Last October, the Communist Party of China convened its Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee, issuing a sweeping communiqué that marries the rhetoric of Marxist-Leninist tradition with the mechanics of globalised State capitalism. How does the document transmute revolutionary language into Party-State strategy? What remains of emancipation in the ‘socialist modernisation’ now being sold to the world?
When the communiqué arrived in Beijing, it bore all the solemn hallmarks of ideological renewal. In the ornate chamber of the Great Hall of the People, with flags draped in scarlet and the register of history in the air, the phraseology of Marxism, Mao Zedong Thought, Deng Xiaoping Theory and, now, Xi Jinping Thought was invoked as though doctrine and refinement were one. Yet beneath the polished prose of continuity lay a radically different logic: a red-flagged enterprise of managed accumulation and State-monopoly capitalism refined for the global era.
The communiqué celebrates the successes of the 14th Five-Year Plan and sets the guideposts for the 15th: high-quality development, technological self-reliance, industrial modernisation, a robust domestic market, rural revitalisation, green transition, and national security under party command. It commands the party and the people to rally around Xi and keep the party’s leadership at the heart of all national endeavour. And it wraps this command in the banner of socialism with Chinese characteristics.
There is reason to pause for those on the Left. The rhetoric claims historic rupture but the practice confirms continuity — not of emancipation but of capital. The industrial system is to be built, upgraded, emerging industries nurtured, and manufacturing preserved as backbone. The “real economy” is to be central. The market is to be efficient but regulated. The party is to govern but also manage the economy. In that structure, the proletariat does not appear as an autonomous subject; it appears as labour-resource, consumer-mass, and pillar of a domestic market.
The claim to stay committed to Marxism-Leninism and Mao Zedong Thought matters symbolically — but the investment is in State-managed market architecture. In Mao’s era, the argument was class war, land revolution, mass mobilisation, workers and peasants seizing power. Now the argument is national rejuvenation, technological leadership, and international influence, all under unified party leadership. Xi’s Thought is credited with continuity — but that continuity is less a revolutionary break than an ideological rebadge. The worker is told to trust the party rather than challenge it.
The global dimension is where the communiqué becomes most insidious. The document calls for “opening up at the institutional level”, expansion of two-way investment, high-standard Belt and Road cooperation, building a community with a shared future for humanity. That kind of language appeals to anti-imperialist movements globally: the red flag creates an alternative image to Western liberal capitalism. But the substance is different. China does not position itself as a revolutionary liberator — it positions itself as a strategic player in global capitalism, deploying State-capital instruments, infrastructure diplomacy, technological dependence, and investment corridors. In zones of crisis — for instance, Gaza — China remains silent or passive, preserving its commercial and strategic interests while presenting a posture of neutrality or moral superiority. The red flag thus becomes a marketing tool, not a symbol of proletarian emancipation.
The philosophical pivot is subtle. Socialism, Marx argued, meant not just State ownership but the transformation of relations of production, the abolition of alienation, agency for the working class as subject of history. What the communiqué promotes instead is State-capital accumulation under party discipline. Redistribution is referenced — “common prosperity”, “refining the income distribution system”, “inclusive public services”—but the conditions of wage-labour, capital accumulation, and class division remain untouched and, indeed, reinforced by the emphasis on manufacturing, innovation, global competition. The party becomes the director of accumulation, the worker a managed partner. There is no space for democratic workers’ control for bottom-up transformation, for the rupture of commodification of labour.
Culturally and ideologically, the communiqué commands a socialist culture with Chinese characteristics. Yet when culture is guided by the party, when ideological work is strengthened, when public communication and social governance are tied tightly to party discipline, what remains of independent cultural agency? The workers, the peasants, the youth, the intellectuals — they are directed, not emancipated. In Mao’s era, mass line implied listening to the masses; here the masses are to be organised. The red flag waves, but its bearer is the centralised party-State, not the collective workers’ movement.
What of the international left? The danger is real. China’s communiqué invites admiration — it sets out a plan for State-directed modernisation, green transition, large market, global cooperation, nationalist pride — and appeals to those who reject neoliberalism. But to embrace it uncritically is to swallow the red flag with the nameplate of capitalism. State-monopoly firms, debt-linked infrastructure, export of Chinese brands, digital surveillance, labour exploitation within global value chains—all of this may be happening beneath that rhetoric of ‘socialism’. The Left must ask: is this solidarity or strategic partnership?
The document’s very structure reflects its political economy. It emphasises development as the central task, security as guarantee, reform and innovation as drivers, and party self-governance as underpinning everything. The four-pronged strategy and five-sphere integrated plan are less frameworks of socialist democracy and more instruments of centralised governance and strategic accumulation. It emphasises party leadership over the armed forces, over national defence modernisation, over Hong Kong, Macao, Taiwan, over the whole sphere of domestic governance. Security is elevated to the level of development. That indicates a State power prepared to manage dissent, integrate markets, control ideology, and extend global reach. It is not the withering away of the State — it is its deepening.
In narrative terms, the red flag, once the symbol of proletarian revolution, has been recalibrated. It now signals endurance and reinvention. The workers’ revolution is replaced by the party-managed modernisation of a national collective oriented towards global competition. The polemic here must be clear: when party leadership absorbs all centres of power, when market logic is internalised as “socialist market economy”, when technological self-reliance becomes State imperative, the Left loses the horizon of abolition and retains only the horizon of management. The idea of socialism becomes an elite programme of national accumulation, not a people’s project of emancipation.
Yet the communiqué is not to be dismissed as cynical propaganda. It is effective and resonant. It acknowledges risks — notably in the international environment and in the domestic tasks of reform, development and stability. It appeals to resilience. It resets the mission of the CPC as both guardian and entrepreneur, as provider of social welfare and architect of global infrastructure, as cultural leader and economic manager. In its invocation of history — the victory over fascism, the reform era, national rejuvenation — it ties legitimacy to narrative. But that narrative binds emancipation to the party’s unity — not to class struggle, not to workers’ self-organisation, not to collective democracy.
For policymakers, educators, Left parties and civil society, the task is to decode the communiqué for what it is: less a socialist blueprint than a State-capital manifest. The global Left must insist on the distinction between anti-imperialism and State-capital competition; between redistribution and transformation; between national modernisation and global emancipation. If the red flag is to reclaim real meaning, it must rest in the hands of the working class, not wave above the party-State.
The red flag still waves over Beijing — but the bearer is not the bicycle-riding factory worker, the rural peasant, or the miners’ collective. It is held aloft by the Party-State, by the hierarchical structures of capital, by global strategies of accumulation. That is the lesson of the Fourth Plenum.
Debashis Chakrabarti is a political commentator and Commonwealth Fellow (UK)