> Creation: Marxist Philosophy Group of the Proletarian Liberation Struggle Association
On November 12th, Zhongxiu held the 15th “China International Aviation & Aerospace Exhibition” at Zhuhai International Airshow Center, which lasted six days. A large number of new Chinese military equipment appeared at the Zhuhai Airshow, with military drones taking center stage — including the large stealth drone “Rainbow 7”, the “Jiutian” reconnaissance-strike drone, and the small suicidal rotor drone “Rainbow 817A”, known as the “flying hand grenade”.
The biennial Zhuhai Airshow has always been an important window for the outside world to understand China’s military technological level. Besides aircraft, the exhibition also showcased new tanks, armored vehicles, self-propelled artillery, and military robots. Moreover, this year, Zhongxiu specially set up a venue to display large unmanned combat boats, covering land, sea, and air forces. It is evident that although the Zhuhai Airshow is called an “air show,” it has actually become a military exhibition where Zhongxiu shows off its muscles. In the current context of intensified imperialist competition for foreign markets and spheres of influence, Zhongxiu is more deliberately using this platform to intimidate the U.S. imperialist bloc.
Some believe that the strengthening of Zhongxiu’s military power is a good thing, beneficial for “preventing foreign invasion.” However, this is not the case. First, war is an extension of politics. Zhongxiu, as a state ruled by bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie, serves only one purpose — to extract more profits. The monopolist bourgeoisie’s methods of profit-making are mainly two — exploiting domestic workers and plundering foreign, especially colonial, peoples. Therefore, the enhancement of Zhongxiu’s military strength is essentially an increase in the power of the bureaucratic monopoly bourgeoisie to suppress internally and plunder externally, and this force is often first used against the people, as Tullman once said: “All weapons in the hands of the ruling class are aimed at firing at us, the working people!”
Second, in today’s imperialist era, colonies have been divided among imperialist countries. To fundamentally change the current situation of colonial occupation, there is no other way but to resort to force and war. As a rising imperialist country, Zhongxiu does not have the vast colonies that old imperialist powers like the U.S. do. Initially, its sphere of influence was only a small part of the global colonial system, and thus it was extremely dissatisfied with the status quo. It mimicked fascist Germany and Japan, loudly claiming to break the hegemonism of American imperialism and demanding “living space” and “land under the sun.” Zhongxiu’s so-called “military commentator” Song Zhongping openly revealed Zhongxiu’s ambitions to seize more territory and dominate the world, saying: “The Chinese navy ‘cannot stay forever as a homebody at the doorstep.’ … The future development direction will be globalization, strategy, and blue-water navy.”
Finally, the products produced by the military-industrial sector are arms, which cannot be used as means of subsistence for people nor as means of production for new products. Therefore, they are useless for social production, and their value can only be realized through arms trade. However, to produce these weapons that are of no benefit to people’s lives, the ultimate source of funds is the bourgeois state, which transfers wealth to the people through increased taxes, fiscal deficits, or inflation. Meanwhile, military-industrial enterprises profit immensely due to the continuous increase in government orders — Zhongxiu heavily subsidizes “civilian participation in the military”[1] enterprises, and companies that obtain military qualification certifications are rewarded. For example, Shenzhen’s “Measures for Promoting Scientific and Technological Innovation,” “Measures for Supporting Enterprises to Enhance Competitiveness,” and “Measures for Promoting Talent Priority Development” stipulate that “military-civilian integrated innovation research projects” will receive 50% of actual investment as funding, with a maximum of 10 million yuan. Zhongxiu seeks to profit greatly by selling arms in war, and its mouthpieces also promote the idea of making war profits as arms dealers. Taiwanese military scholar Su Ziyun stated: “Chinese unmanned equipment… currently lacks combat experience and needs to increase export to accumulate combat experience,” and the Russia-Ukraine war “is an additional push for the PLA to accelerate the development of unmanned military equipment.” In the increasingly collapsing capitalist economy, monopolist bourgeoisie countries are more and more relying on militarization of the national economy, engaging in desperate struggles through unlimited armament expansion, but all these costs are borne by the masses.
Zhongxiu is imitating its fascist predecessor Nazi Germany, testing its killing machines on the Russia-Ukraine battlefield. However, just as no “miracle weapon” could save Nazi fascism’s demise, Zhongxiu, even if temporarily arrogant with various new weapons, will inevitably face destruction by the people once it dares to initiate war with these weapons.
Refers to private capital or state-owned capital mainly producing civilian goods entering the military industry. ↩︎