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Mao Tsetung Thought Realized: “Coca-Cola Colonialism” Comes to China

Proletarian Revolution, vol. 1 no. 9, Editorial, January 1979.

After World War II, communists in Europe often referred to the domination of US imperialism as “Coca-Cola colonialism,” because wherever US imperialism penetrated there could be found Coca-Cola signs everywhere. The Coke signs have become as much a symbol of US imperialism as the stars and stripes. A fact Canadians are well aware of.

So it is not at all surprising to see that Coca-Cola has been given exclusive rights to distribute cola in China. Since 1972 China has openly joined the dance of the imperialist camp, its favorite partner being US imperialism. China has recently opened the gates to all kinds of imperialist ventures, so it is only “natural” that “things go better with Coke.”

It is of course no mere coincidence that granting Coke a monopoly in China comes at the same time as the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between China and the US. These relations were not formalized as a normal function of state-to-state relations, but in fact came about to strengthen the alliance between US imperialism and Chinese social-imperialism.

The US economy has been in serious crisis and this crisis is expected to deepen seriously in 1979. Expansion into the Chinese market, 1/4 of mankind, is a major way in which US imperialism could postpone some of the effects of the crisis, a fact which it openly admits. This situation has allowed the Chinese imperialists to make a deal that will allow US penetration of the Chinese market. The US, in turn, will give China technical and military assistance to become an imperialist superpower by the year 2000.

“Coca-Cola colonialism” has indeed come to China. China’s capitulation to US imperialism should be clear to all who want to see, now that it has just been announced in Peking that China wants the US to increase its naval presence in the Pacific to counter Soviet “hegemonism.”

Although this alliance of imperialists is very clear to revolutionaries around the world, there seems to remain some confusion as to its origin. Revolutionaries realize that the theory of “three worlds” is a theory designed for precisely what China has done. But there are some who seem to be confused on the role of Mao Tse-tung. Some think that Mao was a victim of the rightest forces of Teng and Hua, that he somehow must have opposed these policies of betrayal, even though there is no evidence that he did. The facts are, however, it was Mao who allied with Chou En-Lai to crush revolutionaries in the Cultural Revolution, precisely for the purpose of setting China on its present course. Mao protected Chou and with him rehabilitated the right-wing forces purged in the Cultural Revolution, including Teng Hsiao-ping. Mao did not oppose Nixon’s visit, he welcomed him and even personally invited him back after he was disgraced world-wide for the gangster that he is. Mao met with one reactionary after another in order to solidify China’s position as a great power.

Mao sent Teng to the UN to put forward the theory of “three worlds.” This theory is entirely consistent with “Mao Tse-tung thought” and was in fact originated by him: not in 1974 or 1972, but as far back as 1944, when he proposed that China be a “bridge between the two camps.” It was then that he sought an alliance with US imperialism to turn China into a modern capitalist country. And this was only the result of the revisionist politics he pursued from the beginning of his political career.

Mao was neither an opponent nor a victim of China’s imperialist course; he was its chief architect from the beginning. He is the father of Chinese imperialism and the betrayer of Chinese communism. Objectively those who will persist in supporting Mao Tse-tung thought, even though they claim to oppose the theory of “three worlds,” are in fact preserving the theoretical basis of the theory of “three worlds.”

Mao Tse-tung’s only contribution to Marxism-Leninism was to become another revisionist opponent who must be defeated. Those who defend Mao defend Chinese revisionism. We must break completely with Chinese revisionism so as to prevent it from re-infecting the international communist movement in one disguised form or another. Those who refuse to confront the revisionist nature of Mao Tse-tung thought are in fact refusing to root out Chinese revisionism. Their opposition to the theory of “three worlds” is a sham and needs to be exposed. There are those who think the struggle against Chinese revisionism was won and is now over because of the exposure of the theory of “three worlds” and China’s plots to become a superpower. But it, in fact, is just the beginning. In every great struggle against revisionism there emerges a stratum of centrists that vacillate to and conciliate with revisionism. In the struggle against social-chauvinism this stratum coalesced around the Zimmerwald international. In the struggle against modern revisionism, this stratum coalesced around the Chinese revisionists. History has shown that the struggle against social-chauvinism could not be won without a struggle against Kautskyism, and the struggle against modern revisionism cannot be won without a struggle against Mao Tse-tung thought and all those that conciliate with it.