China's Green Development is Both Anti-Imperialist & Socialist
China’s green industrial transformation shows that ecological development, anti-imperialism & socialism can advance together under a state that governs capital rather than serving it.
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Ashwin Shantha joins Steve for a discussion challenging Western narratives on China – particularly the all-too-common opinions that dismiss its socialist character. This episode makes the case that China is a genuine socialist project where the state disciplines capital rather than being governed by it.
Ashwin illustrates how China’s green industrial revolution—driven by rapid progress in electric vehicles and renewable energy—marks a qualitative break from capitalist development paths. Unlike the Global North’s extractive model, China’s centrally planned approach prioritizes use-value objectives (clean air, energy self-reliance, and technological independence) over exchange-value maximization. The state constructs markets strategically, using mechanisms like the dual-credit policy to force both domestic and foreign automakers toward sustainable production targets.
While the episode isn’t focused on MMT, it highlights how China’s monetary sovereignty enables fiscal space for long-term industrial planning. The nation’s ability to issue its own currency and direct credit toward clean development highlights a crucial distinction from Global South countries trapped in IMF-imposed structural adjustment programs. This self-determined policy space, which is denied to nations like India and much of Africa, allows Beijing to absorb neoliberal shocks while maintaining state control over the economy.
China’s sustainable growth model is anti-imperialist in two key ways. First, energy independence reduces reliance on imported fossil fuels that expose the country to geopolitical leverage through choke points like the Malacca Strait. Second, technological autonomy focuses on developing indigenous productive forces that break the Western monopoly over clean technology.
By keeping private capital subordinate to state priorities, China shows that socialist modernization offers a workable alternative for the Global South, avoiding the de-development and resource plunder that characterizes Western industrialization.
China’s model may still have some contradictions, but it continues to show what is possible when state power is wielded in the interests of the working class.
Ashwin Shantha (they/them) is a doctoral student whose research focuses broadly on the political economy of sovereign development in the global South, focusing specifically on China and South Asia. Some of their existing work has researched South-South development cooperation between China and Pakistan through the Belt and Road Initiative, as well as, more recently, China’s state-led green industrial revolution in the electric vehicles and renewable energy sectors. Ashwin is also the host of the International Solidarity Podcast, which focuses on the politics of anti-imperialism and socialism in the global South.
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Substack:
China always ends up winning because they dont care about beating anyone else, they just care about doing the best they can
A system which calls for unlimited growth on a planet with finite resources is inherently ecologically unsustainable. #China is far from perfect, but it has the correct idea in terms of effectively addressing the existential threat that is #climatechange