire not necessarily for full blown capitalism amongst the bureaucracy, but to at least come to an accommodation with a capitalist world, to get investment and advanced technology from the more powerful capitalist countries in order to develop the economy and to enhance their own power. And we have to realize that the bureaucracy of a Stalinist regime, as in the Soviet Union and in China, and of course, in Eastern Europe, has no principled interest in fighting for socialism. They might defend a planned economy for a time. But ultimately, what they care about is their prestige, their privileges, their power, essentially. And if they feel that the planned economy is being outcompeted by the capitalist West, and that they can do a deal with the capitalist West, and begin to grow more quickly, get access to more advanced technology and investment, then inevitably they would they would do that. And indeed, that is what happened under Deng Xiaoping. I don't think it was necessarily a conscious process. I don't think that they necessarily Deng thought, let's let's move China to being a full blown capitalist power. I think what he thought was summed up in his famous phrase, it doesn't matter whether the cat is black or white, so long as it catches the mouse. In other words, who cares about principles? Who cares about the mode of production? We just got to get gross, essentially. So I think that was really their outlook. It was a practical one based on maintaining their power and prestige by growing the economy. And the easiest way they saw to do that was by trading with the West basically opening up to the West. Now, that was obviously decades ago. And everybody knows China has grown enormously on that basis. And in my opinion, it is now a capitalist economy. And the state also defends capitalism. And yet, the regime appears to be the same as the regime that inherited under Stalinism under a planned economy. There's no bourgeois democracy. We have the same party in charge, the same structures, using the same phrases, etc. And in fact, it seems to be increasingly authoritarian, and even sort of moving seemingly anyway, in people's eyes, moving away from capitalism, you know, striking blows against people like Jack Ma, you know, distancing itself from the West, even sort of, you know, taking on some of the trappings, some of the phrases of the Maoist era, if not really bringing back Maoism. And as I said, this is confusing a lot of people, certainly in the West anyway. And how do we understand that process? Why has that happened? If capitalism has been successful in China, if it's grown the economy, why don't they just continue on that path as so many expected them to do so? Or to explain this, we have to understand the way in which capitalism was introduced into China and the concept of Bonapartism, which I've already touched upon, is very important for understanding this. Because yes, China has now become a powerful capitalist country. But it's one capitalism was introduced into China, not through a bourgeois revolution. In fact, there was no bourgeois class to speak of in the early 1980s, you know, the bourgeois class in China, which obviously does exist today, was created gradually, if you like, nurtured by the Chinese state. And not because they were bourgeois themselves, but as I've explained, in order to grow the economy, not out of any sort of principled belief in capitalism. And that means that the state has retained its Bonapartist independence of the different classes in society, right? In other words, the state unlike in a country like Britain or America, where the bourgeoisie more or less controls politics through owning the media, buying politicians, you know, a long established tradition of domination of different parties and media outlets. But that is not the case in China, right? The Chinese state remains enormously powerful in relation to the capitalist class, even though they defend the capitalist system as a whole, and have an interest in doing so. And in fact, our capitalists themselves in many instances, nevertheless, the state is far more independent and far more powerful in relation to the capitalist class as elsewhere. There was a study 10 years ago called sources of social support for China's current political order, the thick embeddedness of China's capitalists. And this our quote, this is going to be quite a lengthy quote, I apologize, but I think it really explains it. China's capitalists appear to have little interest in pursuing for in pushing for systemic political reforms, but instead seem to seek to embed themselves in the party state, thereby perpetuating Chinese Communist Party rule. Across the board, scholars have found that one feature stands out, a general unwillingness to rock the boat politically and press for systemic political change. Indeed, most capitalists display a notable interest in working with the party state's interest in institutions. A 2002 to four study of rural private enter entrepreneurs found that more than 70% were members of at least one government sponsored association. Research suggests that medium and large private enterprises, sorry, private enterprise owners do not see any incompatibility between the association's dual functions of state control and member representation. Intriguingly, the more privatized and prop prosperous a locality is the higher the likelihood that the capitalist will view him or herself as a partner, not an adversary of the party state. The point being that China's capitalists have in order to survive and to defend their interests over a long period of time have basically become part of the Chinese Communist Party or the party state as they call it. They've married into it, they've bribed officials, they've joined the Chinese Communist Party. And of course, they may have some misgivings about it, they may want a bit more of what they call the rule of law. They might want their property to be more guaranteed. But ultimately, they don't want to rock the boat. They're more afraid of their own workers, organizing a union, fighting for higher wages, things like that. They're more afraid of that than they are of the state, which at the end of the day, they can rely upon the state to crush their workers, should they get a bit too organized. And I really think that encapsulates the relationship between the capitalist class in China and the state. Now, this kind of slightly contradictory process has perhaps the reality of it has been somewhat masked for a period of time because of the boom in the economy, right? There was a sustained boom in the Chinese economy. Obviously, everybody knows this for a very long period of time. And of course, when the cake is growing and everybody's slice of the cake is getting bigger, the cracks in society, the contradictions, class contradictions, contradictions within classes as well, all these kinds of problems, they can be papered over or even not noticed possibly. So this Bonapartist regime that is the Chinese Communist Party appeared to many people to be very capitalist, right? It seemed to be so thoroughly corrupted by capitalism that it really wasn't very different to a Western regime in many respects. And it had a kind of technocratic appearance. I appeared as if it was not remotely ideological, not remotely kind of had no conflict of interest whatsoever with capitalism, and was just sort of very competently managing the growth of capitalism within China. And indeed, to certain extent, that was their selling point. Basically, you don't need democracy, you don't want the chaos that you have in the West. Look, just will manage the process. At least it will be stable, at least it will be predictable. And your living standards will rise. So everything seems kind of okay, more or less, you know, for most people, anyway. But of course, now that is beginning to break down. The period of the long period of boom in the Chinese economy is coming to an end. There's all kinds of problems emerging in society, which will come on to you now. And thus, we can see this tension rising between the state and between the capitalist class and capitalism as a whole. And many people, that most people seem to like, as in liberals, really, they look for an answer to this in Xi Jinping's personality. They seem to be obsessed with this. Like, who is he? What does he really think? Is he a Maoist? Does he hate capitalism? What's what's the secret to it? Maybe the fact that he was, you know, his dad was purged, and he spent some time living in a cave. Maybe that initially people think, well, that means he must be, he must dislike the cultural revolution. He must dislike Maoism and he'll be a liberal reformer. Then others have concluded, well, no, what this clearly meant was that he became a sort of an ascetic, you know, living in a cave and sort of struggling in that kind of way. It made him hate the wealthy. It made him, you know, a modest person who hates corruption. And that's why he's doing all of this. Well, obviously, Xi Jinping's personality is playing a role. But at the end of the day, we can't really know what drives him. The main reason that this is going on in China is that the Chinese state apparatus, which ultimately is interested in preserving its power, can see that there are massive problems emerging in the economy. They can see that their attention is building up in society. And now I think that they are preparing for future struggles, essentially, they're preparing for turbulence, social turbulence. And that is the reason why they are beefing up their security apparatus and all of the other kinds of behavior we're seeing. And that's classic Bonapartism. Bonapartism has always had this feature of leaning on different classes. So, you know, being what they call populism, in other words, pretending to be of the people, pretending to be against the rich. You're not really against the rich. You are rich yourself. But, you know, you're doing that to sort of give you some credibility, basically, and to enhance your power. But then at other points, you'll lean on the rich and you'll sort of say, well, we'll protect you from the mob, from these dangerous, you know, working-class people. So you need us, essentially. That's that's what Bonapartism does. And I think you can see that clearly taking place now. One of the reasons for this rising populism, this sort of left wing image almost, that the regime seems to be trying to cultivate, or you could say anti-capitalist image, which is very superficial. But the reason for that, I think, is to it's to sort of, it's preparing for the future. It's trying to create them, if there are problems in capitalism in China. Well, we are, you know, a good protector of the ordinary people's interests. You know, we're not on the side of the rich. You can trust us. Hence the anti-corruption campaign, which is obviously, which has been very popular and ongoing for a long time. But yeah, they can look at Chinese society and see that for years there's been increasing strikes, every single year seem to to produce a record number of strikes amongst the Chinese working-class. They can see a massive rise in discontent in the youth. Obviously, it's hard to measure that, because there aren't elections that can show where this discontent is going. But you had the phenomenon of, you know, so called lying flat, where essentially the mood amongst Chinese young people was, this is a rat race, you know, capitalism, this competitive environment where we all have to constantly be running to get ahead. It's exhausting. Basically, who cares? Just give up, you know, just lead a modest life, essentially. That was a, you know, sort of very depoliticized, but clearly very significant thing that spread around. Obviously, the movement in Hong Kong, which is obviously a different part of China. But I'm sure that that scared the regime to a large extent. They thought that was, they were worried that that would spill over into the rest of China. There is, of course, the pandemic is a huge factor, and I'll come on to that more in a moment. But one thing it's caused is a big rise in youth unemployment, which I'm sure many of you know. And of course, housing becoming cripplingly expensive and the housing crisis, which again I'll come on to in a moment. And above all, they can see the looming financial crisis, which is associated with the housing crisis. And again, I think that for these reasons they've been preparing, they've been shoring up their oppressive apparatus. And of course, the disgust at corruption, which I already mentioned. Oh yeah, one other thing. There is, I think, and again, this is very hard to measure. But I think in Chinese society, there's also been a palpable sense of a moral crisis, of a sense of what has our society become? Nothing means anything anymore. Everything's just about money. And I'm sure many of you are aware of this. There was this video that went around a few years ago, someone dying in the streets. And everyone just walked past. Nobody stops because nobody trusted that that person wasn't acting in order to rob them. But this person just died and not a single person helped them. And that video went around the internet and people would basically say, like, what's, nobody cares about anyone in our society anymore. And I think all of these things, the Chinese Communist Party takes notice of that and it worries about where things are going. It worries about political turbulence, discontent instability. But the other side of the process is also a certain fear and distrust of the capitalist class amongst the Chinese Communist Party. And one clear example of this, I mean, as many people like Jack Ma as an example, many kind of capitalists who've been, you know, knocked down to size, if you like. One example of it is Desmond Shum, who is this Chinese billionaire who's now written a book. He's been effectively exiled. His wife has been disappeared. He was a billionaire who's very close to the regime. His wife was, basically they were business partners with someone they called Auntie Zhang, who was Wen Jiabao's wife, who was the premier of China, right, before Xi Jinping. And they became very rich. And then suddenly they, I don't know quite why, but they were suddenly seen as bad, as corrupt, which they were, and were exiled or disappeared in his wife's case. Anyway, he basically characterizes the regime quite accurately. He said the following in his book, people with money have always participated in the political process. China's system was the outlier in that sense, denying its capitalist class a say in the direction of the country. But those of us who identified as capitalists wanted a voice. We wanted protection for our property, our investments and other rights. We craved predictability in government policies, because only then could we invest with confidence. Around 2006, the Communist Party seemed increasingly threatened by entrepreneurs. A segment of society with means was getting more independent. Entrepreneurs like us were pushing for more freedom, more free speech, and in a direction that was less under the party's control. We'd believe that China was going in a good direction, blah blah blah goes on, but we were wrong. It was one of the saddest things I've ever experienced. The Arab Spring and color revolutions of the 2010s scared China's leaders. The 2008 crash that rocked the US economy helped convince China's leaders that its system was superior and gave them the confidence to be more assertive. But to me, the most convincing argument of the Communist Party's dictatorial lurch remains the nature of the Communist Party. Now, obviously he's a liberal, he's a capitalist. There's a lot of truth in what he's saying. What he's saying is that this process didn't start with Xi Jinping. It started 2006, 2008 with a sense of A, capitalism isn't working, look at America, look at the crisis. And B, and look at the also, look at the, it's not that they were thinking, oh, capitalism's bad, we've got to get rid of it, but what they were thinking is unregulated capitalism is dangerous, it's unstable, and it could destabilize Chinese society. We could repeat the experience of America if we're not careful. And the other thing was a certain fear of a power base that was a bit independent of the Chinese Communist Party, of a layer of rich people who were setting up their own newspapers and things like that, gaining more independence. And they wanted to basically get rid of that because they saw it as a, not so much for principled reasons, not as if they disliked the capitalist, but because they saw it as out of their control and destabilizing society. And also the corruption, the excessive corruption, the excessive display of wealth that these people were associated with, and many, many people in the Communist Party, obviously, who were themselves very close to these capitalists or were themselves capitalists. That excessive display of wealth and the anger that it was generating, they saw that as dangerous as not to be trusted, essentially. So they basically decided to nip that in the bud before it causes something, some genuine instability to break out. That, I think, really explains why Xi Jinping has been going in the direction that he's been going in. And what you don't hear in the West, obviously, I think probably a lot of you in here are Chinese, so you might be more familiar with it. But in the West, all you get is this scary Xi Jinping stuff. Xi Jinping's a bad man. Xi Jinping is, doesn't like capitalism, doesn't like freedom, and they highlight these speeches that he makes. But what they don't show is the other things he says. For example, in 2020, he explicitly said that we will never return to the planned economy. He also makes other statements saying that, for example, China will unwaveringly support the private economy and let the market play a decisive role in resource allocation. So it's not, what I'm saying is not that they're anti-capitalist. They do, they believe that capitalism is the goose that lays the golden egg. It's delivered the growth that they need and they want to continue having. But they want to control it. They're trying to ride that tiger of capitalism and stay on that tiger and stay in control of it, essentially. And so they're balancing between the classes and they're trying to sort of, to control the process in that way. And that is why we're seeing what we're seeing. Now just quickly onto the present crisis that we're seeing now. First of all, the main thing is the underlying economic crisis. And that is the main thing, even more important than the COVID lockdowns, which are very important. Because what this indicates is an epochal change. We've just had 30 years of relentless growth for China. But that is not the future. The future for China is one of capitalist crisis, of stagnation, of financial crisis, of housing market crashes. And really that kind of was, actually could have happened in 2008 with the global financial crisis. And China did go into recession very briefly at that time. But they launched this massive fiscal stimulus, the biggest in history. But that fiscal stimulus has only laid the basis for bigger problems in the economy because they just pumped credit into the system. They took capitalist Keynesian measures, not communist measures. They didn't plan, start planning the economy. They just pumped hundreds and hundreds of billions of dollars into the economy. And in doing so, they have fueled speculation in the housing market. They have also destabilized the finances of local governments because basically this infrastructure splurge was funneled through local governments and the shadow banks, many shadow banks, by the way, are actually state-owned enterprises or run by state-owned enterprises, including China's state-owned banks who are looking for more, basically they were giving too much money by the Chinese government and they're looking for ways to lend that money out profitably. And rather than invest in new factories, why bother investing in new factories when the world market is already in crisis? There's no, there's no more demand for your goods. So invest speculatively in housing. And actually it's thought that in the last 10 years they've built almost 20% more housing every single year than China actually needs. Because again, it's a speculative thing, right, is the housing market seem to be booming. Nobody knows exactly what the limit of the market is. They pile into the market in the hope of getting bigger returns. As we've seen in many other countries. And as you might be aware, the local governments depend upon land sales for that as a source of revenue for about 40% of the revenue of local governments is from land sales. But the land sales have now started drying up because the housing market is drying up, right? The land sales will obviously to property developers. Property market is now crashing because it was built on on an unsustainable basis. It was built on credit. I don't have time to go into the mathematics and the details of it, but that is the case. I think you're probably aware of the collapse of Evergrande and many others. It's a slow-motion housing market crash, basically. That is sucking in the local governments because like I said, 40% of their revenue comes from land sales. The land sales have collapsed by 30% this year. And there is a, you know, there's been ballooning debt in China. And it's thought that local authorities are basically, the drying up of income to local authorities could destabilize. Apparently they have almost $8 trillion of debt associated with the local governments, which is half Chinese GDP. So the possibility of a full-blown financial crisis in China is there. It could even be happening right now. Obviously the Chinese state is a bit different to the American state and it is intervening more heavily in the process to try and kind of suppress it. But I don't think they can. And the really interesting thing is what will happen when this financial crisis, when this economic crisis breaks out? Because the legitimacy of the regime is largely based upon we are delivering growth. We are raising your living standards. You know, we're stable. We know what we're doing. Trust us, essentially. But that's coming to an end. And how will people react? Well, I think the protests that we've seen in the last week are an indication that people will start to react in a very significant way. And these protests started a couple of two particular causes. One was a fire in a block of flats in a room chi in Xinjiang in which at least 10 people died. And basically everybody knows that they died because they were sealed into the block of flats because it was on lockdown. And so that's basically a tragedy that was caused by these very harsh lockdown measures where people just get, you know, welded into their block of flats, essentially, or padlocked in so that they can't escape. And what isn't necessarily very well known here is that also when you have these lockdowns there's a class element to them as well. If you're wealthy or if you're a corporation you get given subsidies, you know, you can, you get, obviously you can afford to get meat delivered to your door or all kinds of things. But if you're a working class person and you get locked down you get some rotten vegetables delivered to your door basically and that's all you get. And that is infuriating people. And in Narumchi there was a spontaneous protest of hundreds or maybe even a couple of thousand people marching through the streets defying the lockdown which is very significant. The other factor was what took place of the Foxconn factory which is the biggest in China and it supplies 70% of iPhones around the world. Apparently 200,000 workers work there which is absolutely mind-blowing. It's basically a city. And that went into lockdown a couple of months ago because okay some workers fled in dramatic fashion. They broke out of the factory because they didn't, you know, when the factory goes into lockdown you have to sleep and work there. To protect the economy essentially they are, they're not saying don't go to work, you know, stay at home like here is go to work and actually live at work so you don't mix with anyone else. So people just have to to live at work. So some fled, others got recruited to work there and were offered higher wages because they knew that they were going to have to, you know, be in lockdown stuck in this facility for a few weeks so they were offered higher wages. But then it turned out that these wages what didn't really materialize and so they called that sparked a massive protest and you can see videos of it. It's a huge protest. You know, and they had to they had to bring in 20 truckloads of police just to cope with it apparently. And by the way, the problem of lack of payment of wages is a huge problem for the working class in China. And it causes, for example, record protests in the construction sector industry in the last year because of the the crisis in the property sector there's been record protests amongst construction workers because they're not getting paid just not getting given the wages that they're owed. Anyway, eventually the factory management actually relented and promised to pay people much of what they were promised originally and they were offered 10,000 yuan for any worker willing to leave the factory immediately because they just wanted to disperse the protest. That shows you that, by the way, the potential power of the Chinese working class the biggest working class in the world with this vast factory of 200,000 people as a result of what's been going on there a lot of iPhones aren't going to be available for people for consumers in time for Christmas. The Chinese working class is the most powerful working class in the world in potential and there's a glimpse of that there in this astonishing protest and the news spread throughout the country and that combined with particularly what happened in Arimchi has caused the protests that we saw in many cities throughout China. They couldn't contain the news similarly with the bridge protester that you had in Beijing where someone dropped a banner and some of the demands that were on that banner like for Xi Jinping to go and for a general strike have been repeated at these protests that you've seen taking place across China and that's a really interesting point because we hear a lot about just how draconian the control of the internet is in China you know how good they are at censoring things at shutting things down and yet we see that despite that these protests which are not huge protests we're talking about and these yeah they are unprecedented and very significant but in most cases it's like a few hundred people in each city and yet that was big enough for them to lose control of the internet essentially for the news of this to spread they talk about these protests were coordinated are very clever as foreign forces it's not it's just that ordinary people when they have something to protest about and when they're really angry and they've got similar conditions they learn very quickly when they see that something can be done when they see that other people think like me and are doing something they will follow suit very quickly and so and that's obviously not unique to China I heard that there were apparently protests at 79 different universities across 15 different provinces in China many of which 14 of which were in Beijing the capital and obviously probably the most famous protest was in Shanghai so the two biggest cities in China I think and at these protests the workers this well mainly students I think were singing the internationally now it's not entirely clear what that means because it could just be you know a traditional song but obviously there is this kind of contest over the protest when people say well this is just a color revolution in other words a liberal revolution a pro-capitalist pro-western revolution well it's not revolution but you know a series of protests but arguably the singing of the internationally at these and some people were holding a Mao image you know there's you know some of the slogans as well suggest some class consciousness to these protests as well which is very significant now these protests have probably disappeared already it seems that the police have come in very heavily um but I think Xi Jinping is in big trouble despite that because he has staked his reputation on you know the zero COVID policy and of course in general the Communist Party staked its reputation on stability economic growth you know competence basically and yeah he's he's launched a people's war against COVID and initially they were extremely successful in comparison to the west and whereas absolute chaos in the west and hundreds of thousands of people dying in many countries and in China very few people died and they were actually able to go back to a normal life more quickly than elsewhere and they got overconfident and they started being boastful about this and using this in their propaganda look at the west you know look at the chaos you know you have people like Trump you have chaotic politicians you have you know selfishness people just think they can do what they want because of this sort of liberal individualism and it's out of control and people are dying that's what they said and of course that that was very popular understandably for a long time that as a result that means he's in a very difficult position now because he can't break out of the cycle of lockdowns if they were to there'd be big problems the healthcare system is weak there's nowhere near enough intensive care units and doctors if COVID were to rip through society and the vaccination rates have been very low and there's no sign of a big investment in vaccine production or in buying vaccines from other countries and so basically it doesn't it's unclear how they can actually return to normality which to do so you need to vaccinate heavily the vast majority of the population especially the elderly but that hasn't happened I mean they have people have had vaccinations but they're not very strong they haven't had enough vaccinations they haven't too long ago and obviously there's also again there's an anti-capitalist and an anti well not an anti-capitalist but there's a this is associated with the problems of capitalism and with corruption because one of the reasons for the lack of vaccine uptake is that people don't trust the vaccine because there have been dodgy vaccines in the past and many other scandals like that so how it's unclear what can do on the one hand that they are trying to loosen up and open up a little bit but as they do paradoxically they they announce policies which are more you know in favour of a bit less lockdowns essentially or less extreme lockdowns but just as they announce those policies more people get Covid and so paradoxically that the lockdowns actually increase just as they're saying we're we're we're diminishing the lockdowns you get more lockdowns because not because the policy is more harsh but simply because more people have Covid so to contain it they've got to do that so people are thinking we're going to go back to a normal life and then suddenly they're thrown back into yet another harsh lockdown and it's intolerable for people for all kinds of reasons economically, socially, etc but it's there's no real end in sight to this it's a huge problem and people are now seeing well the rest of the world has more or less returned to normal and we're not here and it's massively discrediting Xi Jinping so they're in big trouble and of course on top of that you've got the the underlying economic problems which I've already explained which I mean it was we can maybe go into that more in the discussion we saw just in the last year hundreds of thousands of people going on mortgage strike because their their homes are not getting built properly because of the crisis in the property sector we see youth unemployment at a record level of 20 percent the average monthly salary for this year's graduates is a 12 percent drop on previous years partly because of the Covid lockdowns and the effect that's having on on the economy so to sum up basically the Chinese state has ridden this tiger of capitalism for 30 years and they have more or less controlled it and they've gone very far and obviously China has become a formidably powerful country able to challenge the United States but no regime on earth no matter how powerful it is can resist the crisis of capitalism there's no policy you can come up with which will prevent capitalist crisis if you have a capitalist economy you can change the crisis a bit you might be able to delay it a couple of years or alter it in some way but the underlying contradictions of capitalism require making inevitable a crisis in the system and that is what they are discovering and they cut this tiger now they can't get off it basically they're stuck on it and their reputations are dependent upon on the health of the economy and sooner or later we will see a mass movement of the Chinese working class which is the biggest working class in the world and it will shake the world and it will shake world capitalism not just in China because capitalism offers us no future not in China or in the West so we should look at these events with a great deal of interest and excitement and extend our solidarity to any Chinese workers and youth in struggle yeah stop there