By Paul Hampton
China's Stalinist rulers have appointed a new leadership to continue the turn to capitalism begun in 1978.
President Jiang Zemin handed the leadership of the Communist Party to his deputy, Hu Jintao, but retains a tight grip behind the throne. Hu was designated Jiang's successor as far back as 1992 by Deng Xiaoping - the butcher of Tiananmen Square who led China from a USSR-style Stalinist economic system towards capitalism after 1978.
Hu cut his teeth as the party secretary in Tibet. His rule there began with the bloody suppression of an uprising in March 1989, when the army opened fire for three days, killing hundreds of Tibetans. After the Tiananmen Square massacre in June 1989, Hu sent a congratulatory telegram to Deng.
The new leadership does not signal any significant change in China's foreign or domestic policies. All the new politburo members began their careers after the 1949 revolution, and are committed to the same economic and political agenda as Deng - capitalism in economics, party dictatorship in politics.
During Jiang Zemin's decade in charge state owned enterprises have been run down, and the private sector is now the dominant force in the economy. China has received huge sums of foreign direct investment, and joined the World Trade Organisation.
China remains a police state and the Communist Party is firmly in control, although Jiang has allowed private capitalists to join it - claiming it is a more inclusive, multi-class entity. The party is still a totalitarian force that controls all aspects of life, including the All-China Federation of Trade Unions.
However many bourgeois commentators are predicting a period of political instability at the top of the party, as Hu jockeys with Jiang's closest supporters.
As a whole the class remains an atomised mass for exploitation, politically and economically prostrated by the Communist Party. However earlier on this year there were powerful signs of a new wave of militancy by workers in the rust bucket industries in the North-East, which coupled economic and political demands.
Therein lies the hope for the future of China. As capitalism develops, so does the working class, and with it the class struggle. If instability at the top gives workers a little room to fight back, both industrially and for basic democratic freedoms, then the class can begin to turn its growing social weight into a powerful political force.
