The Chinese government announced January 9 some initial steps to implement market "reforms" demanded by the White House as part of the deal. The moves include plans by Beijing to curb state control over banks and telecommunications in China and ease restrictions on foreign investors.

A layer of U.S. ruling class figures, while heartened by these moves, gave a blunt assessment and open recognition of the obstacles facing both imperialism and the Chinese bureaucracy in imposing the "reforms" on workers.

If the government presses ahead on these "broad initiatives," the editors of the Wall Street Journal asserted in an editorial, "millions more Chinese workers will be laid off." Discerning the "risk of social unrest" that will accompany such a "painful period of adjustment," the editors of the Journal said, "There is also reason to be cautious."

Washington and its imperialist allies seek to overturn the state monopoly of foreign trade, nationalized property, and economic planning—the foundations of the workers state in China. The U.S. rulers, however, are not confident the Chinese regime can carry through with what is needed to make working people give up on the historic social conquests of the Chinese revolution and accept the reimposition of capitalist property relations.

The workers' "cradle-to-grave job guarantees" are at stake, the Wall Street Journal noted, so "what can [the Chinese government] say that will keep them from demonstrating in front of local Party offices? The financial daily's editors are worried that Beijing "does not seem to be preparing the population for the change with any efforts at political reform."

"Such a major rewriting of the social contract," the Journal's editors say, will make workers "complain, with some justification, that they are being cheated out of the job security China had traditionally guaranteed."

An even more pointed question unemployed workers will ask, they point out, is "why is the socialist sector shrinking while the capitalists are getting rich? This is more than a semantic point."

Disappointed, the Journal concludes that the regime headed by Jiang Zemin will "fudge the socialism question." But, they demand, "It is time to tell China's workers the truth about the coming transition."

Meanwhile, the White House continues its propaganda campaign against the ruling Chinese bureaucracy, citing its "human rights record." "Over the past year the government of China intensified its crackdown on political dissent," declared State Department spokesman James Rubin on January 11. He qualified the tough talk, however, in an effort to promote trade relations. "We engage with China to advance our national interests," Rubin added.

U.S. rulers seek to extract more concessions from the Chinese government, pressing them to open China's economy to U.S. investments. The trade agreement will, "at least on paper, pry open parts of the Chinese economy that Beijing has tended to shelter from foreign competition," the New York Times reported January 11.  
 
 
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